Just Say Maybe To Drugs
As in maybe do 'em, maybe don't -- legally. You're less likely to have the hots to do them if they're legal. That's how it works with pot in the Netherlands. So writes Stossel in reason in an anti-drug war piece that isn't all that novel, but lays out the various idiocies pretty well. An excerpt:
I understand that people on drugs can do terrible harm--wreck lives and hurt people. But that's true for alcohol, too. But alcohol prohibition didn't work. It created Al Capone and organized crime. Now drug prohibition funds nasty Mexican gangs and the Taliban. Is it worth it? I don't think so.Everything can be abused, but that doesn't mean government can stop it, or should try to stop it. Government goes astray when it tries to protect us from ourselves.
Many people fear that if drugs were legal, there would be much more use and abuse. That's possible, but there is little evidence to support that assumption. In the Netherlands, marijuana has been legal for years. Yet the Dutch are actually less likely to smoke than Americans. Thirty-eight percent of American adolescents have smoked pot, while only 20 percent of Dutch teens have. One Dutch official told me that "we've succeeded in making pot boring."
By contrast, what good has the drug war done? It's been 40 years since Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. Since then, government has spent billions and officials keep announcing their "successes." They are always holding press conferences showing off big drug busts. So it's not like authorities aren't trying.
We've locked up 2.3 million people, a higher percentage than any other country. That allows China to criticize America's human-rights record because our prisons are "packed with inmates."
Yet drugs are still everywhere. The war on drugs wrecks far more lives than drugs do!
Need more proof? Fox News runs stories about Mexican cocaine cartels and marijuana gangs that smuggle drugs into Arizona. Few stop to think that legalization would end the violence. There are no Corona beer smugglers. Beer sellers don't smuggle. They simply ship their product. Drug laws cause drug crime.
we've succeeded in making pot boring
This isn't really related to legality, but I think if more parents exhibited this attitude, we'd have fewer kids rebelling by doing drugs. It obviously wouldn't work with people who are true addictive personalities; but while most addicts used drugs as kids, not all kids who use drugs will be addicts. Taking away the illicitness would go a long way toward getting kids to stop doing stuff that's bad for them.
This is purely anecdotal, of course, but my parents did a great job with me when it came to potential rebellion. I wasn't offered sips of drinks, but I would get them if I asked. By the time I was seventeen, I'd tasted beer, margaritas, and Long Island tea. There was never a big deal made out of alcohol either way. The same with sex. I never even had a curfew. If it was reasonable for me to be out until two in the morning on a weekend, I was allowed to as long as my parents knew where I was. Sometimes I'd be the one to drive my friends home after a party or a late movie or something, so I'd get home really late, but it was fine as long as I called with my ETA.
As a result, I never even really had an urge to sneak out or drink or smoke. I didn't even realize that until a couple of years ago when I was talking to a friend about her misspent adolescence. I realized mine was really tame, and then I thought about my parents' attitude: it was made explicit that I could come to them with anything, but they weren't all movie-of-the-week about it. They were just forthright with the fact that they knew I was a good kid and they'd trust me until I gave them a reason not to. I don't even think they ever once told me not to drink or do drugs or anything else. Their approach was to not make a big deal out of either side of the issue, see what I decided, and deal with me accordingly.
So I think the "make it boring" attitude could definitely be applied to the legal issue. And I don't think there's any sort of contingent of potential pot-smokers just waiting for the official okay to indulge.
NumberSix at June 21, 2010 12:25 AM
OK, so if pot is made boring something else will just take its place. Can all drugs be made legal? Seems unlike to me.
If when I was in high school, pot was not considered that big of deal. I think it was speed that was the rebellious thing to do. You get pot in the hall way with little trouble from a friend...speed you had to go to a true dealer.
Hence, make pot boring then kids will due something else, gangs will deal in something else with the associated violence.
I doubt much would change.
The Former Banker at June 21, 2010 1:09 AM
OK, so if pot is made boring something else will just take its place.
That's definitely a valid point. There will always be something else, but I do think that making pot boring (and alcohol, sex, and other typically rebellious things) would take care of some of the problem. Not just in legal terms, but in terms of how parents deal with their kids. Like I said earlier, it won't do anything for those who are truly addictive personalities. I guess I should add to that that I don't think it would help those that are really hellbent on doing something bad, never mind what it is. It's like Renton says in Trainspotting: "We'd have injected vitamin C if only they'd make it illegal." There will always be people that are thrillseekers or just self-destructive. Making marijuana legal wouldn't change that, most likely. But I think it would cut back on the people who smoke pot because it's illegal and comparatively less harmful than other drugs.
And not changing much seems to me a better result than not changing at all.
NumberSix at June 21, 2010 1:37 AM
"That's possible, but there is little evidence to support that assumption."
Well, here's the torpedo through the hull of that gem: 12 thousand deaths per year in direct alcohol abuse and hundreds of thousands of contributory deaths and injuries; hospitals and courtrooms full of those injured and dying from tobacco use.
Oh, yeah. "Little evidence."
How many times in this and other fora must we see one assertion that subsidizing an activity promotes it, then in the next breath another which says it won't happen in this case?
Have you noticed that the entire premise that legality removes the cachet of committing "minor" crimes in drug use proves that responsibility is not to be found here?
Radwaste at June 21, 2010 2:11 AM
And can we have an exit strategy for the "war" on poverty too?
BlogDog at June 21, 2010 4:59 AM
Where are these cartels going to go, praytell, if we legalize them? I really doubt they will go silently, with their armies, into the night. Nor will users stop committing crimes to get the money to buy their drugs-they won't be free if legal, and given the price of cigarettes, they'll probably be more expensive. The government will tax the crap out of them and IF a company can be found to make them it will have a very high overhead for insurance alone.
The violence caused by people on them won't go away either. We just executed one Powell, here in Texas, and some of the mentally-vacant people pleading for his cop-killling (with an AK-47) life were using the excuse that he was on drugs at the time. Sure, people commit violence when drunk too, but meth and crack and PCP seem to bring out a special sort of violence even in nonviolent people. Drug rage and paranoia is really scary. I've seen enough of it firsthand.
Do I think people should be in prison merely for holding enough for personal use? Not really, but then think of all the violence caused to get that personal use in their hands. Violence that will not go away all pie-in-the-sky-like if we legalize or decriminalize. It's a complicated issue full of innocent bystanders, not just the users.
momof4 at June 21, 2010 5:13 AM
>>Violence that will not go away all pie-in-the-sky-like if we legalize or decriminalize.
Check out exactly what happened when the Prohibition Amendment was repealed. Why are we hypothesizing when we can look it up?
Einstein allegedly said to continue to follow the same procedures while expecting a different result is insanity.
irlandes at June 21, 2010 7:25 AM
No Government program ever ends. No Government budget ever shrinks. This time, it won't be different.
New York is well on the way to making cigarette smuggling a very lucrative proposition.
MarkD at June 21, 2010 7:35 AM
Similar to NumberSix, my family always had wine or liquor available, since we were kids. By the time I was a teenger, there really wasn't any reason to go off sneaking a six pack, when I could have a beer while mowing the lawn. My grandparents were like this, and I repeated this with my own kids. I used to give them the facts of life after they had the school-sponsored DARE programs.
It's interesting how nobody takes "abstinence only" programs seriously when we're talking about sex, but they are taken as a given when it's beer or marijuana.
How many times in this and other fora must we see one assertion that subsidizing an activity promotes it, then in the next breath another which says it won't happen in this case?
I'm not sure where those figures are from, but it's interesting to note that it's certainly a lot smaller then the number of teenage automobile accidents...
Tom Accuosti at June 21, 2010 7:41 AM
"heck out exactly what happened when the Prohibition Amendment was repealed. Why are we hypothesizing when we can look it up?"
Yep. Look it up. What DID those gangsters do once they weren't running alcohol? Oh, that's right, other crime. Or do you have evidence that former violent smugglers became grocery store clerks?
momof4 at June 21, 2010 7:53 AM
"Many people fear that if drugs were legal, there would be much more use and abuse. That's possible, but there is little evidence to support that assumption. "
No there isn't. Common sense says that illegality keeps prices high on drugs, and high prices increases supply because profits are higher. So we are spending who knows how many bilions each year to keep prices high and feed the cartels. Boring or not boring has nothing to so with it.
Jim at June 21, 2010 8:18 AM
The late Quentin Crisp wrote: "It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom."
lenona at June 21, 2010 3:32 PM
Organized crime existed before prohibition, there has always been some form of vice which was barred by public law, and patronized by those who love the vice more than they fear the law. Prohibition just moved such organizations mainstream.
Before alcohol there was murder for hire, there were the newspaper wars, there was prostitution, gambling, and racketeeering, human trafficing, never was there a time when there were not those willing to provide a vice, nor was there a lack of people willing to pay.
Robert at June 21, 2010 5:29 PM
It's clear that there are no easy choices with currently illegal drugs. Right now we clearly see the problems of drugs being illegal: awful incarceration rates (and their enabling of the prison-industrial complex that drains a huge amount resources better used elsewhere), the U.S. wealth that is turning Mexico into a lawless war zone, the gangs on our own soil (and those like La EME that cross borders), the environmental destruction caused by clandestine drug production.
I think that it is easy to idealize legal or decriminalized drugs as fixing all of these problems, with few negative consequences (as per the Netherlands and Portugal). Americans are not Europeans, however, and we are more given to extremes than the people of either of those countries. I'd guess that decriminalization would come with an increased rate of drug use and addiction. It does not necessarily follow that the problems associated with drug use would dramatically increase, which is probably what would have to happen for drug decriminalization not to have a net positive effect.
Christopher at June 21, 2010 11:28 PM
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