Drugs are illegal because drug addicts cause problems for the people around them. It's really that simple.
No, it's not. For a whole host of ideological reasons, certain problem-causing agents (like alcohol and tobacco) are tolerated, despite their deadly and very costly impact on society, while others are not.
I didn't like the comment above yours either, BTW. Both are untenable oversimplifications.
Tobacco and caffeine don't cause the same sorts of problem. Nobody is going to break into your house while you're at work because they can't afford smokes. Smokers and coffee drinkers can hold down jobs and they don't OD at age 22, leaving behind kids the community has to take care of.
Also, cocaine and heroin were legal and have accepted medical uses.
Cigarette smoking causes cancer.
Drinking more than three cups of coffee a day increases one's risk of pancreatic cancer.
I'm sorry, but I respectfully disagree with this statement. Take a look at this meta-analysis: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063915/ which suggests, if anything, an inverse relationship between drinking coffee and pancreatic cancer.
See also http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2011509/ which establishes no relationship between drinking coffee and the risk of developing pancreatic cancer.
Can you provide any sources that suggest the opposite and have not been rebutted by future publications?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26402414
This is more recent (2015), you are right (I upvoted you).
I am wrong.
Yes. That was why I brought it up.
You might be surprised at what conclusions were reached when researchers conducted a side-by-side analysis of the relative addictiveness of tobacco and heroin:
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/29/magazine/nicotine-harder-t...
The fact that the total criminalization of the heroin market leads to wildly inflated prices might have something to do with the rate of criminality among heroin addicts. Which BTW isn't that high.
Smokers and coffee drinkers can hold down jobs and they don't OD at age 22, leaving behind kids the community has to take care of.
The vast majority of heroin users hold down regular jobs; and the risk of OD'ing is generally understood to be wildly inflated as a direct result of the unregulated street market. Heroin users aren't stupid, or even intrinsically self-destructive; when they know what they're getting (and how much), overdoses are quite rare in fact.
Anyway, rather go back and forth over anecdotal side points like this, I'd (kindly and sincerely) suggest you do some general reading on the topic, taking care to look at the social costs holistically (rather than pivoting on this or that side aspect). In particular, there's a lot to be learned from how other countries (particularly in Europe) have approached the issue of heroin (and other) addictions over the years, and the lessons they have learned.
If you spend even a little time around a junkie it's not hard to see the logic behind making addictive substances illegal. It may be a misguided impulse, but these laws are an attempt to address a real problem.
I based that inference not on the fact that you disagreed with me; but on the quality of the arguments you were making.
If you spend even a little time around a junkie it's not hard to see the logic behind making addictive substances illegal.
I've personally known several heroin users, and have lived in neighborhoods that were chock full of them (in fact, quite famously so). Enough to know that (unless they choose to tell you), the vast majority of the time you'd have no idea they were using.
It is in fact exactly these experiences which led me to study the problem more closely. So on balance I'd recommend looking at data and published studies, not just ones subjective experiences when interacting casually with (the most visible, worst case) users.
Oddly enough, I was thinking the same thing about your arguments.
>I've personally known several heroin users, and have lived in neighborhoods that were chock full of them (in fact, quite famously so). Enough to know that (unless they choose to tell you), the vast majority of the time you'd have no idea they were using.
Well, let me put it this way. I would rather have heroin be illegal than come home from work every day wondering if I would have a stereo to listen to. I wish I could live in a place where heroin users are normal people who inject a drug instead of the ones I've run across who would sell their own mothers for a dime bag.
If you want to reduce property crime associated with drug addiction, legalization is absolutely the most effective path.
Where you and I differ is on the fact that not only does that very rarely happen these days;† to the extent that it does, you're completely neglecting the possibility that there just might be a correlation between the factors that would drive someone to do that (namely, the astronomically inflated street price, as already mentioned; and the fact that these people are already forced to come into contact with criminal elements just to maintain their metabolism), and the illegal status of these substances.
I wish I could live in a place where heroin users are normal people who inject a drug instead of the ones I've run across who would sell their own mothers for a dime bag.
Again, where we differ is that you're consistently focusing on the extremal cases, and not the average cases. And on top of that, neglecting the factors that cause people to slip from "average" to "extremal" -- among which, in the view of people who have worked in this area very patiently for many years the illegal status of these substances is generally seen to be one of the major, if not the most significant contributing factor.
†If it ever did happen as often as we like to believe it did in the 1970s.
It's not "We don't want drugs". It's "We don't want the kind of people who use socially unacceptable drugs." This is an important distinction. Obviously, it's not about health hazards and social risk, or alcohol would be prohibited everywhere and marijuana would be legal.
Other countries, I don't know offhand. I'd love to see how many depended on having American-style drug laws for international aid or other diplomatic considerations.
Sometimes drugs are prohibited for health reasons, sometimes for cultural reasons, sometimes for commercial reasons, and so on and in all countries some drugs are not prohibited at all.
Enforcement is similarly varied.
I think that /u/beat has it right, except it ain't the hippies, blacks, etc. It's everybody. The drug war is a universal justification for spying, search and seizure. That's its purpose.
I got pulled over last night, for a broken headlight. I got a warning. A couple of months ago, someone was shot by the police in my community after getting pulled over for a broken taillight. Uneven enforcement, for sure.
We did try alcohol prohibition. Don't kid yourself - if they'd been able to make it stick politically SWAT teams would be busting down doors looking for bathtub gin.
If your reason was controlling, then only addictive drugs would be illegal.
The U.S. influence over the U.N., and aid and trade leverage, along with China's historic political issues with opium, allowed them to induce ignorant governments around the world to wage war on their own people and create a vast criminal network. It was subsequently used to fund black ops by unaccountable intelligence agencies, and build the prison-industrial complex which has destroyed a generation of Black Americans.
Is there any actual evidence this is true? A memo, or even a documented conversation?
In any event drug prohibition laws in the US started the year after Nixon was born, so even if Nixon sought to use them for his own nefarious purposes that doesn't address the actual prohibition.
>The U.S. influence over the U.N., and aid and trade leverage, along with China's historic political issues with opium...
Yes, and what were China's "historical political issues" with opium? That Chinese society was damaged by carrying the dead weight of so many opium addicts, and they couldn't make it illegal because the British wouldn't let them? Tell me again how this supports the argument Western countries forced drug prohibition on China when the reality was exactly the opposite?
>It was subsequently used to fund black ops by unaccountable intelligence agencies, and build the prison-industrial complex which has destroyed a generation of Black Americans.
That's quite a stretch. Yes, the US supported some groups in Central America that paid the bills with drugs. Just like every group of revolutionaries in Central America. The fact that you support a group with money, information, or advice doesn't mean you own it.
This from California:
"At midyear 2013, 90% of inmates had a current or prior violent or serious felony conviction, and 16% were registered sex offenders."
http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=702
That "generation of [b]lack Americans" is in prison because of violence, not drugs. The idea there's some big conspiracy wherein The System Keeps The Black Man Down with drug laws just isn't borne out by the numbers.
The alternative would be to just say that black people are inherently inferior to whites, and that's why they're more criminal. But I don't think you want to go there, do you?
We know that's not the case. Violent crimes have victims. Whatever the explanation is, blacks in the US commit more violent crimes than whites by a factor of four. We're not playing in the margin of error here.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richa...
> Tell me again how this supports the argument Western countries forced drug prohibition on China when the reality was exactly the opposite?
I made no such claim, nor do I consider it historically supported.
> "At midyear 2013, 90% of inmates had a current or prior violent or serious felony conviction, and 16% were registered sex offenders."
Now you are narrowing the discussion to prisoners. Yes, felons with a record of violence tend to be incarcerated at higher rates than those without. However, making someone an unemployable felon is a kind of low-budget open-air life-long prison, or better, torture, which destroys the productive capacity of the victim.
You should read this [0] and you'll understand that you've been somewhat mislead.