Getting back to the OP, the fact of the matter is, they didn’t… Not by any measure.
Not only that, no nation ever has. The methods that have ALWAYS had the most success though where the ones that strictly targeted the demand side, not the supply side.
Mind if I ask a few questions of you Justin?
Do you drink at all ever?
Say, a nice glass of wine or two with dinner? (I am a huge fan of this.)
How bout at an office party?
New Years?
A nice scotch before bedtime while watching the news?
scott
scotth, I could not agree more - the demand drives it, that’s all there is to it. Same with all things - demand is the driving force.
Of course, there are situations that make certain things prohibitive, such as making cars out of gold - no matter how much demand there was, you could not mass produce them. But drugs are not subject to those limitations, and therefore will be available whereever there is demand.
I only censible approach is to legalize and regulate. Sell them at the local drug store (or Pharmacy for the more potent stuff) and dealers will be out of business in no time. This helps with sales to minors as well - it’s harder for kids to buy in drug stores than in the street. Sure it will still be a fight, but a much different one.
Justin, if you are worried about minors using drugs, what do you think of this approach? I know that I have to keep an eye on my son for many things, but it will be much easier in the case of drugs if I don’t have to worry about his school pals selling him stuff at recess. But most important, I have to be sure that he talks to me about everything, so I know if there is trouble coming.
The approach you claim worked for China is the last thing I want to see here, it is what all Totalitarian regimes use to control their polpulation - remember they use the same approach to control speech they don’t agree with, people’s movement, ability to make a living, etc. Everything. Are you ready to give up all your freedoms?
scotth,
yes I do enjoy alcohol. your point? my point is I probably wouldn’t enjoy it if they had not rescended prohibition as I probably would have gone to drugs for my youthful rebellion/escapism/courage builder. now we get into the discussion of effects of pot vs alcohol. I cant argue either side because they are both bad. pot has the old gateway theory and alcohol just has stronger booze or drink longer. but thats another thread. this is considering stopping another bad substance from entering society. yes its already here to a certain degree and I am trying to suppress it especially to novices.
no it didnt work in china because the damn brits came in and forced the chinese govt to allow it. I can’t find it the ban was on selling it or buying it. but with the penalty of beheading then you would have to be a serious addict to tempt it. I dont think a recreational user would think “rice wine or opium tonite? well who cares about a little beheading so lets go for the opium”
tradesilicon,
you mention legalizing it. well legalizing what? lsd,cocaine,crack,pot,heroine,xtc,…?
selling it primarily out of a drug store to adults would only ensure more supply and facilitate the resale to minors.
its like someone said in some movie a long time ago:
a riot is a nasty thing. and its about time we had one.
Actually justinh, I was looking for some common ground we both agreed upon, and try to go from there.
Lets see if we can agree on these facts about alcohol and then to continue from there.
What makes you beleive this? Do you know of a lot of adults who resell alcohol to minors? I sure don’t. The simple fact is that illegal drugs are far easier for minors to acquire than alcohol for the sole reason that alcohol is legal, and sold under controlled circumstances by folks who require proof of age.
And just to make it clear where I will try to go with this eventually:
What I am going to try to do is logically and factually go from the bottom up to get to a policy that will have as much of the positive benefits you want with the least amount of problems.
Truly, I don’t desire you, your kids, or anyone for that matter to find themselves a slave to chemical dependence or in any other way to have their life ruined or damaged by any substance.
So, I want to look at the basic assumptions, the history, and find some reasonable goals that are achievable. I think if you examine all this carefully, you will find that emotion and ideology have frequently set unreachable goals that have ended in distaster.
When I was in collage and under 21 it was much easier to get pot than it was to get alcohol.
I believe that Marijuana is, in fact, a gateway drug. It was for me. However, IMHO it is a gateway drug because its illegal. I don’t believe that using marijuana leads to the use of harder drugs, but buying pot from drug dealers tends to put you in contact with other people who use and sell harder things. If one was so inclined(as I was), they now have the opportunity to purchase drugs they wouldn’t have necessarily been able to before. Of course, depending on the enviroment you live in, you might have had the opportunity all along, thus invalidating my theory. But that’s the way it happened with me.
5-HT the happy neurotransmitter
I fail to see how you or anyone has the right to dictate what I do to myself, in the privacy of my home, harming (if you can call it that) no one but myself.
I think television is far worse brain rot than most drugs, but you don’t see me or anyone else screaming to kill off all the sitcom writers. (Though now that I think of it…)
Oversymplifying enormously. The Qing dynasty was incredibly corrupt and a state of anarchy was never far from the door from the mid 1800’s. The ban on opium was a bid to stop are horrific outflow of currency.
If you want to use a real political example. Use the People’s Republic of China from 1949-1979. For three decades there was no drug use in China. Of course, there was a draconian police state which included mass starvation and the cultural revolution. There’s your trade off.
I’m under the impression that the Taleban stopped most drug use (although allowed cultivation and sale to outsiders when it suited them).
Although I’m not sure if you want to use Maoist China and the Taleban as shinning examples of winning the drug war.
Scotth,
I can’t argue that alcohol is good or benificial or a drain on our society. Same for tobacco. Both would probably not be able to be legalized today. My argument for the drug war is to prevent 10% of innocent kids who get involved with it because of exposure alone. Not personal expression or rebellion or peer pressure. Just because they are bored and its all around and they dont see the harm. I like to attack all three of those requirements. My poison scare and this thread (that was going to get around to capital punishment for selling drugs to minors. but never made it) are attempts at this goal. I just don’t know an alternative. Well I know the legalization and education plans but dont agree with them.
I actually dont think we are arquing about the malady but just the cure.
Ferrous,
I did use the shift key and it hurt.
Actually, the capital punishment for selling drugs to minors, I really don’t have that much trouble with.
But, I do believe, that I can give a pretty good arguement taht legalization and education together would work better than the current system… far better.
It would not be perfect.
The big problem is that it is probably impossible to make it perfect. The problem with the total prohibition plan is that it works on the assumption that it will perfectly or nearly perfectly remove supply. It doesn’t, not even close. So, if you start with a plan that realisticly looks at what may be possible/achievable instead of basing the plan on doctrinal or idealogical grounds, it has a much better chance for success.
Many, many politicians know this already. However, there has been so much history of strong propaganda supporting the current plan that they have pretty well painted themselves into a corner. It would be career suicide for most of them to suggest a change in course now. In certain religious circles there is a large backing to the current plan purely out of doctrinal grounds. That makes things difficult as well.
There are several problems that people associate with drugs for example, that are made far worse by the current plan instead of better.
Heh. Thanks. I feel your pain. But it really does make your posts easier on the eyes; easier to read and more likely to be taken seriously.
But I am still a bit frustrated that you persistently refuse to get the point about minors and illegal drugs.
Let me say it slowly:
If drugs were legal
they would be sold in stores
by people who are required
by law
to ask for proof of age.
Therefore,
if drugs were legal
it would be HARDER
than it is now
for a minor
to get drugs.
Okay, sorry justinh. That was kind of jerkish of me. I apologize for the condescending tone of that last post. But this point has been made to you several times and you have not adressed it. Would you now, please?
Although legalization would make sense, it might not work. You have to make the more dangerous drugs seem less attractive. As cruel as it is, at any school I ever went to, you make fun of crackheads and the smokers. I mean cigarettes when I say smokers. Weed is accepted by everyone, even me, as harmless and so I don’t take it seriously. I don’t know if that view is a mistake or not.
Actually, you nearly prove the point yourself. Regardless of its legality, tobacco smoking is looked down on more than pot.
A number of things would be needed to happen with a major change in policy like this.
Out with the truth on everything.
Also, it would probably be best to not make several of the substances generally available.
I’ll use heroin for instance. The dangers here are pretty obvious. So, how do we handle this one?
Make it completely free, (as in cost nothing) to registered adicts. They would get this at the pharmacy along with clean needles after presenting a prescription.
Sounds counter-intuitive, I am sure. Lets look closer.
Pushers of heroin are out of business. Gone. No actively looking for new users. I am sure most adicts would suggest others to stay away from their personal monkey also.
Adicts health problems go way down. No more dirty needles. Clean supply of known strength.
They are no longer outlaws any more.
Granted, there is still a dependence problem here. But a much more manageable one. And it should be a steadily declining one (to some new base level).
scotth - good points, again.
justinh - please provide some of the logic to back up statements like “it (legalized drugs) would just be more avialable to resell to kids”. I see several people already pointed out the flaw in thattt logic - if you legalize it, and allow competition to drive th price down, the street sellers would be out of business, and the controls could be put in - similar to tobacco and alcohol - to prevent minors from getting them too easily.
As it is, I am much more concerned about my twelve year old getting a hold of some pot than a beer.
Of course there are financial benefits (such as taxing the trade) but I hardly put the same weight on those as the other benefits. Is it so complicated that we cannot see this thing is a huge government screw-up? I would have much more respect for the people in that business to admin it is not possible to stop the drug trade (without becoming, and put the damn mess behind us.
Scotth, your idea on Heroin prescription has actually been tried before. In Switzerland they opened a “heroin park” were it was legal to consume heroin. The idea behind this was to consolodate all the heroin use into one area. At first it worked great, but eventually it got out of hand and was shutdown. Starting on 1994 the governmant has been presribing heroin to junkies. Read that article for more info on the whole project. In case you missed the url, its here.
I have another article that shows it done in Liverpool (as well Switzerland)
http://www.ips-dc.org/downloads/addicted-testimony-socialimpact.PDF
If you don’t have time to read it all… jump down to this section, “SOCIAL IMPACT OF DRUGS & THE WAR ON DRUGS: Workable Alternatives Testimony of Mike Gray”. It starts on page 33.
This document is a transcript of Congressional testimony.
But to sum up for the people without the time to read this. Several interseting things happened.