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When alcohol prohibition was repealed, it was replaced by regulations and tax statutes that restricted distribution and maintained purity and dose (alcohol content by percentage).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 ...
Our own Wolfie is always coherent. He is wrong but he is always coherent. ;~)
Put it on the list!
Study the history. Drugs were banned the same state moralists who wanted prohibition. Everything causes problems. The State's war on drugs causes a heck of a lot of problems - more so than the drugs themselves ever caused.
If you read the article, the author doesn't promote wholesale legalization, but common sense methods of ending the madness that is the war on drugs.
YOU just proved my point.
Thanks (you're making this TOO EASY).
Now, if you could just do something about the stupid people in our society/world ....
Willam Buckley also has supported ending the war on drugs for at least 2 decades. Would you also call him Comrade?
THIS ignores, perhaps, a lot of the history via the several (numerous?) "Pure Food and Drug" acts passed by congress that addressed a multitude of problems encountered at the time (ANYBODY want to talk about Mad Cow disease, livestock health, USDA inspections or tainted/spoiled beef being sold to the public at this juncture?).
IF 'drug use' wasn't/had not become a problem - it (drugs) wouldn't have been banned.
I see you know nothing of the history of prohibition in this country. It never actually has been a big problem, but it does have its roots in another: blatant racism.
That's the premise in this piece I penned a few years back - it contends that your *real* problem is the stupid people in society - ELIMINATE them and, virtually ALL laws could be eliminated. (So I exaggerate - you get the point.)
You mean like the stupid ones who are unquainted with logic and history and therefore are incapable of making sense?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's the stupid in society who brought this upon themselves in the first place. As is often the case - it is several, usually the stupid - who ruin it for the many.
Racism is indeed a clear sign of stupidity.
The stupid I refer to at this point are those few dopers who ruined it for the balance of the dope ingesting populace who *can* ingest or inhale their stupifying substances without running afoul of Johnny Law.
Meaningless without substantiation that these 'few dopers' actually caused a quantifiable problem in the first place.
This is not to say that other debilitating effects take hold ... they do but the doper in his indulgence in his drug of choice coupled with denial do not see it.
Irrelevant.
Take for example the doper who has a burglary occur, calls the law who promptly discovers his 'grow' operation - this is the type of advanced IQ I am referring to when I use the term the stupid ...
Also irrelevant. MJ prohibition was around long before such grow operations, so individuals like this could not possibly have led to its legal status.
The following must be considered before launching off on wild-eyed pro-drug or drug legalization diatribes.
Oh, goodie. Let's see how this plays out.
IF drug use HAD NOT been a problem - would laws restricting drug use have materialized?
Racism, but I'm not going to do your research for you. Google is our friend.
Some simple, clear-headed deductive reasoning (not always achievable by dopers) can shed some light on how we arrived at the point we currently find ourselves.
I am a homicide detective, and can assure you that my ability to reason deductively is quite advanced. From what I have read so far, you are unfamiliar with such mental activity and, as such, aren't really qualified to expound on it.
Following this premise further - problems with this early, growing population of dopers) - and short of actually educating people (not all people are educable, it seems, given those felons who commit multiple buglaries *after* their release from prison) the imposition of rules (laws) with an enforcement body became the norm in controlling the growing problem.
Historically quite inaccurate.
To sum it up, the growing doper population became first - a simple nuisance - then a problem at which point the problem was solved in the manner in which civil order is normally restored. We pass laws. Then *surprise* we enforce those laws ...
A flawed premise and incorrect or insufficient data will skew the results such that they become obviously unreliable.
What most people in these drug legalization threads are really advocating (in the case of mj) is the freedom to ingest or inhale the stupifying compound THC (active ingredient in mj) via a tobacco-like delivery mechanism (smoking).
More to the point - they are looking for the right to inhale or ingest stupifying substances without repurcussion.
I see you do not tire of being wrong.
It seems patently obvious that they desire to do so free of gov't repercussions.
Trotting out that old saw again?
HE also called for the scaffold, but, you guys don't repeat that part - do ya? (DOWN toward the end - in bold.)
-- Making Poloicy As The Crow Flies --July 15, 1986
In French and Spanish the word "serious" has a meaning that doesn't correspond with any of the synonyms given for that word in English. It means responsible, reliable, trustworthy, reflective. The other day, James Jackson Kilpatrick, who is a serious man, made an unserious suggestion about how we should deal with dope traffickers. It repays hard attention to the meaning of word to understand its ramifications in the current situation.
What we ought to do, said Kilpatrick, is catch a bunch of dope traders, try them, convict them, and then hang them in public squares.
Now if you heard that kind of talk from the mouth of, oh, the early or even the middle George Wallace, you would smile and say: there he goes again, the same man who suggested the best way to deal with protesters standing in the way of a bulldozer is to bulldoze them.
But Jack Kilpatrick really means it. It is an expression of high dudgeaon and also a concrete recommendation. He has heard described, and he has witnessed, the tortures experienced by those taken in the biological and psychologoical death agonies of drug consumption. It is agony whether you go on to die or whether you go on to live. Kilpatrick's point is that if ever there was justification for executing a murderer, there is justification for executing those wanton murderers whp distribute narcotics that cause worsepain by many leagues than anu pain experienced by the mugger's pistol shot.
Ten days ago we saw happen almost exactly that in Malaysia. The executions were not, to my knowledge, public, but they might as well have been, given the attention paid them in the world press. Two Australians, caught with merchandisable quantities of heroin, were tried, convicted and, after due process using up almost three years, hanged.
There was the usual outcry from the anti-capital-punishment set and even a few others, but the government of Malaysia stodd its ground, pointing out that there were signs all over the place potential drug merchants of the fate that would befall them. It is of passing interest that the local equivalent of the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes capital punishment, announced that drug merchandising was a crime so heinous that opposition to capital punishment was officially suspended when applied to that crime.
But Mr. Kilpatrick's suggestion is not serious. It is not responsible. It is not reputable. It is not viable. Why? because it is absolutely predictable that it will not happen.
This has nothing to do with the entirely different question: Should it happen? If tomorrow I needed to vote yes or no on a national plebiscite, "Shall we adopt the Kilpatrick Proposition ?" I should unflinchingly vote yes. And after, oh, a couple of hundred hangings, there would be a very sharp decrease in the merchandising of drugs. It wouldn't cease, any more than crime in Great Britain ceased when they used to hang you for stealing sixpence. But in modern America death sentences are taken much more seriously than they were two hundred years ago, when executions were commonplace and public floings a regular feature of city life. There are still a lot of people out there who maintain that there are no figures to sustain the proposition that capital punishment reduces incidence of murder. Well, let that one go. But it would be hard to find anyone who would dispute the conclusion that public hangings would dry up the assembly line of drugs passing under the eyes of the American public on a vibrant street corner.
But this is not going to happen. We are too frozen, institutionalized, in our views about executions, let alone public executions. So then why make the suggestion? It it were done in the spirit of fantasy ("One day they passed a law ... the next day, the consumption of drugs dropped 90 percent"), that would be one thing. But Mr. Kilpatrick was being -in the American usage-serious. But not serious in the continental sense.
Cocaine consumption is up 600 percent in many American cities. In Pakistan, the morning paper advises us, the growth of poppies is up 400 percent over last year. A lot of that stuff is destined for American blood vessels. And we can't stop it, and aren't stopping it. We are subsidizing a criminal class, overflowing our prisons, corrupting the police and the courts, depleting our reserves of detectives and judges, and accomplishing nothing. Either bring on the scaffold (which we aren't going to do), or legalize (which we probably aren't going to do either). We can, then, look for more of the same. Much more of the same.
That's right - and I didn't make any references to the 'Pure Food and Drug' acts as passed by congress in any of my posts either.
Why don't you go play where you're *not* wanted, needed or desired ...
You dysfunctionally responded: Racism, but I'm not going to do your research for you. Google is our friend.
Somewhere - you skipped a cog ...
I get the impression you have NEVER seen how gov't actually works, in the real world, at any level (from city through state to the federal level): A problem arises and some elected representative rises to the occasion to propose a solution.
That's right - and I didn't make any references to the 'Pure Food and Drug' acts as passed by congress in any of my posts either.
So what? Any fool could, for example, talk about manifolds, but it doesn't necessarily mean I want them working on my carbs.
Your failure to mention or include the numerous other factors and developments in the early history of prohibition in this country clearly indicate your selective 'reasoning' and specious arguments.
Why don't you go play where you're *not* wanted, needed or desired ...
I see you're unable to answer any of my points.
I stand by my statement: your post and its contents were and are imbecilic.
Actually, I did - but you're to steeped in your own juices right now to have read that part.
I assure you the manner in which I responded was not dysfunctional.
Somewhere - you skipped a cog ...
What I failed to do in making you understand logic is post pictures and use bigger font size.
I get the impression you have NEVER seen how gov't actually works, in the real world, at any level (from city through state to the federal level): A problem arises and some elected representative rises to the occasion to propose a solution.
Your naivete is painfully obvious.
Does this earn me extra points on your 'watch' list?
I thought that post had lots of merit, BTW - although along narrow, targeted lines - AS DESIGNED.
Do you understand that term - "AS DESIGNED"?
(My feeling is you're just one more doper who felt badly singed after reading that short little screed.)
Thank you.
Do you want to dance?
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