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’ll sum the anti position up so far. And in a factually correct manner.
1. I do not approve of something.
2. there is no basis for my disapproval other than people who think as I do.
3. Because the founders of our counter participated in the use of substances, I will pretend they did not while simultaneously evoking patriotic themes to bolster my disapproval.
4. Since the Constitution gives power to people to alter laws, I will support it when the laws they alter go my way, but fight it to absurdity when they do not.
5. I will accuse any who point out my gross hypocrisy of drug use and mental deficiency.
6. If at any time I encounter facts or evidence that directly counters my position I will ignore it and bull forth with my talking points.
There is the very essence of liberalism. It perfectly describes their stance on Gun control and a number of other traditionally liberal positions.
It is also exactly the behavior displayed on this thread by people determined to fight the drug war at any cost.
That is a problem for us all regardless of our position on the issue.
Under Natural Law there are many actions that are obviously wrong, and many that are not wrong.
Between these there are a great many that are not obviously either and can be appropriately made legal or illegal as the society chooses.
Or at least so it seems to me.
You should be for gay marriage and abortion due to 1-6.
Nope. And if you ever get around to answering my multiply ignored questions you will see why.
Your questions are the same ol’. You did put up a long list of freedoms that you think are there though. Those certainly included gay marriage at the least and abortion at the most.
“3. Because the founders of our counter participated in the use of “
And that kind of talk, ‘founders of the counter’ is a bit why I don’t like to deal with high people.
In the year you have been a Freeper, have you ever noticed that refusal to answer legitimate questions while changing the subject to divert attention from your failure is a losing strategy?
Symptoms? They are the real deal. Those ate crimes. The criminal justice system has mo more business stilling on drug use as a cause of crime than they have seeking to root out original sin.
“Flippancy is not refutation”
Of course not, and I wasn’t being flip. I truly cannot understand why drug warrior’s arguments are so poor, and that’s all I meant to express on that sentence. If you want to know how, look to another part of the post, other posts, or I suppose I could make a list.
“Writing more prescriptions is the solution, then”
That is the side effect of a solution to a much, much bigger problem. And it isn’t much of a problem, anyway, if the prescription drug world as it exists now is fine by you. What I want to get across, and which doesn’t seem to penetrate most ideological walls, is how ridiculous is the War on Drugs when the abuse of legal drugs might be a bigger problem.
Actually, definitely is a bigger problem when you factor in booze. But drug warriors have compartmentalized that, for whatever reason.
In the year you have been here as a freeper, have you noticed that flames over typos are a losing strategy?
In the year you’ve been here as a Freeper, have you noticed that accusing people of drug use and mental incapacitation is a losing strategy?
And lastly, In they year you have been here as a freeper, have you noticed that people that refuse to debate an issue like adults are rarely given credibility?
It’s actually a perfect analogy, only it doesn’t redound well upon the War on Drugs, so you ignore it.
6. If at any time I encounter facts or evidence that directly counters my position I will ignore it and bull forth with my talking points.
5. I will accuse any who point out my gross hypocrisy of drug use and mental deficiency.
12 year olds aren’t allowed to use alchohol or cigarettes, either.), let alone buy pornography, see R movies unaccompanied, have sex, drive cars. Why wouldn’t we assume marijuana or anything else would work like that, as well? Go back to argument school.
“You are a social liberal. I’m a social conservative.”
Let’s see if there’s anything people morally shouldn’t do which you consider none of the federal government’s business. Should cops arrest us for possession of fatty foods to prevent us from getting obese, which is evidence of the sin of sloth? No? What are you, a social liberal?
Not to say the line can’t be moved back and forth. I come close, but probably don’t reach the Millian ideal of Mt fist stopping at your nose. But in the same way you can call yourself a social conservative even though you give people the freedom to die of heart disease, others can be social conservatives while affording people the freedom to die of overdoses.
It was the issue of my post, which was to inform others that I don’t agree with the revenue argument. Of course many, maybe most, antiprohibitionists promote it. I never said they didn’t. It’s just that the last thing I do is sit around dreaming of the best way to grow tax revenue.
When it comes to drug threads, I don’t expect the drug users to come around. Anymore than being on a gay marriage thread can you ‘convert’ them to thinking it’s wrong. I have more backup evidence obviously. Drug use is idiotic at the core, and those that that support it are fools. However, I know neither will really ‘convince’ the other side.
45 years ago is 1968. What is this "40 odd"? JFK was smoking pot and using LSD in the White House in addition the painkillers he took.
You made two accusations of my drug use. You claim I am ‘high’.
Your evidence of my drug use is a typo.
There is one person in this conversation behaving idiotically. I am not that person.
And you have yet to address a number of questions and issues that I and several others have raised repeatedly. Why is that?
To be honest, I don’t understand it either. But then I have never taken drugs,other then medicine that was prescriped for me
Ok I guess we’ve had different lives.
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