Asymmetrical Information

hi megan,
it is interesting that no one has posted to this one. your libertarian streak is showing! was just in hospital recovering from bicycle fall. first learning moment: morphine is really cool!

so a question for you: if legalizing drugs is so obviously the answer, why is the administration so dead set against it (and clinton wasn't for it either...)? why is this such a third rail?

What aspect about legalization would increase the price back to 1980 levels? I understand all that stuff about price elasticity, I just don't get the connection between less government regulation and higher prices. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?

So if we don't expect the prices to rise with legalization, what is it that we expect will happen that will reduce the amount of drug use?

Or is this an argument that is about reducing ineffective government expenditures that has nothing at all to do with reduction of drug use?

cas:
a) Politicians generally figure that legalizing drugs will offend a lot more voters than continuing this insane crusade will. Americans will quite often vote for laws that they don't intend to obey - from Prohibition to the 55 mph speed limit. And in this case, it's a law that most Americans over 25 or so won't be breaking. I'm sure this calculation was correct for the last 40 years. However, note that public opinion in most places finally swung against Prohibition. It may finally be starting to swing against at least the marijuana laws now.

b) Repealing the drug laws also goes against the basic nature of government. I think the NRA expresses this best: "It's not about guns, it's about control." You can substitute drugs or about 90% of what government attempts to regulate for "guns" and it's still true. It simply is not in any politician's best interests to weaken governmental powers, unless the alternative is to get voted out of office...

Legalize drugs?
Well, we already have a million kids growing up with grandparents/aunts/cousins because mom is a druggie, so what are another one or two million?
Legalize drugs? Well, we already have pushers in our schools, so why harass them?
Legalize drugs? well, we already see 40 percent of our car wreck drivers testing positive for drugs, so why worry if the driver coming at you has decreased cognition (three marijuana joints a day is equal to being legally drunk all the time)...
Legalize drugs? The dirty little secret about the decline in quality of American cars in the 1980's was due to drug use in those working in American manufacturing plants, which is why Japanese factories are in the south.
Legalize drugs?
No. The real answer is how Guilliani cleaned up NYCity. He actually prosecuted minor crimes...and the word got around and soon major crimes decresed dramatically.
And the alcoholism of the early 1800s was almost wiped out not by law alone but by moral revival...but a moral revival would go against the non judgementalism of the PC.
As for getting drugs for pain:
There is a world of difference between using medicine and getting high. IN the first, you can exist and function normally. In the second, you cannot function normally. (yes, I "know" of people who use drugs and are "sucessful"...but if you look closely, those around them know this is a sham...look at Limbaugh, married three times...)

Legalize drugs?
Well, we already have a million kids growing up with grandparents/aunts/cousins because mom is a druggie, so what are another one or two million?
Legalize drugs? Well, we already have pushers in our schools, so why harass them?
Legalize drugs? well, we already see 40 percent of our car wreck drivers testing positive for drugs, so why worry if the driver coming at you has decreased cognition (three marijuana joints a day is equal to being legally drunk all the time)...
Legalize drugs? The dirty little secret about the decline in quality of American cars in the 1980's was due to drug use in those working in American manufacturing plants, which is why Japanese factories are in the south.
Legalize drugs?
No. The real answer is how Guilliani cleaned up NYCity. He actually prosecuted minor crimes...and the word got around and soon major crimes decresed dramatically.
And the alcoholism of the early 1800s was almost wiped out not by law alone but by moral revival...but a moral revival would go against the non judgementalism of the PC.
As for getting drugs for pain:
There is a world of difference between using medicine and getting high. IN the first, you can exist and function normally. In the second, you cannot function normally. (yes, I "know" of people who use drugs and are "sucessful"...but if you look closely, those around them know this is a sham...look at Limbaugh, married three times...)

I was just having this debate the other day. My opponent (I favor an abandonment of the war on drugs) argued that the "externalities" resulting from increased by drug use are not worth it. I of course countered with the point that the prohibition of drugs has its own eternalities, and many of those adversely affect a segment of the populace who never seem to get a break - poor blacks.

The war on drugs is a double-edged sword for this community: first, it offers reward disproportionate to effort, albeit at hig risk, thereby enticing a (significant?)portion of the risk-taking entrepreneurial types into the business (please note how many successful rap stars/producers started this way); second, the incarceration of dealers removes many a poor black man from the community, where he may have family and other responsibilities. Conservative commentators (Dinesh D'Souza comes to mind) often discuss the "broken" black culture, but never seem to recognize the complicity of conservative drug warriors in creating and abetting that culture. The lure of dealing certainly also exists in white culture (my younger brother went to high school with a to-remain-unnamed-senator's son, which youth acted as THE cocaine dealer for the school), but the penalty paid is less, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is access to good legal representation and to other economic opportunities.

It's high time the issue was examined rationally, but I am not holding my breath. . . .

And another thing, that today's drug prices are lower isn't necessarily a favorable argument for legalization. After all, the largest incentive to run an illegal business is...Ta-DA! higher rewards.

If we're talking about a 95% dilution of the price in illegal drugs over the past twenty years, I'd say the business just ain't what it used to be. I'd even go further than 95% dilution since the potency of drugs has increased significantly at the same time that price has decreased.

So let's see, we have low prices and higher potency...sounds to me like drug dealers can't give their stuff away. Would you say that if Cadillac was offering a Super-Buheamoth XLT at $2000 that it was a sign of good times for Cadillac? I wouldn't.

So why would we make the same conclusion about the illicit drug trade? On the one hand I see no connection between legalization and lower drug use (or higher price as Jane suggests). On the other hand I see a trade that can't give its product away without massive discounts.

Tell me again why legalization would be better? As far as I can tell, the war on drugs, slow and inefficient as all government programs are, nonetheless, seems to be working.

Put that it your pipe and smoke it.

This is a problem without a solution. I worked as a local prosecutor in the Bronx for a while, and most of our cases were drug-related. If not narcotics specifically, then narcotic-fueled. To an extent, it's a social problem and not a criminal one. I can't tell you how ridiculous it feels to spend half your day giving community service sentences for three-bag heroin possession cases. A total waste of time, and one which doesn't do anything to solve the problem.

It's not so much addiction (because that's already a recognized social problem). It reminds me of the old yarn about democracy being the worst form of government...except for all the others. Well, criminalization is the worst way to treat drug possession, except for all the others. You can't legalize. Not because of a political problem, but because it's immoral to put a government stamp of approval on such a damaging substance (and don't go all "but what about tobacco and alcohol" on me...that's a different discussion).

Surrender is not a solution. You can't just say, "we give up, snort all you want." Neither is appeasement. You can't say, "well, we'll regulate it, so it won't be so bad." Even if you are losing, you still have to fight. It's a real problem.

With no real solution. In the meantime, you prosecute the dealers, especially the ones near schools (which, to my mind, should be a capital offense). And you prosecute the possession cases, too. Because we can't allow ourselves the luxury of a retreat.

I have always favored legalization, but along with that, strict liability.

The cost in enforcement efforts, crime to raise the money to buy, crime in the process of doing business in the shadow world, cost in lived, is so not worth it, just as we learned with prohibition.

It can't necessarily be willy-nilly, in a vacuum, all one sided "okay we give up." It has to include "you get high and you break the law, we treat it as if it had been premeditated." It has to include a plan for some level of regulation, maybe, since in our world that almost has to be, where in an ideal world even that could be shed. Let taxation add a price bite that can't so easily be countered by market forces, if you want a policy of reducing consumption, as with tobacco. Let people use, and get treatment, more openly, saving lives and bringing a certain caste into the light, shrinking and helping it in the process.

There's nothing I can see coming from prohibition that can't imrove through legalization.

Is it surprising that prices have dropped? Hasn't the inflation-adjusted price of almost everything dropped over the last twenty years?

Matt Johnson,

During the 1980s, cocaine went from a not uncommon but relatively upscale drug to a staple of downscale urban America. It went from an expensive niche product to a mass-produced commodity, and as is often the case with other consumer products, benefited from economies of scale, rationalization and streamlining of production networks, technological improvement ("crack - it's freebase without the hassle!"), and above all increased competition in distribution.

Yeah, I'm sure it's a harder life to be a coke or "crack" dealer than it was in 1980, with higher risks and lower margins. It's harder to be a PC manufacturer now than in 1992, for many of the same reasons. That doesn't mean we are "winning the war on drugs" any more than we are "winning the war on PCs". And, just like with PCs, I'll bet if you compared the volume of cocaine manufactured and consumed between 1980 and now, you'd find volumes are up up UP!

We are not losing the war on drugs, we've lost it, and with it we've lost cities like my own. It's well and good to say it's immoral to beat a retreat even if we're losing, or to focus on the very real and tragic tales of individual abusers and say that on principal we have to fight this. But it's wrong. The "negative externalities" of making this war on ourselves, the real damage done to users and nonusers alike, dwarfs even the terrible tragedies the drugs on their own provoke.

Megan,

You may be interested in looking at Jeffrey Miron's research. He has a couple of papers on his web site, though a trip to JSTOR is probably more valuable. I assume you have access through work. If not, let me know.

Michael

Assuming political viability, what is the likely outcome of legislative processes designed to legitimize currently illicit drugs? The evolution of state lotteries is instructive. The net effect would be an incredible stimulus to the size and scope of the public sector as legislators rationalize the deleterious effects of drug abuse: look at all the "good" that we can accomplish with the billions of new tax revenues from legal(regulated and taxed)hallucinogens. Hallelujah.
The social and dollar costs of interdiction are grave, as are the social and dollar costs of our burgeoning public sector. It is ironic that libertarians and economists don't discuss this aspect of legalization very much.

Given the current state of the war on drugs, anyone who wants to experiment with drugs must become a criminal. And they will be treated like a hard core criminal by the system. So even harmless behavior like smoking a joint in your own home becomes criminal behavior. So the experimenter must deal with criminals to get drugs and is then automatically a criminal when they have them. So why worry about other crimes?

I would much rather see drugs legalized, regulated, and taxed. I would also hope to see very strict "under the influence" laws. We have support programs for alcoholics and harsh punishments for people who drink and drive. Why not treat drug users the same way? If alcohol addiction is a disease than why is drug addiction not a disease? Should we punish the sick?

If drugs were legalized, the drug cartels would go out of business. Or they would become legitimate businesses with an interest in not breaking the law. Right now, a drug dealer has no real incentive not to break any law he feels like. Give him a legal job and now breaking other laws carries a real penalty.

It seems a bit of a stretch to give the federal government the power to regulate drug use anyway. The Constitution doesn't enumerate that as one of it's powers. I'm sure it's there if you squint and tilt your head just right.

Bolie IV

"It's not so much addiction (because that's already a recognized social problem). It reminds me of the old yarn about democracy being the worst form of government...except for all the others. Well, criminalization is the worst way to treat drug possession, except for all the others. You can't legalize. Not because of a political problem, but because it's immoral to put a government stamp of approval on such a damaging substance (and don't go all "but what about tobacco and alcohol" on me...that's a different discussion)."

Not having a law against something is not the same as putting a government stamp of approval on it.

"Surrender is not a solution. You can't just say, "we give up, snort all you want." Neither is appeasement. You can't say, "well, we'll regulate it, so it won't be so bad." Even if you are losing, you still have to fight. It's a real problem."

The problem is that your preferred solution is getting people killed. Without the drug laws, Phillip Morris would be wiping the floor with the thugs serving the market now, and they wouldn't have the money to organize their gangs or buy their weapons, nor would they get nearly as much reward from doing so.

Take a look at the homicide rate over the past hundred years. Notice the sharp drop after 1933, when the first Prohibition was dropped. Understand that that drop happened while the economy remained firmly in the crapper.

I don't think it's right for innocent people to die for the cause of stopping other people from hurting themselves with dangerous substances. I don't care how many people are prevented from using drugs by Prohibition - it's not worth getting people killed. It's not worth forcing families to take two jobs to afford a much more expensive house than they'd otherwise need just to get away from the thugs serving the black market. It's not worth destroying our financial and other privacy. It's not worth letting our property be taken without a conviction.

"It seems a bit of a stretch to give the federal government the power to regulate drug use anyway. The Constitution doesn't enumerate that as one of it's powers. I'm sure it's there if you squint and tilt your head just right."

You'll recall that even the original Prohibitionists recognized that they needed a Constitutional Amendment before their plans could come to fruition.

nancy reyes writes:
Well, we already have a million kids growing up with grandparents/aunts/cousins because mom is a druggie, so what are another one or two million?

Is mom gone because we threw her in prison, because we sent CPS after her, or because she really was incapacitated by drugs? Is there a source for your numbers?

Legalize drugs? Well, we already have pushers in our schools, so why harass them?

Most of the legalization proposals I have seen don't include allowing minors to buy drugs. Regulation and legalization would probably make it harder for kids to buy drugs in school.

Legalize drugs? well, we already see 40 percent of our car wreck drivers testing positive for drugs, so why worry if the driver coming at you has decreased cognition

DUI/DWI would continue to be illegal. Same as for drunk drivers and alcohol. Starting to see a pattern?

(three marijuana joints a day is equal to being legally drunk all the time)...

As in, having a blood alcohol level of 0.08 all the time? That would increase the risk of an accident as much as driving ten miles over the speed limit. Anyway, three joints won't keep anyone stoned all day.

Legalize drugs? The dirty little secret about the decline in quality of American cars in the 1980's was due to drug use in those working in American manufacturing plants, which is why Japanese factories are in the south.

Interesting thesis - source? Anyway, that may well be true, but I would then put the blame on an excessively powerful union. Most companies faced with that situation would start drug testing and/or fire anyone who showed up stoned, but I imagine the UAW made that difficult.

Legalize drugs?
No. The real answer is how Guilliani cleaned up NYCity. He actually prosecuted minor crimes...and the word got around and soon major crimes decresed dramatically.

Funny how crime decreased nationwide at the same time. Low unemployment and youth demographics had a lot to do with it. Anyway, Giuliani's policies were basically good ones - you should enforce the laws you have, else people will lose respect for the law. But people also lose respect for the law if it makes no sense.

And the alcoholism of the early 1800s was almost wiped out not by law alone but by moral revival...but a moral revival would go against the non judgementalism of the PC.

If you want to launch a moral revival, go for it. Hope you don't mind if I sit it out. I am curious though - if alcoholism of the early 1800s was almost wiped out by moral revival in combination with laws, why was Prohibition enacted a hundred years later? Backsliding? I am also actually not aware of the events you describe - President Grant, for example, drank like a fish.

As for getting drugs for pain:
There is a world of difference between using medicine and getting high. IN the first, you can exist and function normally. In the second, you cannot function normally. (yes, I "know" of people who use drugs and are "sucessful"...but if you look closely, those around them know this is a sham...look at Limbaugh, married three times...)

I think that depends on how much pain you are treating. If you're taking morphine for cancer, you will be impaired. Intermediate painkillers (vicodin, etc.) are also not recommended while operating heavy machinery or driving.

If drug use is a "social" problem and not a criminal problem why don't we just penalize drug possession? Make it a misdemeanor instead of a felony.
Drugs would still be "illegal" but penalties could be assessed according to the amount someone possessed. For example, caught with a joint you pay a $50 fine. Caught with an ounce, you pay $1,000 fine. Caught as a minor, you get one free pass, caught a second time and you lose the right to student loans, caught a third time you lose welfare benefits. Whatever. No one would go to jail.
The money collected could be directed to treatment. Basically, this would be a "progressive" tax program on users and dealers and as such it should decrease demand.
Would this end drug use/abuse? No. But trying to stop drugs at the supply level has been and will continue to be a failure. The risk/reward of drug dealing is far too appealing to too many people as well as the fact that substances such as heroin, pills and cocaine are simply too easy to smuggle. We'll never be able to dramatically reduce supply.
Would the supply increase? Possibly. However, we wouldn't have to stop trying to interdict smuggliing or capture large dealers simply because we changed the nature of how we penalized possession.
I believe there is value in sending a message that drug use (like prostitution and public intoxication) is something destructive and undesirable.
Under this kind of program, drugs are illegal, drugs are discouraged, treatment revenue is generated and demand should be reduced. Currently, by only going after dealers and by making the stakes incredibly high for them if they are caught (maximizing the probability of violent resistance) we seem to only make the possibility of violence and corruption as high as it can possibly be.

Broad drug prohibition laws (and that includes alcohol and tobacco) inevitably serve only three political interest groups: moral poseur politicians and preachers, prohibition enforcers, and organized crime.

Narrowly crafted laws, such as prohibiting sales to minors, historically have worked reasonably well. Yes, there are still sales of alcohol and tobacco to minors, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

Under blanket prohibition laws the economic incentives are strongest not only to sell to minors, but to have minors do the selling.

A storekeeper who can lose his liquor license is much more likely to avoid sales to minors than an illegal deal who risks prison for sales to anybody, minor or adult.

I don't believe for a second that prohibitionists even believe their own smarmy rhetoric. Their interest is in political power and financial gain. Doubt financial gain for enforcers and politicians? Who gets the tens of billions of bucks the War on (Some) Drugs budgets every year?

An apathetic voting public and a compliantly sleepy press, willing to believe on faith any flim-flam the prohibition promoters dish out, is the only hope the prohibitionist scammers have for continuing their profitably fraudulent culture war. When the voting public wakes up, and the public is waking up, prohibition will fall like the Berlin Wall.

The prohibitionist scammers know this. Just look at the panicky campaign of lies and strongarm tactics that the ONDCP and DEA launched in states that passed medical marijuana laws.

The problem with legalization is that while decreasing the cost of drugs may reduce the crime associated with those drugs, it will undoubtedly increase the demand for those drugs. Will that offset the crime reduction? Until the legalization crowd can answer that question, I see no reason to change policies.

The trouble is that legalization will increase the use of drugs among people who weren't currently in the drug-using population ("After all, it's legal" as many say about use of cigarettes and alcohol). That would also lead to use among younger people ("I'm just a year or two away from being able to consume legally, and, after all, it's legal"), whose use of alcohol and cigarettes already follow that model.
The trouble isn't that the drugs are too expensive, it's that some people will pay ANYTHING for their drug of choice. That's addiction. And I don't want to facilitate that mistake in any way.
Prohibition wasn't about the impossibility of changing people's behavior, it was about the refusal in the educated classes to recognize that they were addicts. The addicts, and those who sympathized with them, made the decision to revoke the Volstead Act. In fact, during Prohibition, alcohol use went sharply down.

"The problem with legalization is that while decreasing the cost of drugs may reduce the crime associated with those drugs, it will undoubtedly increase the demand for those drugs. Will that offset the crime reduction?"

How can it not? How can forcibly preventing people from hurting themselves be worth any number of people murdered? Or even victimized by any other crime?

I'm sure as hell not willing to give up my life to stop other people from doing drugs. Are you?

Linda wrote:

"Prohibition wasn't about the impossibility of changing people's behavior, it was about the refusal in the educated classes to recognize
that they were addicts."

Addict: Anyone who uses more of some drug than the speaker does. If the speaker is a teetotaler, then anyone who uses the drug at all.

"The addicts, and those who sympathized with them, made the decision to revoke the Volstead Act."

Yeah, folks who just wanted to enjoy a beer after work had nothing to do with repeal. Folks who didn't like their neighborhoods turning into free-fire zones for gang wars didn't have anything to do with repeal. Folks who didn't like jackbooted government thugs kicking down their doors didn't have anything to do with repeal.

I take the view that it is tyrannous to jail a person for pursuring a popular vice. That's why the drug war is wrong.

This principle puts paid to all the arguments from practicality presented by both sides of the prohibition issue.

I take the view that it is tyrannous to jail a person for pursuing an unpopular vice. That's why the drug war is wrong.

This principle puts paid to all the arguments from practicality presented by both sides of the prohibition issue.

Brett, I take the view that we should pursue policies that make us least likely to have our rights violated by either government or by private citizens or ourselves enslaved to the tax man. I want the total burden inflicted on us by the actions of others minimized to the extent possible.

If legalizing drugs increases the use of drugs then we will have to pay in several ways:

A) More of us will be killed by drivers under the influence. Rights violated by our fellow citizens are just as violated as rights violated by governments.

B) Employers will get less productive workers and therefore the economy will be smaller than it otherwise would be. Basic social service costs will fall more heavily on those who are more productive.

C) Drug users will have more defective babies. That will increase tax costs for institutionalization, jailing, and other things that will go up when people are messed up in the head from birth.

D) Drug users unable to care for their babies will produce kids that the taxpayers have to pay to raise.

E) More kids messed up in the head by drugs mommie took while pregnant and by neglect by mommie once born will disrupt classes and therefore reduce the amount of education received by more well behaved kids.

There are a lot of other ways that increased drug usage will create costs for the rest of us. I don't see a high moral principle that is so great that it overrides other considerations.

Also, I argue that citizens have a moral obligation to stay cognitively competent. We can not respect the rights of others and avoid creating costs for others if we are messing up our minds on drugs. We can not responsibly reproduce if we are on drugs.

Any Rand famously argued that our rights are a consequence of our ability to reason. I would argue that her formulation is a step in the right direction but incomplete. We need other mental qualities as well including some degree of empathy and a sense of justice and fairness. Some of these qualities are innate and coded for in the genes.

If we interfere with fetal development with drugs we are going to make brains that have fewer of the attributes of a rights-possessing being. To make it easier for people to do that seems unwise if we want to live in a free society.

All wars are a pot of gold. The spigots of the taxpayers money is turned on full force. Our police have grown fat and rich on all the goodies the drug wars buys.

It increases the prisons. Which works, today, like welfare used to work. Paying off a segment of society that doesn't fit into our definition of 'society.' It also now houses the crazies.

That drugs are part of our culture, you've got to laugh! Because even though there are wealthy locked communities, where the kids NEVER see ghetto kids; the music comes in full force. So these wealthy kids grow up with the whole ghetto lingo anyway. Where boys want to be pimps. And, girls are ho's. (That is the new word for whore, isn't it?)

There are no ramifications here?

Lawyers aren't complaining.

Prison guards aren't complaining.

Wealthy folk aren't complaining.

The black marketeers (worldwide) aren't complaining.

We've made something illegal that's easy enough to hide. And, profit from. You don't think when you pack markup in between the retail and wholesale prices that profits aren't a motivator? Black markets are new to mankind?

The argument that we could be a much more moral country is ludicrous. Just as Prohibition was ludicrous. Remember what Will Rogers said? All those Bible belters would stagger to the polls and vote for prohibition.

Of course, prohibition, by definition, was meant for everybody else. Just ask Rush Limbaugh. (Behaviors don't stop just because you spout platitudes.)

If we didn't allow legislatures to pander to the lowest common denominator, and thereby gain their seats to Congress, etc., then we'd have a brigher, better, electorate. But we don't.

It's easy to make people feel guilty that if they don't back assaults on 'criminal behaviors' everything falls into the mix. Even a man with a prostitute gets labelled. Doesn't stop the behaviors. But, sure, people learn to sneak around. They learn that even in Victorian times the truth was closer to baser instincts, than all those 'proper manners' belied.

What does it take to change things? Dunno.

Freud peeled back the harms of repression. And, in time, we did change. Just look at our movies! The bigger the drug war, the more violent the depictions get from Hollywood.

Will we always have a drug war? Well, as long as the drug companies get to sell you more expensive 'synthetics' that can make you go deaf; the less likely the old fashioned stuff that works will continue to be kept out of the hands of people who'd save money in the bargain, if we legalized drugs.

Legalizing it doesn't mean we don't send sick people to doctors. Legalizing it doesn't mean it's a free for all. Legalizing it just means we substitute the failures (police action); and worse! The stuff that's destroying privacy rights.

WIth what? The canard that accidents happen because people are on drugs? They happen because sometimes people are just exhausted. Maybe, from working two jobs. Or living in dysfunctional homes. Cars have horns. Traffic has lights. It doesn't take drugs for the force of physics to work. When inside a car you a traveling at a greater speed than your own legs can carry you.

We're not banning cars. ANd, we shouldn't be making taking anything (including tobacco smoke) illegal.

What happened to taking responsibility?

The idea that horrible things happen when drugs are decriminalized or legalized can be seen to fail when you look at Holland.

Pot has been decrimed there for a while now, and they haven't had a spike in crime since their policy took effect.

Anyone recall when a Drug Czar tried to assert that crime rates in Holland were higher because of their 'drug problem', and had to retract his statement when the Dutch Ambassador corrected him in no uncertain terms?

I looked up the crime rates for USA vs. Holland, and the only crime that is higher there than here is bicycle theft. All other crimes rates in Holland are either lower or statistically the same as those in America. Since Holland has a higher per-capita rate of bicycle ownership than we American do, this isn't surprising.(Although an alternate explaination is that our stoners are better at stealing cars than theirs' are ;)).

It is a matter of fact that alcoholism went down Prohibition, along with the health problems that are caused by alcoholism. I'm surprised that no one on this thread is advocating its' reintroduction as a public policy.

Which mind-altering substance is harder for teen-agers to get today? Pot or alcohol?

Hint: Every survey of teen-agers on this subject yields the same answer.

If you legalize and regulate drugs, will it be easier or harder for teen-agers to obtain them?

If you think that anyone who wants to use drugs is stopped by the laws against them, then think again.

Drugs are all over the place nowadays. Everyone on this thread probably has neighbors who use and/or sell drugs. The 34-year-old War on Some Drugs hasn't worked, and it's time for a different approach to the drug problem in America.

-30

Dark Avenger, Crime rates vary between countries for a large number of reasons. A simple snapshot comparison between two countries tells us very little.

I'm willing to consider a rigorous argument for drug legalization. Most of the arguments for it are just rants about evil government and the damage that the drug war causes.

An effective argument would consider all the costs of drug use (birth defects, car accident rates, cost of treatment of addicts, failure rates of addiction treatment, child abuse, lost time from work and from education, etc), likely rates of drug use under different legalization schemes, and all the costs of the current legal approach. If there are legalization advocates who have taken the time to come up with realistic estimates of costs and of likely rates of addiction for various drugs if they are legalized I haven't come across them.

Kids get drugs and alcohol at home. They siphon it out of their parents' bottles. And, they go into the medicine cabinet.

And, lots of doctors children walk around with prescription pads.

As to the scare tactics that legalizing drugs would bring about 'birth defects,' it should be stated there are enough ignoramouses having kids that birth 'defects' from drugs isn't the problem.

Tylenol, by the way, can shut your kidneys down.

A drug company that made a heroin-like synthetic, used by Limbaugh, blew his hearing away. Now, that's what I call a side effect!

Want better ones? Do you know how many people die from the side-effects of drugs given in ever larger quantities because the patient was crashing, anyway? It's a real race to the finish line, folks.

And, one of the nicer things now going around medical corridors is to stay away from increasing potency on medications; but instead to mix and match. In other words giving a patient more than one type of medication (from different manufacturers), so that the side-effects are deminished. It seems to be working.

Also, Americans are big users of legalized medicines. Most just call them by 'color.' Telling health care professionals of the array of blues, yellows, whites, and other stuff, they consume to stay 'healthy.' And, some actually do live longer, better lives.

But if we LEGALIZED drugs we'd add some competition to the drug companies. Those are the bears destroying our country. As if legislators, bought and paid for by lobby-ists actually serve mankind any good.

Good question above, too, is WHY kids prefer a joint over a shot of booze? It's beyond just what's obtainable ... It must have something to do with the human preference to smoke ... which always accompanied people drinking.

Will we legalize drugs? How's that? The money is in the bootleg. And, it enriches so many now that we'd get terrorized by the goons who don't want to have their businesses regulated a bit more fairly than by the ATF, and other government agencies that make their money without providing service. Just statistics.

Of course, today's teenagers grow up. Early on, smarter than their parents and grandparents generations.

Has anyone noticed, by the way, that a game called Ghettopoly has so outraged 'the powers that be,' that the poor kid who thought this game up is now being censored? Ebay and Yahoo has booted him off their sites. Censorship stinks. And, I'm mentioning this because our drug war has produced censorship, more than it has produced anything else.

Not a way for a democracy to go!

I don't really have a lot to say to those who would continue U.S. gov policy of drug control other than: you don't know me (or anything about drug use) and be careful who you mess with. Most of you already know both and that is why you want police to do your dirty work.

To legalizers: there is a war to win, but it cannot be won by illegal users alone. U.S. Drug Control policy governs both illegal and prescription drug use. Do you think that this policy makes it a picnic for legal drug users? Do you think the control is less, with prescription pads and health plans (or no health plans)? Do you think the social costs are not as high (or higher)?

The only way to change things is to link together the fight against illegalization (police control) and the fight against prescription medicine (doctor control).

Sam, "linking up" is not a successful expectation.

Unfortunately, the sound bit system of selling politicians has overtaken the show. We get very little information. But, politicians wins on this stuff! They promise, probably through scare tactics, that if 'legalization' ever happened, everyone's neighborhood becomes unsafe.

If you don't have to debate, and give in depth analysis ... which is what's happened in America; you'll never get the 'unity' you want to have.

How did Holland do it?

Is there something in Europe where debates run deeper? When was the last deep analysis that ever got serious coverage here, in the USA?

Now I want to move the whole health care delivery system away from the insurance companies, and their unbelievable databases. It's very scary to think you lose privacy all over the place! What happened to the words that you could tell doctors stuff in confidence? It's in confidence if your whole chart is opened to review by others?

Anyway, the problem is gigantic.

And, you can't exhaust the populace by having them fighting windmills.

When will there be a shift?

Well, it will take a successful mounting of the Barricades (so to speak), by some politician who gains his popularity by speaking the truth. And, then you need a whole system in place. Because if you have only one leader, and he collapses, or gets shot; the old timers come back and take back the authority they need to keep their system in place (including the graft it provides).

I sure wish your idea worked.

Meanwhile, you can buy drugs off the shelf in Europe, Mexico, and Canada. And, I don't think patents work forever. Or that drug companies will continually refine their product. So? So, if this part collapses, then, maybe because of costs, people will try to reduce what it costs them when they get sick?

Can the government keep shooting down mail order? Or the Internet?

If the change comes because the SIZE of the change is large enough to affect the way 'business is done,' then, well ... maybe, then.

Anyway, in America's Chinatowns there really are alternate medicines. Do you have to speak another language to get to this source?

What worries me more, by the way, is the violence now ongoing in our National Parks, where illegals are using military terror campaigns to keep hikers out.

Maybe, if we get to look more like Columbia, then there will be a sweep? Illegals are part of the underground problem, here.

If we wanted to break this economy, the best way would be to legalize stuff; because it would change the profit structure. And, that is, after all, the only thing that really does affect this health care (and related) boondoggle.

So, Sam, while I'd like to join you, we're just stuck out here, alone. Recommending that we form a crowd isn't going to happen. This whole business that punishes most people didn't come about because we're naive. Or even lazy. But it's who gets the power. And, how the money buys off common sense.

Carol - I don't understand your objection. You say you wish my idea worked, but you offer up only a scattershot list of opponents as reasons why it can't.

Drug criminalization is effective because it marginalizes the people it attacks -- from "stupid kids" to "addicts" to "narco-terrorists" -- and therefore gives the government the ability to attack them with impunity. Until there is a way to articulate the issues facing these groups and relate them to other groups, there cannot be a political change.

My view of U.S. Drug Control Policy as a single entity which effects both prescription and illegal drug users is just one approach to opening the possibilities for change. There are certainly others, but resigning ourselves to being "out here alone" isn't one of them.

Sam I am certain there are many Americans who are not drug users, who abhor what's happened to our Civil Liberties because of overzealous drug 'enforcers.'

By having a "war on drugs" we've criminalized pretty normal behaviors; and we've allowed a very small minority of social conservatives to profit from this thing. Cops gets all sorts of goodies because of confiscation laws. In a sense, it is a taxation on dealers, but one that doesn't get used the way normal taxation gets spread around (by the legislators we elect to government who pass laws.)

It is now a very complex problem. It infects every single state. And, in states where this shows up on the ballot (like the decriminalization that a majority of California voters, and Oregon voters, have voted FOR) just gets shot down by Federal agencies. (There's even one that benefits when it raids marijauna users who are allowed to have this via prescription.) Doesn't matter. Statistics are kept where the Federal agents benefit. (A joke? Sure. But the 'joke' cuts deeply into our Constitition.)

Everyone, sooner or later, is going to need pain killers. And, the drug companies know this. Which is why they've killed two birds with one stone. On the one hand they make dangerous synthetics which they patent. And, then they don't even test natural, or herbal medications. Doesn't pay.

Even when you look at the current dilemma, where people have been using the Net, and mail order, to get around the expenses, by buying drugs off shore.

Lily has just threatened Canada, that it will not let it's pharmaceutical company there get any more of one of its more popular brands, because they get paid more in America. How can that be, you ask? Perhaps, the larger expense covers the trial attorneys who swoop in and sue. Another breed of animal feeding at the same trough.

But governments have always been successful. That's their business. I pushes an underground market. One that has remained strong in terms of recreational drugs, even with all sorts of legitimate stuff available.

Anyway, I know ground swells hardly occur. Especially on behaviors most people are ashamed of. Some mildly. Some a bit more than that.

But your call to arms won't change anything.

In time, I'm going to guess that the average 'social conservative' running for public office just doesn't get elected. Not if there's a world of choice.

But we are not there yet.

Adeli Stevenson who ran for president twice (against Ike), and lost twice, had once been approached by a fan, who raved, "Mr. Stevenson, every intelligent person in America is going to vote for you." To which the senator replied, "Alas, that means I lose."

You just don't have enough intelligent folk, against a pool of people the politicians know how to manipulate. Will it change if the democrats fall out of favor?

In other words, after the California recall there may be a price for politicians to pay if they look like Gray Davis. Or, considering that the republicans couldn't get their right wingers into office, then those religious guys with their eyes glazed over ... may not make it into the 'paying jobs?' I do not know.

But there is now a whole industry around the drug wars. And, it comes down into public schools (DARE PROGRAMS, talking dogs, whatever); and it touches local police departments. I think removing a cancer that's intertwined itself around a person's vital organs, can be easier to remove than this stuff.

But if you've got some actual ideas that you think would work why not share them? If it requires petition signing, fuhgetit. And, if it requires money to be sent anywhere, I think you can forget that one, too.

However, it's not just the druggies who have a vested interest. My guess is that there's a balance struck out there so you can smoke at Woodstock (I was there). Yup. There were alerts to 'brown acid.' And, what absolutely floored me, were all the guys running around and doing therapy for the kids that got themselves good and sick. The tents didn't see half of this stuff!

So, in public? Happens. And, is ignored.

College campuses? My guess a lot of this stuff is ignored.

Arrested? I think you can find the right attorney and 'walk.' So, this goes in the 'ignored,' column.

Be mentally ill, or a minority, or somebody who got smart assed with a cop? Well, in olden times, the Catholic Church ran burnings at the stake for minor stuff. It's just a matter of degrees. And, we're supposed to consider ourselves lucky.

Also, every time the government (here and in Canada, gets involved with creating marijuana for those who can take it legally, surprise, surprise, the craps' not potent.)

I guess I'm still a lone voice out here. I don't see any relief in sight. But, Sam, I am open to ideas.

Ummmmm,Dr.Pepper

In almost every discussion I encounter regarding the War On Drugs, including this one, whether the argument is for legalization or against legalization, the speakers always emphasize their agreement that drugs are a problem and the debate is purely about what is the best remedy.

I believe all of these discussions carry several unstated and unexamined assumptions, including the following:

1. The word “drugs” is assumed to have a commonly understood meaning. Part of this understanding is that alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine are not drugs. Similarly, Valium, Placidyl, and Prozac are not drugs—they are “medication.”

2. Having a “drug-free society” is self-evidently a worthwhile and reasonable goal.

The reason that most people in the United States and other European-derived societies do not consider alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine to be drugs because these substances are culturally accepted. In fact, all cultures have some mood-altering substances that are accepted for use within that culture. For some cultures it is alcohol, for others marijuana and hashish, or kava kava root, or coca leaves, and so on. The fact is, there are not now, nor have there ever been any drug-free societies. To suddenly expect to bring one about is unrealistic. So, the War On Drugs is really a War On Certain Drugs. The reason it is impossible to win is because there can be no coherent, rational argument contructed that applies only to the targeted drugs. In the end, the distinction is arbitrary—someone decides which drugs are unwanted (for reasons which are never directly related to the harm caused to the user) and those become the bad drugs.

Comments are Closed.