Abstinence-Only Drug Policies Fail. Time to Legalize.

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2007-12-21 01:18am

It's Time to Legalize Drugs
By Ethan Nadelmann, Foreign Policy
Posted on December 20, 2007, Printed on December 20, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/71033/

Prohibition has failed -- again. Instead of treating the demand for illegal drugs as a market, and addicts as patients, policymakers the world over have boosted the profits of drug lords and fostered narcostates that would frighten Al Capone. Finally, a smarter drug control regime that values reality over rhetoric is rising to replace the "war" on drugs.

"The Global War on Drugs can Be Won"

No, it can't. A "drug-free world," which the United Nations describes as a realistic goal, is no more attainable than an "alcohol-free world" -- and no one has talked about that with a straight face since the repeal of Prohibition in the United States in 1933. Yet futile rhetoric about winning a "war on drugs" persists, despite mountains of evidence documenting its moral and ideological bankruptcy. When the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on drugs convened in 1998, it committed to "eliminating or significantly reducing the illicit cultivation of the coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium poppy by the year 2008" and to "achieving significant and measurable results in the field of demand reduction." But today, global production and consumption of those drugs are roughly the same as they were a decade ago; meanwhile, many producers have become more efficient, and cocaine and heroin have become purer and cheaper.

It's always dangerous when rhetoric drives policy -- and especially so when "war on drugs" rhetoric leads the public to accept collateral casualties that would never be permissible in civilian law enforcement, much less public health. Politicians still talk of eliminating drugs from the Earth as though their use is a plague on humanity. But drug control is not like disease control, for the simple reason that there's no popular demand for smallpox or polio. Cannabis and opium have been grown throughout much of the world for millennia. The same is true for coca in Latin America. Methamphetamine and other synthetic drugs can be produced anywhere. Demand for particular illicit drugs waxes and wanes, depending not just on availability but also fads, fashion, culture, and competition from alternative means of stimulation and distraction. The relative harshness of drug laws and the intensity of enforcement matter surprisingly little, except in totalitarian states. After all, rates of illegal drug use in the United States are the same as, or higher than, Europe, despite America's much more punitive policies.

"We Can Reduce the Demand for Drugs"

Good luck. Reducing the demand for illegal drugs seems to make sense. But the desire to alter one's state of consciousness, and to use psychoactive drugs to do so, is nearly universal -- and mostly not a problem. There's virtually never been a drug-free society, and more drugs are discovered and devised every year. Demand-reduction efforts that rely on honest education and positive alternatives to drug use are helpful, but not when they devolve into unrealistic, "zero tolerance" policies.

As with sex, abstinence from drugs is the best way to avoid trouble, but one always needs a fallback strategy for those who can't or won't refrain. "Zero tolerance" policies deter some people, but they also dramatically increase the harms and costs for those who don't resist. Drugs become more potent, drug use becomes more hazardous, and people who use drugs are marginalized in ways that serve no one.

The better approach is not demand reduction but "harm reduction." Reducing drug use is fine, but it's not nearly as important as reducing the death, disease, crime, and suffering associated with both drug misuse and failed prohibitionist policies. With respect to legal drugs, such as alcohol and cigarettes, harm reduction means promoting responsible drinking and designated drivers, or persuading people to switch to nicotine patches, chewing gums, and smokeless tobacco. With respect to illegal drugs, it means reducing the transmission of infectious disease through syringe-exchange programs, reducing overdose fatalities by making antidotes readily available, and allowing people addicted to heroin and other illegal opiates to obtain methadone from doctors and even pharmaceutical heroin from clinics.

Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland have already embraced this last option. There's no longer any question that these strategies decrease drug-related harms without increasing drug use. What blocks expansion of such programs is not cost; they typically save taxpayers' money that would otherwise go to criminal justice and healthcare. No, the roadblocks are abstinence-only ideologues and a cruel indifference to the lives and well-being of people who use drugs.

"Reducing the Supply of Drugs Is the Answer"

Not if history is any guide. Reducing supply makes as much sense as reducing demand; after all, if no one were planting cannabis, coca, and opium, there wouldn't be any heroin, cocaine, or marijuana to sell or consume. But the carrot and stick of crop eradication and substitution have been tried and failed, with rare exceptions, for half a century. These methods may succeed in targeted locales, but they usually simply shift production from one region to another: Opium production moves from Pakistan to Afghanistan; coca from Peru to Colombia; and cannabis from Mexico to the United States, while overall global production remains relatively constant or even increases.

The carrot, in the form of economic development and assistance in switching to legal crops, is typically both late and inadequate. The stick, often in the form of forced eradication, including aerial spraying, wipes out illegal and legal crops alike and can be hazardous to both people and local environments. The best thing to be said for emphasizing supply reduction is that it provides a rationale for wealthier nations to spend a little money on economic development in poorer countries. But, for the most part, crop eradication and substitution wreak havoc among impoverished farmers without diminishing overall global supply.

The global markets in cannabis, coca, and opium products operate essentially the same way that other global commodity markets do: If one source is compromised due to bad weather, rising production costs, or political difficulties, another emerges. If international drug control circles wanted to think strategically, the key question would no longer be how to reduce global supply, but rather: Where does illicit production cause the fewest problems (and the greatest benefits)? Think of it as a global vice control challenge. No one expects to eradicate vice, but it must be effectively zoned and regulated -- even if it's illegal.

"U.S. Drug Policy Is the World's Drug Policy"

Sad, but true. Looking to the United States as a role model for drug control is like looking to apartheid-era South Africa for how to deal with race. The United States ranks first in the world in per capita incarceration -- with less than 5 percent of the world's population, but almost 25 percent of the world's prisoners. The number of people locked up for U.S. drug-law violations has increased from roughly 50,000 in 1980 to almost 500,000 today; that's more than the number of people Western Europe locks up for everything. Even more deadly is U.S. resistance to syringe-exchange programs to reduce HIV/AIDS both at home and abroad. Who knows how many people might not have contracted HIV if the United States had implemented at home, and supported abroad, the sorts of syringe-exchange and other harm-reduction programs that have kept HIV/AIDS rates so low in Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. Perhaps millions.

And yet, despite this dismal record, the United States has succeeded in constructing an international drug prohibition regime modeled after its own highly punitive and moralistic approach. It has dominated the drug control agencies of the United Nations and other international organizations, and its federal drug enforcement agency was the first national police organization to go global. Rarely has one nation so successfully promoted its own failed policies to the rest of the world.

But now, for the first time, U.S. hegemony in drug control is being challenged. The European Union is demanding rigorous assessment of drug control strategies. Exhausted by decades of service to the U.S.-led war on drugs, Latin Americans are far less inclined to collaborate closely with U.S. drug enforcement efforts. Finally waking up to the deadly threat of hiv/aids, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and even Malaysia and Iran are increasingly accepting of syringe-exchange and other harm-reduction programs. In 2005, the ayatollah in charge of Iran's Ministry of Justice issued a fatwa declaring methadone maintenance and syringe-exchange programs compatible with sharia (Islamic) law. One only wishes his American counterpart were comparably enlightened.

"Afghan Opium Production Must Be Curbed"

Be careful what you wish for. It's easy to believe that eliminating record-high opium production in Afghanistan -- which today accounts for roughly 90 percent of global supply, up from 50 percent 10 years ago -- would solve everything from heroin abuse in Europe and Asia to the resurgence of the Taliban.

But assume for a moment that the United States, NATO, and Hamid Karzai's government were somehow able to cut opium production in Afghanistan. Who would benefit? Only the Taliban, warlords, and other black-market entrepreneurs whose stockpiles of opium would skyrocket in value. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan peasants would flock to cities, ill-prepared to find work. And many Afghans would return to their farms the following year to plant another illegal harvest, utilizing guerrilla farming methods to escape intensified eradication efforts. Except now, they'd soon be competing with poor farmers elsewhere in Central Asia, Latin America, or even Africa. This is, after all, a global commodities market. And outside Afghanistan? Higher heroin prices typically translate into higher crime rates by addicts. They also invite cheaper but more dangerous means of consumption, such as switching from smoking to injecting heroin, which results in higher HIV and hepatitis c rates. All things considered, wiping out opium in Afghanistan would yield far fewer benefits than is commonly assumed.

So what's the solution? Some recommend buying up all the opium in Afghanistan, which would cost a lot less than is now being spent trying to eradicate it. But, given that farmers somewhere will produce opium so long as the demand for heroin persists, maybe the world is better off, all things considered, with 90 percent of it coming from just one country. And if that heresy becomes the new gospel, it opens up all sorts of possibilities for pursuing a new policy in Afghanistan that reconciles the interests of the United States, NATO, and millions of Afghan citizens.

"Legalization Is the Best Approach"

It might be. Global drug prohibition is clearly a costly disaster. The United Nations has estimated the value of the global market in illicit drugs at $400 billion, or 6 percent of global trade. The extraordinary profits available to those willing to assume the risks enrich criminals, terrorists, violent political insurgents, and corrupt politicians and governments. Many cities, states, and even countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia are reminiscent of Chicago under Al Capone -- times 50. By bringing the market for drugs out into the open, legalization would radically change all that for the better.

More importantly, legalization would strip addiction down to what it really is: a health issue. Most people who use drugs are like the responsible alcohol consumer, causing no harm to themselves or anyone else. They would no longer be the state's business. But legalization would also benefit those who struggle with drugs by reducing the risks of overdose and disease associated with unregulated products, eliminating the need to obtain drugs from dangerous criminal markets, and allowing addiction problems to be treated as medical rather than criminal problems.

No one knows how much governments spend collectively on failing drug war policies, but it's probably at least $100 billion a year, with federal, state, and local governments in the United States accounting for almost half the total. Add to that the tens of billions of dollars to be gained annually in tax revenues from the sale of legalized drugs. Now imagine if just a third of that total were committed to reducing drug-related disease and addiction. Virtually everyone, except those who profit or gain politically from the current system, would benefit.

Some say legalization is immoral. That's nonsense, unless one believes there is some principled basis for discriminating against people based solely on what they put into their bodies, absent harm to others. Others say legalization would open the floodgates to huge increases in drug abuse. They forget that we already live in a world in which psychoactive drugs of all sorts are readily available -- and in which people too poor to buy drugs resort to sniffing gasoline, glue, and other industrial products, which can be more harmful than any drug. No, the greatest downside to legalization may well be the fact that the legal markets would fall into the hands of the powerful alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies. Still, legalization is a far more pragmatic option than living with the corruption, violence, and organized crime of the current system.

"Legalization Will Never Happen"

Never say never. Wholesale legalization may be a long way off -- but partial legalization is not. If any drug stands a chance of being legalized, it's cannabis. Hundreds of millions of people have used it, the vast majority without suffering any harm or going on to use "harder" drugs. In Switzerland, for example, cannabis legalization was twice approved by one chamber of its parliament, but narrowly rejected by the other.

Elsewhere in Europe, support for the criminalization of cannabis is waning. In the United States, where roughly 40 percent of the country's 1.8 million annual drug arrests are for cannabis possession, typically of tiny amounts, 40 percent of Americans say that the drug should be taxed, controlled, and regulated like alcohol. Encouraged by Bolivian President Evo Morales, support is also growing in Latin America and Europe for removing coca from international antidrug conventions, given the absence of any credible health reason for keeping it there. Traditional growers would benefit economically, and there's some possibility that such products might compete favorably with more problematic substances, including alcohol.

The global war on drugs persists in part because so many people fail to distinguish between the harms of drug abuse and the harms of prohibition. Legalization forces that distinction to the forefront. The opium problem in Afghanistan is primarily a prohibition problem, not a drug problem. The same is true of the narcoviolence and corruption that has afflicted Latin America and the Caribbean for almost three decades -- and that now threatens Africa. Governments can arrest and kill drug lord after drug lord, but the ultimate solution is a structural one, not a prosecutorial one. Few people doubt any longer that the war on drugs is lost, but courage and vision are needed to transcend the ignorance, fear, and vested interests that sustain it.

Want To Know More?

Drugpolicy.org, the Web site of the Drug Policy Alliance, offers statistics, arguments, and information about drug policies worldwide. Ethan Nadelmann and Peter Andreas examine the politics of global crime control in Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Reproduced with permission from Foreign Policy #162 (September/October 2007) www.foreignpolicy.com. © 2007, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Ethan Nadelmann is founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2007-12-21 01:40am

Many good points, however...

Higher heroin prices typically translate into higher crime rates by addicts.

...this explicitly ingores that a higher price would discourage newcomers into the addict market, especially from the poorer classes of society - those who tend to do criminal acts to get drug money.

A cheaper price would result in an influx of new addicts from lower classes... characterising this as "bad" isn't doing it justice.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-12-21 01:44am

AlterNet periodically posts this same basic article, doesn't it?

Korvan · Post by **Korvan** » 2007-12-21 03:16am

I'm not optimistic about seeing a saner drug policy coming about anytime soon. There is too much money and vested interest involved in keeping things the way they are.

I'd be surprised if the top people in the drug trade aren't sinking big money into lobbying against decriminalization. Law enforcement would also stand to lose a lot of prestige and funding even if only cannabis was decriminalized.

Plus, the people running things now don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to admitting failure, even when that failure is blindingly obvious.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2007-12-21 03:30am

If cracking down on drugs 'has failed' because drugs are still used... well. I fail to see how not being able to get a 0% illegal drug use number means we should legalize them. As a result, this article is so hideously distorted, as every other 'legalize drugs!' article I've ever seen.

Politicians still talk of eliminating drugs from the Earth as though their use is a plague on humanity.

Because of course, Drugs have zero productive value and are, in fact, effectively a plague on humanity?

Cannabis and opium have been grown throughout much of the world for millennia. The same is true for coca in Latin America.

Slavery has also existed throughout the world for milennia. Does that make it alright?

The relative harshness of drug laws and the intensity of enforcement matter surprisingly little, except in totalitarian states. After all, rates of illegal drug use in the United States are the same as, or higher than, Europe, despite America's much more punitive policies.

Not enough data to make correlation that America's harsher punishments aren't helping. By the same reasoning, are American punishments against Murder and such 'the cause' of why the US murder rate is above Europe's? I seriously doubt that.

But the desire to alter one's state of consciousness, and to use psychoactive drugs to do so, is nearly universal -- and mostly not a problem.

In your world maybe. I prefer to actually not be a waste of human resources and achieve something worthwhile.

The better approach is not demand reduction but "harm reduction." Reducing drug use is fine, but it's not nearly as important as reducing the death, disease, crime, and suffering associated with both drug misuse and failed prohibitionist policies.

...explain to me where it's mutually exclusive that one must pick reducing either 'harm' or demand.

More importantly, legalization would strip addiction down to what it really is: a health issue.

Yes. And it'd make it 'okay' to do harmful drugs. You're not supporting crime, you've got 'a disease'. More playing victim for one's own weakness.

Some say legalization is immoral. That's nonsense, unless one believes there is some principled basis for discriminating against people based solely on what they put into their bodies, absent harm to others.

Bullshit again. It's not discrimination when someone does something harmful to society willingly. It's not discrimination when you base in on somebody's willing and deliberate actions, not conditions beyond their control. Alcoholism is not okay, even when at home and alone. So why the hell should any other drug be?

hey forget that we already live in a world in which psychoactive drugs of all sorts are readily available -- and in which people too poor to buy drugs resort to sniffing gasoline, glue, and other industrial products, which can be more harmful than any drug.

Nonsense argument. We live in a world where it's easy to die too. Should we socially and judicially 'legalize' suicide, since it's 'already available'?

Gullible Jones · Post by **Gullible Jones** » 2007-12-21 03:38am

I don't see a problem with legalizing pot, and putting the same restrictions on it as cigarettes. That way college potheads could smoke their shit outside, instead of toking the nights away in their dorms and stinking the place up.

The other stuff out there, though... I'll just say there is a very good reason that highly addictive, strongly psychoactive drugs are not legal. Having large numbers of zombies among the citizenry is not good.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2007-12-21 03:49am

Nephtys wrote:
The relative harshness of drug laws and the intensity of enforcement matter surprisingly little, except in totalitarian states. After all, rates of illegal drug use in the United States are the same as, or higher than, Europe, despite America's much more punitive policies.
Not enough data to make correlation that America's harsher punishments aren't helping. By the same reasoning, are American punishments against Murder and such 'the cause' of why the US murder rate is above Europe's? I seriously doubt that.

Indeed. This part is wrong. Being authoritarian does not necessarily mean a low rate of drug abuse, neither does being democratic mean the opposite.

Nephtys wrote:
But the desire to alter one's state of consciousness, and to use psychoactive drugs to do so, is nearly universal -- and mostly not a problem.
In your world maybe. I prefer to actually not be a waste of human resources and achieve something worthwhile.

Yeah, this is also striking as odd. Why can't you just criticize the social enforcement of law without resorting to drug apologism? That's right there with tobacco apologism, in my mind - disgusting.

I could understand legalizing soft drugs whose harm for health has been proven to be minimal and which do not lead to a horrible and deadly addiction. I could also understand legalizing to get a grasp on the scale of drug proliferation, trade and production to curb those down later.

The rest is just... so fucking off.

I mean, those people just don't understand that chemical addicting toxins create new demand on their own by chemical addiction, not by "rational consumer choice"? Fuckin A'

Xisiqomelir · Post by **Xisiqomelir** » 2007-12-21 04:58pm

Darth Wong wrote:AlterNet periodically posts this same basic article, doesn't it?

Pretty much. Does RedImperator still post, or is einhander going to tackle the Jr. Dare patrol himself?

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2007-12-21 05:10pm

Xisiqomelir wrote:Does RedImperator still post, or is einhander going to tackle the Jr. Dare patrol himself?

I just got back.

Nephtys wrote:If cracking down on drugs 'has failed' because drugs are still used... well. I fail to see how not being able to get a 0% illegal drug use number means we should legalize them. As a result, this article is so hideously distorted, as every other 'legalize drugs!' article I've ever seen.

Politicians still talk of eliminating drugs from the Earth as though their use is a plague on humanity.
Because of course, Drugs have zero productive value and are, in fact, effectively a plague on humanity?

Way to miss the point--attempting to enforce prohibition has simultaneously failed to curb drug use and created its own social problems.

Cannabis and opium have been grown throughout much of the world for millennia. The same is true for coca in Latin America.
Slavery has also existed throughout the world for milennia. Does that make it alright?

Are you seriously comparing pot smoking to the buying and selling of human beings?

At any rate, you've taken the quote out of context. "Cannabis and opium have been grown throughout the world for millennia" supports the argument that there is popular demand for drugs (the fundamental problem for prohibition enforcement). It's doesn't mean "Oh, it's been around forever, so it's okay".

The relative harshness of drug laws and the intensity of enforcement matter surprisingly little, except in totalitarian states. After all, rates of illegal drug use in the United States are the same as, or higher than, Europe, despite America's much more punitive policies.
Not enough data to make correlation that America's harsher punishments aren't helping.

Would you care to prove that they are? That is, after all, the entire point of having them.

By the same reasoning, are American punishments against Murder and such 'the cause' of why the US murder rate is above Europe's? I seriously doubt that.

This is just a stupid strawman. Nobody is arguing that harsher drug penalties actually increase use, and anybody who actually reads the article could tell you that.

But the desire to alter one's state of consciousness, and to use psychoactive drugs to do so, is nearly universal -- and mostly not a problem.
In your world maybe. I prefer to actually not be a waste of human resources and achieve something worthwhile.

Bully for you. While you're out achieving worthwhile things, perhaps you could learn to read: nearly universal. And once again, you've taken a quote out of context in order to avoid addressing the actual point, which is again that there is high popular demand for drugs.

Oh, and speaking as an occasional marijuana user who holds down a job, pays his taxes and his rent, and contributes a little to the consumer economy: how about you take your self-righteousness and jam it up your ass?

The better approach is not demand reduction but "harm reduction." Reducing drug use is fine, but it's not nearly as important as reducing the death, disease, crime, and suffering associated with both drug misuse and failed prohibitionist policies.
...explain to me where it's mutually exclusive that one must pick reducing either 'harm' or demand.

It isn't, you imbecile. Did you just skim or something? "Demand-reduction efforts that rely on honest education and positive alternatives to drug use are helpful." Plainly nobody is arguing against all forms of demand reduction--only punitive ones.

More importantly, legalization would strip addiction down to what it really is: a health issue.
Yes. And it'd make it 'okay' to do harmful drugs. You're not supporting crime, you've got 'a disease'. More playing victim for one's own weakness.

So your whole argument against treating drug addiction like a medical problem isn't that it's not a real medical problem--you haven't even tried to contest that--or that treating it as a medical problem would be less effective in mitigating the harm caused by drug addiction. Instead, it's asinine puritan bullshit about legitimizing drug use, as if acknowledging that tossing heroin addicts into prison is immoral and wrong would result in an army of people rushing to try heroin.

Some say legalization is immoral. That's nonsense, unless one believes there is some principled basis for discriminating against people based solely on what they put into their bodies, absent harm to others.
Bullshit again. It's not discrimination when someone does something harmful to society willingly. It's not discrimination when you base in on somebody's willing and deliberate actions, not conditions beyond their control.

While I'm not going to try to veer this discussion into where we balance the rights of people to do what they wish to their own bodies versus their responsibility to contribute positively to society, if you're so concerned about harm to society, why haven't you, anywhere in this post, attempted to refute, justify, or even address the myriad harms caused by prohibition itself?

Alcoholism is not okay, even when at home and alone. So why the hell should any other drug be?

1. Not every drug user in an addict. Most, in fact, aren't. Comparing an occasional joint or even an occasional line of coke to alcoholism is either transparently dishonest or woefully stupid.

2. We tried to fight alcoholism once with prohibition, and it was a disastrous failure--exactly like the War on Drugs.

hey forget that we already live in a world in which psychoactive drugs of all sorts are readily available -- and in which people too poor to buy drugs resort to sniffing gasoline, glue, and other industrial products, which can be more harmful than any drug.
Nonsense argument. We live in a world where it's easy to die too. Should we socially and judicially 'legalize' suicide, since it's 'already available'?

Jesus, where do I start? You've already compared smoking pot to slavery, so I'll just call comparing it to suicide asinine and leave it at that. Second, if attempting to control suicide had led the United States to the highest rate of imprisonment and the highest prison population in the entire world, among many other horrible social problems, then yes, I would argue legalizing suicide is probably the utilitarian course of action, regardless of what I felt personally about it.

And you cap the post by missing yet another point--even if you magicked all drugs into nonexistence, you'd still have people seeking to alter their minds with chemicals, and in the long run do more damage to society by driving people to more dangerous chemicals to do it.

Stas Bush wrote:Many good points, however...
Higher heroin prices typically translate into higher crime rates by addicts.
...this explicitly ingores that a higher price would discourage newcomers into the addict market, especially from the poorer classes of society - those who tend to do criminal acts to get drug money.

A cheaper price would result in an influx of new addicts from lower classes... characterising this as "bad" isn't doing it justice.

I don't know the situation in Russia, but in the United States, an individual hit of heroin is relatively cheap. Only an astronomical price increase would drive a first-time or occasional user out of the market. It's only when you need a hit every four hours just to function does higher prices really start to hurt.

Chardok · Post by **Chardok** » 2007-12-21 05:28pm

RedImperator wrote:
Xisiqomelir wrote:Does RedImperator still post, or is einhander going to tackle the Jr. Dare patrol himself?
I just got back.

Wow....that was rather like talking to your buddy about "That prick Lord Vader" in the mess hall just before you realize he's standing behind you.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2007-12-21 08:25pm

RedImperator wrote:Way to miss the point--attempting to enforce prohibition has simultaneously failed to curb drug use and created its own social problems.

Please show me an unbiased source that would indicate changing current policy actually decreases drug use? If anything, wouldn't making something legal make it easier to obtain, and thusly, increased in use? And I can understand the expense of enforcement, but what 'social problems' are cracking on drug sale and use exactly causing?

Are you seriously comparing pot smoking to the buying and selling of human beings?

At any rate, you've taken the quote out of context. "Cannabis and opium have been grown throughout the world for millennia" supports the argument that there is popular demand for drugs (the fundamental problem for prohibition enforcement). It's doesn't mean "Oh, it's been around forever, so it's okay".

And you don't understand what I've said. Slavery has occured around the world for millenia by the very same logic seems to promote the argument that there is a popular demand for slaves. Because it has happened for so long doesn't make it popular or right.

Would you care to prove that they are? That is, after all, the entire point of having them.

This is just a stupid strawman. Nobody is arguing that harsher drug penalties actually increase use, and anybody who actually reads the article could tell you that.

I'm arguing against this article. It has made an assertion, but it fails to actually back it. It's placing a number of claims solely on one aspect of US Law, without looking at other factors including socio-economic reasons. In this case, why the use rate is greater in US despite greater penalities compared to Europe. It's not a strawman. It's a completely legitimate analogy.

Higher murder rate in the USA compared to Europe is not because of solely US laws. Why should the US's higher drug rate be because of US laws a well?

Hell, while you're at it, since you say nobody's arguing that harsher drug penalities increase drug use, what's the problem then? Less use would mean less people affected, and less demand.

Bully for you. While you're out achieving worthwhile things, perhaps you could learn to read: nearly universal. And once again, you've taken a quote out of context in order to avoid addressing the actual point, which is again that there is high popular demand for drugs.

Oh, and speaking as an occasional marijuana user who holds down a job, pays his taxes and his rent, and contributes a little to the consumer economy: how about you take your self-righteousness and jam it up your ass?

It's still claiming that there is a nearly universal 'desire' to take drugs? That's still entirely absurd. You can take your offended act somewhere else. The fact that there is demand at all (Incidentally, the ONDCP report on drugs say that around 18% of Americans between 18-25 are 'active' drug users, while less than 8 percent for other age groups, and 3% for Americans above 35)

This 'universal desire' is groundless.

It isn't, you imbecile. Did you just skim or something? "Demand-reduction efforts that rely on honest education and positive alternatives to drug use are helpful." Plainly nobody is arguing against all forms of demand reduction--only punitive ones.

Yet... why cannot we have these things, and still keep drugs illicit, resulting in a far more effective demand reduction?

So your whole argument against treating drug addiction like a medical problem isn't that it's not a real medical problem--you haven't even tried to contest that--or that treating it as a medical problem would be less effective in mitigating the harm caused by drug addiction. Instead, it's asinine puritan bullshit about legitimizing drug use, as if acknowledging that tossing heroin addicts into prison is immoral and wrong would result in an army of people rushing to try heroin.

While I'm not going to try to veer this discussion into where we balance the rights of people to do what they wish to their own bodies versus their responsibility to contribute positively to society, if you're so concerned about harm to society, why haven't you, anywhere in this post, attempted to refute, justify, or even address the myriad harms caused by prohibition itself?

So you're saying people shouldn't be judged for their actions? Don't give that a choice wasn't made at some point. If someone happens to be chemically dependant based on something beyond their control, such as expsure in the womb, that's one thing. But quote 'Discrimination against people based on what they put in their bodies'? That's a conscious action.

It's a choice. Nobody makes you take drugs. And don't shift the goalposts by comparing the enforcement of illicit drug laws that affect a very small portion of the population, compared to banning previously socially acceptable substances used by a supermajority of the population with substantial history.

It's not even vaguely the same thing in practical terms.

1. Not every drug user in an addict. Most, in fact, aren't. Comparing an occasional joint or even an occasional line of coke to alcoholism is either transparently dishonest or woefully stupid.
2. We tried to fight alcoholism once with prohibition, and it was a disastrous failure--exactly like the War on Drugs.

In any case, drug use is similar to alcohol use. Some may not visually cause immediate harm, but it's quite easy to cause lasting harm, or impair one's mental state. How hard is that to understand? We want to limit that as much as possible. We're talking about the 'harm to no one else' bit. People acting while under judgement altering substances ARE a harm to other people.

Jesus, where do I start? You've already compared smoking pot to slavery, so I'll just call comparing it to suicide asinine and leave it at that. Second, if attempting to control suicide had led the United States to the highest rate of imprisonment and the highest prison population in the entire world, among many other horrible social problems, then yes, I would argue legalizing suicide is probably the utilitarian course of action, regardless of what I felt personally about it.

And you cap the post by missing yet another point--even if you magicked all drugs into nonexistence, you'd still have people seeking to alter their minds with chemicals, and in the long run do more damage to society by driving people to more dangerous chemicals to do it.

Can you strawman my argument more please? I think you missed a spot.

I compared the article's argument that growing Pot and Opium is 'okay' and shows demand because it's been done for hundreds of years. That's where the reference to slavery came from, which has also been done for hundreds of years. Saying these things are okay because of that history is a fallacious statement.

But the argument that 'people will always find a way to do something else' is garbage. Because you can't stop something 100% is not a reason to throw it out, just because people 'have other alternatives'. Again, you claim this 'universal' or 'nearly universal' desire to alter one's mind with drugs. I haven't seen a thing that'd indicate it's the case.

Xisiqomelir · Post by **Xisiqomelir** » 2007-12-21 08:49pm

Nephtys wrote:Yet... why cannot we have these things, and still keep drugs illicit, resulting in a far more effective demand reduction?

I don't think there's a facepalm gif large enough for this. The current laws and policies are the root cause of all the societal problems, because they foster a criminal atmosphere over an industry with a long record in human history.

There will never be a reduction in demand, because people will always want to get blitzed. This exactly analagous to how there was never a demand reduction in the 20s, because people have always wanted to get faded. Sorry if the "waste of human resources" upsets you.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-12-21 09:14pm

Xisiqomelir wrote:
Nephtys wrote:Yet... why cannot we have these things, and still keep drugs illicit, resulting in a far more effective demand reduction?
I don't think there's a facepalm gif large enough for this. The current laws and policies are the root cause of all the societal problems, because they foster a criminal atmosphere over an industry with a long record in human history.

There will never be a reduction in demand, because people will always want to get blitzed. This exactly analagous to how there was never a demand reduction in the 20s, because people have always wanted to get faded. Sorry if the "waste of human resources" upsets you.

There's been a reduction in tobacco demand in certain parts of the world, such as mine. That would seem to work against this axiom of yours. A combination of public education and regulation/taxation seems to work better than an outright ban, in terms of reducing demand.

Xisiqomelir · Post by **Xisiqomelir** » 2007-12-21 09:20pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Xisiqomelir wrote:
Nephtys wrote:Yet... why cannot we have these things, and still keep drugs illicit, resulting in a far more effective demand reduction?
I don't think there's a facepalm gif large enough for this. The current laws and policies are the root cause of all the societal problems, because they foster a criminal atmosphere over an industry with a long record in human history.

There will never be a reduction in demand, because people will always want to get blitzed. This exactly analagous to how there was never a demand reduction in the 20s, because people have always wanted to get faded. Sorry if the "waste of human resources" upsets you.
There's been a reduction in tobacco demand in certain parts of the world, such as mine. That would seem to work against this axiom of yours.

Can't a significant portion of that be credited to medical research into the effects of long-term smoking?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-12-21 09:21pm

Xisiqomelir wrote:Can't a significant portion of that be credited to medical research into the effects of long-term smoking?

Yes. That doesn't change the fact that your "it's impossible to reduce demand for drugs" rule is not correct.

FireNexus · Post by **FireNexus** » 2007-12-21 09:30pm

Prohibition seems to be quite effective at reducing demand. The problem is that unless you nearly elliminate demand, prohibition seems to do little more than let the bloods, crips and baja cartels of the world make a lot more money than is reasonable off of drugs.

Somebody's going to fill the demand if there's enough. If drugs were legal, then it would be a licensed and (most likely) law abiding business that would do it, not Johnny Crip on the street corner.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2007-12-21 10:53pm

Nephtys wrote:Please show me an unbiased source that would indicate changing current policy actually decreases drug use? If anything, wouldn't making something legal make it easier to obtain, and thusly, increased in use?

If you're going to argue that ending prohibition would lead to a significant increase in use (without cannibalizing alcohol's numbers), then you can produce the God damn proof. I can point to alcohol consumption numbers rising during capital-P Prohibition, or European policy proving lenient laws don't necessarily lead to increased overall usage, but if you're going to sound this alarm, you can cough up the data to prove it.

And I can understand the expense of enforcement, but what 'social problems' are cracking on drug sale and use exactly causing?

Millions of people in prison, criminal cartels getting rich, users dying from contaminated product, open warfare in the inner cities. That's four; I could think of more if I weren't in a hurry. You must be an idiot, willfully blind, or 12 years old not to know this--even most prohibitionists with whom I've argued are aware of these things.

Are you seriously comparing pot smoking to the buying and selling of human beings?

At any rate, you've taken the quote out of context. "Cannabis and opium have been grown throughout the world for millennia" supports the argument that there is popular demand for drugs (the fundamental problem for prohibition enforcement). It's doesn't mean "Oh, it's been around forever, so it's okay".
And you don't understand what I've said. Slavery has occured around the world for millenia by the very same logic seems to promote the argument that there is a popular demand for slaves. Because it has happened for so long doesn't make it popular or right.

Once again, nobody is arguing that, no matter how much you wish someone was. The argument is simply that there is a demand for these drugs, and there has been a demand for thousands of years--that's the uphill battle prohibitionists face and why prohibitionist policies have been such a disaster.

And at any rate, the slavery comparison falls flat on its face because enslaving a human being is a gross violation of the totality of that individual's human rights by another, and those violations historically happened on a very large scale. If you want to argue that casual drug use--even heavy, destructive drug use--is equivalent, you can be my guest, but I can't imagine that would reflect well on you.

Would you care to prove that they are? That is, after all, the entire point of having them.

This is just a stupid strawman. Nobody is arguing that harsher drug penalties actually increase use, and anybody who actually reads the article could tell you that.
I'm arguing against this article. It has made an assertion, but it fails to actually back it. It's placing a number of claims solely on one aspect of US Law, without looking at other factors including socio-economic reasons. In this case, why the use rate is greater in US despite greater penalities compared to Europe. It's not a strawman. It's a completely legitimate analogy.

Higher murder rate in the USA compared to Europe is not because of solely US laws. Why should the US's higher drug rate be because of US laws a well?

You're still attacking the same strawman. Show me where in the article is says US laws actually cause an increase in drug use. US drug use rates are higher than Europe's in spite of draconian drug laws.

Hell, while you're at it, since you say nobody's arguing that harsher drug penalities increase drug use, what's the problem then? Less use would mean less people affected, and less demand.

You really didn't understand anything the article said, did you? The social costs of enforcing harsh laws outweigh the social costs of drug use. That's the bloody point you've been ignoring, despite the plain-English language the article uses.

I could end drug use with harsh laws. Here's how: empower the police to stop any citizen at random and conduct a drug test. If he fails, shoot him on the spot. Your drug problem goes away, and all it cost you was everything you've ever stood for as a society.

It's still claiming that there is a nearly universal 'desire' to take drugs? That's still entirely absurd. You can take your offended act somewhere else. The fact that there is demand at all (Incidentally, the ONDCP report on drugs say that around 18% of Americans between 18-25 are 'active' drug users, while less than 8 percent for other age groups, and 3% for Americans above 35)

This 'universal desire' is groundless.

Yes, if you, like the ONDCP, ignore alcohol, then demand for drugs is fairly low. If you, like a rational human being, do include it, then demand numbers soar. ONDCP draws an arbitrary line between alcohol and the other drugs because it has to defend an idiotic policy; you've apparently decided to sail in the same boat.

It isn't, you imbecile. Did you just skim or something? "Demand-reduction efforts that rely on honest education and positive alternatives to drug use are helpful." Plainly nobody is arguing against all forms of demand reduction--only punitive ones.
Yet... why cannot we have these things, and still keep drugs illicit, resulting in a far more effective demand reduction?

Social problems...astronomical costs...shit we've already been over...tell me, are you honestly stupid, or just ignoring what you don't want to hear?

So your whole argument against treating drug addiction like a medical problem isn't that it's not a real medical problem--you haven't even tried to contest that--or that treating it as a medical problem would be less effective in mitigating the harm caused by drug addiction. Instead, it's asinine puritan bullshit about legitimizing drug use, as if acknowledging that tossing heroin addicts into prison is immoral and wrong would result in an army of people rushing to try heroin.

While I'm not going to try to veer this discussion into where we balance the rights of people to do what they wish to their own bodies versus their responsibility to contribute positively to society, if you're so concerned about harm to society, why haven't you, anywhere in this post, attempted to refute, justify, or even address the myriad harms caused by prohibition itself?
So you're saying people shouldn't be judged for their actions? Don't give that a choice wasn't made at some point. If someone happens to be chemically dependant based on something beyond their control, such as expsure in the womb, that's one thing. But quote 'Discrimination against people based on what they put in their bodies'? That's a conscious action.

In other words, yes, puritanism counts for more in your world view than sound medical practice and policies which would actually reduce the impact of drug addiction. You didn't even try to address anything I actually said. Instead you concocted an idiotic strawman about "not judging people for their actions".

It's a choice. Nobody makes you take drugs. And don't shift the goalposts by comparing the enforcement of illicit drug laws that affect a very small portion of the population, compared to banning previously socially acceptable substances used by a supermajority of the population with substantial history.

It's not even vaguely the same thing in practical terms.

Not not even vaguely the same thing at all. That's why drug prohibition hasn't enriched violent gangs or poisoned people with contaminated product, right? I mean, just because the effects of banning one mind-altering substance had exactly the same effects as banning other mind-altering substances doesn't mean the same mechanism is in operation or anything.

1. Not every drug user in an addict. Most, in fact, aren't. Comparing an occasional joint or even an occasional line of coke to alcoholism is either transparently dishonest or woefully stupid.
2. We tried to fight alcoholism once with prohibition, and it was a disastrous failure--exactly like the War on Drugs.
In any case, drug use is similar to alcohol use. Some may not visually cause immediate harm, but it's quite easy to cause lasting harm, or impair one's mental state. How hard is that to understand? We want to limit that as much as possible. We're talking about the 'harm to no one else' bit. People acting while under judgement altering substances ARE a harm to other people.

So why aren't you arguing for alcohol prohibition? You're already willing to accept the side-effects of prohibition, and alcohol kills more people than all other drugs except nicotine combined. If your cost-benefit analysis says it's okay to enrich the Taliban and the Colombian cartels and toss 19 year old college students in jail for simple possession of other drugs, then you should be willing to accept far more severe consequences for alcohol prohibition.

Jesus, where do I start? You've already compared smoking pot to slavery, so I'll just call comparing it to suicide asinine and leave it at that. Second, if attempting to control suicide had led the United States to the highest rate of imprisonment and the highest prison population in the entire world, among many other horrible social problems, then yes, I would argue legalizing suicide is probably the utilitarian course of action, regardless of what I felt personally about it.

And you cap the post by missing yet another point--even if you magicked all drugs into nonexistence, you'd still have people seeking to alter their minds with chemicals, and in the long run do more damage to society by driving people to more dangerous chemicals to do it.
Can you strawman my argument more please? I think you missed a spot.

That's a nasty case of projection you have going there.

I compared the article's argument that growing Pot and Opium is 'okay' and shows demand because it's been done for hundreds of years. That's where the reference to slavery came from, which has also been done for hundreds of years. Saying these things are okay because of that history is a fallacious statement.

The article doesn't say...oh, the hell with it. You're an idiot.

But the argument that 'people will always find a way to do something else' is garbage.

Would you like a list of synthetic drugs invented in just the last 40 years? On what do you base this assertion, besides wishful thinking?

Because you can't stop something 100% is not a reason to throw it out, just because people 'have other alternatives'. Again, you claim this 'universal' or 'nearly universal' desire to alter one's mind with drugs. I haven't seen a thing that'd indicate it's the case.

And yet another strawman. You can't stop 100% of all murders, but I'm not arguing we should legalize murder. I am arguing--as is the article--that the social costs of prohibition outweigh the benefits of prohibition. On this matter, not only have you failed to refute anything I or anyone else has said, you've failed to even try, except by pleading ignorance on the existence of those costs.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2007-12-21 10:55pm

It'd be interesting to figure out what's the amount of under-the-radar drinking and such is done by Mormons, Muslims and other communities who aren't supposed to do these sorts of things, as a study on how a prohibition along with sufficently broad societal pressure can reduce usage. Utah, for example, is as close as we can really come to a 'dry state' in the midst of others.

Prohibition is a big example for people to claim legislation doesn't work, but denial of access seems to be really the vastly inferior control element of a multi-pronged attack that includes a lot more education, some flex room for choice, and social pressure to avoid or moderate behavior on your own. Drinking isn't as bad as it was before--my parents always told me how people would pressure them to drink, do drugs, etc. Nobody has ever done such a thing to me, and always acted with general positive comments (even if they thought otherwise) about my lack of interest in smoking or drinking or whatnot.

The harm seems nearly always to be in excessive use, not in moderate use. That's sounds stupid, but even things that are dangerous or unhealthy, in moderation, aren't really all that damaging to societies or individuals and you save a lot more time and money at a national level by allowing people their slice of cheesecake or red meat or heavily-taxed cancersticks.

I have no idea, but I'd guess that a better strategy would be to slowly strangle demand while keeping down supply, rather than just blow up the supply and keep giving tacit approval to the idea tha 'everyone' wants to do it. I certainly don't!

I wonder if prohibition had gone on for a generation longer how widespread the use of alcohol would be. I can't imagine why people tried so hard to get a drink... so the idea of running an illegal empire on stuff I wouldn't drink if you paid me to is pretty mind-boggling.

Xisiqomelir · Post by **Xisiqomelir** » 2007-12-21 11:23pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Xisiqomelir wrote:Can't a significant portion of that be credited to medical research into the effects of long-term smoking?
Yes. That doesn't change the fact that your "it's impossible to reduce demand for drugs" rule is not correct.

I meant that it's impossible to eliminate the demand for drugs. I of course agree that placing regulatory and concomitant economic obstacles in the path of users will have some effect in lowering use. I believe in the argument that the effort and resources expended to effect these obstacles does not efficiently achieve a significant public good, and that they have several net negative results, such as an increase in violent domestic crime and increased funding to foreign terrorists.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-12-21 11:39pm

Xisiqomelir wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:
Xisiqomelir wrote:Can't a significant portion of that be credited to medical research into the effects of long-term smoking?
Yes. That doesn't change the fact that your "it's impossible to reduce demand for drugs" rule is not correct.
I meant that it's impossible to eliminate the demand for drugs. I of course agree that placing regulatory and concomitant economic obstacles in the path of users will have some effect in lowering use. I believe in the argument that the effort and resources expended to effect these obstacles does not efficiently achieve a significant public good, and that they have several net negative results, such as an increase in violent domestic crime and increased funding to foreign terrorists.

The problem is that they're not regulating demand at all. They're only regulating supply. Think about the way the laws are constructed: it is totally legal to do drugs, but it is illegal to possess them for the purpose of sale. That's why people go to jail for possession and dealing, not for taking drugs.

If you look at tobacco, there are plenty of regulations on the use of tobacco, not just its sale. The government regulates where you can buy it, how old you must be, where you can smoke it, etc. In short, tobacco demand is regulated, as opposed to having unregulated demand in conjunction with a violently regulated supply.

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2007-12-22 12:01am

Alcoholism is not okay, even when at home and alone.

Alcoholism isn't illegal either. Analogy fail.

Legalizing drugs does not mean that efforts to reduce their abuse, similar to efforts with alcohol and tobacco, are not able to be employed. The article is astute in pointing out what an enormous cost that American taxpayers have eaten in the pursuit of an entirely ineffective drug policy. It is a legitimate question to ask if things could possibly be any worse than they are now.

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2007-12-22 12:08am

But the argument that 'people will always find a way to do something else' is garbage.

Fun fact: Meth wasn't nearly as popular until we cracked down on cocaine.

You can't stop 100% of all murders, but I'm not arguing we should legalize murder. I am arguing--as is the article--that the social costs of prohibition outweigh the benefits of prohibition.

I'll go a step further, and argue that our society in general has an unhealthy obsession with the idea of locking people up when they do something we don't like (I'm not by far the first person to say this on SDnet, but it bears repeating). I'd happily go along with an alternate social policy on murder were there ample evidence that the policy was somehow superior - and not necessarily by reducing the number of murders. Granted, I can't think of anything that could be better than reducing the number of murders off the top of my head, but that's not really the point. In the case of Schedule I drugs, our efforts to curb their use have done more harm than good, and an alternate track is required. Legalizing all of them may not even be necessary: treatment programs we've been refusing to support nationally have had successes with local funds. Ideally we'd be arguing whether programs like those produce more social harm than fully legalizing use, but this incarceration obsession makes it impossible.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2007-12-22 12:45am

Nephtys, can you tell me why I shouldn't be allowed to close my door, put on "The Village Green Preservation Society", and eat a bunch of mushrooms?

In your world maybe. I prefer to actually not be a waste of human resources and achieve something worthwhile.

I always have to laugh when I hear something like this. Yeah, there are a lot of drug users who are useless oxygen sinks. Tons of people whose lives have been absolutely destroyed by drugs. But do you really have any idea how prevelent recreational drug use is? You live in South California, for Christ's sake. I guarantee you, if you leave the house at all, you interact with any number of highly functional recreational users of illegal drugs.

To paraphrase Bill Hicks, have you ever heard of the Beatles? Rrreeeaal fucking high on drugs.

I know this doesn't have anything to do with your argument directly, but you seem to have an oddly distorted view on the nature of illegal use.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-12-22 01:05am

Oh, but Hemlock, he posts very insightful things on the Internet. No one high on grass has ever done that.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-12-22 01:18am

In your world maybe. I prefer to actually not be a waste of human resources and achieve something worthwhile.

if we're going to go by "value of contribution to society" as a metric of how hard to crack down on activities then we should start gassing star trek conventions

yeah we'll kill a few valuable folks in the process but i reckon the collateral damage would probably be proportionately far less than what it is for the war on drugs