Create your own drug policy

Great Debates
1

I’m tentatively for legalizing drugs (and other consensual crimes) but I’m wondering how doing so would work in a practical sense, especially in terms of creating a cohesive consistent policy with regards to things like the FDA, prescription drugs, and alcohol/tobacco. Here’s your chance to tell me how things would work if you created the new policy. Pick a scenario and run with it:

  1. Decriminalizing marijuana and/or softer drugs like shrooms, LSD etc.
  2. Legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana and/or softer drugs like shrooms, LSD etc.
  3. Decriminalizing all drugs
  4. Legalizing all drugs
  5. Pick your own policy

How would this work in terms of the FDA? It seems odd to have to have a prescription for certain drugs, but to be able to buy things that are potentially as dangerous over the counter for recreational purpose. How would this work with alcohol/tobacco? Right now they exist in kind of a nether region - would they fall under the new policies? How would you deal with age restrictions, quality control, litigation, zoning, home ‘brewing’, taxes, etc.?

2

Legalize everything. Set a minimum age of 18, and enforce the hell out of it. The only drugs you’d need a prescription for would be antibiotics, and possibly newer medications with multiple, dangerous, and/or poorly understood potential side effects. Tax the drugs, but not at the kind of level that we tax cigarettes, which would just incentivize the maintenance of a black market, the eradication of which would be the whole point of legalization.

3

I’d have to go with number 5, jack.

For me it would be legalize marijuana, shrooms, cocaine and LSD. Create licenses for people over the age of 21 to purchase these drugs.

  • Licenses have to be approved through through the state which issues the license.
  • Applicant must have no past criminal record for violent crimes, parolees on case by case basis, and a MANDATORY physical exam FOR EACH APPLICANT to obtain a drug license.
  • The physical exam would have to show there is no current physical condition that could/will become fatal if the approved drugs are used. (In other words, you got lung cancer, you can’t buy smokable marijuana, but you could buy edibles (brownies, ganja butter, lollipops, tongue strips, etc.)
  • A weekly limit to be set on drug amounts purchased, maybe a daily limit.

Zoning- NO drugs sold within a good distance of schools and public parks, public buildings. Perhaps a few miles. Drugs can only be sold by pharmacies, hospitals and clinics. Never at liquor stores and the like.

Quality control would be a tough one. There would have to be limits on the doses, especially with coke and LSD. (!) Have to get back to that later…

And most important…

  • Tax it till you feel like taxing no more! Start at 10% on all amounts!

I have a marijuana license in CA. It’s still about the same price for kind bud that I used to pay 20 years ago at Dead shows. I personally buy 3.5 grams and that lasts 3-4 weeks for me, and I share it on occasion with other licensees.

When you go to a marijuana shop here, they need your original letter from the prescribing physician (which they keep a copy of on file), your official marijuana license and your driver’s license or ID card.

You can buy a number of clones and legally grow it, and buy it at the same time.

We can also lose our license here if we sell it to non-licensees and be prosecuted as a distributor. I would do away with that law as well, at least in CA, since our prisons are beyond full anyhow. It makes no sense to me that in prison mother rapers, father rapers, murderers and molestors would be sharing a space with a guy who made $200 a week selling weed. Just make them pay a large fine to discourage future activity and build a school with the penalties.

Not done yet. As far as the drugs I WOULD NOT legalize, increase the penalties. Ex, Meth and even cough syrup distribution to kids is much more dangerous because these drugs, though maybe consensual, hold higher risks in lower doses.

Or… just toss off a few bags o’ crack off a rooftop and watch the reaction. That’d be less red tape!

4

Yup, legalise them all.

5

Eliminate DEA schedule 1. There are no longer any drugs that the government decides are dangerous and have no medical use. That is for doctors to decide.
Put the severely addicting and/or damaging drugs in sched 2, and the rest in sched 3.

Sched 2 drugs are prescribed by board-certified physician whose function is basically to verify that you have no pre-existing issues and that you aren’t killing yourself with the drug. Refills limited by prescription.
Notable changes: People with chronic pain or opiate dependency can be prescribed heroin as maintenance. People who are using cocaine just for fun can keep using it unless their physician decides they’re wrecking their life with it.

Sched 3 drugs can be bought OTC at special pharmacies with the buyer presenting a license that is the equivalent of a criminal/medical background check. No prescription, hence no restriction on refills.
Notable changes: Soft recreational chemicals like ecstasy, LSD, 2CB, plant alkaloid extracts like DMT, mescaline, etc.

Sched 4 are psychoactive plants (pot, mushrooms, datura, whatever). It’s not a statement about the safety of ingesting any psychoactive plant, only a comment on the futility and stupidity of criminalizing what mother nature provides. These may be grown in noncommercial quantities for personal use. They may be sold in government-controlled stores.

No drug shall under any circumstances be given to anyone who is under 18, not mentally competent, nor any person with an otherwise contraindicated mental or physical health problem.

6

For adults:

Retain FDA (prescription) control of chemicals which, when misused, have harmful effects beyond the individual user. An example is antibiotics, which when misused can result in drug-resistant strains.

Retain FDA (government) approval for medical indications. That is, no chemical can be promoted as an agent for effective treatment unless its effectiveness has been demonstrated through a governmentally-approved formal process.

Decriminalize personal recreational use (or refusal to use) anything. Narcotics and seat belts are two good examples.

Retain criminal penalties for behaviours which harm others, even if those behaviours occurred while under the influence of electively-taken chemicals.

7

… and again I’ll go on record against the “legalize it, but tax the hell out of it” mentality.

Sometimes this is acknowledgment by anti-drug types that criminalization doesn’t work, but they still want to penalize people for activities that they disapprove of.

Sometimes it’s a pro-drug person expressing an earnest spirit of compromise, that they’ll be willing to pay for the freedom they desire.

Always, it’s based on the misguided assumption that people don’t possess a right of cognitive freedom, to regulate the contents of their own head in a matter that pleases them and doesn’t bother anyone else, unless they pay the government to leave them alone.

It’s bullshit and I wish people would stop showing such willingness to bribe the government for my (our) freedom. The purpose of taxation is to offset cost. Don’t fucking tax something that doesn’t cost anything. Calculate the actual medical harm to society for a certain behavior. Make a plan to mitigate the harm. Levy a tax to pay for the harm reduction plan. In the case of marijuana, this tax would be exactly zero.

8

It sounds to me like CA has pretty much legalized recreational marijuana use, with the “prescription” card being a ruse to put a nice facade on it. Not that I am against the idea, but am I far off base?

9

I hope those of you who nominally want to legalize it but are going to have licences, doctor’s approval etc. realize you are not going to end the blackmarket, save money, prevent crime or anything like that.

So what’s your goal?

10

To (virtually) end certain black markets, save money, and prevent crime. Also to make drug abuse and addiction less harmful. On a more abstract level, it would also be nice to quash some of the current hypocrisy in our laws surrounding our ideas of privacy and individual freedom.

ETA: Whoops, totally missed the part about licenses and doctor’s approval. I think that could be taken too far, but it would still be better than the status quo, and such restrictions *might *do more good than harm. Hard to say, IMO.

11

Agree 100%. If you go too crazy with licenses, fee, etc. you will just create two classes of people:

  1. Those who have money and can “buy” doctors and licenses who are free to be legal junkies

and

  1. Those who will end up just like they are now under the current system, who will suffer even more police intrusion.
    Also, what doctor who is doing his job is going to say you need LSD or heroin? What kind of illnesses do some of you have?
12

My own drug policy?

I avoid alcohol and all recreational use of controlled substances.

I even avoid most “medical” use of controlled substances.

It’s working out pretty well for me. :smiley:

13

And those who can qualify for licenses or whatever, but would rather have money than drugs and will re-sell the drugs to those who don’t qualify (or those who don’t want themselves on record as being drug users).

We’ll need even more DEA agents to track those people down, won’t we? Both the buyers and sellers.

14

Legalize marijuana, hashish, and non-addictive drugs like LSD.

If you are in federal prison only for offenses related to these drugs, you get a pardon. If you committed any other crimes, or dealt cocaine or other drugs, you get your sentence reduced by 20%.

And none of this stuff about licenses. If we want to treat adults as adults, then let’s treat them like adults. If you demonstrate in some way - driving under the influence, for instance - that you cannot handle the stuff responsibly, fine, but the default assumption ought to be that adults can take care of themselves until proven otherwise.

Regards,
Shodan

15

  • End the black market. No, but how many people are selling weed in my area? Only the pharmacies. It’s easy to get a license and legally purchase and be in possession of it.

  • Save money. For me? No. It costs $175 for a med marijuana license (with photo) an $125 for renewal yearly after another physical exam. (The exam is easy in CA too, if you can breathe, you get a license. :slight_smile: ) But I’m saving other people a hell of a lot of money and inconvenience by NOT sending three cops to arrest someone smoking a bone. Nor am I wasting court time, spending lawyer fees, etc. Violent crime could be prosecuted quicker, hopefully, without a docket full of misdemeanors or class E felonies.

  • Prevent crime. See above, plus it’s too expensive to make a profit on your own by selling weed. It’s $60 an eighth for Indica or Sativa. Can’t make much profit off that especially when the buyer could just go to get his/her own license and buy from a ton of stores (there’s approx. 17 stores in a 5 mile radius of me now.)
    My goal? To legally buy FANTASTIC marijuana which is grown locally by some serious botanists and not shoved up the ass of an illegal immigrant only to be shat out, separated into dime bags and me cruising around unsafe neighborhoods in my new car looking to find the 13 year old with said dime bags for sale. :wink: (And there’s the tax profit too-ooo! There’s no money generated from an illegally sold bag o’ drugs, but every legal marijuana sale is taxed in CA. Imagine all the dealers paying a buck on every dime they’ve sold.)

Now that’s just with weed. Shrooms, LSD, coke and other social/consensual drugs might not be as easy as I originally thought.

16

Make it all legal but regulated like alcohol. You must be at least 18 to buy. (While we’re at at it, let’s change the drinking age to 18.) You don’t have to have a prescription to get anything. Only licensed stores can sell the stuff and they must be located outside certain areas, like school zones. Tax the stuff to contribute to the medical and government services the drug users may need, but not such high taxes it drives prices up to black market prices. Use some of the tax money for drug education and rehab centers. You must have a license to produce and sell the stuff, but people can make certain drugs which are safe to produce in low quantities for personal usage, just like beer and wine.

17

Not all of it, of course. But a smart drug policy based on harm reduction and medical supervision can make a huge dent in all these things. Obviously what we’re doing now is a huge failure, and 100% overnight decriminalization of every substance is extremely risky. I would say we need to work better to find a sane middle way, and then loosen things incrementally as different approaches are proven successful. Hell, even if we decriminalized marijuana in all 50 states (for adults, of course) and left everything else alone, we’d be doing much better than we are now. Right now most places aren’t even trying.

18

Legalize everything. Anything you wish to put in your body, you may. This includes all current prescription drugs.

-Drug schedules revised and used for education and tax purposes. Schedule 1 drugs have high taxes, and all people are strongly encouraged to never try them, Sched 2 medium, and its best not to try but occasional use may be ok, etc. These taxes are earmarked specifically for drug treatment programs, rehab, training, etc. Drugs are assigned to classifications based on scientifically determined impact on human life. Untested drugs are considered schedule 0, and cannot be sold by any means commercially, though they can be made for private use.

-All drugs are labeled with all appropriate dangers, recommended dosages, similar to an MSDS. Something on the order of ‘You really shouldn’t be putting this in your body, but if you really feel you must, if you follow these instructions its less likely you will kill yourself’.

-Drugs prescribed by doctors for valid medical conditions are not taxed at the high rate of consumer drugs.

-Licenses are required to sell drugs, same as liquor and tobacco. Licenses are also required to manufacture drugs. Selling is a small to medium violation(quantity depending). Manufacturing unlicensed drugs is a nice, fat felony. Exceptions include natural drugs(tobacco, pot, anything that grows and needs no chemical preparation) and alcohols.

19

Legalize everything. Can be purchased by anyone at age 18. Tax it normally - no need for a morality tax on what some people think is “wrong”. Fines and jail time for operating machinery and motor vehicles under the influence, same as alcohol.

20

But why would it do those things?

As you’ve pointed out, pretty much anyone with a pulse can get a license in CA, yet many people prefer to rely on the black market. Why do you think that is, and why would it change under your system?

I’ll tell you what I think: people don’t trust the government and the records they might keep. Why would I spend extra for a license just so I can be on file somewhere as a (semi-)illegal drug user? Much better to just go the black-market route until it can be legally bought without notifying the state.

If you have the licenses, some people will still not have them, so you either have to make the crime of smoking without a license less than it is right now, or accept that we will still waste police resources on people smoking pot. If the plan is to do away with the harsh penalties for smoking without a license, then why not just do away with the licenses entirely and remove the penalties?