What benefits?
http://www.reuters.com/article/financial-un-drugs-idUSLP6507...
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who wouldn't drive to a seedy neighborhood and risk arrest to secure drugs, but who would take drugs if buying them were cheap and safe. Some number of those people will end up hooked, and some number of those people will be breaking into houses (or worse) looking for stuff to sell so they can get their next hit.
Like I said, I don't think the putting a stop to that is worth what we're paying in terms of money and lost freedoms, but let's not pretend these substances were made illegal out of groundless malice. If and when we end the drug war there will be more junkies, more crack whores, more people who sit around staring at the wall instead of working and raising families, more people in the ERs from overdoses and drug-fueled mental breakdowns. It's a price I think we should pay, but it still a price.
> Some number of those will end up hooked, and some number of those people will be breaking into houses (or worse) looking for stuff to sell so they can get their next hit.
But most folks won't do this stuff. Most folks won't even get addicted. It isn't like the US has affordable facilities to help folks, staffed with medical doctors and psychologists to help folks along. They do have AA and NA. A few are helped, many others aren't.
Some of the key with Portugal's decriminalization was they offered help to those addicted. Affordable help. Right now, you have people getting pills for surgery, etc. and some of them wind up addicted. Instead of the doctor being able to have an honest conversation with the person about warnings signs, etc, and offering free(!) help to those that wind up addicted, we choose to treat them like criminals.
>... let's not pretend these substances were made illegal out of groundless malice.
Only that isn't really true either. Some of the campaigns to make them illegal were based in racism. Misinformation was spread, both before and after. My grandmother thought pot would make people insane, for example. And research shows that most of these would have less effect on society than alcohol. There are drugs that I think are bad for folks that take them and their families, but we could actually help folks and their families instead. Punish for actual crimes instead of "a few of these folks could commit a crime".
That is absolutely true. I didn't say civilization will collapse or anything like that. I'm just saying there will be a price. There's certainly room for disagreement over how high the price will be. But I think it's pretty ridiculous to pretend ending drug prohibition will be free.
>Only that isn't really true either. Some of the campaigns to make them illegal were based in racism.
I don't find this compelling. Yes, there was a feeling of "Don't smoke pot - only jazz musicians smoke pot." But if you really thought only jazz musicians smoked pot there wouldn't be any reason to make it illegal. And if there were 88% of the country wouldn't tolerate prohibition just to oppress the other 12%.
>Misinformation was spread, both before and after. My grandmother thought pot would make people insane, for example.
Yes, that's true, though I think there's a big difference between marijuana and, say, opiods, amphetamines, or barbiturates.
>There are drugs that I think are bad for folks that take them and their families, but we could actually help folks and their families instead.
If you read up a bit you'll see I'm in basic agreement with you on the right way to move forward. I just think it's naive to believe people won't take more drugs in the margin, and we won't be dealing with some problems as a result. The hope (and my belief) is the new problems will be fewer than the old problems we're getting rid of by getting rid of drug laws.
As for groundless malice...you're half-right. It wasn't groundless, it was and still is racist in origin.
Right now: "Then why is gay marriage illegal in Japan et al?"
Etc. Your point has nothing to do with the drug war itself, it's broad enough to apply to any early-stage progressive proposal.
The problem I have is that the US is so hard headed, they double down whenever something doesn't work rather than reevaluate. The US has been doubling down on the drug war every administration since the 1970s. The solution has been significantly more harmful than the problem since the 80s, and yet they keep doubling down. Sounds like we just doubled down again with painkillers. It's madness.
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibiti...
"John D. Rockefeller, a teetotaler, observed in 1932, 'drinking has generally increased, the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale.'"
To avoid a long drawn out argument about which statistics are more likely to be accurate, I'm willing to admit that both conclusions are possible and the actual answer lies somewhere in-between. The first guy estimated 30%, Rockefeller surmised that it increased, so lets go with 15% decrease in drug use because of the drug war. That's even hard to say because the drug war has lasted a lot longer than prohibition.
Unfortunately I couldn't quickly find any information about the repeal of prohibition which is more relevant to the topic since we are currently in a prohibition.
Anyway, I guess the country needs to decide if 15% increase in drug use is worth the cost of the drug war, so for every 20 current drug users, we'd get 3 more. In exchange, we'd get a lot of money in the treasury, respect for the law, return of our freedoms (maybe), much smaller incarceration rate, greatly weakened gangs and cartels, much less justification for surveillance, and an overall less hellishly scary police state.
Unfortunately, the US doesn't debate it rationally in those terms.
The evidence is, based on heroin use among white people, that nobody needs to drive to a "seedy" <cough>black</cough> neighborhood to get heroin.
And never mind driving! These people are using a needle drug which entails risk of hepatitis C, AIDS, etc. Is a lw goinf to deter them?
Yes the Drug War was created with malice. Just not "groundless." The grounds were to continue Jim Crow by other means. The Drug Warrors are an expensive evil.
You're dead wrong. And unless you intend malice you need to stop spreading this BS. Portugal legalized ALL drugs and a decade later they saw abuse fall by 50%. Source: http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/drug-decriminal...
But almost all U.S. DEA prosecution is over trafficking, not possession. So decriminalization wouldn't get rid of it.
When they decriminalized all drugs of abuse, they saw an initial, mild spike in usage rates, and now consistently see far lower rates of drug abuse, for all drugs than pretty much every other country.
Pick a position, and argue it; when you're proven wrong, accept it and learn.
The point under discussion is the abolition of the DEA, meaning legalization of drugs. The DEA doesn't spend a lot of time running down drug users - this is about dealers.
Don't assume other people are moving goalposts because you didn't understand where they were to start with.
I'm not sure the same would be true in the US, seeing the piss-poor state of mental health treatment in the US.
In the US, offering treatment like that would probably be decried as welfare-state redistributory nonsense.