The "War on Drugs" has failed - time to consider legalisation?

The Sun (UK) ^ | NIGEL INKSTER, Ex-Assistant Chief of MI6

[sussex]

A FORMER British MI6 chief has joined growing calls to end the “war on drugs” and consider legalising them. The battle has left tens of thousands dead in Latin America but failed to reduce drug-use around the world. Here Nigel Inkster, of the International Institute For Strategic Studies, argues that we need to rethink our approach to narcotics.

[andyk]

So what do you think of the use of the expansive Commerce Clause to impose national prohibition in the US?

Many FReepers love it. They would rather support complete restriction of light bulbs and low flow toilets than recognize individual liberty.

Many folks here love to use the commerce clause to prohibit activities that their own state laws could prohibit. I will bet you that your state anti-drug laws are borne from a concern of the individual, and not a command from the federal government which you chartered with your own blessing.

[Ken H]

So you want to federalize the crime of murder?

[discostu]

Catching a buzz of some kind or another is deeply engrained in the human brain, part of our relaxation instinct I think. Notice 2 of the things you find in every culture is some sort of mind altering substance, and a form of group entertainment (mind altering activity). Trying to keep a society from doing drugs is like trying to keep a society from performing comedy, you can make a lot of laws and a lot of money enforcing those laws, but in the end people are going to do what their core instinct tells them to.

[andyk]

Justice Thomas had it right in his dissent to the Gonzalez case in 2005.

That's correct. Scalia screwed up.

[Sam Gamgee]

I agree. The US has 750 per 100,000 in prisons, half of those due to drug crimes. The US has become a police state.

[corlorde]

bookmark

[discostu]

That and the fact that we’ve had 3 generations grow up during the modern era of the drug war grow up largely ignoring it in their teens and mostly come out OK. The lies of the drug war have become pretty obvious, at least to anybody who ever actually did some drugs and didn’t get hooked or OD, which at this point is a really large percentage of the populace. Probably isn’t helping the WOD that the first generation to grow up under it have now hit senior citizen land and are regularly being prescribed stuff that makes the drugs they did for fun seem like soda.

[Magic Fingers]

I know potheads.

Sure, but a fair number of non-potheads agree with them. It’s not unusual.

[Magic Fingers]

“Probably isn’t helping the WOD that the first generation to grow up under it have now hit senior citizen land and are regularly being prescribed stuff that makes the drugs they did for fun seem like soda.”

LOL - I think you’re on to something.

[andyk]

That is why I am opposed to legalization.

It's not about legalization. It's about what the federal government can and cannot do. What your state decides to do is your own issue.

[Ken H]

Do you think states should decide issues like medical marijuana under authority of the Tenth Amendment, or do you think fedgov should have that authority under the Commerce Clause?

[WMarshal]

The government thinks that it owns us like draft animals. Like any good farmer, it wants to protect its investment by controlling what we eat, where we can go, and how long we live. When the government is paying good money for welfare it wants to protect its investment. When we can no longer work and pay taxes we are just dead weight that needs to be culled. The war on drugs is not about morality, it is about asset protection. The bigger the government, the smaller the person.

[cradle of freedom]

You can’t wage a war on terror while keeping the border open at the same time.

[cradle of freedom]

Oops, I meant war on drugs.

[varmintman]

The main problem is  economic.  The drugs one of these idiots would use in a day under rational circumstances would cost a dollar;  that would simply present no scope for crime or criminals.  Under present circumstances that dollar's worth of drugs is costing the user $300 a day and since that guy is dealing with a 10% fence, he's having to commit $3000 worth of crime to buy that dollar's worth of drugs.  In other words, a dollar's worth of chemicals has been converted into $3000 worth of crime, times the number of those idiots out there, times 365 days per year, all through the magic of stupid laws.  No nation on Earth  could afford that forever.

A rational set of drug laws would:

• Legalize marijuana and all its derivatives and anything else demonstrably no more harmful than booze on the same basis as booze.
• Declare that heroine, crack cocaine, and other highly addictive substances would never be legally sold on the streets, but that those addicted could shoot up at government centers for the fifty-cent cost of producing the stuff, i.e. take every dime out of that business for criminals.
• Provide a lifetime in prison for selling LSD, PCP, and other Jeckyl/Hyde formulas.
• Same for anybody selling any kind of drugs to kids.

Do all of that, and the drug problem and 70% of all urban crime will vanish within two years.

That would be a theoretical ideal solution of course, which might or might not be possible.  But we'd be better off simply legalizing it all than doing what we are now.  150 Years ago, there were no drug laws in America and there were no overwhelming drug problems.  How bright do you really need to be to figure that one out??

[GeronL]

fed or state, I am still opposed.

[microgood]

The War on Burglary has failed even worse in the UK. They might as well take that off the books too while they’re at it.

Also, we have a failure on the War on Murder. People are getting killed, every day. And our jails are full of those doing the killing, at a terrible cost to taxpayers.

The war on murder and rape are so old and useless.

Lucky for you guys there is no war on ignorance and illogic. At least not yet.

[Meet the New Boss]

Lucky for you guys there is no war on ignorance and illogic.

LOL. One can make various arguments for or against the regulation of certain substances, but the particular argument that because passing a law has not eliminated the outlawed activity, therefore the law should be removed from the books is practically the definition of illogic.

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

Agreed.

Remember Carrie Nation and the WCTU?

Remember the 18th Amendment? Roaring 20s? 21st Amendment to repeal it?

Ever read the Federal Racketeering Statutes? Because the Prohibition of Alcohol was what Created the Crime Syndicates which Created the Racketeering Laws, AND the Expansion of the unholy Commerce Clause fits Everything rule.

Read Sec 1958. Interstate Commerce Facilities.
http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/18C95.txt

I’ve known potheads, and while I wouldn’t lend them money, as a class they rarely commit armed robbery to keep them in dope.

[Tublecane]

“Why do people want to get high?”

Duh. It makes you high.

“what if some hophead kills someone while they’re high? You put them in jail, same as you would with anyone else.”

Yes, exactly. Why drug warriors can’t see this is beyond me. The idea, I guess, is that with everyone doing drugs as often as they want they’ll be a lot more crimes: too many to handle. Except anyone can use as much as they want now, and that’s with the Drug War.