Posted on 07/28/2014 12:07:40 PM PDT by right-wing agnostic
EDITOR’S NOTE: This past Sunday, the editorial board of the New York Times endorsed the federal legalization of marijuana. In the February 12, 1996, issue of National Review, this publication’s editors endorsed the same concept in an introduction to a symposium on the question. The editorial and WFB’s contribution to the symposium follow:
National Review has attempted during its tenure as, so to speak, keeper of the conservative tablets to analyze public problems and to recommend intelligent thought. The magazine has acknowledged a variety of positions by right-minded thinkers and analysts who sometimes reach conflicting conclusions about public policy. As recently as on the question of troops to Bosnia, there was dissent within the family from our corporate conclusion that we’d be best off staying home.
For many years we have published analyses of the drug problem. An important and frequently cited essay by Professor Michael Gazzaniga (February 5, 1990) brought a scientist’s discipline into the picture, shedding light on matters vital to an understanding of the drug question. He wrote, for instance, about different rates of addiction, and about ambient pressures that bear on addiction. Elsewhere, Professor James Q. Wilson, now of UCLA, has written eloquently in defense of the drug war. Milton Friedman from the beginning said it would not work, and would do damage.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
There you seem to part company with some alleged "conservatives."
What are your ideas for successfully fighting this war? IMO, the only way to have any impact on the drug market by force is to have a militarized 24/7 surveillance police state and I consider that to be losing. Look at the battle on every front:
Dealers/Users- There are nations where drug dealing is punishable by public death penalty and possession is punished by years in prison. Yet people continue to use and deal. There will never be a shortage of poor people willing to risk their life to get rich. There will never be a shortage of mentally ill people willing to do anything to escape. Someone caught in addiction takes no account of laws.There is also no witness or victim in most drug deals so very few are caught.
Smuggling and Border Control- Drugs are so small and powerful that you will never stop smuggling without stopping all legal border traffic. A package that fits in your palm is worth more than most yearly salaries. You can buy any drugs you want in prison, where everyone is searched and under surveillance. A drug mule can transport $100k worth of drugs in their stomach, then it gets cut and sold for $500k on the street. The more you fight it, the more advanced methods of smuggling become profitable. Through chemistry, drugs can be concealed as nearly anything.
Manufacturers and growers- As long as privacy and freedom exist, you will NEVER stop drugs that can be grown in anyone’s closet or cooked in a backyard lab. You might be able to eradicate drugs that require vast farm fields in unique climates by physically controlling the fields. However, it would require many simultaneous shooting wars, occupation of vast amounts of land and overthrow of various governments all across the world. If you go after one country at a time, the others simply get more business.
Politics and Corruption- The biggest problem is the incredible amount of easy profit to be made and the corruption that stems from it. Look at how much money and power bootleggers gained during alcohol prohibition. The office of POTUS was even occupied by a big bootlegger's son. Before that, most of them were poor immigrants. More than 70 years later, prohibition money still maintains influence in our government.
The situation today is far worse than in the 1930s:
-Drugs are hundreds of times more profitable, smaller, lighter and easier to smuggle than booze.
-Modern communications, machinery and finance allow exponentially more smuggling than in the 1930s. The cartels are running subs and planes constantly now.
-Drug prohibition has gone on for 40+ years while alcohol prohibition was only 13.
After 40+ years, entire nations are owned by warring cartels and certain parts of our government have obviously been bought by drug money.
IMO, the resources spent on simply maintaining the scope of the WOD far exceeds the cost of damage caused by legalizing all drugs. Not to mention the incalculable costs of living in an increasingly corrupt militarized police state.
I don't know about the exact price, but I do know heroin is cheaper and more prevalent in the U.S. than it ever has been.
Despite billions of dollars spent.
February 20, 1996. I turned 20 that day. I wish I could tell that feller a few things about the way life REALLY is.
One hit is $5. Purer heroin is around $20. Depending on the addict, I have heard of addicts living on $20-$40 of heroin a day. The heroin zombies break into cars and steal change just to score a hit. One zombie bought a couple of cases soda with an EBT card and broke the can return machine with full cans. Heroin is cheap and illegal.
Wrong
http://www.toledoblade.com/Police-Fire/2014/03/11/Heroin-problem-comes-down-to-price-mobility.html
“It’s easier to score a $5 hit of heroin than a $100 pill”
Careful you could be mistaken for a libertarian.
That been pretty well SOP from the beginning. The Shafer Commission tried to cut through all the bullshit and get down to just the facts. Raymond Shafer did what they asked him to do, and then they threw him under the bus for it.
I don't see much to be proud of in the way it's been handled by either side.
“Now you can get a hit of heroin somewhere between $3 to $5,” Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato said.”
“We fought it like we have every war since WW2 so we were bound to lose.”
BINGO!
Good point. I have seen a good number of freepers who want smaller government except when they want the state to do their bidding. Curbing drug use is an admirable goal were the solutions not all rooted in empowering government. I think a lot of these WOD proponents should ask themselves why the founding fathers did not create federal laws against murder, rape, etc.
I don’t care about labels. My only question is what you would do differently from what is going on. Right now governments have pointlessly burned trillions of dollars around the world with no results to show for it besides criminals and corrupt government agents getting rich.
I see no problem in effectively closing our borders to both the drugs and illegals. We won’t catch it all and never will, but we will get more of it to the point it will hurt.
We have a military that can do that, damn any treaties we have with Mexico. Port security can be broadened. Shovel ready jobs right there. The CIA corruption/complicit involvement issue is a bigger mess but has to be addressed.
Tell countries either eradicate your poppy/coca fields or we will or stop all imports from that country period. It is worth fighting a real war over if needed. I’d rather see the effort focused outward rather than inward with the current no-knock and SWAT models.
Any corruption or bribery that is caught allowing drugs in is a life sentence, period.
Stop treating drug overdoses at ER’s (harsh but hey you can’t fade the heat don’t do it). Do away with all tax payer rehab units.
After that then we can talk about prescription addiction and what not.
"... I supposed we should just legalize everything because we can’t stop evil. ..."
I wouldn't go so far as to say it should be fully legalized, but what we have done so far clearly hasn't worked. And it hasn't worked at an enormously obscene expense. If it actually got results, that would be one thing. However, I don't think imprisoning the non-violent pot smoker population is the best way to spend gazillions of our tax dollars.
Are there absolutely no other options that lay somewhere between full legalization of pot and the glaring, utter failure of the war on drugs?
“Do not confuse these boys with rationality or reason.
They’d like to stay in their drugged out stupor, with blissful thoughts of utopia if drugs were just legalized.”
Sorry, you seem to have me confused with one of your knee-jerk drug warrior allies who likes to slander everyone who doesn’t march in lock-step by calling them a druggie, with zero evidence to back it up.
Yeah, it would be somewhere in between though. Probably not more than double the manufacturer’s cost, in a competitive market.
However, from what we know of other legal drugs, the taxes will be where they get you. There’s a 1000% markup in some areas on cigarettes, just because of state, federal, and local taxes. They are able to skirt the laws of supply and demand through taxation, because there is no legal competition that doesn’t have to pay the same tax.
The non-violent pot smoker is not in prison. That is a red herring. It actually takes quite a lot of criminal activity to earn a lengthy jail sentence. Most drug dealers are in prison because of the violent crimes that they committed. Heroin dealers are out in the streets days after an arrest.
Sorry, you showed rationality.
You are outed as someone who is not a loony toon drugs-legalization-is-panacea brigader.
The war for national sovereignty and borders is lost. The war against murder, rape and communism are lost.
All is lost.
___
It is bad when self proclaimed (and self-deluded) fighters for liberty focus mainly on the availability of drugs, the ultimate slavery.
Since nobody here says drug legalization is a panacea, that's not a difficult outing to make.
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