Posted on 05/18/2002 7:44:57 PM PDT by LarryLied
One measure of a good society is whether its individual members have the autonomy to do as they choose in respects that principally concern only them. The debate about heroin, cocaine and marijuana touches precisely on this. In my submission, a society in which such substances are legal and available is a good society not because drugs are in themselves good, but because the autonomy of those who wish to use them is respected. For other and broader reasons, many of them practical, such a society will be a better one.
I have never taken drugs other than alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and medicinal drugs. Of these, I have for many years not taken the two former. I think it is inimical to a good life to be dependent for pleasure and personal fulfilment on substances which gloss or distort reality and interfere with rationality; and yet I believe that heroin, cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy and cognates of these should be legal and available in exactly the same way as nicotine and alcohol.
In logic is no difference between legal and currently illegal drugs. Both are used for pleasure, relief from stress or anxiety, and 'holidaying' from normal life, and both are, in different degrees, dangerous to health. Given this, consistent policy must do one of two things: criminalise the use of nicotine and alcohol, in order to bring them in line with currently illegal substances; or legalise currently illegal substances under the same kinds of regime that govern nicotine and alcohol.
On civil liberties grounds the latter policy is preferable because there is no justification in a good society for policing behaviour unless, in the form of rape, murder, theft, riot or fraud, it is intrinsically damaging to the social fabric, and involves harm to unwilling third parties. Good law protects in these respects; bad law tries to coerce people into behaving according to norms chosen by people who claim to know and to do better than those for whom they legislate. But the imposition of such norms is an injustice. By all means let the disapprovers argue and exhort; giving them the power to coerce and punish as well is unacceptable.
Arguments to the effect that drugs should be kept illegal to protect children fall by the same token. On these grounds, nicotine and alcohol should be banned too. In fact there is greater danger to children from the illegality of drugs.
Almost everyone who wishes to try drugs, does so; almost everyone who wishes to make use of drugs does it irrespective of their legal status. Opponents say legalisation will lead to unrestrained use and abuse. Yet the evidence is that where laws have been relaxed there is little variation in frequency or kind of use.
The classic example is Prohibition in the USA during the 1920s. (The hysteria over alcohol extended to other drugs; heroin was made illegal in the USA in 1924, on the basis of poor research on its health risks and its alleged propensity to cause insanity and criminal behaviour.) Prohibition created a huge criminal industry. The end of Prohibition did not result in a frenzy of drinking, but did leave a much-enhanced crime problem, because the criminals turned to substances which remained illegal, and supplied them instead.
Crime destabilises society. Gangland rivalry, the use of criminal organisations to launder money, to fund terrorism and gun-running, to finance the trafficking of women and to buy political and judicial influence all destabilise the conditions for a good society far beyond such problems as could be created by private individuals' use of drugs. If drugs were legally and safely available through chemist shops, and if their use was governed by the same provisions as govern alcohol purchase and consumption, the main platform for organised crime would be removed, and thereby one large obstacle to the welfare of society.
It would also remove much petty crime, through which many users fund their habit. If addiction to drugs were treated as a medical rather than criminal matter, so that addicts could get safe, regular supplies on prescription, the crime rate would drop dramatically, as argued recently by certain police chiefs.
The safety issue is a simple one. Paracetemol is more dangerous than heroin. Taking double the standard dose of paracetemol, a non-prescription analgesic, can be dangerous. Taking double the standard medical dose of heroin (diamorphine) causes sleepiness and no lasting effects.
A good society should be able to accommodate practices which are not destructive of social bonds (in the way that theft, rape, murder and other serious crimes are), but mainly have to do with private behaviour. In fact, a good society should only interfere in private behaviour in extremis.
Until a century ago, now-criminal substances were legal and freely available. Some (opium in the form of laudanum) were widely used. Just as some people are damaged by misuse of alcohol, so a few were adversely affected by misuses of other drugs. Society as a whole was not adversely affected by the use of drugs; but it was benefited by the fact that it did not burden itself with a misjudged, unworkable and paternalistic endeavour to interfere with those who chose to use drugs.
The place of drugs in the good society is not about the drugs as such, but rather the freedom and the value to individuals and their society of openness to experimentation and alternative behaviours and lifestyles. The good society is permissive, seeking to protect third parties from harm but not presuming to order people to take this or that view about what is in their own good.
Fortunately, society isn't composed of simpletons and our laws reflect that fact.
Or is it the easy, readily available, uncensored, constant temptation etc. to suicidal behavior that is the "FREEDOM?"
I suppose it depends on how high up on the shelf one wants to put the gun/knife/rattlesnake/hot pot/matches from the 4 year old.
Given the 4 year olds in the oval office during BILLDO AND SHRILLERY'S REIGN, one might wonder at the wisdom of giving much freedom to 4 year olds.
I smell a BS artist. Views of the kind Orwell was articulating were far outside the accepted universe of political discourse in post-war Britain.
Orwell was savaged by his supposed old friends on the Left; even his publisher(Victor Gollancz) sandbagged him.
Perhaps in American public schools, it is not required to teach or learn the concept of historical context.
It certainly wouldn't surprise me.
If you cannot see any difference between sugar and heroin or lard and cocaine, then remind me never to ask for coffee and a tamale at your home.
Crime is an issue, but not THE issue. If moral decay is the problem, I assumed you wanted the State to do something about it. Am I wrong? I will point out that Prohibtion creates crime, creates corruption and causes moral decay. Freedom reduces crime, reduces corruption and builds more moral people. Drug prohibition does all the things you claim to decry. You can't get to way you want to go with the no wheels of drug prohibition.
Obviously (pfffft) the vehicle needs to be powered by Neo-Tech's ZonPower! Then we will arrive at (pfffft-pffffft) the, um, Civilization of the Universe! (ahhhhhh cough-cough)
Neo-Tech can't answer nihilism. Only cowardice coupled with faithlessness prevents you from seeing this.
Neo-Tech answers nihilism and renders it an impossibility, you just can't, won't or are unwilling to research and learn how. That's your problem, not mine. What do you think, your one feeble sentence was going to negate thirty-two years of seven-day-a-week twelve-to-sixteen hour days and that's just one man not to mention other writers and researchers, years of work? The government authorities tried multiple times to destroy Neo-Tech and each time they failed Neo-Tech expanded, growing more powerful.
It maters not one iota what you or I or anyone else says or does -- save for chemical/biological/nuclear annihilation from an anticivilization you're so indebted to preserving despite it's guaranteed detriment to your life that has killed every conscious being for two millennia -- nothing and no person, group or government can stop Neo-Tech/Zonpower from accomplishing its goal.
Go back to post #789 and read the Giants versus Twerps article.
How embarrassing for you. It is most unseemly to parade ones personal problems in public.
Cultural Jihad, you've render yourself impotent and useless.
Bad link plus misinformation.Which part would be the misinformation?
That you called me a neo-facist?
That excessive/punitive taxes on tobacco cause mob-run smuggling problems?
That beer distributorships are awarded to companies headed by favored minorities for political reasons, and that this is attended by the ususal corruption that goes along with Jesse Jackson-esque extortion operations?
First off, there are no drug warriors and there is no drug war.Wow. The Big Lie. Now Drug Warriors have every accoutrement of totalitarianism.
The poll figures you claim are also lies. The vast majority of americans consistently and across all polls in all recent years (just do a Google on "war on drugs" and "poll") believe the War on Drugs is unwinnable and has been handled incompetently.
Polls also consistently show a preference for treatment rather than jailing addicts. If Americans were so enthusiastic for the Drug War, why has "medical marijuana" been supported in referenda in so many states?
This public opinion is also in the face of billions of dollars of government propaganda over the course of the War on Drugs. Except for maybe anti-smoking campaigns, never has the U.S. population been subjected to such a propaganda blitz. And still they reject the War on Drugs and the Drug Warriors.
Keep the pressure up. Even most police chiefs think the Drug War is lost now. Ostracise narcs and their families in your community. Write you local paper about what an ineffective fraud DARE is proven to be. If your school has "drug scare" propaganda, home school your kids. It is time to give these totalitarians a taste of their own jackboot. They are no better than the ex-Stasi among German society.
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