It is very successful in incarcerating a ton of people and providing lots of money for people involved in it. It's worse than useless (like negative net effect) in terms of protecting society and individuals from the harms of drug abuse.
Slavery, in the Colorado and many other state constitutions, is explicitly forbidden. Colorado, at least, allows an exception for convicted criminals.
I can't believe it's 2016 and I find myself having to say "yup, slavery is bad, let's not do that."
I'm not sure of the distinction you're making, but you may be confused about categories of slavery, of which chattel slavery (what the US had until 1865) is only one. You may be thinking of indentured servitude, but even that doesn't map precisely to prison labor.
Except no, we're not going to let 100 people have those $13/hour jobs. Instead, we're going to have 100 prisoners do those jobs for free, or next to nothing.
Sorry prisoner slaves. Sorry free citizens.
EDIT: And oh, we also have to pay guards to watch them do those jobs. So not free labor, not really.
Some years ago I read an interesting book on this, called The Pursuit of Oblivion[1]. In addition to providing a fascinating look at historical drug use across different cultures, the book also makes the general argument that the human drive to alter one's consciousness is as natural and inherent as the drives for food, sex, etc.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Oblivion-Global-History-Narco...
I wouldn't say that. For generally law-abiding citizens like me, the lack of availability has done wonders to protect me from drugs. At some point or another in my life, I've been tempted to experiment with the legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco, etc.). I've never been tempted to try LSD or cocaine (for example), because there is currently no legal way to obtain it and I definitely don't feel like engaging in risky activities just to try.
Making all drugs legal and accessible will definitely have a negative impact on one portion of the population (curious people like me). A certain percentage of curious but otherwise law-abiding people will destroy their lives once drugs are legalized.
There are a lot of assumptions in there - the biggest one is that, in a legal market, drugs which are currently illegal today would still be more dangerous than drugs which already are legal. That's a big assumption, and there's plenty of evidence to suggest the opposite. For example, the success of diacetylmorphine maintenance strongly suggests that it is just as possible to be a regular user of heroin as it is to be a person who drinks regularly in the evenings but otherwise lives a 'normal' life.
On that note, we dramatically overestimate the danger of drugs like cocaine and dramatically underestimate the danger of drugs like alcohol and caffeine. Alcohol, incidentally, is one of the only drugs for which the withdrawal can literally be fatal[0]. (By contrast, while heroin withdrawal can cause dehydration and other problems, as long as those are treated correctly, the direct effects of the withdrawal are non-fatal)[1].
[0] Benzodiazepines can also cause the same effect.
[1] This does not mean that heroin detoxification is easy or should be taken lightly. Lots of things can still go wrong, and it's one of the reason why detox programs exist. But partly due to the legal status of heroin, we ascribe these to the 'danger' of heroin as a drug, all the while ignoring that alcohol detoxification shares all of these same challenges and many more.
this recent John Oliver piece on opiods holds a lot of truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdPrQFjo2o
Benzodiazepines are far more addictive than opioids, and while their abuse has declined a bit, a lot of people still abuse xanax and klonopin, and before that valium. that' a lot of doctors directly and indirectly enabling all those addicts.
why hasn't the war on drugs taken on the opioid and benzo manufacturers? it makes me wonder why pharmaceutical companies and their executives aren't locked up like the drug kingpins they are?
Probably because it has little to do with what would actually be good for society, and more to do with filling the pockets of people who maliciously abuse moral rhetoric to their own advantage.
You can't make the claim that drug A is more or less addictive that drug B. Addiction has little to do with the substance used as far as is known and there is no way to measure addictiveness objectively.
Also, methadone is used because it's legal, politically safe, and has a long half-life. The long half-life is useful because the person using it doesn't need to dose as frequently and it lets politicians and addiction treatment professionals pat themselves on the back because they got the patient off of heroin.
> people will destroy their lives once drugs are legalized
I don't think this statement is really a good summary of that, though.
The better example is prohibition. I wouldn't say most people who consume alcohol are destroying their lives, but alcohol has a moderate impact on the liver. Regular use increases liver-related disease. And during the prohibition, liver disease went down starkly.
Say we legalize everything. Even if the additional addiction is negligible, any minor to moderate health detriment spread across a larger population (due to legalization) is a big societal cost.
Anyway, I think there is still a decent argument to be made about individual freedom being worth the cost, and a decent argument to be made about a substitution effect (given how bad we already know alcohol to be, a legal drug just needs to be no worse than alcohol).
Alcohol consumption went up during Prohibition, and went back down after it was repealed.
E.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat...
> Scholars estimate that consumption dropped to a low of about 60% of pre-prohibition levels around 1925, rising to almost 80% before the law was officially repealed.[citation needed] After the prohibition was implemented, alcohol continued to be consumed. However, how much compared to pre-Prohibition levels remains unclear. Studies examining the rates of cirrhosis deaths as a proxy for alcohol consumption estimated a decrease in consumption of 10–20%.[96][97][98] However, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's studies show clear epidemiological evidence that "overall cirrhosis mortality rates declined precipitously with the introduction of Prohibition," despite widespread flouting of the law.[99] One study reviewing city-level drunkenness arrests came to a similar result.[100] And, yet another study examining "mortality, mental health and crime statistics" found that alcohol consumption fell, at first, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level; but, over the next several years, increased to about 60–70 percent of its pre-prohibition level.[101]
From the Ken Burns PBS "Prohibition". I don't have a transcript of it, but here's a quote from PBS:
"The solution the United States had devised to address the problem of alcohol abuse had instead made the problem even worse. The statistics of the period are notoriously unreliable, but it is very clear that in many parts of the United States more people were drinking, and people were drinking more." http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/unintended-consequen...
Alcohol related deaths in the US are currently 2.75%. They were 3.2% in 1923.
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co...
http://www.census.gov/popclock/
Consumption did decline initially, but then rose steadily.
"Prohibition" by Eward Behr, pg. 148
That's an argument for decriminalization, not legalization.
Your argument is offensive. If you need to be protected from your lack of self control then to make the rest of the world suffer is depraved.
My argument is not offensive, you simply chose to be offended.
> If you need to be protected from your lack of self control then to make the rest of the world suffer is depraved.
Yeah, let's get rid of all the guard rails on mountain roads too. Some of us like the adrenaline of getting near the edge and if you need to be protected from your lack of self control, too bad. My desire to ride the edge should trump your desire for guard rails... right?
I'm offended by your reasoning and lack of insight into the overall societal cost of having certain temptations kept out of your reach. This not just about getting high, it's about the crime, corruption and death that comes from this madness.
I'm guessing you are a relatively intelligent person - try thins thought experiment: Do you drink alcohol? Can you control your intake? Know anybody who does? Know anybody who is an alcoholic? Do you accept that most people who use it can enjoy it but there are some unfortunates who can't and that's just the price of the freedom to drink?
Now replace the word "alcohol" with "drugs". Because guess what? Alcohol is a drug too, except it's socially acceptable.
I'm not trying to be an asshole, but your original premise comes off as "sure, other people may be fucked by the system now, but it works pretty ok by me so I see no need to change it"
Do you accept that most people who own and use guns do so responsibly but that there are some unfortunates who can't and that's just the price of the freedom to own and use guns?
I believe in personal freedom up to the point where that freedom impedes on that of another. What you put in your body is your own god damn business.
One more argument in my favor: obesity is reaching epidemic levels in America and has a great societal cost. Do you think we should make junk food illegal to protect those that can't control themselves.
Every one of your arguments has been inadequate. Ignore the hurt of me calling you out and think about my point. The War on Drugs has done far more harm than good. It's bad policy and if you research it, did not have any good intentions behind it.
Right, but my point was that cost is worth the freedom. There's a lot of unhealthy drug fetishization and tragic deaths from irresponsible drug users too, and I think you already said the cost is worth the freedom.
> I believe in personal freedom up to the point where that freedom impedes on that of another. What you put in your body is your own god damn business.
If the world worked like that, I would agree with you whole-heartedly. But in real life, drug users end up killing or otherwise abusing people around them (whether it be through DUIs, child neglect, safety mistakes, etc.). So along with drug legalization there have to be dozens of secondary laws that outline what you can and can't do under the influence, where you can and can't go, etc. And people (of course, not thinking clearly while under the influence), will break these laws anyway and end up killing people, destroying property, etc.
> Do you think we should make junk food illegal to protect those that can't control themselves.
Completely illegal? No. But I see the value in limiting accessibility to junk food, especially in schools and such, where kids are still developing self-discipline. So maybe that's where I can agree with you.
Legalize them. Regulate them. Treat their abuse as a health issue, not a criminal one.
When my brother overdosed on heroin, the police laughed about just another dead junkie. Yeah, I feel so much safer.
A health issue with a cost burden on responsible people who exercise good judgment. Addicts rarely pay for their own treatment.
> When my brother overdosed on heroin, the police laughed about just another dead junkie. Yeah, I feel so much safer.
As far as I know, my entire extended family has not has a single drug abuse case. And certainly a drug death would be unheard of. We were all taught growing up that mind-altering substances should be avoided at all costs, and it paid off with a virtual 0% drug usage rate in the family.
Contrast with your family where you yourself openly admit to using drugs recreationally and think they are good, yet your brother died overdosing on them. I would venture to guess that there are other, unnamed members of your family that use drugs and have or had drug problems in the past.
The best and simplest place to stop drug abuse is in the home via good parenting. That is my vision for what America should strive for. I can't lend my support to your cause because I don't believe in it. I believe that if my parents and grandparents taught us it was okay to experiment "safely" with drugs and such that the amount of drug abuse in the extended family would go way up. Good luck-
I know that ideas and the words that define them are the proper path, but for such a smug, self-satisfied, and small-minded jerk such as ythl, I'd like to take it outside and wipe the stupid grin off of his face.
I had two friends overdose on heroin, and I found them and made the call that saved their lives. I watched the paramedics amble up the stairs, looking pissed that they had to deal with two more junkies on a Saturday night. One of my friends' hearts stopped for a minute and a half. I got grilled by the cops for an hour, who wanted me to snitch on the dealer and wondered why I would hang out with such "losers" in the first place.
Find a facility that invoices "responsible people" and will treat someone without health insurance or very deep pockets. Find a person who is hopelessly addicted to marijuana so much that they burden responsible people with their expensive treatment.
Again, draw the comparison to cigarettes and alcohol, both harmful and deadly addictive products. Responsible people don't burden the healthcare system with health issues caused by smoking or drinking. Responsible people don't expose themselves to the harmful effects of prolonged stress through overwork and sleep deprivation enabled by legalized stimulant intake (caffeine, nicotine, Adderall, modafinil).
Reminder that addicts come in all forms of people you might consider responsible contributors to society. Surgeons, businessmen, lawyers, politicians, CEOs, computer programmers.
> We were all taught growing up that mind-altering substances should be avoided at all costs, and it paid off with a virtual 0% drug usage rate in the family.
That you know of. Adolescents rebel, seek novelty, don't have the best judgment and have misguided priorities and influences; addicts and alcoholics learn to hide questionable behavior. People don't talk about it out of shame and not wanting to disappoint.
I lost two childhood friends to the disease. Their families would have said the same thing. One family found out after the autopsy. They were a model family and they were completely blindsided. "How could this happen to him of all people?" was the prominent reaction I remember.
> Contrast with your family where you yourself openly admit to using drugs recreationally and think they are good, yet your brother died overdosing on them. I would venture to guess that there are other, unnamed members of your family that use drugs and have or had drug problems in the past.
I know more families than I can realistically count who openly drank in front of their children, even encouraged consumption, yet their kids didn't grow up to be alcoholics. I know of people who raised kids with a realistic outlook on marijuana use, yet none of them have overdosed and died.
I know families who blatantly used highly addictive drugs in front of their kids, yet somehow, their children grew up to deny that lifestyle and still be successful and drug free.
You can instill values through lessons and experiences in children, yet as they gain autonomy it is up to them to accept, reject, interpret or reflect on them.
You may have chose to accept those experiences and attribute them to your lifestyle, but the same cannot be universally applied across the population.
It is a low blow to use the overdose of someone's brother to try to raise your anecdote as fact.
> The best and simplest place to stop drug abuse is in the home via good parenting.
Good parenting can't stop people from making the choices they want to make. People are people, not robots to be programmed, who have a multitude of varied beliefs and reasons to approach mind altering substances.
Murderers, rapists, thieves and war criminals can and have come from homes with good parents. So can addicts.
> I believe that if my parents and grandparents taught us it was okay to experiment "safely" with drugs and such that the amount of drug abuse in the extended family would go way up
The truth is people are capable of responsible use of drugs including alcohol. There are also dangers, risks and consequences behind consumption; some of them not good at all.
However, I would want my child to come to me if they had a problem with drugs including alcohol or addiction. Lying breeds resentment. Drawing hard but false lines in the sand is a good way for someone to file you away as a person who can't be turned to when they need the help of someone honest and trustworthy.
> That is my vision for what America should strive for. I can't lend my support to your cause because I don't believe in it.
Or we can approach addiction with a realistic outlook: people are going to drink and use drugs. By virtue of the way our brains work, some people will become addicted. There isn't a single way to stop this and there are many, many reasons it will continue despite best efforts to end it. What we can do is educate, take preventative measures, limit availability, ensure quality and purity, reduce harm, move addiction from out of the shadows of criminality and provide accessible/affordable treatment.
The difference between your example and drug policy, is that guard rails are there to prevent accidents. Same with laws on speeding (protects others from speeders). American drug policy doesn't prevent accidents, it restricts individual freedoms under the guise of protecting society.
My family has serious problems with alcoholism. As a result, I don't drink because it would be a very risky personal choice. Statistically I'd probably be dead before retirement. However, I don't have a problem with weed or LSD. They're fun and I know how to use them safely, so I do.
Why do we have guardrails for LSD? Works fine for me! Why do we have national guardrails for weed? It's legal in my state and works fine for me! And why in the world is alcohol legal? This is a toxic substance, it's seriously risky for me, and putting it out in the open could lead to bad decisions on my part. We should ban it!
No. We shouldn't ban alcohol. Nor weed or LSD. These aren't guardrails protecting us from the cliff. These law are baby fences, presuming that some government official needs to protect us from ourselves.
Why should we have guardrails for guns? Works fine for me! It's legal in my state and I use mine responsibly! To suicide prone and mentally unstable people this is a deadly tool, it's seriously risky them. We should ban it!
Your and my ideas of individual freedoms are different. You (probably, based on your political leanings) believe that guns are bad and should be banned. You believe that particular freedom should be taken from individuals (but retained by governments). You believe that drugs are good and should not be banned. And the faulty logic you use is... "people should be able to harm themselves and that's why drugs should be legal. Guns harm others therefore they should be illegal." The elephant in the room, of course, is the death and damage caused accidentally to others by people under the influence of drugs.
Also, I suggest you stop stereotyping people. You're not good at it, and your argument attacks thing I never even implied. I believe in a collective-oriented society with strong individual freedoms.
Schizophrenics should not be allowed to buy a pocket pistol, but mentally sound citizens should be essentially unrestricted... no current military hardware or classified technology, the rest is fair game. Buy a tank if you want.
Same with drugs or any other policy. Blatantly addictive or destructive drugs like krokodil should not be allowed, but safe drugs like LSD/weed/mushrooms (and others) should be at least as legal as alcohol.
People in favor of universal drug legalization are all for drug control in the same sense as gun control, plus higher taxes for narcotics. But control is different from prohibition.
So, yes, drugs should have safety rails provided by the government. It's one of many public services governments should provide. But right now, that "safety rail" is an electric fence with thousands of security guards watching it.
So I'm not liable for what happens to people on my property?
Do you truly believe that you haven't tried controlled substances because they are hard to get?
And, do you believe you are law-abiding?
Although not personally offended myself, it is almost never appropriate to say this to somebody hurt by an action or comment you have made. Please respect the feelings and opinions of others, even when you find it difficult or nigh impossible (such as in this case) to relate to the perspective of the hurt party.
And see, so drugs are good, right? Only such experiences lead to more such experiences, and on and on.
Addiction doesn't stem from initial bad experiences, but exceptionally good ones. You should fear the latter many times more than the former.
What would you forecast the expected effects of you trying LSD or cocaine would be?
A night of amusing delusions? Heightened spiritual awareness? A one-way ticket to pus-oozing blowjobs in bus station parking lots?
Part of the effectiveness of the Drug War has been to implant a binary perspective on the dangers of drugs: uncompromising, guaranteed, full-scale disaster. They manage to re-arrange everyday peoples' notions of cause and effect to make it seem as if the drugs are the problem leading to emotional disaster. This is a convenient scapegoat.
The real situation is the breakdown and loss of faith in the fully industrialized world is causing more people to want to escape than ever, breakdowns in family structure, financial stress, physical stress, loss of freedom and so on. These things can't be fixed easily and despite all of the drug arrests, people are continuously becoming more desperate.
For me? Probably not much. But who knows, maybe I'll try it the first time, nothing happens. 10 years later I fall on hard times and then I try it again to try and deal with my situation, this time become addicted, and then make my problems an order of magnitude worse.
That's how alcoholism generally works.
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CHICO-Fraternity-pledg...
It's not stupidity on his part at all, it's just fear. And it's understandable that there's fear, because look at the world we're in! Fear is generated constantly. It takes effort and a gentle intervention to snap people out of it and encourage them to grow and become responsible and let others live freely.
In fact, you probably can control yourself (how is your record so far?), it's only a fear that you can't. I don't like being restricted in my life, because you're afraid you won't be able to control yourself.
Furthermore, the law has not eliminated drugs: If you run into hard times and seek something to self-destruct with, you can still easily find LSD or cocaine. It would just take you more effort because of the law.
So the law has put up a small barrier around you so you can get away with exercising less responsibility, making you weaker, yet your threat from the substances persists.
Meanwhile it has endangered me and millions of others in our quest for spiritual enlightenment. (I don't care about cocaine, only LSD). There are other ways to learn enlightenment of course, but in the meantime if we want LSD we run the risks of arrest in the act of purchasing, holding and consuming. We also risk poisoning because it comes from the black market. And we have to endure greater surveillance in our daily lives and at the borders. And we have to pay greater taxes for all the law enforcement and surveillance equipment.
While the benefits of millions of people attaining spiritual enlightenment are tremendous. There would be less fighting, less greed, less anxiety, more sharing, more volunteering and less fear. Having a connection to our spirit, environment and world means less waste, stress and pollution.
Imagine if 50% of the people in your life were as giving and kind and generous as your first-grade teacher. Don't let a vague fear of distant self-destruction control you. Just by posting and exchanging information on this forum, you're adding momentum to the process of cooperation on a grand scale. Don't restrict access to spiritual substances. Let the people who want to chill out, see the big picture and cooperate on a grand scale figure out how to do it.
You aren't the same sort of curios. I'm the sort that goes to Amsterdam as a vacation spot. I tried out things when I was younger. Drug education? Mine was in the 80's and 90's. I figured it was a bit ... overblown. The only addictions I've truly had were to nicotine and caffeine, both of which I have today. Completely legal too.
The thing is that it was possible for me to combine the anti-drug propaganda, tone it down some, and balance it with what I saw around me. I asked folks questions about stuff. We can educate, control strength and purity, and invest in treatment programs. We can educate on safety like say we do with alcohol. We can invest in much improved public transportation. And so on.
> A certain percentage of curious but otherwise law-abiding people will destroy their lives once drugs are legalized
I actually think the small percentage whose lives get ruined due to drugs will be smaller than the percentage of lives that are ruined and uprooted due to the war on drugs. Folks have lost houses and their children for pot - or lsd, even if they are as responsible as you can be with kids (relative babysitting for example, or they are at their mom/dad's house). Many have went to jail or prison and this is pretty common.
Most folks don't get addicted to drugs - a few have higher addiction rates, and I think we can minimize that with proper education and investment.
from http://www.vice.com/read/the-first-fentanyl-addict
"Roughly 10 to 14 per cent of all physicians will be substance-dependent over their lifetime, and the incidence in anesthesia providers is 2.5 times higher than other physicians, according to a five-year outcome study from 16 physician health programs in the US."
I often think it has something to do with the work or work environment when there are such trends, and start working to figure out why or if anything relieves it.
But I'd expect the trend to trickle down to pharmacists and pharmacy techs, who handle the drugs quite often. It does happen, but I don't know if it happens as much as physicians.
The main curiosity to me is what leads these professions to develop a substance abuse problem in the first place? It isn't just opiates: If I remember correctly, nurses have a high rate of alcoholism. I nearly always have access to alcohol, and I don't drink regularly. Access in itself isn't nearly enough to cause addition or even use.
Is the law really the only thing that keeps you away from harder drugs? Don't you think that it's your own willpower?
Like you, I'm generally law abiding, but thanks to certain friends, I have easy access to a number of illegal drugs - and it's in an relatively safe environment where my chance of getting caught is quite low.
But despite that access, the only drugs I've ever used in my life are alcohol and marijuana (well ok, I'm literally addicted to caffeine). I've never even tried cigarettes.
It's not the law that keeps me away from certain drugs, I just don't want to do them.
That's a real shame. LSD is incredible.