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.
Your answer to a big government problem is even more government. And the funny thing is when the math problem resolves itself, you’ll likely to be one of the people wondering how it happened.
Oh, yes, there are busybody conservatives. I did omit them, though didn’t mean to pretend they didn’t exist. They weren’t behind Prohibition alone. Progressives were, too. It may be hard to tweeze the ideologies out since Bible thumpers could be progressive back then, which is hard to wrap your mind around nowadays. Or maybe not, since we have churches preaching “social justice” and Liberation Theology.
I meant only to say they there were antiwar and antiprohibition conservatives, whatever the ideological alignment since the 60s. My saying neocons never let conservatism into their hearts may imply conservatism is fundamentally antiimperialistic and antiwar, and further not bringing up pro-prohibition conservatives may imply antiprohibition is fundamentally conservative. Indeed I think they are, though I am aware busybodiness has always been with us.
Certainly it is with our movement today. I’m not saying they aren’t conservatives. I do think they’re less conservative than others, but I’ll hold that back for now. It’s just that to jump over on any particular issue would not mean to make you a leftist, especially when you may have forgotten where people on our side used to be.
I like to seperate the dominant movements by whether they advocate overall a more or less powerful central government. But both sides have their liberty principles and their order lrinciples
Our party as of now is for order on drugs and war, at least, and their side for damnable near everything else. So in the balance we are the lliberty party, though not in every particular.
Them again, it’s a charade to pretend there are only two sides. We tend to collect together, partly because of how the political system is setup. Bit there are as many ways of calibrating ideological positions as there are minds to adopt positions. And the idea that we ought not drop the Drug War because libs are against it is insane.
Yes, you guys need to answer why certain meds can be OTC vs not.
Social Security? People pay in to that, therefore it's their right to collect it. If you meant SSI (Supplemental Security Income), I agree.
Already answered - learn to read.
News flash: Giving up and rolling over won't stop the dogs' tearing at you. It'll get worse -- until there's nothing left of you.
But hey, if you gotta have a hit .... don't count on me for understanding. Or forgiveness. Much less support. You're part of the rot.
Nobody's tearing at you - you're kicking the dogs and blowing $40 billion a year of taxpayer money to do it.
HA!!!
After dodging multiple questions, YOU demand answers?
HA!!!HA!!!HA!!!HA!!!
Put down the bong, Cheech, and try to answer the question again.
Who says I hate them? You can be a great man and also a lousy drunk. That is partly the point of antiprohibitionism. And I didn’t mean the Founding Generation, by the way, but the masses of men who came before us, recently and distantly. It is possible to hate everyone who lived before I was born. Libs seem to manage fine. I don’t, even though I recognize their multitude of sins.
Maybe someone here IS smoking dope and has comprehension problems...just not us.
That would have happened anyway, if drugs had never even existed. That's because crimefighting is only the mcguffin, the pretextual concept, and population control is the whole candle for anti-civil-liberties types.
“I guess you agree that liberal agendas fail.”
No, I don’t. You read my post, so you know I said they’re only mostly wrong, and can be right for the wrong reasons.
About rightwong prodopery, you’d probably shoot them down as Losertarians, so what’s the point. Except that there are various well known and obvious old conservative voices against Prohibition, which was the point of my post. I don’t suppose I’d have to list them.
Well. as long as we’re making wish lists...criminalize alcohol and tobacco until the social programs are ended. That way we’re being consistent. Again, until then, the principle behind your request has been ceded.
What part of "Okay, give up and THEN watch what happens! did you not understand.
China, 1840-1912. Case in point.
I can refute it. Life sucks. This is a major principle of Christianity, for instance, though not in those words. Everyone agrees on that, basically. What is so irrational about wanting to feel good, wanting to escape suffering temporarily? Is it cowardly to participate in sports? But play is escape from reality. So are a million activities not directly tied to subsistence, especially sex.
What we’re talking about here, I trust, is a matter of degree. Should you escape reality to the extent that you get high or drunk, you are insane and cowardly. Anything less is acceptable. I find you’re being arbirtary, but of course I am too. Some level of escape is bad, and yes cowardly, though I wouldn’t say insane. I put the bar higher than what the general run of humanity tends to be able to get by on. Putting it at any recreational drug use whatsoever is what’s insane.
By the way, you don’t use “recreational” drugs, but do you drink? Is that not cowardly and insane? Why, because it lacks the modifier “recreational”?
You don't know what you're talking about. The opposition of CCA, the alcohol industry, police unions and prison guard unions to prop 19 were very well known. They weren't ashamed of it.
...George Soros funded the pro-dope proposition.
Don't care who funded the pro side. Diane Fienstein was against it. Should that detract from your position against it?
To be drunk is to be high. I’m almost certain that was one of the euphamisms back when. “High” has shifted mostly to cover illegal drugs, though I think it still works for properly use prescription drugs, for instance.
“If so, nobody would break the law and would just drink legally?”
Huh? I have absolutely no idea what this means. There ate different kind of highs from different intoxicants. Are you trying to say, for instance, should we legalize marijuana crackheads and meth tweakers would drop everything and smoke it instead? That’s nuts.
Drinking and getting high are similar enough. That’s why we tried to outlaw booze back when.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.