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.
You do realize I'm actually on your side of the legalization debate?
I do. My statement stands - and I don't like your shirt, either. :)
Anyone who would smoke meth or crack already has a screw loose. I'll give you that much.
Yup, uncontrolled confounding factor.
As to the rest, go hang out at a few dozen parties where someone is smoking meth or crack
No help there - my observations would also not be randomized or controlled for confounding factors like pre-existing psychiatric conditions.
I didn't need Nancy telling me to Just Say No to drugs. I've seen up close and personal what hard drugs do to people.
I don't use any drugs - inlcuding the hard drug alcohol - and I'd recommend that choice to anyone who asked. The issue here is public policy and the making of same based on data not anecdotes.
If you're trying to put something like crack cocaine on par with a few beers
I'm not.
You think recreational drug abuse is benign.
Provide an exact quotation where I said that.
I don’t happen to think there is really such a thing as a “l’il bit” of recreational drug abuse. I just don’t.
You're wrong - I've seen it done with coke and with pot.
Whereas normally people have 1, 2, maybe three drinks. This is reality.
People getting drunk happens all the time. This is also reality.
being personally drunk is basically legal unless you have dependents there or whatever. I know.
So you know your previous claim that "Drunkenness is basically against the law" is garbage. Good. What have you done to advance the cause of banning drunkenness to prevent very serious threats to others? (Posts to FR count.)
I don’t enjoy your histrionics or mischaracterizations of what I say.
You're projecting - the only mischaracterization above was from you: "You think recreational drug abuse is benign."
I have made my positions clear.
And I have clearly shown them to be wrong.
Please find some other site to post your fantasies about children.
Self-centered, immature people often miss sarcasm directed at them.
So that's how you missed mine. Got it.
I don't know you,
That may be the first correct statement you've posted in this thread.
but your attitude and demeanor indicates to me that you have some very serious personal issues.
I would encourage you to work on those.
I would encourage you to learn about argumentum ad hominem.
Histrionics? You know, it’s very difficult to convey a light sarcastic mood on the Internet. Even so, I don’t think that’s the right word for what I’ve posted.
As for mischaracterizations, of course you’d say that. I might feel the same way, though I won’t go complaining about it. In a way all argumentation involves muscharacterization, for we want to pin the other guy down and make him sit still exactly where we think they’re wrong. But the other guy can always shift ground, even when cornered. And of course they never get to say what they really mean, as none of us do.
“I made my positions clear.If you don’t like them, that is your business.”
If I don’t like them I argue with them. That’s much of the point of these forums. You don’t have to go on arguing forever. But a “that’s your business” attitude is remarkably blockheaded.
Indeed, I seem to find myself grasping at the wind.
Who is "they"?
Social Security Disability Insurance pays benefits to you and certain members of your family if you are "insured," meaning that you worked long enough and paid Social Security taxes.
“They” is everyone who receives SS benefits. There’s a reason the word “insured” is in quotation marks in your post: it isn’t insurance. There is no system into which you pay SS taxes. They aren’t SS taxes, really. Call them payroll or just another income tax, if you want a better description. Supposed SS taxes get shovelled onto a big pile out of which all government expenditures are made. By the time you retire your money is gone. Should you receive benefits, that money will have been taken from someone else.
They only ever called it “insurance” to make it respectable. That charade didn’t last, as we all refer to it rightly now as an entitlement and wealth redistribution program. I notice people referring to unemployment “insurance” less as insurance and mote as the neutral benefits. That’s a step in a saner direction, too.
You may say the money they confiscated—or, in fantasy socialismland, to which you “contributed”—morally ought to come back, even if there’s no accounting connection. But two wrongs don’t make a right. Those who believe in it, methinks, recognize the argument is paper thin, too. Why do you get back payroll taxes and not, say, basically every other tax?
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