Have We Lost the Drug Wars?

Townhall.com ^ | January 8, 2013 | Bill Murchison

[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.

[Tublecane]

Am I? Because it seems to me we already have a massive welfare investment in drug rehabilitate and/or prevention. This includes programs tangled up with the criminal justice system, and also in basically every institution recognized as legitimate in our society. Like I said, anyone who wants to use drugs now can, and though I could see habitual drug use grow with legalization (though you never know, drinking went up under prohibition), I doubt services would ne strained by extra lost souls to compensate for the continental vastness of the cost of the War on Drugs.

Also, I know people like you envision everyone who is now deterred by drug laws turning into junkies that can’t support themselves after decriminization. But I don’t see why they have to explode, even if casual use does. We already gave enough junkies with the Drug War, as well as, and perhaps more significantly, more abusers of the legal alchohol and prescription drugs.

Anyway, the solution is to leave them to their own devices. Personal responsibility has its own controls, as does non-legal social control. If all else fails nature has its awful price. I understand the argument that it’s dangerous with thep preexistence of the Welfare State. Lord knows government needs no further excuses for expansion. I feel the same way about immigration. Open borders would be fine without welfare.

But I don’t like legislating out of base fear. We shouldn’t let the Nanny State force us to spend sums of Asian proportions on obviously failing crusades.

[Norm Lenhart]

Further, I would hope that in light of your debate skills, your fellow drug warriors rein you in before your ‘tactics’ do further damage to their legitimate concerns.

I’m all for a good knockdown dragout discussion on the issues but this “you’re on crack’ thing is just pure Alynski BS.

[fattigermaster]

"If people let government decide which foods they eat and medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny." -Thomas Jefferson

"An acre of the best ground for hemp, is to be selected and sewn in hemp and be kept for a permanent hemp patch." -Thomas Jefferson's Garden book

"The culture [of tobacco] is pernicious. This plant greatly exhausts the soil. Of course, it requires much manure, therefore other productions are deprived of manure, yielding no nourishment for cattle, there is no return for the manure expended... It is impolitic... The fact well established in the system of agriculture is that the best hemp and the best tobacco grow on the same kind of soil. The former article is of the first necessity to the commerce and marine, in other words to the wealth and protection of the country. The latter, never useful and sometimes pernicious, derives its estimation from caprice, and its best value from the taxes to which it was formerly exposed..." --Thomas Jefferson Farm Journal (16 March 1791)

“Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, sow it everywhere.” -George Washington

"What was done with the seed saved from the India Hemp last summer? It ought, all of it, to have been sewn again; that not only a stock of seed sufficient for my own purposes might have been raised, but to have disseminated the seed to others; as it is more valuable than the common Hemp." George Washington Writings of Washington, Vol. 35, pg. 72

P. S. : For the uninformed, "Indian Hemp", the "Cannabis Indica" variety President Washington speaks of, differs from the common "Cannabis Sativa" in several important regards:

Smaller plants, thinner stalks/stems means less fiber...well, if Old George had been growing it for rope, that wouldn't have been good…

More bushy leaves, bigger buds and INCREASED POTENCY. Well, what have we here?

Comparison of Cannabis Sativa to Cannabis Indica. Indica is the bushy one. the one with lots of sweet sticky smokable leaves... ;^)

(Cannabis Indica) From Wikipedia:

Broad-leafed Cannabis indica plants in India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan are traditionally cultivated for the production of hashish. Pharmacologically, C. indica landraces tend to have a higher cannabidiol (CBD) content than C. sativa strains. [6] Most commercially available indica strains have been selected for low levels of CBD (which is not psychoactive), with some users reporting more of a "stoned" feeling and less of a "high" from C. indica when compared to C. sativa. [7] The Cannabis indica high is often referred to as a "body buzz" and has beneficial properties such as pain relief in addition to being an effective treatment for insomnia and an anxiolytic, as opposed to sativa's more common reports of a "spacey" and mental inebriation, and even, albeit rarely, comprising hallucinations. [8]

Now exempting those drug warriors who have their eyes shut and are chanting "La La La I can't hear you", how do the remainder explain George Washington not only growing his own, but purposely praising a species that was low on "rope" and high on "dope"?

In addition, come face to face with the fact that they would all have imprisoned the father of our country...and have labelled him a leftist, a coward, and a homo with the same broad brush as they have every other conservative patriot who thinks cannabis should be legal.

I think I'll stand on the side of Washington and Jefferson on this issue!

[Tublecane]

Let’s say they chemically different, lead to different results, are worse in almost everyway conceivable. Okay. But using them is still not a crime, according to the traditional understanding of crime, notwithstanding obvious longtime departures from principle. Drug use, even if different and moreharmful in itself, is a crime you commit against whom? Whose rights are you violating? Your own? That makes no sense.

No, drug use as well as drinking are not malum in se, and for the dame reason. They are sins, maybe, or abusing them is. But not crimes.

[Tublecane]

Let’s say they chemically different, lead to different results, are worse in almost everyway conceivable. Okay. But using them is still not a crime, according to the traditional understanding of crime, notwithstanding obvious longtime departures from principle. Drug use, even if different and moreharmful in itself, is a crime you commit against whom? Whose rights are you violating? Your own? That makes no sense.

No, drug use as well as drinking are not malum in se, and for the same reason. They are sins, maybe, or abusing them is. But not crimes.

[Tublecane]

“Drugs are a special case”

Why? Are they in the Constitution? No. Because you personally dislike them?

[Monty22002]

“No, drug use as well as drinking are not malum in se, and for the dame reason. They are sins, maybe, or abusing them is. But not crimes.”

what? You guys are so high you can’t even make any sense.. Or spell.

[Monty22002]

Are you for abortion and gay marriage? Those are ‘privacy in one’s body’ situations.

[Tublecane]

I wouldn’t say it’s a clear and present danger. Regulation of prescription drugs should be a state matter, in my opinion. But note it is just regulation, not prohibition. And certainly I do not propose possession or use of antibiotics be criminal, even if it there is legitimate state interest in preventing superbugs.

[Tublecane]

According to currently populat medical theory alchohol is abusive by nature, depending on who drinks it. I don’t agree, and think it’s all a matter of begavior. If you drink heavily, you are an alchoholic. If you abuse drugs, you are a junkie. In that sense, alchohol is exactly like the big, bad illegals.

But even if you’re right, and there’s something fundamentally different about non-alchoholic drug abuse, drug use still shouldn’t be criminal. Because whatever that difference is it does not address why vices are not crimes. It’s just finagling with degrees, as in the difference between booze and cigarettes or cigarettes and soda pop.

[Tublecane]

You’re overlooking the much larger clear and present danger of laziness. When are we gonna start our War on Goldbricking?

[Monty22002]

When you come down, you might look back at your posts and go.. hmmm..

[Norm Lenhart]

Nah, just tired of trying to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man. Frustration sets in and, well, you provide more entertainment with typo and spelling fhloems.

[Tublecane]

That is a strawman hypocrite you’re attacking. Regulation of drugs and criminalization of drugs are two different matters. I hardly see antiprohibitionists go after regulations on food production or distribution in the same terms as they do the War on Drugs, though they may attack it also. Not in principle, except on federalism grounds, but for more technical reasons.

Drugs can be regulated like that, according to legitimate state interest. In the same way that selling tainted fruit can be stopped bu state authorities, but possessing a banana is not criminal.

[Tublecane]

They do NOT “pay into” SS. That is a calumnious lie.

[Monty22002]

You still make no sense.. Drugs can be regulated? Ok. Well, lets keep it how it is with alcohol and tobacco legal and the rest not. Ok? Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

[Tublecane]

There’s a difference between actions that are wrong, or tend to be, and what constitutes a crime under natural law. A crime must have that element I keep referring to: that it is bad in itself. Possessing drugs is not bad in itself, even if recklessly consuming them might lead to nape things. I don’t think there’s a system of thought out there that does think it’s bad in itself.

No harm is caused by it, not to yourself nor others. But if it were harmful to you it still shouldn’t be a crime, because the idea of committing a crime against yourself is absurd. Sucide is the obvious exception, though I don’t think it should be criminal. I can see the argument that it is a crime against nature or life or your future self, but I just can’t quite buy it. Leave it at as something too horrible to contemplate. A taboo, which is bad because it just is, don’t think bout it.

[Norm Lenhart]

Still a bunch of questions you’ve ignored left to answer. Any reason you keep ignoring them? Or should I just expect another rant on my supposed drug use?

[Monty22002]

I looked back at your posts to me and I don’t see many questions except ‘why do you think I’m on drugs?’.

Well, it’s obvious.

Please repaste the other questions.

[Norm Lenhart]

I don’t think you did. Try again.