Commentary: Legalize drugs to stop violence

[Rahvin]

You're splitting hairs without defining precisely what "safer" means. The reduction of usage lessens the net harm to society after all. As far as the black market violence, that was largely overblown sensationalism.

"Safer" in the context of regulating the production and sale of drugs means "reducing the likelihood of a lethal overdose and taking reasonable steps to prevent users from harming others."

Just like with alcohol. Regulating the production and distribution of alcohol has resulted in a "safer" product, and reasonable steps (like cutting people off at the bar, making intoxication in public illegal, etc) are effective at reducing harm done by those who drink.

Alcohol takes a significant deal more of abuse to have a noticeably harmful effect on any individual than the majority of hard drugs on the market. This is a well documented medical fact. Regulating a harmful product will not change the amount of harm it's capable of causing on an individual level, and opiate based drugs are handily capable of causing far more harm from casual use than alcohol.

Irrelevant. Those people who partake of "hard" drugs use them regardless of the legality of those drugs. The harm to the individual is lessened through regulation (by controling the quality of the substance as with alcohol), but I never claimed that legalization would result in "safe heroin." There is no such thing as "safe heroin," just as there is no such thing as "safe tobacco."

Your argument still rests on the premise that making these drugs illegal is more effective than legalization with regulation. This requires that prohibition result in significantly fewer users than legalization - enough to compensate for whatever reduced harm regulation would bring. But we know that prohibition does not counter drug use. It never did, just as alcohol prohibition never coutnered alcohol consumption.

Remind me again how many people die from drunk driving related accidents every year. . .and compare that to the percentage that were harmed from poisoned brews.

False comparison. Drunk driving would still occur if alcohol were still illegal. It would arguably happen more often - currently alcohol users may drink without fear of prosecution, but know that driving while intoxicated can result in prison time. Under prohibition, alcohol users would already be committing a crime just by drinking, meaning that driving while intoxicated is no different.

Just like drugs today.

Making public intoxication and driving while intoxiated illegal provides an incentive for users to remain indoors and in designated areas, which lessens harm to society. Making intoxicating substances outright illegal provides no such incentive.

Aside from the rather blatantly obvious fact that it's far easier to hurt or kill yourself using hard drugs without being very careful in monitoring use? We already control a number of prescription medications that can be abused by patients, and make it illegal to sell them without medicinal reasons specifically because of this. Once again I bring up the liability to the person selling the drugs in question.

And once again I bring up the liability of a bartender. We already have laws in place that encourage bartenders to "cut off" individuals who they perceive have consumed too much. Why would we not use the same model for drug use?

But once again you focus on individual harm rather than social harm while ignoring the fact that individual drug users will use and are using regardless of the legality of their actions. Legalization allows the government to regulate the product and lessen (to the extent possible) the potential for accidental overdoses, thus lessening the negative effects of drug use. Legalization also eliminates the drug gangs and cartels by making the black market unnecessary. Legalization allows drug producers/distributors/users to use the legal system for conflict resolution rather than resorting to violence. Legalization allows proper, safety-regulated manufacturing facilities to be used rather than meth labs in residential homes.

Legalization lessens the net harm to society. Forced rehab continues the exact same pattern with a 4% reduced recidivism rate. That's better than what we have now, but it's not better than the total efect of ending drug prohibition.

[General Zod]

"Safer" in the context of regulating the production and sale of drugs means "reducing the likelihood of a lethal overdose and taking reasonable steps to prevent users from harming others."

Just like with alcohol. Regulating the production and distribution of alcohol has resulted in a "safer" product, and reasonable steps (like cutting people off at the bar, making intoxication in public illegal, etc) are effective at reducing harm done by those who drink.

Bullshit. If the amount of users is not reduced than the level of safety has not significantly changed.

Irrelevant. Those people who partake of "hard" drugs use them regardless of the legality of those drugs. The harm to the individual is lessened through regulation (by controling the quality of the substance as with alcohol), but I never claimed that legalization would result in "safe heroin." There is no such thing as "safe heroin," just as there is no such thing as "safe tobacco."

Then we should treat it like prescription medication? Without a method of control your arguments in favor of regulating it aren't making a whole lot of sense.

Your argument still rests on the premise that making these drugs illegal is more effective than legalization with regulation. This requires that prohibition result in significantly fewer users than legalization - enough to compensate for whatever reduced harm regulation would bring. But we know that prohibition does not counter drug use. It never did, just as alcohol prohibition never coutnered alcohol consumption.

Why don't you provide evidence that regulating them actually reduces harm instead of simply making the harm easier to track and increasing availability?

False comparison. Drunk driving would still occur if alcohol were still illegal. It would arguably happen more often - currently alcohol users may drink without fear of prosecution, but know that driving while intoxicated can result in prison time. Under prohibition, alcohol users would already be committing a crime just by drinking, meaning that driving while intoxicated is no different.

Bullshit. Drunk driving is ridiculously common because of alcohol's ease of availability. There's a reason I emphasized rehabilitation over criminalization, you know.

Just like drugs today.

Prove that drug use had anywhere near the social acceptability alcohol did before prohibition; then you might have a point.

Making public intoxication and driving while intoxiated illegal provides an incentive for users to remain indoors and in designated areas, which lessens harm to society. Making intoxicating substances outright illegal provides no such incentive.

Except drunk driving is one of the leading causes of death in the US. . .it seems to me this "incentive" is bullshit.

And once again I bring up the liability of a bartender. We already have laws in place that encourage bartenders to "cut off" individuals who they perceive have consumed too much. Why would we not use the same model for drug use?

Would you trust a bartender to work in a pharmacy without a certification that shows he knows how drugs can interact badly and cause lethal side effects? That's basically what you're asking here. If you're going to say he should be certified then how is this different from prescription medication which is already highly controlled?

But once again you focus on individual harm rather than social harm while ignoring the fact that individual drug users will use and are using regardless of the legality of their actions. Legalization allows the government to regulate the product and lessen (to the extent possible) the potential for accidental overdoses, thus lessening the negative effects of drug use. Legalization also eliminates the drug gangs and cartels by making the black market unnecessary. Legalization allows drug producers/distributors/users to use the legal system for conflict resolution rather than resorting to violence. Legalization allows proper, safety-regulated manufacturing facilities to be used rather than meth labs in residential homes.

Once again you're ignoring the fact that alcohol has always been seen as a largely socially acceptable drug, even during prohibition which went a long way towards its repeal. Your proposal is unrealistic because it ignores this.

Legalization lessens the net harm to society. Forced rehab continues the exact same pattern with a 4% reduced recidivism rate. That's better than what we have now, but it's not better than the total efect of ending drug prohibition.

I suggest providing some numbers before making such bald faced claims.

[RedImperator]

Steering clear of the hard drugs debate for the moment (since I really haven't thought my way through to a position I'm satisfied with yet), this is the second mainstream article or editorial this I've seen this month endorsing an end to marijuana prohibition--I saw one in the most recent issue of The Economist. I wonder if there's genuine momentum building.

[Rahvin]

Bullshit. If the amount of users is not reduced than the level of safety has not significantly changed.

Really?

Why do you get to define "safer" as "significantly fewer users?" Why does the number of users factor in at all to how safe or unsafe a given substance is?

Should not the relative safety of a substance be determined by how likely that substance is to "fuck you up," as was put earlier? If so, would regulation of the manufacture/distribution of drugs not be capable of making them more safe than unregulated illegal production and distribution?

I know of a couple who nearly died because their dealer cut their coke with Comet. They snorted fucking Comet, and almost died. Government regulated production would virtually eliminate contaminated product, just as with alcohol.

A friend of mine died of a heroin overdose, not because he injected significantly more than perviously, but because his final fix was of significantly greater purity than what he was used to. Government regulation can control for the concentration of the substances, and such cases can be virtually eliminated - just as with alcohol.

I'm aware that individual, anecdotal cases mean next to nothing, but these sorts of events do happen, and would be nearly eliminated with the legalization and regulation of drugs. It's exactly the same case as with moonshine during Prohibition - government regulation makes the substances safer than the unregulated black market.

The number of users doesn't even come into it. You aren't going to significantly reduce the number of drug users - it's already illegal, and we still have drug users. Forced rehab is better than prison, but doesn't make those who choose to use drugs any safer, and it actively creates a black market that results in violence.

Trying to stop people from using drugs entirely is just like trying to stop abortion, or premarital sex, or alcohol prohibition. You cannot win this fight. The best you can do is minimize the damage caused by drugs - and that means government regulation and control, which is impossible if prohibition continues, whether we send offenders to prison or rehab or Disney Land.

Then we should treat it like prescription medication? Without a method of control your arguments in favor of regulating it aren't making a whole lot of sense.

Curiously, we seem to be able to control and regulate both tobacco and alcohol just fine without treating them like prescription drugs. We have systems already in place for regulating the production, distribution and sale of those. I've been suggesting all along that we model those systems for other drugs.

What doesn't make sense is the fact that you cannot seem to actually respond to my argumetns, but rather choose to make up your own straw men to knock down.

Why don't you provide evidence that regulating them actually reduces harm instead of simply making the harm easier to track and increasing availability?

You don't see how government regulation reduced the harmfulness of alcohol during prohibition, where bad moonshine could result in blindness or death? You don't see how this parallels modern drugs, where cutting coke with Comet or the varying potency of the substances can result in serious harm?

Really?

Bullshit. Drunk driving is ridiculously common because of alcohol's ease of availability. There's a reason I emphasized rehabilitation over criminalization, you know.

Alcohol was easily available during Prohibition, too Zod. Most drugs are pretty easy to obtain currently as well - even kids can get their hands on coke, or heroin, or meth, or extacy.

Drunk driving is ridicuously common because alcohol impairs judgement. Making alcohol illegal would not curtail drunk driving, since driving while drunk is already illegal.

Why would drug use be any different?

Prove that drug use had anywhere near the social acceptability alcohol did before prohibition; then you might have a point.

Why does social acceptability have anything to do with my argument? I'd prefer that drugs retain social unacceptibility - my argument is not that "drugs are good, m'kay," but rather that legalization and regulation will cause less net harm to society than prohibition.

Except drunk driving is one of the leading causes of death in the US. . .it seems to me this "incentive" is bullshit.

"Incentives" are not typically 100% effective. But they're a lot more effective than providing no incentive.

Driving while intoxicated (whether from alcohol or other drugs) is and should remain a crime. Why would making drugs legal have any affect on intoxicated driving? People already drive high, despite the fact that it's already illegal.

Would you trust a bartender to work in a pharmacy without a certification that shows he knows how drugs can interact badly and cause lethal side effects? That's basically what you're asking here. If you're going to say he should be certified then how is this different from prescription medication which is already highly controlled?

Curiously, despite the fact that alcohol can have serious interaction problems with various medications, we don't task the bartender with interviewing every drunk about his/her prescription medications. Instead, we let the pharmacist tell the patient "don't consume alcohol while you're taking this." Why would we not continue the same pattern? Let the pharmacist say "don't use heroin while taking this," and leave the responsibility on the user.

Just like we do, right now, with alcohol.

Once again you're ignoring the fact that alcohol has always been seen as a largely socially acceptable drug, even during prohibition which went a long way towards its repeal. Your proposal is unrealistic because it ignores this.

A moment ago we were discussing whether legalization was a good idea. Now, you're discussing whether the proposal to legalize drugs will gain popular support. These are two different arguments - and I'll agree with you that, despite my support of ending prohibition and the fact that legalization seems to be entering the public awareness lately, I doubt we will end prohibition for anything harder than marijuana. This is independant of the argument over whether ending all prohibition would be a good thing.

I suggest providing some numbers before making such bald faced claims.

Year Number of homicides Percentage drug-related*
1991 21,676 6.2%
1992 22,716 5.7
1993 23,180 5.5
1994 22,084 5.6
1995 20,232 5.0
1996 15,848 4.9
1997 15,289 5.1
1998 14,088 4.8
* Drug-related homicides are those murders that occurred specifically during a narcotics felony, such as drug trafficking or manufacturing.
Source: Table constructed by ONDCP Drug Policy Information Clearinghouse staff from the FBI's Crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reports, 1991–1998.

Around 5-6% of homicides in the US are committed "specifically during a narcotics felony, such as drug trafficking or manufacturing."

How many homicides are committed during alcohol manufacturing or trafficking?



From here.

It would appear that homicide rates increased during Prohibition and decreased afterwards.

I'd say that, combined with the known fact that black market drug production and distribution results in violent turf wars, lethal clashes with police, and other needless deaths, this is adequate reason to believe that repealing drug prohibition would reduce the amount of drug-related violence.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Steering clear of the hard drugs debate for the moment (since I really haven't thought my way through to a position I'm satisfied with yet), this is the second mainstream article or editorial this I've seen this month endorsing an end to marijuana prohibition--I saw one in the most recent issue of The Economist. I wonder if there's genuine momentum building.

The Economist article was actually for the legalisation of all drugs, and that's been their position for a good twenty years. I recommend that everyone pick up their new Drug-focused issue - it tears apart the criminalisation and war on drugs mercilessly.

[Kanastrous]

I'm not sure how best to phrase this, but maybe the right metric is one that compares damage to voluntary users against damage to bystanders.

If someone is intent upon fucking themselves up with heroin, crack, etc, they'll eventually succeed despite the laws in place. On the other hand, if revising the narcotics laws yields less damage to bystanders who haven't made that choice, so much the better.

[Punarbhava]

Trying to stop people from using drugs entirely is just like trying to stop abortion, or premarital sex, or alcohol prohibition. You cannot win this fight. The best you can do is minimize the damage caused by drugs - and that means government regulation and control, which is impossible if prohibition continues, whether we send offenders to prison or rehab or Disney Land.

This is really the crux of the argument. It all comes down to 'harm reduction'. It's what society does as a whole with any risky behaviors. Driving a car is risky, so do we ban cars? No, we have seat belts and airbags and road rules. Climbing Mt. Everest is risky, so we have climbing hooks and special tents and oxygen tanks. Using drugs is risky, so we should work to minimize the harm caused to the user and others by these drugs. We don't need mandatory prison sentences (or any prison time for any nonviolent drug 'offense'), nor any aspect of this "drug user = criminal who needs deterring" mentality. We need care and compassion, just like we give to nearly every other risky activity humans partake in.

[Knife]

I'm not sure how best to phrase this, but maybe the right metric is one that compares damage to voluntary users against damage to bystanders.

If someone is intent upon fucking themselves up with heroin, crack, etc, they'll eventually succeed despite the laws in place. On the other hand, if revising the narcotics laws yields less damage to bystanders who haven't made that choice, so much the better.

Ecept the culture has been pimping-what's bad for you is bad for all of us- for the last bit. I'm a socialist but this is even left of me.

[Rahvin]

Trying to stop people from using drugs entirely is just like trying to stop abortion, or premarital sex, or alcohol prohibition. You cannot win this fight. The best you can do is minimize the damage caused by drugs - and that means government regulation and control, which is impossible if prohibition continues, whether we send offenders to prison or rehab or Disney Land.

This is really the crux of the argument. It all comes down to 'harm reduction'. It's what society does as a whole with any risky behaviors. Driving a car is risky, so do we ban cars? No, we have seat belts and airbags and road rules. Climbing Mt. Everest is risky, so we have climbing hooks and special tents and oxygen tanks. Using drugs is risky, so we should work to minimize the harm caused to the user and others by these drugs. We don't need mandatory prison sentences (or any prison time for any nonviolent drug 'offense'), nor any aspect of this "drug user = criminal who needs deterring" mentality. We need care and compassion, just like we give to nearly every other risky activity humans partake in.

It's not even a matter of care and compassion. It's a matter of dealing with the facts. Drug prohibition creates a black market that results in a number of murders, government corruption, and unintentional deaths due to dangerous and unregulated substances. Legalization does nothing to reduce the total number of users, but prohibition doesn't achieve that anyway. Legalization does cut the legs from under the black market drug cartels.

I'd much rather buy booze from a local grocery store, where I can be certain of the contents, know how much I can drink before getting intoxicated, and be sure that I won't lose my eyesight or be killed, than to buy my alcohol from some bootlegger who swilled the stuff himself in his bathtub.

So too with drugs.

I think we should continue to discourage drug use. The shit certainly isn't good for you, and Zod is 100% right - it can be lethal, even without an overdose. In a perfect world, they wouldn't even exist. But prohibition hasn't been successful, and has caused more net harm to society than it prevents - drug users still use, and now we have to deal with drug wars on top of it. The best way to deal with the problem is to minimize its damage to society. You can't do that with prohibition, as we've all seen. You can minimize the damage done by drugs by legalizing and regulating them - just as we have done with alcohol.

The US has been very successful in curbing smoking by engaging in educational campaigns, regulating advertisement, and banning sales to minors. I think legalization and regulation, combined with the same sort of educational anti-drug campaigns, will do far more to reduce net social harm than any form or prohibition.

[General Zod]

Why do you get to define "safer" as "significantly fewer users?" Why does the number of users factor in at all to how safe or unsafe a given substance is?

I never suggested that legalization would decrease usage. I said that legalization would lessen the net harm to society by making the drugs safer (note - not safe, safer, just as the regulation of alcohol allowed for a safer product than illegally produced moonshine), and by eliminating the black market that causes violence.

You're aware of the definition of "net harm", yes? Reducing the number of users reduces "net harm".

Trying to stop people from using drugs entirely is just like trying to stop abortion, or premarital sex, or alcohol prohibition. You cannot win this fight. The best you can do is minimize the damage caused by drugs - and that means government regulation and control, which is impossible if prohibition continues, whether we send offenders to prison or rehab or Disney Land.

Speaking of strawmen, why don't you drop this ridiculous suggestion that I'm arguing drug use must eliminated entirely? I've not once suggested such a thing. Also, comparing it to premarital sex or abortion is really fucking dishonest as neither offer an even remotely comparable degree of harm to society.

Curiously, we seem to be able to control and regulate both tobacco and alcohol just fine without treating them like prescription drugs. We have systems already in place for regulating the production, distribution and sale of those. I've been suggesting all along that we model those systems for other drugs.

What doesn't make sense is the fact that you cannot seem to actually respond to my argumetns, but rather choose to make up your own straw men to knock down.

What doesn't make sense is your bizarre black and white approach to this. Why do we have to legalize all drugs? Why not just the ones whose "net harm" to society is arguably small and cost more to fight against than those whose "net harm" is greater?

You don't see how government regulation reduced the harmfulness of alcohol during prohibition, where bad moonshine could result in blindness or death? You don't see how this parallels modern drugs, where cutting coke with Comet or the varying potency of the substances can result in serious harm?

Apples and oranges. Your premise is flawed in that you're treating alcohol and any other hard drug as the same when that's clearly not the case. It's a matter of degrees; not merely "legal or illegal".

Alcohol was easily available during Prohibition, too Zod. Most drugs are pretty easy to obtain currently as well - even kids can get their hands on coke, or heroin, or meth, or extacy.

Drunk driving is ridicuously common because alcohol impairs judgement. Making alcohol illegal would not curtail drunk driving, since driving while drunk is already illegal.

Why would drug use be any different?

Wow, my point just completely sailed right over your head. You made the audacious claim that repealing alcohol prohibition would result in having the same effect in lowering harm. . .yet it's pretty clear the amount of harm caused hasn't really been lowered at all by legalizing it. It just makes it easier to track.

Why does social acceptability have anything to do with my argument? I'd prefer that drugs retain social unacceptibility - my argument is not that "drugs are good, m'kay," but rather that legalization and regulation will cause less net harm to society than prohibition.

You're missing the rather blatantly obvious fact that alcohol has always been viewed as socially acceptable; thus, repealing prohibition was not all that difficult to accomplish. Your argument of legalizing everything else is ridiculous in that it ignores the fact that such a measure would be wildly unpopular and unlikely to pass at all. Some of us like to keep our solutions grounded in reality.

Curiously, despite the fact that alcohol can have serious interaction problems with various medications, we don't task the bartender with interviewing every drunk about his/her prescription medications. Instead, we let the pharmacist tell the patient "don't consume alcohol while you're taking this." Why would we not continue the same pattern? Let the pharmacist say "don't use heroin while taking this," and leave the responsibility on the user.

You're conveniently ignoring the fact that these medications are prescribed by a pharmacist, who can tell the patient whether or not he can have alcohol with them. He will have no such informed opinion if he just grabs a couple of random drugs that don't have the same type of controls in place.

A moment ago we were discussing whether legalization was a good idea. Now, you're discussing whether the proposal to legalize drugs will gain popular support. These are two different arguments - and I'll agree with you that, despite my support of ending prohibition and the fact that legalization seems to be entering the public awareness lately, I doubt we will end prohibition for anything harder than marijuana. This is independant of the argument over whether ending all prohibition would be a good thing.

Different arguments? Hardly. You can't consider whether or not something is a good idea without taking into consideration how the public will react to it. Face it, there was far more support for repealing prohibition than there is ever likely to be for repealing the ban on any hard drugs.

I'd say that, combined with the known fact that black market drug production and distribution results in violent turf wars, lethal clashes with police, and other needless deaths, this is adequate reason to believe that repealing drug prohibition would reduce the amount of drug-related violence.

Maybe. On the other hand the chances of domestic violence increasing because it's perfectly legal for junkies to shoot up at home rises rather significantly, which is why I question whether or not the amount of violence would actually decrease.

[Rahvin]

You're aware of the definition of "net harm", yes? Reducing the number of users reduces "net harm".

You're arbitrarily defining "net harm" to only correspond to "number of users." Reducing the harmfullness of the substances would also qualify as making them "safer." Or do you beleive that, if all of the negative effects were to be removed from heroin, heroin would still be regarded as no "safer" than the real version?

*note, before you claim that I'm suggesting that regulation can make heroin harmless, that I am claiming no such thing. I am illustrating the fact that reducing the harmfulness of a substance (such as reducing the likelihood to be cut with another substance, or for overdoese due to inconsistent purity) does in fact reduce net harm and means the drug would be "safer."

Speaking of strawmen, why don't you drop this ridiculous suggestion that I'm arguing drug use must eliminated entirely? I've not once suggested such a thing. Also, comparing it to premarital sex or abortion is really fucking dishonest as neither offer an even remotely comparable degree of harm to society.

It's not dishonest at all. The analogy was not intended to conflate the consequences of drugs and abortion, but rather to illustrate that criminalization of each results in more harm than it prevents. Legal or not, junkies will still use drugs. Legalization and regulation make that drug use less harmful to society as a whole. This is similar to the fact that, legal or not, some women will seek abortions. Legalization of abortions drastically reduces harm compared with back-alley coat-hangar abortions.

What doesn't make sense is your bizarre black and white approach to this. Why do we have to legalize all drugs? Why not just the ones whose "net harm" to society is arguably small and cost more to fight against than those whose "net harm" is greater?

I asked you in the very beginnign for your criteria for determining which drugs should be legal and which should be illegal. You declined to give those creteria. Instead you replied with this:

It's not exactly hard to come up with a scale to determine how hard a given substance is likely to fuck someone up as long as the people doing so are being honest about it.

If you have some way of determining which drugs should remain illegal and which should not, I'd love to hear it. My question was not rhetorical, I was genuinely seekign a response.

I'm not debating this as some sort of hard-assed set-in-my-ways position. I would genuinely like to see if you can convince me otherwise through real evidence. Thus far, you've done very little of that, focusing instead on straw men.

Apples and oranges. Your premise is flawed in that you're treating alcohol and any other hard drug as the same when that's clearly not the case. It's a matter of degrees; not merely "legal or illegal".

Please give the criteria for determining which drugs are comparable to alcohol and which are not. Claiming that <substance x> is potentially more dangerous to a user than alcohol doesn't address the point, however, which virtually ignores such a comparison.

Given that:
1) drug use is not curbed by prohibition
2) regulation can lessen the potential harm to users
3) prohibition causes a black market with all of the violence, corrupted officials, and uregulated products that comes with it
4) legalization and regulation virtually eliminates a need for a black market

Legalization and regulation would seem to be the rational choice. Claiming that <substance x> is more harmful to users than alcohol does not address the fact that prohibiting <substance x> will not curb the use of <substance x>, and that legalizing and regulating <substance x> can help minimize what harm is done.

Wow, my point just completely sailed right over your head. You made the audacious claim that repealing alcohol prohibition would result in having the same effect in lowering harm. . .yet it's pretty clear the amount of harm caused hasn't really been lowered at all by legalizing it. It just makes it easier to track.

That's a rather difficult claim for you to support, Zod. Driving wasn't nearly so common (and the speeds we drive at today were impossible back then) during Prohibition. We have little idea how much drunk driving would exist were alcohol still prohibited. We do know that people still drank despite Prohibition. We also know that despite drug prohibition many users still drive high.

I fail to see how drunk driving can be made to apply in this argument without data showing us whether Prohibition would reduce, increase or have no effect on drunk driving. The data we do have (that despite drug use being illegal people still both use and drive high) suggests that Prohibition would have had little or no effect on drunk driving.

This means that drunk driving is at worst irrelevant to a net harm discussion (since no difference is made with or without Prohibition), and at best a possible factor with insufficient data to make a determination.

If you can provide data suggesting that Prohibition would result in fewer deaths (including drunk driving, contaminated alcohol poisoning, bootlegger organised crime wars, etc) than without Prohibition, I'd very much like to see it.

You're missing the rather blatantly obvious fact that alcohol has always been viewed as socially acceptable; thus, repealing prohibition was not all that difficult to accomplish. Your argument of legalizing everything else is ridiculous in that it ignores the fact that such a measure would be wildly unpopular and unlikely to pass at all. Some of us like to keep our solutions grounded in reality.

Again, the discussion of whether repealing all drug prohibition is a good idea is separate from the discussion of whether it is likely to actually happen. I agree - it is extremely unlikely that drugs harder than marijuana will be legalized, and I only give marijuana the barest chance anyway.

You're conveniently ignoring the fact that these medications are prescribed by a pharmacist, who can tell the patient whether or not he can have alcohol with them. He will have no such informed opinion if he just grabs a couple of random drugs that don't have the same type of controls in place.

What over-the-counter drugs do you suppose I could take to make a lethal cocktail, Zod?

Further, if Janie the Junkie wants to mix meth, coke, ecstacy and alcohol for a night of "fun," what difference would prohibition make? Will she not purchase the same substances illegally if they are not available to her legally? Is she not still less likely to suffer harm if she can be assured that the coke is not cut with Comet?

Different arguments? Hardly. You can't consider whether or not something is a good idea without taking into consideration how the public will react to it. Face it, there was far more support for repealing prohibition than there is ever likely to be for repealing the ban on any hard drugs.

I disagree with the first part, and agree with the second. We've had many discussions on this board, Zod, where various proposals were discussed (mass nuclear power and rail transportation, to use one of Dutchess' favorites as an example) on their merits withotu consideration of how the public would accept them.

The American public is, generally, a bunch of drooling imbeciles who still think evolution is "just a theory" and believe in a magic sky pixie who's going to fix everythign for them. I think it;s safe to say that we can discuss whether something is a "good idea" without regard for whether that idea will be supported by the public, good or bad.

Maybe. On the other hand the chances of domestic violence increasing because it's perfectly legal for junkies to shoot up at home rises rather significantly, which is why I question whether or not the amount of violence would actually decrease.

Would those junkies not be shooting up at home anyway? Again, this argument rests on the idea that continued prohibition reduces the number of drug users compared to legalization and regulation.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Indeed, I'm prepared to make the claim that prohibition of drugs actually increases the likelihood of driving stoned. I'm a teenager, and so am coming at this from that perspective: Thanks to relentless education and indoctrination, next to none of my peers drive drunk, nor have they ever driven drunk in my experience. We're all frightened by the dangers and shun people irresponsible enough to drive drunk.

However, as far as I know, none of my toking friends have any problem with driving stoned (to the point of using a pipe while driving) and the majority of my friends would get in a car with them. Very, very few of us think that driving high is particularly dangerous at all. Why? Because drugs are prohibited, meaning both that when we discover that drugs aren't nearly as dangerous as claimed by authority figures, we decide that everyone they say is garbage and pot, ecstasy, etc really don't hurt driving, and further, there's less willingness to ask authority figures about it, and driving stoned is seen as no great risk since you'd already be in trouble for being stoned, whereas being drunk is no big deal but there is a risk of penalties incurred when driving drunk. Finally, since drugs are prohibited, small private cars that can be moved easily and at a moment's notice, can be quickly renovated to not smell like drugs, and have many nooks and crannies are one of the few places where stoners can reliably get their fix in high school.

And I know for a fact that most of these facts hold true for cocaine, pill, and heroin users in this city. Changing the law from being a punishment-oriented one to a rehabilitation-oriented one would change none of these things.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Considering that consuming unrefined coca is actually harmless and has been done in the Andes for thousands of years as a simple stimulant like caffeine, I wonder if legalizing unrefined coca would be a viable strategy? Yes, certainly, there'd be issues with people trying to refine it into freebase cocaine, but because the coca leaf would be freely available they'd be doing it for themselves in their own homes, completely eliminating the criminal element. So we could keep cocaine illegalized and yet eliminate criminality associated with cocaine abuse, potentially, by simultaneously keeping refined cocaine (and thus crack) illegal, and yet making the coca leaf easily available. Also we could then track the coca products by having the government monitor the quantities purchased, which would make finding the producers much easier. It would also break the back of the cartels in Mexico because now all the cocaine users in America would be refining legally purchased coca leaf, so the cartels would be denied their money from both marijuana AND cocaine and thus die, and we'd eliminate the crime problems associated with both drugs and compress them down into the relatively simple problem of people making cocaine from coca leaf, which is far less dangerous and contaminating than producing meth. Since meth use skyrocketed when we started to get a handle on cocaine, furthermore, and tends to crop up in areas without easy supplies of meth, it seems clear that meth is a substitute for cocaine, and so in this circumstance most meth-heads would probably turn to locally refined cocaine, which let us eliminate the danger of meth labs on top of everything else via the combined legalization of marijuana and coca leaf.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Considering that consuming unrefined coca is actually harmless and has been done in the Andes for thousands of years as a simple stimulant like caffeine, I wonder if legalizing unrefined coca would be a viable strategy? Yes, certainly, there'd be issues with people trying to refine it into freebase cocaine, but because the coca leaf would be freely available they'd be doing it for themselves in their own homes, completely eliminating the criminal element. So we could keep cocaine illegalized and yet eliminate criminality associated with cocaine abuse, potentially, by simultaneously keeping refined cocaine (and thus crack) illegal, and yet making the coca leaf easily available. Also we could then track the coca products by having the government monitor the quantities purchased, which would make finding the producers much easier. It would also break the back of the cartels in Mexico because now all the cocaine users in America would be refining legally purchased coca leaf, so the cartels would be denied their money from both marijuana AND cocaine and thus die, and we'd eliminate the crime problems associated with both drugs and compress them down into the relatively simple problem of people making cocaine from coca leaf, which is far less dangerous and contaminating than producing meth. Since meth use skyrocketed when we started to get a handle on cocaine, furthermore, and tends to crop up in areas without easy supplies of meth, it seems clear that meth is a substitute for cocaine, and so in this circumstance most meth-heads would probably turn to locally refined cocaine, which let us eliminate the danger of meth labs on top of everything else via the combined legalization of marijuana and coca leaf.

I doubt it. The relative weakness of the coca leaf would make it just that - a chewing-tobacco equivalent to caffeinated drinks. Cocaine's refinement is what makes it strong and therefore desirable, while crack only became popular thanks to being a poor man's equivalent. The fact that meth is stronger than crack, even more addictive, and can be cheaply and locally grown means that I suspect that it would remain popular, and possibly (by possibly I mean here there be complete conjecture) even make inroads into coastal cities and urban Black communities where crack and heroin are still the most popular.

[Master of Ossus]

Considering that consuming unrefined coca is actually harmless and has been done in the Andes for thousands of years as a simple stimulant like caffeine, I wonder if legalizing unrefined coca would be a viable strategy? Yes, certainly, there'd be issues with people trying to refine it into freebase cocaine, but because the coca leaf would be freely available they'd be doing it for themselves in their own homes, completely eliminating the criminal element. So we could keep cocaine illegalized and yet eliminate criminality associated with cocaine abuse, potentially, by simultaneously keeping refined cocaine (and thus crack) illegal, and yet making the coca leaf easily available. Also we could then track the coca products by having the government monitor the quantities purchased, which would make finding the producers much easier. It would also break the back of the cartels in Mexico because now all the cocaine users in America would be refining legally purchased coca leaf, so the cartels would be denied their money from both marijuana AND cocaine and thus die, and we'd eliminate the crime problems associated with both drugs and compress them down into the relatively simple problem of people making cocaine from coca leaf, which is far less dangerous and contaminating than producing meth. Since meth use skyrocketed when we started to get a handle on cocaine, furthermore, and tends to crop up in areas without easy supplies of meth, it seems clear that meth is a substitute for cocaine, and so in this circumstance most meth-heads would probably turn to locally refined cocaine, which let us eliminate the danger of meth labs on top of everything else via the combined legalization of marijuana and coca leaf.

There's been a move in Latin American countries to do this for a while (lookup "Coca no es cocaine"). It culminated with Hugo Chavez boasting that he used coca every day and flexing his bicep to show off his health in front of (IIRC) the Venezuelan legislature. Maybe not the best endorsement.

I think it would actually make the cartels' job a lot easier if they could legally get product into the US, so I think it's pretty optimistic of you to think that they would be weakened by this. Also, if you kept methamphetamines illegal (and why the heck wouldn't you?), they'd still, likely, remain popular because they're cheap and pretty easy to make, and refining the coca into cocaine would still be illegal.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Sinaloa and so on might try to produce refined cocaine in the United States from legal supplies of coca, but I'm proposing a government monopoly--sorry for not making that clear--at least at the state level on the production and sale of coca and marijuana, to improve monitoring on the end use of the products.

[Dooey Jo]

It is often said in these kinds of threads that if you legalize drugs (all, presumably?), but put them under heavy taxation and regulation, the drugs cartels would disappear. How does that follow, in the case of heroin, for instance? If it's heavily regulated and taxed, ie. hard to get and expensive, why would the addicts use that source, if they could just go to their local dealer, like they do now? Safety, perhaps, but how many of them really gives a shit about that? It would seem that if the legal heroin were to be competitive enough, it could in fact not be very heavily taxed or regulated. Certainly it would have to be less so than alcohol is here in Sweden, because we have a quite extensive black market for that, and most users aren't even severely addicted (although I suppose that's debatable).

Obviously the black market would shrink from its current 100% market share, but to think it would magically go away, unless you basically treat it like nicotine (and it is not nicotine; heroin is obviously dangerous enough that it would have be some kind of prescription drug, be that a "drug license" prescription, or whatever), just seems silly.

[Darth Wong]

The repeal of alcohol prohibition and the enacting of the regulations that now surround alcohol production/distribution/possession certainly seem to have resulted in less net harm to society, since people don't typically go blind or die from consumption of bathtub brews. It also seems to have had the result that the producers/distributors/possessors of alcohol no longer resort to violent means of conflict resolution, since the perfectly legal court system is now available to them.

Remind me again how many people die from drunk driving related accidents every year. . .and compare that to the percentage that were harmed from poisoned brews.

Approximately 16000 people are killed in the US from alcohol-related driving incidents every year. However, according to the CDC, the total death toll from all alcohol-related problems in the US (including health problems) is 80000 people per year. Despite what you had apparently assumed, the huge majority of alcohol deaths are actually not driving-related. Even if you could eliminate 100% of drunk driving tomorrow, alcohol would still kill more than 60000 Americans every year.

[Justforfun000]

I have to say I'm leaning towards Rahvin's point of view on this one. Realistically criminalizing drug use, especially in a drastic and ridiculously harsh way that includes multiple years of jail time is completely counterproductive. It's really just a societal/parental equivalent of "go to your room, you're bad". It's about trying to control personal behaviour that in this instance cannot be truly controlled without implementing absolutely drastic measures like instant death penalties. Some of the more dangerous country regimes have small drug problems because of this, but then we'd be living in a place we despise as totalitarian. We can't have it both ways.

Decriminalization seems to be the best compromise along with education and programs that offer options to help people overcome drug addiction and make their OWN choice to ultimately remove it from their lives or at the very least, reduce it to moderate levels of harm. The way it is now, there is no effective, methodical approach to lead people from their personal usage habits to a better place unless they really go out of their way to seek support groups and/or medical help but this is of course a huge step because of the stigma and illegality.
As Rahvin says, a big problem is purity. Regardless of the argument about whether or not someone should be allowed to consume a drug of choice, I'm sure everyone could certainly agree that if they were going to do so anyway, that a pure, standardized dose is still better then death from products like COMET added...

[Rahvin]

This thread has already been HoSed, but I had already planned on making an effort to bring some actual numbers and data to the table, so what the hell.

No country I'm aware of has a policy of legalization for "hard" drugs like cocaine, heroin, meth, etc. Most don't even allow marijuana for anything more than medical use. This means that real data is extremely scarce.

About the best I've been able to find has already been posted - the drug policy of the Netherlands.

In the Netherlands, drugs are not legal, including cannabis. Instead, the Netherlands has a general policy of non-enforcement surrounding cannabis - technically it's illegal, but the law is not strictly enforced. Imports/exports of large quantities of marijuana (or any quantity of other drugs) are not allowed. Growing up to 5 cannabis plants will not result in criminal prosecution, but the plants will need to be surrendered if discovered.

Clearly this isn't an excellent example for the legalization of drugs in the US, since even cannabis is still technically illegal (preventing large-scale commercial production, etc). It does, however, help to illustrate what partial legalization means.

This is from the Wiki article on the drug policy of the Netherlands:

In the Netherlands 9.7% of young adults (aged 15-24) consume soft drugs once a month, comparable to the level in Italy (10.9%) and Germany (9.9%) and less than in the UK (15.8%) and Spain (16.4%),[17] but much higher than in, for example, Sweden (3%), Finland or Greece.[3]

Cannabis use seems to remauin comparable to nations where prohibition is still enforced, being actually significantly lower than the rate in the UK and Spain (though still significantly higher than other countries, as mentioned above). I would conclude that this means ending the enforcement of prohibition against marijuana did not meaningfully affect the rate of its use. This may or may not be applicable to "harder" drugs - with no examples to work from, this is the best data I have available.

Dutch rates of drug use are lower than U.S. rates in every category.[18] The monthly prevalence of drugs other than cannabis among young people (15-24) was 4% in 2004, that was above the average (3%) of 15 compared countries in EU. However, seemingly few transcend to becoming problem drug users (0.3%), well below the average (0.52%) of the same compared countries.[3]

I have no idea how "problem drug users" is defined. It may mean drug users who commit a violent crime, or drug users who overdose, or any number of other things. However, the fact that the rate of "problem drug users" in the Netherlands is almost half that of other nations is telling. It would seem that, for this piece of the puzzle at least, the correlation suggests that non-enforcement of anti-marijuana laws reduces net harm in the form of reducing the rate of "problem drug users." This may be due to the easy availability of marijuana compared to "hard" drugs (legalizing the "safer" drug while prohibiting the rest would create an incentive to stick with the "safer" drug), in which case this is an argument for legalization of some but not all drugs depending on which are determined to be "safe enough" to control through government regulation. It may also be due to any number of other factors, and the correlation could also be incidental - there is insufficient data in this article to make a solid conclusion.

The reported number of deaths linked to the use of drugs in the Netherlands, as a proportion of the entire population, is lower than the EU average.[19]

This is a significant factor - but again, the Netherlands only permits the use of marijuana, and so it's difficult to say (from this data alone) whether legalization of other drugs would in fact reduce drug-related deaths.

I would still maintain that legalization and regulation would drastically reduce the incidence of cutting drugs with even more unsafe substances (as in my earlier example of coke cut with Comet), as well as the incidence of accidental overdose from varying product purity/concentration. We've seen that government regulation efforts have been successful in regulating the content and potency of alcohol, focusing on a strategy of clear and accurate labelling so that the consumer knows what he/she is getting into (where currently with unregulated drugs you may be used to drinking beer but instead have a bottle of vodka, to use an alcohol-based analogy). This is extremely likely to reduce deaths as a percentage of total drug users if those users maintain current consumption rates. Legalization could potentially also result in a significant increase in total drug users; with no examples or studies to draw a conclusion from, it's impossible to say whether total drug-related deaths would be increased, decreased, or remain the same.

The Dutch government is able to support approximately 90% of help-seeking addicts with detoxification programs. Treatment demand is rising.[20]

Apparently many addicts int eh Netherlands actively seek out their own treatment programs. No data is given as to how successful these programs are in preventing future drug use.

Criminal investigations into more serious forms of organized crime mainly involve drugs (72%). Most of these are investigations of hard drug crime (specifically cocaine and synthetic drugs) although the number of soft drug cases is rising and currently accounts for 41% of criminal investigations.

Clearly, partial legalization (or at least the non-enforcement of marijuana use) does not accomplish the goal of eliminating the black market. This can only be accomplished by providing legal avenues to obtain the drugs that the cartels currently maintain a monopoly on. It's possible that partial legalization of only certain drugs may cut off the cartel's cash flow sufficiently to bring the problem down to a more manageable level withotu legalizing all drugs, but without any further data this is all conjecture.

This data also demonstrates that simple non-enforcement for minor marijuana offenses still allows for a "soft-drug" based black market, since 41% of criminal investigations in the Netherlands are still "soft-drug" related. True legalization of marijuana would eliminate this statistic, since obviously no criminal investigation is necessary if the substance in question is no longer criminal.

It can be concluded that partial legalization (or more accurately non-enforcement of minor "soft drug" offenses) does not accomplish the goal of eliminating black market drug activity. This means that drug violence is not significantly reduced in terms of the producers/distributors. It is unknown (from this data) whether full legalization of some or all currently illegal drugs would be successful in eliminating the drug-based black market. The end of alcohol Prohibition in the US, however, seems to indicate that at best the drug cartels would lose their source of revenue quickly and be crippled or destroyed, and at worst would find a new illicit product to continue with.

It can be concluded that non-enforcement of minor "soft-drug" offenses has a correlation with significantly reduced "problem drug users" as well as drug-related deaths, and does not seem to significantly affect the total rate of usage for "soft drugs." This is suggestive but not conclusive that a similar policy of non-enforcement (or even full legalization) for other drugs may have a similar effect.

I would say that given these two conclusions, further study is justified.

Given that we know that current drug policy in teh US is not working and is in fact directly causing a number of social ills including (but not limited to):

1) a disproportionate percentage of citizens are incarcerated
2) illegal substances are compeltely unregulated, causing similar results to the moonshine of Prohibition
3) a massive expenditure in time and resources fighting a "war" that cannot be won, and has not proven to be successful in even reducing the problems
4) the creation of massive drug cartels who are even now violently threatening towns and cities just across the southern US border
5) ineffectual policies whose intent is to reduce drug usage (ie, prison doesn't stop drug use)

...it is reasonable to tentatively conclude that legalization (partial or full) may be a promising solution that may lead to lower net harm to society by resulting in the following:

1) a significant portion of nonviolent drug-related inmates being freed from incarceration to return as productive members (or at least not dangerous members) of society
2) regulation of some or all currently illegal and uncontrolled substances resulting in fewer accidental overdoses and cutting with toxic substances as a percentage of total drug users
3) significant savings in manpower and resources that are no longer directed towards ineffective enforcement policies and which can now be used to fund massive educational anti-drug campaigns with the same proven strategies used against tobacco, while simultaneously generating significant tax revenue and generating legitimate business in a time of economic crisis
4) reduction or elimination of the drug cartels by cutting off some or all of their funding, making not only the US safer, but also those countries in which the drug cartels primarily operate, and eliminating situations like the current fiasco in Mexico
5) more effective policies put into place to reduce drug use, such as additional public funding for treatment programs instead of prisons and the DEA

It is also possible that partial or full legalization would result in higher total rates of drug use, and/or increased consumption amongst current drug users, which may dilute or even overcome any advantages gained.

That said, I think that the potential benefits outweigh the potential drawbacks, and that further study at the least is justified.

Given the current general mindset in the US surrounding drug use, I'm doubtful that full legalization will gain enough momentum to be successful any time soon. However, true legalization of marijuana alone is a potential testbed for legalization for the rest. While there are significant differences between marijuana usage and "hard" drug usage, it would at least provide some additional data, and legalization of marijuana has a far, far greater likelihood of becoming a reality.

I'm sure this will be mostly ignored in the HoS, but at least I get to feel like I provided a more reasoned analysis of some actual data rather than running with the opinions espoused in an editorial.

[Broomstick]

Obviously the black market would shrink from its current 100% market share, but to think it would magically go away, unless you basically treat it like nicotine (and it is not nicotine

Believe it or not, there actually is a black market for cigarettes in the US. Eliminating anti-drug laws is not going to result in 100% clean and legal supply lines. The real question is whether the proposed alteration in laws will result in a less overall harm to society because experience shows that even when a drug is legal there will still be addicts and problems.

heroin is obviously dangerous enough that it would have be some kind of prescription drug, be that a "drug license" prescription, or whatever), just seems silly.

Well, there is already a market for prescription-only drugs being sold illegally. However, it does not seem to lend it self to the massively organized crime groups that totally banned drugs do. Again, the harm is reduced, not eliminated.

[Edi]

Let it not be said that I don't learn from mistakes. The HoS-worthy part has been split and this has been restored to N&P. I got (deservedly) rebuked for a hasty HoSing and all I can say in my defense is that I was in a hurry and thus it did not occur to me to take the time to split the thread then. Apologies to all involved for the inconvenience.

[Qwerty 42]

On the subject of what cutoff should be defined for what constitutes a hard drug, it seems to me that it makes good sense to outlaw the substances like crystal meth, where any level of usage makes one an imminent danger to those around you. Someone having a beer, or a cigarette, or a joint is relatively harmless, but even the most minute usage of drugs like crystal meth is consummately hazardous to society at large.

[Justforfun000]

On the subject of what cutoff should be defined for what constitutes a hard drug, it seems to me that it makes good sense to outlaw the substances like crystal meth, where any level of usage makes one an imminent danger to those around you. Someone having a beer, or a cigarette, or a joint is relatively harmless, but even the most minute usage of drugs like crystal meth is consummately hazardous to society at large.

But this is not true either. I personally know Crystal Meth users that manage to hold down jobs and have a relatively 'normal' life other then they partake every few weeks or so in sex-related meth sessions. It's a huge sexual drug and this is what makes it so insidiously popular.

Granted many, many people go down a very serious road with meth and lots are lost, but it is not impossible to use this drug moderately.

[Redleader34]

Hell, you can buy legal meth now with a prescription http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desoxyn, so its kinda funny banning it when I had to take it for the ADHD I had, so eh guess I am a "meth head'