I am not for or against, but I am sure the war on drugs is an expensive failure like it was for alcohol prohibition!...so I think it is good that we start looking for alternative solutions.
Peter Hitchens is utter idiot. "Taking drugs is wrong and that's why they are illegal". Is that oxymoron, just utter stupidity or just pure lack of intelligence?
I found the debate entertaining but personally I'd like to know more about the war on drugs and what it actually is. It is a loaded word in itself and carries certain image which is not really realistic or truthful. A bit like the pro-life abortion opponents who are really pro-suffering and pro-killing instead of actually being pro-life.
Also the whole legalization of drugs is much more complex issue economically, politically and from safety and control point of view and there are far more aspects of it to solve than just the restrictions, sale and marketing aspects of it.
It is kind of strange when talking about drugs how all drugs are put in the same league with meth, cocaine and heroine and then made to sound as harmful as well. If we legalize marihuana every kid coming from school will be high on meth and shooting heroine. Yeah sure. Like we have kids smoking tobacco and drinking booze for the same reason. Just because they can. Slippery slope argumentation fails always.
Just to be the devil's advocate as I am totally against the "war on drugs" and in support of legalizing marijuana, but I don't trust legislators to do it properly.
There is something to be said about the status quo for marijuana. Presently, weed is widely available, inexpensive, and good quality that is to say it is generally not tampered with by adding harmful chemicals etc. If weed was subject to normal market forces then large corporations would get involved with growing and distributing it. Who is to say that they would not add nicotine to marijuana? To companies like Marlboro, the major downside of weed is that it isn't addictive...yet. As more states reduce the crime of marijuana possession to a citation and <$200 fine I'm pretty comfortable with having and smoking weed even in Texas. I think the only sensible way to legalize marijuana is to make it legal only as a medicine with a prescription and impose a maximum yield for cultivators. California has pretty much a perfect system except it is subject to raids by federal officers.
I don't support legalizing heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamine. I am not in favor of taxpayer funded support and rehabilitation programs or needle exchange programs. If people make a conscious decision to do these extremely harmful and potentially lethal drugs they should bear all of the consequences. There is not a single person who is old enough to obtain heroin who doesn't know that heroin is a killer. At the end stages of hard drug use, the user often ends up in jail or in a hospital, both of which I have to pay for. They should just be left alone. It sounds heartless, it probably is, but they should have stuck with weed.
More pissed about the legal alternatives that are being banned.
For a while I was a dealer who had people working for me dealing a legal alternative.
I was even caught with a big stash when I was busted by many cops for trespassing
and they let me go and keep it because it was legal.
Had to pay a fine though for the trespassing.
Ah the good old flymikeyland where everyone gets what they deserve.
Anyways what happens when rapist has hiv? What happens when you accidentally get hurt by a hiv infected needle in park (you know they take the needles back which is why it is called an exchange of needles!) or you work in the police or hospital? What happens when a father has aids, then pregnant mother has aids and then their baby gets the hiv? I could go on. There are tons of good reasons for needle exchange for example. Simply limiting hiv from spreading is a damn good reason.
@cheerio
synthetic marijuana is far worse than regular weed. Want to smoke some dried herbs sprayed with unknown chemicals? That's what K2 is and it has caused kids to die.
Also why were you dealing K2 unless you were scamming kids. If one of them had died you would be in prison.
@hyperactive
I'll agree that my opposition to needle exchange programs is too hard line. My point is that making a considered decision to essentially commit slow, painful suicide does not make one eligible for taxpayer money. Needle exchange programs are better left to charitable groups, which are actually the main source of such services today. I could go on about my views on the criminality of transmitting AIDS but you already think I'm too extreme.
Think before you type.
I did not deal K2.
What I dealt was a single pure drug.
Nothing close to any synthetic weed.
And you did not smoke it.
Some did though.
I have never even tried synthetic marijuana.
I don't think you are extreme. You are just not making any sense. Your slow suicide theory has some nice unexpected consequences for example. What about obesity? Smoking and drinking in your american medical system? Where do you draw the line? What is too dangerous and what isn't? Is playing football too risky? What about renovating your house? That in itself is an increased risk factor and probably bigger than occasionally smoking. Are those big enough reasons to increase the personal costs in your corporate driven healthcare system or prevent care altogether you paid for in your insurance fees...? It is all about risk management after all...?
You obviously seem to want less government control and all that ideological nonsense but what you in fact are proposing is a heavy bureaucratic system where more money is spend on deciding who gets something and who doesn't instead of using that money to what it was originally meant for...
Needle exchange for example is extremely cost effective way that has many benefits. It benefits everyone which is why everyone should pay.
hyper you have a point, but it seems like a conflict of interest for a government to make hard drugs legal and readily available on one hand, and try to prevent and discourage their use on the other. That is another argument for keeping the status quo, except perhaps the government should be entirely focused on imprisoning manufacturers and dealers as opposed to users.
Remember that the de facto war going on in Mexico right now is mainly fueled by demand for drugs in the US. There is no guarantee that it would get any better if hard drugs were legalized, and in fact could make the violence worse as the cartels are allowed to get larger and branch out into other lucrative crimes via a legal international drug distribution system. This includes sex trafficking and kidnap for ransom. The unintended geopolitical consequences of legalizing hard drugs has not been thoroughly studied or experimented with.
Prohibition generally decreases supply while demand remains approximately the same (compare Netherlands usage rates) and thus increases prices and gang profits. The Cartels would never make more profits from drug sales than they currently enjoy if forced to compete with efficient corporations.
And yet, as a free adult (who considers heroin to be a terrible drug), I would prefer to make my own decisions about what I put in my body and do not feel the need to be protected from myself under the threat of kidnapping and being locked in a cage. Arrest me if I harm others, don't initiate violence against me for victimless "crimes."
I'd also argue that most dangerous drugs, especially crack, would be less used if safer alternatives were cheaply and readily available.
The idea of an efficient corporation making heroin must sound better to you than it does to me. I wonder how the print ads will look. As for your last point I agree. If people had sense, they would stick to potent strains of marijuana, but I am afraid that if it were legal to do hard drugs, teenagers would try weed and think "that was great, I wonder what meth is like?" Most normal people don't know where to get meth (I don't) but I would if i could buy it at the gas station.
If demand for hard drugs exists, that demand will certainly be met. If the demand is going to be met, corporations operating within the law offer these production advantages over the Mexican cartels:
-Profits aren't reinvested for the purposes of committing heinous crimes.
-Corporations wouldn't murder people in the process of manufacture and distribution.
-Quality control (combined with non-black-market pricing) means harmful impurities to bulk up the weight would not be used.
-Money via taxes is redistributed to the community and can be used to help fund harm reduction programs.
I can see no advantages in allowing the cartels to dominate the production and enjoy profits generated from artificially inflated prices.
Here's one from early last century. But in all seriousness, ending prohibition doesn't mean they will be permitted to advertise any more than tobacco companies.
I disagree.
-That is what happens at the moment, after they discover how great cannabis is and that they've been lied to their whole life about it being harmful. They suddenly wonder what else is a lie and might be worth trying.
-Prohibition makes it easier for teenagers to purchase illegal drugs than legal drugs (dealers don't check ID).
-Alcohol is a drug (and a fairly hard one at that). Yet nobody is trying alcohol and thinking "this is great, I wonder what meth is like!"
Do you mean you would be a meth user or merely know where to buy it?
Addiction is better treated by physicians than prison guards. Making criminals out of people who have harmed no one does nothing but increase the harm of their usage. Attempting to impose a certain lifestyle on people by threatening them with kidnap does not work, and IMO is actually pretty sick. There are far better ways to help addicts than with violence.
I think they could stop punishing people growing and using natural drugs, like cannabis, salvia, peyote and shrooms. Damn it should be people's choice, what to put in their body and what not.
You're correct. The only reason why cannabis is a gateway drug, is because it connects children with dealers, who have plenty of chemical stuff and persuade to try it.
Depends on the region/country where you buy cannabis. I smoke weed since i'm 16 years old... i have never in my life been offered something else, nor has anybody ever tried to pursuade me into taking harder drugs (i'm talking about the people selling weed).
People who deal weed are usually weed smokers themself and don't do other drugs.
The heroin taking weed dealer who's a scumbag and robs lunch money from kindergarten kids is mostly something fictional and not from the real world.
True. The people who start on weed and end up on heroin are either people who have a curiosity about heroin that is so strong they are willing to accept the risks, or they are people who are in very vulnerable positions who are exploited by dealers, and heroin is a great choice of drug for this due to the nature of the high.
Come over here. I'll show you 5 of those in the same place. It's sad.
I've bought a couple of times. 1st time - fake stuff, 2nd time - dude intended to sell me .5 for a price of gram (always carry a scale), 3rd time - another dude said us (we were 2) he didn't have pure weed at the moment, offered laced shit, then offered to try some kind of powder he didn't even know the name of, for free of course. We know him, so we didn't beat him up (i regret not doing so now, as some kid can accept that offer), 4th time - a friend of mine bought from some shady dudes, turned out it was salvia, smoked anyway, saw a devil, never again. Normal smoking people are common here, but they don't usually sell, as the buyers are mostly wasted souls too.
But in all seriousness, ending prohibition doesn't mean they will be permitted to advertise any more than tobacco companies. 