War on Drugs

So, should drugs be legal? Should pot be legal everywhere? Why do you think so, or why shouldn't it be?

I'm straight edge, so yeah. I'm against drugs, very much so. I'm also against drinking. VERY against it. Since my mom was hit by a drunk driver when I was a baby.

My opinion:

No drug is less harmless than another. True, pot might be 'weaker' or there are 'soft' drugs, but it's not just the drug itself. It's the person taking it. The person who get's high then decides to go out and drive. The person who overdoses on perscriptions. The drug didn't make them take that drug. It's an inanimate object. It's a person's will that did it. Their option to say yes to taking it. Addiction begins with the first time you use. It may not be strong, it depends on the person for that.

There is no such thing as a 'harmless' drug. 420 is worse than tobacco smoke, plus in younger users it can fuck up your life in other ways; like verbal and even learning skills. So I don't even want to hear how it's 'harmless'. Especially since I had a cousin die recently because he decided to drive to the store to get food while high and crashed, killing himself and injuring two others. I had a friend who died from a overdose in high school.

You might argue that, well, not everyone is like that. I say that's true. But making drugs legal and more readily available doesn't improve the chances that those idiots won't get a hold of those drugs.

And I'm actually for making things dry again here in the US.

I'm against people drinking and then driving, the same way I'm against people giving blood and then operating heavy machinery, or taking strong medication and doing open-heart surgery, or sleeping while flying an aeroplane. Obviously if you're going to be doing something that requires you to be in control you shouldn't do anything to jeporadise that, but if you don't have any responsibilities then what's the problem? Don't take away my drinking games ):

I don't do illegal drugs, so probably don't know enough about this to really talk about it properly, but the 'war on drugs' seems ridiculous and just seems to result in a ton of (young, poor, non-white) people getting put in prison for posession. And I feel that what people do in their own homes is their own business, and that a lot of other kinds of crime (especially theft) is motivated by drugs and wouldn't happen as much if it weren't so illegal.

On the other hand, you've got a point about some drugs messing up younger users - my mother works with young people with first-episode psychosis and a lot of them did weed and other 'harmless' drugs from a young age. But even so, I think the war on drugs is silly and the answer should always be education and prevention rather than punishment and incarceration.

Making alcohol illegal either doesn't work much at all and drives crime through the roof, or it leads to a state that has entirely too much power over its members in order to prevent the first thing.

Illegalizing stuff tends to make it more expensive and more dangerous, not make it disappear.

One need only look at Ciudad Juárez to know that the War on Drugs does far more harm than good.

Phantom said:

And I'm actually for making things dry again here in the US.

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well, they're not going to be. trying to make any country 'dry' from drugs or alcohol or whatever is just... silly. you can't really make drugs more illegal than they already are, and making them illegal just means people are going to go to more dangerous lengths to get them. You can't make the US a drug-free state because there's like a bajillion people in there. How invasive would the government need to be to make absolutely sure nobody is using drugs at all ever? remember how prohibition went down? I'm all for protecting people and educating them about drugs so they know better than to try them in the first place, but trying to eradicate drugs out of the US is a pretty pointless goal.

edit: come to think of it, when was the US ever dry? or... any country, for that matter? pretty sure taking mind-altering substances isn't an especially contemporary practice.

But making drugs legal and more readily available doesn't improve the chances that those idiots won't get a hold of those drugs.

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but it does mean that drugs can be regulated and people can make more informed choices about what they do take (like, for example, the regulations on alcohol and cigarettes). It's the difference between taking ecstasy and knowing what's actually in it and what the consequences are, and taking ecstasy and not knowing that it could be laced with poison (which is a thing that people do). I'm not saying drugs should be legalised - I don't really know how I feel about that yet - but it's something to be considered.

I do think that what someone does in their home is kind of their own business, but when people take drugs in public it can be kind of dangerous, so I have mixed feelings on this topic.

There is no such thing as a 'harmless' drug.

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inb4 everyone going 'Coffee?? paracetamol?? hurr' Phantom means illegal drugs pretty obviously don't even go there guys. but I think it would be good here to properly define what you mean by 'drugs' - anything already considered illegal by the US? anything that alters someone's perceptions of reality? drugs used just for recreation?

Dry Law in the US benefitted the criminals who smuggled booze to the people who wanted them, so it's a no go.

Legalize everything, put all drug production on government control, then tax the shit out of it. The moment we can legally produce drugs for ourself you don't get the "cookie in the forbidden jar" effect.

The Dutch did not smoke more weed because they could get their hands on it - in fact they smoked less. And our system isn't perfect either because it was just "gedoogbeleid". So coffeeshops still had shady ways of getting their weed. If you just have legal drug production under govt control using strict licensing and high taxing then everyone who wants to destroy their body can do so at their cost and pay insane amounts if they want to.

I'm staying off of it.

Iceland was dry until 1989.

US was dry in the 1920s.

Most muslim countries are dry to an extent.

I hear Denmarks system is working fairly well, they have these "stations" where you can get some amount of some drug (can't remember which one) and clean needles. This actually turns out to economically benefit the country since those who take drugs easily can access them and don't have to steal in order to get it. But on average I'm on the same track as tarvos here; it probably would be better if the government was in control of drugs.

Tarvos said:

Legalize everything, put all drug production on government control, then tax the shit out of it. The moment we can legally produce drugs for ourself you don't get the "cookie in the forbidden jar" effect.

The Dutch did not smoke more weed because they could get their hands on it - in fact they smoked less. And our system isn't perfect either because it was just "gedoogbeleid". So coffeeshops still had shady ways of getting their weed. If you just have legal drug production under govt control using strict licensing and high taxing then everyone who wants to destroy their body can do so at their cost and pay insane amounts if they want to.

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Yes. Exactly this. Taking the control out of the hands of gangs and criminals will solve a lot of drug-related crimes, with the added bonus of providing tax revenue and making the use and production of drugs safer for everyone involved.

The war on drugs is pretty much lost by this point, and instead of prolonging it and wasting more and more time and money we should go the other way and make money from it!

Out of interest: Harle and Tarvos, would you support age restrictions on any/all drugs?

So I don't even want to hear how it's 'harmless'.

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Harmless, no. But it is a lot less harmful than most drugs. It is literally impossible to overdose on marijuana; the same is not true of alcohol or even caffeine. Which, in my view, makes it absurd that the former is illegal and the latter are not.

Banning drugs doesn't work. That's a fact: if banning drugs worked, there would be no drug use. The only way to combat drugs is through education, regulation, and rehabilitation. Portugal decriminalised possession of all drugs in 2001 (producing/distributing remains a criminal activity): since then, they've seen massive decreases in drug-related crimes and increases in people signing themselves into rehabilitation clinics. Results like this (and there are other examples), I think, make it blindingly obvious that a "war" on drugs is the wrong approach.

The war on drugs is a silly thing. All it means is that the production of drugs is going to be in the hands of criminals who will use it to fund further illegal enterprise while their profits aren't taxed and with no regulation on the quality of the drugs, which means they're going to cut it impurely to maximise their yield at the cost of their customers' health. And on top of that, because of how many hands the drugs pass through before they get to the street, with many of the dealers themselves being addicts who'll want to only sell on as much as they need to buy more for themselves, the drugs get recut with impure and often even more toxic substances each time they're sold on to the next middleman, with the result that, frequently, the drugs that get sold at the end can contain less than 10% of the actual drug.

And then if addicts do want to get clean, they have to deal with the additional stigma of confessing to a crime on top of the fact that they're admitting to being addicts, and many of them end up with the drug use on their permanent criminal record for years after they get clean, even though addicts of legal substances like alcohol don't.

On the other hand, legalisation and regulation removes basically every single one of those problems.

Incidentally, no, Iceland and the US were not dry and nor are any Muslim countries. They may have laws (or have had laws for Iceland the US), but that doesn't make them free of alcohol any more than the illegality of heroin makes Dublin the straight edge capital of the world rather than a city with a crippling heroin epidemic. Any customary knowledge of the history of prohibition will tell you that it has never worked, even in the most totalitarian of states, and it never will.

I don't agree with the 'what you do at home is your own business' sentiment, although it might just be the wording that I'm misunderstanding. I mean, doesn't that imply that if someone beats their children at home, not our business? Or if they're doing said drugs while pregnant, we can't interfere? Or if they're handing out drugs to underage children we can't interfere? It being in the home doesn't really matter, honestly. If it affects other people it's time to get involved.

That said, that's all going on now, and it's much harder to know about it because it's all illegal. If the drugs were legal we could monitor a) who has them b) when they're doing them, so it wouldn't be so practical to be on heroin at home while your children are there and even giving them some because hey kids like drugs right.

Pathos said:

I don't agree with the 'what you do at home is your own business' sentiment, although it might just be the wording that I'm misunderstanding. I mean, doesn't that imply that if someone beats their children at home, not our business? Or if they're doing said drugs while pregnant, we can't interfere? Or if they're handing out drugs to underage children we can't interfere? It being in the home doesn't really matter, honestly. If it affects other people it's time to get involved.

That said, that's all going on now, and it's much harder to know about it because it's all illegal. If the drugs were legal we could monitor a) who has them b) when they're doing them, so it wouldn't be so practical to be on heroin at home while your children are there and even giving them some because hey kids like drugs right.

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The difference is that when you beat your kids at home, you're directly harming other people. Taking drugs doesn't directly harm anyone except possibly yourself. (Emphasis on "directly".)

Music Dragon said:

The difference is that when you beat your kids at home, you're directly harming other people. Taking drugs doesn't directly harm anyone except possibly yourself. (Emphasis on "directly".)

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That's why taking drugs isn't one of the situations I put forth. o.o

Pathos said:

That's why taking drugs isn't one of the situations I put forth. o.o

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In that case, you don't really disagree with the "what you do at home is your own business" stance at all, as far as I can tell. I mean, it's obviously not the home as a physical location that's relevant, but rather the idea that people are free to do whatever they want as long as they keep it to themselves.

Just legalizing marijuana, and no other currently illegal substance, seems like a horrible, horrible idea. Their illegal quality is part of what makes drugs so appealing, and people, especially teenagers, sometimes seem to want to try them just for that. Like the "Parental Advisory" label on a music album that ensures mom and dad wouldn't approve, drugs' illegal feature serves as chaos' own seal of quality. People want to try a little taste of rebellion. And society needs that outlet. If pot becomes legal, kids will turn to other, more harmful chemicals. As the situation stands, things are relatively under control. A mild hallucinogen, pot is one of the least addictive drugs. The vast majority of highschool/college-age pot smokers stop when they become real adults. Pot smokers above 35 are extremely rare according to my Psych textbook; by that time most have quit, and a few have moved on to more harmful, more addictive substance abuse.

I'm not sure I feel about legalizing all drugs in general. Can someone please explain why making drugs legal and then taxing the shit out of them would stop people from buying drugs illegally for comparatively less exorbitant prices?

Also, one thing I'm worried about if drugs became legal is that restaurants and food producers might figure out that they can get away with using them as an ingredient, even if in small amounts, to give their food a slight addictive property in the way MSG is frequently used by chinese restaurants (and Starbucks, and I'm sure there are more I don't know about).

Dannichu said:

Out of interest: Harle and Tarvos, would you support age restrictions on any/all drugs?

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Yes, depending on the drug. 16 for light ones, 18 for the hard ones.

I'm not sure I feel about legalizing all drugs in general. Can someone please explain why making drugs legal and then taxing the shit out of them would stop people from buying drugs illegally for comparatively less exorbitant prices?

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Do you know how little tax you would need to get filthy rich on weed alone? Weed is smoked so much that you could work out a very fair business model for growing weed that would be competitive with any black market weed dealings? Sure, you're still probably gonna be able to get shady weed real cheap, but government-sanctioned weed would be quality, fair price, good source. If you want, you can tax it relatively highly to make it expensive like cigarettes - but rest assured, people will still buy weed even at high prices. Even moreso with addictive drugs - and obviously a legal govt store means easier access.

Cause you know, that shit doesn't do anything bad to your body at all.

Anyone who is supporting legalizing drugs (and 16 really) is just as responsible as the tobacco companies for cigs.

So? That's their business, not mine. Like I said, I have no problem with alcohol being at 16, no problem with weed being at 16, etc. None. Zero. Zilch. I drunk at 16 and I am fine. However, the consequence should be that their insurance premiums go through the roof because they are putting their body at risk. Now that's how you do it.

The right to preside over one's own body should always prevail over "security".

I'll have you know, by the way, that I don't touch drugs, use alcohol in severe moderation, and I don't smoke. I do drink quite a bit of caffeine, but that's it. I am simply against the idea that we should prescribe everyone's lives.

And what's wrong with tobacco companies having really clever marketing? Sure, they're dicks for selling you crap that's bad for you, but you're the dumb fuck who bought into it. It's common knowledge that cigarettes are ass for your health, and if it isn't, it well damn should be (education!)