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.
I checked it out, and you’re right, she walks all around the subject with her “make it low priority” wiggling but never commits to saying it should be decriminalized. My bad.
Because unlike recreational drugs, misused antibiotics create a clear and present danger to others through the creation of antibiotic-resistant 'superbugs.' Glad I could clear that up for you.
Violence type? Nope. More like responsibility type. Pot use has been linked to schizo and lower IQ’s. Obviously from anyone with real world experience. Cost-wise.. It’s incredibly expensive to have it around.
Yeah, it’s “lopsided” alright. There are reasons why they are illegal, and why DUI laws exist, and both go to the mind-altering/loss of judgment effects. My argument was to dispute the BS notion that because alcohol is legal so should dope. Alcohol can be abused, drugs by nature, are abusive.
Who are you or the government to decide which misused antibiotics are causing a problem, eh? Why can’t I have a ton of levaquin and cipro just in case?
“she walks all around the subject”
Which would not indicate a strong desire to continue the status quo.
Who are you or the government to decide which misused antibiotics are causing a problem, eh?
Already answered. Read it again - move your lips if it helps.
What???
How dare you admit you were wrong? Oh. I see. You’re still a newbie.
Look. This is FRee Republic. Where FReepers are NEVER WRONG. (lololol) And if you are wong - don’t admit it. (lolol) Just keep repeating and re-hashing the SOS.
And add in some ad hominem as well.
lololol.
Nonsense. I've known many people who have smoked a little pot and remained more together than many sober people I know.
misused illegal drugs create a clear and present danger to others through the creation higher taxes and other problems paying for their use.
And again, if you’re gonna say no drug laws, you HAVE to include all prescriptions. Right? I’ve never seen you ever say which prescriptions YOU want to be enforced and why.
I would guess your automotive prefrence runs toward “Dodge”.
Can you address a single issue I have put to you? Just one?
Why can’t you openly admit the statistics show that the majority of ‘drug’ related violence comes from alcohol? The numbers are there. But it makes your position very hard to justify. So you ignore the fact and just plow right ahead with the same old.
This is exactly like the video game threads where in light of the fact millions of gamers have not snapped and killed their neighborhood, the ban-happy continue to insist that they are responsible for all the evil in the world.
Pathetic. And people call themselves conservatives while using all the tactics of the left.
No wonder so many people are going Indy.
"But here's the conundrum: while marijuana went from being a secret shared by a small community of hepcats and beatniks in the 1940s and '50s to a rite of passage for some 70% of youth by the turn of the century, rates of schizophrenia in the U.S. have remained flat, or possibly declined. For as long as it has been tracked, schizophrenia has been found to affect about 1% of the population." (http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2005559,00.html)
Lame. Weed makes people stupid, period. That is known.
It also tends to cause schizo issues. Causes.. Directly.. With use.
Period.
Obviously, Mr. Logical Positivist, whatever the strong man says is law has the force of law, at least physically. I direct you to Aristotle right on through to now for a long philosophical tradition holding that there’s a difference between what political authorities say and is just or ought to be legal or illegal. I wouldn’t have thought a two post digression would have been necessary to establish what I meant by saying “vices are not crimes,” but maybe you enjoy positivism and like getting it out there.
I understand that completely. For instance, even were it correct to criminalize vices, the practical fact that people get away with them despite our massive investment and erosion of other liberties might be reason enough to legalize them. Then again, we fail at the War on Murder and trudge along. But then again again, murder is malum in se, and we’re back to moral philosophy.
Does not matter. Facts that directly counter the talking point/agenda must be ignored.
That’s easy to fix. Don’t pay them. You’re going to get that anyway. The big government conservatives and liberals have taxed, borrowed and spent the country way past the point of no return. Expensive entitlements, government granted monopolies, nation building, policing the world, micromanaging the lives of everyone, building and maintaining a police state, drug wars, poverty wars, literacy wars. Neither side will stop spending and there isn’t enough money to tax to pay for it. The collapse isn’t avoidable anymore. It’s no longer an ideological problem. It’s just math now.
Whether you like it or not, people are going learn to mind their own business. There just aren’t going to be the resources to be busy bodies on a national scale.
You must be super high, bad link btw
"researchers confirmed previous findings that alcoholism is associated with thinking problems and lower IQ" - http://www.ur.umich.edu/0506/Oct17_05/15.shtml
"heavy drinking may have extensive and far–reaching effects on the brain, ranging from simple “slips” in memory to permanent and debilitating conditions that require lifetime custodial care." - http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa63/aa63.htm
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