As Promised, SF Senator Begins Process to Legalize Hard Drugs

California Family Council ^ | January 22, 2021 | California Family Council

[fwdude]

Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has made good on his promise to begin his effort to “decriminalize all drug use” step by step with the introduction of several bills at the start of the new legislative session. Senate Bill 57 creates “safe injection sites” in Oakland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles where drug addicts can use illicit drugs under medical supervision. Senate Bill 73 lowers the criminal penalties on users and dealers of heroin, opiates or opium derivatives, salts, cannabis, phencyclidine (PCP), and other dangerous drugs. Still promised, but not yet introduced, is a bill Wiener says will legalize all psychedelic drugs such as LSD and magic mushrooms.

[NobleFree]

Not to mention the lost war on burglary, robbery and theft. Been illegal for centuries but these still occur at epidemic rates.

Over 30% of robberies are solved, per the FBI; that rate is assuredly several orders of magnitude higher than the rate at which drug "crimes" even become known to the authorities.

And before you respond, no, drug crimes are NOT “victimless” crimes, externalities notwithstanding.

Who is the "victim" of Joe Toke's pot purchase?

[NobleFree]

I don’t see a decrease in hard drug use anywhere. I see the opposite.

For the past three years, heroin use has been flat: https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/trends-statistics/national-drug-early-warning-system-ndews/national-survey-drug-use-health

[nathanbedford]

fwdude: Not to mention the lost war on burglary, robbery and theft. Been illegal for centuries but these still occur at epidemic rates.

NobleFree:I challenge you yet again to name a single FReeper who supports open borders or abortion.

To fwdude: I would point out that burglary, robbery and theft occurred before, during and after prohibition. Would you now bring prohibition back? Do you think the prohibition contributed to crime? I might point out to you that burglary, robbery and theft are now occurring at epidemic rates, by your logic does this not mean that it has been caused by drugs or drug laws? Or does it simply mean that burglary, robbery and theft are simply coincidental with the use of drugs? For the record, I think the use of drugs contributes to crime, but I also think that our war on drugs increases the use of drugs and the crime rate.

NobleFree: I challenge you to name a single Freeper who supports reinstituting prohibition. If you can find one, by your logic all Freepers therefore believe in reinstituting prohibition. Maybe, but maybe not.

Better to leave the rhetorical tricks and gaps in logic for QAnon.

[Hot Tabasco]

Two weekends ago on Nat Geo’s series on drug trafficking, they did a segment on the Krokodil epidemic in Russia. Two of the ingredients in its manufacturing are gasoline and paint thinner and one of the telltale signs an addict is on the drug is that they noticeably smell like gasoline..........

[NobleFree]

NobleFree: I challenge you to name a single Freeper who supports reinstituting prohibition. If you can[not] find one, by your logic all Freepers therefore believe in reinstituting prohibition.

First, one of the undelined words needs to become its opposite (and "can" become "cannot") for your statement to be even within spitting distance of what I argued. And even after that change, you misrepresent my argument (directed at LouAvul, to whom I was replying, and cced to you because Lou's post seemed relevant to your post #19) - which is not that no FReepers support open borders or abortion, but if those positions are characteristic of FR libertarians as Lou implied, then he should be easily able to name one ... which he has NEVER done.

[fwdude]

I’m not by any means trying to link burglary, theft, and robbery to drugs, although that argument can be convincingly made. I’m just using your faulty logic that prohibition of an activity is illegitimate if that activity continues unabated. Yours is the silly argument of a lot of liberaltarians here on FR.

Legitimizing a destructive activity through law creates a legitimate (legal) market for it. Markets do what they do to compete viciously, which means they market to whomever they can, using whatever deception they can, skirting laws when they can. It’s vice that is allowed to feed upon itself and the innocent.

[fwdude]

I want the price to be below a level that encourages (rather than virtually requires) addicts to commit crimes (including selling drugs) to pay for drugs.

So, you advocate for price controls, the abolishment of free markets?

We used to call that Communism.

[nathanbedford]

Legitimizing a destructive activity through law creates a legitimate (legal) market for it. Markets do what they do to compete viciously, which means they market to whomever they can, using whatever deception they can, skirting laws when they can. It’s vice that is allowed to feed upon itself and the innocent.

For the record I am not a libertarian but a conventional constitutional conservative although I have confessed for many years to a "pesky libertarian streak" when it comes to this issue.

As to the quoted portion above I can only cite a reply I posted some years (10) ago:

If you want to know why the war on drugs is lost start thinking about it the way Adam Smith and Warren Buffett would think about it.

Adam Smith would talk about the law of supply and demand and he tells us that when the demand goes up so does the price; when supply goes down, the price goes up. When the demand is inelastic, that is, when it is the product of an addiction, the price curve is even more radical in its upward thrust when supply is reduced. Therefore, the more the government succeeds in interdicting the supply of addictive drugs, the more it increases the price and thereby increases the incentive to increase supply. The more the government succeeds, the more it must fail.

That is why drug smugglers and dealers are so wonderfully inventive in evading the law and will ever continue to be so.

Without putting words in Warren Buffett's mouth, his criteria for investing in an enterprise are well-known. He wants a company with a unique product and a huge market potential. What better than an addictive drug? He wants company with high barriers to entry against competition. What better barrier than the law and what better barriers than drug enforcement agencies raiding your competition? And if competition becomes too serious, this business model says you simply eliminate it by murdering them.

Buffett would be very intrigued by the idea that costs are extremely low, markup extremely high, and the price is ever supported by the government! By making drugs illegal, the government in effect has enacted price supports. By selling into an inelastic demand of addicts, the market as well as price are virtually guaranteed.

Because the price is high, addicts are incentivized to push the drugs onto others in order to addict them, to create a mini market which funds their own addiction. What a wonderful business model! On the macro level it is a multilevel marketing scheme on steroids, or should I say, powered by addiction, and supported by the government.

Meanwhile, this wonderful marketing scheme generates so much money that corruption is inevitable. Worse, our enemies in the Muslim world and elsewhere have exploited this market to our disadvantage and national security peril. Meanwhile, our only politically correct response is a full throated roar: "do more of the same."

[fwdude]

I’m with you, Lou. It’s disgusting what parades as “conservative” these days. Perhaps they should look up the definition.

I always ask, would you have adopted this new “libertarian” view 50 years ago? If not, you are not now a conservative by any stretch.

[fwdude]

Your first fatal logical error is promoting the presumption that the war on drugs is “lost.” Prove it.

[nathanbedford]

Please!

The price of drugs on the street today after they are stepped several times is multiples of the cost of producing drugs at the farm and factory.That is wonderfully profitable but for criminals.

I want a free market that permits the Street price to be reduced by the law of supply and demand, free of government meddling and the inevitable collateral damage, to sink below the cost of operating illegally.

it is your approach, not mine,that has interfered with the free market by these mindless laws with crazy distortion of a free market and all the accompanying corruption.

Please see my last immediate post.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

It’s interesting to me how close the hard drug epidemic in real life is so close to the zombie apocalypses portrayed in movies (and tv). My guess is that this will not end well.

[nathanbedford]

Your first fatal logical error is promoting the presumption that the war on drugs is “lost.” Prove it.

Drugs are prevalent on the streets along with murder. The price of illegal drugs has not gone up to reflect diminished supply but actually over the years has reduced somewhat.

Because so many more drugs are sold, profits for the criminal syndicates grow arithmetically.

We are twenty years fighting a war in Afghanistan that scarcely anyone thinks we won. Do we hold more or less territory? Do we have more or less political control?

By any metrics we have lost both wars.

[VietVetwcm]

Good question. But I don’t think the Mob files income tax returns.

[NobleFree]

I'm confident the mob gets only a sliver of the $250B spent on alcohol each year - whereas criminals get all of the $150B spent on other drugs (except for the $11B spent on legal marijuana in 12 states).

[VietVetwcm]

I doubt that the money spent on bootleg alcohol is included in the figure of $250B. Again, those on the illegal side of business are unlikely to file reports with government tax authorities.

[NobleFree]

Again, I'm confident the mob gets only a sliver of the $250B spent on alcohol each year. Can you provide any reason to think otherwise?

[MarvinStinson]

SOROS