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legalize it! ALL OF IT, apparently.
Local H Jay
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/24/miron.legalization.drugs/index.html
so, i like drugs. not all of them, though. in fact, a lot of them are really really bad. but this dude from harvard says we should make them 'all' legal (well, coke and heroin with weed).
so, uh, WHAT? i just don't follow. his words sound smart, but COKE and HEROIN are BAD.
thoughts?
The right policy, therefore, is to legalize drugs while using regulation and taxation to dampen irresponsible behavior related to drug use, such as driving under the influence. This makes more sense than prohibition because it avoids creation of a black market. This approach also allows those who believe they benefit from drug use to do so, as long as they do not harm others.
Legalization is desirable for all drugs, not just marijuana. The health risks of marijuana are lower than those of many other drugs, but that is not the crucial issue. Much of the traffic from Mexico or Colombia is for cocaine, heroin and other drugs, while marijuana production is increasingly domestic. Legalizing only marijuana would therefore fail to achieve many benefits of broader legalization.
so, i like drugs. not all of them, though. in fact, a lot of them are really really bad. but this dude from harvard says we should make them 'all' legal (well, coke and heroin with weed).
so, uh, WHAT? i just don't follow. his words sound smart, but COKE and HEROIN are BAD.
thoughts?
Local H Jay on
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He's not addressing the health issues at all of the harder drugs, just the effect on the criminal market around them.
The Economist also, had a recent article promoting legalization as an admittedly flawed, but definitely better situation than we currently have. Harder drugs like heroin and coke were touched upon, mentioning a fairly high percentage of users of those drugs never using them more than occasionally.
Oh, of course I agree with this; the college users of hard drugs, due to all of the cultural stories we have now about how horrific heroin and coke addictions are, seem far more cautious about it.
Cigarettes and alchohol are also BAD.
Of course they're "BAD", the question is "would legalization create better results than the current system" and the answer is a resounding, clear, obvious "maybe, I dunno".
i think its very well proven that people don't always take the most rational action in any given circumstance.
There's not really a solution to the "drug problem." Legalization is the least awful alternative because there isn't a prohibition program which prevents more harm than the harm the program itself causes. Maybe that's just a utilitarian argument.
Please trust I'll get more into this later, but the short, short version is that I don't think it would increase usage, and it being legal would result in far better conditions for those who do use it. As well as for our prison, the severely reduced crime in trafficking the drugs, and the safety of everyone involved period.
Here's the economist article:
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13237193
They argue that in countries with very similar cultures(Norway and Sweden) and very different laws related to drugs, show the same addiction rates.
I can see how it would reduce crime, but you can't honestly believe that legalizing anything wont result in increased usage. I mean, it's not really too hard to get drugs if you're in the right place, but if it was legal then it will just become more available. With more availability comes more usage. The only way to counteract that might be to make it so prohibitally expensive as to make many unable to purchase it, but then we're back where we started and a black market pops up able to meet demand without the price.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Well, evidence shows that it doesn't increase usage significantly. So your ability to believe or not believe it is irrelevant.
And yes, heroin consumption will increase, if we were to legalize it. Law of Demand.
That's in the Netherlands right?
Prescription based? No doctor would prescribe heroin...
The idea that I'd see heroin on a shelf, easy to buy, bothers me. I do however, not care at all if anyone goes to jail for using or making or selling it. Legalize, and keep it somewhere I never have to see it, and I guess I don't care...
I would guess specialty stores, like liqour stores but for drugs.
Read it. Don't be afraid just because he quotes the loony Ann Coulter in there.
The reasoning being, better to get it from them than someone who wants to keep you hooked.
Or something.
Why not? A lot of problems would be solved very quickly. Overdose and bad reactions due to drug contaminates would drop drastically. Violence due to drug use would drop because this would become a legal situation with regulations instead of stabbings. Drug use would probably not increase much, if drug laws from other countries tell us anything. Lots of money gets saved for the state and lots of new jobs would open up.
Oh, and all of the children die*.
*all of the children would not actually die.
You realise that there are programs for exactly that, right? Also for Methadone, which is allegedly even more ferociously addictive than heroin.
Yes, and why do we care about casual use anyhow? We certainly shouldn't. We should care about abuse. I don't care what someone does as long as it doesn't impinge on me overly. And has been pointed out, it isn't even clear that usage rates would vary substantially.
And the money raised from taxation of illicit substances could far more effectively treat the negative externalities of drug abuse than the status quo. First of all, medical treatment is far more effective than interdiction in the US and especially in foreign countries. Second, it is a lot easier to raise taxes via a sin tax to fund medical treatment than it is trying to hoover it up via income taxes. People (wrongly IMO) get uppity when you suggest using their hard earned income to pay for treatment. They are far less uppity when those dirty drug users pay for their own treatment (even if most of those users are just bored suburbanites who don't actually generate any harm).
Plus, as has been mentioned a lot of crime is generated via this prohibition. Legalization would effectively halt this. The Hells Angels have nothing on Archer Daniels Midland when it comes to the ability to project economic power. What are the drug cartels going to do exactly? They cannot compete on price. Their illicit nature would give them a distinct cost disadvantage, not to mention the fact that most people are willing to pay a fairly steep price premium to retain legality.
Not that I think full out legalization is likely though. There is still a lot of social stigma associated with it, and a lot of people will simply refuse to believe any economic arguments.
How much is not significantly? Because the report that was quoted earlier just said that it's not different, and regardless of my mental faculties, that's just hard to believe. There are some people who would do drugs if given the opportunity, but don't because it's either too much of a pain in the ass to get ahold of or don't want to deal with holding illegal substances. For example, I am one of those people. There's some stuff that I'd probably try, but I don't want to deal with the negative shit attached to it. Nevermind not knowing how much to take, etc. My drug usage would go up if drugs were legal. Would I be doing drugs all day everyday? No. Would I be doing them regularly? No. If they were more available you would see an increased usage. That doesn't mean that the addiction rates would go up, but I'm betting that I'm not the only person out there that doesn't do drugs because I don't associate with the people that do them and I don't want to deal with the law if it comes down on me.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
This. There's a justification for giving these drugs to patients, namely that the patient is better off - safe synthesis is a bitch, and the production isn't exactly subject to quality control. With pharmaceutical involvement, purity isn't the issue it is elsewhere.
I'm not sure that comparing cigarettes to some of the harder drugs is really fair. Not singling you out, others have made this comparison before, yours was just the first I saw in this thread.
Cigarettes don't impede or affect judgment in any discernable way. They don't increase violent tendencies. There isn't a risk of suffering an immediate and fatal heart attack from smoking a cigarette. They aren't so rampantly addictive that one might throw away all rational thought or worse die, in the pursuit of getting a fix. One does not have violent withdrawal when they kick smoking. Hell, one cigarette a day might be healthier than one beer a day.
I just don't think cigarettes and drugs like cocaine or heroin are even remotely comparable. It's like comparing aspirin to IV antibiotics; they're just not even close.
his point was everyone won't start doing these things just because they are illegal.
but since you brought it up, every problem you listed either also applies to alcohol or wouldn't be a worry if the drugs were legal.
So since cigarettes are a lot less bad for you than heroin, obviously more people would use heroin if it was legal than smoke cigarettes. I see.
I'm don't think that's what he was saying
I assumed he was in some way responding to my argument. He kind of skipped answering the question, so I wasn't sure. I guess I was wrong, sorry.
The question of whether usage rates would dramatically increase is the important one. Are there any developed nations which have legal cocaine or heroin, for comparison's sake? My first guess is no, but I'd be happy to be incorrect here.
I personally won't do heroin because I don't want to associate with heroin dealers and because I don't trust bags of substances which are difficult to identify with certainty. But if it was legal I'd at least try the stuff.
No, that's not what I was talking about at all, and I think you know that. There are good reasons for these drugs to be illegal, and good reasons for them to stay illegal. Whether or not all people would engage in their use is irrelevant. The laws are in place to protect those who don't use these drugs.
Though I will admit that I'm curious how alcohol (as hard a drug as it is) came to be legally and socially acceptable when these other drugs are not. I mean, Prohibition didn't work in the 20s because there was a time before that when alcohol was legal. Presumably, drugs like heroin (which have been around in some form or other forever) were not always illegal. So who pushed that through, and how were they able to marginalize the drug and its users from the rest of society? I don't know the answers, but it's interesting to think about.
Answer the question and substantiate your claims.