The quest for freedom and safety: Why I donated $100,000 to YesOn19
paulbuchheit.blogspot.com
paulbuchheit.blogspot.com
Marijuana is clearly a big piece of the puzzle, but what about legalizing harder drugs like cocaine?
EDIT: Removed the question because I saw another HN'er posted it. Then added it back when Paul responded so it'd make sense in context.
However, my question was a bit more pointed and I think you haven't addressed it.
The justifications used in your post are equally applicable to cocaine and to other drugs. If different drugs have different answers, why didn't you (or why don't you) explain why your argument is limited to marijuana.
OTH if you strongly believe in the philosophy outlined in your post, what is stopping you from endorsing similar initiatives for cocaine and why would cocaine potentially need a different answer ?
[edit] I see a lot of good responses, but all of them special-case marijuana (e.g. marijuana is less addictive than heroin). This is fine, but Paul's post has flowery language about freedom and all of that language is applicable to heroin as well. Paul's post doesn't make the case for special-casing marijuana. On the contrary, if he denied the principles of "freedom" for cocaine, it would undermine his post which is all about "freedom" and nothing about marijuana being less dangerous than cocaine etc.
Cocaine was legal before it became illegal. What results il-legalization of cocaine have produced? More crime and more funding for crime organizations - check. What else? Look at the history of opium as well. And don't even start about LSD - the drug my reading about have discovered it having only positive benefits so far.
You mean the fact that it was legal in China about 500 years ago and it nearly created an entire country of addicts?
Vicodin (another form of heroin) is legal, yet there is still a black market for it.
I would also be interested to see "your reading" where LSD only had "positive benefits".
If you're using Vicodins legal status (requires prescription) as a comparison then pot and cocaine are already legal.
Right..so why fight for other forms of it then?
Also, it didn't stop people from selling it on the black market (like so many proponents would like you to believe)
Not that I'm arguing for or against just enjoying seeing the opinion of other HN readers.
I believe in legalization, but this this is false (in the US at least). Pot is a Schedule I prohibited substance, Cocaine is a Schedule II prescription drug, and Vicodin is Schedule III. Each schedule carries with it a large difference in how available and legal a drug is.
"legal" is a spectrum, and vicodin is much more legal than pot or cocaine are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act#Sched...
You are right that cocaine is more strictly controlled than either of the other substances, but the original point I was making is that you can't use vicodin as an example of a legal substance when it's not freely available.
An entire country of addicts was nearly created by a Big, i'd say Huge, Business + Government Corporation - Britain's East India Company. These and other addictive substances have existed through the history of human species. They become a huge problem only when big money and/or big power gets involved.
>Vicodin (another form of heroin) is legal, yet there is still a black market for it.
that your statement doesn't make sense - Vicodin is legal for prescribed purposes. People having Vicodin prescription don't buy it at black market. Vicodin is illegal for all other situations, and in these situations people go to black market.
For me, the cost of marijuana prohibition is too high and the benefits too low. Based on what I've seen in my life in those around me, I do think smoking marijuana a lot is a bad idea. I can't scientifically determine if it makes you spacey or if spacey people are drawn to it, but it doesn't seem to be a good sign overall. But, there are a lot of other equally dangerous or even more dangerous things that we don't legally prohibit, and while I think it's probably bad for you, it's not that bad for you. Consistent alcohol abuse certainly seems worse.
The other deciding factor for me personally is the addictiveness of a drug. Marijuana may be addictive, but I've seen people successfully quit, even without seeming to exert that much will power. I am much less inclined to legalize the drugs that snare you on the first hit, for two basic reasons: First, the very fact that they do ensnare you, and second, because if we legalize them today, the drugs that could be designed under a legalization regime are even more dangerous. I don't think I want to release the full power of a free-market economy on the task of producing a chemical that makes you feel good (and better yet requires repeated purchases); that's just asking for trouble.
Careful observers may note that tobacco as it stands now pretty much fails my test for legalization. As a practical matter it would have to be grandfathered in, but yes, I actually do think nicotine's demonstrated ability to snare you physiologically on the first hit is actually pretty dangerous and may really be on the wrong side of my personal legalization line.
It also has little to do with the debate over prohibition, since prohibition has done little to curb consumption but certainly incentivized stronger strains.
I worked in the MIL/INTEL world for a long time and a staggering number of really nasty things turned up amongst bags of powder all over the world. Drug networks are like VPN for physical objects. And drug producers would happily abandon that protocol for FEDEX if they could. The remaining market for moving things we truly cannot live with would be reduced by many orders of magnitude if we gave up on the drug war.
We can shut down the drug cartels in Mexico, like we did in Columbia, but the drug trade will be next be passed to another country like a baton. The next country to be promoted as a drug state will be Afghanistan with it's fields of poppies fulling the growing heroin demand.
I'm all for Proposition 19, but legalizing marijuana will not stop drug cartels just like legalizing prostitution does not stop the flow on human traffic.
Drug smuggling out is fairly widespread and finances bad stuff; very little else is smuggled in or out, except for a bit of quasi-legitimate reimport of stuff on the Pakistan border to get around absurd Pakistani tariffs on stuff like cars, and moving fighters across the Pakistan border.
Child (or general human trafficking) isn't a viable market: Afghanistan can't afford to smuggle children in, and Afghan children mainly are consumed in the domestic market. ("woman for breeding, boy for pleasure, melon for sheer delight"). Very few Afghan women become prostitutes outside of Afghanistan or Pakistan (unlike Iraqi women in the neighboring states/Gulf).
There aren't many migrant workers moving across the borders either, mainly due to a lack of an economy in any of the neighboring states. Iran and Pakistan have a fair number of refugees, but they are fairly static, and don't actually work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Iran.
Eliminating opium as a profit source would eliminate the weird choice between befriending farmers as local allies AQ/Taliban vs. destroying opium (and thus making those farmers into enemies or enemy sympathizers for purely economic reasons), and would definance most of the Taliban (if not AQ, still financed via Saudi recreational jihadis).
Sounds like an argument for legalizing drugs.
> legalizing marijuana will not stop drug cartels just like legalizing prostitution does not stop the flow on human traffic
Why not? Legalizing alchohol did seem to stop the flow of moonshine.
Touché in regards to the commend on moonshine. But it is well document that The Netherlands, who have a long standing liberal view on prostitution, are a leading destination of human traffic[2].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_liberalization [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_Netherlands...
So American, lets just go and make a mess where nobody called us. Anyway, if you were so successful shutting down the cartels in Colombia, how come it is still the world's leading producer of Cocaine[1]?
[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
who said that it is the cartels who produce the cocaine nowdays? How about government for example?
Taken literally, this seems extremely unlikely.
The largest cocaine bust was on the order of 48,000 pounds. Drug smugglers, on the high end of things, have access to submarines and secret tunnels that cross nation boundaries.
Child trafficking happens, and it the overlap between the major drug movers and the child traffickers is significant -- because they are both serving black market commodity on the level of distributors.
There are, however, a whole lot less people out there interested in buying children compared to the number interested in buying pick-a-substance. The reduced amount of profit available to high-level black-market distributors when you take away the market for drugs would, in my opinion, make it harder to find people willing to smuggle children.
In a lot of places (US Southwest especially), the penalties for drug smuggling are far higher than for escorting groups of people -- if you get caught, you might go free if it's just a group of workers. The humans can transport themselves on foot. The humans can be held hostage afterward and you can try to extort more money from their family; if a $20k kilo of coke is held for ransom, no one is going to pay more than the discount to an alternative kilo for it.
Detection and logistics, mainly. Weapons are a special case, since if we're still talking mainly about the US/Mexico border, I would expect that weapons do not move in the same direction as drugs, and expertise in smuggling one way across a border may not translate to smuggling the other way.
Nuclear material will require at least some shielding to avoid detection, and it would seem to me that a well-implemented detection system would notice abnormally quiescent cargo as well. That would mean that you have to carefully tune shielding to present the right level of radioactivity, rather than just piling on more to make it as low as possible.
Smuggling people of any kind requires life support; there are a lot of tactics you wouldn't be able to use without losing them. For some types of human cargo, the smugglers might find some losses acceptable, but angering terrorists by losing a container of their buddies might not be healthy. In any case, it seems that there's already a lot of people walking across the border into the US, and I'd expect that if there were an obviously safer or more reliable way, they'd use that. Lots of assumptions, there, of course.
Consider the cargo container. A large metal box. It'll hold several tons of drugs, or just as easily 50lbs of radioactive material and 1 ton of shielding. Or 5 people and several jugs of water.
It's not clear to me what the challenges are with smuggling radioactive material, or how good detection protocols are. That doesn't mean I can't think of any, or solutions to same, but it means that I expect there are at least some consequences I'm not thinking of, and it's certainly not as easy as some sealed, inert cargo.
This may surprise you, even shock you, but heroin is actually legalized, and given out by the government, in a lot of European countries. Addicts visit a special office and get their daily fix administered by trained professionals. I think this is the way to do it for heroin. Heroin in itself is actually not as insanely dangerous as portrayed. Sure, it's a really really bad drug, but just like morphine, it can be administered safely. The most dangerous thing about heroin is actually not the heroin itself, but the contaminants and unclean administration. The high price of heroin creates a lot of crime, in places where it's not legalized the addicts either have to steal, prostitute or push drugs to afford their own usage. Stats have shown that legalizing and incredibly strictly regulating it reduces addiction, crime and recruitment of new users. Nobody sane wants to try heroin, almost all the recruitment are done by the addicts themselves pushing it to other unfortunate people. When they don't have to spend their days working on getting enough money to buy their next fix they actually can have normal jobs and working on escaping their addiction.
I don't know how to handle other dangerous drugs such as cocain, meth, amphetamines and lsd. Mushrooms and MDMA should be legalized, but way stricter than marijuana.
I'd really rather deal with the marijuana issue as separate from the heroin issue.
Would those things make heroin less harmful? In many important ways, no. There are simply some hazards of being a heroin addict that are intrinsic, not extrinsic. I still don't think that a heroin addict, even in the protected situation you're describing, would likely be a top candidate for "Parent of the Year," for example.
Is legal heroin better, on balance, than a rational needle-exchange program and a generous rehab program? I don't know, but I can guarantee that politically coupling that to marijuana legalization would simply kill marijuana legalization.
This is why I'm not talking about heroin's direct health risks and instead focusing on the bigger picture. Heroin's terrible effects are a consequence of physiology and behavior, not necessarily of cellular toxicity. The way that heroin makes people feel is so powerful that it outcompetes all other motivators. Therefore, heroin has the habit of dominating the lives of its users, enslaving them to itself and its pursuit.
The addictive potential of alcohol is nothing like that of heroin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence#Addictive_...
In my opinion, the fact that it's so addictive makes it more of a candidate for legalisation or at least greater availability, not less. If you have a population of addicts who will do anything for a fix, and the only people who will supply it to them are hardened criminals who are also into prostitution, extortion, theft, etc. what do you think will happen?
And note that while you are arguing that we should legalize heroin, I'm not taking a position on that. I'm merely arguing (1) that legalization is not going to happen politically so you shouldn't weigh down the marijuana legislation with this, and (2) that heroin is intrinsically devastating even when you remove the drug dealers, etc. Point #1 is based on my hunch, but I doubt many would disagree, and point #2 is based on my experience. Do you have evidence or experience that contradicts mine, or are you just speaking hypothetically?
Nice. Maybe try leading with that next time, instead of "Heroin is a wheelbarrow full of rockets." or something, hey? :)
I'm not arguing point #1 - I'm arguing that your point #2 is flawed. Your experience likely biases you in that direction, since you will have seen the absolute worst cases of addiction, instead of someone like a lawyer or executive who can afford to have a heroin habit without it bankrupting them, or who isn't addicted.
Now, criminalization may be counter-productive, and I'm inclined to think it is. But let's recognize what we're dealing with, here, it's not just freedom and rainbows.
It's not a good idea for any kid to try marijuana. It's funny because now it's the exact opposite. There is all kinds of misinformation on how it has absolutely no drawbacks. Most people won't even admit there is a possibility of addiction.
It may not be as bad as they say, but it is definitely a mind-altering drug that can destroy your ambition in life and make it very difficult to succeed.
Pretty much all of my friends that started smoking pot (even the ones that were really smart) all have dead-end jobs and dropped out of school. This and all of the stupid shit that they have done while high make me never want to touch the stuff.
You must be a heck of an outlier.
Haha, the beauty of NOT smoking pot and fucking up your life.
No, I'm not. I've seen a change that went directly from productive and ambitious individual to not giving a fuck only wanting to get high asshole. No confusion here. The pot is what did it. When some of those people quit, the were themselves again.
"I'm advocating a policy of drug legalization based on facts, not fear or the assumed "common sense" of the current prevailing religious hedegmony."
Ok, as long as we actually outline the adverse health effects of pot and mention stories like mine. You seem to eager to brush these things under the carpet. I feel that pot advocates don't want "facts", they want the public to be told that pot is alright to use. Pretty much all advocacy sites are completely biased and only told about the rainbows and kittens. Even people telling the truth about pot on here are immediately down voted.
Here are a few horrific pages from a book about meth that illustrate what I'm talking about: http://books.google.com/books?id=qYOFM6aXSyEC&lpg=PA42&#...
All drugs should be legalized and regulated. Especially cocaine.
You will not have peace on this Earth until that happens. The drug cartels will simply move onto the next forbidden fruit. Prohibition is, as Paul and many others point out, an assault on basic human rights and freedoms, and it carries with it a tax on society. Not just in terms of dollars wasted but in lives ruined.
Education + Legalization.
Erowid and scientific fact in every classroom instead of propaganda and lies.
This is not exactly a difficult concept to grasp, and various parts of the world (like Portugal, Holland, etc.) are finally waking up to it, and their quality of life is improving because of it.
Unfortunately, years of lies, fear-mongering, brainwashing and propaganda can be hard to erase.
At the same time, we would be deluding ourselves to think that locking people up changes anything, whether we go after the supply or the demand.
The best way to move towards a sensible drug policy is to start by admitting that there are no good solutions, and that the best we can hope to do is to minimize harm, both from the drugs themselves, and the cartels.
(I agree, though, regarding drug education: Erowid has the capability to save far more lives than DARE ever could.)
I have, and not just for meth, but for heroin, and alcohol, and nicotine, and caffeine, and all sorts of other drugs.
Have you seen first hand what it looks like when somebody takes a women and fucks her in front of her husband, then tortures her, and finally cuts her head off?
What about a man being thrown alive into an acid bath?
No? Would you like to see that? Can you imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes? Just head South of the border. Ask for the Zetas. Ask for the families of people who have been kidnapped and turned into slaves.
This is the _reality_ of drug prohibition. Entire neighborhoods living in constant fear.
Methamphetamine can cause some damage to the human body when abused. So can water. The difference between a hit of meth in your hand and a punk standing over your head with a rifle pointed at your temple should be obvious. The difference between a hit of meth in your pipe and the unrelenting human suffering that goes on in America's overflowing prisons should be obvious. It is the difference between personal choice and the consequences thereof, versus violence imposed upon you by another, completely out of your control. It is the difference between freedom and prohibition.
I could kill myself by overdosing on a number of substances right at this moment, but I don't. It's because I know better, not because there's a law against it. It is far easier, cheaper and more humane to educate a population and provide them with the healthcare and counseling that they need than it is to deal with the horrors that are going on around you today due to prohibition.
Compassion and understanding and freedom will lead to a better world.
Prisons and prohibition perpetuate suffering.
No dispute whatsoever. I'm 100% in favor of decriminalization for these reasons and more; that's different than full-blown legalization, though. Remember the law of unintended consequences.
And in fairness, at least some of the gangsters you describe would continue to perpetrate horrors even if all vice laws were eradicated overnight. There's still plenty ill-gotten gains to be derived from extortion, human trafficking, organ harvesting, etc.
I suppose what I'm saying is that decriminalization is necessary, but not sufficient, for an effective drug policy. Remember that part of Portugal's successful program is getting as many addicts as possible into (state-funded) rehab/treatment. As the cops stand down, we also need the doctors to stand up.
Decriminalization is neutered legalization. We should stop coming up with excuses for sending people to prison. Prisons don't create model citizens, they are a breeding ground for suffering and are a waste of human potential. Their existence is symptomatic of a poorly functioning society.
If someone wants to buy marijuana, then it only makes sense for there to be someone who sells it. Otherwise you still have a problem.
Legalization is combined with regulation so that you don't have the problem of major corporations funneling millions of dollars into advertising campaigns targeting children (as we learned with cigarettes).
This is a problem that most programmers should be familiar with. It's a function minimization problem. Minimize suffering(x).
> As the cops stand down, we also need the doctors to stand up.
Yes, if there were a mantra to chant, it might be: legalization, education, and rehabilitation. You have to have all of them to get the best result.
Couldn't agree more; in fact, this is a problem far above and beyond drugs alone. I dare say that prisons likely have the lowest efficacy of any social program in the history of the world. :P
That aside, prohibition being evil and ineffective doesn't change the fact that drugs are dangerous. The worst ones are capable of altering a person's judgment and personality, and creating harm to others. Taking prohibition away solves the problem of prohibition; it does very little for the problem of addiction.
(For that matter, I'm also in favor of socialized mental health care, which could be a highly effective harm reduction technique for drug addiction and alcoholism, but for some reason you get labeled a freedom-hating commie for suggesting such things.) :P
Having just lived through one of my parents going totally and utterly mad having taken absolutely no drugs whatsoever and having seen the vast majority of my friends at some point in their life taking 'dangerous' drugs let me tell you with total and utter certainty that there is nothing at all dangerous about marijuana, ecstasy, lsd, cocaine or speed. Well certainly compared to driving a car or going out for a drinking binge.
An extremely temporary sensation of happiness or fun is nowhere near as dangerous to a person as a manic or depressive episode, the latter two being states of mind being entirely brought on by your own brain with absolutely no 'dangerous' drug being involved.
And this is even before we mention alcoholism, ocd or the plethora of other brain diseases our own bodies can inflict on us.
In order to combat illnesses of the brain, your doctor will prescribe drugs which are fundamentally more brain altering than many of your 'dangerous' drugs. My mother can barely read a sentence in a paper at the moment. Most of my friends got degrees from universities after their 'dangerous' drugs.
And the next argument that blows your utterly preposterous and medieval argument out of the water is that brain altering drugs are on sale today.
Caffeine, Alcohol, Tobacco, probably even Chocolate and Sugar. And this is before we consider the addictive drugs that are pumped into burgers, fries, milkshakes, sweets and all the dodgy fast food being sold today across the world. Oh, sorry, I mean 'food additives'. Of course they're totally safe because McDonald's paid your senator to say so.
History is the only precedent that makes them acceptable.
That anyone can be sent to prison for owning any 'dangerous' drug, especially when up to 50% of the population have at some point taken them, is an utter travesty of freedom and common sense. Worst still is that the poorer communities pay the price, locked away for ridiculous amount of years compared to the widely published and yet bizarrely low sentence celebrities arrested for drug offences.
This is a war of false morality, waged by middle class people who themselves have in all probability at some point actually taken these drugs and yet still vote with 'hard-on-drugs' politicians. They are hypocritical fools.
Anyway, you're arguing with the wrong guy. :) Drugs should not have anything to do with the criminal justice system, period. But to say that drugs aren't a problem worth taking seriously is ridiculous; not because drugs are evil, but because people are people. Alcoholism is a real problem. So is compulsive gambling, manic depression, and yes, drug addiction. We can take proactive steps to deal with that problem without turning people into criminals.
Should we legalize child porn (there is a demand)?
There are many things that have demand, but shouldn't be legalized. I'm not saying pot is one of them, but you aren't making a very good convincing argument.
"This is a problem that most programmers should be familiar with. It's a function minimization problem. Minimize suffering(x)."
Who's suffering? People that want to put drugs in their body? It's something you choose to do. You aren't born with a joint in your mouth.
"As the cops stand down, we also need the doctors to stand up."
Why can't pot smokers just admit that the reason they want pot legalized is so they can get high? It has very little health benefit. It might help people with cancer/eye problems, but those people are in the minority.
If there is no down side to becoming an addict, we will have more addicts. If you know that the government will just "rehabilitate" you, more people will be willing to try thinks like heroine and cocaine. If you know that it will basically ruin your life, you might think twice about it.
Opiates were legal in China at one point in time...until nearly the entire country was addicted. Why can't we just learn from the past instead of continuing to repeat mistakes?
That isn't at all what he said, though. He was talking about the issue of partial decriminalization vs. full legalization+regulation.
The real argument is, "If we believe something is benign enough to make partaking in it legal, it is yellow-bellied inconsistency to make providing it illegal."
Most of the proponents will never admit that smoking pot has adverse health effects. Everything seems to be rainbows and unicorns when it comes to pot. I want to see some real long-term studies, not from high times magazine.
Why can't people admit that they don't give a damn about the 'health benefits' and just want to get high? It's very cowardly to get it decriminalized under the guise of health.
Inhaling smoke into your longs that may or may not cause memory loss and paranoia can't be healthy. Pot changes people that smoke it regularly. It never fails. All of my friends that smoke it regularly have had absolutely no ambition in their lives and are still in pretty much the same positions they were in high school (it's been 11 years). Before the pot, they had dreams and goals.
If we ever have government run health care, regular drug users either shouldn't be covered or have to pay a ton more. I shouldn't have to pay for you mistakes.
Prisons and prohibition perpetuate suffering."
I'm all for drug legalization as long as I, as a taxpayer don't ever have to pay (if we do ever have a public health care plan) for anyone that decides to become a drug addict. I say decides, because the consequences of doing these drugs might just mean you become an addict. This means you won't get covered if you become addicted.
Also, businesses should have the ability to fire a drug addict at any time. Even if it doesn't directly affect productivity.
You are free to make any choice you want in this world, but I shouldn't have to pay for your mistakes.
As it is, people are still suing the cigarette companies for getting cancer (even though it's been well known for 50+ years that smoking causes cancer). We also need to have tort reform.
> Also, businesses should have the ability to fire a drug addict at any time. Even if it doesn't directly affect productivity.
Would you fire someone who drank? or smoked? or was obese? They're equally addicted.
Generally, those people would otherwise have low-paying jobs and wouldn't be contributing very much anyway. The people in prison aren't your daily pot smoker. They are dealers and people who committed crimes while under the influence of an illegal substance.
50% of the population already doesn't pay federal taxes. If we are going to go after revenue, we should start with this.
"Would you fire someone who drank? or smoked? or was obese? They're equally addicted."
Smoking cigarettes and obesity don't get you high, which has profound effects on your state-of-mind. If someone drinks on a daily basis and comes in hung-over..then yes. All of these also shouldn't be under the same category as "discrimination" because they are choices you make (freedom can have consequences) not uncontrollable qualities that you are born with.
That distinction has become meaningless. Anyone who gets caught with more than the "intent to distribute" threshold (which apparently isn't a lot) is simply presumed to be a dealer.
It's more than just quantity:
"Anyway, several things can determine intent, including quantity. Other factors might include quality, packaging, what type of area the person was in and the time of day."
http://forums.officer.com/forums/showthread.php?77095-Intent...
If you are by yourself or with a few friends smoking a joint, the cops won't really bother you.
I'd wager you were voted down for proposing that employees could be let go "[e]ven if it doesn't directly affect productivity", and then you subsequently abandoned it when you defended cigarettes and alcohol by taking purporting to take their effects into account.
If you're going to propose something like that, at least stick to it, and especially don't whine about it when people don't like that you've created an inconsistent system.
This is a seemingly simplistic statement to something a lot more complex. Your brain doesn't care if you get counseling. It just wants its next high. If you can't get that next high from a computer game, you'll certainly want it from something more powerful (and in most cases, harmful). I'm surprised you haven't mentioned the neurological effects of using drugs like cocaine.
[1] C.f. The Consumer Union Guide to Licit and Illicit Drugs.
[2] Not counting polydrug deaths.
How much harm does being homeless do to society? How much harm does having a bad credit score do to society? Smoking cigarettes? Listening to thrash metal? Rock climbing? Eating a cheeseburger? Being HIV positive? What's the proper response to these sorts of things?
History has shown us in no uncertain terms that it is impossible to protect people from themselves. And every attempt to do so will fail utterly. Will result in more harm to the individual and more harm to society than the problem attempted to be addressed. There are good ways and bad ways to deal with the problems that, say, meth addiction creates. The wrong way is to try to regulate what people can put into their own bodies, that road leads to addicts who can't seek help because of fear of jail, it leads to no-knock militarized police raids, it leads to a criminal justice system increasingly cut-off from the populace. It leads to corruption, to gang violence, and to tragedy of epic proportions. There are too many examples from history to pretend otherwise.
If you want to fix the alcoholic parent problem, create a society that reacts to them in a compassionate manner instead of throwing people in prison.
Why, so we can continue to enable them? If you coddle someone and are compassionate, people will never stop.
If you look at any documentary about addicts (or hear real doctors talking about it), it's the step families are FORCED to take because every other method just results in the addict thinking they can continue.
"Being kind and loving isn't necessarily enabling."
If I tried to be kind to my addict friends and tell them in a sweet voice that what they are doing is hurting themselves, they would tell me to fuck off. People aren't stupid. They know that being addicted to Meth, Coke, or Heroin is shitty and unhealthy.
Tough love is the kindest and most loving thing you can do for an addict. It just might save their life. If they know that the result of being an addict will mean that you might not talk to them again, they will think twice about shooting up.
The only way people ever stop is when they hit "rock bottom" and realize the terrible choices they are making. This usually means going to jail for at least a little while.
It's not too often you see such a blatant contradiction in the same sentence.
I'm saying nothing of morality, and speaking only of practicality. Absolute personal freedom is a beautiful ideal, in the same sense as world peace or the eradication of hunger; we should strive to achieve those ideals using every tool at our disposal.
But people (and societies) are extremely complicated, and in practice, one person's freedom can mean that another's is taken away. My freedom to play loud music at 3am removes your freedom to sleep soundly through the night. The premise of a social contract exists to seek a balance that maximizes freedom for everyone. Just because it doesn't always work isn't a reason to abandon the idea outright.
On the issue of drugs specifically, I think it's simply naive to pretend that easy and legal access to hard drugs won't have profound unintended negative effects on those besides the users themselves. I think we need custom-tailored policies for each drug that seek to strike a balance between personal freedom and the good of society (which is code for "the freedom of everybody else to not be fucked with by drug addicts").
If it means you will be blowing smoke around and potentially having a negative effect on me or my family, lots.
"Being HIV positive"
If you don't tell your partners and spread it around, it could have devastating effects on many peoples' lives.
"The wrong way is to try to regulate what people can put into their own bodies, that road leads to addicts who can't seek help because of fear of jail, it leads to no-knock militarized police raids, it leads to a criminal justice system increasingly cut-off from the populace."
I seriously doubt addicts have to worry about jail. Have you ever seen the show "Intervention"? If the laws were as bad as you say in the US, the police would be waiting outside the homes of those people. Many of them are illegal drug addicts (and the show explains exactly which drugs they are taking).
The pro-marijuana movement is less about freedom and is more about trying to legitimize a mind-altering substance.
"It leads to corruption, to gang violence, and to tragedy of epic proportions."
Correlation != Causation. This seems to come up in every article except when it comes to drug related stats. It doesn't lead to corruption and gang violence. Those people would be just as corrupt and in gangs without drugs.
Also, it's your freedom and choice to put substances into your body..with or without laws. The tragedy is only brought on by the user and is most likely a symptom (the reason they got into drugs in the first place) of other problems. Most of the drug users I know had messed up childhoods/family life.
I also don't think we should make it any easier for an addict..because we will just end up with more people who won't really care about becoming addicted because there will be no consequences (IE: the government pays for your rehabilitation).
Nope. There are many other possibilities. The law could be that bad, but enforcement could be inconsistent. The law could be that bad, but certain classes might be relatively immune. And so on.
And correlation is different from causation, but in this case, it's deductively provable that prohibition acts as fuel for these things. It's not merely correlated in some indirect way.
Nope. Intervention is on national television. A cop somewhere has to be seeing it. If it was as bad as you say, those people would be arrested asap. and certain classes might be immune? Please. the people on the show are from different classes.
"it's deductively provable that prohibition acts as fuel for these things."
So you are making the argument that the prohibition of drugs causes someone to form a gang? Why do people decide to do drugs in the first place?
Pot for example gets you high. It allows you to forget, for a short time, any of the bad things happening in your life and gives you a temporary happiness. Anyone that needs to do this has problems. It's those same bad problems at home that make gangs so enticing. Gangs provide family, a support network, and power.
P.S. My comment about corruption was not meant to address the "corruption" of individuals who join gangs, rather it was meant to describe the corruption of the criminal justice system, society, and the political process that prohibitions causes.
Ahh, because if drugs were allowed, we would see virtually no gang activity in the US. We should check out Portugal and Amsterdam to see if all of the gangs just decided to disban because drugs are legalized.
It's been stated in other replies, but it bears repeating: this argument is nonsense. You can use the exact same reasoning to argue for banning anything that has ever caused harm to people (which is pretty much everything, ever).
Just make sure all the dangerous stuff can only be administered in licensed venues by trained professionals.
Make users fill out a 12 page disclaimer before they are served. Make sure that the centers are decorated as tastefully as the average welfare office.
The hardcore addicts will flock to the centers, which will kill the street trade. But casual users and people looking to experiment won't bother; and they won't be able to find street dealers, as the dealers can't make a profit off the addicts anymore.
Has that stopped dealers from selling Vicodin? Extacy was also legal at one point and it didn't stop anyone from using it as a club drug.
"The hardcore addicts will flock to the centers, which will kill the street trade. But casual users and people looking to experiment won't bother; and they won't be able to find street dealers, as the dealers can't make a profit off the addicts anymore."
There will always be a black market..even if it's legal. This is because many people won't want to have to go to a doctor...and it will still be the most convenient.
I also would be interested to see how a doctor can ethically give you a prescription for a substance that does absolutely nothing to benefit you.
This is not what is meant by legalization. There would not be a black market because doctors would not prescribe these drugs, you would be able to buy them at your local, licensed convenience store (with proof of ID).
Is there a black market for alcohol or caffeine? If there is it's so tiny that somehow I've never encountered or heard about it. The same would be true for heroin, cocaine, etc.
The community kind of screwed themselves on this one. They got "medical marijuana" semi-legal. Now you are trying to tell me that it's not really good as a medical device and that we should sell it like alcohol? Why not just tell us the truth to begin with: It has very little medical benefit and the only reason you want it legal is to get high.
I also can't stand behind a community that puts out propaganda making it seem like marijuana has no adverse health effects.
Because that's not true... It has _tons_ of well documented medicinal benefits, and many people enjoy it recreationally.
rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.ht...
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/03/14...
– http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/10/coffee-shop-crackd...
the main market for the coffee shops turns out to be drug
tourists from abroad
Just a note of caution - while looking at what other places do definitely brings information to the table, you can't always say "if place A does X, doing X in place B will make it like place A".
The classic example of this is alcohol. Alcoholic beverages are not prohibited, but if you walk through an Italian town center at 11pm on a Friday night you won't see the scenes of public drunkeness and alcohol-fueled disorder that you see, say, in an English town center at the same time.
While I don't necessarily disagree with the larger point, in these kinds of policy area there is a level of unpredictability as to what will happen when a previously controlled substance is legalised, because patterns of consumption are convolved with local social norms.
For the police union it is "lost" money, not "saved".
Although not always, it seems. Wikipedia lists a fair about of support from police unions. (And longshoremen, FWIW.)
Key findings include: 1) Mexican DTOs' gross revenues from illegally exporting marijuana to wholesalers in the United States is likely less than $2 billion; 2) The claim that 60 percent of Mexican DTO gross drug export revenues come from marijuana should not be taken seriously; 3) If legalization only affects revenues from supplying marijuana to California, DTO drug export revenue losses would be very small, perhaps 2–4 percent; 4) The only way legalizing marijuana in California would significantly influence DTO revenues and the related violence is if California-produced marijuana is smuggled to other states at prices that outcompete current Mexican supplies. The extent of such smuggling will depend on a number of factors, including the response of the U.S. federal government. 5) If marijuana is smuggled from California to other states, it could undercut sales of Mexican marijuana in much of the U.S., cutting DTOs' marijuana export revenues by more than 65 percent and probably by 85 percent or more. In this scenario, the DTOs would lose approximately 20% of their total drug export revenues.
And say it's just the 4% cut from California. Do those incremental hundreds of millions of dollars not count as major?
I don't think there's a slippery sloper from marijuana to cocaine, especially if marijuana is legalized. The slippery slope argument is like arguing there's a slippery slope from beer to cocaine -- addictive personalities aren't that simple. Further, any evidence implying a slippery slope from marijuana to harder drugs becomes less relevant after legalization, since marijuana users will then have fewer interactions with criminals and less exposure to harder drugs.
If we make all drugs legal and they start resorting to other illegal activities like kidnapping/ransom, can we make them illegal again?
"what about legalizing harder drugs like cocaine"
I'm guessing you've never lived with anyone who's been addicted to drugs.
Apparently a very large fraction of voters actually make their decision while in the voting booth!
I'm guessing the late run of donations is because latest polls show there is a 50/50 chance of this passing, whereas a few months ago it looked like it was unlikely.
You either put up $100k earlier on to make a wider political statement regardless of the chances of outcome or you put up $100k to help create tip the balance when it looks like things could go either way...
You are allowed to man phone banks for get out the vote efforts, and are allowed to drive people to the polls, however. These multiplicative effects are likely to do more than just voting.
Most people agree it was disgusting and inappropriate for people based in other states to phone-bank Californian voters over Prop 8, and the same logic kind of applies to me given that I'm non-immigrant (but living here for 4.5 years).
I also don't like it when non-citizens get involved with politics and elections in my home of UK and so I have to abide by that when the boot is on the other foot.
> I also don't like it when non-citizens get involved with politics and elections in my home of UK and so I have to abide by that when the boot is on the other foot.
Then why are you even commenting here? There is no bright line between discussing likely consequences here and more general advocacy.
Democracy is too important to be limited to just citizens. If you live here and you have ideas worth listening to, you have a responsibility to participate. We'd like to have you at the phone bank, or driving old people to the polls on election day, or writing letters to the editor.
Electoral activities in particular are tricky. Voting or claiming US citizenship without the right to do so is almost always a felony, and can easily result in mandatory deportation and permanent exclusion (mandatory as in not subject to discretionary or judicial review). Campaigning is generally not illegal, but would probably attract unusually close scrutiny during review. Mistaken decisions can be appealed, but that's a long and expensive process.
I understand and agree with the substance of what you're saying, but 'the ethic of the society' and the letter of the law don't always match up. In immigration matters, the burden of proof is almost always on the non-citizen rather than the government. So he's not just making excuses.
The founding fathers and US Constitution beg to differ on that point. In fact, franchise was initially limited to a subset of the citizenry. We have a representative republic, not mob rule.
well at least i know you won't be my competition. keep on keeping on man.
I would if it would connect with my target group.
Yes I think starting a cannabis related startup is a good idea. I live in Colorado where we have over 100,000 medicinal patients and a dispensary on every other street in the Denver area. Combine that with a staggering amount of people that consume cannabis recreationally, unaffiliated with the medicinal program, and you can see how there's a pretty enormous market in this state alone. Now take into consideration the relative size of California and the fact that every single one of its citizens of legal age could potentially be buyers of this product.
Nobody would advertise on it? The Denver Post disagrees with you mightily ---> http://www.denverpost.com/news/marijuana ... oh yeah, the Westword Magazine disagrees with you too ---> http://www.westword.com/directory/marijuana-dispensaries/
Do you have any idea the amount of shops that are going to be offering cannabis products? You don't think, I don't know, that THOSE people would like to advertise? Or the glass blowers that make a living making pipes, bowls, etc? Or the vaporizer manufacturers like http://silversurfervap.com or the web developers that make most of their money designing sites for dispensaries in medicinal states? What about grow light suppliers like http://www.sunlightsupply.com or the nutrient companies like http://www.generalhydroponics.com/ or the full hydro/grow stores like http://www.thebigtomato.com/ ?? Consider the seed banks like http://www.cannabis-seeds-bank.co.uk/ that will be bringing their business to California. Think of the apparel companies that sell cannabis related gear. Think of the music industry when it finally adopts weed in out in the open. Think of the electricians that specialize in wiring grow rooms from small all the way up to the warehouse sized ones that dispensaries run around here.
Edit: You know what, I'm not even done. Here are some more people that "wouldn't advertise" -- cannabis edible makers and drink makers like http://www.keefcola.com/ , online communities like http://www.icmag.com , cannabis breeders like DJ Short, companies that sell point of sale software to dispensaries, credit card processors, etc etc etc.
This is so much bigger than you'll ever know, and it makes me sad that you have such a negative attitude towards it. This is bigger than the gold rush and bigger than silicon valley.
And we're only talking about California. Think of when the next state adopts it. And the next. And the next.
I also find it ironic that you think nobody would "buy" a cannabis related startup when this very thread is about a very wealthy individual investing $100,000 already, and the law hasn't even passed yet. Imagine the projects he's got his eyes on for when it actually DOES pass.
Mark my words, if legalization takes hold you're going to see your first cannabis entrepreneur break the Forbes 400 in a very short amount of time.
Without these I don't think that you can consider SF one of the most free places in the world.
I agree with hugh3 in any case. This is an article about politics, and no matter how much we may want to cheer paul on, I am not really sure it's germane, and that it might encourage others to submit things they feel 'rah rah!' about.
good luck with your business.
I don't want politics on Hacker News. Get. It. Off. Please. Thanks!
</angryrant>
I urge all Californians who're reading this to do their absolute best to make it pass in these last vital days. Join the phone banks, make sure all your friends are voting, campaign at universities. It could make a large difference, larger than you probably think.
It already is legalized in Netherlands and decriminalized (I believe) in Spain and Denmark, as well as UK (although that's about to change back I hear).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis#United_Kin...
Under Labour they reclassified it as class C for a while but then put it back to class B in 2009.
This keeps production and supply in the hands of actual criminals that deal across countries. The legalized links are operated by borderline criminals and shady people.
It makes life better for the consumer (I have no problems with this), solves a lot of the policing issues but doesn't tackle solve organised crime, quality issues etc. If you are only interested in legalising marijuana, this policy doesn't create the wall between soft & hard drugs either. That is, marijuana stays in the "drugs" category and doesn't enter the alcohol category (where regular users will be appalled at the thought of their adult children using, for example, marijuana).
Would you vote yes on a future proposition that legalizes all drugs ?
You take a substance out of the hands of professionals and place it into the hands of criminals. The quality of the substance goes down. The number of dead bodies goes up. The truth about the drugs themselves gets completely distorted with lies and propaganda instead of becoming common knowledge.
Legalization should go hand-in-hand with education and healthcare reform. If you get those elements right, you'll have a much more functioning society. Fewer drunk drivers, fewer overdoses, and no drug cartels to speak of.
What healthcare reform? Are we going to pay for the health care of addicts now? If you become an addict you should have to also deal with the consequences. Education should concentrate on telling kids not to touch drugs because most likely, they will fuck up their life. Pot may not be chemically addicting or as harmful as cigarettes, but it ruins your ambition and can be even worse for kids or even younger adults that should be figuring out what they want to do in life.
I also don't think it will get rid of the drug cartels. They will just have a legal way of funding their operations. It will only make it easier for them to make money.
I suspect (though I haven't researched further) that the recent crime uptick in northern Mexico is due to the easing of cannabis laws across America over the past few years, and that it'll just get worse after Prop 19 is passed.
Personally, I think the solution is to legalize all drugs, and to put the money that we're spending on the war on drugs into medical treatment and education. It's obviously a difficult situation, but I'm glad to see that we're making progress.
So we make it easier for someone to become an addict and then pay millions to treat them? I also fail to see how education is going to work. The education people need is to tell them to stay away from drugs in the first place.
Similarly, if we are controlled by our desires, we're not really free. An addict is not really free because he can't control himself.
> Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Drugs are definitely not essential.
> prohibition also provides a multi-billion dollar subsidy to violent criminal organizations that threaten our physical safety and security
Crime networks exist not because of strong government or strict laws; they exist because of moral corruption in the society. A strong government, strongly connected coherent society with powerful social moral values actually reduce the size and power of crime networks.
My personal stance is that governments need to admit that the black market is a fundamental condition of humanity, and trying to stamp it out is impossible. However it is the governments responsibility to monitor the black market and prevent it from becoming too large, and the only way of doing that is to legalize the most popular activities found within the black market.
If America legalized prostitution, marijuana and cocaine today, i would guess that the black market would be put on life support here in the states.
They will generally have a diatribe about "evil corporations are poisoning us with HFCS/Vaccines/GM food/etc..." Meanwhile they are saying that the federal government shouldn't regulate what someone puts in their body.
Personally I'd like to err on the side of freedom, but all the same there are real risks out there. We can't expect society/government to take care of all dangers, then turn around and say "I should be able to take whatever I want!"
Or to put it more bluntly imagine medicare costs if we legalize all drugs. Imagine the emergency rooms?
This is like sitting in a bar listening to the same sob stories repeated week after week at a local dive bar and saying all drinkers are defeatist losers.
Smoking pot makes many people paranoid. This is fact. It's not that far of a stretch to imagine that these people are conspiracy theorists.
"This is like sitting in a bar listening to the same sob stories repeated week after week at a local dive bar and saying all drinkers are defeatist losers."
When you hear the above from many different groups of people in different parts of the US/world that smoke pot, it really makes you wonder.
I really feel drug rules (not laws) need to be set at the neighborhood level by simple majority vote.
That way you can live where the limits suit you and you don't need to try to control what the whole country does.
Freedom is not just about allowing everyone to do anything. Its also about people being able to make the living arrangements that suit them without having to impose their choices upon others.
Its too much work anyway, always fighting these battles. Lets call a truce and go our separate ways together.
How is this Prop19 will 'surely' change everything? Especially related to drug cartel.
My previous question is actually to find out what kind of measurement, precaution or whatever it is, to make sure that Prop19 will cripple drug cartels, without creating another problem.
Moreover the profit margins go way down because you are no longer covering the risk of arrest to those growing and supplying the drug.
Sounds ripe for corruption.
Well, with your taste to great ideas you'll have fun looking at this one as well http://www.correctionscorp.com/ :
"CCA's 19th Annual Chairman’s Charity Golf Classic hosted nearly 300 golfers and donated almost $150,000 to nonprofit organizations in Middle Tennessee. "
edit: yay hackernews! Just downmod me because your liberal hippy viewpoints disagree. The chances of prop19 passing are 0.
If you drink alcohol on the street other than at a licensed outdoor event, a police officer can make you throw it away or issue a citation resulting in a fine. This seems pretty effective overall.
Except as permitted under Proposition 215 and SB 420 laws, persons age 21 and older may:
use marijuana in:
a non-public place such as a residence or
a public establishment licensed for on site marijuana consumption.
If so, that's quite a way for a libertarian to waste $100k.
edit: I love the open debate. Yeah, legalizing pot is definitely the most pressing problem facing our nation, so let's downvote anybody who says differently. HN is turning into Reddit.
Besides, the opportunity cost is zero to not lock these people up. It's not as if some other problem is going unsolved in favor of taking this law off the books.
Consider how much money the government is stealing from its citizens for no good reason. If some organization other than the government were doing this, solving the problem would be high priority..
The reason it's not high priority is because those people knowingly used an illegal substance and got caught. I also think you are over-estimating the amount of causal drug users in prison.
That can be a reason to believe they should remain imprisoned, but not a reason to believe they should be released but it's not a priority to do that anytime soon.
> over-estimating the amount of causal drug users in prison
It's possible. The drug war has vastly increased prison populations, but it's hard to come by unbiased statistics about how many of those people committed any non-victimless crimes.
For example, just what is the most pressing problem? Well, the answer is pretty obvious: people get old and die.
What is also obvious is that we don't know what to do about this. More funding for research on Alzheimer's disease looks correct, but beyond that it gets very unclear.
So immediately you reject sarcasm it leaps out at you that "most pressing problem" in the simple sense of "most important" isn't a good criterion. You need to be thinking about whether a problem can be fixed or not. Repealing bad laws is a very attractive focus for activism because it is such a practical step; it will actually work.
Your own errors can only leap out at you before you click reply if you state your position directly. Once you give in to the lure of sarcasm, you bind yourself to smug stupidity.