Which of tbe four food groups is alcohol?
I guess for some folks they're three of the four...
Posted on 01/08/2013 10:59:00 AM PST by Kaslin
Forty-odd (exceedingly odd, I might add) years ago, who would have envisioned a national war against drugs? Nobody took drugs -- nobody you knew, nobody but jazz musicians and funny foreign folk. Then, after a while, it came to seem that everybody did. Drugs became a new front in the war on an old social culture that was taking hard licks aplenty in those days.
I still don't understand why people take drugs. Can't they just pour themselves a nice shot of bourbon? On the other hand, as Gary S. Becker and Kevin M. Murphy argue, in a lucid piece for the Wall Street Journal's Review section, prison populations have quintupled since 1980, in large degree thanks to laws meant to decrease drug usage by prohibiting it; 50,000 Mexicans may have died since 2006 in their country's war against traffickers, and addiction has probably increased.
Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics, and Murphy, a University of Chicago colleague, argue for putting decriminalization of drugs on the table for national consideration. The federal war on drugs, which commenced in 1971, was supposed to discourage use by punishing the sale and consumption of drugs. It hasn't worked quite that way.
"[T]he harder governments push the fight," the two argue, "the higher drug prices become to compensate the greater risks. That leads to larger profits for traffickers who avoid being punished." It can likewise lead "dealers to respond with higher levels of violence and corruption." In the meantime, Becker and Murphy point out, various states have decriminalized marijuana use or softened enforcement of existing prohibitions. Barely two months ago, voters in Colorado and Washington made their own jurisdictions hospitable to the friendly consumption of a joint.
The two economists say full decriminalization of drugs would, among other things, "lower drug prices, reduce the role of criminals in producing and selling drugs, improve many inner-city neighborhoods, [and] encourage more minority students in the U.S. to finish high school." To the Journal's question, "Have we lost the war on drugs?" 89.8 percent of readers replied, "Yes."
One isn't deeply surprised to hear it. National tides seem presently to be running in favor of abortion and gay marriage -- two more elements of the culture wars that began, contemporaneously, with the battle for the right to puff pot. Swimming against powerful tides is no politician's idea of a participatory sport. Conceivably, armed with practical (i.e., $$$$$$) reasons for decriminalizing drugs, advocates of such a policy course will prevail. We can then sit around wondering what all the fuss was about.
What it was about -- you had to have been there to remember now -- was the defense of cultural inhibitions. Sounds awful, doesn't it?
As the counterculture saw things, inhibitions -- voluntary, self-imposed restraints -- dammed up self-expression, self-realization. They dammed up a lot more than that, in truth: much of it in serious need of restraint and prevention.
The old pre-1960s culture assigned a higher role to the head than to the heart. Veneration of instincts risked the overthrow of social guardrails that inhibited bad, harmful and anti-social impulses. The drug culture that began in the '60s elevated to general popularity various practices, modes, devices, and so forth that moved instinct -- bad or good, who cared? -- to the top of the scale of values. There was a recklessness about the enterprise -- do whatever turns you on, man! -- incompatible with sober thought: which was fine with an era that had had it, frankly, with sober thought.
Drugs are very much a part of our time and culture, which is why the war on drugs looks more and more like a losing proposition. The point compellingly advanced by Becker and Murphy may win out over the next decade. If so, the drug gangs may disappear, the prisons disgorge tens of thousands. Will things in general be as good as they might have been had the culture walked a different path 40 years ago -- the path of civilized "inhibition"? Ah. We get down here to brass tacks.
All I’m doing is pointing out who is on the right side and who is on the left (wrong) side of the argument.
And when we add pro-abortionists, pro-gay marriage advocates, pro-gays in the military, pro-porn, pro-open borders, pro this and pro that wacko’s, leftists and other assorted libertarian nutjobs into the pro-dope mix and we see they are all cut from the same cloth...
I just don’t get you you people at all.
I don’t consider myself a liberal in any sense of the word, and I can see that the “drug war” has utterly failed, and left in it’s wake a rape upon the Constitution.
Shove your appeal to authority. It’s a failed debate tactic, and has been since the time of Plato.
Drinking and ‘getting high’ aren’t the same thing. If so, nobody would break the law and would just drink legally.
Post 121. Applies to you.
“I still don’t understand why people take drugs. Can’t they just pour themselves a nice shot of bourbon?”
This one statement expresses the average persons knowledge of what is and isn’t a drug. There are probably more iatrogenic addicts than all of those from illegal drugs.
Admit it though, you do use weed. Right? Why the hell deny it? It’s barely a stigma anymore. Same as gay marriage.
Its status is unique, and meth or crack will not be treated the same way as alcohol in law no matter what form decriminalization takes.
The law will treat other drugs the way lawmakers decide it will. As I understand it, the legalizations in CO and WA treat marijuana very much like alcohol - so the available evidence is against your unsupported claim.
Fact: W pregnant woman is 2 lives...hers and the childs. The unborn child cannot by definition choose or be responsible for anything.
Not arguable.
Fact: People have a choice. They can remain with said drug user and go down or exercise their right to not do so.
Not arguable.
Before this goes any farther and I waste my time explaining it, do we agree so far?
I see. Anything short of a reverse Berlin Wall on the Mexican border isn’t trying hard enough. Well, I guess it’s true, they could be doing more. Quintupling the prison population, chucking the 4th amendment, turning police forces into occupying armies, etc. is a lot. But you could always say more would do it.
Who is "one"?
To the decriminalizer's mind, "one" is a twentysomething college graduate with extensive life experience, a supportive family and ample amounts of demonstrated personal responsibility who decides to try a substance for his own amusement.
In the real world, "one" is a poorly-supervised twelve year old with no judgment, poor impulse control, acting under peer pressure with no guidance from wiser people who have his best interests at heart.
Who "one" is matters.
I don’t consider myself a liberal in any sense of the word,...
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You are a social liberal. I’m a social conservative. A Socon if you will.
(Just some basic fundamental terms. But I’m sure you know this.)
Facts my ass. You’re comparing things that are basically the same. Destruction of 1 life or 2 for ‘feeling better’.
Even if you think drug use isn’t destructive, it doesn’t matter. Your opinion on this is clearly fogged by drug use, so..
Which of tbe four food groups is alcohol?
I guess for some folks they're three of the four...
Don’t try to get me. Try to answer my question without tying yourself in philosophical knots.
I wish these guys would try to be as pro gay marriage on here as they are drugs. It’s very similar. The ideology and ‘do what feels good’ mentality is the same.
She does favor decriminalizing it...
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Link please. (I ask - even though I have the link ready to show you that she doesn’t.)
I, for one, never bought into the tax it argument. That is more for statists like you who need to feed the beast and fund other Wars on Whatever.
So you cannot agree on simple realities. Or address relevant issues. Just scream the drug warrior time worn rants.
And btw, as I stated, I don’t do drugs. And I have not drank in YEARS.
You’re talking about feeding a welfare system from druggies that will be FAR more than enforcement losses.
Like the wars on poverty, illiteracy, homelessness, terrorism, etc., etc., etc., the war on drugs will never end as long there are people on this earth.
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