NORML founder and longtime head Keith Stroup is stepping down in favor of younger leadership. Keep fighting the good fight, dude. The following quote is dry, but charming:
Meanwhile he’d begun smoking pot and marching in antiwar demonstrations, sometimes simultaneously.
No. Way.
I never knew they’d gotten this close:
In 1975, five states — Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine and Ohio — removed criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of the weed. In 1976, Jimmy Carter, who during his campaign had advocated decriminalizing pot, was elected president. In 1977, Stroup visited the White House to meet with Carter’s drug policy adviser, Peter Bourne. Soon NORML would be playing the White House in softball.
It seemed like high times for NORML. Publicly, Stroup predicted that pot would be legal in a couple of years. Privately, he and his NORML pals joked about forming an advocacy group for another drug they’d begun to enjoy — cocaine.
OK, coming clean here, I favor legalization of all drugs, so I’m not mocking him. And who knew that about Carter? A candidate who took the Peter Tosh line got elected in my country?!
Then Stroup got busted and stuff. In the words of the Beastie Boys, “Customs jailed me over an herb seed/Don’t rat on your boys, over some rat weed.” Wait, but why are government officials quoting The Big Lebowski?
Tom Riley, official spokesman for federal drug czar John Walters, agrees. “Keith and people like that have banged their heads against the wall for years saying ‘Legalize pot.’ But they’re farther behind now than they were 20 years ago.”
Riley says Stroup’s career reminds him of a line from the movie “The Big Lebowski”: “The ’60s are over, Lebowski. The bums lost. My condolences.”
We’ve appointed John Waters Drug Czar? Oh, Walters. But yeah, and that guy’s never toked up? Riiight. The Dude Abides. I mean, just say no. [Link to picture of Nancy Reagan in Mr. T’s lap.] Finally, I’d just like to echo the plaintive query of a thousand stoners: “how can you make a plant against the law?” “Workings of Democracy for $100? By passing a law.” “Dude, that packs meager.” It does, people. It packs meager. When I’m Drug Czarina, all this is going to change. (It’s like being Drug Czar, but way more tiaras.)
{ 82 comments }
David Weman 01.04.05 at 2:14 pm
You’re for legalization of cocaine? I’d be interested in hearing why.
belle waring 01.04.05 at 3:10 pm
I know people are going to spend all kind of money and fund all manner of criminal activity to purchase prohibited drugs. I recognize that under legalization some individuals who would not otherwise have become drug addicts will become drug addicts. I reckon that this obvious harm is outweighed by the terrible toll in lives that the current illegal drug trade exacts, from the AUC in Colombia to our own crime-blighted inner cities. If we were to agree to spend 1/8 of the money currently spent on drug-related crimes on recovery programs we could handsomely mitigate the harms, while simultaneously eliminating the DEA and all its attendant BS.
Eric 01.04.05 at 3:15 pm
I too would be interested in the theory behind de-criminalizing all drug use. Pot I can understand because it was wrongly classified, and criminilization itself leads to the most problems with it’s use. What about use by a minor?
Most other “harder” and more addictive substances are illegal or controled because of thier overwhemingly negative imapct on society as a whole.
belle waring 01.04.05 at 3:25 pm
ummm, Deb, I don’t have a penis. Just thought I’d mention it. Also, the synconpated offering of “’bout” for “about” ought at least to maintain the meter. Eric: I would support restrictions on drug use by minors similar to those we currently have in place for the two controlled substances most likely to cause a randomly chosen person’s death or fatal disease: to wit, cigarettes and liquor. To favor the decriminalization of drugs is not to propose crack vending machines in middle schools.
Eric 01.04.05 at 3:27 pm
belle waring
Sounds like the theories that if we did completly away with taxes people would have so much wealth they could give away to charity much more than any government sponsored program.
It’s bogus.
belle waring 01.04.05 at 3:38 pm
Eric, you don’t have to be a Rand-crazed supply-sider to be in favor of decriminalization. Heroin is a very dangerous drug. It is not, however, more dangerous than alcohol.
Unless you think that we should return to prohibition, I’m a bit at a loss to see what principled arguments you can muster to the conclusion that booze and smokes should be legal and H or C should not.
Eric 01.04.05 at 3:38 pm
If discovered today, asprin would be a perscription drug, not an over the counter drug. If you are de-criminializing drug use, what about perscription drugs?
Tobacco and alcohol have long and checkered backgrounds, and like pot are social and recreational drugs with a low social imapct. They are damaging only in a fraction of the population. Cocane, crack, herione, and other drugs are not low social impact… one use and you are more than likley addicted, not just mentally but physically as well.
Let’s not forget the fact that alcohol is a natural process that has helped humans for millena. I brew gallons of wine and wine like drinks at home with little to no outside help.
The governments intensions are good, I do believe that drug use should warrant rehabilitation not hard incarseration, but the ban on destructive drugs should stand.
Eric 01.04.05 at 3:39 pm
If discovered today, asprin would be a perscription drug, not an over the counter drug. If you are de-criminializing drug use, what about perscription drugs?
Tobacco and alcohol have long and checkered backgrounds, and like pot are social and recreational drugs with a low social imapct. They are damaging only in a fraction of the population. Cocane, crack, herione, and other drugs are not low social impact… one use and you are more than likley addicted, not just mentally but physically as well.
Let’s not forget the fact that alcohol is a natural process that has helped humans for millena. I brew gallons of wine and wine like drinks at home with little to no outside help.
The governments intensions are good, I do believe that drug use should warrant rehabilitation not hard incarseration, but the ban on destructive drugs should stand.
Gotinha 01.04.05 at 3:43 pm
If only
belle waring 01.04.05 at 3:43 pm
Dude, if you think alcohol is a drug which has a low social impact…hmmm. Do you know any alcoholics? Any children who grew up in alcoholic families? Alcoholism is a serious and pervasive social ill. The fact that people in millenia past have gotten wasted whenever the opportuntiy presented itself does not mitigate this stark fact.
Scott Martens 01.04.05 at 3:46 pm
What good is social policy if you’re not willing to weigh the benefits against the costs? Belle’s argument that the costs of decriminalisation exceed the benefits doesn’t seem irrational or unreasonable. Of course, yes, the costs are measured in people’s lives, but so are many policy choices. Unless you think the use of mind altering substances merits criminalisation for some moral reason independent of the consequences of use, the only counter-argument is to claim that the costs of decriminalisation really do outweigh the benefits.
Where I think a decent case could be made is saying that the decriminalisation of some drugs, but not others, lowers the costs while keeping most of the benefits. I’m not making that case, but its relative merits are underexplored. I suspect full legalisation in conjunction with enormous regulatory controls and a heavy surtax for health services would actually work better in the short term, while in the long term the sin industry would eventually take it over and start buying congressmen willing to deregulate the industry. This would eliminate most of the value of regulating and taxing it, but at least the end result would be the banalisation of drugs to the point where kids would never want to do anything as square (or whatever word the kids are using these days to indicate squarehood) as use the brand name drugs their parents use.
Eric 01.04.05 at 3:56 pm
Scott,
Yes, a re-evaluation of social costs I would support. I also support reclasifing pot because of the government’s hypocracy of it’s being listed on “section c” and being availible from the FDA as a drug. At worst pot deserves to be by perscription at best it should be sold just like tobacco.
But the blanket assumption that complete decriminilization would be better than what we have now is a much more outragious statement to make without hard numbers and facts to back up the argument.
Alcohol does have social ill effects, but the vast majority of the population can use alcohol without ill effect, it’s ill effects tend to be easly recognozable, treatable, and are not illediatly fatal. Correct use is linked to a number of social benifits including reduced arterial desiese, reduced stress, and longer life.
Tobacco I will not attempt to defend on a social level, I think it’s a disgusting habit. You have to weight the deaths, health care costs, taxes, and lost productivity against a product that has a long history in this country. To remove tobacco would be a large blow to our economy.
WillieStyle 01.04.05 at 4:02 pm
I’d love to legalize drugs, really I would. But the tiny conservative voice in my head (which I try desperately to ignore most of the time) keeps saying look at history.
I’m no expert, but it seems to me that societies that have had unfettered access to opium have been damaged in ways far more debilitating than any wave of alcoholism could wrought. I’m thinking in particular of China in the 1800s.
Eric 01.04.05 at 4:12 pm
I think that the line should, and has, been draw between those substances that used in moderation are effectivly harmless and those substances that are not harmless in moderation or that defy moderation ( cocane users would rather use than eat, even to the point of starvation ).
We can’t save people from everything, but nor can we ignore social costs of debilitating drug use.
Matt McGrattan 01.04.05 at 4:15 pm
Eric wrote:
“Cocane, crack, herione, and other drugs are not low social impact… one use and you are more than likley addicted, not just mentally but physically as well.”
In fact, that’s just not true. It requires use of heroin, for example, over quite a long time before addiction sets in. I’ve read a number of different estimates of time-to-addiction and they range from weeks to months of fairly regular use.
Further, there are relatively large numbers of people who use all of these drugs recreationally and who are not addicted.
Addiction and withdrawal are extremely complicated from a psychological point of view — one only has to look at the different withdrawal experiences of surgical patients coming off extremely pure morphine/diamorphine and of addicts coming off crappy heroin containing relatively low levels of opiates — but pretty much every expert agrees that it’s just NOT a case of ‘one hit and you’re hooked’…
That’s not to trivialise heroin addiction, but the very worst problems experienced by addicts stem as much from the very illegality of what they do as much as they do from the drug and its effects.
des von bladet 01.04.05 at 4:30 pm
(cocane users would rather use than eat, even to the point of starvation )
What, all of them? Cocaine has become very popular as a recreational drug in the UK over the last decade or so, and I’ve not heard of many related cases of starvation.
One of the more telling facts about the Moral Paniceers is just how hard they often find themselves dredging to get suitably appalling examples (UK readers will remember Leah Betts, for sure). Imagine if they did the same with crossing the road…
SqueakyRat 01.04.05 at 4:34 pm
One use and you’re addicted? I’ve heard this before. When did this piece of crapola get established? Anyone who has any experience with cocaine or heroin knows that this is just rubbish. Is this what they teach in school now?
SqueakyRat 01.04.05 at 4:41 pm
As you say, Williestyle, you’re no expert. China was “debilitated” by opium addiction in the 19th century? Believe me, it was the least of their problems.
Walt Pohl 01.04.05 at 4:55 pm
Belle, I’m very disappointed in you. I thought finally someone was ready to join me in my campaign to guarantee every single middle school in America has a crack vending machine.
rvman 01.04.05 at 4:56 pm
Most illegal drugs have “soft” and “hard” versions, just like alcohol. Crack and Heroin are forms of drugs which are easy to transport and dense, so they thrive in an illegal environment. Comparing their effects to “alcohol” – which includes everything from wine coolers to moonshine – is unfair. A fairer comparison is to everclear and ilk – probably even better is to moonshine, with its contaminants and uncertainties.
In a legal environment both drugs have “softer” forms which would be far less harmful – opium in the case of heroin, the “seven percent solution” and the original “Coca” cola in the case of cocaine. The latter is no more harmful than Vivarin or a wine cooler.
Even in the illegal environment, Cocaine has had many more “high-functioning” users than sewer-rat addicts. Think back to the ’80s, with the classic coke-snortin’ yuppie with a high-powered job and a higher-powered social life. He may have been an a**, but he was a productive one.
Look at the social ills of the ’20s prohibition era for another example – machine gun massacres, poison rotgut, and gangsters running rum. A level of disruption caused by alcohol far greater than today, despite the massive increase in consumption. Why? Because criminality meant that only criminals manufactured or imported liquor, resulting in extremely potent, variable quality goods which serve addict markets. (Sound familiar?) Legalization allowed accountable manufacture and recreational dosage. (e.g. beer and wine)
No one can bring “hard numbers” to the table because no one is allowed to run the experiment. All we can cite is common sense and logic, and the lessons of the history of Prohibition. Both point to legalization (with appropriate ameliorative spending in lieu of law enforcement) as solving more problems than it creates.
Of course, we can also point to the injustice of imprisoning people and ruining their lives over recreational drugs of no particular harm to non-users.
And to the implicit racism of illegal crack and pot, but legal alcohol, or of disproportionate sentences for crack relative to coke.
And to the mercy of allowing true addicts to come in for treatment without risk of prison.
And to the lives saved by taking “dealing” out of the hands of murderous and unaccountable thugs who “compete” with guns and putting it into the hands of (relatively) honest and accountable corporations and businesses who compete with prices and marketing.
And to the children who can be protected – ask kids, what is easier to come by, a joint or a beer? At most schools, it is the joint, because the beer-seller has a business to protect from sanction if he sells to kids, while the dealer just LOVES selling to kids – he knows they aren’t cops. (Jump Street fantasies to the contrary)
The cost of legalization? Some more people use recreationally, just like more people drink today. A lot of cops out of work, or back on less glamorous beats like felony investigation and traffic duty. Small price to pay for a massively reduced murder rate, reduced ODs through accountable manufacture and safer dosing, more efficient and focused enforcement and treatment options, white-market (and thus taxable) sales, and reduction in jail populations by hundreds of thousands.
asg 01.04.05 at 5:13 pm
But the tiny conservative voice in my head (which I try desperately to ignore most of the time) keeps saying look at history.
Indeed — in particular look at the history of organized crime, and track its influence. Prohibition gave birth to the phenomenon of extremely wealthy criminal entrepreneurs with the resources to corrupt police and judges, and the drug war has continued and magnified it. The effect on civil liberties has also been profound; I remember seeing a factoid stating that almost three-quarters of Fourth Amendment appellate cases have to do with the drug war. And it sure ain’t the case that all of those cases were decided in favor of a broad reading of the 4A.
I have yet to encounter a prohibitionist argument that does not either rely on basic factual problems (such as eric’s fatuous claim that one use of heroin or cocaine creates an addict) or on a straightforward refusal to engage the reasons why alcohol prohibition was a dismal failure. As someone else has pointed out, many of the debilitating social costs of drug use stem directly from its illegality (how many people drink themselves blind due to contaminated moonshine nowadays? How many liquor store owners die in gun battles over turf? How many judges are on the take from cigarette smugglers?). The drug war really is, in my mind, one of those issues where reasonable people have very little room to disagree.
Matt Weiner 01.04.05 at 5:21 pm
[SPOILERS for The Big Lebowski]
Anyone else find it funny that Riley assesses Stoup’s career by quoting a character who’s a fraud, impostor, crook, and bigger bum than the Dude? Talk about not getting it.
On the subject of legalization, Mark A.R. Kleiman IIRC thinks that legalization would do a significant amount of harm in increased drug use, but that enforcement should be changed–the best policy is to aim it at those aspects of the drug trade that cause the most social harm (violent drug dealers and the use of minors in the drug trade, for instance). I borrow my opinions from him.
Locutor 01.04.05 at 5:31 pm
Since no one else mentions it, I would also add a point in response to this line of thinking:
“I’d love to legalize drugs, really I would. But the tiny conservative voice in my head (which I try desperately to ignore most of the time) keeps saying look at history.
I’m no expert, but it seems to me that societies that have had unfettered access to opium have been damaged in ways far more debilitating than any wave of alcoholism could wrought. I’m thinking in particular of China in the 1800s.”
Well, those societies with “unfettered access” would include the U.S. up to 1914. Prior to that date, you could walk into any drugstore on main street, USA, and get laudunum, morphine, hemp extract, cocaine, or any number of drugs, all without a need for a doctor’s script.
And yet, for some reason, millions of people did not become drug addicts. Why? Well, ask youself: is the only reason you don’t do large quantities of heroin or cocaine the illegality of it? No? Well, so it is with most people.
We will always have drug problems, because human beings love to take drugs. Legal controls, quality controls, controls over the sale of drugs can help avoid some of the worst problems. But making them out-and-out illegal just creates a whole host of new and worse problems.
That’s what history shows.
mg 01.04.05 at 5:32 pm
Hmmm… Couldn’t this be read as Riley’s precisely getting it, and getting away with letting people know that he gets it?
Eric 01.04.05 at 6:04 pm
My claim that one use can create an addict not only comes from well established documentation, but from personal stories told to me by addicts some in my own family. Go down and ask any person in NA if they think thier drug of choice can be used recreationally by anyone. ask them when they became addicted.
Ok, freebasing cocane can lead to cardiac arrest and death on the first use. Are you telling me that regulating the cocaine market will stop this? Will legalizing PCP make the user any less parinoid and violent? Tobacco, and pot can be bad, but short of a leathal allergy neither will kill you with one hit.
“Common sense” is a fallacy unto itself. A reasonable person has much room to disagree with making dangerous substances commonly abused open and availible to the general adult population. Just because two other substances are legally availble does not undermine the assertion that others should be witheld.
While you may think my position is untennable, not one of the “legalise all drugs” people have made a convincing argument how and why they can justfiy such a radical change in drug policy. What happens when newer, more enticing, and more lethal substances come onto the market? Given our ability to control Tobacco access to teenagers, how do you expect to control cocane or amphetimenes in youth?
We can already see the answer to many of these question when looking at perscription pain killers and narcotics. They are by far the most abused drugs availible, and they ARE availible, pure, tracked, and taxed. Cocaine, herione, and many other illegal drugs have perscription counterparts that are already abused in far greater numbers than the original. This information can be used to project the possible social cost of creating an open market for drugs.
I personally believe it’s time to re-evaluate some illicit substances to see if legalizing or de-criminalizing would help or hurt sociery as a whole, but I do not support a default policy of legalization.
Andrew Boucher 01.04.05 at 6:10 pm
This is reasoning by the lowest common denominator.
Just because there happens to be one potentially harmful product which is legal, does ot mean we should legalize all potentially harmful products.
The law is not only about consistency; it has to take historical facts into account. Alcohol consumption has been legal, therefore it’s difficult to make it illegal; heroin consumption has been (thankfully!) illegal, therefore it’s less difficult to keep it illegal.
Jeremy Osner 01.04.05 at 6:44 pm
Go down and ask any person in NA if they think thier drug of choice can be used recreationally by anyone. ask them when they became addicted
It’s probably obvious but you have a sample bias here.
eudoxis 01.04.05 at 6:45 pm
Matt: Addiction and withdrawal are extremely complicated from a psychological point of view —
True, but they are fairly straightforward from a physiological point of view. One dose of heroin leads to an upregulation of opioid receptors in the brain. When no second dose is forthcoming, those receptors are still looking for heroin and a withdrawal ensues leading to downregulation of the receptors. That’s a very straightforward medical model of addiction.
Otherwise, I disagree with Belle’s conflation of pot and crack with alcohol and tobacco. As if it’s all a moral issue. It’s rather impossible to control alcohol and to a lesser extent cigarettes. All these substances lie on a contiuum of vice, benefit, and cost and where one draws a line for what to control and in what way is a practical issue. I totally agree that more needs to be spent on rehabilitation.
In general, people need to feel good and pot is a cheap and relatively harmless way to feel good. Milder forms of opiates may have had better (in a healthy way–that is, slower) delivery methods in the past, but we can’t move away from highly specific and effective delivery methods to target receptors in the brain. Drugs are becoming more dangerous and where control is possible, it’s important for a society to do so.
abb1 01.04.05 at 6:49 pm
What about machine-guns, bazookas and surface-to-air missiles – should they be legalized so that boys could play without having to buy them from criminals?
What about the loan-sharks? After all you don’t harm anyone but yourself when you’re taking out a 50%-interest loan.
And what about construction codes and stuff like that? Most people will not build houses that collapse easily or have live electical wires hanging over their bath tabs. They are not that stupid.
Actually, they are.
lemuel pitkin 01.04.05 at 6:52 pm
Don’t know about heroin, but I have MANY friends who are regular cocaine users and they all manage to hold down jobs, maintain relationships, engage in conversation, and yes eric, eat. The scare stories on this thread would not survive the slightest contact with reality.
(And no, I don’t do it myself. I’d probably be better off tho if I did, and drank less.)
My father, a physician, has a number of patients who are regular cocaine users and doesn’t believe it has significant health effects. The one exception is poor people whose habits mean they can’t afford other necessities of life. Then you do have a problem. But the issue there is (a) poverty and (b) inflated prices due to anti-drug laws, not cocaine per se.
Matt McGrattan 01.04.05 at 6:52 pm
eric wrote: “My claim that one use can create an addict not only comes from well established documentation, but from personal stories told to me by addicts some in my own family. Go down and ask any person in NA if they think thier drug of choice can be used recreationally by anyone. ask them when they became addicted.”
I think it’s extremely unwise to base an objective assessment of the etiology of addiction on the individual testimony of addicts who may not, and often do not, have much insight into their condition.
The fact that some addicts offer personal testimony to the effect that ‘one hit made me an addict’ ought not to be a sufficient reason for believing this to be the case. Not least because addicts often have entirely self-serving reasons for exaggerating the immediacy of their addiction and their difficulties with stopping drug-use.
It’s a lot easier to tell people that ‘I became an addict because this chemical is so over-poweringly addictive that it was impossible to resist’ and then that ‘I behaved badly because I was an addict’ than it is to admit otherwise or that one may have behaved badly for reasons for which one is at least partly culpable.
Medical experts on addiction, however, will tell you there’s extremely good reasons for doubting, in most but not all cases, that addiction arises from isolated or highly intermittent instances of drug use.
Eric 01.04.05 at 7:08 pm
( yes I know asking NA would have a sample bias, you appear to have missed the point )
So cocaine does not affect the affluent, only poor people? I’ll stand by my assertion that drug studies showed that cocaine addiction is strone enough for the user to use in place of food to the point of starvation if necessary to keep their habit. Just because your rich friends have enough money for cocaine and food does not make the problems go away.
Does legalized PCP make the user any less volient and parinoid?
Why does experiment after experiment in legalization seem to fail, spectacurally in some cases, around the globe as addiction and crime skyrocket in those areas?
Many people point to the fact that people would not have to commit crimes if these drugs suddenly became legal rather than fact the fact that people addicted to drugs are more likley to commit crimes despite the legality of the substance in question. When you legalize the substance there will be many more addictions ( probably less as a percentage, but more in number overall ) and more addiction related crime as a result.
WillieStyle 01.04.05 at 7:12 pm
As you say, Williestyle, you’re no expert. China was “debilitated†by opium addiction in the 19th century? Believe me, it was the least of their problems.
It may very well be true that China had bigger problems than rampant opium addiction. It does not then follow that rampant opium addiction was not a devastating problem. And it most certainly does not then follow that the ravages of rampant opium addiction are not reason enough to outlaw opium.
Look, to all the “legalize everything” folks, I really want to be on your side. But it’s not enough to say that outlawing certain narcotics has negative effects (Columbian drug warlords, inner city gangs, mountains of addicts in prison), you have to show that, in a world where all drugs are legal, the ensuing increase in incidents of drug addiction would not be a greater evil.
In the case of marijuana the case is fairly easy to make. In the case of Heroin and PCP, on the other hand, it’s a much tougher call. Addiction is a terrible thing in and of itself. And while there are more alcoholics than heroin addicts in America today, the percentage of heroin users who become addicted is far greater than the percentage of alcohol users who become addicted. Furhtermore, as bad as alcoholism is, being addicted to heroin is much worse. The fact that our society can bare the number of alcoholics that arise from the relatively unrestricted sale of alcohol, does not mean that it couold bare a similar number of heroin addicts.
Finally, who’s gonna sell the stuff once you legalize it anyway? In a world where tobacco companies get sued for billions, what reputable (or even not so reputable) company would touch heroin? It seems to me that legalizing heroin wouldn’t solve many of the problems that arise from its illicit markets. It would still be the same scumbags selling the stuff and spiking it with anything from quinine to ratpoison. They’d just be a lot harder to stop.
WillieStyle 01.04.05 at 7:14 pm
As you say, Williestyle, you’re no expert. China was “debilitated†by opium addiction in the 19th century? Believe me, it was the least of their problems.
It may very well be true that China had bigger problems than rampant opium addiction. It does not then follow that rampant opium addiction was not a devastating problem. And it most certainly does not then follow that the ravages of rampant opium addiction are not reason enough to outlaw opium.
Look, to all the “legalize everything” folks, I really want to be on your side. But it’s not enough to say that outlawing certain narcotics has negative effects (Columbian drug warlords, inner city gangs, mountains of addicts in prison), you have to show that, in a world where all drugs are legal, the ensuing increase in incidents of drug addiction would not be a greater evil.
In the case of marijuana the case is fairly easy to make. In the case of Heroin and PCP, on the other hand, it’s a much tougher call. Addiction is a terrible thing in and of itself. And while there are more alcoholics than heroin addicts in America today, the percentage of heroin users who become addicted is far greater than the percentage of alcohol users who become addicted. Furhtermore, as bad as alcoholism is, being addicted to heroin is much worse. The fact that our society can bare the number of alcoholics that arise from the relatively unrestricted sale of alcohol, does not mean that it couold bare a similar number of heroin addicts.
Finally, who’s gonna sell the stuff once you legalize it anyway? In a world where tobacco companies get sued for billions, what reputable (or even not so reputable) company would touch heroin? It seems to me that legalizing heroin wouldn’t solve many of the problems that arise from its illicit markets. It would still be the same scumbags selling the stuff and spiking it with anything from quinine to ratpoison. They’d just be a lot harder to stop.
Matt McGrattan 01.04.05 at 7:22 pm
Eric: where do you think the addiction related crime comes from?
It comes from the need to finance a habit which is only expensive in the first place BECAUSE it’s illegal.
It’s not that addicts commit crimes therefore we need to combat addiction by making drugs illegal, rather it’s that drugs are illegal thereby causing addicts to commit crimes [to finance an expensive habit…]
The UK, prior to the late 60s, had little problem with opiate addiction because the medical establishment was freely able to prescribe high-quality, uncontaminated heroin. The minute heroin became unavailable by any legal method, that’s when the massive expansion in addict numbers and in drug-related crime took place.
Addicts, prior to the ‘reforms’ of the late-60s, weren’t particularly involved in crime. They had no financial need to be.
Similarly, it’s not that wealthy cocaine users are affected differently by cocaine but that, because they can AFFORD their habit, they are mostly insulated from the criminal and social consequences of drug use.
[I’m not being overly simplistic here, I do know that the rise in UK heroin addiction can’t SOLELY be traced to changes in drug legislation. But the changes in legislation were a major factor….]
Eric 01.04.05 at 7:31 pm
Matt: It comes from the need to finance a habit which is only expensive in the first place BECAUSE it’s illegal.
I said legal or not. People addicted to alcohol, perscription drugs, tobacco will do the same thing when they cannot get their fix, so unless you are planning on subsidizing the drugs ( thus undermining the social cost argument ) there will be a rise in addiction related crimes.
To claim that all addiction realted crimes are because the substance is illegal is easly refutable.
Uncle Kvetch 01.04.05 at 7:37 pm
Why does experiment after experiment in legalization seem to fail, spectacurally in some cases, around the globe as addiction and crime skyrocket in those areas?
Could you name one such case, please?
eudoxis 01.04.05 at 7:38 pm
“The UK, prior to the late 60s, had little problem with opiate addiction because the medical establishment was freely able to prescribe high-quality, uncontaminated heroin.
How much more freely than today? One can get an oxy scrip without difficulty. And what about those handy morphine drips for home use.
It’s absolutely presumptious to think that the cost to society of serious drug use is only in crime related to prescriptions and that if all drugs are freely permitted problems would disappear. Who wants to work or keep a family on the nod?
eudoxis 01.04.05 at 7:44 pm
Oops–crime related to restrictions, not prescriptions.
asg 01.04.05 at 7:52 pm
I said legal or not. People addicted to alcohol, perscription drugs, tobacco will do the same thing when they cannot get their fix
Yes, the streets are full of starving cigarette smokers who can’t buy Ramen noodles because they spent their last pennies on a pack of Marlboros. Do you even think about what you’re saying?
there will be a rise in addiction related crimes.
Not if the price of a fix is one percent of what it is now!
asg 01.04.05 at 8:00 pm
But it’s not enough to say that outlawing certain narcotics has negative effects (Columbian drug warlords, inner city gangs, mountains of addicts in prison), you have to show that, in a world where all drugs are legal, the ensuing increase in incidents of drug addiction would not be a greater evil.
Two things to say about this —
1. If you have a way to “show” that one sort of evil (increased addiction) is commensurable with the others in a manner agreeable to both sides of this debate (or at least to you), please do share with the rest of the class. How many fewer drug addicts are worth one more judge bribed in Colombia? One more innocent bystander gunned down by a stray bullet? One more ghetto teenager who sees the lucre of drug sales as the only way out of his neighborhood and economic situation?
2. In a liberal society, the burden of demonstration ought to rest on those who wish to restrict the liberty and autonomy of sound-minded adults. It should be on the shoulders of those who support the current drug-policy regime to show why its alleged benefits outweigh its many, varied, and massive costs.
Matt McGrattan 01.04.05 at 8:15 pm
I wrote: “The UK, prior to the late 60s, had little problem with opiate addiction because the medical establishment was freely able to prescribe high-quality, uncontaminated heroin.
Eudoxis replied:
“How much more freely than today? One can get an oxy scrip without difficulty. And what about those handy morphine drips for home use.”
Change the subject why don’t you :-)
Oxycontin (I presume that’s what you mean by oxy) isn’t an issue in the UK. It’s US problem. I suppose the equivalent here would be something like the abuse of temazepam (jellies) or temgesic. [which, and this is the point, is available on prescription but not for addicts.]
The point was that, in the 60s, doctors could prescribe heroin FOR ADDICTS. Not just for pain control, or any other ‘medical’ reason, but specifically for the management and safe maintenance of addiction.
Addicts had a legal and safe source of heroin.
The so-called British model, as it was then called, is widely seen by drug prevention experts as extremely successful.
That’s not to say, I hasten to add, it would necessarily work in today’s specific circumstances but rather, it does show that addiction need not necessarily, given the appropriate legislative and treatment regime, lead to destitution or crime even when one is addicted to ‘hard’ drugs.
WillieStyle 01.04.05 at 8:24 pm
If you have a way to “show†that one sort of evil (increased addiction) is commensurable with the others in a manner agreeable to both sides of this debate (or at least to you), please do share with the rest of the class. How many fewer drug addicts are worth one more judge bribed in Colombia? One more innocent bystander gunned down by a stray bullet? One more ghetto teenager who sees the lucre of drug sales as the only way out of his neighborhood and economic situation?
What makes you think that legalizing cocaine will solve Columbia’s problems? Do you think big agriculture is gonna step in and start mass producing cocaine?
In a liberal society, the burden of demonstration ought to rest on those who wish to restrict the liberty and autonomy of sound-minded adults.
In what sense are addicts “sound minded” adults?
Eric 01.04.05 at 8:30 pm
Re: British model perscription heroine.
Why is it when herione could be by perscription for addition managment the number of additited to the drud DOUBLED every 16 months?
Re: Dutch model
While the dutch themselves fare well, crime related to many people traveling there is of most concern.
Re: Italy model
Herione is legal there and they have upwards of 360,000 addicts. Addicts in italy have HIV rates of 70%, much higher than other countries.
Re: “Needle park”
Open air herione market between 1986-1995 ( aprox ). Shut down because of the blight on the community and the rise in crime and viloence.
What many people still fail to see is that while everything in moderation is good, many of the substances defy moderation.
LSD: You can have a flashback up to 10 years later. What if that person is flying a commercial aricraft? operating on someone?
PCP: Volience is a know side effect. Do you want to make PCP avalible on the open market?
eudoxis 01.04.05 at 8:32 pm
Matt: All the opioid related agonists and antagonists generate a similar high to heroin. My point is that there is a legal way to get that heroin high today (in the US).
The drug-assisted treatment programs are available in the Netherlands and Switzerland and they are quite succesful for a limited number of addicts. There is certainly a lot of wiggle room for the US with a policy where there is no generalized legalization of hard drugs, but where drug used is controlled with a multipronged approach.
Andrew Boucher 01.04.05 at 8:48 pm
“2. In a liberal society, the burden of demonstration ought to rest on those who wish to restrict the liberty and autonomy of sound-minded adults. It should be on the shoulders of those who support the current drug-policy regime to show why its alleged benefits outweigh its many, varied, and massive costs.”
On the other hand one could say that the burden is on those who want to change the status quo.
abb1 01.04.05 at 8:56 pm
I think in the US (at least in Massachusetts) they use methadone for drug-assisted treatment (for opiates). It’s used quite a lot, actually. They don’t sell it, though, they administer it, same as Switzerland and Holland.
Matt McGrattan 01.04.05 at 9:00 pm
I have to admit that, unlike Belle (if I am reading what she says correctly) I don’t actually support the blanket legalisation of all drugs.
However, I do think that a substantial amount (but not all) of the problems caused by drugs are down to the criminal justice system and the way in which legislation tackles drug addiction.
There’s a range of models of drug treatment that fall between blanket bans with severe criminal penalties on the one hand — the current status quo for most controlled drugs in most western countries — and a total free-for-all on the other.
It remains a historical fact that there have been lengthy periods in US and British history in which the majority of drugs were in fact much more freely available than they are now and in which legal penalties for their use and possession were less strict than they are now and there’s evidence that the switch to a criminal model of drug management has failed as an effective tool for control of numbers of addicts and for control of the negative consequences of addiction.
Clearly there’s a complex relationship between the legal and social system and the levels of drug addiction in a society and I would not want to make the simplistic claim that legalisation would reduce drug addiction or criminal behaviour by addicts overnight. However, it’s clearly true that the current system is not working and we ought to look seriously at finding some way of controlling drug addiction which does not rely on a simplistic equation of drug use with criminality.
GMT 01.04.05 at 9:31 pm
On the other hand one could say that the burden is on those who want to change the status quo.
Wow. Would that someone had pushed that point back when Hearst was pimping the criminalization of marihuana by recycling old prohibition propaganda.
LSD: You can have a flashback up to 10 years later. What if that person is flying a commercial aricraft? operating on someone?
This is beginning to stink of the “ticking time bomb” argument.
PCP: Volience is a know side effect. Do you want to make PCP avalible on the open market?
Well, so much for alcohol.
Eric 01.04.05 at 9:35 pm
If the US model has been such a terrible disaster, has there been a not insignifigant drop in drug use since the early 80’s?
Also, to compare limited soft drug availiblity over a century ago to current social structures is without merit. In the past 30 years along heroine has gone from signle digit purity to as high as 90%. Even back then it was cocaine addiction from drinking coca-cola syrup that prompted some of the first bans on these destructive substances.
If drug use, as some people hypothisize, is a reaction to negative social stimuli would not the greater harm come from further diminshing social insurance in the US and languishing wages and an increse in stress? Would these not be better avenues to persue over “decriminilization”? With the daily widening of the classes in this country would you not agree a depressed public is more likley to turn to and become addicted to drugs?
To blindly presue legalization would only compound the problems that the US is facing today.
joel turnipseed 01.04.05 at 11:03 pm
on Pot: any med-tech folks here who take the occasional pull from the dugout could do us all a favor by inventing a “pot-a-lizer” very much like a diabetes tester. As I watched my wife test during her pregnancy (gestational diabetes), it occurred to me that this was totally safe, sanitary, nearly-painless and would allow same degree of enforcement as alcohol. That device and some sensible restrictions on use would go a long way toward legalization.
As for the hard stuff: y’all are smokin’ crack. I’ve known a lot of folks w/acid, heroin, coke habits and none with a habit have done very well (and most were disasters). The only people I know who managed hard drugs with any success had two qualities, both rare: 1) restricted drug use to (more-or-less) constrained, ritual bound situations (acid while camping & after camp set up; no one uses first time w/o someone very experienced along for the ride) and 2) very goal-oriented, disciplined people–would NEVER let their drug use kill their PhD, quarterly earnings, what have you.
I don’t think jailing a petty crack user for 25 years is a good deal, but keeping that shit illegal and bringing it hard on major dealers is fine by me.
Uncle Kvetch 01.04.05 at 11:47 pm
I’ve known a lot of folks w/acid, heroin, coke habits
Joel, unless I’m grossly mistaken, there’s no such thing as an “acid habit.” It simply isn’t physiologically addictive in the sense that opiates & cocaine are (i.e., as Eudoxis explains in the case of heroin above). A relatively minor detail, but as long as we’re talking about the relative risks of legalization of various substances, it’s worth pointing out.
joel turnipseed 01.04.05 at 11:56 pm
Of course (though: ‘psychological addiction’ doesn’t seem to me the simple bogeyman pro-legalization folks make it out to be, and after you’ve seen a young math student drooling in hospital after taking 50 doses “just to see what THAT trip would be like,” you realize the insight of De Sade on desire’s insatiability): so, let’s call it a “acid problem.”
pj 01.05.05 at 1:03 am
The standard scare stories always get trotted out don’t they.
Sure cocaine and heroin can kill you, but look at alcohol — it is a lethal drug. People overdose all the time. Just in the past few months, there have been high profile cases of college students with no history of drinking who died from having a dozen shots or so in one night.
And not all heroin addicts are drooling wastoids wondering around in bus station bathrooms. I’ve known some very successful people who secretly snort or smoke heroin (they never seem to be the needle types). When some poisonous heroin was on the street in NY a few years ago, the people dropping dead turned out to be lawyers, bankers, real estate executives, not the expected group of homeless losers.
And is the LSD flashback story really true? It’s been 15 years for me, so I guess I’m safe, but I never had one, and neither did any of my friends.
The bottom line is people should have the freedom to screw up their lives.
Nicholas Weininger 01.05.05 at 1:56 am
I would recommend to all anti-legalizers (and others!) Jacob Sullum’s extremely good book _Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use_. Of the many points he makes I’ll cite only a couple:
1. with any drug at all the dose makes the poison, and doses of things like cocaine are so high now principally because of criminalization;
2. the argument “but look at all the drug users who are completely screwed up!” suffers from, among other things, a correlation-vs-causation problem.
WillieStyle 01.05.05 at 4:42 am
Sure cocaine and heroin can kill you, but look at alcohol — it is a lethal drug. People overdose all the time. Just in the past few months, there have been high profile cases of college students with no history of drinking who died from having a dozen shots or so in one night.
I think it would be useful to take note of differences in degree. Plutonium and fertilizer can both be made to explode, but there’s a reason one is far more restricted than the other.
Also, when making statements like “many people overdose on alcohol” or there are more alcoholics than heroin addicts, it’s useful to consider what percentage of users of either drug suffer these negative effects.
bananajunior 01.05.05 at 6:33 am
On the subject of “LSD flashbacks”, to Eric and others, I think that there’s a lot of mythology surrounding LSD. It’s not a very common drug these days anyway, probably because of the difficulty of manufacture and changing trends (the kids want “E”) and so the myths continue to increase. I mean, I once had a DRUG DEALER lecture me on the dangers of LSD and why they wouldn’t sell such a dangerous substance and would I like some nice safe cocaine or MDMA instead? (I said no, the last thing I need is uppers) I’m not sure anybody uses LSD anymore – or makes it, or sells it, or anything. Mescaline and shrooms, I hear, are out there, but not really any LSD.
So it’s academic – the dangers of a drug that nobody has really used in 10 years or so.
But I’ve had some experiences with it. Using LSD 10 times does not cause permanent schizoprenia, as some say – I would know. And as far as the mysterious “flashbacks”…..
You don’t see big hairy bugs on the wall eating each other or anything. Maybe you see something weird out of the corner of your eye, or something just doesn’t look quite right for a second. That’s all it is. And maybe this happens more after a period of LSD use, but I saw stuff like that long before I ever took any LSD. I’m pretty sure that EVERYBODY occasionally sees the occasional weird thing out of the corner of their eye. It’s not crippling. Everybody gets that. Maybe it’ll happen more often after a dose or two of LSD in the following weeks, maybe not. Maybe… maybe memories of LSD experiences cause one to experience a shock of recognition when they have that weird feeling, maybe a causal connection is drawn between this and the previous LSD use, but it probably isn’t really there.
So I don’t think I’m a ticking time bomb or anything. I’m not going to snap one day, find myself in crazy LSD world, and cook my kittycat in the oven or jump out of a window thinking I can fly. At least, it’s been about 8 years since I had any LSD at all and nothing like that has happened since.
There’s just a myth about LSD, I think, and the less LSD is actually out there the more these legends can grow, unconstrained by actual reality.
Matthew2 01.05.05 at 9:58 am
I should also point out that pot at a very high dose has long-lasting, dramatic effects on mental health, in an irreversible way, although few casual pot-smokers will want to admit this.
Maybe this kind of danger can be prevented by better information but like abb1 says, does that ever work in any other context??
ajay 01.05.05 at 10:03 am
Hate to introduce a note of reality, but contra williestyle et al, opium wasn’t legal in 19th century China. Widely available, yes, but not legal. Here, for example, is an edict from Lin Tse-hsu, special commissioner of the Chinese Imperial Government in 1840 at Canton (modern Guangzhou):
…Whoever among the people of this inner land deals in opium, or establish houses for the smoking of it, shall be instantly visited with the extreme penalties of the laws; and it is in contemplation to render capital also the crime of smoking the drug.
The background to this is that British merchants had been illegally running the black smoke into southern China for decades. In fact, according to this, in the 1830s the problem got so bad that Peking considered legalising it – instead, however, it decided on suppression. That worked about as well as you might expect. Relevant quote: “They might as well have tried to concert a measure to stop the Yellow River in its impetuous flow, as to check the opium trade by laws and penalties”.
dglp 01.05.05 at 11:47 am
Apropos of Nancy & T, here’s a complementary photo from the same era. Does it reflect anything about double standards?
WillieStyle 01.05.05 at 3:17 pm
Hate to introduce a note of reality, but contra williestyle et al, opium wasn’t legal in 19th century China. Widely available, yes, but not legal. Here, for example, is an edict from Lin Tse-hsu, special commissioner of the Chinese Imperial Government in 1840 at Canton (modern Guangzhou):
The point was the Chinese were powerless to stop it because the folks with the real power – the colonialists – didn’t want them to.
If you’d like to defend the actions of colonial Britain, Russia et al. during the opium wars I’ll be all ears.
In any case, you seem to concede the point that rampant opium addiction was a serious problem in 19th century China. A problem blanket legalization would hardly have solved.
Eric 01.05.05 at 3:34 pm
LSD is a fat soluable compound – it’s a fact. Fat soluable comounds can be stored in the fat cells in out body for extended periods of time. These compounds can be released without warning into the bloodstream when the fat cells are tapped for energy. LSD appears to also get trapped in spinal fluid.
Because it’s trapped in fat cells and can be released over time tests of hair can show LSD use for upwards of a decade from use.
So, at this point… do the legalization people have a leg to stand on? They claim it will reduce social ills, but fail to prove that. Historical and social experiments into legalization have failed. We already know that attempting to take away ( prohibition ) something that is established as legal to be bad socially, but sometime worth the effort ( china’s opium problem ). The perceived reduction in social harm is only true if the drug’s price remains low, but this is contradicted by the fact that a low selling price will drive up demand and addiction or we have to subsudise the price ( clinics, health care, social security ) to prevent addicts from becoming criminals neither senario looks good from a social cost perspective. Sure tobacco and alcohol are problems that if were discovered today would probably be banned as well, but because of their established base it’s almost impossible to stop.
ajay 01.05.05 at 4:03 pm
Williestyle, your exact words were “I’m no expert, but it seems to me that societies that have had unfettered access to opium have been damaged in ways far more debilitating than any wave of alcoholism could wrought. I’m thinking in particular of China in the 1800s.”
I’m just pointing out that, in fact, access to opium in C19 China was not unfettered. Far from it: reducing opium use was a major policy objective of the Chinese government – albeit an unsuccessful one. The degree to which the colonial powers had the real power in China pre-1842 is very debatable, but it’s hardly the case that the whole of China, or even Canton province, was under foreign rule at this time. Foreign involvement was limited to extremely restricted legal trade from the Canton factories, illegal trade in opium and other commodities, and occasional gunboat missions. Law enforcement, for example, was in the hands of the Chinese authorities (inasmuch as they were competent). We are not talking about the International Settlement in Shanghai here!
So the appropriate lesson to draw from the example of China is probably not “unfettered access to opium is disastrous”, but “the side-effects of a draconian prohibition policy are disastrous”. Or, more reasonably, “whatever the hell went wrong with China in the 19th century, it probably wasn’t unfettered access to opium.”
And as for your assertion that “rampant opium addiction was a serious problem in 19th century China. A problem blanket legalization would hardly have solved” – isn’t that last assertion one of the things that this thread is trying to discuss?
As locutor pointed out, societies which really did have unfettered access to opium (such as pre-war USA) did not have cripplingly high levels of opium addiction. Why China did, and whether this really made things much worse for the country (cause/consequence?) is outside both the scope of this thread and my own knowledge; but I would be very wary of using China as an argument on either side of this debate.
Incidentally, as far as I can remember, Russia was not involved in the Opium Wars. The first was between Britain and China; the second between Britain and France on one side and China on the other. (Although other colonial powers, such as the USA and Russia, unquestionably benefitted from the more open terms of trade resulting from the treaties of Nanking and Tientsin.)
Ginger Yellow 01.05.05 at 5:06 pm
Nobody is suggesting that addiction to any drug is a good thing, or even not a bad thing. What most legalisers are arguing is that legalisation reduces the harm caused by addiction, and some would even argue that it will reduce the rate of addiction.
Comments, like this from Eric – “Historical and social experiments into legalization have failed. We already know that attempting to take away ( prohibition ) something that is established as legal to be bad socially, but sometime worth the effort ( china’s opium problem ). ” – will do little to persuade legalisers, since they are so patently false. The closest there has ever been to an experiment in legalisation was in Switzerland, because it is just about the only country not a signatory to the UN treaties banning the legalisation of certain narcotics. Even there it was more a question of decriminalisation than legalisation. Several countries have experimented in decriminalisation – all of them have seen reduced usage and addiction rates, and more importantly reduced drug related illness and crime.
Again, Eric, it would help if you stopped coming out with blatant lies such as this:
“Re: Italy model
Herione is legal there and they have upwards of 360,000 addicts. Addicts in italy have HIV rates of 70%, much higher than other countries.”
Heroin (correct spelling of the topic in hand would also help your arguments) is not legal there (see reason above). Possession of heroin for personal use attracts a two to four month prison sentence. Supply is punishable by up to six years. What’s more, the government is currently preparing a draconian reform of the narcotics laws which will treat marijuana possession identically to crack possession.
I suggest that everyone reads the excellent series of articles written on the subject by investigative journalist Nick Davies to be found here http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0,2763,506559,00.html. I really can’t see how you could oppose legislation on utilitarian grounds in the face of the evidence he presents.
WillieStyle 01.05.05 at 5:06 pm
So the appropriate lesson to draw from the example of China is probably not “unfettered access to opium is disastrousâ€, but “the side-effects of a draconian prohibition policy are disastrousâ€.
Oh don’t be ridiculous. It wasn’t the draconian measures that were the problem. It was the very real debilitaing effects of epidemic opium addiction on Chinese society. Your refusal to acknowledge the very real sufferring caused by this wave of addiction is simply bizzare.
WillieStyle 01.05.05 at 6:00 pm
So the appropriate lesson to draw from the example of China is probably not “unfettered access to opium is disastrousâ€, but “the side-effects of a draconian prohibition policy are disastrousâ€.
Oh don’t be ridiculous. It wasn’t the draconian measures that were the problem. It was the very real debilitaing effects of epidemic opium addiction on Chinese society. Your refusal to acknowledge the very real sufferring caused by this wave of addiction is simply bizzare.
Eric 01.05.05 at 8:50 pm
Italy experimented with decriminalizing heroin for personal use and their addiction rate skyrocketed. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r101:S20OC9-479:
As for the “investigative reporting” it’s all in the eyes of the beholder. He states specifically that heroin is a very addictive substance and that you should not start taking it, BUT…. blah blah blah. It’s the same regurgitated crap that has been spewed all over this page time and time again. The government has to draw the line somewhere, and has been proven in the UK and elsewhere when to increase availiblity or reduce penalties/stigmatizm you increase demand.
Just because it won’t kill you some might want us to believe that it’s not destructive to our society as a whole. That’s bunk. The reporter goes on to blame the prohibition for the ills on society rather than where the blame truly lies… with the people that have chosen from their own free will to start and continue to use illegal drugs. You don’t blame the government for putting up stop lights when people run them and kill or harm innocent people… why do people believe that with illegal drugs it’s the governments fault? It’s mind boggling. Do people really believe “oh, that’s a silly place for a stoplight, I’ll just ignore it”? Insted of making people responsable and accountable for their illegal actions we should just remove the stoplight and let the public fend for themselves.
Some people point to the fact that it’s difficult to stop drugs from being imported and sold, so we should just give in or give up. We are trying very hard to stop the spread of AIDS, but in some cases we are failing meserably, should we just give up?
Oh, and alcohol… ug, can you repeat after me. Just because the government allows one potentially dangerous substance does not require the governemnt to allow ALL potentially dangerous drugs. There is also a world of diffrence between a substance with a relativly low addition rate vs heroin. If you want to make that argument tobacco might be a better starting point.
Harm reduction strategies with very limited scope, at times, have proven sucessful at stoping criminal behavior of addicts, but why should the public at large support the illegal addiction of a few? Like those in the US need a few more taxes to feed the addicts, great. Harm reduction also, because of inreased availiblity, creates additional demand for the drug and therefore more addicts. How many AA clinics give out free booze?
I don’t see where a prohobition policy is wrong. I think people should be personally accountable for thier illegal actions and we should not be foreced to support them or tolerate the damage from those that still insist on doing them. I don’t think a reasonable argument has been made yet to legalize currently illegal substances.
GMT 01.05.05 at 9:46 pm
Your refusal to acknowledge the very real sufferring caused by this wave of addiction is simply bizzare.
Your ignorance of what was driving the opium trade is crippling.
Go read.
Luc 01.05.05 at 10:51 pm
A few figures to light the bonfire here.
Last month cannabis/marijuana use as % of people 12 years and older:
Amsterdam (Netherlands): 7.8 %
Vermont (US) : 10.04 %
US (all states) : 6.2 %
Now that must be easy to explain given that Amsterdam is a city with +/- 270 licensed places where you can buy various kinds of marijuana.
Now I’m all for a law that prohibits smoking it within a hundred meters from me, because I find the smell distasteful. But decriminalising worked in the Netherlands, whatever your opinion about the morality of it.
Uncle Kvetch 01.06.05 at 12:54 am
Italy experimented with decriminalizing heroin for personal use and their addiction rate skyrocketed. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r101:S20OC9-479:
Ah yes: Capitol Hill. That’s where I always turn to first when I want straightforward, unbiased information about the “war on drugs.” Give me a break.
Luc 01.06.05 at 1:51 am
Ah yes: Capitol Hill. That’s where I always turn to first when I want straightforward, unbiased information about the “war on drugs.†Give me a break.
Now, now, it is essentially a NYT article from 1989. Quite readable. But open to an entirely different conclusion than Italy experimented with decriminalizing heroin for personal use and their addiction rate skyrocketed.
In fact it doesn’t even mention anything like that. That nonsense is indeed produced by someone from Capitol Hill.
eric 01.06.05 at 3:07 am
It seems incredible… don’t answer the questions posed by legalization, just continue to shoot the messenger. Why don’t we take a page from history and see how america did in that wonderful time before heroin was made illegal.
http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/McCoy/book/03.htm
Unrestricted distribution by physicians and pharmacies created an enormous drug abuse problem; in 1924 federal narcotics officials estimated that there were 200,000 addicts in the United States, (13) and the deputy police commissioner of New York reported that 94 percent of all drug addicts arrested for various crimes were heroin users.(14) The growing dimensions of heroin addiction finally convinced authorities that heroin’s liabilities outweighed its medical merits, and in 1924 both houses of Congress unanimously passed legislation outlawing the import or manufacture of heroin.(15)
After a quarter century of monumental heroin abuse, the international medical community finally recognized the dangers of unrestricted heroin use, and the League of Nations began to regulate and reduce the legal manufacture of heroin. The Geneva Convention of 1925 imposed a set of strict regulations on the manufacture and export of heroin, and the Limitation Convention of 1931 stipulated that manufacturers could only produce enough heroin to meet legitimate “medical and scientific needs.” As a result of these treaties, the world’s total legal heroin production plummeted from its peak of nine thousand kilograms (I kilo = 2.2 pounds) in 1926 to little more than one thousand kilos in 1931. (16)
So you want to go back to the point in history to create millions of american heroin addicts and where, when legal, 94% of criminal drug users are heroin addicts?
Luc 01.06.05 at 4:11 am
It seems incredible… don’t answer the questions posed by legalization, just continue to shoot the messenger.
You’re a bit more than a messenger here. You’re acting like an evangelist.
Try explaining why marijuana use is bigger in Vermont than in Amsterdam, where it is available legally? No more dealers hanging around schools, clear cut separation of marijuana and other drugs, lots of advantages around.
It can work, legalisation. That it may not always work might be true, but not entirely relevant for those that think it will work here and now.
Besides you quote some funny statistics:
As a result of these treaties, the world’s total legal heroin production plummeted from its peak of nine thousand kilograms (I kilo = 2.2 pounds) in 1926 to little more than one thousand kilos in 1931. (16)
In 1999 Afghanistan alone produced 4600000 kilos (4600 tons) of that stuff. This year it is said that they’re back at that level. Today is a different world than 1926.
ajay 01.06.05 at 1:49 pm
Oh don’t be ridiculous. It wasn’t the draconian measures that were the problem. It was the very real debilitating effects of epidemic opium addiction on Chinese society. Your refusal to acknowledge the very real sufferring caused by this wave of addiction is simply bizarre.
Assertion/= proof. As I said in the very next sentence of my post, the more reasonable conclusion is “whatever went wrong with China, it probably wasn’t unfettered access to opium.” I suggested later on that high opium use might be a consequence, rather than a cause, of the problems in Chinese society; much as, say, widespread alcohol abuse is a consequence rather than a cause of the near-collapse of the economy of post-Soviet Russia.
From my limited knowledge I would hazard a guess that a restrictive, corrupt, inefficient and tyrannical government in Peking had a lot to do with it. In other words, it was indeed the draconian measures – against opium use and against everything else of which Peking disapproved – that were the problem.
Note that the same period also saw repeated revolts against the government, including the Taiping Rebellion, the bloodiest civil war in history, which were not caused by heavy opium use; it also, of course, terminated with the 1911 Revolution.
And, Eric, your logic needs work. “I don’t see where a prohibition policy is wrong. I think people should be personally accountable for thier illegal actions”… honestly. Let me rephrase you: “Punishing drug offences is good because people should be punished for doing illegal things. So legalisation is bad because, if drugs were legal, people would no longer be punished for drug offences.”
Ginger Yellow 01.06.05 at 3:03 pm
For the umpteenth time, nobody is saying that addiction is anything other than bad, nor that people shouldn’t be responsible for their actions. What we are saying is that the consequences of addiction, for the user and for society at large, are far, far worse when the addictive substance is illegal. Even if addiction rates increase with legalisation, which is extremely debatable, the harmful social consequences are drastically reduced. The whole point about addiction is that it’s such a powerful behavioural influence that laws do almost nothing to control addicts’ behaviour. If addicts run out of money, they don’t stop using, they steal. That’s the point of prescribing heroin.
The proportion of criminal drug users who are heroin addicts is pretty much irrelevant. The relevant statistic, surely, is the proportion of criminals who are drug (or heroin) users, and the overall crime rate. To give a manufactured and simplified example, imagine in a given town with a population of 10000 and legalised heroin 100 crimes are committed. 30 of those crimes are committed by drug addicts, of which 24 are heroin addicts. That’s an 80% drug criminal rate for heroin. Tell me, is that better or worse than a town of the same size, where 200 crimes are committed, of which 150 are caused by drug addicts, 75 of them on heroin? Because that’s only a 50% drug criminal rate for heroin.
Similarly with disease – if hygeinic syringes and/or uncontaminated narcotics are not available, addicts don’t usually pass on the fix. No amount of laws will change that. Prohibition means you have a significant number of people, hundreds of thousands, at risk of infection and likely to steal to support their habit, and also likely to use force in the process of stealing, as well as an incredibly profitable black market which encourages a limitless supply of dealers and vicious turf wars. No amount of moralising will change that – it’s just a fact of life. If you’re willing to stomach all that social harm for the sake of punishing people for irresponsible pleasure seeking, then that’s your right, but it’s my right to call you callous and uninterested in reducing crime.
Finally, your arguments regarding alcohol are utterly incoherent. It’s not about the government ‘allowing one potentially dangerous substance’ but not another. It’s about what happened when the government tried to ban alcohol.
Eric 01.06.05 at 3:36 pm
There will always be substances that are illegal. Why don’t we just legalize and regulate child pornography since the blackmarket trade is where most of the “crime” is commited and hram done, not with the end users? We can supply pedophiles with access to clean regulated and taxed child porn so the black market will collapse and pedophiles will not have to go out and abuse children anymore. What a load of crap.
It’s the same argument. Why when it comes to drugs do we believe that the criminal addict needs to be coddled rather than punished. The parallel I was making with booze is that we already have a huge problem with one or two legalized mind-altering, addictive substances and you want to further expand the quantity and the quality of access to much stronger drugs and narcotics.
I’m not saying that the government should not help addicts kick the habit, but to give them a never ending suply of the substance that they are addicted to is crazy. You don’t give a recovering alcoholic a beer, why should we supply heroin junkies with a fix?
Luc 01.06.05 at 4:31 pm
Let’s go bowling!
Uncle Kvetch 01.06.05 at 7:27 pm
Why don’t we just legalize and regulate child pornography since the blackmarket trade is where most of the “crime†is commited and hram done, not with the end users? […] It’s the same argument.
It most certainly is not. If you can’t see a fundamental distinction between drug use and child pornography, there’s no wonder this discussion keeps going around in circles.
Why when it comes to drugs do we believe that the criminal addict needs to be coddled rather than punished.
Why do you believe it’s in society’s interest to “punish” people for what they do to their own bodies, assuming there’s no harm done to anyone other than the user?
Eric 01.06.05 at 7:56 pm
My example is mearly meant to highlight the train of though that legalization takes you down. It’s the same train of though that we must provide for the addict not attempt to reform them.
Why do you believe it’s in society’s interest to “punish†people for what they do to their own bodies, assuming there’s no harm done to anyone other than the user?
But that’s a lie. Addiction does not just affect one’s own bodies, but society as a whole. If that is beyond your grasp, then the whole discussion is fruitless.
Jeremy Osner 01.06.05 at 9:00 pm
If you can’t see a fundamental distinction between drug use and child pornography, there’s no wonder this discussion keeps going around in circles.
If that is beyond your grasp, then the whole discussion is fruitless.
So clearly…
Uncle Kvetch 01.06.05 at 9:41 pm
Addiction does not just affect one’s own bodies, but society as a whole.
Right, because you say it does. QED.
I surrender, Eric.
W. Kiernan 01.08.05 at 3:05 pm
Eric: I’ve read one after another of your far-out blanket statements about drugs – take heroin, which is legal in Italy, even once and you will become physically and mentally addicted, several years after ingesting LSD one is apt to suddenly start seeing paisley everywhere and swerve the car up onto the sidewalk, and so on.
Out here in the real world, have you ever taken marijuana, or LSD, or opiates, or cocaine? Did you ever know any users of these drugs personally? Because for a person like me with a bit of real-world experience with these illegal drugs, your stuff has the same tone of outre surreality as some of those War-on-Terrorists we’ve all read, who tell us how all of the Moslems in the world are semi-literate red-eyed terrorists every one, who live in tents and spend their days riding camels to and fro across the orange dunes, incessantly howling “Allahu Akbar” and waving their AKs in the air, etc., etc. Meanwhile anybody who’s ever known Moslems in the real world bats his head and says, “Why do I have to listen to this rubbish?”
Drug policy is a debatable issue, and a complex one; that public policy ought to deal with drugs as a whole rather than on a drug-by-drug basis makes as little sense as regulating all green things – broccoli, absinthe, iguanas, hand grenades – exactly the same way. But reciting volumes of obvious absurdities doesn’t contribute anything to that debate. Do you seriously believe that a guy who took LSD in 1998 is a likely traffic hazard today, and that thanks to lax laws Amsterdam is a more dangerous city than, say, Tampa, or do you think that if you post such a huge volume of nonsense that your opponents resign in exhaustion, that means you’ve won an argument?
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