Horrifying Collateral Damage Inflicted by the War on Drugs

Townhall.com ^ | June 4, 2014 | Jacob Sullum

[DiogenesLamp]

So your answer is more shootings and more control.

Your fix is worse then the disease.

Are you trying to be obtuse? Are you deliberately trying to misstate my position? If you aren't going to be intellectually honest, i'm not even going to bother attempting to discuss this with you.

The answer is no, that's not my position, and it is a strawman tactic for you to attempt to articulate it as my position.

[OneWingedShark]

The British responded by bringing in warships and mercilessly shelled the town killing thousands. The Chinese begged for peace, and so the terms were dictated to them by the British, and those terms were the legalization of the Opium trade. People who want to talk about legalizing drugs should seriously study this period of history.

There's an important difference here — it isn't legalization only, but [essentially] the forced commerce as well.

[discostu]

I never said it wouldn’t happen again, in fact in my next post to you I outright say it could. Of course making them illegal doesn’t mean you stop them. Opium was illegal in part or in whole in China for your ENTIRE graph (medical use only as of 1729, banned completely 1799). Which hits the usual problem the WOD defenders never seem to be able to acknowledge: making something illegal doesn’t keep people from using it.

You’re right about one thing, people should study that period, and use it to understand that making something illegal doesn’t prevent use. You’ve got to work on your society to get people not to use drugs. Plenty of places had opium legal during that time frame and didn’t have the massive problem China did, and it was illegal in China. If you’re going to use this time frame as a “what to do” model the time frame says legalize, and nuke England.

[DiogenesLamp]

I have to go now, I have responsibilities to which I must see. I'll come back at some other time to deal with all the flaming I expect to get from the "toking is freedom" crowd.

I can only appeal to reason amongst people who are willing to be intellectually honest. If someone wants to disregard past history and chase a Unicorn fart utopia, then there is no point in trying to dissuade them with facts. They will believe what they wish to believe.

Yes, our system is rife with abuses, and not just regarding drug issues. A Whole host of governmental agencies are out of control and intent on pushing their will on the people of this nation. Even the mindset of these officials is out of whack. Totalitarianism and criminality is gaining a foothold in the thinking of many governmental officials nowadays.

[tacticalogic]

The Enumeration of the power to interdict drugs is under the Defense clause.

Source?

[driftdiver]

Well pick a position then. You’re confusing

[OneWingedShark]

War on drugs, my a$$. It’s a War on the American People.

You are right — here is the simplified version:

The War on Drugs (WOD) is justified in the courts by Wickard (to allow for regulation of intrastate commerce) and Raich (to allow the regulation of non-commerce) which ignores a very fundamental fact: the commerce clause is more than just the states.

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

This is very important because it shows that the power to regulate commerce among the states is the same power to regulate foreign commerce.

If the congress were to try to institute regulation inside countries as it does the several states, it would rightly be considered an act of war — and the enforcement of those regulations would be (a) the waging of that war, and/or (b) the assertion of subservience of the conquered to the conqueror. In any case this has particularly poignant consequence when compared to the Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Since that enforcement is waging war (and/or exercising the result of having so done) then this means that the WOD is Treason.
Let that sink in.

It is also useful to look at the results of the WOD, as it has destroyed 90% of the Bill of Rights:

Amendment 10 — Destroyed by combining “necessary and proper” with the intrastate/interstate regulation of Wickard.
Amendment  9 — Everything. Seriously, EVERYTHING about the War on Drugs is about the federal government exercising powers not expressly delegated by the Constitution.
From Justice Thomas’s Dissent in Raich:

“If the Federal Government can regulate growing a half-dozen cannabis plants for personal consumption (not because it is interstate commerce, but because it is inextricably bound up with interstate commerce), then Congress’ Article I powers – as expanded by the Necessary and Proper Clause – have no meaningful limits.”

Amendment  8 — Mandatory minimums and zero tolerance combine to make the punishments outweigh many of the “crimes”, even is you accept the crime as valid.
Amendment  7 — In [civil] asset forfeiture, the victims are routinely denied jury-trials even though the amount in controversy exceeds $20.
Amendment  6 — The clogging of the courts with drug-related cases erodes the notion of a “speedy trial” to a joke. Often drug charges are added on to the list of crimes, which can “taint” the jury w/ prejudices. Often police act on informants whose identities are “protected”, which impairs the ability to confront the accuser.
Amendment  5 — How does “Comprehensive Forfeiture Act of 1984” comply with “No person shall [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”?
Amendment  4 — Kentucky v King

”The Fourth Amendment expressly imposes two requirements: All searches and seizures must be reasonable; and a warrant may not be issued unless probable cause is properly established and the scope of the authorized search is set out with particularity. [...] The proper test follows from the principle that permits warrantless searches: warrantless searches are allowed when the circumstances make it reasonable, within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment , to dispense with the warrant requirement.”

In other words: Yes, the fourth amendment requires warrants for searches, but… fuck that!

Amendment  3 — [Nope, nothing here... yet.]
Amendment  2 — Arguably, the “prohibited persons” from the `68 GCA.
Amendment  1 — Religious freedom is denied via the war on drugs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Division_v._Smith ), there are stories of “legalization”-advocacy publishers being raided/harassed. So, that’s 90% of the amendments in the Bill of Rights.
If that's not cause for concern, and impetus for stopping the War on Drugs then is there anything that cannot be done in its name?

[OneWingedShark]

> War on drugs, my a$$. It’s a War on the American People.
See This.

[tacticalogic]

The DEA was a willing participant in Fast and Furious...

[OneWingedShark]

The DEA was a willing participant in Fast and Furious...

As was the FBI.
(I consider F&F to be a clear-cut case of state-sponsored terrorism and treason.)

[zeugma]

It is like no one learned anything about the attempted “war on alcohol” (prohibition).

I think you're wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong.

THey learned that prohibtion was extraordinarily profitable for all parties involved. They also learned that it was a great tool to subvert our liberties.

They know exactly what they are doing.

We're being played, and the neo-puritains are singing in the choir, and cheering for the bandstand as we sink even deeper into the realm of the banana republic where the jackboot rules, and justice is governed by who you know and how much you have.

 

[GeronL]

bump

[lentulusgracchus]

[Art.] ....should awaken the country to the moral obscenity that is the war on drugs.

I stopped reading right there.

Liberal/Prog agitprop: Tell a sad story, blame the other side, and then enter a moral Nonnegotiable Final Judgment against them. No discussion, no negotiation -- just an absolute, unappealable, blistering, FINAL condemnation of the other side, delivered as psywar 24/7/365.

The last time this occurred on a broad scale in the U.S., it ended in the Civil War. So guess how this will work out?

[lentulusgracchus]

What China went through by NOT having a war on drugs is FAR worse than these abuses you point out.

Bump. And don't forget, it was all started by the British, to break down China's policy of hard-currency purchases only by foreigners of Chinese consumer nondurables like silk and tea. China refused to import anything but precious metals in payment for her goods.

Addicting China was a cash-flow problem's expedient corrective.

[OneWingedShark]

>> ....should awaken the country to the moral obscenity that is the war on drugs.
>
> I stopped reading right there.

Actually, I would not consider it an incorrect description.
The War on Drugs has degraded 9 of 10 amendments of the Bill of Rights [in excess of 90% if you consider clause-by-clause] and fundamentally damaged the legal rights of every citizen. — when someone talks about 'legalization' they betray themselves as having accepted contraconstitutional precepts, namely that the War on Drugs is valid (even a cursory look at precedent, which I hate, shows it without authority: there is no anti-drug amendment like the 18th).

[DiogenesLamp]

Actually you’re the one who doesn’t know what you’re talking about.

Yeah, I get that a lot from simpletons.

Opium was PUSHED onto China, they were trying to get it out.

And you naively think hard drugs wouldn't be PUSHED onto us if it were legal?

Meanwhile it, and all the other drugs, were legal in most of the world without having issues.

No, there were plenty of issues. American drug addiction started during the civil war when they found that opiates and cocaine made good painkillers. Towards the end of the 19th century, drugs were just getting started in this country, especially with the advent of "Patent" medicines which were mostly hard narcotics and alcohol. People started dying from this stuff in the last couple of decades of the 19th century.

Now you may argue that this stuff was known since colonial times, and this is true, but it was not available in sufficient quantities to establish a large contingent of addicts until the later part of the 19th century. Addiction was just starting to increase when the US Government took actions to stop it.

The stupid mistake is adding a black market to the other problems of drug use.

Better a black market than an open legal market for this stuff. It's poison and it leaves a path of death and destruction wherever it touches.

At least with it legal all we get is the junkies. And the only way it gets anything like China is if a government (possibly even our own) decides it’s in their best interest to give us LOTS of drugs for really cheap. Which would be a problem even if it was illegal (as seen in your own link because during most of that time China was actually trying to PREVENT opium being imported into their country).

I am not even going to address that comment. It is just nonsense.

[sitetest]

If the child dies, felony murder for every cop involved. Death penalty.

[DiogenesLamp]

Like I said...it’s Nanny State logic. There’s no disagreement here.

You can say it all you want, but it's a very deliberate lie, or an expression of astonishing ignorance.

I doubt you have the intellect to comprehend this point, but a government must first and foremost be capable of SURVIVING. A government which tolerates widespread usage of drugs cannot survive, and will be replaced by a dictatorship after that society collapses. It is as predictable as the sun, and it is exactly what happened in China.

One of the arguments we constantly make to the Socialists/Communists is that "this idea has been tried many times in history, and it always fails."

Well i'm pointing out the same thing to you. Legalized drugs has been tried before, and it was a horrible disaster with consequences that are still affecting us today. It didn't work in China, and it didn't work at Platzspitz in Switzerland.

"Needle Park" was an utter disaster.

[DiogenesLamp]

That's exactly what the USSC does though — look up Raich, it's all about the commerce [and necessary and proper] clause.

A person could write an encyclopedia pointing out the irrationality of that body known as the US Supreme Court.

[GeronL]

A government which tolerates widespread usage of drugs cannot survive, and will be replaced by a dictatorship after that society collapses.

Where did you get the idea that libertopians would oppose that?

"Brave New World" is their guiding light.