The downside is this: after the so-called war on drugs has Mexico has seen an increase in muggery, abduction and extortion. There is a whole criminal working class whose way of living is crime and have no respect for human life. So, if legalization ends the drug traffic business, this people will have to either learn to work honestly or find more creative ways to profit from crimes.
The truth is: Mexico is screwed.
It's sad because I live here and I love my city and some aspects of México, but I don't want to live here anymore. As soon as I get married I'm going to fly away.
What? It is all your fault! You are the freaking consumers! We have the misfortune to be the obliged way for Colombian drug dealers to pass the drug to USA, where the rich dumbasses drug-addicts live and are willing to pay.
Now you are going to take the moral high-ground here and say "eew! make that fence taller!"?
This is not just caused because of the USA. We also have addicts that increase the demand for drugs in Mexico. No one is putting a gun in the head of this people to become drug traffickers. People in Mexico are poor but I don't see anyone that is not a drug trafficker dying of hunger because they don't have money. This people just like the easy live they can get by becoming drug traffickers.
This criminal culture in Mexico is a very complex issue and it's not like it can be magically fixed if the USA and Mexico legalize drugs. To fix this we need to make profound changes in all aspects of our culture & society and it will take time if it ever happens.
I believe in sovereignty. The USA can do whatever it wants in its territory same as China(Google respect local laws or GTFO) same as Mexico.
But it is mostly the money from the monopoly prohibition has granted to that criminal class that perpetuates its existence.
If you replace the criminal drug industry with a legal drug industry, you will encourage the growth of the non-criminal-classes, people working on the drug industry will become law-abiding-tax-paying citizens that will have an interest in the rule of law, instead of criminals with an interest in undermining it by corrupting law enforcement, criminals, and the whole fabric of society.
Here is a great interview with Milton Friedman about the economic and social effects of the War on Drugs:
"But it is mostly the money from the monopoly prohibition has granted to that criminal class that perpetuates its existence."
It's not prohibition, it's illegal. I love how the pro-drug people use this word when you wouldn't say we have a prohibition on rape, murder, or burglary.
"If you replace the criminal drug industry with a legal drug industry, you will encourage the growth of the non-criminal-classes, people working on the drug industry will become law-abiding-tax-paying citizens that will have an interest in the rule of law, instead of criminals with an interest in undermining it by corrupting law enforcement, criminals, and the whole fabric of society."
I'm okay with that if you're okay with knowing that we will encourage people to sell substances that will destroy lives through addiction and kill people. The difference is that the legal drug companies are selling drugs that actually have some purpose besides getting you high.
I really don't see how a drug like crystal meth will help anyone in the long run.
It's not prohibition, it's illegal. I love how the pro-drug people use this word when you wouldn't say we have a prohibition on rape, murder, or burglary.
The distinction is important: drug prohibition is a choice, and other societies (including our own society at other times) have made different choices here, often to their benefit.
There isn't much choice about prohibiting rape, murder, burglary -- to have any social order at all, they must be prohibited.
See also the difference between conduct that is malum prohibitum versus that which is malum in se. These legal terms draw a distinction between things that are wrong because a law was chosen (regardless of their harmfulness), versus those things that are inherently wrong/harmful.
Even those who like to ban intoxicants called their period of greatest influence "prohibition", when alcohol was banned. So there are good legal and historical reasons for calling anti-drug-laws "prohibition".
"You should be able to kill yourself if you really want to, but they won't allow you."
If I own a business. Will I be allowed to not hire anyone that even touches drugs? I feel I should have the right, since those people have the right to "kill themselves".
Also, if we have a government run health care program, regular drug users should either 1) have to pay a large percentage more out of their pockets or 2) shouldn't get covered by a government plan. I shouldn't have to pay for anyone knowingly killing themselves with substances.
"Natural selection? If anybody is dumb enough to damage or kill themselves with the use of drugs it's fine with me. Same goes for cigarrettes."
You might be fine with this, but there are still people to this day that sue the cigarette companies for health bills and other related problems due to their own problems. We will also be exposing a larger percentage of the population to substances that are known to be addictive. This will result in more addicts, which can and will increase health care costs overall. How do you propose we deal with these problems?
You seem to have this idea that when we legalize all drugs, all drug-related violence will stop and we won't have any other problems. It's not as simple or as easy as this.
"You seem to have this idea that when we legalize all drugs, all drug-related violence will stop and we won't have any other problems. It's not as simple or as easy as this."
No. Read my comment above and you'll see that that's not my idea. I'm just saying that dumb people should be allowed to remove themselves from the genetic pool.
The Economist, argued for the legalisation as the way forward in the article (Mar 5th 2009): "How to stop the drug wars, Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution" which is behind the paywall. http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?story...
The final paragraph is:
"A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?
This newspaper first argued for legalisation 20 years ago. Reviewing the evidence again, prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it."
Just make it legal for people do to do whatever they want to themselves. It's simple and easy. Don't add any regulations they just create criminals out of non criminal behavior.
Imagine you have a wife and children, and you live in the world where anybody can do whatever they want "to themselves." So in that world, the people in the houses on either side of you start doing cocoaine, heroin, meth, etc. You revel in their freedom, taking great pride in your liberarian country. Then one night they break in to your house crazed and murder your family.
Yeah for freedom! Yeah for letting people do whatever they want!
Actually yes it's happening right now, there's a very high correlation right now with people who do certain kinds of drugs (cocaine, meth, heroin, that sort of thing) and crazy, violent, self-destructive and community-destructive behavior. I for one don't want more of that going on than already is going on. I don't want to live in a world where that's more widespread.
1. The police in my area don't seem militarized. Where in the US are the police militarized? Are you seriously referring to things like tanks, jets, battleships, mortars, or what? In my town, and it appears in most of the rest of Colorado, we have police and they mostly do old fashioned police sorts of things.
2. Attack is a strong word. That also sounds like you're suggesting it's something pervasive. I bet if we did a poll of people, at least here in Colorado, for example, I bet we'd find that at most a very small fraction of 1% of the population will say they feel they have experienced an "attack on [their] civil liberties". Another point I'd add to this is one could make a very strong argument for the position that there is no such thing as some inherent "right" to anything. People do what they can get away with, and it's been happening like that for millions of years, I suspect. Heck, I'd love to have the "right" to do anything I wanted. But in practice, that's not going to happen. And there's that notion of one person's rights end where another's begin. Your right to walk down the street firing a gun ends where my right to walk down the street and not be shot by some idiot, begins.
3. the folks who buy a thing are the ones funding it, I would argue. If you buy illegal drugs, YOU are funding the organization which provided it to you. The government did not. That's a physical fact. Yes, if it was legal, then you might be buying it from a different source, and then YOU still would be the one funding it.
4. "gigantic waste of money" -- I cannot refute this point, merely say it's a question of whether one thinks that the benefits of the situation outweigh the disadvantages. Do the positives outweigh the negatives? Are their better ways of achieving the same goal, for less cost? Perhaps, I don't now. But if your position is that nothing positive has come from it, I think that's a harder case to make.
5. again I think this is a case of individuals making poor choices and ruining their OWN lives -- through their OWN actions. The government did not come along and ruin their life, against their will. It's also not clear to me that in every case where an individual buys or sells an illegal drug, and gets busted for it, that when they are processed by the legal system their lives are all automatically ruined -- that's a pretty extreme statement. However, in the other direction, I'd argue that when people CHOOSE to use/consume/inhale/inject those hard, illegal drugs they very often do ruin their own lives, or set them on the road to ruin. They also make the world worse for their families, friends, and communities. There's a lot of evidence to support that position.
Hey, if I could live in a world where all the hard, "bad" drugs were legal and easily available AND also live in a world that has not turned into a violent, anarchic, ghetto-like hellhole (due to bad drug behavior & culture) I would like that.
On your Mexico point... counter-point: there are other countries where the same drugs are also prohibited, and they don't have the serious violent drug gang/war problem as Mexico. And as you pointed out, there are also countries that have looser drug laws, and they have less problems (apparently, in some dimensions) than Mexico or the US. So perhaps the stronger correlation is with the type of culture, and the type of people, and the types of lifestyles, choices, intellect, etc. that exist in those different areas. All I know for sure is that there's a high correlation between hard drug use and with behavior that is destructive to self and community, and so I don't want to live in a world where there's a larger percentage of people doing that. This is not an academic argument, it's a practical one, based on seeing and experiencing and knowing real people in my life and community that have went down the path of hard drugs -- even if those drugs were legal, it wouldn't change their effects on mind and body.
Freedom is just one dimension. There are other dimensions I think most folks care about as well. Health, safety, happiness, wealth, efficiency, quality, fairness, etc. On one extreme end of the freedom spectrum you basically have pure anarchy -- and I bet it's a state with much more violence and fear and rape, etc. and a lot less health, safety, justice, etc. Almost all modern societies have intentionally dialed down on the freedom dimension in order to raise one or more of those other dimensions we also desire. I like freedom, it's those other dimensions I won't want to lose. This is not a radical position, it's pretty mainstream actually.
Yeah! While you're at it, remove all the regulations from alcohol, including regulation on BAC while driving a car. I mean, really, you can do whatever you want to yourself! If driving on public roads at a BAC of 0.35 is criminal, I don't want to be law-abiding!
If you were the only person using the public roads, I wouldn't see a problem with it; the problem is that other people are using the roads too, and at that point, you're putting those people at risk.
I'm sorry if I take a bit of a negative attitude towards it all, I just get tired of people who completely overlook the impacts their own actions may have on other people.
If you break the law or cause damage while under the influence you should be held accountable for your actions. I don't think anyone is arguing against that.
We have that law currently and it doesn't stop drunk driving. Until people become rational actors (which they manifestly are not), we cannot just stop at prohibiting outcomes, but also must prohibit means to some degree.
So people will ignore laws against drunk driving, but will obey laws against drinking in the first place. Interesting theory, if only we had some historical evidence to see if that would be likely to work...
He's saying they don't anticipate the damages they will cause driving drunk, so there are laws against drunk driving (the 'means')
I don't think anyone is arguing mj should be outlawed because of driving, or that alcohol should be either, the point is there are careful considerations that must be made and you can't just remove all regulations and expect things to go swimmingly
You think using mj has no impact or risk on other people? How about driving baked? It's probably not as bad as driving drunk, but when you're on the same road as me piloting a 2-ton missile around me, 'not as bad as wasted' isn't quite good enough.
This is exactly the kind of attitude I'm talking about.
I don't drive when high. And if I did, it would still be a DUI even if marijuana was legal. DUI laws are not whats under debate. You're confounding the issue. And on a side note, I agree it's less harmful than driving drunk and alcohol is legal to possess.
Note that the laws in this area aren't limited to BAC; if any substance including prescription medicines makes you incompetent behind the wheel that's enough.
We just focus on BAC because it's easy to measure and we're pretty damned sure alcohol to excess is the biggest current problem.
I don't think we should be using taxes treat the addicted. Drugs are a personal choice. You have to make that choice to first start using drugs. It could be peer pressure or you just wanted to experiment. I would rather see that tax money go for something more beneficial to society.
If we are going to legalize drugs and you make the personal choice to kill yourself, I sure as hell am not going to pay for your treatment.
It's exactly this type of thinking that makes me never want legalized drugs in the US.
How do we know that legalization reduced crime and drug abuse in Portugal? It could have been any number of things.
You already pay for police to seek out and arrest drug users, courts to prosecute them, jails to hold them, and parole officers to keep track of them once they are out.
Treatment costs a hell of a lot less than that.
Sometimes being pragmatic is better than being idealistic.
"Please legalize all drugs while banning all middlemen with prior convictions and requiring they be US-made."
Unless we have tort reform, I don't think this is a good idea. People still sue the cigarette companies even though it is a well known fact that cigarettes cause cancer. Drugs like heroine and meth are very addictive and some people might decide to blame the government, which will tie up our court systems.
I also find it a little funny to want the government to legalize substances which have more negative health benefits than positive.
Here's how I back that up. Assume you have a teenage daughter. Now assume your daughter goes to a party and the host gives her either:
a Twinkie
or
some meth
As a parent, would you not mind if it was meth? Do you really think the impact on her life, her health, her state of mind, etc. would be about the same whether it's a Twinkie or meth? Or herion? Cocaine? Now how about if it was a Diet Coke? Or a glass of wine? I bet most parents wouldn't worry as much about the Diet Coke (even though it has "drugs" in it, like caffeine). And some may not mind if it was the wine -- especialy if just a small amount -- but of course even then, you would be more worried.
I think the difference is in how extreme and how fast the bad effects are, comparing a Twinkie to some meth. And while the Twinkie may not be ideal for your body, it almost assuredly won't make you go crazy essentially -- it won't mess with your mind -- like meth, cocaine, heroin, etc. would.
Now if you said, "Put down the meth and the case of 500 Twinkies," that I could agree with you on!
Decriminalizing weed is like fixing the mainframe program bug. Sure you were hired to stamp it out, but in the process discovered that you had a monopoly on the knowledge, and you quite liked the life of "unsuccessful" bug fixer and wealthy charlatan. I am primarily speaking of Politicians who always have a vote-profitable story in the form of drug seizures, arrests, et al., but also the Federal Government - far too addicted (no pun intended) to the billions of dollars appropriated to fight this so called War On Drugs - to ever end it. My guess is you will continue to see the passive-aggressive Ad Council ads for at least another decade.
I have a friend who is a retired Scotland Yard detective and he has an interesting take on the US war on drugs: we effectively put hundreds of billions of dolars a year into the hands of organized crime, and the possibility that there are payoffs to the US Congress to keep this money flow going is a real possibility.
When that kind of money is involved, it's impossible not to have affected the highest levels of the legislature, executive, and judiciary. I believe there have already been documented cases of folks with dubious affiliations funneling money to various PACs. That has to be just the tip of the iceberg.
Portugal has shown legalization actually reduces both crime and drug abuse: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/03/14...
Plus we will no longer be funding political instability the world over with the money of addicts. Better yet we can tax and treat the addicted.