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.
Whether you bought into or not is not the issue. CA Prop 19 and other pro-dope measures are on the table in part TO ADD TAXABLE REVENUE TO THE STATE.
Just like cigarettes and booze - the gubmnint will tax the hell outta dope.
ok replace one with your and they with you
Will you ever tell us what should be done about the people who use the use the drug alcohol to temporarily escape reality? Note that "ban other drugs" is not an answer.
The FDA regulates methamphetamine, the codones and cocaine at a far more stringent level than dronabinol.
State lawmakers do not have quite the same leeway with those substances.
They’ll never make up in taxes as lost revenue from use.
I do not see my life as having been in any way impoverished by "listening to others" rather "seeing for myself" in these matters.
Especially since I have "listened to others" by observing their disedifying behavior as a powerful cautionary tale.
Since teens report that they can get pot more easily than beer or cigarettes, it looks like the most effective way to keep pot out of teens' hands is to legalize it for adults - so sellers have an incentive not to sell to kids (namely, the loss of their legal adult sales).
Every once in awhile - one of these pro-dopers lets down their guard and expresses the same garbage POV with regards to supporting gay marriages or abortion.
It’s quite satisfying to see them get the zot.
Yeah, like no one ever smoked rope in the old days...
The drug war is a war on people and liberty - and no - I DON’T SMOKE POT OR OR SNORT COKE LIKE CHOOMBAMA!
Now that I think about this more I have another question. What other group in history chose to not debate facts and instead claim their opponent was on drugs or otherwise mentally incapacitated?
Only because lawmakers so decided; they are free to decide differently in the future.
“I say alchohol is a necessary evil”
You start out upside down right away, then. Alchohol is NOT an evil. People may do evil things under its influence and it may lead to all manner of social ills, but it is not evil in itself. Our criminal law is supposed to be based on acts that are malum in se, or bad in themselves. When you start stretching the criminal law to cover activities that lead to bad general consequences, you are outside of the traditions of Western civilization. You are onto social engineering. Not that traditional crimes don’t have social consequences as well. But that’s not why they’re illegal. They are illegal because they’ve deprived other people of their rights, and because they are bad in themselves.
We must keep such things clear in our heads. Not because limited and technical social engineering will automatically lead to the general and pervasive engineering of 1984, where even unsocial thoughts are considered crimes. But we may forget, and may lose out rights by not recognizing liberty is not having your rights infringed instead of living in a well harmonized society, whatever legal principles got you there. Not that I think any principles but ours can provide harmony, nor that we won’t end up slouching toward 1984.
That’s for sure. The welfare roles alone resulting from stoned out dopers unfit to pass a drug test will cripple the economy.
Oh. I forgot. We’ll just pass MORE LAWS prohibiting them mean rich people (employers) from denying unemployment to stoners. That’ll solve the problem right? Make them hire regardless of whether or not applicants can pass a drug test.
/sarc
“People like on this thread don’t care about drugs and their dangers.”
Right, because we don’t want the federal government to fail to forestall them. You nigh as well say we don’t cate about sickness, for instance, because we don’t support nationalization of the healthcare industry.
G]Had you paid the slightest bit of attention on this thread, you would see that we are not saying we are “Pro dope”. We are saying that we are Pro responsibility and Pro constitutional government.
We are Anti-nany state, Anti Prohibition and Anti strip people of their rights as humans.
Now are you EVER going to tell me by what right or authority you can tell me or anyone what to do?
You carefully dodged my posts on that issue and rant on zots and the rest. Back up your Constitutional position.
I do not personally believe alcohol is bad. It can be bad, but overall it is not that bad.
Pot, coke, heroin, and meth (LSD/mescaline/shrooms) are mind altering in a way that just aren’t the same as drinking. Drinking messes people up badly, but not the way the others do.
Will you be providing evidence for this claim, or are we just supposed to accept your say-so?
That is entirely wrong. Drugs are a special case, indeed. Hey, if you legalized cipro as an OTC and everyone took it, would that be good?
Why stop at high drugs? How about making any antibiotic legal? Sure it would cause much more harm through non-prescription use and adaptation of bacteria, but why not right?
So its ok that drunks pound women into ICUs but not when a guy flying on Acid does?
That about right? Care to explain each of those carefully split hairs of yours?
If you want to compare the violence numbers based on drug type, lets do that.
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