Ending The Drug War?

[BamaLefty]

Repealing drug laws would stop the war immediately. Make drugs legal, under control of Drs., and let the takers kill themselves if they are determined.

We would save
-prison space and employees
-narc squads throughout the US
-court time
-control outside the US (as if we have some)
-crime and its terrible results.
-etc.

foes on and on amounting to many billions of $ per year which could be turned partway on curing, we could just bury the ones who won't stop. Just my opinion though.

[Psephos]

1. The fly in the ointment...

...is that drug addicts usually suffer last, only after those who are dependent upon them, or those who love them, are damaged or destroyed. So when we let drug addicts kill themselves, we condemn a lot of other, nondrug-taking people to serious quantities of misery.

I agree with you wholeheartedly that the WOD is senseless, but for some drugs such as cocaine (and especially its derivative, crack) and crystal meth, the addictive potential is so high that as many as one in eight or ten who try them immediately become abusers and shortly thereafter become virtual zombies concerned only with finding the next high.

Read a book like The Corner for a sense of what happens to those caught up in crack. If legalizing these drugs could alleviate some of that misery, I'd be for it, but I'm skeptical. Is there some evidence (as opposed to theories) that might be true?

There seem to be no simple answers to the scourge of hard drug abuse.

Peace.

[Dances with Cats]

5. Who is the author

of The Corner? Thanks.

[Psephos]

13. My pleasure

The Corner : A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, by David Simon, Edward Burns

Simon is a professional writer, and Burns is a former Baltimore cop. They spent more than a year researching The Corner by integrating themselves into a Baltimore drug hood. This book doesn't stereotype or judge its subjects; it lets us get inside them, and understand them. Very powerful and insightful - likely to cause a reader to discard many theories about what life in the urban drug culture is like.

I believe an HBO miniseries was developed from this book, too, although I didn't see it.

Peace.

[punpirate]

10. Jailing people for possession...

... causes a great deal more hardship, in general. Treatment costs a great deal less, and jail rarely actually solves the problem without creating more (seen the long-term recidivism rate?).

Eliminating criminal penalties shouldn't mean that other institutions devoted to treatment go away, too.

And here's a nasty truth: even with the laws on the books, a fairly steady percentage of the population continues to use (and abuse) drugs. My own feeling is that it's partly genetic--dependency is part of some personalities. Another part of the problem is certainly economic (a very high percentage of meth addictions are rural and semi-rural and result from the desire to make extra money--most of the people being caught are also small manufacturers).

One thing for sure, though--a lot of this is about money, not the alleviation of societal discord or simply preserving lives. The last estimate I read for the amount spent on drug enforcement--DEA, military, state and local--was $30 billion a year. Thanks to the property seizure laws (which in themselves have become draconian), most state and local law enforcement groups now depend upon property seizure, principally in drug cases, to augment their budgets. Drug smuggling continues to be a major crime because of the amount of money to be made--and that money is directly related to the level of enforcement--drug dealing is one of the purest examples of Keynesian supply and demand economics to be found today. Beyond that, there are plenty of strong suggestions that the underground economy of drugs pumps a lot of money into the economy, and that, indeed, some large banks would be in big trouble without the ancillary flow of laundered drug dollars going through them.

Then consider the degree to which civil rights have been infringed upon because of government escalations in the drug war....

Somehow, I think the damage being caused by enforcement is far greater than would result from an emphasis on treatment (and, yes, there's no reason not to believe that a system of mandatory court-ordered treatment couldn't be substituted--we already have, in virtually every state, a child & protective services agency to intervene in cases where family is involved). What prevents us from backing down from the war on drugs are some very authoritarian notions in society which support government in efforts which have, by almost any measure, failed to accomplish the stated end--eradicating drug use.

Cheers.

[Psephos]

17. I couldn't agree more: jailing people for possession is madness

I see no reason why not to decriminalize possession, or perhaps, make it a civil infraction, to retain some incentive not to use. But we must shift away from the punitive response. It doesn't work, and jailing users causes huge disruptions not only to the incarcerated, but also to their families. Furthermore, jail decimates what remains of the user's life-skills, and instead exposes the jailed user to a bunch of criminals who teach him/her how to be a criminal after release.

OTOH, for hard drugs, I think criminal penalties should remain for selling and distributing. Hit those people hard. They care not a whit about wrecking people's lives to make some cash.

I found your post thoughtful and reasonable.

Peace.

[punpirate]

21. My question would be...

... about criminal penalties for selling. If decriminalized, one ruins the inherent scarcity (and, therefore, the profit motive) created by attempted enforcement. One also reduces the crime associated with that high cost (due to artificial scarcity promoted by enforcement) of maintaining one's habit.

I don't think you can have one without the other. If we decriminalize possession, how, logically, does selling a decriminalized substance remain a crime? Let's back up for moment and consider life as it was prior to January, 1934 (the date that federal enforcement started (and, isn't it curious that the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was created just months after the repeal of prohibition?; the FBI's claim to fame in those days was fighting organized crime created by prohibition--you can see Hoover's greasy little hands in that decision in myriad ways)). Before that time, in most states, even little old ladies could go to any drug store and buy laudanum over the counter for their aches and pains. Small doses of cocaine were typically purchased to aid digestion. So, then, simple selling wasn't a crime until Hoover decided it should be. There was no strong societal bias against drugs then that are now considered "hard," per se. There certainly must have been cases of abuse even then, but they were likely handled medically.

If one wishes to dismantle a system which creates more problems than it solves, one has to go to the root of the problem, to address causes rather than symptoms. The principal cause of our current problems regarding drugs is the artificial scarcity created by an enforcement regimen which was manufactured for purposes other than solving a problem in society (namely, perpetuating and increasing the funding for an agency which had just lost, in the eyes of its progenitor, its principal reason for being).

The other cause is inherently racist in nature. It was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics which encouraged, for example, the use of the term "marijuana" to describe cannabis, because using a corrupted Spanish term for the drug associated it with Mexican immigrants, who were ubiquitous throughout the south and west. Before that time it was known by many other names and nicknames, and principally by its most commonly associated name, hemp. It was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and later, the FBI, which did its best (despite prior evidence) to propagandize the public into believing that drug users were elements of the fringes of society--the lazy, the unproductive, the socially and sexually deviant, the politically dissident and, particularly, black.

The results of that are still with us.

Cheers.

[waiting for hope]

19. As someone who has a loved

one who for the last ten years has kept his addiction at bay - I concur. The only problem is that not all treatment programs that are available truly help - my loved one ended up going to a therapist after a year with NA because we knew that there was a deeper underlining trigger that he needed to figure out and recognize. I saw a lot of good with programs like NA but alas, there was a lot of sliding too - and yes, it is mainly a genetic problem - grandfather was an alcoholic and all six siblings have an addiction, one sadly died from alcoholism.

[Mairead]

23. The secret is to decouple the fate of the secondary victims

from the situation of the drug user. Make sure that people committing suicide-by-drug can't take anyone else with them as they circle the drain. Provide the users immediate succor if they can pull themselves together enough to ask for help, but make sure those close to them can avoid being sucked down if not.

Today, in our vicious 'personal responsibility' world, we really only allow personal responsibility of the worst kind. People aren't allowed to take personal responsibility for drug experimentation within a supportive social environment, so the outcome tends to be terrible for everyone, just as forcing drug dealers to settle business disputes with guns is guaranteed to be worse for everyone than if they could do it with lawyers in court.

[Seedersandleechers]

2. Definitely not a bad idea, so if all drugs are legal without an RX

Profits would skyrocket for the company that makes them.

[Warpy]

18. Some drugs need to be monitored closely

like heart drugs, blood thinners, diabetes medications. Some drugs are dangerous, like the antibiotics people eat like after dinner mints to the point that bacteria are becoming resistant.

Schedule 1 drugs should simply be legal. The money we waste on jailing people and interfering with peasants in other countries would pay for gold plated rehab facilities for the few who would get into trouble.

I tried everything in the 60s and was unimpressed with most of it. I have friends and relatives who did the same thing with the same reaction. I'm convinced it's all brain chemistry and that being punitive does absolutely no good.

[punpirate]

3. Remember who started the war on drugs...

... Nixon. He was looking for ways to keep tabs on other countries as much as anything.

For decades, studies have found treatment far less expensive than enforcement. In this country, we've tended, ever since Prohibition was repealed, to take an authoritarian stance on the issue (Harry J. Anslinger, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was greatly supported in his career by the prohibitionists).

Had we not seen the beginnings of authoritarian government from Nixon's time onward, we might be where Canada is now (I doubt we'd ever get to where Holland is at the moment). But, even in the Carter years, public opinion had been shaped about drugs for forty years, so there was a tremendous outcry from the authoritarians about Carter's suggestion that he'd be amenable to decriminalizing grass.

It's going to take a long time to undo seventy years of propaganda, and a sea change in public attitude about the nature of victimless crime vs. public authority.

Cheers.

[Dances with Cats]

6. Anslinger

was the biggest villain.

[ProudDad]

25. One of them

He was the force that put Marijuana on the list in '27. Back then it was a Racial thing...Native-Americans and Black people were the major users and were an easy target for this bullshit wedge issue.

Before that, it was the "moralists", Comstockery and the nascent Physicians trying to get control of the medical profesion. These were the people who brought us anti-abortion and anti-contraception laws in the late 1880's through 1900.

(http://womenshistory.about.com/od/abortionuslegal/a/abortion.htm)

To digress: It's amazing that Scalia calls himself a "strict constructionist" -- to follow the Constitution as written -- and there were NO laws against contraception or abortion at the time of the "Founders"

As for "addicts" going nuts if drugs were de-criminalized, I've a GREAT deal of experience with alcoholics and addicts in support groups. The main common denominator between all is a feeling of insecurity (probably injected in childhood) and a low self-worth. These neurosis CAN'T be fixed by the intolerant f*cking "criminal" injustice system!

By decriminalizing drugs and using some of the VAST SUMS of money that would free up that's being pissed away on the phony drug war we could create outreach and effective, secular treatment programs. This would make a REAL difference in handling the "drug problem", which is actually a social, public health problem NOT A LEGAL ONE!

Ah, but it wins votes for the repukes and conservative dems so rationality will NOT triumph over ignorance any time soon.

[MADem]

4. Free up that prison space for POLITICAL prisoners!!!!!!

In BushCo World, anyhow...........

[Pushed To The Left]

7. Makes sense to me!

I have never been a fan of American drug policy. I think that drug abuse should be treated as a health issue, not a legal one.

www.aclu.org
www.drcnet.org
www.mpp.org
www.drugpolicyalliance.com

[Dances with Cats]

8. Prothro

great photo of "The Catch"
Bama Class of '82

[YoungDemocrat]

9. I disagree

I support the legalization of marajuana but not that of other drugs. In every other place where drugs have been made legal such as China and Amsterdam, the consequences have ranged from bad to very bad. Crime rates actually increase (I know, counter-intuitive), it still costs society money and then you have the problem of everyone being high all the time.

[msongs]

11. EVERYONE bein high ALL the time? 6 billion people?

my that is a lot of drugs :-)

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[YoungDemocrat]

12. Ha ha ha

Laugh if you like, but if drugs are legalized, addiction rates would skyrocket.

[Dances with Cats]

15. As for you

I respect your opinion, but respectfully disagree. I wish I could name the author but there is a GREAT book called Drug Crazy that examines all the issues of legalization and the results don't supposrt your argument. One thing is for sure, even if addiction did go up, crime would come down. Of course, so would the economies of Colombia and Peru!

[ms liberty]

20. author of Drug Crazy: Mike Gray - excellent book!

Also see Smoke & Mirrors by Dan Baum

[ProudDad]

27. They DIDN'T in the Netherlands...

Why should they here?

[Dances with Cats]

14. Sounds like a

Widespread Panic show!

[ProudDad]

26. You are seriously mistaken

at least about the Netherlands. I've been there and in Amsterdam, the major police problem is bicycle theft. They DON'T HAVE anything like the drug problem we have here.

Dysfunctional people created by dysfunctional parents and a dysfunctional consumerist society will continue to cost society money -- whether drugs are decriminalized or not.

[Warpy]

16. We'd have a more civil society

if people were allowed to treat their own goddamned pain.

[Tsiyu]

22. And if multi-dimensional tactics were used to monitor

"abuse."

I see a shitload of people abusing alcohol. Alcohol is perfectly legal for adults to buy and consume in America. (Are most Americans drunk all of the time?)

But the courts and the physicians and the shrinks all have their own version of how to handle alcohol abuse. One says punish, the next says throw a drug at it, the next says look for an underlying cause.

The three Stooges don't work as a team.

Go and make alcohol COMPLETELY illegal and see what kind of a mess you get out of those three.

That's the mess we have with the "War on Certain Drugs."

[eridani]

24. We would lose a lot, too

The War on Some Drugs keeps the unemployment rate way down (and in a jolly punitive way, not like those Euros with their social support programs) and the profits from the sale of illegal drugs way up.