Posted on 05/16/2002 11:22:07 AM PDT by Reagan Man
The Libertarian Party and like-minded think tanks and policy research centers, most notably the Cato Institute, are proponents of drug legalization. It's said to be an idea whose time has come. Foremost, Libertarians hold to the philosophical stance that individual freedom and responsibility are paramount, requiring strong limits on the role of government. Libertarians claim that the current policy of drug prohibition in fact violates individual liberties. Although Conservatives as a group generally espouse a Libertarian bent, social Conservatives in particular are not purists regarding government intervention, especially when they perceive a threat to the greater good of the citizenry.
Moreover, Libertarians believe that drug legalization is congruent with the notion of "harm reduction", which purports that society actually incurs more damage from stringent drug laws than from the effects of drug usage itself. They cite the negative consequences of our current "prohibitionist" drug policy, which directly led to the creation of a black market, limited drug availability resulting in high drug costs, violence and turf wars in efforts to compete for significant profits, and a burgeoning, expensive criminal justice system. Ostensibly, if drug legalization were to be implemented, availability of drugs would increase, prices would drop markedly, and drug crime and drug trafficking would all but disappear. Moreover, the size and cost of the current criminal justice system would be significantly reduced, a tremendous bonus to the taxpayers. And of course, as a compassionate society, we would offer rehabilitation for those substance users who seek help in kicking their drug habits, a minor price to pay in the scheme of things. Out with the old paradigm, and in with the new paradigm.
The Real Deal--Consequences of Drug Legalization:
Sounds terrific, right? But it's an inaccurate representation of how legalization of drugs would impact our culture. In truth, there would be increases in both drug activity and concomitant social ills and other antisocial behaviors linked to substance abuse, all of which would have a profoundly deleterious effect on our populace. The dysfunctions and problems associated with addiction would probably not manifest to a significant degree in the criminal courts, although we would expect to see a higher number of Driving While Impaired and Assault offenses. Undoubtedly, automobile and workplace accidents would become more commonplace. However, the most profound impact of drug legalization would be reflected in the sharp rise of various social ills and accompanying activity in the family/juvenile court systems, with growing demands upon social service agencies and treatment programs. Addicts often become cross-addicted, so also anticipate more widespread difficulties with alcohol, prescription drug abuse, gambling, etc. The greater prevalence of child abuse and neglect, teenage pregnancies, domestic violence, divorce, juvenile delinquency and other types of societal dysfunction would particularly stress public sector programs paid by the taxpayers. So forget about saving all that tax money, which will be needed to provide government services. Moreover, enacting drug legalization would fail to send the salient message to our youth that indulging in drugs is morally wrong, placing all substance abusers, and those around them, at risk for physical, psychological, and spiritual damage.
A review of the "Dutch Model" demonstrates that drug activity, particularly marijuana usage, has increased with the softening of drug laws and drug policy in the Netherlands. And our nation had some similar experience in the state of Alaska, with the decriminalization of up to four ounces of marijuana between 1975 and 1991. Reportedly, use of that drug went up significantly among Alaskan youth during the referenced time frame. Noteworthy, the marijuana of today is many times more potent than the marijuana available in the 1960's and the 1970's. It is more addictive, and more debilitating than the older versions of the substance, and now often requires intensive treatment for recovery. Beyond marijuana, Ecstasy and other designer drugs, and purer quality heroin and cocaine, will continue to be part of the drug scene.
The Status of the Drug Culture:
As a professional in the field of criminal justice, utilizing both law enforcement and social work skills, I've personally observed an escalation in societal decay, especially since the mid-1990's due to the prevalence of drug usage among those sentenced to community-based supervision. And there is supporting statistical data to demonstrate that substance abuse activity has gone up in recent years, despite the propaganda put forth by the prior Clinton administration. Regarding FBI drug arrest figures, (estimated at 14 million in 1999), these numbers had risen a whopping 36% during the decade 1990 - 1999, with a marked increase in resulting drug convictions. For further information, please refer to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, "Crime in the United States -1999", Section IV, "Persons Arrested". Current drug crime statistics are about the same. But why hasn't the media underscored this salient information for the public? And why hasn't the media "connected the dots" for the citizenry, explaining how drug abuse is directly linked to societal ills?
For more than a decade, the media correctly noted that aggregate crime numbers were down, including violent crime and property crime. But the media was remiss in failing to examine specific types of offenses that statistically increased, seemingly incongruent with overall crime trends. Regarding drug crime particularly, one wonders if the Liberal-leaning media was reluctant to embarrass the ensconced Democratic administration (1993-2000), which was intent on spinning the notion that all crime was declining, supposedly due to Democratic policies and efforts involving great expenditures of money and resources.
But we must ask ourselves why hard-core usage and accompanying drug activity is not responsive to the aggressive policing and negative sanctions effective with most other types of crime. I believe that the situation is complicated by the nature of addiction, which is all encompassing, and often blurs reasoning and the ability to respond appropriately to the threat of punishment and the pressures brought by the court system. Addiction is not just a physiological or psychological phenomenon, but a moral dysfunction as well. It drives those under its influence to engage in the most decadent behaviors, criminal and otherwise.
From years of societal experience with the drug culture, the public is well aware of the depths of depravity, which can be exhibited by addicts. Since the public is more or less cognizant that this population of hard-core users has remained unabridged, they instinctively sense that society is still at great risk for the emergence of additional drug related crime and drug related social pathologies. The media and politicians can laud the overall drop in crime all they want, but the public realizes that drug activity will continue into the foreseeable future with its attending social dysfunction. The public also understands that the degenerate drug culture constantly spawns new addicts to replace those who have perished from the likes of disease, overdose, and street crime. Clearly, the drug culture will only become worse if drug legalization is enacted.
Is Treatment The Answer?
Many criminal justice and mental health professionals tell us that treatment is the solution to substance abuse problems. However, the truth is that the vast majority of chemical dependency programs are ineffective for hard-core drug abusers. From years of monitoring and auditing cases, I can state unequivocally that most, if not all, drug addicts are in a revolving door of various intervention programs, routinely walking out of both residential and outpatient care before completion of treatment. I'm in agreement with calls for providing intensive drug intervention to criminals who are incarcerated, a captive audience, if you will, who would be required to successfully participate and complete treatment as a requirement of their sentence. This leverage may induce the addict-criminal to fulfill program requirements. Although not a panacea, coerced treatment would at least improve the odds of long-term recovery.
Unfortunately, the relapse rate for addicts is overwhelming, with individuals participating in numerous programs over the years before maintaining any real sobriety. In fact, if drug abusers haven't died at an early age from their risky life style, and are lucky enough to make it to middle age, they generally are motivated to seek recovery from addiction only because their bodies are so racked with physical infirmities that they are finally willing and able to maintain abstinence. To make matters worse, hard core drug users have a very negative impact on family members and those around them, inflicting a variety of damage including criminal victimization, child abuse/neglect, domestic violence, passing congenital abnormalities to offspring, and spreading disease. And these individuals collaterally affected by the addict experience severe and ongoing emotional and physical disability, whether or not the addict is eventually removed from the situation via incarceration, death or abandonment. The greater society is also impacted since they are exposed to the dysfunction of the family and friends of addicts, and must provide treatment and interventions for them, as well.
Conclusion:
Legalization of drugs would increase substance abuse, especially among youth, and would cause social pathologies to flourish to an even greater extent than they are flourishing now. Government programs to address the societal problems, spawned by the growing substance abuse culture, would augment the size of the public sector and reliance on taxpayer monies. In effect, drug legalization would spur negative consequences across the societal spectrum.
Clearly, the Libertarian viewpoint on drugs is patently wrong-headed, and would have a profoundly pernicious effect upon our culture. But beyond the question of drug legalization, we as a society must make it a priority to inculcate values in our youth, and help them build character, so that they can be equipped to resist the temptation of drug usage under any circumstances.
Then there are those of us who fight for maximum individual rights and responsibilities for the maximum amount of people.
Let me get this straight... conservatives oppose welfare partly because they don't want the government to protect people from the consequences of their actions (in this case, refusing to work). For this reason they don't want welfare to be available as a way of life for these people. But these same conservatives think government should protect people from the consequences of other actions (in this case, using drugs). For this reason they don't want drugs to be legal. Does this make sense?
Well hey, they're our JBTs now...
Fine. Just stop pretending libertarian (with a small "l") has any relationship to Libertarian (with a large "L').
What Libertarians (with a capital "L") support is clearly written on every Libertarian Party membership card:
"We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose." (Bolding added for emphasis.)
When you imply that Libertarians (with a capital L) support "absolute and unrestricted liberty" you completely ignore the "...so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.
... we discussed asset forfeiture, to which you seemed to think that it was rogue cops making human mistakes instead of actual government policy...
That's totally incorrect, stop putting words in my mouth. Rogue cops are just that, rogue cops! They should be should be pulled off the job, charged with the appropriate crime and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Human error is a different set of circumstances and you know it.
Making them legal would take half the fun out of them.
The Robert Hansons of the world wouldn't have had any fun at all in Sodom.
It's becoming less amazing all the time the longer I hang around FR. It's really an interesting phenomenon. Big Government was the enemy when Clinton was in power. Now, Big Government is okay because it's headed up by a Republican. I don't give a rat's patoot who's in the White House, I'll point out abuses of the Constitution wherever I see them. And I'm sure that goes for you and many others here as well! :-)
I agree with this. I've made the point in other threads, but it was the conservative Republicans who opposed the MJ Tax Act on the grounds it was unConstitutional. Nowadays there are people like yourself who call themselves conservative and go along with the socialist foolishness.
The GOPers who opposed FDR were right then, and their ideas are still true today. IMHO, one of the more constructive things we can do is encourage the President to appoint Clarence Thomas clones to the Supreme Court; I think he thinks like a New Deal-era conservative.
That's not a costless exercise. It would be cheaper IMO to repeal the laws in the name of which these abuses are perpetrated.
Bingo!
I checked your link....don't become a stoner...that's a dead end.
Well, duh. EVERYTHING I write is "only my opinion"...just as everything YOU write is only YOUR opinion. And in cases where our opinions can not be reconciled, one of us is right, and the other is wrong. In the matter of whether it's constitutional for the federal government to criminalize the manufacture/possession of drugs, I'm right and you're wrong. Simple reading of both the Constitution, the history of the commerce clause, the details of alcohol Prohibition, and the history of the criminalization of cocaine, marijuana, LSD, etc. would lead any intelligent person to that conclusion.
America is a society that has always been based on the rule of law.
It was founded on the rule of law. And, in fact, it pretty much followed the rule of law (i.e., the Constitution) until about the time of the first World War. Since then, America has consistently gone farther and farther from the rule of law. And "conservatives" (ala G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, John McCain...and even Antonin Scalia) are most certainly NOT heading America back towards the rule of law.
Libertarians do not support the rule of law,...
Complete BS. Libertarians support the rule of law FAARRRRRR more than Republicans! It isn't even close!
...or the will of the people,...
Most certainly NOT when the "will of the people" is to take away rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Starting with the 10th amendment! The Constitution GUARANTEES my freedom from federal government interference in what drugs I take to make me well (or even for recreation). And your comment is basically BS...because you're equating the "will of the people" with how The People's representatives in government act. The Founding Fathers understood very clearly that government was NOT the same as The People. In fact, that is ABSOLUTELY demonstrated when there are state REFERENDA (i.e., TRULY the will of The People) to legalize marijuana for medical use, and stinking, corrupt conservatives like John Ashcroft attempt to unconstitutionally OVERRIDE that will! (No doubt you cheered him on, on that one!)
Libertarians want absolute and unrestricted liberty, as in no limitations on individuals and their personal behavior.
Complete BS. As I just posted, Libertarians want liberty ONLY to the extent that it does not "forcibly interfere with the equal rights of others" to liberty. In other words, exactly as Thomas Jefferson said:
A good government is one "which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread that it has earned."-- Thomas Jefferson (libertarian) (1743-1826) (inaugural address)
In my time on Freerepublic, you're one of the most pessimistic individuals I've ever come across.
Not pessimistic, skeptical. Conservatives here pretend (I think they've actually falsely convinced themselves) that they care about freedom (the "Free" part of Free Republic) and the Rule of Law. But a significant minority, if not a majority, of posters on Free Republic express opinions that are incompatible with freedom and/or the Rule of Law. Opinions like support of federal laws criminalizing drugs (without a corresponding Constitutional amendment).
Its impossible to have any further reasonable communication with you.
Heh, heh, heh! You're just like the guys I "debated" about evolution versus young-Earth-Noah's-Flood creation. I asked them, if all people on earth are descended from 8 (or 9...I don't know the Noah myth very well!) people who got off the Ark ~4000 years ago...what were those people's races? (Was Noah white, his wife black, and their children oriental, for example?) They responded by calling me a racist (ad hominen attack, the last refuge of someone being clobbered in a debate!) and saying they didn't think it was worth talking to me. I told them what I'll tell you: "Yeah...if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen." (Thanks, Harry Truman.)
You can't answer my question about why a 18th amendment was (or was not) necessary to prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcohol. That's because you know that it will force you to admit that all federal laws prohibiting the manufacture and sale of drugs are unconstitutional. That's the only conclusion that can be reached by a rational individual.
Come to think of it, that reminds me of a discussion board I was on with liberals a few years back. I got into a discussion with a fellow who claimed to be (he probably was, I have no reason to doubt it) a professor of constitutional law. I posted that virtually all that the federal government does is unconstitutional. He wrote something on the order that he agreed with some things I said, but that I was greatly exaggerating. But then I asked him to comment on the Constitutionality of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federal ownership of land outside of the District of Columbia and federal forts (i.e. national parks, wilderness areas, and so on). He immediately stopped posting!
As I've told you before, I never said our entire system of government was perfect. I don't agree with every aspect of federal and state asset forfeiture laws either. But I understand, human beings aren't perfect creatures and that includes members of law enforcement and officials of the criminal justice system. Mistakes are made every day in this world. If an American citizen, believes their rights have been trampled on, they have every right, under law, to have their case addressed through the legal system. get a lawyer and present your case.
My inference is that your understanding of asset foreiture is one of local abuse, not general policy. I try to be correct in my inferences, but sometimes fail. If this was not addressing asset forfeiture from #340, help me out.
I guess, in that regard, anyone can theorize anything they want. In my book, being a conservative, is being opposed to everything that has happened since the 1930`s. I oppose everything from FDR`s New Deal socialism, to LBJ`s Great Society liberalism, to Clinton's "I Feel Your Pain" liarism. Conservatism doesn't mean, I want to throw America back in time, to the early days of its beginnings. Modern conservatism, isn't against government, its against the over taxation and the bloated federal bureaucracy. I believe the only way the system can be changed, is through the ballot box and through the election of more conservatives to public office.
You might want to share this with the current administration. It seems intent ot bloat government with spending increases and departmental increases (DoE).
IMO, Conservatives aren't the answer, because from my perspective, they are just as intent on Big Government, only with different objectives than with the Liberals. And when we get Moderates in office, like now, we see escalation of government FROM BOTH POLITICAL SIDES!
(Did I stumble on any of the points you'd like me to find or not?) Gotta go, maby be back later.
Opposing the legalization of illicit drugs, such as cocaine, heroin and marijuana, doesn't make me a socialist. Supporting government restrictions over these harmful substances, doesn't make me a socialist either. Your argument is hollow and has no basis in factual truth. Law abiding citizens/societies have every right to restrict personal behavior of individuals, that they deem harmful to society at large. You may consider that socialism, but you'd be wrong. Its law and order that reigns supreme in a civilized society and not chaos and anarchy.
IMHO, one of the more constructive things we can do is encourage the President to appoint Clarence Thomas clones to the Supreme Court..
On that, we can agree. Clarence Thomas is a great American and a fine SC Justice.
It's amazing that YOU write statement like that, when you see the real world so poorly! You (properly) complain about the New Deal, the Great Society...but you don't see that those things were not merely bad ideas...they violated The Law! There is NO legitimate constitutional support for Social Security (New Deal) or Medicare/Medicaid (Great Society). There is NO legitimate constitutional support for the Department of Education (1960's?), the Department of Energy (Carter) etc. etc. etc.
ALL those things are not merely bad ideas, they are illegal. And just because the idiots in Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court don't see that...or you don't see that...does not make it any less true.
Yes, conservative George Will recently wrote, in a column headlined, "Conservatives should be pleased":
He and Gore agreed that the emblematic achievement of the New Deal, Social Security, must be strengthened, and that the emblematic achievement of the Great Society, Medicare, should be enriched with a prescription drug entitlement.
And if the Constitution allows for lawmaking in this area, 'society' can enllist the government to help. In the case we're talking about, it doesn't. Consider: Alcohol prohibition relied on a Constitutional amendment. Wise or unwise, at least it was legal. The National Firearms act relied on sleight-of-hand: Congress does have the authority to levy excise taxes. (there's a USSC precedent that I can't think of the name of now that says they should only levy taxes to raise income, not to control the citizens, but it hasn't been enforced in years). The deception here was that FDR never intended to issue the tax stamps.
This chicanery was the model for the MJ tax act. At least back then they gave lip service to the Constitution.
Now we have the CSA, which doesn't even pretend to be Constitutional. It's just the raw exercise of power.
I assume that some state constitutions, maybe even all of them, would allow the state to attempt to ban certain substances. It's interesting that the only state-level drug laws prior to the 'progressive' and 'new deal' eras were anti-Chinese (opium) laws in California and Colorado. Period. Prior to FDR, MJ was not regulated
You may consider that socialism, but you'd be wrong. Its law and order that reigns supreme in a civilized society and not chaos and anarchy.
The laws were put in place by the socialist-leaning FDR, and opposed by the conservatives. It is not at all obvious that the laws in question have done anything to make society more orderly; I'd say they've done quite the opposite.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.