The next step will be for people to wake up to the fact that harder drugs need to be legal too. Not so that more people can take them, but so we can have less crime and eliminate a key justification for the growing police state.
It sounds like a flippant remark until you realise it was triggered by him knowing people who have died or become brain-damaged pursuing equestrian hobbies. He then did the statistical calculations and found out that the risks of horse-riding were higher but roughly comparable to those of MDMA use.
People think MDMA is more dangerous mostly because of intense press coverage when someone does die from it. When was the last time you saw "girl dies in tragic polo accident" on the front page?
Imagine if the "girl dies in tragic polo accident" was slanted the same way, and listed recent horse riding accidents and interviews with people warning about how more and more young people ride horses...
Equasy – An overlooked addiction with implications for the current debate on drug harms. DJ Nutt Psychopharmacology Unit, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. Journal of Psychopharmacology 23(1) (2009) 3 – 5
http://www.synchronium.net/2009/11/02/equasy/
Non-statistical anecdote: in my own acquaintance, I've known countless people who have taken MDMA, but never has my attention been called to the fact that any of them suffered from an acute harm episode as a result. However, I do know someone -- very respected in his field -- who suffered from not only permanent nerve damage, but (obviously) noticeable personality changes due to the use (or overuse -- doesn't matter) of painkillers after a rather nasty fall from a horse.
Risk #1 - You may hurt yourself
Risk #2 - You may discover the emperor wears no clothes and you don't have to spend your life in servitude to the ruling classes.
Which one does the government _really_ fear?
It's about as convincing as "and they all lived happily ever after" at the end of a fairytale.
There are a great number of activities which slowly, in turn, help reveal that all power is within ourselves. Basically, any activity which takes us by surprise, including psychedelics but also including extreme sports, international travel. Hell, reading a good book.
and it's not as easy as realizing it to get out of the trap. that's like saying is easy to become an entrepreneur. it's about spending the rest of one's life devoted to seeking reality....
You value acquiring physical intelligence. You do not value spiritual exploration. FWIW, MDMA is not "bliss" and it's not "short." It's longer than your average horse-ride, and it's much more complicated than simple bliss (as I've read in numerous reports on erowid.org)
It is the government's responsibility to protect us through sharing appropriate information [1], not to ruin our lives through imprisonment when we undertake solo activities with no risk to others.
BTW, I'm not even an MDMA enthusiast. I just don't feel like it, too busy, but for those who want to, I just want them to be safe, have their stuff tested, etc.
[1] So, why are articles like "Death rates from ecstasy (MDMA, MDA) and polydrug use in England and Wales 1996–2002" [2] only available through a paywall!!
(Disclaimer: I've used horses recreationally. No, I did not inhale. I do not recommend inhaling. They smell bad.)
I'm not sure what you mean by 'getting away from ourselves', but considering one worthy and the other not is purely subjective and I would say prejudicial.
Deleted comment
Why is that so hard?
http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/david-n...
I'm not deriding him in any way (I hope he is successful with this product). Just thought I'd mention it.
There are already other known alcohols that don't metabolise in the same way as ethanol and don't result in hangovers. I'm not sure they're 'safe'. It's possible that Prof. Nutt is talking about a benzodiazepine derivative he's working on, though finding one without the addiction potential of its class would be hard work.
And it's entirely possible he's just trolling :)
His book, "Drugs Without the Hot Air" is well worth reading. It contains some of the basic neuroscience behind drug actions, explores a lot of societal stuff and, in general was just a good read, if you're genuinely interested in this stuff.
GHB was touted as alcohol 2.0 but is now illegal for being a "date-rape drug". The irony here is that alcohol is already the leading date-rape drug.
The real irony is it's only really effective as a date-rape drug in conjunction with alcohol.
You're right, though, crack and some others seem to have horrific addiction profiles and I've even heard of Brazilian drug-lords forbidding its sale in their territory because it destroys any sort of community stability and kills the market.
I do wonder if many people would bother getting started with crack if other drugs were open to them. I also think that if there wasn't the criminal stigma we could help more of them, sooner.
There's no perfect solution, but what we have isn't working.
I know it will sound a little bit... hmmm... not-what-a-good-guy-would-say but, with this kind of policy in 10 years most of addicts would be dead, dying or getting treatment.
It's a darwin-aware policy that would remove the main problems with crack: Drug traffic and crazy killer zombies on the streets.
If crack addicts had water slides and massages, would crack still be interesting? Mainly crack seems to be an escape hatch from the brutal realities of incomplete urban life.
Putting a water slide on every block and other nice things is easier said than done, I know. But we can start making the world into the kind of place where crack isn't attractive and we can do it cheaply with inexpensive and free activities like singing, dancing, story-telling, campfires, etc.
I know, I sound like a fucking boy scout troop leader, but this kind of wholesome stuff can be good for us, doesn't depend on corporate culture and is likely what out bodies and minds evolved to perform well. We don't have to criminalize drugs, just make better things for people to do.
Thing is, you can't for certain say why someone is using some substance (excepting addiction, naturally). Some people as an escape from a less-than-great life, some people for fun, others for spiritual/religious reasons, some for just straight up curiosity.
Almost the same profile as any other enjoyable activity.
I don't think it's a matter of making better things for people to do.. partly because in some cases no such thing exists.
For instance, I challenge you to find any "non-altered" experience that can measure up to the reality-bending, introspective powers of chemicals like LSD or psilocybin, the compounds in peyote, and so on.
Unsure.
People say this stuff about heroin addicts too, but the truth with them is that, when provided with the sort of service you're talking about, they tend to be able to live normal-ish lives and a reasonable proportion eventually kick the habit.
I get the impression that crack (even medically pure) is way more damaging to the body though, so you might (sadly) be right. At least there would be less crime to fund the habit, and we could get help to more of them.
My girlfriend works at the state youth detention program (INAU) and she sees a lot of those.
But yes, crack cocaine and "pasta base" here ( cocaine paste - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine_paste ) does generate severe mental problems really quickly (she sees those everyday).
This means spending money where it does more good.
http://www.livescience.com/4060-hangover-free-buzz-star-trek...
You've stooped to an ad-hominem, implying that Nutt's statistics are somehow faulty because he's got an interest in something which might "compete" with a drug he identifies as more harmful, without providing any evidence that he's wrong. That's slimy.
Alcohol is toxic to most major organs, is one of only a tiny number of drugs that can make normally passive people become violent, and is the world's most prolific date-rape drug. If you've ever seen the emergency room in a typical hospital on a Saturday night, you'd see that many of the millions who enjoy a drink get violent and antisocial, injuring themselves and others. Then there's domestic abuse, drunk driving, risky sex, etc etc.
You'd need to take figures on all of those effects into account before deciding whether it's a 'stretch' or not. Which is exactly what Prof. Nutt did in his paper.
I do not believe that alcohol is a net negative to society. I'm pretty confident that crack cocaine is more damaging, especially to the individual user (and in fact you'll find that borne out by Nutt's research).
However, while perhaps "nobody robs a granny to buy a single malt," alcohol can very obviously have damaging effects, especially if it's misused. Sexual assault and drunk driving are just two examples.
That these exist does not mean that alcohol should be banned, and that crack is more damaging does not mean that the most effective tool to prevent it's use is criminalisation.
No, they rob granny to buy another bottle of $15 vodka.
Also, getting publicly sacked from your job is not great marketing, so seems inconsistent with the money-focused approach you are suggesting. However, it is entirely consistent with standing up for your belief in harm reduction above all else.
(By the way, if that last sentence is giving you cognitive dissonance, you need to stop and think hard about the statistics. The fact is that the most dangerous thing about pot, MDMA, LSD, and the like isn't their biochemistry. It's the fact that ignorant people have made them illegal.)
That depends what's in the pill, and how often there's a glass of wine, and if it's only ever one pint. Which I doubt.
Binge drinking is a very popular passtime here in the UK and is very dangerous.
Do you not think that when Prof Nutt makes these sorts of calculations they take this stuff into account? Or do you think he just pulls it all out of his arse?
You can rant and rave all you like, when the studies come in your (and my) favourite drug really is more harmful and more addictive than many/most others.
(--edit-- had the term kindling wrong, now right)
Can't do that with MDMA...
Just because you can find an article from 12 years ago saying a small glass of red may be healthy (and I bet I can find 10 more articles saying it isn't in the 12 years since that was published), doesn't mean that alcohol isn't addictive and harmful to its users. Hell, few brits drink that way anyway and your article posits that the benefit doesn't come from the ethanol but something else. It doesn't support your position at all.
Oh look I can google too - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23358078 - around 9000 people a year die directly from alcohol misuse in the UK.
Why do you have so much of a problem with this? Why do you think the experts are liars? Have you actually read any of Nutt's stuff? He doesn't actually advocate drug use, he's only interested in honesty and harm reduction.
--edit-- can I ask why you're so invested in this idea that alcohol must be less harmful than anything else?
I mean, the science is in. Booze is more addictive and more harmful (cancer, liver disease, alcoholism, alcohol related violence...) than lots of other drugs. Isn't an appropriate reaction to that news "oh, guess maybe those other things aren't as evil as I thought" rather than "but not really, because alcohol can't really be bad, we're only joking right lads? Booze is fine, right? I don't binge much, it's probably good for me eh? Not like those idiots taking pills"
They may well be idiots, but you're probably in denial too.
Or the federal government can just use it as a means to arrest pot-smoking undesirables at will? I don't really see how state laws come to a head with federal ones in this case - state police and lower will not enforce the federal laws, but FBI/DEA etc. can and probably will continue to. When it's a federal law granting someone a right (e.g. Roe v. Wade, the 14th amendment) then the federal government gets to go in and change state laws, but I've never heard of a case of federal laws changing because something it criminalizes was explicitly legalized in state laws. The most analogous historical precedent we have is prohibition, and iirc state laws didn't change until after the ratification of the 21st amendment, so that doesn't really apply. Unless you're saying that states would pass a constitutional amendment, which seems a little far fetched to me, though not impossible.
It's a little like the MVP of government.
There's an advantage to allowing the states to hash out laws. It's frustrating because it's slow but it also gives people a chance to catch up with the progression.
Drug prohibition laws are federal, but not part of the constitution. Very different, legally speaking.
By 1928, long before the repeal, 28 states had stopped funding prohibition enforcement: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/view-ten.... This effectively killed the law in those states that refused to enforce, because the federal government simply couldn't.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_S...
This is the major distinction between Cannabis prohibition and Alcohol prohibition. The latter could be turned off by the US government, the former requires snubbing the UN. There is always the unilateral option but the US wouldn't do that in this case because it would open the gates for every other country and the political interests are way too strong.
Basically for the US to formally "legalize it" the rest of the world would have to as well, which is why Argentina and Uruguay are great examples of leadership when it comes to the Drug war; they are both UN members and implied signatories to the treaty.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_D...
There are of course major examples of unilateral actions on the part of the US to be sure, but those are outliers albeit extreme ones.
As is the case with most things related to the UN as it applies to the US, the US can ignore it tomorrow morning, and there is absolutely nothing that will or can realistically be done about it. Who is going to do what, exactly? The US is by far the prime leader in the war on drugs, if we fold our cards, it's instantly game over, no matter what half-cocked treaties are outstanding.
Enforcement is purely optional at this point already, as has already been demonstrated in Washington and Colorado, and a lot more are going to follow.
Hence my previous statement:
There is always the unilateral option but the US wouldn't do that in this case because it would open the gates for every other country and the political interests are way too strong.
What political interests? Most European elites are begging for the US to come around so that they can have the political cover to drop this madness. They cannot do that until World Police changes its stance, because they'd be commercially blacklisted into the Middle Age.
The political interests were there when the US could use drug policy to support this or that puppet government in Latin America or Afghanistan. This strategy has failed so thoroughly in the long run, your own backyard is now giving up and leading decriminalisation. The US government would get a lot of goodwill around the world by ending the prohibition idiocy.
Portugal was blacklisted to the middle ages? Eventually Europeans will have to stop pretending everything is the US's fault and be responsible for their own countries.
We see this in the response to copyright infringement too e.g. ACTA - the executive thinks this is a thing that needs doing, but will never get past elected representatives because the public doesn't like it.
A lot of the hostility towards Europe stems from it's constituent governments using it like this.
Is this a reaction to a flaw in democracy?
I also have a brother dead from a heroin overdose. It's illegal and it didn't stop him. Sanctimonious nanny staters like you think you're protecting people but you're just supporting organized crime, death and ruined lives by pushing this into the shadows.
I don't care what you put in your body (legal or otherwise), its your body and your life and you are compelled to do so for reasons I might not understand, but if I found a loved one was taking a cocktail of amphetamines and opiates I would do everything in my power to see they got the help and support they needed to get off it.
Legalizing amphetamines would trigger major societal problems. What percentage of HN would feel the need to consume it in order to compete at school, the office or the market.
Nanny state? You make it sound so simple. Drugs are just chemicals. Why not say all chemicals should be legalized. What about RDX (a military-grade explosive)? Is the nanny state getting in the way of me having a good time on private property blowing stuff up? I can safely use military weapons, so why can't I purchase them privately?
The drug war has not criminalized harmful behavior caused by drugs. That would make far too much sense. The drug war criminalizes the mere possession of drugs, regardless of any actual harmful behavior. Then the nanny state corrects your behavior by giving you a criminal record.
The only reason I see why cannabis is not legal yet is because it threatens the medical industry in a big way. Cannabis, although easily becomes an addiction, is also a big medicine for many things.
When people start to realize this in big quantities, the medical companies are going to get worried, as their prescription drugs that may cause coma and death, will not be used so much anymore.
If we're talking about alcohol, then the rise in consumption is absolutely acceptable because 1.) those who abuse are now treated as addicts instead of imprisoned by default, and 2.) those who don't abuse it are now free from the horrors of capricious and arbitrary criminal persecution.
Same goes for marijuana and tobacco (which is, in my meager experience, the most addictive drug of all).
Now, if we're talking about meth or narcotics, then obviously any rise in consumption has to be taken very seriously, and then addressed by treating addicts medically as they should be, instead of sending them deeper underground by making them criminals.
Very simple: Law enforcement protects individuals against the actions of other individuals, and not against themselves.
Your loved one needs addiction treatment (i. e.: heathcare), and law enforcement will not solve his/her problem.
If you think you could just convince a loved one to stop doing dope and crank with words, you're living in a fucking dream world. I speak from experience, having the disease of addiction.
You are extremely naive, stop posting please.
However, I think you are trivializing it. The fact that some people do something that is illegal doesn't mean that the law has no effect. Alcohol is practically the only recreational drug I use and the same applies to a large group of my friends. I am sure that if other categories had been legal, they would have been more common as well. My parents would have had a harder time convincing me not to take something if you could buy it in a safe location with knowledge that the production was controlled etc. Now I'm not necessarily saying that this would have been worse, but you're suggesting that the only thing that would happen from legalizing everything would be that people would keep consuming like they do today (because people who want something can get it anyway), and drug lords would be replaced by taxable corporations. Which I think is hardly the case.
There aren't hard numbers of consumption during the prohibition (obviously) but statistics of alcohol related deaths and arrests seem to show that there was a serious decrease just before the prohibition, and after a few years it returns to its previous state, and was worse in some aspects.
http://www.druglibrary.org/prohibitionresults.htm
Also, in the Netherlands the marijuana consumption rate is less than in the USA, despite it being almost legal.
So, don't worry, things won't change much, except for those people who won't have to be worried about being arrested for smoking a plant.
As far as I know, there aren't any records of a boom in consumption just because a drug was legalized. And I'm not talking about marijuana only, but drugs in general, alcohol included.
Considering that, we can say that the fear of people going mad about a drug just because it was legalized is another myth of the "war on drugs".
I agree. However, I shouldn't have to clean up the mess. IE: rocketing health care costs and social programs that come out of my tax dollars.
You could fund some pretty sweet social programs and healthcare if you took back the DEA budget...
Hell, there are 10,000 employees at the DEA, in the most simplistic case you could replace them with drug rehab folks and that's a couple of hundred extra per state. That's enough to have an impact.
(-edit-- yeah ok, I may have overestimated the budget of the DEA, but 3 billion is not to be sniffed at, and the DEA is really only the tip of the iceberg)
Also, most of the money spent in the drug war doesn't go through the DEA.
For example, DEA doesn"t run prisons. It costs about $50000 to keep someone in prison. We have about 3 million prisoners in the US. Suppose only 10% of them are in prison for drug offenses. That's about $15 billion/year. Pencils out to $50/year for each US citizen. So about $200/year per taxpayer.
Think a little and you won't have trouble finding other sources of waste. Wasted police time. Lost productivity of the imprisoned. Truancy among children with missing fathers.
Personally, I'd rather give the $200 to a harm reduction program.
actually it's 50%.
Because I'm not? Or are you just knee-jerk assuming that because I dare to raise any comment at all, I'm opposed to the general idea?
Don't assume that ending the war on drugs will free up some large, discrete sum of money that you can go and promise away on "sweet social programs". The money saved (of which there will be plenty) is in hundreds, even thousands, of small pools across all levels of government, all of which are perpetually money-starved, and it will be gone like dew on a summer morning before you'll get anywhere near it.
No where in my comment did I offer any judgement against you or your character. You're the one making assumptions.
> Don't assume that ending the war on drugs will free up some large, discrete sum of money that you can go and promise away on "sweet social programs". The money saved (of which there will be plenty) is in hundreds, even thousands, of small pools across all levels of government, all of which are perpetually money-starved, and it will be gone like dew on a summer morning before you'll get anywhere near it.
I assume nothing beyond the fact that the current system is massively expensive and demonstrably a net negative on society. My opinion is simply that the current system is worse than doing nothing at all and my philosophy is always for there to be less government intervention in people's lives than more. Therefore, my preference is that we end the war on drugs as I believe this is a better situation than we are in today.
Naive response - well excellent, by the sounds of it we've just freed up a whole bunch of funds in all sorts of areas for all sorts of other important stuff.
More cynical response - government waste and perpetual hunger for more cash is a constant and something else we should be fighting anyway.
Either way, I'm of the opinion that even if all the money disappeared off into a vacuum, the WoD is counterproductive. Even if we kept paying the DEA to just hang around and scratch its collective butt all day, we'd be making a positive change to society by stopping all action in the pointless 'war'.
Yes, rehab centres, education and healthcare initiatives would be great and I totally think that we should have those and fund them from taxes. But even if we don't, even if we say "fuck it, legalise everything and to hell with the rest" we'd be far better off as a society. Innocents would no longer die in drug-raids gone wrong. Taxes that fund the war could be cut, suppliers could compete on quality and price, removing major reasons addicts die and steal. Criminals would no longer have an easy source of income. Lives already ruined by addiction would no longer be further destroyed by criminal records and prison time.
So yeah, legalise it. All of it. Now. We can talk about the other stuff later.
Notice I didn't say it decreases use, because it doesn't (evidence: see Portugal case study, they decriminalised drugs and use went down).
If that war money had been spent towards educating people how to use drugs safely, health care and rehabilitation, instead of putting people in jail for a victimless crime, well, you tell me if that's a good idea.
The benefits of drug prohibition (if any) are far outweighed by the problems it causes.
that way you can afford to improve healthcare and education whlst simultaneously reducing harm by ensuring a cleaner product is made available to users.
Why bother when mental illness has been linked to cannabis use in adolescents? It's so logical to just legalize everything and call it a day.
> "lets throw drugs at the under educated and already disadvantaged that will help social inequality in our country greatly."
They already have the drugs aplenty. But we do them one better by giving them criminal records on top of their addictions. Isn't that helpful! Plus, as an added bonus, prohibition ensures that the profits from those drugs go to actual criminal organizations.
> " Why bother when mental illness has been linked to cannabis use in adolescents"
First, unless I'm missing something, no one here has proposed legalizing drugs for children. Second, tobacco has been linked to a bible-full of hellish ailments for everybody. Perhaps you'd like to illegalize that and call it a day yourself?
By making a good law about this kind of drugs, you just taking out lot of problems and saving lots of $$$$$ in survelliance and law enforcement wich, clearly by long proved stats, they don't work at all.
http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2K1...
Should that be legal?
Throwing the lower classes in jail for being uneducated and addicted does not solve anything. These people need help, not more prohibition. (And to be clear, it is overwhelmingly the lower classes that are targeted by prohibition. Prohibition is a powerful tool for class warfare)
Because their organised crime is sort-of regulated and accepted as an inevitable part of society. Wanna try that? That's even more of a paradigm shift, I don't think you're ready for it.
Yes. It doesn't. US couldn't occupy successfully neither Afghanistan nor Iraq. If you'd like to occupy someone ask British. They successfully occupied India for many years.
But the important corollary of that is that the lives of the common people got better too. Not so in Afghanistan.
Just exactly how much MORE invasive of a state would we have to put up with to "fight for more life quality"?
In other words: The US army is wholly insufficient to prevent heroin production in even a single country. And if they were to succeed, they'd just have made production vastly more profitable, and hence attractive, for people elsewhere.
> Then what does stop you from asking this simple question: why don't we fight for more life quality for everybody?
Why do you think this would improve life quality for anyone?
Have you known any high functioning heroin addicts?
Chances are you have even if you think you don't, but just don't know it. I have known at least one - it took a year of dealing with this person regularly before we noticed, and then only because the war on drugs causes massive price instability. Suddenly he had problems getting money enough for his abuse, and ended up stealing some. Until then, he'd been able to hide his abuse for years from everyone including his closest family. Luckily for him, he got it together enough to check himself into treatment before he got into further
The heroin users you see on the street is not nearly all of the heroin users out there, by far, any more than the alcoholics you see on the street are all alcohol users. Even heroin is not so addictive that everyone who use it even have a strong dependency on it; you find recreational heroin users out there. Of those that are dependent, not nearly everyone have problems managing their daily life in ways that makes it likely for people around them to have any idea they are using.
A huge part of the problem with even drugs that can be as nasty as heroin can be is the criminalisation that makes it impossible for users to get properly manufactured doses of known strength at a predictable low price. Most of the nastiest side effect of even many of the really hard drugs are legal and/or problems related to impurities and unpredictable doses rather than actual medical problems related to the drug itself with "normal" use. There are a few drugs where extensive abuse does have nasty medical side effects, yes. But so does alcohol and nicotine - do you propose we use military means to stop all manufacture of those too (if you do, I suggest you look up prohibition to see how that worked out last time)
Want to fight to improve life quality? Legalise pretty much everything, and invest the money currently spent on fighting it into enforcement of strict quality standards, regulating manufacturing and sale, and providing far more treatment and support for those who do need it.
The war on drugs has nothing to do with making things better - it is a mix of religiously founded moralism and a war on the poor (and by extension, in the US it is a war on black people).
Prohibition does not work. The war on drugs does not work. Throwing more money at it will not work.
Don't even mention about class. If you had a piece of idea of social classes, you'd first support their life quality and realize that the drug industry is already a device of the system to knock them down.
Plus, what I proposed was to war against drug cartels, not users.
And you just keep that bullshit with the assumption of "drug war doesn't work" oh really? I know that hopeless face of the government, when it comes to stopping the crime, the eagle turns to a rabbit!
The War on Drugs has been massively unsuccessful. The history of it gives us absolutely no reason to think that throwing even more money at it will improve anything at all.
Seriously, get real: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/29/t...
(And you are delusional if you think I support wars. What the hell are you even driving at there?)
I see the streets. Go to 6th and Market now, or 16th and Mission, both streets have tents that sell hard drugs. Every night, there are a lot of things going on there.
Who does even attempt to stop them? I lived in multiple countries, and the toleration I see here is just incredible. I saw those who sell and use heroins, and we (me and bunch of coworkers) just passed them.
Just a regular day. I don't believe your numbers. Plus; I believe, this entire business is a way to keep the poor classes as poor. Go read about Hasan Sabbah.
Do you now understand why you're getting nowhere in this debate? It's like trying to convince somebody that the solution to cancer is bringing in the army to defeat viruses.
If you disagree with the fundamental assumption, you would do well to state that.
The drug on war is a combination of christian moralism and class warfare, pure and simple, just like prohibition was. Just like then, the moralists managed to convince a lot of people that it was to protect or save them, and just like then it proved to do far more damage than good.
There's no law against belts, but it's nevertheless illegal to beat the shit out of your kid with a belt.
Look at your history and check your ideas. While I will defend the fact that you have ideas, you are grossly wrong.
I don't have any sources at the moment, but from what I've read, the problems associated with drugs are actually due to poverty and the fact that drugs are illegal, making those who use and sell them criminals. There is an important distinction between harm due to the criminalization of drugs, and harm due to drugs per se.
There are a few real world examples of states that have decriminalized all drugs, such as Portugal:
The resulting effect: a drastic reduction in addicts, with Portuguese officials and reports highlighting that this number, at 100,000 before the new policy was enacted, has been halved in the following ten years. Portugal's drug usage rates are now among the lowest of EU member states, according to the same report.
One more outcome: a lot less sick people. Drug related diseases including STDs and overdoses have been reduced even more than usage rates, which experts believe is the result of the government offering treatment with no threat of legal ramifications to addicts.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/portugal-drug-policy-decrimin...
Only Stalin's gulags held more in prison than the US has under the war on drugs. It's easily arguable that over the span of the program, we've outdone Stalin.
Poverty, crime, cartels, destroyed families, destroyed lives, millions in prison: hundreds of billions of dollars spent without solving a single thing, without fixing anything, without ever reducing addiction or stopping drug use. America's cities became war zones when the war on drugs began.
Tell Mexico's tens of thousands of innocent victims that have been slaughtered by our war, that it's all working out just swell.
Tell you what, why don't you go ask the "folks in Michigan" if we need to bring back alcohol prohibition as well, since alcohol continues to be the most destructive by far.
A lot of the problems of drug use are either orthogonal to legality or worsened by prohibition. We saw this with alcohol and it's just as true with marijuana and most other drugs.
Why do I suddenly have the feeling that I'm being trolled?
Now I'm pretty sure that you're either playing me, or you really are one of those "folks" I mentioned above.
If the evil White people you are referring to didn't care about the poor, why would they say "the free market will sort everything out". They would say "the free market will screw you over, but that's the way things should be".
You legalizers who cite theories and internet sources make me laugh. So passionate for your weed, as if its the most important thing there is.
You may have seen people killed by crime, or untreated addiction to other drugs. You may have seen lives ruined by the legal system. I am sure you saw many of the problems the war on drugs has given us, but you did not see anybody killed by marijuana. You did not see a plant tear a community apart.
What the fuck is an "internet source" anyway? What is next, disbelieving anything written in a book that has a black cover, instead of a white one?
And no - I did not see anyone killed by crime, or lives ruined by the legal system, or some other theory of yours. Just people who drank and drugged until they were dead or caused terrible harm to their family.
Dude you are so eager to assert what I know or have seen. Enjoy your pot.
Perhaps you can provide us with your own "theories and internet references" that might change our minds? Like, I don't know, maybe some evidence that throwing people in prison for minor drug offenses (a necessary consequence of making drugs illegal) has helped those people, their children, and their communities in any way. Statistically speaking, that is.
No wait I have a better idea! How about you convince me that the addicts in my own family would be better served by criminal records than by treatment. Now that's a real appeal to emotion!
And yes I am in favor of more restrictions on both drugs and alcohol. I'm opposed to the notion that drugs and alcohol are consequence-free substances. In the wrong hands, they kill and they destroy lives.
If it's so unimportant, why should we spend billions combatting it, and give people prison time and criminal records for using it?
>> And yes I am in favor of more restrictions on both drugs and alcohol. I'm opposed to the notion that drugs and alcohol are consequence-free substances. In the wrong hands, they kill and they destroy lives.
And prohibition does nothing to keep it out of those hands.
> "I'm opposed to the notion that drugs and alcohol are consequence-free substances."
See this is what we call a strawman, and this is a particularly blatant example of one. Opponents of prohibition don't argue that drugs and alcohol are "consequence-free substances". They do argue that the consequences of prohibition are far worse than those of the drugs alone.
If you are intent on making this personal, I can tell you that I haven't had a drink in over 12 years, and I remember the exact day of my last drink. If you can guess why I'll mail you a star sticker :). Oh and I don't smoke anything either.
But although I personally can't be trusted with the stuff, I have the maturity to accept that other people can, and I'm not blind to the horrors of preemptively punishing everyone else in deference to my personal weaknesses.
> "In the wrong hands, they kill and they destroy lives."
Granted. But I don't understand how you get from there, to concluding that the solution is to criminalize everyone who uses a substance, regardless of whether or not they actually do something bad with it. Criminal records are pretty good at destroying lives too, and they do nothing to help actual addicts.
Look, I realize you're probably immune to logic on this, and you seemed to acknowledge earlier that the evidence isn't on your side, so I'll spare you all that jazz and just issue a very basic rhetorical challenge:
Tell me with a straight face that the drug addicts in my family (or anywhere else) are better off being treated like criminals, on top of or in lieu of whatever treatment they may receive. Then convince me that everyone else who isn't an addict should also be treated like criminals simply for possession, just so we can continue imprisoning the "wrong hands".