Where do we draw the line? Say you buy a drug that comes from a cartel that uses kidnapping, rape, and murder to hold their power. It is possible for the drug to have been produced safely, but it wasn't in this case and you are feeding the market. Is the government preventing the drug from being created relevant? What happens if, given a safe production option, those purchasing it do not do their due diligence in checking the source. Are they still not creating a market where the object produced with harm is to be sold, further promoting the harm?
Consider a alternate example. Say you downloaded a few megabytes of data. In this case, the bytes were produced by actions involving a child being abused, but it would've been possible to produce them with a photorealistic CGI application.
>> Say you buy a drug that comes from a cartel that uses kidnapping, rape, and murder to hold their power. It is possible for the drug to have been produced safely, but it wasn't in this case and you are feeding the market.
There are indeed lots of moral questions here. As someone who tends to buy things that are free-range, organic, fair trade etc. I fully agree that one cannot divorce the action of purchase from the background process. This is one (of many) reasons I'm not going to be buying any cocaine or heroin any time soon.
The argument put forward above is that stopping the war on drugs just because we can't win is equivalent to stopping the 'war' on (for example) burglary. Burglary by its very nature, in the commission of the act itself, creates victims. People whose house was broken into and whose stuff is gone. Drug taking does not create these victims in the act of taking drugs itself.
So I would argue that yes, the government preventing the drug from being created and sold openly is very relevant - it is the government regulations that support the extremely lucrative black market as well as the consumers. The cartels, the violence, they could not exist without our laws propping them up.
This is where the comparison with Burglary really breaks down - legalising burglary leads to a world where there is no deterrent to breaking in to someone's house and taking their stuff. A worse world, I hope you'll agree.
Legalising cocaine, for example, would make most of those horrible side-effects go away at the expense of (probably) increased drug-related healthcare costs in the developed world. I think that's a better place to be.
>> What happens if, given a safe production option, those purchasing it do not do their due diligence in checking the source.
What happens with, say, coffee? Some people choose ethical brands. One hopes that there are minimum standards of human rights applied to workers on any product coming in to the country (no slave labour, no blood-diamonds...), and AFAICT there are no coffee cartels using kidnap, rape or murder to protect their hold on the coffee market.
>The argument put forward above is that stopping the war on drugs just because we can't win is equivalent to stopping the 'war' on (for example) burglary.
I do agree that stopping the war on X differs greatly when X is something that deserves stopping in and of itself compared to when X is not inherently harmful, but closely tied to things that are (though I do think that different people will classify certain actions into other groups, for example some people will say some drugs are so bad that they deserve to be stopped in and of themselves).
>> some people will say some drugs are so bad that they deserve to be stopped in and of themselves
They will indeed. And to them I say "good luck with that!"
I agree with the sentiment there, nobody should be encouraging the use of heroin, for example. But we've tried banning it and it hasn't actually helped all that much. I think it's time to admit that's failed and investigate what we can do, with a close eye on the evidential and scientific basis of our actions, to reduce harm as much as possible.
Stamping our feet and threatening people hasn't made them stop. Lets find the best way we can to keep more people from getting there, to keep the harms to them as minimal as possible, and to make society better for the rest of us while we're at it.
But there are other forms of bans that could be tried. Ban production and selling but not purchasing. Or ban purchasing, but massively change the penalty to something more help. Even keeping all our current bans in place and just redoing prison to be about rehabilitation instead of retribution could result in a positive change.
Part of the problem isn't even the bans, but the money being made off of the war that leads to things like prisons lobbying for three strike rules and other horrendous laws.
I would agree that we should look at it from an evidence base and if those options look lile the best ones then that's great.
The thing that winds me up the most is the prevalent attitude of kneejerk banning of anything of everything, damn the consequences and fuck the evidence.
I started writing a sensible reply to this and couldn't It's outrageous.
'Drug use goes hand in hand with theft'
Do you know how ignorant that sounds? Caffeine and alcohol are drugs, do they go hand in hand with theft? Is everyone legally smoking weed in Colorado a thief too?
'Once you're addicted to drugs, you have to steal to pay for that habit.'
Not all drugs are addictive. Most are less addictive than alcohol, nearly all are less addictive than tobacco. The vast majority of drug users are not addicts. In any sensible country those people who do get addicted would receive help and maintenance doses of their drug and wouldn't need to turn to crime. See Switzerland and their heroin programs.
'It's hardly a victimless crime.'
It's exactly a victimless crime. If someone steals stuff to support a habit THAT is the crime with the victim. Not drug use. FFS.
Reality steps in and it's bad. In Russia drug addicts were (and still are, to lesser extent) responsible for very large if not largest portion of crime, especially burglary and theft. It is a major problem, it is there and you can't go around it. And usage isn't punishable here, only distribution.
So, don't dismiss parent comment so easily.
'Caffeine and alcohol are drugs' - yes, alcohol comes hand in hand with theft and other crimes.
'It's exactly a victimless crime' - it's victimless short term, but if it's hard drugs addict, there will be victims sooner or later. They will do nasty things just to get next dose.
And I support claim that war on drugs is wrong, and you can't win it (for economical reasons). But usage should be controllable.
>> In Russia drug addicts were (and still are, to lesser extent) responsible for very large if not largest portion of crime, especially burglary and theft ... So, don't dismiss parent comment so easily.
My issues with the parent comment are not that addicts never steal, it's the ignorance of lumping all drug use into the same category and then saying 'drugs' make you steal.
It's the same in the UK - addicts of one sort or another do disproportionately make up the crime figures. However the proportion of drug users who are addicts is small and the proportion of addicts that steal is small so saying that drugs and theft go hand in hand is just plain wrong.
>> yes, alcohol comes hand in hand with theft and other crimes.
Again, a tiny proportion of drinkers may cause a problem, this is not the same as saying they go hand in hand, implying anyone who has a drink is going to get addicted and steal stuff to support their habit.
>> it's victimless short term, but if it's hard drugs addict, there will be victims sooner or later. They will do nasty things just to get next dose.
Firstly, we're now talking about a subset of drugs, rather than trying to tar all drug users as thieves. Secondly, in a situation where the government treats heroin as a health issue this doesn't occur. Switzerland basically killed this stuff and proved that heroin addicts could lead quite a normal life if they knew where the next dose was coming from - a government clinic in this case. And there's nothing like a queue of old junkies outside a medical facility to put the youth off heroin.
I was composing a reply, but I think you've more than covered what I was adding. Though I also wanted to include the phrase "Drugs are bad, mmmmm'kay?" to cover the tone of the grand parent.
OT but your parent was down-voted for what I would say was a totally reasonable and constructive comment. I guess you didn't do it because you can't down-vote those that reply to you, right? I wish people would keep the down-voting for situations where a comment is offensive / destructive / mean, instead of something they disagree with. Anyways, I'm going to up-vote to counter it.
>> However the proportion of drug users who are addicts is small and the proportion of addicts that steal is small so saying that drugs and theft
Probably we have different view on who is a drug addict. Hard drugs addicts (like heroin, ketamin, etc) have very large criminality involvement, because those drugs make them fall very fast.
>> Again, a tiny proportion of drinkers may cause a problem
Maybe small proportion of drinkers, but huge proportion of _drunk_ people cause problems. More than half domestic murders are caused by alcohol in Russia. Whole villiages die out because if alcohol, you can hear sometimes in some village there's no one who can work, because all men became total drunks. I think magical removing of alcohol would be single most positive thing crime-wise you can do in Russia. But of course it's impossible.
>> Switzerland basically killed this stuff and proved that heroin addicts could lead quite a normal life if they knew where the next dose was coming from - a government clinic in this case.
Yes, that's what I was talking about - using should be controllable. Special clinics etc. But Switzerland experience can be hard to reproduce elsewhere, this country just has different social structure. So it should be applied carefully.
>> Probably we have different view on who is a drug addict.
Maybe we have. One of the reasons I was hacked off at the first comment on this was that it's not even talking about addicts - "drug use goes hand in hand with theft". This is just not true.
>> Hard drugs addicts (like heroin, ketamin, etc) have very large criminality involvement, because those drugs make them fall very fast.
I've never heard of anyone stealing to support their Ketamine habit either!?! K causes various bladder problems, and while it does seem to be a little addictive isn't really very high up the scale I don't think.
>> Maybe small proportion of drinkers, but huge proportion of _drunk_ people cause problems.
I will defer to your knowledge. I know we have problems with alcohol in the UK but I get the impression Russia is more familiar with this problem! I agree actually, that decreasing use of alcohol in our societies would probably be a really positive thing. And that it would be next to impossible. Perhaps if everyone had access to some cannabis they might not bother so much? (I'm only half-kidding there).
In general I don't think addiction is a good thing, and I don't think anyone should be encouraged to take drugs of any sort, let alone the really nasty ones. I'm very pro-legalisation but that doesn't mean I want to hide the damage drugs do to people and to society.
I just think it's way off-mark to say "all drug users are thieves" !!
In Russia drug addicts were (and still are, to lesser extent) responsible for very large if not largest portion of crime, especially burglary and theft. <snip> And usage isn't punishable here, only distribution. So, don't dismiss parent comment so easily.
This would likely not be the case if cocaine cost about the same, or even ten times as much as sugar. The high price of drugs is a direct result of laws against their production and distribution. I expect addicts stealing to support their habits would be much less of an issue with legal drugs, even if there were moderately high taxes on them to offset the costs of treating addicts.
I don't know, making hard drugs easily available in the country with large number of people living in poverty could end up not too good... I think we should dig history more on that, China and opium comes to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_opium_in_China
I agree that war on drugs can't be won because of economical reasons, though.
Perhaps not making (very) addictive drugs easily and cheaply available to the general population, but making them easily available to registered addicts, who can get some counselling but also be provided a cheap/free fix so they don't need to steal to get more.
>Once you're addicted to drugs, you have to steal to pay for that habit.
How much does generic-brand sugar cost? A dollar per kilo? Two?
Cocaine should cost about that, definitely less than ten times that, if it was manufactured at scale by corporations in a competitive market, and one didn't need to compensate everyone in the distribution network for the risk of being arrested or killed.
Your stereotypical addict on the streets should be able to get as much as they "need" from panhandling for an hour a week. A tragedy, but a contained one.
Instead, they need twenty bucks for the next dose, precisely because of the war on drugs. Think about that.
> Once you're addicted to drugs, you have to steal to pay for that habit.
Not at all.
Of course, you could just get a job that pays enough to support your habit? Software Engineering works for me, for example, and has allowed me to maintain a twenty year heroin habit, almost.
I did the same for six years, though I'm clean now. The people I used to run with were all well paid, too, though that's more a function of how expensive heroin is in Australia.
What do you base that on? Because I think you'd be very surprised to see the number of people who take drugs, and the fact that most of them do not resort to theft for their habit.
In a free market cocain and heroin should cost about the same as OTC generic drugs. That means your 1000 usd/day heroin habit is now a lot less than a coffee run to starbucks.
Looking at the official NHS pricelist for May 2015, 100 10mg Diamorphine (Heroin) tablets cost GBP 24.09 which is a lot cheaper than street prices...
I'm guessing a GBP 80 (1/16 oz) per day habit could drop to around GBP 10-15 (not really sure about purity, but assuming adulterated to 10% would mean 0.1g street Heroin is equivalent to one of these pills, so that would be the equivalent of 10g or over 1/4 oz which would be GBP 160 probably)
There is widely considered to be a shortage of opiates for medical services around the world, and this is in part due to the very, very strict controls on growth and distribution of the product. This is in part why the cost is as high as you say there.
We seem to be getting a lot of stuff wrong in this area....
