Posted on 03/28/2006 10:51:21 PM PST by goldstategop
Getting high can be bad. Putting people in prison for it is worse. And doing the latter doesn't stop the former.
I was once among the majority who believe that drug use must be illegal. But then I noticed that when vice laws conflict with the law of supply and demand, the conflict is ugly, and the law of supply and demand generally wins.
The drug war costs taxpayers about $40 billion. "Up to three quarters of our budget can somehow be traced back to fighting this war on drugs," said Jerry Oliver, then chief of police in Detroit, told me. Yet the drugs are as available as ever.
Oliver was once a big believer in the war. Not anymore. "It's insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over again," he says. "If we did not have this drug war going on, we could spend more time going after robbers and rapists and burglars and murderers. That's what we really should be geared up to do. Clearly we're losing the war on drugs in this country."
No, we're "winning," according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which might get less money if people thought it was losing. Prosecutors hold news conferences announcing the "biggest seizure ever." But what they confiscate makes little difference. We can't even keep drugs out of prisons -- do we really think we can keep them out of all of America?
Even as the drug war fails to reduce the drug supply, many argue that there are still moral reasons to fight the war. "When we fight against drugs, we fight for the souls of our fellow Americans," said President Bush. But the war destroys American souls, too. America locks up a higher percentage of her people than almost any other country. Nearly 4,000 people are arrested every day for mere possession of drugs. That's more people than are arrested for aggravated assault, burglary, vandalism, forcible rape and murder combined.
Authorities say that warns people not to mess with drugs, and that's a critical message to send to America's children. "Protecting the children" has justified many intrusive expansions of government power. Who wants to argue against protecting children?
I have teenage kids. My first instinct is to be glad cocaine and heroin are illegal. It means my kids can't trot down to the local drugstore to buy something that gets them high. Maybe that would deter them.
Or maybe not. The law certainly doesn't prevent them from getting the drugs. Kids say illegal drugs are no harder to get than alcohol.
Perhaps a certain percentage of Americans will use or abuse drugs -- no matter what the law says.
I cannot know. What I do know now, however, are some of the unintended consequences of drug prohibition:
1. More crime. Rarely do people get high and then run out to commit crimes. Most "drug crime" happens because the product is illegal. Since drug sellers can't rely on the police to protect their property, they form gangs and arm themselves. Drug buyers steal to pay the high black market prices. The government says alcohol is as addictive as heroin, but no one is knocking over 7-Elevens to get Budweiser.
2. More terrorism. The profits of the drug trade fund terrorists from Afghanistan to Colombia. Our herbicide-spraying planes teach South American farmers to hate America.
3. Richer criminal gangs. Alcohol prohibition created Al Capone. The gangs drug prohibition is creating are even richer, probably rich enough to buy nuclear weapons. Osama bin Laden was funded partly by drug money.
Government's declaring drugs illegal doesn't mean people can't get them. It just creates a black market, where even nastier things happen. That's why I have come to think that although drug addiction is bad, the drug war is worse.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Correct. Milton Friedman had a brilliant writing illustrating the futility of the War on Drugs. I believed he penned it shortly after Nixon stated the idiotic War on Drugs. All the bad consequences he wrote about have come true. Stossel hits another one out the park.
When middle class parents wailed about junior's 20 year sentence for a joint, those laws changed.
They don't have a problem in Singapore. Guess why?
I enjoy John Stossels' comentaries.
He has a way of looking at both sides of the coin on many social issues.
I've been saying this for some time. Virtually every time I say it here I get flamed...
I think the WOD was Reagan's biggest mistake.
The price has been high in both blood and treasure with little if anything to show for it. One only has to look back at a little history to know what the result would be. Oh well...
They don't have a constitution that protects individual liberty?
Milton Friedman and others who think like him, called exactly how the drug war would turn out. More crime, more prisons, bigger government, less rights for individuals, and drugs as available as ever.
The drug warriors remind of communists. They both imagine a utopian world, if just the state can intervene, with the ends justifying the means.. and oh yes they won't screw up like the last communists did.
none that we are aware of. Besides, our society is so much different; having once been dominated by strong respect for individual rights and the "live free or die motto." You would have to lock up 1/4 the country to make any difference. If the drug war ended tomorrow, I doubt seriously the drug problem would be much worse. I have never done any drugs and if the all drugs were legalized, I would have zero interest in any of it. The plain reality is those who want to do drugs, will find them; those who don't, will not. I have a strong faith in most people to do the right thing. To think they drug use would skyrocket because they are legal is false. Please go back and read some of Friedman's and other great thinkers. Some day the War on Drugs will be ended and years after, people will wonder why we wasted our time.
Here's what I don't get: everyone I know- liberal or conservative- thinks the War on Drugs is a disaster, a waste of time, and a horrible idea that must be put to an end. It's probably the one issue everyone agrees on. My question is this: who are the people that are actually supporting this nonsense? There has to be a pretty sizable group out there somewhere, or else this money wouldn't be wasted every year. From what I can see, most people want this fake war ended.
The blame for that belongs to Nixon.
This has always been my take.
In London we had a operation called Operation Bumble Bee targeting career burglars withing a few months we had cut break ins by 10% and the figure was going down.
Then a newspaper the Evening Standard ran a series of stories about dealers in Soho.
The offshoot was that resources were diverted from BumbleBee and put to use tackling the dealers.
After a man hour intensive five month operation they busted a gang of dealers many were arrested an jailed, withing a week new dealers had taken over.
As a buy product housebreak ins rose again.
thanks for pointing that out. I did not recall the %. If true, then it shows Nixon was wiser on this matter than leaders that followed. The shame is that most people who have drug problems have serious emotional problems that need compassion, not incarceration, to help solve. The Drug Warriors like to imply the drugs cause the problem these people have, when it is their sad state that causes them to fall into the drug dependency. We would have a much more civil society if we treated them with compassion instead of police state actions.
good analogy, spot on. Deserves repeating.
And all those drug buyers and sellers would be model citizens if only the evil government wouldn't ruin their fun by banning drugs. Anybody who would steal to get mind- and body-destroying drugs, and anybody who would buy a gun and form a gang to sell them, is either evil or stupid. Chances are they'd end up criminals anyway.
The government says alcohol is as addictive as heroin, but no one is knocking over 7-Elevens to get Budweiser.
If the government truly says this, then the government is definitely wrong. If alcohol were as addictive as heroin, everybody who drank would be alcoholics. Are there actually people who shoot up heroin and do not end up addicted?
I know many socialists who say the same thing.
Taking drugs, gambling going to prostitutes, you could say that that indicates a weak willed nature, a lack of moral backbone.
We could even go further and mention smokers, drinkers and those with very unhealthy diets.
After all if we are going to look after in fact assume responsibility for others because they are too weak to assume responsibility for there own actions, or hand that responsibility over to the government why stop at just prostitution, gambling and drugs.
There is so much else we can do to regulate people and make a perfect society.
I think most people are still brainwashed by the government on this matter. Second, there are hundreds of thousands of government workers whose career depends on the War on Drugs. Notwithstanding the utter moral imperative to end the war, the government is "addicted" to the War to keep their parasite class employed. Remember, it came out after 911 that many FBI staffs around the country were mostly dedicated to the WOD, not terrorism. It would take a strong visionary leader to end this insane drug war.
But not all people do, there is a growing number of people who hold down jobs and take drugs on the weekend as a form of recreation.
the better fight is to restore respect for individual rights and Liberty. The drug war itself fits the European way. The way of putting the state above the individual. The drug war is corrosive to our liberties. Humans are moral beings and I believe if left alone, most would make the proper choice. You seem to think that everyone would become drug crazed zombies if all drugs were legalized. I have faith that would not be the case.
many of our Warriors in Vietnam did heroin. When they returned and aged a little past 30, most got sense and stopped.
They don't have a constitution that protects individual liberty?
Fascinating, you decided to blow off the larger half of the post because you can't attack it, amply demonstrating the lack of integrity in your blanket accusation.
Given that we used to enforce similar drug laws in this country when the Constitution was in far better shape, you don't have a case.
This holds about as much water as the, "you can't deport 15 million illegals" gambit.
You don't have to. You start prosecuting and people will quit.
Singapore has the advantage of being a tiny city-state with one airport, a small, secure border with Malaysia, and a well-regulated port. Combine that with broad police powers, and that is today's Singapore.
I wish they would try this to prove you wrong. I have friends and family in Law enforcement. None I know take the drug war seriously. They know it is a game. I can't believe anyone seriously can believe this idiotic war can be won. Did we not learn from alcohol prohibition? Humans have faults and it isn't the end of the world if someone smokes pot. A bigger problem to me is the fact that governments take over 50% of our income and abuse us with the bureaucrats. The drug war is stupid and WILL NEVER BE WON no matter what we try. Think about it. IF they can't keep drugs out of maximum security prisons, do you honestly think they can keep them out the general society? Don't be so hung up on this drug war... sheesh, I need a drink :)
Stossel is wrong on this issue. People who are intent on destroying themselves need to be locked up. Treatment only for those who want it and show a commitment to it. We aren't responsible for making sure everyone makes the right choices in life, but we are responsible for removing those people from civilized society. The public health problems created by "recreational" users is incredibly damaging.
I call BS. Not quickly enough? They have been fighting this so called WOD since I was young, I am well over 60 now. We not only haven't won,and are not winning now, we have taken relatively benign street gangs who had little money and crummy little weapons such as zip guns and chains and have helped them gain financial independence(the same way gangs did duriong prohibition), and who are now about as well armed as they can get because they have the money to do so. Money that they obtained by selling and running illegal drugs.
As long as drugs are illegal we will have them in this country, the demand makes it so, and as long as they are illegal we will have street gangs killing, robbing and generally causing violence in order to maintain the wealth they have now. It was true with booze and it is true with drugs.
Legalize, we will still have drugs but we won't have the crime that goes with the illegal selling of them.
Rum runners are virtually gone from this country because of the legalizing of booze by the lifting of prohibition. Anyone who can't see the problem would be solved by legalizing drugs is an idiot and if you fall into the category they you are truely blind to the ways of the world and are more interested in forcing your version of morality onto people than you are with stopping the crime involved in the WOD.
I have never understood the WOD. (And let me state that I have NEVER used illegal drugs of any kind.) Who cares if people use? Not me. If they use and then drive under the influence, arrest them for that. If they use and then commit crimes while high, arrest them for that -- and cut them no slack at all, since they chose to use. If they use and it tears up their families, well, what is different about that from people who are alcoholics and tear up their families, or those who are just plain jerks and do the same?
The way to dramatically cut drug use is not to forbid it, but to make it unfashionable. Tobacco use is WAY down, largely because of a public opinion campaign. Once it was sexy to light a cigarette. Now people just think of secondhand cancer. But drugs still have a cachet, since they are the forbidden fruit. Make drug use boring by decriminalizing it and making it available cheaply, and portray people who use them as losers and idiots, and the drug problem will be way down too, just like tobacco use.
"Stossel is wrong on this issue. People who are intent on destroying themselves need to be locked up."
What gives you the right to choose for them. Having government control your life is what liberals want.
thanks, you made many good points!
Excellent point. This is indeed what would happen. Imagine how much more civil and peaceful our cities would be if this insane WOD ended. It's a shame to waste human treasure on such a futile effort.
Bull pucky. Go look at Amsterdam.
Please go back and read some of Friedman's and other great thinkers. Some day the War on Drugs will be ended and years after, people will wonder why we wasted our time.
Yawn. I've read plenty of Friedman, and sent his kid into loops to boot (in a debate over competing private currencies).
I'm sick and tired of shallow "libertarian" arguments in favor of legalization, simply because there is no personal accountability in their proposals. So chew on this for a bit, and you'd best understand it and take it in context, else I won't bother to respond:
The libertarian claim is that drug use is a victimless crime, no worse than the legal consumption of alcohol. That both are important factors in birth defects, transmission of infectious diseases, broken families, accidental pregnancies, children without support, traffic accidents, and violent crime renders the claim that either drug or alcohol abuse is "victimless" totally bogus.
It is unreasonable to expect people under the influence of increasingly powerful drugs to be capable of containing the damage they might do. So, without supplying users a motive to make absolutely certain that they cannot harm others while using a mind-altering chemical substance, there will never be a successful means of managing the consequences. Absent sufficient penalty for failure to contain destructive behavior, no legal motive can compel responsible behavior.
What's it going to take? Some people are willing to risk death for a good rush.
There's one place in the industrialized world that has contained their drug problem: Singapore, which visits extreme penalties for all recreational drug use that are enforced swiftly and uniformly. So, as a thought experiment, let's say that drugs were totally legalized in America with the following provision: Users would be subject to a similarly stiff penalty if their actions inflicted harm on other people while they were intoxicated; such as causing a traffic accident, domestic violence, transmission of a communicable disease, etc. Let's say it's death with no appeals.
So, if the advocates of drug legalization are not willing to sign onto heavy penalties for the consequences of irresponsible drug use, isn't the argument, that decriminalizing the substance will not cause serious public health and safety problems, at least suspect? Similarly, if alcohol users are not similarly willing to accept the same penalties as with drugs for the consequences of alcohol intoxication aren't they being hypocritical for advocating keeping drugs illegal?
Both arguments are made by people who want access to the substance of their choice and to avoid accountability for the consequences to other people. So are we stuck with what we are doing now?
The simple fact is that even if it was within the physical power of the United States to stop the importation of illegal drugs, it won't stop domestic illegal drug production any more than it stopped moonshiners and speakeasies during prohibition. Meanwhile, there are solid reasons for concern that effective domestic drug enforcement would do serious damage to civil liberties.
The point of this discussion is not to decide what should be legal or not. It is to show that the choice to enforce the law is not optional. The selective or non-enforcement (what we have now), perpetuates the problems that create the call for solutions that threaten those liberties. So with respect to illegal drugs we have only this hard choice: enforce extremely harsh penalties for all illegal drug use, or decriminalize drug use with extreme penalties for crimes committed under the influence of any substance, with one additional key provision.
Even if we did decriminalize all use of mind altering substances, once users have become intoxicated they can no longer be relied upon to prevent the damage they might do to others while under the influence. Here is where the peculiar transaction for a mind-altering substance bears unique distinctions that provide us the opportunity to address this issue creatively.
Consumption of a mind-altering substance only serves as a vehicle for an experience. The drug functions as a vehicle for entertainment. If a drug producer could sell a means to induce a high without manufacturing or selling a substance, would users purchase the product? Sure, because the product is the high, an experience that often includes the loss of judgment. The producer of that product has thus become a party to the change in the decision-making faculties of the customer and a potential accessory to any crimes committed while intoxicated.
An obvious consequence of that idea is the significant liability inherited by the drug producer or seller that varies greatly with the manner in which judgment is altered or impaired. Makers of stimulants might not be as affected as if they made hallucinogens. The scope and extent of the risk depends upon the product, dosage, and user response. The risk associated with impairment also varies by the circumstances the user encounters. It's complex, too complex for a bureaucracy to manage, almost too complex for a market to operate unless there is a way to keep a cheaters from undercutting their responsible competition.
One problem with incorporating risk into the product under legalization is that the cost of risk in an open sale vastly outweighs the production cost of the drug. For example, a dose of LSD can cost but a $1 to produce and can be made in a good high-school chemistry lab, but the risk of harm in a single dose to or by the user via an auto accident or other crime is substantially more.
All of these factors point to the same conclusion: without rigorously enforced and extreme penalties for crimes committed under the influence with at least civil liability on the part of the seller, there is no hope that sellers and users won't produce and distribute drugs on a black market. If however, the user buys the drug from a vendor with sufficient insurance and perhaps facilities that keep the user from doing too much damage, the possibility of the consequent crimes has been greatly reduced. So, if drugs were to be legalized under this scenario, the only way someone would sell them without risking life in prison or worse, is if they took responsibility for the actions of an intoxicated user by whatever means.
That in itself is a hard political sell even if the billions we are spending now on drug enforcement and the profits now financing organized crime are sufficient to cover the cost of risk. Legalized in such a manner, the price of some drugs might be cheaper than they are on the black market now and people with drug problems could be identified and helped.
If the public is unwilling to inflict such punishments, then there is no way to legalize recreational drugs and the only way to control a drug problem is to do what Singapore has done, similar to what the United States used to do before we had a major drug problem. Either way, we cannot solve this problem by failing to enforce bad law.
It's either re-institute draconian punishments, or tolerate what we have now, or worse.
Prior to the 1960s. IIRC they were changed in about 1969 or 70.
follow the money. Fighting the war on drugs is just as big of an industry as the drug trafficking is if not bigger.
Keep reading genius. Drug users are a public health problem. If someone chooses a destructive lifestyle that affects the public, then lock them up. I didn't say choose for them. I said get them out of the public domain. I feel the same way about other vice crimes like prostitution.
I would love to think that people can do whatever they want, but societies need laws and activities that affect the general public need to be dealt with seriously.
I think many people visit there for the drugs. Do you honestly believe the US would become filled with drug crazed zombies? I have faith in most people to make good choices. I agree people should be responsible for their actions. I suggest you move to Singapore and be happy. I would be happy in an America where the WOD ends and the violence of the drug was is gone. Utopia will never exist on this Earth and believing this WOD can be one is a Utopian type dream. I'd rather lived with flawed Americans, than live in the police state that is Singapore. Remember, most people wanting to take drugs are taking them. If they were legalized I doubt it would increase much. Please see post#33 for a good way to deal with decreasing drug use. I respect your views, but don't agree with them. Good night.
Bull pucky. Go look at Amsterdam.
Ok... looking... seems to be a lot of drugged up foreigners looking for cheap drugs because every place else has them illegal. Seems to me if you kicked the drugged up foreigners out things would be fine there.
Some thoughts on drug addiction based on years of direct observations and training in counseling.
One young white male from an upper middle class family addicted to cocaine took me to the projects when he made a buy. The seller was a poor black woman with two children. Her son was an honor student in high school, and hated what his mother was doing to keep a roof over their head. She used cocaine intermittently for menstrual cramps. The white male had been sexually abused by his mother and physically abused by his successful father who also used cocaine sometimes. He was in constant emotional pain and used cocaine, alcohol and nicotine to suppress it. He often said he wished pot would be decriminalized because it was almost as effective and a lot easier on the body. He is dead now or I would not be discussing his case. On the day of his funeral, his father couldn't wait to get the guests out of the house so he could get drunk.
Everyone I have ever known well enough to know their history, who was addicted to drugs or alcohol, was in a continual state of emotional (and sometimes physical) pain. Any substance which kills pain is addictive to those who are in pain. There is NO such thing as a NONADDICTIVE PAIN KILLER. People whose reaction to pain is to want to be reved up will go to cocaine and crystal meth. Those who want to mellow out and zone out will go to heroin or pot.
Sending people to jail simply increases the pain these people are already in. It is like trying to cure a broken leg by perscribing jumping rope. If it were an enforced detox, it might make some sense, but drugs are easily obtained in prison. Why some prisoner or civil liberties group has not sued the prison systems for failure to prevent those who are jailed on drug charges from getting drugs, I can't fathom. Surely if you are going to jail for drugs, you shouldn't still be getting them. What hypocracy.
There is a major prison industry with a stake in keeping these laws. Most drug use and minor distribution should be decriminalized. Keep penalties for major dealers and selling to minors. Use the empty space to jail the increasing number of illegal immigrants coming from countries with a potential for terrorism. Thus the prison lobby would continue to get its money. Potentially dangerous illegal aliens would not be paroled and disappear. And minor drug offenders would not have their lives destroyed even further. NOTE, I HAVE SAID DECRIMINALIZE, NOT LEGALIZE.
I say we draw the line here, now. Better to fight the good fight and lose than to passively acquiesce. That would be such a European thing to do.
Kettle Pot calling black an all that.
Ok lets get to the nub you stated "that a society that either passively abets or actively promotes behaviors". You got me coming and going
If we end the WOD does that mean we are actively promotes behaviors such as drug taking.
Many would argue not.
But your first part either passively abets means that by ending the WOD we are passively abbeting people making bad choices.
The only way to not be passive is to actually intervene in someones life style choice to make sure they make the right choices albeit the ones dictated by those with a serous moral and responsible attitude towards society.
"Keep reading genius. Drug users are a public health problem. If someone chooses a destructive lifestyle that affects the public, then lock them up. I didn't say choose for them. I said get them out of the public domain. I feel the same way about other vice crimes like prostitution.
I would love to think that people can do whatever they want, but societies need laws and activities that affect the general public need to be dealt with seriously."
Well genius how does someone smoking pot hurt anyone else? It doesn't.
I would suggest the Welfare state spending by our government over the past 40years have destroyed many times the lives. Governments are the biggest entities that threaten the family, liberty and general peace. It is disgusting how people always assume everyone's a libertarian and therefore a crackpot. I am not a libertarian; I am just someone who looks at government with a skeptical eye. Remember, most of our Founders had little faith in government to solve most problems. They wanted people to be left alone. I have ultimate faith that most people left alone, will make wise choices. I am sorry so many think through government action, we can be all be "made" to be happy and never do wrong.
No, they LIVE there for the drugs. Guess who pays for it, "libertarian"?
Do you honestly believe the US would become filled with drug crazed zombies?
Broken homes, more divorces, more single parent kids, more auto accidents, more welfare cases... yes. It's bad policy.
I suggest you move to Singapore and be happy.
I suggest you grow up. Enforcing draconian penalites for crimes committed under the influence does not a police state make. I'm not for making possession, sale, or use illegal, but I AM in favor of heavy penalties for damages done to others while under the influence subject to due process of law. If you call that a police state, get a grip.
I'd rather lived with flawed Americans, than live in the police state that is Singapore.
Just go on with your strawman fantasy and I won't bother responding again.
I am all for that, for both drugs and drink.
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