Decriminalization of drugs would solve a lot of social problems. But the public and political dialogue on this subject is not occurring in the USA because I think too many industries and profit interests depend on criminalization. Can anyone prove me wrong?
Too sadly true. Include the enslavement of prisoners to do jobs for free, the mental health system and addiction recovery programs, the entire criminal justice system, and as you say, the prison industry. And besides that, there are the drug running organizations operating in the CIA and who knows where else. It gets pretty serpentine and internecine, if you ask me.
I think that there is a difference between the European and the American people. Let’s take a drug that is legal: Beer. When I was in Italy I would sometimes go to their nightclubs, and as I was waiting in line, some bouncer came up to me and my friends, and scorted us to the front of the line. We got in before a lot of italians. Later I ask someone, why they had done that, and they said because americans come to the club to get drunk and drink beers one after another, which is good for the club. Italians, on the other hand, may have a beer or none at all. You hardly see them drunk.
I think that legalizing drugs in Europe have overall led to the same decrease in the improper use of drugs, but that is mostly because europeans are very prudent in their use of drugs, in my opinion. However, given american abuse of their few legal drugs, I would not recommed giving them even more alternatives to abuse.
Well, marijuana is much safer than alcohol and cigarettes. It also has medicinal and analgesic properties.
Yes, Churro, we can still see these effects.
For example it is easy to act stupid and blame on the fact that you were drunk. Behavior you simply would not have the balls to do sober, you attempt once you get a few beers in the system. So I guess that bottled courage is one positive effect. Another positive effect is how it gives you goggles through which everything is much better than it actually is. I guess that in this regards even religion, which is the opium of the people, also have positive effects that should be admired. Did I mention creative commercials? Promoting manly sports? Very positive consequences of the laglization of alcohol in America which we still enjoy, along with the thinning of the heard from the few that overdose on the stuff.
But there are of course other effects which are not as salutary. Headaches, liver disease, a higher risk of dying while driving.
But in the end, Portugal legalized it’s drugs not because of the arguments about the positive effects of drugs on people, but from the argument about the negative effects of prihibition, like increased numbers of HIV patients. The cure was worse than the disease basically. I think that people should have access to neddles to prevent infections, but that does not mean that we to legalize crack cocaine. And just because we lagalize pot does not mean that overdoses on that or other drugs will go down. There is not enough data to tie overdoses to laws against those drugs people are overdosing. Someone has to show that laws against drugs were causing higher irresponsible use of drugs and also how the repeal of such laws effected a change in how people used drugs. Until then I hold to the opinion that at least in America, which is where I live, legalizing alcohol did not affect positively the abuse of alcohol, as I see today, this leagl drug, causing overdoses and health problems in the population. What is to say that the same thing won’t happen if we legalize cocaine?
When they can make more money by taxing the shit out of drugs instead of keeping them illegal, then drugs will be legalized. The social consequences will be ignored or swept under the rug. It’s all about the money. Why do you think alcohol is legal? Why tobacco? It’s all about the money…
I’m with you here. Legalization would solve so many problems.
Churro:
“Five years later, the number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006.”
Nothing here about crime rates falling.
Calmate Churro!
If prostitution became taxable, that would only show that government is a pimp and does not serve as a valid argument about the health of promiscuity for society.
That prohibition decriminalized rum, created revenue and gave a blow to organized crime, that does not mean that alcohol consumption and abuse became healthy activities, or that the repeal of the law affected alcohol abuse in America.
From the article, at least, the intention had nothing to do with the benefits it would give to their economy, and I did not see anything about crime in what I quoted. What they were concerned with was with the negative effects of abuse that could be mitigated by opening healthy resources to abusers, such as access to needdles. the argument has been made before here in the US, and not just about drug use but also about abortion and condoms in schools. I am just saying that you have to examine each case and the possible effects on each case and not simply think that all societies are cookie cut the same size. That would be naive. Rather check how european use of drugs compares to american use of drugs. As I said, from what I have seen, european society approaches, at least the legal use of alcohol, a drug in any case, differently. Just look at television commercials and you see that it is not 25 percent beer commercials. Now, I am talking “europe” as if it was a single unit, which is not. Certainly I have seen a difference between German and Italian cultures, and even between northern italy and southern italy, but for the most part southern countries, including Portugal, ratin that sameness from the dominance that Catholicism retained in the south and then from the muslim cultural influence afterwards.
In whatever case, the point is that the drug legalization event was beneficial according to Portugal’s government aim and scope, not to mention criteria used to measure the achievement. From that there is a long way to make an argument that America should do the same, and me, based on what I have seen in America, would discourage greater access to more health risks- more things that Americans will be advertised to death to consume and abuse.
Decriminalization of drugs is the way to go. Even that arch-conservative Bill Buckley advocated for it some twenty odd years ago. It just makes sense. Societies with freer drug laws do not have the problems that we do over here. It would be hard for gangs and cartels to continue with their narco-terrorism and it would free up the criminal justice system for much more serious crimes.
My thinking is that the police state does not want to legalize drug use. First, fascistic control of the people depends on being able to put them into the criminal justice and/or mental health system. Secondly, the prison industry is big business now.
I’d just like to point out that you have to be very careful about statistics regarding falling crime rates after a decriminalization/legalization event. After all, an activity that was once illegal is now legal so what was previously a “crime” is now no longer a “crime” so total rates of criminal activity necessarily fall. What is important to look at is not the total crime rate but other related factors and related crimes (domestic violence, theft, driving under the influence, and that sort of thing). Another useful factor to look at is the mortality rate, which is what the OP does. After legalization, we observe a fall in lethal overdose as well as a fall in HIV transmission rates.
But are those measures the only ones worth considering? Take the experience of heroin in Britain. In 1964, doctors were given the ability to prescribe heroin to users (provided that they followed certain criteria – think of it as a “free needle exchange” but where you could also get heroin) in the hopes that it would contain addicts and alleviate other forms of crime. The project was abandoned in 1980 because there was a 100% increase in the number of heroin addicts between 1970 (when the program became widespread) and 1980. Despite the easy access to heroin and the clinical nature of the program, Scotland Yard had to double the funding to its narcotics division to deal with the increase in crime.
Like most cities, most crime in Amsterdam is committed by addicts. Coupled with the lax drug policies in the Netherlands, Amsterdam has a police force that is substantially larger than freaking American cities of equivalent size – and America is a fucking police state!
Examining those and other data, we are left with a bit of a balancing act. In countries where drugs are legalized/decriminalized the quality of life for drug users does increase considerably (such as outlined by the OP). That higher quality of life does cut down on drug-related problems (such as crime and disease transmission) committed per addict. However, the overall number of addicts does increase. So then it becomes a matter of maximizing these trends. At what level of legalization is the maximum benefit conferred?
In the case of marijuana, I think absolute legalization makes the most sense. Marijuana is a terrible vector for serious diseases (oral herpes notwithstanding) and has an addiction rate well below that of other well accepted drugs (such as alcohol) – indeed, marijuana isn’t addictive in any sense beyond mere habit. Furthermore, marijuana has been demonstrated not to be a gateway drug (it is less of a gateway drug than alcohol) so any ancillary concerns like those are best left in the “myth” pile.
What about other drugs? MDMA (ecstasy) seems another good candidate for legalization and regulation. Like marijuana, MDMA is usually not considered addictive in a clinical sense (which is fairly typical for amphetamine derivatives – interesting considering that the base drug is addictive) and purity is a huge concern with MDMA. Adjusting for the difference in population, a lot more people die in the United States due to “MDMA” as opposed to countries (like the Netherlands) where MDMA is decriminalized. Proper regulation would likely further decrease this trend (though likely not by much, Dutch ecstasy is almost always pretty damned pure because the audience knows what they are purchasing).
But what about drugs that are addictive? Well, I think that the balance does err more towards the “illegal” side of things because addiction is, by its nature, irrational and crime-prone. But that doesn’t mean that a draconian approach (such as that followed by the government of the United States) is a good idea either. Addiction ought be treated as, first-and-foremost, a medical problem. The problem with that, of course, is that healthcare is absurdly expensive and inefficient in the US especially as it relates to those of lower socio-economic strata. Likewise, views on white-collar crime need to be revised so that they too can be investigated as they relate to drugs with the same seriousness of other crimes. An addict breaking into your car to steal your stereo for smack sucks. Losing your job or retirement fund because someone was committing widespread embezzlement to keep their nose fed is substantially worse yet is often dealt with in a substantially more relaxed manner.
Well, it was done as an alternative to methadone treatment. The doctor’s would prescribe heroin for addicts ensure that a) they got a safe product and b) they got clean needles. However, the entire point of the program was to wean addicts off heroin.
Manichean views rarely yield sensible policy. That quote you’ve provided makes it seem as though you are disagreeing with my analysis. Are you disagreeing with my analysis?
Then it would appear that we are more-or-less in perfect agreement – at least on the points that matter.
How do we treat addiction as a medical problem with a privatized health system, is the next question. Who picks up the tab on that one.
I included Britain’s experience with Heroin as an important contrast to Portugal’s. Whereas the British saw an increase in addiction and an increase in crime, the Portuguese have actually seen a decrease in both! But the Portuguese have also been spending a lot of money (to a tune of around E50million/year) to treat the addicts. Britain just increased the police presence, while the Netherlands is following a more mixed approach.
I ask this question because the Cato institute is pushing for decriminalization without the other attendant programs that are necessary for success. The prison industrial complex features in this discussion in an important manner. Prisons serve as poor houses.
Many legal pharmaceuticals are very harmful and dangerous drugs, including and especially the psychotropes. The DSM manual is super fat now, and there is a designer drug for every diagnosis; and I don’t think they’re done yet. It’s so fucking insidious, and some drugs that are illegal look very good in comparison, particularly cannabis.
Very insightful, and I totally agree. In fact, it gets worse. The prison industry, a euphemism for slave labor camps, depends in large part on keeping drugs illegal and on using drugs to keep prisoners in line, which of course brings the mental health system and pharma into the picture. It aint nuthin nice, that’s for sure.
You might also be interested in this book on the way the prison system is skewed towards incarcerating people of color, mainly Black males.
It’s called The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. See: amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Inca … 1595581030
Contrary to the rosy picture of race embodied in Barack Obama’s political success and Oprah Winfrey’s financial success, legal scholar Alexander argues vigorously and persuasively that [w]e have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration as a system of social control (More African Americans are under correctional control today… than were enslaved in 1850). Alexander reviews American racial history from the colonies to the Clinton administration, delineating its transformation into the war on drugs. She offers an acute analysis of the effect of this mass incarceration upon former inmates who will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives, denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Most provocatively, she reveals how both the move toward colorblindness and affirmative action may blur our vision of injustice: most Americans know and don’t know the truth about mass incarceration—but her carefully researched, deeply engaging, and thoroughly readable book should change that.
No, it’s possible that they are targeted for the criminal justice system, which is gamed to let whites and rich people off. Just the disenfranchisement alone has repercussions that impact the whole society.
The commits-more-crimes scenario always belongs to whoever is on the bottom rung of the economic ladder (or the top rung, lately) Hispanics are an up and coming commits-more-crimes group that will surpass blacks in the next decade or so. As crappy as the prison system is, we are the creators of that system. We refuse to spend the real money necessary for genuine rehabilitation and continue building more prisons - out of sight, out of mind. The easiest solution to any social problem is to buy ourselves away from it. The Brits had the right idea. Just ship them off to some far away place (Australia), but we haven’t any place to send them, sooo, more prisons.