How would you distribute them? Marijuana perhaps might be sold over the counter in liquor stores. In the case of marijuana, you might allow it to be home grown. But what about others which have nasty physically addicting qualities? Like heroin or cocaine? Say what you want about letting people do what they will, when some require the state to ultimately step in for medical treatment that costs the taxpayer an inordinate amount, we should have some regulations in place for to prevent these substances to be abused or programs to ween people off such addictions and then place estrictions on what they are allowed.
For that matter should we consider how we sell alcohol to alcoholics?
Another problem is how do you keep prices reasonably low and kept away from organized crime? You know they’ll want to come in through the the back door. How do we keep drugs from becoming an ever increasing source of income for phamaceuticals that will want to maximize profits quarter after quarter?
I’d suggest:
a.) At wholesale levels the gov’t contract reasonably low price margins for what is sold. Pricing would depend on demand. A low profit margin is acceptable in the marketplace so long as the volumes produced are high enough to where a 5% profit still translates into lots of money. If the demand shrinks, wholesale prices would go up to offset loss of revenue. if demand goes up, the wholesale prices of those drugs would go down letting increase volume make up the difference.You don’t make a ton of money, but enough to make it worth your while and it’s likely demand will be reasonably consistant.
b.) At retail levels most drugs would be distributed by a non-profit organization set up specifically for this purpose. You could buy alcohol, tobacco products and pot as well at these places. They should be staffed by people who have medical backgrounds that you might find in a pharmacy, along with a pharmacist on call and perhaps even a doctor or two. Prices must be kept low enough to be more than competative with what might be sold on the streets while maintaining high quality. Street dealing should carry extreme penalties for selling without a licence. To do so takes the profit out of illegal sales along with a big downside for getting caught. Police would now concentrate on a few dealers rather than the current huge numbers of them and even much larger numbers of users.
c.) Taxes paid on these products should also be reasonable and paid specifially into health care and perhaps education as well, as education might help reduce usage and abuse. This would be easier if these substances are controlled, not demonized. Also, some smart types might be able to reconstruct how young people would view the social impact of drugs. No longer taboo, could they be made to seem so 20th century so as to blunt curiosity? Or at least effectively make anything other than moderation seem really lame or stupid?
In other words: Regulate, not prohibit the drug trade. I couldn’t agree more. I would go so far as to say prohibition of any “vice” is unconstitutional.
By definition and fact, health and crime risks would be minimized if dose and purity and accessibility were well regulated. During alcohol prohibition, the impurities in white lightning often caused rapid deterioration; prohibition nurtured gangsters. It is an indisputable fact: regulation minimizes crime, prohibition creates crime. Do not forget that the majority of crime in our streets and terrorism throughout the world is a direct result of our war on drugs.
Again I agree. The problem is not the drug use; the problem is the underlying criminal tendency. It is much more likely that an intoxicant has released subconscious anger than it has actually created anti-social behavior. It is even more likely that creating a crime where there is none contributes to anti-social behavior.
”Natural” products (beer, wine, leaves, sap etc.) could be sold wherever food or herbal products are sold. Processed products (including distillation) could be more closely regulated as in liquor stores.
There’s been an across-the-board increase in criminal prosecutions, as I understand. Politicians love to pound their fists on the podium and vow to get “tough on crime” and unfortunately, some of them act on their half-baked ideas. (Such as flat sentencing. Jeeze, what a turkey that is.) Judges no longer have as much discretion in setencing as they once did.
The chart below that text says that only 2.1% of prosecuted drug cases were for simple posession only.
Hey, man, you’ll get no argument from me that this whole thing is bullshit. I’m a big supporter of repealing drug laws. The only reason I spoke up is because I don’t want “my side” using statistcs which can be attacked as erroneous. It clouds the argument.
As I said, I’m on your side of this-- I would wholly support any repeals.
That said, it seems like most drug law opponents base their argument on a fallacy-- that large numbers of otherwise-innocent folks are going away for years of hard time just for having a bit of weed in their glove box. I know that this notion is intended to be an emotional appeal, but it doesn’t fly with people who want real numbers.
I am of the opinion that even one person doing time for such a stupid reason is too much, but a lot of people would see 758* people going to prison for drug posession as relatively “small” evil when compared to a lot of the social injustices which occur around us every day. (There’s more than three thousand people on Death Row, for example.)
What I’m saying is to go to the argument balls-out. Admit readily that most people are in prison for dealing, but that they should be just as pittied as the fabled kid with a joint in his pocket. An injustice is an injuctice even if it happens to a thug.
This was the number of posession-only prosecutions in 1999, IIRC )from the PDF file.)
You’re using the fact that very few people are in jail for just possession and deducing from that that few people are in for just having small amount of drugs, but my point is that doesn’t follow, given the whole web of laws designed to increase punishment (1000 ft school zones, ‘intent to sell’…etc). There may be prisoners who are technically in for multiple charges, but their only actual act is having the drug above a certain threshold (like more than 10g of pot and a second offense). We really need some detailed stats.
Going over that linked document, on pg 11…
in 1997,
of 7,848 in for marijuana,
18% were ‘User only’
7% were dealers above street-level
3% were dealers at street-level
14% were dealer at “other” level (what does this mean?)
24% were importers
7% were manufacturers
26% for ‘Other’ type of offense i.e. not dealer/user/manufacturer/importer, what could that be?
True enough. I agree with you. My only point was that when discussing this issue, we who oppose the War on Drugs should be very careful to avoid giving the wrong impressions of the data. As an example, Michael Moore has some very valid points, but they get lost in all the contovery surrounding whether or not he misrepresented this fact or that.
I’m guessing paraphenalia. There’s a whole set of whacky laws surrounding that, too, which is why poor Tommy Chong was put in federal PMITA prison.
It’s sad and sickening that we waste resources on this sort of bullshit.
In terms of toxicity and physical dependence, alcohol is about the “hardest” drug out there. People regularly take %50 of the lethal dosage and death rates for those in withdrawal can be very high.
It would be nearly impossible for a new drug with those characteristics to even get FDA approval as a prescription, let alone recreational approval. Compared to alcohol, heroin is a baby. You have more purity and strength issues with opiates, but you also did during Prohibition.
To those proposing changes to drug laws: under the new policies you envision, would anyone currently in prison for drug posession be released, or would they stay in prison because they broke the law as it existed at the time?
I would want a full pardon issued to non-violent drug offenders currently incarcerated. If they had additional charges, they would have to serve those, but any charges based on manufacture, sales or use of drugs would be dropped.
I still would like to see meth and other chemically-based drugs monitored in some way, simply because the shit is poisonous. (Anything with brake fluid and drain cleaner as ingredients is inherently dangerous.)
What would be ideal is if a “High Pill” could be manufactured which would give users the sense of euphoria they seek but would have no serious side-effects. (All pill-usage, of course, can cause long-term liver problems, but that’s not what I’m talking about-- I mean the open sores, loose teeth and other body-mangling consequences of things like meth.) Brave New World, and all of that.
Haha, what the fuck. I don’t expect you want people to sign a form saying they will not get treated if they get health problems after eating McDonalds. But hell, we’re far too many people already. I’d love if we sped up evolution again and let people eat and drug themselves to death. Then we’d evolve to be superenjoyers who could lie around all day just eating and getting high, that would so rule!
And more people should start realizing that outlawing a problem is about the least effective way of solving it. (To quote Tao Te Ching, “The more laws that you make, the greater the number of criminals.”)
For example, nowadays a fair portion of the critique against cannabis is that it acts as a “stepping stone towards harder drugs” (never mind tobacco and alcohol, by the way). Now, do you think the fact that as a result of the law, cannabis users are pushed outside the society and has “already lost” increases or decreases the burden of that step?
I’m all for regulation, but regulation should be balanced between the point where a substance is too easily available and the point where it’s so hard to obtain legally that the illegal, nonregulated market takes over. But regulation isn’t half as important as mentality. If a society decides drug users are losers, they become losers. The health problems of a controlled (not as in illegal) and pure substance pales compared to the psychological and social problems of being an outcast.
I hope you’re not serious. Anyone working in law enforcement/ the legal system who don’t think it would be better if they didn’t have to, don’t deserve it. Ending the war on drugs would release enough resources to feed these people, and much more.
Actually cocaine was used as a medical anaesthetic and analgesic throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and is stilll found in some medication used by, for example, nose and throat specialists.
Not to mention that because both cannabis and harder drugs are illegal, in order to obtain cannabis you often have to associate with those who also deal the harder stuff- something that wouldn’t happen if marijuana were legalised.
Still, I find it interesting that a fair portion of those arguing for the legalisation of some or all drugs (those tending to come from the liberal, rather than the libertarian, end of the spectrum) are often also in favour of, for example, harsher laws on tobbaco advertising or whatever.
I’m definitely coming at it from the libertarian perspective. Let adults makes adult decisions…and face the consequences of their actions directly. If they want to smoke or drink or use drugs, well, thats their decision…and they will have to pay the price themselves for their actions in terms of higher insurance costs, risk of physical and mental injury or death, and possible legal consequences if they fuck up and hurt someone else.
I also used to find what you are getting at a bit baffling…but its all part of the quasi-nanni government mentality of some ‘liberals’. See, there is a select group who get to decide whats good and whats bad…and then cast that into concrete to be force fed to the general public who, we all know, are too stupid to decide for themselves and have to be led by the nose to whats good for them. At the heart of some ‘liberals’ is a Stalin just waiting to get out. (Just kidding there btw). Seriously though, if you look at it from that perspective (not the Stalin thing, but for the elite group who decides whats good or bad for the ‘poor huddled masses, yearning to get high’) it makes more sense.
Otherwise its not only ironic, but a bit hipocritical…
“quasi-nanni”? Is that a sly reference to “nanny”, meant to ridicule and/or belittle anyone with a differing opinion on an issue?
I’ve been a quasi-hermit for a while and I’m not up on the latest put-downs.
Saying something nasty about someone else and then adding “just kidding” is disingenuous at least.
Stalin was anything but liberal. In fact, he pretty much let those who were of no interest to him fend for themselves. Sound familiar?
Peace, whether you be big or small.
mangeorge
Sorry, its a private joke. I wasn’t trying to belittle anyone.
For the humor impaired, its one of those ‘joke’ things. I put in the disclaimer so the humor impaired could TELL it was a joke in fact.
Yeah, I’m aware of it. You are wrong though if you think Stalin was a live and let die kind of guy though, letting folks ‘fend for themselves’. The levels of control in Stalins state were staggering.
Yeah, it sounds familiar…every despot in the last century basically did the same thing. I can think of a few off the top of my head in fact…lets see, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and those charming folks in North Korea. Did you have someone else in mind?
How about ‘hairy or bald’? What about ‘liberal or conservative…or somewhere in between’? Do I still get peace?
(Just kidding there btw). Seriously though, if you look at it from that perspective (not the Stalin thing, but for the elite group who decides whats good or bad for the ‘poor huddled masses, yearning to get high’) it makes more sense.