Illegal drugs

[Smarmy Of One]

I personally don't have any issue with marijuana or hash. I don't think they are gateway drugs. In Canada, while they are not legal, if you are caught with either, they get confiscated and you are fined. I think they should be legal. The fact these are not legal is directly the fault of cotton industry lobbyists.

I don't think the issue is simply that it's our own business what we put in our bodies, but more what happens afterward. People having overdoses on stronger drugs are a strain on society in terms of health care, and addicts are a strain on society in the sense that they may turn to crime and are unable to contribute.

[pjkeeley]

People having overdoses on stronger drugs are a strain on society in terms of health care

True, but as I pointed out in my last post, this is only relevant to the discussion of prohibition *if* we suppose that more people will use drugs if they were legal. Otherwise, it makes no difference, since a 'strain' on our public health care system exists anyway, regardless of the illegality of drugs.

I should point out, evidence in this area suggests the contrary. In extensive surveys conducted in this country, the majority of respondents who claimed never to have use drugs cited "just not interested" as the main reason for their decision. The illegality of drugs was of much less concern, listed towards the bottom. The survey can be found here, if anyone's interested. Simply put, making drugs illegal does not change people's motivations to use or not to use them. Most people on this forum could, through resourceful use of contacts, obtain illegal drugs if they wanted, given enough time. It is not difficult and some of you may have even come across the opportunity entirely by accident.

addicts are a strain on society in the sense that they may turn to crime and are unable to contribute.

There are many factors that turn people to crime, and once you realise how absurd it would be to try and make them all illegal you can see the futility of that line of argument. Poverty for example, and lack of education, are hugely responsible for the rate of crime. Should these things be illegal?

[Smarmy Of One]

If drugs (and I'm talking heroine, PCP etc.) were made legal, I certainly do think that saturation would be far more prevalent. I am sure that there are many people who wouldn't otherwise partake in drug usage that would use if it were legal and available.

We can't negate the curiosity factor and legality removes a level of stigma that certain drugs currently have. I am certain that usage would go up. Especially among college youth.

I do however agree with a great many of the points you have made. I would personally like to see an experimental legalization in a specified test area.

[pjkeeley]

If drugs (and I'm talking heroine, PCP etc.) were made legal, I certainly do think that saturation would be far more prevalent. I am sure that there are many people who wouldn't otherwise partake in drug usage that would use if it were legal and available.

Overall I disagree, but it does depend on how you define 'legal' and 'available'. If mere drug possession were decriminalised, the rate of drug use I think would not change at all. Maybe a fraction of a fraction of a percent. If it became legal to sell drugs, their use might indeed become more prevalent, but keep in mind we would then be equipped with the ability to regulate the market. In the same way that the use of cigarettes is being controlled (in increasingly extreme manners in many countries), and to a lesser extent alcohol, we could control the sale and purchase of narcotics. The benefits of this, as well as hopefully reducing the number of drug users, are increased revenue from taxes and control of such factors as purity and dosage -- safer drugs.

We can't negate the curiosity factor and legality removes a level of stigma that certain drugs currently have.

The stigma of illegal drugs is a good point actually. It does prove to be an effective deterrent, I would argue much more so than the threat of legal sanction. However, I question how much that has to do with their illegality. It's important not to underestimate how powerful society's disapproval can be. I think even if the drugs you mentioned were legal, there would still be a stigma surrounding their use, in the same way that many legal but nevertheless deviant behaviours are stigmatised currently, particularly when they involve self-harm or inability to participate in the social structure. Alcoholism, for example, or suicidal behaviour. In this country, the indigenous population in many of the more impoverished communities faces significant problems with the inhalation of petrol -- a legal substance. I'm sure there are many more examples you could think of.

I would personally like to see an experimental legalization in a specified test area.

I would also be very interested in seeing this. But I can't see it happening any time soon. Current received wisdom in most developed countries is that we have a moral imperative to protect people from drugs, and were we to leave people to their own devices, we would be responsible for the consequences. It would take a long time and a lot of pursuasion to convince people otherwise. Such is the nature of the nanny state. Giving it responsibilites is as easy as pie. Taking them away requires wrenching them from nanny's iron -- but loving -- grip.  :wink:

[SteveS]

Such is the nature of the nanny state. Giving it responsibilites is as easy as pie. Taking them away requires wrenching them from nanny's iron -- but loving -- grip.

  Well put!

[McQ]

If drugs (and I'm talking heroine, PCP etc.) were made legal, I certainly do think that saturation would be far more prevalent. I am sure that there are many people who wouldn't otherwise partake in drug usage that would use if it were legal and available.

Overall I disagree, but it does depend on how you define 'legal' and 'available'. If mere drug possession were decriminalised, the rate of drug use I think would not change at all. Maybe a fraction of a fraction of a percent. If it became legal to sell drugs, their use might indeed become more prevalent, but keep in mind we would then be equipped with the ability to regulate the market. In the same way that the use of cigarettes is being controlled (in increasingly extreme manners in many countries), and to a lesser extent alcohol, we could control the sale and purchase of narcotics. The benefits of this, as well as hopefully reducing the number of drug users, are increased revenue from taxes and control of such factors as purity and dosage -- safer drugs.

We can't negate the curiosity factor and legality removes a level of stigma that certain drugs currently have.

The stigma of illegal drugs is a good point actually. It does prove to be an effective deterrent, I would argue much more so than the threat of legal sanction. However, I question how much that has to do with their illegality. It's important not to underestimate how powerful society's disapproval can be. I think even if the drugs you mentioned were legal, there would still be a stigma surrounding their use, in the same way that many legal but nevertheless deviant behaviours are stigmatised currently, particularly when they involve self-harm or inability to participate in the social structure. Alcoholism, for example, or suicidal behaviour. In this country, the indigenous population in many of the more impoverished communities faces significant problems with the inhalation of petrol -- a legal substance. I'm sure there are many more examples you could think of.

I would personally like to see an experimental legalization in a specified test area.

I would also be very interested in seeing this. But I can't see it happening any time soon. Current received wisdom in most developed countries is that we have a moral imperative to protect people from drugs, and were we to leave people to their own devices, we would be responsible for the consequences. It would take a long time and a lot of pursuasion to convince people otherwise. Such is the nature of the nanny state. Giving it responsibilites is as easy as pie. Taking them away requires wrenching them from nanny's iron -- but loving -- grip.  :wink:

Good points, PJ. My views on this subject have definitely changed over the years. I was a staunch, but ignorant critic of legalization of drugs, including pot, for a long time. Amazing what a little education and time can do.

[Smarmy Of One]

The stigma of illegal drugs is a good point actually. It does prove to be an effective deterrent, I would argue much more so than the threat of legal sanction. However, I question how much that has to do with their illegality. It's important not to underestimate how powerful society's disapproval can be. I think even if the drugs you mentioned were legal, there would still be a stigma surrounding their use, in the same way that many legal but nevertheless deviant behaviours are stigmatised currently, particularly when they involve self-harm or inability to participate in the social structure. Alcoholism, for example, or suicidal behaviour. In this country, the indigenous population in many of the more impoverished communities faces significant problems with the inhalation of petrol -- a legal substance. I'm sure there are many more examples you could think of.

While there is most definitely a stigma around alcoholism, we can't deny the power of denial. Most alcoholics are in complete denial about their alcoholism while they are drinking. Anyone experimenting with strong and highly addictive drugs often lives under the same denial.

It is easy for a person to convince themselves that they are in control of their drug use. After all they are not some gross junkie who doesn't bathe and trades hand jobs for smack under the expressway.

So with hard drugs made more accessible through legalization, I think that many more people would partake and live under the delusion that because they are from a good background, well educated and under control and that they can quit any time and therefore are not an addict.

I hope I am getting my point across, my sentence structure is weak today. I'm kind of tired- not stoned.  

[Seosamh]

I've had too many examples in my family of what drugs do to people to agree with the idea of legalizing illegal drugs. My uncle has used meth as far as I can tell, and he's living with his mother at the age of 50 with no job, and turned my mother's family home into a crackhouse. He's not the same person that he used to be. I have to take my mother's word for it that he used to be funny, as now he's a recluse that stays in the back bedroom of the house at gatherings. He also has lymphoma, also most likely caused by the amphetamines.

My cousin is addicted to cocaine probably. This has caused him to lose custody of his now eight year old daughter. He pretends to be a father on the best of days, but when he's on the cocaine he has done such things as terrorize his daughter, write obscenities on the walls of his mother's house, where the daughter is living, and once threatened to shoot my mother while in one of his drug-induced rages. He is constantly stealing computer parts form his mother and anything not bolted down from his grandmother to sell for drug money. He can;t hold a job for a month, and he's 30. THe worst thing is that he keeps having children, which are probably damaged for life by whatever their mothers were on while pregnant.

As i said, I've had too many perfect examples of how wonderful drugs are.

[pjkeeley]

I've had too many examples in my family of what drugs do to people to agree with the idea of legalizing illegal drugs. My uncle has used meth as far as I can tell, and he's living with his mother at the age of 50 with no job, and turned my mother's family home into a crackhouse. He's not the same person that he used to be. I have to take my mother's word for it that he used to be funny, as now he's a recluse that stays in the back bedroom of the house at gatherings. He also has lymphoma, also most likely caused by the amphetamines.

My cousin is addicted to cocaine probably. This has caused him to lose custody of his now eight year old daughter. He pretends to be a father on the best of days, but when he's on the cocaine he has done such things as terrorize his daughter, write obscenities on the walls of his mother's house, where the daughter is living, and once threatened to shoot my mother while in one of his drug-induced rages. He is constantly stealing computer parts form his mother and anything not bolted down from his grandmother to sell for drug money. He can;t hold a job for a month, and he's 30. THe worst thing is that he keeps having children, which are probably damaged for life by whatever their mothers were on while pregnant.

As i said, I've had too many perfect examples of how wonderful drugs are.

These are tuly terrible examples of the effect illegal drugs have on people Seosamh, but whether or not we agree that drugs can do terrible things is not the same question as whether or not we agree that they should be illegal.

Consider the current drug policy of most Western nations, in which drug use is currently illegal and punishable. Despite this fact, and as you pointed out, people continue to use drugs even though they are illegal. The most common arguments many critics of decriminalisation seem to rely on is that if drugs were made legal:

a) more people would use drugs, and
b) society would be condoning their use.

These are both baseless assumptions. Addressing the latter point first, there are currently a great many things (drugs, poisons, weapons, etc.) that are legal to purchase and which could have a dangerous effect on the user, yet society certainly does not condone this or indeed any reckless or dangerous behaviour. Focusing on legal drugs for a moment (alcohol and tobacco being the biggest killers, much more so than illegal drugs), nobody condones the fact that these legal substance make people into addicts in today's society, whether it be alcoholics or people addicted to inhalants or painkillers or whatever. We do the best we can to help them out of their situation. That is what should be done with drugs that are now illegal. The attention we focus on making them into criminals should be focused on alleviating their problems. It just seems like common sense to me.

As for the view that more people would use drugs that are currently illegal if they were made legal, there is simply no evidence to suggest this is so. Surveys of the general population as well as evidence from countries with more liberal drug policies suggest this view is false. Most people who are inclined to use drugs can find access to them, and this seems to me one of the most obvious drawbacks of prohibition: how easy it is to obtain drugs despite them being illegal. It is also a very easy 'crime' to get away with. As for the rest of the population, polls show they simply aren't interested in using those drugs in the first place, and whether they are legal or illegal makes no difference to them. So, in essence, what we know suggests that the status quo would remain the same if drugs were made legal.

Why is this so? In my opinion the most effective deterrent against any form of deviant behaviour is the stigma that society imposes on deviants. There is no reason why we would need to be more tolerant towards drug use simply if it were legal. So long as society continues to condemn drug use, the cultural effect of this stigmatisation will mean that few people use drugs. Those that do are even less likely to want to abuse them for the same reason. When I was in Japan, I noticed they had cigarette and alcohol vending machines on the street. There was nothing to prevent underage kids from using them, yet Japan has no more of a problem with underage drinking and smoking than any other country, possibly less. Why? Because Japanese culture utterly shuns those who deviate from accepted behaviour. I guess you don't need a nanny state when parents are doing their job properly.

The advantages of legalising drugs, on the other hand, are many. Among other things, they include:

i) Market control of supply, price, purity, dosage, and so on, meaning safer drugs as well as the ability to regulate their purchase.
ii) Increased revenue possibilities from taxation as well as slashing the law enforcement budget, money which could be put back into alleviating drug problems.
iii) Thwarting the black market that has built up around illegal drugs and which fuels many other forms of organised crime.

That's basically a summary of my view, expressed in more detail in earlier posts. I conclude by pointing out that prohibition didn't work with alcohol because the opinion of the majority went against it. Even those that supported it in the first place could see that it wasn't working. The majority of people today aren't interested in using illegal drugs, yet they fail to see that prohibiting them is equally pointless. Wake up, world.

[the_atheist_organist]

This is an argument I've been having with myself for a long time. It seems like every website I look up has something different to say about the effects of marijuana-- from it being extremely harmful and bad, to it being much less harmful than cigarettes. I can see what it's doing to my friend who does it regularly; he's distant, secretive, and negligent with friendships and schoolwork.

But then again, laws can't be made on such a personal level. If someone wants to mess up the relationships they have and keep secrets, that's not the government's business. Laws should be made to protect people from other people, so if the action doesn't hurt others, it shouldn't be illegal, right?

My current opinion on marijuana (not harder drugs) is that it should be made legal-- only because it doesn't seem to be any worse than cigarettes or alcohol, and those are legal. It's an extremely tough issue to solve.

[SteveS]

For what it's worth, the_atheist_organist, I think the best reason to make it legal is what you laid down here:

But then again, laws can't be made on such a personal level. If someone wants to mess up the relationships they have and keep secrets, that's not the government's business. Laws should be made to protect people from other people, so if the action doesn't hurt others, it shouldn't be illegal, right?

That is my feeling on the matter.  People should be granted freedom up to the extent that claiming their freedom does not remove someone else's freedom.

While I would be upset if one of my close friends became withdrawn due to drug use, I certainly can't claim a "right" that they remain close with me.  This is a personal desire, but I can't impose this upon them as a requirement.  I might try to talk them out of the drug use, and explain how I valued our friendship which had seemingly failed, but I would hardly find it appropriate to lock them in prison and forcefully prevent them from taking whatever drug they were using.  This I would find to be a gross infraction upon their freedom.

Thinking like this is why I come down on the side of legalization --- I value personal freedoms over the nanny state.  In fact, one of the primary objections to legalization is that legalizing something constitutes promotion of it, yet this itself doesn't make any sense once we get away from the whole nanny-state concept.  If the state is there as a necessary regulator for the cases where people began to harm each other by transgressing against their freedoms, and this is all, then it becomes clear to see that a legal action is not a promoted or endorsed action.  It is just an action that is not transgressing upon another's freedom.

[Eris]

I agree, for the most part. When it comes to marijuana, I think it should not be illegal. http://norml.org/

When it comes to some of the drugs that damage lives, I'm not sure. Maybe it shouldn't be illegal to consume them, but if a parent starts doing meth or something at the expense of their child's well-being, there should be some serious repurcussions there.

[pjkeeley]

When it comes to some of the drugs that damage lives, I'm not sure. Maybe it shouldn't be illegal to consume them, but if a parent starts doing meth or something at the expense of their child's well-being, there should be some serious repurcussions there.

Good point, however, there already are laws and regulations to prevent the neglect of children. Alcoholic parents included. So I don't think that particular point factors into discussion of whether drugs should be legal or not.

I know it's hard for anyone to imagine what it would be like living in a society in which ALL drugs are legal, and the idea that they should be illegal is deeply ingrained; my argument as set out in previous posts hopefully goes some way to pointing out that such a society would not be very different to the way it is now, perhaps even better, as outlined in my arguments as to why legal drugs could be beneficial.

[Valerie]

I just want to make one simple statement.  I don't want to see ALL illegal drugs made legal, just pot.  I choose not to drink because I don't like the taste, it bloats me, and it makes my migraines worse.  I have dealt with the judgment of even people who drink alcahol and feel that they are such hypocrites because they're down on someone who smokes to get high as opposed to someone who merely drinks to get high. I can tolerate a person who doesn't do anything to get high a whole lot easier.  I remind these people that alcahol was illegal once too, but that didn't necessarily make is immoral.  And now we just wink at those old bootleggers who sold moonshine.  I also tell them that abortion is legal, but that doesn't make it moral.  I think that pot will become legal someday hopefully in my lifetime!  How many pot smokin presidents have we had now?  Remember, Clinton didn't inhale!  Anyway, nice to read all of the opinions.  Lot's of intelligent people here.....

[Will]

I don't drink because it lets the crazy out.

Still, I can't imagine trying to explain why I made heroin legal to my kids. No, I can't support legalizing every illegal drug. Maybe just mj, shrooms, and light opiums.