Lol, this reminds me of a Flann O’Brien joke about an argument over paying for drinks: “The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based upon licensed premises.”
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Heroine and cocaine will always be imported - so will always have some form of criminal element behind them. No rational government would legalize them as it’s tantamount to going into business with cartels,etc.
Chemical drugs are home produced, constantly changing and for the most part massively harmful. I can’t even picture a world with unfettered access to these. Or I can but it looks extremely cyberpunk.
Pot legalization has been extremely simple to implement. Sure it’s not being managed properly (in Canada) but that doesn’t affect me in any way.
I’d be curious to know the division of total national resources to combating each drug - from DEA attempts to halt imports to SWAT booting down doors to regular cops.
Obviously pot occupies a significant portion of that. I’d also be curious to see the impact on the Mexican cartels if the States starting producing its own. They’d probably just move onto avacados (oh wait, they already have…)
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I’m aware that nobody’s OD’ed on the ganja, man. Just as I am also painfully aware that the illegality of these drugs has been far more destructive than the drugs themselves.
But what of access one might say? If we make these horrible drugs legal, why, they’ll be sold to children and nuns at Walgreens!
…because children and nuns or anyone else have a hard time scoring crack or meth right meow? Smockingly, I’m just not convinced that’s the case. But I am convinced that the erosion of our civil rights in the name of waging the never-ending Drug War has had, and will have, awful consequences on our society.
I’m not saying we should pass out smack to preschoolers, but what I am suggesting is that our glorious and obviously righteous government has been fighting a war on its own people for decades now, and what’ve been the results? A militarized police force, asset forfeiture, and the weakening of the 4th Amendment (among others).
Seems like the War on Drugs might be a cure that’s worse for the country than the original disease.
-hits the crackpipe-
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Even if this is true, it doesn’t logically lead to this:
Your argument as I understand it is
- Prohibition causes ‘far worse’ harm than the drugs themselves.
- Ending prohibition would stop that ‘far worse’ harm.
- Therefore ending prohibition will result in less harm.
The logical fallacy here is not showing how the harm caused by past, specific prohibition attempts is in any way true for all of them. For instance, off the top of my head, countries like Portugal have made strides at dealing with drug abuse by removing criminal penalties on users without actually legalising the drugs they take.
US strategy on tackling drugs so far may have led to the damage you cite, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the fault is in the existence of laws in and of themselves, and given (as I think you acknowledge) drugs do cause harm too, the premise of any argument needs to be fairly secure.
Hehehe.
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Your reply makes it sound as if you’d like me to write more, and cite sources. Alas, I am much too lazy for such an exercise. (Actually, if I weren’t such a lazy bastard I probably have most of this in previous posts - this has been kind of a long-running issue for me.)
So I must hand the heavy lifting here off to fellow libertarian Temet. GO!
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One thing I’d like to note here is that I find a discussion about the differences between decriminalization and legalization to be far more meaningful than the apparent fumbling stop public attitude has come to in regards to the war on drugs. We seem to have a public perception problem moving beyond criminalization on a broad level, as if the existence and extent of criminalization make it axiomatic in and of itself.
I also want to point out that there are two subjects here rather than one. Whether the government should be involved in victimless crime at all, and whether decriminalization or legalization is more effective from a health perspective.
And Mike? That made me laugh. Albeit there’s a paucity of real evidence vis a vis legalization versus decriminalization. Even decriminalization has a low level of evidence simply because of how uncommon it is unfortunately.
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Not necessarily; it just struck me that there is evidence against your premise. Stuff can be true without evidence or sources, but they help show whether or not it is.
Yes indeed, which was kind of my point; accepting that laws can play a role in tackling the harm of drug abuse allows for a great deal of nuance about exactly how that plays out.
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…must resist urge to keep replying…
@Hattie I’ll grant you that the issue is indeed much more complicated than the simplified version I gave above. And yes, ‘degree of drug’ vs ‘degree o’ prohibition’ is an important element.
@TemetNosce Thanks! I post here 1/2 for the friendly political banter, and 1/2 for the sweet jokes.
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I don’t disagree with you about the outcome, and that revelation that Nixon pushed the war on drugs as a way of countering black advancement was truly odious.
But I’m not convinced that legalization of hard drugs is the answer either. I’d like to see more nuanced charging/sentencing, with a bigger emphasis on treatment options for addicts, and a concerted push to counter the major dealers/importers rather than street pushers. Right now, it seems like the brunt of the enforcement is hitting all the easy targets, and no one is addressing the systematic root causes of addiction in the worst affected communities.
But then I’m Canadian so pretty much a red and white communist anyway…
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Not sure I’m saying that it’s The Answer, just that it’s created more problems than it’s solved. The illegality is what drives the black market, and the black market is what drives the violence associated with the drug trade. From cartel leader on down to street-level dealer, the drug trade is inherently violent as there is no legal remedy if someone gets screwed.
Are drugs bad? Oh, yes. Yes they are. But so are militarized police forces, addicts dying in the streets because they don’t have access to care (because what they’re doing is illegal and they’re afraid to get help), a government that spends trillions in vain, and drug dealers killing each other and ravaging their communities. All of these things are bad, I just want to do things that are less bad.
!
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I like the idea of a “red and white Communist”. There’s a kind of endearing ability to enshrine complete antitheticals in it, the kind of thing I associate with the Church of England. It’s like one of the Cambridge college that claims to have a “multi-faith chaplain”.
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Tears! Oh yes, tears! Tears of dirty, dirty sadness.
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Meanwhile:
IM DELETING YOU, THERESA!
██]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] 10% complete… ████]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] 35% complete… ███████]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] 60% complete… ███████████] 99% complete… 
ERROR! 
True Cankickers are irreplaceable 
♀ 
I could never delete you Theresa! Send this to ten other 
Cankickers who are in 
contempt of parliament Or never 
represent the will of the people again 
If you get 0 Back: no contempt of parliament for you 
3 back: you’re representing will of the people 5 back: you receive Theresa’s parliamentary ejaculation 
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I’ve got to admit, UK’s politics have taken a turn for the absurd lately. Much like a broken rollcoaster, I’m never quite sure if they’ll just grind to a halt or go flying off track.
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and France, and Germany, and Denmark, and Sweden, and Greece, and Italy, and Czech…
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It is pretty jaw dropping. An MP actually seized of the royal mace in parliament the other day!
He was of course thrown from the chamber and nothing else he does will be remembered.
In honesty the cankicking thing is right, and that can’t usually go on forever. This has been coming for a while. Goodness knows how it’ll resolve.
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I know, right?! Lol, UK makes me sick! Thank God our politics aren’t full of insanity.
Also, @Hattie please tell us more about this royal mace. I think Congress could use some sort of republican mace. Maybe hold an annual lottery where one lucky citizen could beat a Member of Congress with it? I assume that’s how it works over there, yes?
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I giant can of bear repellent might be more effective. (Not to mention thoroughly non-partisan.)
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-small ‘r’ republican, just for sake of clarity-
Perhaps, although bear repellent’s effects smack of short term, transient results. I think we’ll need something stronger to get the desired result. Maybe a crowbar?
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