That ought to suffice, unless you're going to assert for the record that the pre-repeal system was morally superior.
Posted on 03/28/2006 10:51:21 PM PST by goldstategop
Getting high can be bad. Putting people in prison for it is worse. And doing the latter doesn't stop the former.
I was once among the majority who believe that drug use must be illegal. But then I noticed that when vice laws conflict with the law of supply and demand, the conflict is ugly, and the law of supply and demand generally wins.
The drug war costs taxpayers about $40 billion. "Up to three quarters of our budget can somehow be traced back to fighting this war on drugs," said Jerry Oliver, then chief of police in Detroit, told me. Yet the drugs are as available as ever.
Oliver was once a big believer in the war. Not anymore. "It's insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over again," he says. "If we did not have this drug war going on, we could spend more time going after robbers and rapists and burglars and murderers. That's what we really should be geared up to do. Clearly we're losing the war on drugs in this country."
No, we're "winning," according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which might get less money if people thought it was losing. Prosecutors hold news conferences announcing the "biggest seizure ever." But what they confiscate makes little difference. We can't even keep drugs out of prisons -- do we really think we can keep them out of all of America?
Even as the drug war fails to reduce the drug supply, many argue that there are still moral reasons to fight the war. "When we fight against drugs, we fight for the souls of our fellow Americans," said President Bush. But the war destroys American souls, too. America locks up a higher percentage of her people than almost any other country. Nearly 4,000 people are arrested every day for mere possession of drugs. That's more people than are arrested for aggravated assault, burglary, vandalism, forcible rape and murder combined.
Authorities say that warns people not to mess with drugs, and that's a critical message to send to America's children. "Protecting the children" has justified many intrusive expansions of government power. Who wants to argue against protecting children?
I have teenage kids. My first instinct is to be glad cocaine and heroin are illegal. It means my kids can't trot down to the local drugstore to buy something that gets them high. Maybe that would deter them.
Or maybe not. The law certainly doesn't prevent them from getting the drugs. Kids say illegal drugs are no harder to get than alcohol.
Perhaps a certain percentage of Americans will use or abuse drugs -- no matter what the law says.
I cannot know. What I do know now, however, are some of the unintended consequences of drug prohibition:
1. More crime. Rarely do people get high and then run out to commit crimes. Most "drug crime" happens because the product is illegal. Since drug sellers can't rely on the police to protect their property, they form gangs and arm themselves. Drug buyers steal to pay the high black market prices. The government says alcohol is as addictive as heroin, but no one is knocking over 7-Elevens to get Budweiser.
2. More terrorism. The profits of the drug trade fund terrorists from Afghanistan to Colombia. Our herbicide-spraying planes teach South American farmers to hate America.
3. Richer criminal gangs. Alcohol prohibition created Al Capone. The gangs drug prohibition is creating are even richer, probably rich enough to buy nuclear weapons. Osama bin Laden was funded partly by drug money.
Government's declaring drugs illegal doesn't mean people can't get them. It just creates a black market, where even nastier things happen. That's why I have come to think that although drug addiction is bad, the drug war is worse.
You sound like a pretty admirable guy!
Yeah, power is his fantasy...like mighty mouse.
Given the tiny number of IV drug users, this doesn't strike me as a very large cost.
"When I asked how a flasher harmed her..."
When I was 14 and walking to school, up ahead on the grass between his car and the sidewalk I saw a man standing there twirling a keychain. I should note I am nearsighted, and hated to wear my glasses. As I got close, I realized it was not a keychain. I felt great shock, but acted like I didn't notice anything strange, and kept walking past him as my hearth beat overtime and the skin on my scalp crawled. When I got in home room, I just sat there silent and in shock. In first period I finally got up the nerve, and presence of mind to tell the young female teacher I liked. She immediately had the police called, but, of course, the man was gone.
I was always afraid to walk that route ever after, and for a year felt anxiety every time I walked too or from school. My anxiety was heightened by the fact that at age 7 a pedophile forced me to touch him. I later realized he could have killed me. I also realized later that the man by my school could have dragged me into his car.
So I ask you, did the flasher harm me? I think yes. After that the world felt a lot less safe.
Gee, if my logic was "imbecilic at best", what would be the worst case? If my "rhetoric" was so "imbecilic", why did you condescend to respond to it? Of all the things to get insulting about, the right to keep and bear drugs is not one of them. Sanctimony should be reserved sacred things, not whether (or not) you get your freak on. Thomas Jefferson you aint. Step away from the bong, Zon (or needle/coke spoon/angel dust). You're the one who wants to use the arguments of cost effectiveness, jail overcrowding, and (most of all) the "failure" to arrest every drug dealer and seize every kilo of drugs as reasons to make your (and everyone else's) favorite drugs available at popular prices. If my imbecilic analogies hit a little too close to home, sorry!
You advocate enlisting government agents to initiate harm/force against people that have not harmed anyone but perhaps themselves. The act of ingesting drugs harms no one but the user. Don't give me the communitarian/socialist pap about increasing health care costs for the community because fat people are worse in that regard as are tobacco users and alcohol users and a list of others.
But it's not a war against inanimate objects. It's a war against people. How pathetic are you?
If by dead you mean the recreational drug trade would be driven underground, I agree.
First of all, your first and last sentences completely contradict each other. "It's a war against inanimate objects...no wait, it's a war against people, not inanimate objects". Applying your "logic", all encounters between police and citizens is "a war against people". People commit the crimes. People get arrested. People do time.
I don't see the license to use drugs as an "inalienable right" that is (or should be) protected. Do you really believe that you would have been praised a champion of freedom if you had lit up, shot up or snorted up in the days when Madison, Jefferson, and Franklin walked the earth? No? I didn't think so.
Cite one, just one, example of this.
In every instance where the law has been relaxed, people rushed in to take advantage of it.
Were you actually at the school when you got nailed? Because if you were, with a half an ounce, not only would you have gotten nailed for "intent to distribute" based on the amount alone, you would've gotten crucified for possession within a thousand yards of a school. You'd still be in the clink today, unable to post on FR.
What's the reasoning behind your desire to add to the burden? Are you upset because your vice isn't included?
The WOD CANNOT be won. We can simply turn back to the 1920s, and watch the illegal stamp put on alcohol...and see that the efforts of the police and laws...simply didn't do the job. People generally looked the other way. Eventually....we got to the point of seeing how worthless the effort was, and state by state...we stopped prohibition.
The WOD is the same way. You could hire 30,000 additional cops...have drug tests in 30 percent of the work places of America...seize personal property of citizens convicted of drug use...and even start executing anyone with a significant amount of drugs in their possession as a sales guy. It does not matter. They won't stop. I can walk through any neighborhood in Mobile...even upper class neighborhoods...and 20 percent of the folks are smoking pot. There are college professors doing coke. There are congressmen using drugs. It doesn't matter.
You want to have an impact? Legalize pot alone...authorize dealers in each county where it can be bought, and tax the heck out of it...and watch tax revenue jump by leaps and bounds. Face a serious reality here...there are probably 10,000 cops throughout the US...on the payroll of some local or international drug cartel. DEA has them and so does the border patrol. We are spinning wheels.
Wonderful---say we go so far as to grant you that point. Under what bizarre brand of "common sense" is it logical to criminalize the use and possession of substance X "for the common good," yet not substance Y for the same reason, even though science, experience, and history has proved time and time again that substance Y is far more harmful to "the common good" than substance X?Even if we grant you the ideological point---though I still think you err too significantly on the side of state powers---your argument doesn't hold water because it's not based on common sense, which is the lynchpin of your point.
That ought to suffice, unless you're going to assert for the record that the pre-repeal system was morally superior.
The original intent (a phrase you so dearly love) of the U.S. Constitution was to define and limit the powers of the newly formed federal government. It was not meant to restrict the police powers of the states.
Maybe you need to read it, huh?
Hell yeah---they were ready to throw down over a stamp tax!
To me, this is what FR is all about: The oft rancorous but always free exchange of ideas and philosophy. It's what made this country and (hopefully) what shall keep it as well!
Engaging in morally repugnant activities like gambling, pornography, prostitution, gay marriage, polygamy, bestiality, etc. -- In private, -- has never been constitutionally 'illegal', - and never will be.
You communitarian warriors simply cannot admit that you are engaged in an anti-constitutional 'war'. -- You are convinced that the moral majority can 'rule'.
Read our Constitution. It is very restrictive on governments at any level "implementing laws and public policies" that infringe on our individual rights to life, liberty, or property.
To bad you can't argue this issue squarely, on a Constitutional basis.
FR has more that enough communitarian's that simply insist that 'moral majority rule' trumps the clear words of our Law of the Land.
The original intent (a phrase you so dearly love) of the U.S. Constitution was to define and limit the powers of the newly formed federal government.
Paulsen, you keep repeating your idiocy about limits ~only~ on the feds, -- when Article VI clearly says that State laws & constitutions notwithstanding, our US Constitution is the "Law of the Land".
It was not meant to restrict the police powers of the states.
The 10th says that powers are prohibited by it [the Constitution] to the States. -- Powers to deprive people of rights to life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
Maybe you need to read it, huh?
Maybe you need to honor it, huh?
If by "won" you mean the complete elimination of recreational drugs, you're right. It cannot be won.
It's a goal, yes. Just as the elimination of any other crime is a goal. But you're being a bit disingenuous to say that the War on Drugs can't be won so let's give up and go ahead and legalize ... uh ... how about only pot? Where did that come from?
OK. You referenced Prohibition. What would have happened if, during Prohibition, we legalized only wine? Would that have had an "impact"? In a word, no.
Legalize pot and tax the heck out of it and you'll drive it right back underground (to the existing network). We see that already happening with cigarettes.
The combination of the drug laws, enforcement of those laws, and an attitude change, led to a 65% drop in marijuana use from 13.2% in 1979 to 4.6% in 1993. It remained relatively flat for the next 10 years, though it is up recently. Without turning into a police state, maybe the best we can do is 5-7%.
Currently, 30% of marijuana users are underage. With legalization, that number is sure to grow. If legalization doubled the number of teens smoking marijuana, would you still favor legalization? Just curious.
Tell me Duck, when we start "removing people from civilized society" who gets to decide on what the list of "right choices" is.
"The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog is."
--G. K. Chesterton
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