Posted on 01/04/2004 10:44:31 AM PST by patdor
Once we understand that the War on Drugs is an abject failure, the question arises, what can we do? What is the solution for ending the drug war?
The answer is very simple.
The core issues of crime and other social ills of the drug war come directly from the black market, not the drugs themselves. The black market is created by, and in fact encouraged by, the socio-economic effects of prohibition (called the “War On Drugs”).
As a result, the cure can only come by ending prohibition. But ending prohibition does not mean a sudden "free for all" of "legalization".
When alcohol prohibition was repealed, it was replaced by regulations and tax statutes that restricted distribution and maintained purity and dose (alcohol content by percentage). It also placed the methods of regulation for sale to the public largely in the hands of local and state governments, where it rightly belongs.
As a nation we are a very diverse culture. The values and cultural heritage of the east are different from the south and are quite different from the values of the west. The result is that federal level recreational substance laws fail in their ignorance of underlying social issues that are highly variable across the nation.
In other words, each state and locality should be afforded their own means of dealing with issues relating to drug abuse.
Thus, ending drug prohibition will be handled much like the end of alcohol prohibition - with the strict regulation and taxation of the manufacture, distribution, and sale of recreational substances.
The model of alcohol
For instance, comparative analysis of even the most pessimistic studies of marijuana show it to be safer and more benign than alcohol. Therefore it’s easy to see marijuana regulations mirroring those for beer and wine.
Hard alcohol is regulated more strictly than beer and wine, and certainly there are substances that should receive stricter regulation than marijuana. Soft drugs such as MDMA (Ecstasy), Psilocybin (Mushrooms), and Peyote, would need stricter regulation - along the lines of hard alcohol, which has significant restrictions on public use and distribution.
The very hardest of recreational substances, (i.e. the drugs with the highest physiological addiction rates, such as cocaine and heroin), would be regulated and distributed only by the government and directly to users. This distribution would seriously undercut, and virtually end, the black market for these drugs. This would greatly discourage the creation of new drug addicts.
It’s important to consider this last aspect of ending prohibition most thoroughly. It is the demonized “hard drug” user that the prohibitionists point to when declaring that the drug war must be continued.
(Excerpt) Read more at civilliberty.about.com ...
Well you are reading it now! The police and prison guards know very well that there would be massive lay-offs if drugs were legal. That is why the California correctional workers union was the main contributor to the campaign against prop 215.
With legal drugs, there would be less real crime and more police time to deal with it. We wouldn't be turning murderers out early to make room for MJ users with mandatory minimum sentences.
And yes, I would legalize everything and treat it like we treat alcohol now. Even heroine is not worse than alcohol and MJ is just about nothing.
Check these numbers:Deaths from:
Tobacco 400,000
alcohol 110,000
all illegal drugs 15,000
aspirin 2,000
Marijuana 00.00
Therefore, we'd have the same number of prisoners. Therefore we need the same number of prisons. Therefore we need the same number of guards.
Exactly what I said.
Not true. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association was not a contributor at all to Proposition 215.
Have you ever run for office?, or sold used cars? You have an uncanny ability to turn stuff around. The California corrections union contributed to the campaign AGAINST prop 215.
Have you ever run for office?, or sold used cars? You have an uncanny ability to turn stuff around. The California corrections union contributed to the campaign AGAINST prop 215.
We cannot know for sure if the removal of drug prisoners and the increase in real criminals due to focused police work will cancel out or not, but obviously, the nation will be better off because the correction resources will no longer be wasted on harmless folks.
Sorry. Let me re-phrase: "The California corrections union contributed nothing to the campaign AGAINST prop 215.
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