Drug Policy Survey

Great Debates
1

There have been numerous threads dealing with the debate over the merits of some sort of drug law liberalization. I intend this thread to be a poll and possible debate arena (hence in GD) over the details of such policy change in the US and internationally.

So, for all those who think that the drug laws should be reformed, some questions and statements follow

1)Policy should be changed for

a)marijuana only

b)a whitelist of select group of drugs(you may specify which), changeable upon procedure

c)all drugs, with the option of a blacklist

2)The policy should be changed to

a)decriminalization
my conception:
no penalty for possession, use
small-scale unregulated manufacture, distribution and trading tolerated
no advertising
taxation perhaps
criminal approach intact for large-scale operators and commercialization

b)regulated legalization
my conception:
no penalty for possession, use
licensed & regulated trading (age restrictions…etc)
product manufacture licensed & regulated (potency, labelling…etc)
advertising prohibited or actively contained
taxed

c)free-market legalization
my conception:
no penalty for possession, use
no special licensing or regulation for drug traders or manufacturers (no more than for other businesses of equivalent size)
product manufacture self-regulated (govt. checks in only when trouble occurs)
advertising allowed, with possibly some controls
taxed

If your conception of your choice doesn’t map onto mine, feel free to elaborate. You may also mix & match i.e. (2)© for (1)(a) and (2)(a) for (1)©.

3)Do you think the policy change you support shall occur?
If Yes, predict the year.

If No, do you think one of the other forms of change, listed in (2) shall occur?
If Yes, predict the year.

4)After a few years of your desired policy change, relative to current rates,

a)regular use of marijuana will have [increased / decreased]
insignificantly or,
modestly or,
substantially

b)regular use of hard drugs will have [increased / decreased]
insignificantly or,
modestly or,
substantially

c)regular use of other drugs will have [increased / decreased]
insignificantly or,
modestly or,
substantially
If you can, provide your conception of these adjectives e.g. modest increase is 25-33%. If you want, you may provide your answers in the form of absolute ranges i.e. hard drugs will be regularly used by between 15-25% of the adult population.

5)The costs of drug abuse

a)social costs will have [increased / decreased]
insignificantly or,
modestly or,
substantially

b)economic costs will have [increased / decreased]
insignificantly or,
modestly or,
substantially

6)Personal view of drug use

Positive
Positive but cautious
Negative but tempered
Negative

7)If you can, please provide demographic details

Gender
Age
Location (Country)

8)Any comments?

If sufficient responses are received, say 30+, I’ll prepare a summary with some stats.

Thanks!

2

Here are my replies:

  1. © - all drugs
    Some drugs should be strongly controlled, but not prohibited. A tiered policy is the optimal approach.

  2. (b) - regulated legalization
    Decriminalization won’t prevent tragedies like the recent rash of fentanyl-laced heroin ODs. Also, it doesn’t make sense to allow drug use, but not allow drug users adequate tools to choose and control use, like purity of product, specific potency and labelling of such. Profits may be retained for some drugs, so major criminal enterprises may still control some aspects of the drug trade, negating impetus for choosing this approach. Free-market legalization seems to go too far in the other direction, and seems to be the permissive equivalent of prohibition. In both cases, I don’t think age restrictions can be adequately enforced.

3)Yes, 2025

a)increased to atleast 20-25% of adults being weekly users

b)increased to atleast 5-7% of adults being weekly users

c)increased to atleast 12-15% of adults being weekly users

a)decreased but only insignificantly, mostly due to hard drug use

b)decreased substantially, due to taxation, reappropriation of current enforcement and incarceration funding

6)Positive but cautious

7)Male, 26, US

8)Enough said already.

3

  1. © - all drugs
    It doesn’t matter if a drug is all bad or has its merits, I still think legalization is the best way to control them.

  2. (b) - regulated legalization

3)Yes, 2020

a)increased modestly

b)decreased modestly

c)increased modestly

a)decreased substantially

b)drug price?decreased insignificantly (Due to heavy Norwegian taxation on tobacco and alcohol, at least cannabis is already quite cheap. On second thought, the more expensive drugs would be substantially cheaper)

6)Positive but cautious

7)Male, 20, Norway

8)…

4

  1. Err…not sure which my answer would be. I think that current drug law should be dropped, the FDA de-politicised, and for the FDA to decide which drugs should be legal to buy/sell for self-medication/entertainment. Possession would not be illegal, just buying or selling; for which there would be fines. #B perhaps?

  2. B, it sounds like.

  3. Not mine. I could see marijuana being decriminalised, but that’s about it for the moment. I imagine other drugs will be added to the tobacco and alcohol space as things gain and drop in popularity.

4a) Increase perhaps. I would imagine that, compared with alcohol and tobacco, that the FDA would legalise marijuana based on it’s relative health demerits. But whether it increased or not would depend on how it did as a product.

4b) No change. You’re not going to see a lower rate of hard-drugs usage without fixing poverty and education.

4c) Decrease perhaps. Fines would be a bitch as would having the reason you aren’t getting your medication be that it causes heart attacks, rather than because the up-tight old guys said no.

5x) How do you mean?

  1. Negative. Doing drugs is stupid.

  2. Male, 27, living in Tokyo, but referring to the US in the above.

  3. None.

5

More like A(decriminalization), given that you are maintaining fines for buying/selling.

6

1.) B I’m leaning towards A, but I admit there may be a few, very few, other recreational drugs that can be responsibly enjoyed like marijuana.

2.) A Legalizing pot would be a social experiment that should proceed cautiously. If decrim works out we can move to B. I’m not sure if I can see B working out for anything other than grass, though. Definitly not C, which we don’t even have for alchohol, if I’m reading the OP correctly

3.) Not anytime soon. Not in the U.S. at least. I’m surprised Europe hasn’t gone further towards decrim/legalization. There’s no politician brave enough to make that step here though. Anyone who did would meet a chorus of braying jackasses going “What kind of message does this send to our children?”

4a.) moderate increase with legalization. Once Pot becomes easy to find, more people will try it. During the decriminalization phase increase will be tiny, after legalization more people will try it. I suspect “light weed” will be marketed in the same way that beer and wine sell when alchohol is legal but the speakeasys of Prohibition generally marketed hard liquor.

Since I don’t believe in legalizing much besides pot, the rest of 4 is moot.

5a. moderate decrease. I don’t see pot causing much social harm now anyway. I’d say it causes less harm than alchohol and would continue to do so even if legal. It’s trite but drunks are violent, stoners are mellow. I’d rather share the road with an unimpaired driver, but if the devil made me choose, I’d rather the impaired driver be a paranoid cautious pothead than an out of control drunk. Also decriminalizing/legalizing weed would free up prisons for real criminals.

5b.moderate decrease. Weed would probably stay about the same price, as black market price hikes are replaced by sin taxes. Law enforcement costs would go down.

6. positive yet cautious with regard to pot, negative with regard to almost anything else I know functioning stoners. Can’t say the same with many other drugs.

7 Middle aged dude in Washington D.C.

All comments above.

7

That’s for buying selling things that are illegal. Your A and B seem to be discussing more of what is to be done with things that are allowed to be distributed. The only difference between them that you have listed is whether manufacturers/distributors/advertisers are to be able to operate and whether that is with restrictions or not. Assuming marijuana was released as being less harmful than cigarettes and alcohol, I would assume that essentially the same setup used to for cigarettes and alcohol would be applied to marijuana (i.e. where you are allowed to manufacture, distribute, and advertise the product, but where their are specific guidelines that must be followe–like no advertising/selling to kids.)

Buying or selling illegal/non-FDA approved drugs would be met with a fine. Growing/baking your own would not as you did not buy or sell illegal drugs, nor would passing them out for free.

8

Some people believe in the ‘gateway’ effect, so the question’s not moot for them.

Miron, a economist currently at Harvard who specializes in drug war economics, estimates that if marijuana were a regular legal agricultural commodity, it would retail at 1/15th the current street prices (cocaine: 1/4th, heroin 1/8th to 1/19th). So even after accounting for premium pricing, we’re talking about massive sin tax (300-500%), higher than that for alcohol, to maintain current prices. Given the margins, a substantial black market will remain, so practically a sin tax can’t be higher than, say, 100%, resulting in a net retail which is 25% of the current prices.

9
  1. I would legalize and tax all drugs. If you have noticed they can not be stopped and we are filling our jails but replacements are born everyday. We are corrupting our police departments and governments. We are pouring money into dictatorships and drug cartels.
  2. Regulate quality , price and tax for revenue. provide clinics for those who wish to beat the habit.
  3. No change is possible due to our religious bullshit. Hypocracy runs rampant. Check oxycotin and Rush for example.
  4. Drug use would eventually drop. Its readily available now but there is financial incentive for pushers to start people off. That would go away. With pressure to start gone and the mystique of doing something illegal,which has appeal to the age challenged, it would slowly drop.
  5. Costs would drop and quality would get uniform and better. In Detroit about 50 people recently died from drugs mixed with something else.
  6. I dont care much about drugs. I like coffee and do drink beer. They are drugs not defined that way. The list should grow.
  7. Michigan and old.
10

This approach seems dumb to me. IMO the main point of the exercise is stop the flow of huge amounts of money to organised crime, and to regulate the quality of drugs, as well as to regulate the distribution to minors, as we do for alchol and tabacco). This does nothing to solve these problems.

Definely how I think it should work. Possibly with more serious drugs only available via a doctor, but for most drugs the approach that is used in some places (e.g. the Swedish Systembolaget ) for distrubuting alchohol. Completely controlled by the state via state-owned outlets, that very closesly controlled and low-key, and designed to DISCOURAGE, encourage people from using them.

Seems bad idea to me, we heavily regulate alchohol and tabacco, I don’t see why we shouldn’t do the same for other drugs. Though I could see the advantage of allowing marajuana to be distributed via the free market (the same way tabacco is now, via the free market, but closely regulated), as it would clearly de-lineate it from more seriours, addictive drugs. Again, IMO, the disadvantage of current system is it does not delineate enough between marajuana and serious drugs, the same people who are selling pot are selling smack (in alot of cases, not all obviously), and they would MUCH rather people buy the latter as it improves the chances of repeat business. Also we tell kids “don’t take pot its bad”, they take it with no bad effects, why should they beleive us when we say “don’t take smack/crack/coke/crystal-meth”.

I have a generally negative opinion on of drugs, but that irrelevant. I have a negative a opinion on tabacco (IMO by FAR the worse health effect of Marajuana is most people who smoke it end up smoking cigarettes as well), but don’t want it banned.

I’m a Brit currently living in the states.

11

griffin1977, thanks. If you don’t mind, can you answer the other questions?

12

  1. B, because some drugs have too harsh an effect on the behavior of users, and even by reducing the price and making it readily available I feel that many hardcore users would still need to resort to crime to support their habit

  2. B, regulated legalization

  3. No, there will be no changes at all so long as the lawmakers care more about pissing off a few prudish letter writers than the bulk of their constituents and people can make money on the “war on drugs”

  4. After a few years of your desired policy change, relative to current rates,

a) regular use of marijuana will have increased insignificantly – users will continue to use and some amount of non-users will begin out of curiosity and no fear of prosecution, but for the most part the number should stay about the same as the vast majority of people that want to use marijuana already do

b) regular use of hard drugs will have decreased insignificantly as ease of access to lesser drugs should pacify the average user. There will still be a black market for the harder drugs, but over all there should be less users

c) regular use of other drugs will have increased insignificantly, again accounting for current users and the addition of the small percentage who were previously afraid to experiment due to legal repercussions

  1. The costs of drug abuse,

a) social costs will have stayed roughly the same

b) economic costs will have decreased substantially as there is no need to pay for the “war” any longer. In addition, taxation of the previously unregulated and outlawed products will bring in additional revenue to be applied toward medical programs

  1. Personal view of drug use = Positive but cautious

  2. If you can, please provide demographic details

male, 30, USA

13

1)Policy should be changed for
c)all drugs, with the possible exceptions of drugs which are highly addictive or unhealthy and for which there are safer alternatives with similar recreational effects.

2)The policy should be changed to
b)regulated legalization

No penalty for possession, use, manufacturing, or selling. No special restrictions on selling compared to alcohol or tobacco (I’m opposed to age restrictions in general, but that’s another issue). Illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of off-hours drug use.

Standards of potency and labeling absolutely must be enforced, including possible negative interactions with other drugs.

3)Do you think the policy change you support shall occur?
Not a chance until a majority of voters recognize drug use as a legitimate form of recreation. I think the best chance of change is with small tweaks: for example, Seattle’s voters made marijuana offenses the official lowest priority of their police department, and arrests for pot have gone down significantly since then. Once people see that drug users can be allowed to roam the streets without society falling apart, they’ll be more likely to accept greater changes.

4)After a few years of your desired policy change, relative to current rates,
a) regular use of marijuana will have increased modestly
b) regular use of hard drugs will have increased insignificantly
c) regular use of other drugs will have increased modestly

I’m not sure exactly what the line is between “hard drugs” and “other drugs”, but I think that if all drugs are made available equally, with neutral, factual information about all of them, users will tend to stick to the safer ones.

5)The costs of drug abuse
a) social costs will have increased insignificantly

Simply because more people will be using them. OTOH, identifying and treating addiction will be easier without legal penalties, and the social costs of drug-related crime will be gone when drugs are provided by licensed businesses.

b) economic costs will have decreased substantially

As long as the taxes aren’t insanely high, recreational drugs will be cheaper than they are today, leading to less of all the negative effects of drug users needing to spend a ton of money to support their habit.

6)Personal view of drug use
Positive but cautious

7)If you can, please provide demographic details
Male, 24, USA

14

In the UK, most drug-related crime is committed by those using heroin and/or crack. If you examine the costs for a heavy user of the major drugs, the reason becomes clear. See post #8 for an exploration of possible price changes, and why this is unlikely to continue.

15

1)Policy should be changed for

b)a whitelist of select group of drugs(you may specify which), changeable upon procedure

I do not know a lot about drugs, so I would start with marijuana, but others may be added if appropriate
2)The policy should be changed to
b)regulated legalization
my conception:
no penalty for possession, use
licensed & regulated trading (age restrictions…etc)
product manufacture licensed & regulated (potency, labelling…etc)
advertising prohibited or actively contained
taxed
3)Do you think the policy change you support shall occur?
If Yes, predict the year.

Yes, 2040.

4)After a few years of your desired policy change, relative to current rates,

a)regular use of marijuana will have increased insignificantly

b)regular use of hard drugs will have decreased substantially

c)regular use of other drugs will have not changed

5)The costs of drug abuse

a)social costs will have decreased modestly (depending on the drug)
b)economic costs will have decreased substantially

6)Personal view of drug use Negative. Drugs are dumb (no offense)

7)If you can, please provide demographic details

Gender : Male
Age: 28
Location (Country): Tennessee, USA

16

  1. c - I favor a complete legalization for all drug use by adults

  2. c

  3. No time in the foreseeable future
    There’s no political group advocating the kind of legalization policy I favor

a - increased substantially
b - increased modestly
c - increased modestly
I think it’s obvious that drug criminalization has some deterrent value, so legalization would increase usage.

a - can’t predict
b - decreased substantially
Complete legalization would be such a major change from current practice, I couldn’t make a valid estimate of the social effect. But legalization would eliminate the need for a huge law enforcement network and have a substantial economic effect.

  1. Negative
    Don’t use any drugs, including legal ones like nicotine or alcohol

  2. Male - 45 - USA

  3. I see this as a personal liberty issue. I believe adults should have the absolute right to make their own decisions, even if their decisions are incredibly stupid, as long as their choices affect themselves and they are held responsible for their actions.

17

I am surprised corpoprations havn’t gone after the profits available with legalizing. or the government going after the potential tax revenue.

18

1-c
2-b
3-yes, after I’m dead, I can foresee my grandson will be happily toking away someday in the open sunshine
4-a, increased modestly
5-a, decreased insignificantly; b, decreased substantially
6-positive but cautious
7-F/47/USA
8-Out to the windy beach…

19

:confused: Why have you left “universal compulsory use” off your list of policy options?

20

No need to type it out again when **LOUNE ** answered the same as I would already. Just change #7 to Illinois and 28.