Why we should legalise hard drugs

Observer (UK) ^ | February 23, 2003 | Henry McDonald

[MrLeRoy]

I was having lunch last week with a senior member of the Garda Siochana or Irish police in Dublin. He is a man with 32 years of service fighting crime in the Irish capital. Throughout his career he has witnessed three major drug waves in the Irish Republic - the first heroin epidemic of 1980; the explosion of ecstasy and cocaine use in the mid 1990s and now the introduction of crack cocaine at the start of the 21st century. He is a superintendent with some major successes under his belt including the operation against John Gilligan, the drugs baron who ordered the murder of my colleague, the reporter Veronica Guerin. He has seen millions of pounds of euros in drugs seizures. But the officer was highly modest about the scale of his achievements in the fight against drugs. In his most candid moment of the afternoon he came across with a startling statistic - the police only seize about ten per cent of the drugs that come into the state at any time. When you press him about the success of the war on drugs he is dismissive. This is a war, he states, that cannot be won.

The drug sub-culture still fills me in equal parts with disgust and ennui, but there seems to no logic to prolonging what is arguably the most futile conflict in human history: this so-called war against drugs. This war, equivalent to fighting a thousand Vietnams at once, can never be won. Even the United States, with its superpower monopoly and infinite military resources, has failed to stem the narcotics flood. Dictatorships, whether of the Islamic fundamentalist variety as in Saudi Arabia or the Leninist-capitalist model in China, have employed brutal methods to suppress drugs, respectively beheading or blowing the brains out of alleged dealers. The latter means of dispatching drug peddlers is also used by the IRA on the streets of Belfast, Derry and even Dublin.

But neither the Saudi and Chinese cliques nor the IRA can put an end to the production or consumption of drugs. That is because since the time of the ancient Greeks - and quite possibly even before - the iron laws of economics have operated: a permanent demand creates an inevitable supply. Dealers are prepared to continue risking their lives on the streets of Belfast, Beijing and Riyadh to meet that demand.

Prohibition, as the Americans found with alcohol in the 1920s and 1930s, is counter-productive and only gives rise to a vast criminal sub-culture. The monopolisation of supply in criminals' hands hikes up the price of drugs to the point where consumers can only feed their habit through larceny or prostitution, thus further fuelling crime.

Then there is the enormous and totally unnecessary cost to the state of prosecuting those individuals who choose freely to take drugs as a means of entertainment or escapism. The Economist magazine has estimated that between 1996 and 2000 the British taxpayer paid out £36 million to lock up people who were tested positive for cannabis. The figures for jailing those consuming hard drugs are reckoned to be even higher.

Then there is the one drug which is widely available, legal and socially acceptable. Families are ripped apart and lives shattered through the fermentation, advertising and distribution of the most popular legal drug in the free world - alcohol. How many young men for instance will end up in the casualty wings of Irish and British hospitals this weekend due to obscene bouts of boozing? What are the odds of someone getting mowed down on an Irish or British road by a drunken driver?

Despite this we persist in glamorising drink while demonising drugs. In Ireland more people are killed by drink and cars than drugs. These are indisputable facts yet we never hear calls for the prohibition of alcohol or driving. Nor does society ban dangerous sports such as hang-gliding, air boarding, bungee jumping and so on. These activities are taken up by individuals exercising personal freedom and choice. The state does not intervene in these choices.

Opponents of legalisation claim that drug takers are not free individuals. This is because the moment they consume a drug, any drug, their minds are altered and thus their ability to act as free thinking individuals. But if you apply this logic consistently then what about the moment that someone takes a sup of his first pint, then his second, third, fourth and so on? That individual's mind is also being altered by chemicals. Are our opponents seriously suggesting that we should therefore ban alcohol because it stops us from being rational individuals the moment we put pint or glass to our lips? I think not.

Legalisation of course contains inherent dangers. The sale of narcotics should be regulated but definitely not controlled by the state. The prospect of the state selling drugs to consumers brings to mind Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where the regime kept the masses docile by doling out Soma. Nor should legalisation imply hedonistic license. The minimum age should range from between 16 for soft drugs and 18 for harder substances; those who sell to children must suffer the maximum penalties.

There are pitfalls over price fixing. An exorbitantly taxed product will result in what has already happened with tobacco in Ireland, where the paramilitaries have flooded the market with cheaper illegal foreign cigarettes. Tax revenue from drugs should be funnelled into drug treatment programmes and preventative education aimed at de-mystifying drugs.

None of this is to suggest a solution to the drugs problem because there is no solution, only the pragmatic management of it. A reasonable tax on narcotics can help fund education programmes aimed at reducing demand for drugs. Furthermore, decriminalisation would wipe out far more effectively than the Criminal Assets Bureau the profits earned by loathsome beings, such as John Gilligan, who control supply.

With apologies to The Verve: the drugs don't work but the ban on them just makes us all worse.

[MrLeRoy]

The motion was defeated by 80 votes to 44."

Close. Keep trying.

So the Cambridge Union now defines truth?

[eastsider]

To the conservative, the only liberty is "a liberty connected with order: that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them."

Can you give us a cite for the quote? Tx.

[dcwusmc]

I suspect there can be no cites. "Ordered liberty" is a contradiction of terms. Such a thing cannot exist. You have liberty (which can be and usually is chaotic) or you have order. I suspect most of the WODDIES and their sychophants prefer order because they are afraid to be free and to have the ulltimate responsibility for themselves and their own well-being in their own hands. They cannot stomach that sort of responsibility and want someone else (the National Daddy) to give them direction and take the responsibility for them. Ultimately, they will find (either in this life or standing before their Creator) that THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR OWN ACTIONS. Abdicating that responsibility does not absolve them. It only makes matters worse for ALL of us.

[robertpaulsen]

"This tension has often been reconciled by what George Washington called "ordered liberty." British statesman Edmund Burke explained it as, "liberty connected with order; [liberty] that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them."

Ordered liberty is not license. It is not, as Judge Learned Hand said, "the ruthless, the unbridled will." Learned Hand warned that, absent order, liberty becomes license, ultimately leading to the denial of liberty. In a world of unbridled license, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. Freedom to act according to one's will is lost to the infringement, by force if necessary, of the will of another.

Nor is ordered liberty a euphemism for Big Brother. A pervasive order in which security is guaranteed by a massive, invasive police power that prevents crime before it happens by monitoring everything its citizens say, do and think strangles freedom. In such a society, as Orwell observed, liberty dies.

Remarks of Attorney General John Ashcroft
Eighth Circuit Judges Conference
Duluth, Minnesota
August 7, 2002

[eastsider]

Freedom to act according to one's will is lost to the infringement, by force if necessary, of the will of another.

Thank you for the cite to, and quote from, AG Ashcroft's remarks. Ashcroft seems to be saying that freedom is not the right to do what one wills, but rather is the right to do what is right -- which presupposes a certain order. Coupled with Burke's remark, I understand that to mean that a human action is "right" when it is ordered toward virtue.

I concur.

[dirtboy]

Ashcroft seems to be saying that freedom is not the right to do what one wills, but rather is the right to do what is right -- which presupposes a certain order.

The problem is, who in government defines virtue? Ashcroft? Bill Clinton? Hillary Clinton? Jimmy Carter? For Bill Clinton, it would be virtuous for citizens to give up their guns and let him be president for life.

[eastsider]

I'm unclear what you mean. Let's take the virtue of Justice, for example. Are you asking who defines Justice? Or are you asking who defines whether a particular act is just?

[dirtboy]

I'm unclear what you mean. Let's take the virtue of Justice, for example. Are you asking who defines Justice? Or are you asking who defines whether a particular act is just?

I think my meaning is quite clear. What is a virtue to us conservatives is often a vice to liberals, and vice versa (pun intended). Therefore, if you wish to have a government driven by virtue, that government is at the whim of the virtues of those in power...

[eastsider]

The judgment whether an act is just or not is an application of the facts to the definition of justice, and freedom would be the right to act justly. In our system, an independent judiciary determines whether one has acted justly or unjustly.

[tacticalogic]

Therefore, if you wish to have a government driven by virtue, that government is at the whim of the virtues of those in power...

While there are the rare few who truly are driven by virtue (even that is arguable, given that moderation is considered a virtue, and such men are seldom, if ever, moderate), it doesn't seem to compare to the kind of ambition men show in pursuit of vice. While not defending vice, the idea of "driven by virtue" doesn't seem to be conceptually consistent with history and human nature.

[apackof2]

Can you give us a cite for the quote? Tx.

An American patriot

Here's a few more

Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams

"The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded." James Madison

No truth is more evident to any mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people." Noah Webster

It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." George Washington

[apackof2]

thanks on behalf of the author

[eastsider]

Thanks for the cite and the quotes. At the risk of sounding like I'm from another galaxy, is "An American Patriot" a recent book that contains all the quotes you posted?

[apackof2]

At the risk of sounding like I'm from another galaxy, is "An American Patriot"

If you are a libertarian you are from another galaxy.
No "An american patriot" is my description for the author of the article

[tpaine]

"Nor is ordered liberty a euphemism for Big Brother. A pervasive order in which security is guaranteed by a massive, invasive police power that prevents crime before it happens by monitoring everything its citizens say, do and think strangles freedom. In such a society, as Orwell observed, liberty dies."

Remarks of Attorney General John Ashcroft
Eighth Circuit Judges Conference
Duluth, Minnesota
August 7, 2002
_________________________________

And as he spoke, last August, planning was going forward on the massive, invasive police power 'bong bust' display of a few days ago.
An invasive power that seeks to prevent crime before it happens by monitoring everything citizens say, do and buy on the internet.

The hypocrisy of this administration has little or no limit.

[eastsider]

I was hoping to read Burke's quote ("liberty connected with order; [liberty] that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them") in context. Can either of you tell me where Burke's quote (or the other quotes in post #31 above) comes from?

[robertpaulsen]

"planning was going forward on the massive, invasive police power 'bong bust'"

"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

I hope you see a conflict between these two statements. Therein lies the problem.

Do you think there was any need for a "massive, invasive police power 'bong bust'" in the days of John Adams? Do you think a moral and religious people would be organizing "bong parties"?

You throw away morals, elevate shameful acts, denigrate religion, remove personal resonsibility --- then you look around and cry for your "Constitutional Right" to smoke dope. Sorry, you threw that away, too.

[Protagoras]

That is precisely what the merry band of libertarian bashers do here ALL the time. They put up silly pictures of people who are identified as liberatians and do the same thing. I haven't heard you complain about that. Maybe I missed you admonishing them about it. Care to disavow that kind of thing now?

[Protagoras]

You throw away morals,

I find your political beliefs to be immoral.

elevate shameful acts,

It is shamful to advocate the use of force to further your political goals

denigrate religion,

Which one? I denigrate Islam. And the brand of radical violence mongering in the name of the Almighty advanced by pretend Christians,

remove personal resonsibility ---

libertarians call for personal responsibilty on all issues at all times, unlike Republicans

then you look around and cry for your "Constitutional Right" to smoke dope.

The constitution does not confer rights, some of the people can't get that through their heads, they mistakenly believe that rights are granted by benevolent governments

Sorry, you threw that away, too.

No, you threw out your freedom, and now you are trying to throw out mine.

[Protagoras]

Quoting John Ashcroft on liberty is like quoting Hillary Clinton on ethics.