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.
“Can’t they just pour themselves a nice shot of bourbon? “
A nice shot of bourbon leaves you lucid, grounded in reality, sane, aware of your surrounding.
People who get high want to get MESSED UP. A nice shot of bourbon won’t do it.
And no, I am not defending my sacred cow, I don’t drink bourbon. I have never had more than one drink at a time in my adult life.
But a shot of bourbon will not harm you, and most likely will be a net positive for your health. Thus, it is not of much interest to drug lovers.
I don’t know, have we lost the murder wars? Because people are still getting killed.
Have we lost the theft wars? Because merchandize keeps getting stolen.
Have we lost the vandalism wars? Because I still see graffiti.
I guess we’ve lost all the wars, and just let everyone do everything they want to. Since we’ve “lost the wars.”
Think of all those DEA jobs that would go away.
Think of all the Don Johnson wannabes who could never slick their hair back and drive forfeited Ferraris.
The purpose of the War on (Some) Drugs is not to "win."
To steal a phrase from Steve Jobs, "The journey is the reward."
Not to mention that legal heroin would be much cheaper and motivate correspondingly less theft.
The country's first no fault divorce law, and one of the first laws legalizing abortion, were both signed by California Governor Ronald Reagan.
Your argument loses a lot of force when you realize the shady world of prescription drugs you describe already exist. So does the world of junkies stealing to feed their habit. We ca shift the forces now used to crack down on drug sales and possession to fight the real crimes of robbery, burglary, etc.
I truly cannot understand the paper thinness of drug warrior arguments. You’ve had a long while and much opposition and that’s all you can come up with? Specters of things that are already happening with the unjust, deadly, costly, demoralizing drug war.
I just find it interesting that so many of these patriotic Americans forget that Opium was real popular with the Constitution writing set.
But then lots of people don’t like the ugly truths of history.
Like the fact that drug laws only came about recently on the timescale of civilized man.
How oh how did we ever survive? How did we not collapse into a drug fueled haze?
Lets not speak of the sheer volumes of amphetamines that rushed through many of the projects like Manhattan and NASA.
Lets not mention the genesis and main ingredient of Coca Cola was Cocaine and men/women/children drank it freely with no CocaCola trade developing and CocaCola violence.
Drug use is part of every human era and many human endeavors. For better or worse, it just is.
Legalizing pot is a libeal agenda. Liberal agendas fail. End of story.
But if it sends a thrill down your leg to hope this succeeds... knock yourself out.
Ditto for a few puffs of moderate-potency pot.
I must assume some are deterred from drug use b drug laws. But the margin has got to be so thin it’s anorexic. Come on, who doesn’t at least try something that really wants to? Maybe not crack or meth, but any number of milder alternatives.
I’m not willing to fight, but I’m only myself. Are you saying the federal government is unwilling to fight? Because there is evidence to the contrary. Or is it like how Tinkerbell needs the audience to believe in her? They’ve tried their best and us selfish brats robbed them of victory.
According to the FBI, two out of three murder cases are cleared; in contrast, the number for drug sales is assuredly no more than two out of three-thousand.
So how much freedom must we give up in order to eliminate it in society at large??
Simple. The numbers show that there is less illegal drug use in Supermax than society. So if we turn society into Supermax, drub use crime ect will logically follow.
Makes sense to me....
Try working as an LEO or prosecutor. We couldn’t even convict OJ of murder. Getting a conviction on most crimes is an impossible task even with eye witnesses. If the local burglar stealing my stuff never gets caught for stealing but gets arrested for possession and goes to jail at least he is not stealing my stuff any more. After 3 convictions he qualifies for lifer status. Feel free to substitute child molester and the act of molesting in this scenario.
And people drink mainly for social reasons, not to get messed up. Dope is 100% about mind alteration.
That one's going on my check-back-in-a-year-to-rub-their-nose-in-how-wrong-they-were list.
Legalizing pot is a libeal agenda. Liberal agendas fail. End of story.
But if it sends a thrill down your leg to hope this succeeds... knock yourself out.
Legalizing pot is a liberty agenda. Liberty agendas succeed - without any need for me to hope for them.
We could make it easier still by making it illegal to wear clothes. That way, the police could see the perp's guilt without searching his pockets (because just having pockets would be proof enough), thereby streamlining the process yet further.
Yes, I'm saying the federal government is unwilling to fight. I'm as ardent a drug warrior as there is. But I concede the fact that local, state and especially the federal government profits from the playing the WOD game. If the government was really serious about fighting the WOD, we would see troops on our borders to curtail the millions of illegal immigrants that pour accross our borders AND to curtail the millions of pounds of illegal drugs.
Because there is evidence to the contrary.
What evidence. What REAL evidence?
I want both things, but don’t see why it has to be a twofer. Right now the Welfare State supports addicts in and out of prison. Some imagine as if drug use would explode in the absence of criminalization, but seems to me basically everyone who wants to use now can. Even if the burden on the junkie coddling apparatus were to grow, you must subtract the cost of the drug war and the loss to the prison industrial complex, which is of continental proportions.
Subtract also the cost of all manner of crime connected to the drug trade, adding back in what new crime will he added by legalization. I’m almost certain we’d end up ahead. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. The Welfare State is popular, the drug war less so. At least we can possibly kick out one prop of Big Government, even if the rest inevitably destroy our civilization.
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