U.S. Legalization of Marijuana Has Hit Mexican Cartels’ Cross-Border Trade
time.com
time.com
Lets look back in history to see how well prohibition has worked in the past.
The exact same result happened back in the 1920's with the prohibition of alcohol. The 1920's prohibition resulted in nothing more than the rise of the Mafia.
Back in the 1920's there was similar waste of government money fighting alcohol, only to see the rise in the power of the Mafia.
Move forward to today's 'war on drugs' and once again government is wasting massive amounts of public money trying fighting a loosing war.
The harder the fight the richer the drug kings become.
But now the states decide to go softer on a 'war on what ever' and guess what, the 'drug kings' once again start to loose money.
Nothing more than history repeating :(
1) There was a mafia in Italy and US long before Prohibition and after Prohibition
2) The violence and deaths of police officers in the US started to rise in 1900 and peaked at 1921 and declined for another 30 years.
3) Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society.
4) We are at one of the least violent and peaceful decades in US History
[1] Police deaths in London and NYC (I could use other markers just this was a lazy first choice http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2586786/ [2] US Crime Rate (Which I would argue is flawed since the recording of crimes prior to 1960s was not tracked in the same way as records are now kept after JFK assassination http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0109/US-crime-rate...
2) I'm not sure that police deaths are the best metric, since most of the violence during prohibition was carried out by gangs against other gangs. Given enough police corruption, violence wasn't even necessary.
3) How about cocaine followed by crack cocaine?
4) That doesn't mean we couldn't be less violent and more peaceful, and it doesn't mean that our law enforcement resources are efficiently allocated.
Not every popular-but-illegal activity benefits from becoming legal. Selling alcohol is very different from selling people. Don't conflate the two activities.
Seriously, the existence of problems related to legal prostitution in any particular location doesn't necessarily indict the entire practice. Also, in close analogy with drug prohibition, the state gives criminals space to thrive whenever it limits the free movement of people.
It's not a job when the most desirable "employees" are the least experienced ones.
The idea that sex is having something done to you, as opposed to something you're doing for or with someone, strikes me as a rather old-fashioned and sexist attitude. I'd like to believe that my wife and I share something better than that.
Of course, there are a lot of personal values tied up in this question, so I don't think that either your opinion or mine necessarily prevails. That being the case, I think the best indicator is what each individual chooses to do of their own free will.
The problem with "what each individual chooses" and prostitution is that it's extremely difficult to get an accurate reading of what people truly want. There's lots of coercion, pressure, and outright threats. I think it's fair to say that given the opportunity, most people would not choose prostitution. It's very important to have a society where no one ever feels the need to become a prostitute.
The whole "consent" argument also tries to ignore the question of harm. If someone consents to be harmed, should we harm them? If a drug addict wants to keep drugging themselves, should we not do anything about it? I'm not outright saying that prostitution harms every prostituted person or not, just that this question should be considered, not elided with the "consent" argument.
I'd say that is incorrect and based on incomplete understanding. I'd say it's a choice, made, no matter how incomprehensible, for money. Like other choices people make, eg choosing such and such career path, or such and such relationship, sometimes there's peer pressure. And because it's connected with orchestration by criminal enterprises, tainted by that association. However, when you come down to it, people could sell themselves before criminals wanted a cut. It works to consider how you might come to make that choice, and whether your assumptions about prostitutes are filtered through the landscape of what you perceive as your own possible choices.
So before I pronounce prostitutes as victims to fit a narrative of exploitation I've chosen (seductive also for it suggests my moral superiority that I would never make such a choice! :), maybe I'll remember it doesn't work to victimize the people I'm talking about by pretending they had no autonomy. Isn't that, the very same hypocrisy I'm trying to accuse others of? Using a person for a purpose? And when that person may have done the choosing, and I in my argument may be doing the using, haven't I neatly reversed the roles all by myself, and undermined the very argument I was making?
Tl;Dr - when you're talking about people you want to paint as victims it works to consider them as autonomous, choice making beings, to gain more accurate insight, even tho it's seductive to pretend that somehow you've more autonomy than they.
Stl;Dr - fantasising that prostitutes have no autonomy is trying to use them for an intellectual "dry sex", without paying, for the sake of argument without their consent! Definitely only for scoundrels!! :)
Given the opportunity, most people would not choose to work.
That being said, from my neighbourhood, women who did chose prostitution could have done some other work instead. They picked prostitution because it was 1. easier and 2. it paid better.
I've known three strippers (for reasons unrelated to their careers), and I know for certain that in all cases their choice of profession was absolutely a personal choice. The cost/benefit opportunity was the best one open to them, and they took it.
Like I said, stripping isn't the same thing, and of course anecdote isn't the singular of data. But my experience personally, and what I hear second-hand elsewhere, makes it difficult for me to believe that violence and force are significant factors in that world. And to the extent that they are present, it seems more likely that they enter the picture precisely because it's an outlaw black market lifestyle, and if allowed in the light of day that aspect would likely disappear.
A quick google leads me to http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-average-prostitution-price...
From this, it looks like the price for prostitutes increases with quality.
I'm in favor of legalization, but there is some economic research suggesting that at least in the short term, expansion of the market for prostitution (through decriminalization or legalization) results in a net increase in illegal trafficking, because market sector growth >> the substitution effect (whereby many customers prefer the legal alternative). It's not the simple 'ban it or legalize it' dichotomy that advocates on both sides suggest.
I think you're right about a certain segment of the market. After all, we know that pedophiles exist, so some "customers" would want the "services" of a child who lies there crying, which would require no "training". I think those would be few in number when compared to a legal market for adult prostitution, although they would necessarily be a larger portion of any illicit market.
Also, in a country with legal prostitution, aren't there regular inspections? interviews with the workers? I can understand in a poor country but how are these women being held against their will in shady establishments in a country with strong laws and an effective police force.
afaik (i have no real, direct, experience of this tbh, so don't quote me) there are none of these safety measures that you see in Vegas or Amsterdam etc. its basically treated as a form of self employment and is completely unregulated.
you should also consider the psychologies of vulnerable and desperate young women and criminal gangs. there is a long history of techniques they will both use to avoid problems with the police and both types will see it as protecting themselves from harm...
Also, I'd like to see a reference on the 'most' and 'frequently'.
There is a reason that a person chooses to be a prostitute. You may not agree with that person's decision, but criminalizing one party of the exchange doesn't change the prostitute's available choices. In many cases, prostitution is the only way to finance drug addiction, because of drug prohibition. You can criminalize any party -- the prostituted or the customer -- and it doesn't address the root issue, it only suppresses it.
What it does is destroy the market for those exploiting prostitutes. I.e. traffickers. It changes very little for those who want to engage in sex with prostitutes.
Citation? I ask because that's not my personal experience and I haven't heard the same information from the sex workers I know.
I'm slightly suspicious of these claims. I've seen reports about trafficking in my country showing numbers of foreign people trafficked that are completely unrealistic. NGOs are just making up these numbers when they are pleading to well-meaning but clueless people for donations.
The point here is that if someone can actually bring up evidence that there is a huge criminal organisation, then that organisation can be shut down effectively. But there is no evidence. It's a bit like so many conspiracy theories that tell about the secret conspiracy; the proof of existence of conspiracy consists of the fact that there is absolutely no evidence, because the conspiracy is so effective.
In the context of prostitution, the term "human trafficing" itself us primarily used for shaming purpose where prostitution is no longer illegal. For this reason it should be avoided like the plague.
I don't think the OP was making any correlation with crime in the 70s and 80s. You could however link that rise in crime to the spread of crack cocaine through NYC and LA if you really wanted to.
4) We are at one of the least violent and peaceful decades in US History
Interestingly enough, while that is true, our incarceration rate is the highest ever and it started just as the drug war started. See also The New Jim Crow [1]
The background crime rate increase from the 1960s forward is more readily explained by societal changes, as well as the start of the "war on drugs".
But I've been led to believe that a large amount, if not majority, of drug crime prisoners are due to low-level and non-violent criminal acts. Many of the drug laws are extremely heavy-handed that puts many people in prison for little reason. If that's the case, I doubt most of these people would have contributed to violence statistics.
I thought that at this point it was pretty much accepted that by far the strongest factor here was leaded gasoline.
This probably came because of the creation/rise of gangs, an organization dealing with things very similar to the Mafia.
The sale of drugs, perhaps?
It's also a possible consequence of Nixon's War on Drugs [2]
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp...
The statistical increase in crime rates that peaked then is largely well explained by the baby boom of the 1940s and 1950s and the widely-observed correlation between crime and the proportion of population that is adolescent to young adult males.
> 4) We are at one of the least violent and peaceful decades in US History
Which is also largely well explained by the same demographic effects.
Lead exposure through lead in gasoline also can explain some of both of these effects, as noted in other comments.
The impression I get is that the entire illicit drug trade vertically integrated to increase profits and localized the competition aspect between suppliers (killing each other) to a geographic location where law enforcement is less capable and easier to buy off.
Crime rates are based per 1000 so it is percentage based and not population based.
BUT the correlation young adult males makes senses. Right now we are starting the smallest proportion of young adult males that US has ever seen and it is going to keep getting smaller. I should dive into the percentage of young adult males and the crime rate and see what I come up with.
I changed my mind in seeing that young adult males percentage of population could be the answer to the mid 1960s to early 1990s crime bump?
Hmm... let me see. What related thing started in the early 70s? Yep, the "War on Drugs", started by Nixon.
The big theory for this is the widespread use of lead paint that was banned in the 70s.
[0] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
What about for illegal pornography?
I find that even those against prohibition support it for things they personally see as really really wrong. Even many of those who don't use drugs don't see pot as a major problem, only as something they don't want. And as such they don't support prohibition of it. But pick something that they do outright hate, and they will support prohibition regardless of how ineffective it may be.
Child porn cannot exist under these terms. Science has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that children cannot give informed consent and therefore cannot participate in the creation of pornography consensually. So to compare prohibition of alcohol, drugs, or prostitution to prohibition of child pornography doesn't hold up.
Take alcohol. Ideally it doesn't directly cause harm to another individual. Now remind me again how many people are killed by drunk drivers each year? Now, is this alcohols fault? Or is it the drunk driver's fault? Or is it both? Or some fourth option? Well we've now reached a point where 'harming other people' is quite a subjective standard when determining what is causing that harm and thus what can be prohibited.
>Science has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that children cannot give informed consent
Links?
Of the limited amount of science concerning informed consent that I've read (dealing with mentally disabled individuals ability to give informed consent), most teens would easily meet the standards set for a mentally disabled adult.
But we can avoid that whole moral quagmire by instead focusing on outlawed images that look like children but do not involve any children in their production (such as photorealistic CGI). Even when no one is harmed in making, would you still be for prohibition?
And swinging back round to prostitution, what about those who are financially coerced into it? Fully informed consent requires that one be both of age and not coerced. Thus someone who is financially coerced is incapable of consenting, which means that the parallels and comparisons made here do stick.
Finally, even if we say that the prohibition of A cannot be compared to prohibition of B, if the original point being made was that prohibition of anything fails, then it fails regardless if it is A or B being prohibited.
You will never get a reply to this point. I've read feminists and non-feminists assert this reality, as you have, for about a year now and never come across an honest engagement with it. One has to begin to suspect unwillingness over inability.
1. Financial coercion for sex isn't like financial coercion for labor (which needs to be accompanied by a reasonable argument as to why).
2. Financial coercion for sex is like financial coercion for labor, and they are both done without consent (admitting that most labor is a form of slavery, albeit it not as bad as what people generally think of).
3. Financial coercion for sex is like financial coercion for labor, and as such financial coercion for sex still allows consent, which then leads to the conclusion that coercion (of at least some forms) is not sufficient for stating consent cannot be given.
2 can outright ignored because almost anyone making that argument will never actually live by it and are merely using it as an escape. So either an argument for 1 or to admit the conclusion of 3.
Plenty of socialists seek fundamental reforms of the economic system to mitigate, to the extent possible, and to eliminate if possible, the economic coercion for labor generally, whether the labor involves sex or not, so I don't see how you can say that 2 is always just an escape when it comes to sex work. That position on labor in general is one of the major positions in economic politics in the world.
To bring up another hot topic to show a comparison (because I am more familiar making this point with the other topic), look at a group of pro-life people who call abortion murder, yet do not react the same as if it were. They do not treat those who participate in abortion as child murderers, they do not go through the same extremes that people go through to stop child murder, they do not even fully support rhetoric to treat it like murder (those who seek to outlaw abortions almost never support it being treated as murder with the same penalties, including the doctor being charged similar to a hitman and the mother similar to someone who paid a hitman for a hit). Look how they will treat individuals who had abortions but then changed their view to pro-life compared to how they treat those who have committed acts such as legally murdering a child (or things of near the same nature).
Yes, they say it is murder, but the vast majority do not actually act as if it is.
In the same way, those who say economic coercion is slavery do not act as if they were slaves.
To which one may respond by, for example, pointing out that clothes are general necessary for human life, while having sex is completely optional.
But such acknowledgements (that use of prostitutes without the possibility of rape is impossible, that sex is optional) would betray the sex-positivity line and the rewards that come with sticking to it.
"Financial coercion" inferred from material need isn't generally recognized as voiding consent in any other domain where consent is critical (e.g., marriage, contracts in general -- labor included, but not exclusively, etc.) If "financial coercion" were treated as a real form of coercion that voided consent, capitalism -- even in the moderated form seen in modern mixed economies -- would collapse entirely.
I support the Swedish model. The prostitute is not the criminal; the pimp and the john are. It has demonstrably reduced human trafficking and has helped many women and some men get out of prostitution.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/07/usa.gender
http://prostitutionresearch.com/2007/03/17/prostitution-and-...
I wonder if that would actually work.
Is it totally unheard of for drug use to be a responsible recreational activity? Is it fundamentally the case that drug use is irresponsible? Why?
In this case there is no john. Addiction is a mental illness, so the drug user is the victim just like the prostitute would be.
If it is okay to use a drug, it is okay to buy it. If it is okay to buy it, it is okay to sell it. If it is okay to sell it, it is okay to produce it. If it is okay to produce it, it is okay to acquire the raw materials and precursors (i.e. grow cannabis, grow mycelium, grow ergot, buy pseudoephedrine).
If there is a possible malicious use or purpose, you can only criminalize that chain as far back as the last link in an innocent use or purpose. If you criminalize methamphetamine, you cannot also criminalize pseudoephedrine, because it is still a decongestant cold remedy, which is an innocent purpose.
In my view, you cannot separate links from the web of commerce by outlawing an intermediate activity and pretend that the orphaned innocent activities are not affected by it.
I think those laws previously mentioned are thus aimed more at influencing policing activity. Left to their own devices, a cop would prefer to arrest a prostitute than 10 johns, and would prefer to arrest a pimp than 10 prostitutes, and would prefer to arrest an organized crime captain than 10 pimps, and would prefer to arrest a kingpin than 10 captains. Interrupting that walk to the root of the crime tree at the prostitute level forces them to fight the crime where it occurs rather than seize the money.
Addiction is considered a mental illness by the US government. If we outlaw consumption of drugs by an addict, we're throwing people in jail for having a mental illness. It doesn't matter where they got the drugs from, they're the victim. However, selling drugs is not an addiction. Growing drugs is not an addiction. They're crimes, because you're victimizing someone with a mental illness.
You're not criminalizing any necessary step in a chain of commerce that ends in a legal transaction because in this situation there is no legal transaction that lets you purchase illegal drugs.
If both buying and selling sex are legal, then it's a different story. But if buying is illegal but selling is legal, the prostitute is the victim. And if a drug dealer is offering something an addict cannot prevent themselves from buying due to their mental illness, the dealer is the criminal and the buyer is the victim.
Bear in mind, the point of not charging the prostitute with a crime is because they don't want to arrest someone who was forced into an illegal transaction, they want to arrest the people who are forcing others to commit crimes. If a carjacker puts a gun to your head and tells you to run a red light, you won't get a ticket. And if you're addicted to heroin, you don't really have a choice if you want to buy heroin or not. But the person who is providing you with that heroin doesn't have to sell it to you. That's why they're the criminal.
I have long since rejected the notion of the law having any say in what is or isn't consensual. If the law says that pi is 3 or that climate change isn't happening, would we give any weight to it? No, and not because the law happens to be wrong in this case, but because any educated person would reject what the law has to say concerning the reality of the situation. (Not to say the law can be ignored if one is looking to stay out of jail, but thankfully online arguments about reality aren't likely to get one jailed.)
>But if buying is illegal but selling is legal, the prostitute is the victim.
You define the victim based on what the law says? Once again, I reject the notion that what the law says has any bearing on reality.
>Bear in mind, the point of not charging the prostitute with a crime is because they don't want to arrest someone who was forced into an illegal transaction, they want to arrest the people who are forcing others to commit crimes.
If every prostitute can be considered forced, then so can every john. A john would only be seeing prostitute because a more socially acceptable hookup is not available, and in such they are forced into it in much the same way that a prostitute is forced into it because a more socially acceptable job is not available (BTW, I'm being sarcastic because I reject that whole argument).
>But the person who is providing you with that heroin doesn't have to sell it to you.
When you are in a gang and are told to go seel some crack, you don't tell the leader no if you favor your health and wellbeing.
The argument was made that prohibition is inherently ineffective.
Some people who make this argument may nonetheless support prohibition in some cases.
In fact, whether prohibition works or not is intrinsically tied to the general moral views of society at large. When over 1/3rd of the U.S. population has tried marijuana - including a former President - it's really no surprise that prohibition of marijuana is ineffective.
Prohibition is effective at controlling deviant behavior.
It's a strange thing. It works solely to punish behaviors that most people wouldn't engage in or don't approve of anyway anyway. Once society's stance changes on those behaviors, the punishment comes to be seen as unjust and the law as unnecessary.
I'm going to plead drugs (of the legal/prescribed nature) and sleep deprivation due to a recent illness. Reading back in a few of my post I think I was losing sight of my main point.
>Prohibition is effective at controlling deviant behavior.
Is it? Prohibition on Kinder Eggs seems to have worked because there isn't much of a market for them. But prohibition on prostitution has not worked, even though I don't think the majority would openly support it. Prohibition on things more generally agreed outright wrong doesn't work as long as there is a demand for them. Kinder Eggs have no demand, so prohibition in general worked. But things that have a demand that cannot easily be fulfilled by other goods/services seem unable to effectively be prohibited.
"Illegal pornography" is too general a term for this type of discussion. Sodomy is still illegal in many places throughout the world, including fourteen states in the US as of April of last year, but is something that can be a very enjoyable experience for everyone involved. If the "illegal" pornography involves individuals who are capable of making a conscious choice about the acts they engage in, then yes, it should be legal. If the "illegal" pornography involves coercion and/or rape of anyone, or animal, involved, then no, it should remain illegal.
Ignoring for the moment that I can kill and eat an animal for my own pleasure... we aren't focusing on if it should be prohibited, but if prohibition of it would work.
People will say that prohibition of drugs is stupid because prohibition fails. I'm interested in if this argument, not the argument that drugs shouldn't be prohibited for any other reasons, holds up.
Illegal porn, at least of the digital variety, is easier to produce and trivial to copy compared to drugs. If prohibition of drugs is doomed to failure irrelevant of one's stance on their morality, then should not the same be true of illegal porn?
As for what I mean by illegal porn, pick whatever you think should be made illegal for whatever moral reasons you want. If you want to ban midgets because Shiva told you so; it doesn't much matter why because my point is talking about the argument that prohibition inherently fails regardless of the moral judgments upon what is being prohibited.
Here's the same hypothetical that you're proposing from another angle: "If banning whistleblowing is doomed to failure irrelevant of one's stance on its morality, then should not the same be true of war crimes?"
They can be compared for the purpose of the argument. The argument that 'prohibition doesn't work' does not place any conditions as to what it can be applied to.
>"If banning whistleblowing is doomed to failure irrelevant of one's stance on its morality, then should not the same be true of war crimes?"
If the properties of whistleblowing that dooms to failure the ban on it are also found in war crimes, and if war crimes does not possess properties that are lacking from whistleblowing that would counteract those properties they both share, then banning war crimes is doomed to failure.
Why does banning drugs fail? Because there is a demand that will not go away and thus the potential for money to be made and there are those who are willing to do anything to make that money. Notice that the moral considerations of drugs do not factor into this.
>and have no victim aside from the users themselves.
Maybe for a college student smoking pot this is the case. There are plenty of third party victims to many other drugs, even some of the legal ones (take alcohol which factors into drunk driving injuries and sexual assaults). Also consider pregnant women who give birth to babies that are born addicted to drugs.
I'm all in favor of prohibiting theft, murder, etc., but drugs are a little ludicrous. It's obviously unenforceable, and a government will bankrupt itself trying.
To me, it seems that prohibition has some complex equation to determine if it will or will not fail. This becomes even more complicate when you consider the option to prohibit with only fines, at which point it is nearing becoming a sin tax instead.
I don't think it's fair to compare child porn, which is almost universally considered immoral, to drug use or prostitution, which is a very grey area of morality.
But beyond all that, the morals of the issue change over time and do not factor into an argument of feasibility (even things that are 'almost universally immoral' have a very large market, one large enough that it makes me question the 'almost universal' part of the sentiment).
The first is purely voluntary [e.g. both parties desire to engage in the transaction without coercion] while the second is generally due to coercion of some kind. Addiction isn't "coercion" in this sense when you are the one that voluntary took the substance with knowledge of the risks in the first place.
The only truly "illegal" [as in widely agreed upon across many countries] prostitution and pornography is that of children so I assume that is what you were getting at.
I don't think many people here are really in favor of criminalization of any transaction between consenting adults [as long as no coercion is involved].
Is there that big of a difference between prohibition of drugs and prohibition of prostitution?
Also, where does prohibition of a substance produced by an activity that exploits human beings fall?
>Addiction isn't "coercion" in this sense when you are the one that voluntary took the substance with knowledge of the risks in the first place.
I wonder how many of those addicted fully understood the risks? Especially if they first became addicted while underage and thus unable to partake voluntarily.
As to what type of prostitution I'm talking about, I'm including adults because there are many places it is still illegal.
>as long as no coercion is involved
What counts as coercion? Does "If I don't have sex with this John, my children won't eat tonight" count? (Of course, one may also ask the same for other jobs; is "If I don't produce garments for the next 12 hours, my children won't eat tonight," slavery?)
I think this is often overlooked in definitions of a freedom and liberty; "the freedom to starve" is a pretty low bar for freedom. How can we structure a civilization that we're free from coercive choices like "take the only available, shitty, demeaning job left, or starve to death"?
If your company grows large enough, the people most worried about starvation can literally work for food, using industrial capital rather than subsistence tools.
That's probably as close as one person can get to "structuring civilization" without spending at least $10M on politics, lobbying, and capital investment.
Providing for the welfare of people is a separate topic that isn't "solved" by banning prostitution. It is solved by rational welfare policies that guarantee a basic level of subsistence that no one is forced to make that decision in the first place.
Otherwise, once again, you can replace "prostitution" with "any job people don't like".
It isn't inherent to the substance that people were exploited. Labor laws cover that. You are using arguments that equally apply to sweatshops. No one goes around arguing we have to prohibit shoes because of sweat shops.
> I wonder how many of those addicted fully understood the risks?
If they are an adult and didn't understand the risks beforehand, that is on them. For the most part, you can't really protect adults from their own choices. It isn't practical [or frankly] possible. They just become criminals as prohibition has shown. Criminals who only break the law in regards to themselves are going to do it anyway. You can't magically protect people from risk when its clear people will do it regardless of the legality.
Its commonly understood addictive substances are risky. We aren't talking about some guy in China sneaking a harmful substance into baby formula.
> Of course, one may also ask the same for other jobs; is "If I don't produce garments for the next 12 hours, my children won't eat tonight," slavery?
That is kind of my point. Situations like you describe are solved best by other solutions. [e.g. Welfare so people aren't that level of desperate]
But shoes from sweatshops, I know many who say we should prohibit those.
>If they are an adult and didn't understand the risks beforehand, that is on them.
What does turn 18 (or what ever age you set adulthood to) magically remove the need of informed consent?
>Its commonly understood addictive substances are risky.
At least in the US, growing up the risks of drugs were vastly blown out of proportion (as was the risks of premarital sex). If those who told you that K was dangerous cried wolf on A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J, why would you believe them about K?
But once again, you are outlawing the labor practices of sweatshops. It is not inherent to a substance prohibition and is a different class of law.
Once a good is produced, the harm to the labor is already done. Banning things "after the fact" is pointless. By the time you've identified a "sweat shop" to "ban the shoes" you can already take appropriate actions against the fact it is a sweat shop, y'know?
You just keep trying to somehow link problems that are already solved in other ways that are as least as effective [if not more so] with the good itself. That isn't how it works. You aren't magically going to have the power to identify "Shoe X" as from a sweatshop without also recognizing the fact that "Shoe X" was produced by "Group Y" which is a sweatshop.
You punish the sweatshop, not the person in possession of a given good.
> What does turn 18 (or what ever age you set adulthood to) magically remove the need of informed consent?
Informed consent is the adorable assumption that information is always going to be equal. It isn't. We hold people to legal contracts they failed to consult a lawyer on all the time. How is that any different?
You are an adult. You have to take responsibility and do your own research and/or decide which sources of information you trust.
You cannot somehow magically force adults to be responsible members of the population. You can only say "Hey, we aren't going to fuck you over and we will provide tons of free research about whether or not X is good or bad for you via institutions like the NIH and CDC."
> At least in the US, growing up the risks of drugs were vastly blown out of proportion (as was the risks of premarital sex). If those who told you that K was dangerous cried wolf on A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J, why would you believe them about K?
Once again, how is that different than literally any other behavior that contains risk? You are aware the same could be applied to a wide array of medication you are prescribed, the tobacco people still smoke, etc?
There isn't some magical solution to the fact human beings have agendas. You can only write laws requiring research into these things, to make the information publicly available for free, and so forth. You can't somehow outlaw personal agendas that cause certain groups of people to behave irrationally in a democratic system.
-------
Look, if you have an actual solution to the fact human beings have agendas [and can express those agendas via voting for people that will cater to their desire for an overblown reaction to Moral Risk X], by all means provide it. However, literally no human being of significant intellectual prowess has ever succeeded in the endeavor in the real world. This should tell you that you are either the founder of a new political movement that will solve a fundamental problem with democracy....or that you are simply wrong.
You have to let people think for themselves and have faith they realize they need to learn things on their own.
None of the problems you've stated with my position can actually be "solved" in a reasonable manner because the freedom for adults to make stupid choices [due to ignorance or otherwise] is a fundamental right they have [even if you think they shouldn't have it].
Sometimes you only have jurisdiction over the point of sales.
>You punish the sweatshop, not the person in possession of a given good.
If you cannot punish the sweatshop because they are not under your jurisdiction, then the only thing you can do to discourage profit from flowing to the sweatshop is to punish those who benefit from it's product.
>We hold people to legal contracts they failed to consult a lawyer on all the time.
Considering many are too poor to afford a lawyer... I don't see it as a major difference. I actually see the contract law in much of the modern day world as allowing for the exploitation of the lower class and less informed.
>You are an adult. You have to take responsibility and do your own research and/or decide which sources of information you trust.
Once again, why can't we just say 'you are a person, you have the...'? What is magical about being an adult that suddenly makes taking advantage of someones lack of resources and information acceptable (if not admirable)?
>None of the problems you've stated with my position can actually be "solved" in a reasonable manner because the freedom for adults to make stupid choices [due to ignorance or otherwise] is a fundamental right they have [even if you think they shouldn't have it].
What if I think that freedom should happen at 13 instead of 18? Or 23 instead of 18? Or when you can past this comprehensive test instead of 18?
We are talking about domestic law. Once again, you go from "apples" to "oranges".
The fact you can't stay in the context of domestic law causes me to say f it, honestly.
What is the argument you are attempting to make? Let's start there and see where we can go, yes?
Except it doesn't, so stop making statements to try to sideline the actual argument.
>What is the argument you are attempting to make?
That people who say they do not support prohibition because it doesn't work are being dishonest about their reasoning because in reality they do support prohibition of some materials/goods/services/items/ect. even when such prohibition doesn't work.
My second and lesser point is that people determine their support of prohibiting something based on both an effectiveness and their subjective moral feelings about the subject being prohibited.
As far as I'm concerned, that is exactly what you are doing which is why I dropped this. The only difference is, I picked a different way to say it.
I actually didn't reply to your other comment because you basically said your arguments fail as soon as goods start crossing borders. Considering that for almost everything having been discussed (goods made by slaves, goods made by abusing non-consenting individuals, and most definitely drugs) involves crossing borders. The original article is even about a substance that is crossing legal borders.
>As far as I'm concerned, that is exactly what you are doing which is why I dropped this. The only difference is, I picked a different way to say it.
It is pretty clear your arguments fail as soon as goods crossing borders were taken into account. As such, your arguments have no place in discussing prohibition in reality except for services that don't cross borders at all.
Not having them become drug users in the first place would be even better. Let's not forget that a lot of drugs really are seriously harmful
Criminalizing drug use is fucking stupid, sure, but I also really don't want to have big companies spend big advertising budgets on making people addicts.
And a lot of the ones that hurt lots of people now, predominantly harm people due to effects of the criminalisation. Even heroin is a quite safe drug (comparable to other opioids, which does not in any way make it harmless, but also not nearly as nasty as it's often portrayed) - to the extent that it's prescribed for post-op pain in .e.g the UK (under the name diamorphine).
It becomes the horrible nasty mess that people overdose on when you incentivise criminals to cut it with anything from other drugs to brick dust and sell it at all kinds of unpredictable doses because their customers have no recourse.
Give people predictable doses of clean heroin, and it's not much different than having people stay on prescription drugs like Vicodin. In fact, one of the most common gateways to heroin abuse is a dependency on prescription drugs like Vicodin - once the prescriptions are terminated people often turns to the black market due to dependencies, and gradually get nudged over to heroin because it is far cheaper.
I'm not saying we should have ads for heroin or let grocery stores sell it, but the criminalisation even of these drugs do massive amount of harm and we owe it to the people harmed to actually seriously consider whether the criminalisation is even moral.
Your concern of advertising budgets is easily prevented by outlawing advertising. Whenever I visit the US, I'm shocked at the amount of drug advertising on TV for example, as in Europe both drugs (prescription or otherwise) and alcohol advertising is strictly regulated or outright banned in a range of countries.
Likewise many European countries regulate sale of e.g. liquor heavily, including with government sales monopolies with stricter sales policies in a few countries.
The last figure that I read was that 85% of the DEA's budget was spent fighting marijuana.
If it were legalized, overnight, that would mean that the amount of money available to go after cocaine, heroin, crystal meth and prescription opiate trafficking would be increased by about 566%.
The government is facing a huge lawsuit though.
That being said, drugs, including more dangerous drugs, are already very much part of our culture and glorified everywhere from music to movies. De-criminalizing them is the obvious course of path for harm-reduction and diminishing the influence of organized crime.
But I agree, drug use should be legalized but of course advertising for them (ANY kind of advertising) should be forbidden: note that this is problematic as many movie could be considered as a kind of advertising for alcohol, cigarettes, etc.
Add prohibiting taxes. With the added taxes, direct a large portion to projects which is intended to prevent new users and educate the population.
Ban the use in public areas. Make it social unacceptable behavior and shunned during day light.
Create regulations and complex bureaucracy for those who want to sell the product. Create state controlled monopolies if possible, which then can advertise against purchases.
For tobacco, you can have warning labels that covers most or the whole package.
(Examples are taken from Sweden).
[0] http://www.healio.com/hematology-oncology/news/print/hemonc-...
I don't want that either, but what I would really like is if we could find a way to encourage our massive pharmacological sector, in the private and public spheres, to research and produce less harmful recreational drugs.
The problem we'd have if we just de-regulated to encourage this is that there would be a market incentive to produce things that are more addictive.
Some of the most dangerous drugs (alcohol, benzos, opiates) are already heavily abused by people addicted to heavily, heavily marketed drugs.
For the drug user and possibly society, not better for the Law Enforcement, Prison Guard and private corporations who run them though.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/06/23/251363/cca-geogr...
http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/22/4-industries-getting-r...
A more viable solution would be to license hard drugs to pharmacists, and notify health department and non-profits so that they can help users.
I agree that it's an error to criminalize them, but you should also discourage people to use hard drugs like heroin and meth. Putting a frame around the use of drugs is a good idea, but it's also important for public health to not send a mixed message.
Obsoleting the dealer is one thing, but don't forget the users.
"[In 2012] the annual average taxpayer cost in these states was $31,286 per inmate."
If you start treating people you need less law enforcement and you get less inmates. And then you haven't even considered the less obvious damage that drug related convictions cause, like not being able to find a job and relying on welfare. Children of convicted drug abusers growing up in a bad environment and being more vulnerable to addiction and crime.
Most arguments against decriminalization are extremely short sighted, just look at the positive effect it's having in Portugal. Drug use might not be severely affected, but the surrounding factors are slowly improving: http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/drug-decriminalisation-portugal-...
Daily maintenance doses of heroin for a typical addict costs less than $20 (we know, because medical grade heroin is in use in a number of countries for post-op pain). Compare that to the cost of policing, or incarcerating these users, and health care costs that are massively exacerbated by impurities and unknown dose strengths, and offering free prescriptions for pure versions of many drugs would likely save us massive amounts of money.
Especially when indirect crimes (e.g. robberies to finance drug habits) are taken into account, as well as reduced tax revenues (from drug addicts that are unable to function in work places due to the current system).
Getting people to stop using would be preferable, but it is not realistic to get most people to even start to deal with until they're not hounded by police and spending most of their time struggling to scrounge up the money for their next hit. I'd be willing to bet that even in purely economic terms, handing free drugs to most drug addicts in clean forms and predictable doses would likely have a massive ROI for society even in purely economic terms because of the reduced damage - both to users health and due to crime - and increased tax revenue from actually getting many of these addicts back to relatively normal lives (even most heroin addicts can function relatively normally when they don't have to worry about where their next hit is going to come from).
In human terms, the suffering that is directly caused by criminalisation of many of these drugs today is downright disgusting - we'd be hard pressed to come up with anything worse (unless we allow unregulated marketing and sales to children or something).
The problem isn't that these substances aren't available. It's more of a problem of who they're available to. If you're wealthy and informed, you can probably shop doctors or get prescribed a strong pain killer and even have insurance to pay for it. The less fortunate have to risk their lives to get the same kick with an inferior and less controlled product.
Not to mention one of the main points of approaching this whole situation differently is that treating users and decimalization may actually save money overall.
Many ethical issues have to be solved first. Several hard drugs, for example heroin, methamphetamines and crack, are almost impossible to use without "abuse". So you have companies selling this stuff to people so they can harm themselves. It will be tough to make these sales a better ethical choice than banning these drugs.
http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/drug-decriminalisation-portugal-...
There's still a black market for selling drugs, but drug users can't face jail time and have a much easier time getting help for addiction
A minor problem, all in all, considering what has changed here regarding decriminalization, but thought I'd share.
I'm not saying that full legalisation of anything and everything would necessarily be better, but...
The portuguese experiment has been a huge success in terms of harm reduction, but probably less so in terms of discouraging or removing criminal activity.
- Prison-industry
- Militarization of Police
- Pharmaceutical industry
- and Marijuana prohibition
I highly recommend this flick. It is exceptionally well made in artistic as well as subject-specific regards.
Also watch-worthy are "How to Make Money Selling Drugs" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276962/) which features a similar approach to the subject and "Narco Cultura" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2504022/) if you are interested in how this drug-crap even detrimentally influences what's left of Mexican culture.
[0] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125653/ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_house_i_live_in/
More states are pushing the same agenda, if the federal government doesn't object, why would there be a conversation?
Maybe you are overestimating how many people make this effort. For the most part, when you say "solved" most people will take that to mean "my side won" and when your side is for the criminalization of drugs a priori then if screeching and shouting and thinking about kids are what is necessary to get the job done, then that's what will happen. Most people don't do this on purpose, rather the thought never occurs to them to examine why they support a thing, i.e. what their goals are, and whether the measures they endorse to further these alleged goals actually do anything to accomplish them.
Why do people support criminalization of drugs? Do they just think that drugs are really bad and that people shouldn't use them no matter what? Putting aside for a moment whether this belief is justified, does the current regime even manage to reduce drug use? Maybe they just think that drug users are bad people and need to be punished, but I wonder what such people think of enriching drug cartels, which the policies they support tend to do. Then there is the harm reduction cohort, which is the one that I think has finally come around to the fact that criminalization isn't accomplishing that goal, and is why we are starting to see legalization after the destruction of millions of lives.
Some, of course had turned their coats already at the time of repeal. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_State... )
Yes, but correlation does not imply causation, which might be the other way round: counties have decided to be dry because they have recognized they have alcohol problems.
(You can have the same debate about gun control, etc.)
But the causation may also be that being "dry" actually incites people to use alcohol. I'm in the North of Europe, a country where availability of alcohol is restricted (strong liquor only in state monopoly stores, beer sold only at specific hours and not to minors and not to those already under influence), and the drinking culture is traditionally binge-drinking. People take ferry trips to buy loads of cheap alcohol from the neighbours. They buy enough to last two months, and then they drink it in two weeks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monmouth,_Oregon
My recollection is that there were accidents outside of town because students would drive somewhere else to drink and then drive back.
For example, the murder rate in prison seems to be actually lower than outside. There's also less risk of dying in a car accident, etc.
Before you get outraged, note that I'm only talking about health effects, not happiness or achievement.
With criminalisation we see drives to stronger forms of the drug (EG: bootleggers were mostly not selling beer, but spirits). Decriminalisation and legalisation would allow people to grow and actively market weaker forms of the drug.
Criminalisation pushes people towards unhealthier forms of drug taking because it's legally tricky to provide harm reduction information or harm reduction devices. Most people smoke cannabis; and most people mix it with tobacco. That's a pretty unhealthy way to take it. Legally being allowed to sell vaporisers would help.
I get confused about what is or isn't "drug paraphernalia" and whether it's legal or not.
Might end up with a few less killed violently. Might end up with more money to spend on social programs instead of militarised police. Might end up with much more tax from economic activity brought out of the black market. Might end up with less contaminated produce.
All of these could end up being better for the health of American citizens.
And even if not you're bringing your problems in-house rather than shipping them off to poorer places and causing suffering there.
Both of these can be solved by legalizing and regulating recreational drugs.
If you want to empower the thugs and the terrorists and the human traffickers, make as many things illegal as you can.
Like many, many things, this should be handled locally. People should be able to the drugs they want as long a neighborhood or city wishes to profit from it and deal with the costs. And others should be able to live without drug use in their neighborhoods.
Funded by one of the co-founders of Bebo, a social network.
http://world.time.com/2014/01/14/dea-boosted-mexican-drug-ca...
edit: Some people seem pretty tetchy about this...
"A key problem is that cartels have diversified to a portfolio of other crimes, from sex trafficking to stealing crude oil from Mexican pipelines. They also make billions smuggling hard drugs. Seizures of both heroin and crystal meth on the U.S.-Mexico border have gone up as those of marijuana have sunk..."
EDIT: The title sounds like it is impacting overall drug traffic, as opposed to simply a shift in the type of traffic.
Kidnapping people, Organ trafficking, etc ...
Most of the articles I've read, talk about how marijuana is effectively a third or fourth tier product to them. Sure they bring a lot of it in, but it's not a huge money maker like other drugs are. This isn't hardly going to put a dent in their operations. When you have an organization generating BILLIONS of dollars, a few million here or there isn't going to affect them very much.
"Across the U.S., heroin abuse among first-time users has increased by nearly 60 percent in the last decade, from about 90,000 to 156,000 new users a year, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)."
source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2014/01/14/why-is-h...
"Emergency room visits related to MDMA -- known as Ecstasy in pill form and Molly in the newer powder form -- increased 128 percent between 2005 and 2011 among people younger than 21. Visits rose from about roughly 4,500 to more than 10,000 during that time, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration."
source: http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20131203/ecstasy-use-on-...
"A report by the National Drug Intelligence Center released last August, “National Drug Threat Assessment 2011,” stated methamphetamine use was increasing, especially among the young. The report attributed the rise to Mexican drug cartels that control smuggling routes across the Southwestern border, which can produce, transport and distribute the drug. "
source: http://www.drugfree.org/join-together/methamphetamine-use-ap...
More sweeping measures, including federal decriminalization and the passage of recreational use in the American Southwest, would probably sink the black market altogether. Let's see if republicans get the message or if they'll continue to cover their ears and eyes.
An HN post could lead them to your front door, and then parallel construction could cover the trail.
Actually, let's have Samaritan from Person of Interest explain how it works: http://imgur.com/a/yaLPk.
(This is the best infographic I ever saw on the topic.)
So that's $350 per capita on average. That's a lot higher that I expected.
>The Organization of American States estimated that the revenue for cocaine sales in the U.S. was $34 billion in 2013. The Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates that $100 billion worth of illegal drugs were sold in the U.S. in 2013
34 sounds more realistic to me
It's not an unreasonable guess.
The numbers are hard to get right. Here's something about different statistical methods that end up with very different numbers (about 650,000 people who used heroin in a year vs about 1.5 million people; about 60,000 people who use heroin nearly daily vs neary a million people who used heroin nearly daily.)
> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2014/03/10/how-many-...
$100 billion is the ONDCP illegal drugs estimate.
You'd sort of expect the total value of illegal drugs sold in the US to be greater than the total value of cocaine sold in the US, since there are other illegal drugs besides cocaine.
well done to those bits of the US for being progressive and intelligent instead of reactionary and ignorant. i'm glad its paying off. :)