Ok here’s my premise though I think you got it, Im just restating for clarity to make sure we’re on the same page.
The current levels of violence are due primarily to their illegal status.
By removing this and enacting restricitions(just as you mentioned, i.e. minors et. al) and taxes we remove most of the black market effects. Now here’s my concession. I agree this won’t remove all criminality, only the degree. Hypothetically I say 90%. Why? Glad you asked.
While there will be people who’ll not be able to buy legally, minors come to mind, but maybe there’ll be additional proscriptions not presently clear. I’d venture to say that most of these would get there drugs illegally in the same ways they now acquire alcohol and cigarettes - through straw purchases and the like. Where i really see the problem is say designed drugs like Meth, which can be made easily with off the shelf stuff. But let’s stick to the Big three for now.
I see your cigarette analogy, but I think it’s a flawed comparison. Cigarettes are now being taxed at nearly the same as it’s retail price. This is more to do with the lawsuits and such, and of course the sin tax.
The same would not be true (or at least not presently anyway, though I’ll allow for future litigation making this an issue at some point). If Phillip Morris started making marijuana (sp?) products. They’re not going to be introducing at the extorbitant rates charged by the underground market. They’ll be able to grow it legally, so they don’t have to fund mules, and illegal grower, any potential coruption funding, and the type of street security now used because of it’s illegality/turf wars /stealing. They have the manufacturing/distribution base, the same would be true of Drug companies for opiates. It would be a far cheaper product. More in line with cost/overhead.
And now we do find ourselves in agreement again. i do think there would be at least some social ramifications. I don’t agree that it’ll produce more violence. I do think there’s likely to be at least some rise in usage. I think there’ll be some increased health concerns. In other words, I think the upheavals experienced under decriminalization would be far and above better than what we’ve experienced during this so called drug war, which almost neccesitates violence.
Umm, psychosis, paranoia, and physical and psychological addictions anyone?
What good would making heroin and cocaine legal do? If you keep doing it, sooner or later you WILL get addicted. And when someone is addicted, nothing else matters. Their only concern is getting another fix. Do you want the already angry neighbour to do a few lines and think they are invulnerable and subsequently want to teach you a lesson?
Care to provide any evidence that there is a higher risk of that happening due to cocaine or heroin than due to alcohol? Like an actual scientific study or something? One that separates violence caused by the drug from violence caused by the prohibition of the drug, please.
Demonizing addicts and addiction does nothing but hinder any meaningful discussion of a very serious and complex issue. The stereotypical portrayal of the drug addict as the wretched, single-minded lunatic also happens to be ridiculous; why would you base your opinion on drug war propoganda? The heroin addict, under his alloted dose, is a well man. Though the cocaine addict may be something of an asshole (to put it bluntly), I (like waterj2) challenge you to find one study that demonstrates a causal link between cocaine use and violence. On the other hand, when addicts cannot afford black market prices, or when they are forced into withdrawal by a lack of availability, bad things will happen (robberies, violence, need for medical care, etc.).
wring,
You’re right to fear the emergence of a modified black market in the event that drugs are legalized. Ideally, those fears would fuel a sane taxation policy. When taxes (or prices in general) are such that a black market in legal goods arises, something is wrong. Prices must be kept reasonable. After all, a large part of why we want drugs legalized is so that addicts don’t have to go broke supporting their addiction.
As for usage, there is reason to believe that addiction rates would go down if drugs were legalized. When I was 15, I could have gotten any amount of any illicit drug I could afford (easily). I could not, on the other hand, have gotten a bottle of vodka. Legalization allows regulation, which would make drugs harder for youths to obtain. As for the rest of us, black market prices mean a huge profit margin for any (unregulated) drug dealer. This leads to the phenomenon of actual “pushers.” Legalize it, then either have the government distribute it directly or at least ban virtually all advertising. At that point, those who want (or need) to obtain drugs can do so, safely, while those who do not are not preyed upon by sellers. During the prohibition of alcohol, alcoholism rates rose, sometimes dramatically (while the safety of alcohol, and of the circumstances of its ingestion, declined).
No, the mob didn’t disappear because prohibition was repealed. But it had been effectively created by the enforcement of prohibition, and it did have to get out of the booze business after the repeal. The black market you speak of in alcohol, cigarettes, CD’s, etc. is patronized by an incredibly small percentage of consumers (though I would agree that cigarette prices are becoming dangerously high). Currenly, 100% of illicit drug users go through the black market (the evils of which have been described several times already). Getting the overwhelming majority of users out of the black market can only have beneficial results.
Prohibition or no, there will always be drug addiction and problems that stem from drug addiction, both personal and social; no state action can change that. The point, therefore, is to eliminate the problems caused by the government’s irrational and poorly executed “war on drugs.”
(The history of the drug laws in America – from their causes to their evolution – is truly bizarre. An understanding of their past helps immeasurably with an understanding of their present.)
Yeah, I’ve never gone to buy a six pack of beer and had the liquor store owner ask me if I wouldn’t rather have some Everclear. I have gone to buy pot and been asked if I would like something harder. In these cases, I’m not sure if the dealer was actually pushing in the same sense that it’s being talked about, they knew me well enough to know I had tried most drugs and might have just thought they were doing me a favor by letting me know more than pot was available that day, but still…legalizing yet regulating drug sales would make it tougher for kids to get them, though by no means would it be impossible, I WAS able to get alcohol sometimes as a teenager, it was just a pain in the ass and I often had to pay someone to buy it.
Yes, a heroin or cocaine addict will often do anything to get a fix - the point is that if these drugs were legal and sold at realistic prices, the addict wouldn’t have to do as much to get some. Take nicotine addicts. Smokers rarely go long without getting their hands on a cigarette - they can scrape together change, borrow a few bucks from someone, or just bum a smoke off of somebody. If a pack of cigarettes cost $20, you can bet you would see smokers committing crimes to get money for cigarettes. My Mom (definitely not pro-drug) admitted that if cigarettes were made illegal she would find somebody who sold them illegally, back when she smoked. Most people who are addicted to drugs have such high tolerances they don’t get much more of an effect from the drug than a smoker gets from a cigarette - the only real difference is the legality and price.
I showed above that even with the current drug prices I could make a profit selling crack at 20% of it’s current street price, if it was practical to buy the cocaine an ounce at a time and sell it as crack in large quantities - actually, I was a bit off on my figures, I could probably get an ounce of cocaine (enough for 300 rocks) for $400 or less. The more I bought at once, the cheaper it would be. Even if it cost the same amount to get it over here in the states, a crack store that had a bit of capital to work with could lower prices to a point that would seriously reduce crackhead crime. If cocaine was legal, it would be cheaper to smoke crack than cigarettes.
Mob existed before prohibition. Yes, they became more powerful and organized during prohibition (especially in Chicago apparently), however, that may have been due to prohibition or the particular strong personalities of the ones involved at the time.
A better thing to look at perhaps, would be China back yonder - wasn’t opium legal? opium dens - how much of a problem were they? (genuine question, it’s not an area of history that I’m familiar with).
“a sane taxation policy”??? I’m sorry, fell of my chair laughing. well, you certainly have a more generous view of our lawmakers than I. OK - physically, the US has to import the raw ingredients for both cocaine and heroin. However, pot can be grown anywhere (and is). So, even with a modest tax - the black market in pot would flourish. And I don’t think it’d be difficult to see a propensity for the heroin/cocaine trade to flourish as well - look at it this way - if the government/companies were importing the raw materials for cocaine/heroin, then processing it etc, I’d think there’d be a great incentive to merely modify the current illegal trade from importing it to stealing it. And, they’d still be able to sell at a serious profit and for less than the legal venues.
RE: black market percentage - obviously we disagree. I look at things like the current easy access to prescription drugs on the street, methadone in particular for an ironic piece.
the violence comes not only from the illegality of the substance but from the need for $$ to get it. People who are addicted to cocaine/heroin/alcohol - often have difficulties getting and keeping jobs (yes it’s a generalization). Yes, there are functioning addicts, but we should agree, I think, that the problems will occur with the ‘non functioning’ ones. And I fail to see how legalization will help with that. The price may go down, so, what - they’ll rob one less convenience store?
Let’s take a look at price -let’s say the current illegal price for a days supply of heroin for the addict is $200. Obviously, (I think) most who would be addicted couldn’t afford that much. So, you want to drop the price down to what? $50? that’s still $350 per week over and above some one’s rent etc. $20 a day? well, the extra $140 /week for the addict would still put a bite on the household expenses, and now you’re dropping the price of a high to a level that would attract more people (there are some of us who refuse to pay $50 to get high - $5 and we’re talkin…)
I’m really confused, too about this :
and you see this as good…how???
Anyhow. I don’t think we’re too far apart on this - I see more to fear in the legalization scene, but agree that we need absolutely to stop it being such a priority for our law enforcement crowd.
Yes, I think one of the side-effects of drug legalization would be that some of the people in the drug trade now (a small percentage, probably) would use their connections and knowledge of how to evade the law to move into new rackets, just as the Mafia did. But how many of us have been hurt by the modern Mafia? Money laundering, gambling, drug dealing, that’s what they do now. We might add to their numbers, but we would be robbing organized crime of one of it’s sources of income as well. When alcohol was made legal, they moved on to other drugs. This is why I think partial legalization is not a very good idea - if we legalize some drugs, you can bet that the others will be pushed even harder.
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A better thing to look at perhaps, would be China back yonder - wasn’t opium legal? opium dens - how much of a problem were they? (genuine question, it’s not an area of history that I’m familiar with).
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It’s hard to say how much of a problem opium dens were. All the information we have on them now has been filtered through the minds of either those for or against their existence. The Europeans made a lot of money selling drugs there, so we can’t really trust what they had to say about them at the time. The Chinese really didn’t like foreigners having that degree of control over a portion of their population, so their reports would be distorted too. Add on top of that the fact that this was a totally different culture from modern America, or even modern China. Maybe we should look to MODERN countries that have decriminalized drugs to see what effects they have. Unlike some pro-legalization people, I’m not so deluded as to say that the number of people who drugs wouldn’t go up. There are people who don’t do drugs now who would if they were legal. I’m also sure that there are people doing drugs now who wouldn’t have started had they not grown up in a situation where they were sold in every neighborhood, instead of a centralized location where you needed to show ID to get some. I think if we are to legalize, we should expect the number of addicts to go up, just in case. I still don’t think it would hurt the country as much as having over 2 million people in jail, most of them for drug-related crimes. And I’m not SURE that more people would use them, I just think we need to take that possibility into consideration.
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We have to remember that a huge amount of the markup in drug prices now is being imposed once the drugs are already here, having to move down through a network of dealers until it reaches the users, each level adding their own percentage. I don’t know too much about the cocaine trade, the reason I used 1 oz. as the amount in my examples above is that was the biggest amount I ever shopped for (no, I didn’t end up buying it). I know marijuana prices well, though. One can get a pound of quality Mexican marijuana from someone who bought it in Mexico and smuggled it across themselves for $400, at least in Texas. The smuggler may have paid as little as $15 a pound from the grower. That pound will probably be sold in quarters, for $150-$200 per 4 ounces. I’ve only bought that much a couple of times in my life, since I’m a user, not a dealer, and even when I smoke a lot a 1/4 pound will last me at least a couple of months. Most casual marijuana users never buy that much at a time, I’m lucky to be able to afford it. An ounce of weed usually costs $80-$100 (in Texas, prices can be four times as expensive in other parts of the U.S., or more). Most people who smoke weed never buy more than a 1/4 oz. That will run you $25 to $30 in Texas. A lot of people buy joints down here for $2 each. I’ve rolled 30 joints from one quarter before (though it was actually a bit more than a 1/4 ounce, in Texas a 1/4 is actually more like 8 or 9 grams). We are talking over a 600% markup between the guy importing it and the guy selling it to the people actually using it, and that is AFTER the markup of the guy taking the most risk, bringing it over. The need to move it through various levels of dealers, each adding their own markup, will be gone when it is legal to possess it - most arrests are for possession, not for being caught in the act of selling it, and if marijuana was legal it would be hard to prove that the pot the dealer had was not legally gotten. Consider also that those importing it or growing it in secret are competing with people growing it legally in huge fields right here in the U.S. Illegal drug dealers will not be able to compete with Phillip & Morris, unless the government thinks they can tax the drugs so much that they cost as much as during prohibition - and doing so would defeat the purpose of legalization. When was the last time you were tempted to buy homegrown tobacco, or homemade black-market beer? Economy of scale will destroy the illegal drug business.
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I think functioning addicts probably outnumber non-functioning ones. Even that friend of mine who became addicted to crack never went long without a job. True, they were mostly jobs that never paid more than $2 or $3 more than minimum wage, and he often would lose his job and have to find a new one, but I’m not sure that was because of his addiction, because even before he started smoking crack he lost jobs a lot. Maybe the people who think that feeling good momentarily is worth losing a lot of money are the same type of people who think that staying home when you don’t feel like working is worth losing your job. The guy he usually got to go get him crack (until he managed to meet a few crack dealers) had kept the same job for a long time, and made pretty good money - he just blew it all on crack, but he made it to work because he wanted MORE. One of the biggest crackheads I knew owned his own successful business and had a wife who made $75,000 a year. Of course, working on crack is easy. There are other drugs that have worse effects on you, like heroin or alcohol.
Consider how much of tax money is currently spent on law enforcemnent and keeping people in prison. Consider that most of the people in prison now are in there because of drug prohibition. I think we could afford a rise in unemployment, when we are currently spending $30,000 per inmate to keep a couple of million people in jail now.
A $200 a day heroin habit is not that unusual, and actually desperate people (and if you are trying to avoid heroin withdrawal, you are VERY desperate) can afford that. It will take a lot of stealing, maybe a lot of selling your body, but it can be done. Most topless dancers make several hundred dollars a night, and I’ve known several with very expensive drug addictions (usualy cocaine or meth instead of heroin, though). Many serious drug users aren’t paying for all their drugs - they have well-established connections, they act as middlemen for people who DO have money, or at least don’t have such expensive habits, and do their profits. I would have no problem affording a $200 a day habit if I started dealing.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to imagine heroin getting cheap enough that a serious habit cost $5 or $10 a day, if it was legalized. Opium poppies grow very well in the U.S., there are fields of them all around Oklahoma City. I can’t think of a single illegal drug that is so difficult to make that it would cost more than a couple of packs of cigarettes a day for most addicts.
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and you see this as good…how???
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Well, I see this as good because I know crack addicts will smoke crack no matter how expensive it is (OK, maybe if it cost a hundred dollars a hit they might cut down). I’ve known crackheads. I can probably find a post by me on another board from over a year ago where I was lamenting the fact that all my friends were becoming crackheads and I couldn’t relate to them anymore. I’ve smoked it myself a few times.
Is there anything you enjoy that you would be willing to pay $1 per minute of effect for, that you would be willing to risk imprisonment to obtain? If not, you are not an addict. Addicts are not like most people, they have one priority they place above all others, and if they can think of a way to do it, they will, or at least try. This is what the problem is, you have people destroying their own lives and then sucking money out of everyone who cares about them because nothing, not love, family, respect, is worth more to them than that brief relief from their craving. If they are going to do it anyway, why punish them for it? If the government GAVE crack away they would make a profit, the same with heroin or any other extremely addictive drug that has addicts we currently pay $35,000 per year to imprison.
I agree that a sudden legalization of all drugs would probably not be the safest thing to do, simply because of the reaction from non-users. Maybe I’m a bit of a nihilist, maybe I put too much faith in the ability of an addict to do their drug of choice no matter how much it costs, and I’m willing to allow for that uncertainty. I think we should probably go about legalization in phases. Make marijuana, LSD, and other non-addictive drugs legal immediately, leave more addictive drugs illegal, though allow addicts to get prescriptions for their drug if they have been diagnosed as addicts (like the programs in England where they provide heroin to addicts). After people have had time to realize that some of the prohibition laws we had in the past were useless, we can start phasing in other drugs. Eventually we will have a society that allows people to make choices that hurt themselves, and takes measures to insure that their bad choices don’t hurt everyone else. I think we can do that, it will just take some learning, and waiting for old attitudes to fade away.
Badtz - I guess where we have a fundemental issue is that I see a basic problem with increasing the number of people addicted to drugs. Stepping outside of the legal ramifications etc, the pain/suffering etc associated with addictions is something I’d like to avoid increasing. See- if I had that magic wand of yours I’d have gone back in time and prevented the tobacco plant=something good to put in your lungs thing. But that’s the socialworker in me.
I agree that the structures currently are focused into this ‘lock em all up’ mentality, and that, too is a tragedy. I’m not in favor of trading one tragic set of circumstances for another. I admire that you at least admit the possability that use/abuse would go up (at least initially).
RE: your arguement “how many of us have been hurt by the present day Mafia” etc. Not sure the validity of that one - in the first place, do we know for certain that we’re not affected by them?, secondly, crime rates really are down ya know - folks in general are not necessarily crime victims often. Anyhow, it doesn’t really matter, since the thrust of that idea is that the drug lords will find some other way to illegally make money if they so choose, which will have a net effect on the crime of “zero”.
From the little I was able to scan (from the Encyclopedia Britanica online), China had a significant problem with opium addiction, causing it to outlaw the drug. Yes, they were flooded with it by England etc to balance their trade, but I think it’s a significant thing that a country, back that long ago, before they really did studies on long term effects of stuff, analyzing mounds of data, kinda said ‘holy shit, this is bad, let’s try and stop it’. But, if you don’t find that persuasive, ok, let’s look at data from other countries currently either legalizing them or decriminializing them. Anyone??? data? links please???
Re: markups etc. relative to pricing - the passing of the drugs from hand to hand has more to do with the illegal status of the stuff than anything else, so, the net effect would be: price would be somewhat lower, big guy still would make out (less overhead in terms of lawyers, bribes, money laundering fees etc), would probably still keep the middlemen, but the ones who would be cut out of the loop are the ones who currently support their own habits via selling. (ie the bottom rung folk). I see no appreciable difference in the outcome. You reduced the prices to a degree, more affordable, don’t have to sell it in order to have it… And, as far as the grass is concerned, I think that would fall apart immediately - A. many would grow their own and therefore not buy it in the first place (thus deleting the cash cow of taxed sales and restrictive buying laws) and B. for those few w/o a green thumb, they could buy it from Franky next door w/o having to pay those pesky taxes on it. Hell, for a bunch of folks, the only reason they buy pot in the first place is 'cause they’d be afraid of the penalties if caught growing it.
We also disagree on the percentages of functioning/vs. non functioning. probably more on the basis of what constitutes “non functioning” (I’d call your job hopping friend non functioning for example).
It’s difficult to predict what effect there’d be on the employment picture - number of addicts, folks who would have been in prison, folks who would have been guarding the folks in prison.
The amount of $$ for a ‘good’ drug habit stuff - I was saying that reducing the amount needed wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing, since it would make it more available to folks who can’t afford big expenditures, and since many of them are addictive, I’d be concerned about the folks (additional to the ones already doing it) skipping meals/rent meds /kids clothes etc. Folks at the bottom rung of the social ladder have less ‘wiggle room’ for addictive behavior than your pal with the $75,000 job. And, as I’ve already said, I’m not seeing the potential for **more ** people addicted to anything as a good thing. (that’s why all those arguemnts about ‘gee it’s no worse than alcohol and/or tobacco’ fall flat to me)
I guess I’m looking at it in an ‘envioronmental’ picture - change one little thing some ripple effect will happen, some you won’t like, some you will, many probably you’d never have thought of. Change some big things, and you’ll have tidal waves of potential effects, some good, some great, some bad, some catestrophic. And I’d rather avoid the catestrophic stuff.
Hi wring A lot of information that you’re requesting can be obtained form http://www.drcnet.org, including decriminalization studies, such as that in use in the netherlands. As I mentioned yesterday, I can’t link directly to them, but the site is really easy to use.
As for decriminalization from my POV. I see two things, we can keep going as we are
Lock 'em up Which does
a. not treat addiction
b. criminalizes personal behavior
c. drains economic resources
d. exposes these people to more criminality
e. increases social cost, by effectively making these people less hirable
f. further strains race relations
g. contributes to the milatirazation of our police forces
h. diverts law enforcement from other criminal activity
i. increasingly diminishes our civil liberties
I can probably keep going with this, but I think that’s a start.
Or we could try decriminalization, which would free up resources for:
a. education efforts
b. Treatment programs (even in the Bay Area an effective treatment program cost around $6000 compared to $30,000 plus to keep someone untreated behind bars.
stuffinb thanks for the link, will be perusing it.
FTR, tho’, I believe there is a substantial difference between ‘decriminalization’ and ‘legalization’. The latter was the OP, and I have substantial problems with, the former is closer to what I’d like to see (for many of the same reasons you listed). (see above where I suggested that it should be less of a priority for law enforecment)
Gosh, isn’t it great when we all agree, sort of???
In brief, the author points out that many of the classic legalization arguments are by no means clear cut. For example, increased availability of drugs will not necessarily reduce the crime rate. It might reduce drug-related theft, but it would also quite likely increase the amount of violent crime. Additionally, if more people indulge in these drugs, the amount of drug-related theft could still increase, despite the lower drug costs.
Eh, not going to go too far into this. Thank you spooje for backing me up. I have actually done real research in an actual library about heroin addiction. Quotes from addicts say that it is all too true.
What good would legalizing heroin and cocaine do? We already have drugs that work the same way medically. An alchoholic is very deeply addicted. But so is a crack addict. Or a smack junkie. So do we really want more addicts in the nation? What, if anything, is beneficial for the greater good?
These drugs will also cause plenty of harm short and long term to the body. Alchohol is mmore nefarious, as it works long term only. That is, unless you wrap your car around a tree while DUI.
Drugs’ current legal status greatly affects how users are addressed within the justice system. Currently, the general position is to treat them as criminals, who should be punished.
I believe it would be more appropriate to consider drug use to be a public health issue, offering users education and treatment. I believe the current classification of drug offenses prevents attempts at effective treatment and education. And face it, too many people are making too much money off the current system to want to change it.
I agree, and from the viewpoint of some one who’s worked in the CJ system for the past 20 years, I’ve seen wide divergency in how the SA problem is treated. One problem is that no program/approach/viewpoint is left in place long enough to really find out if it works. It seems that every 2 or 3 years, new guidelines are issued, new standards etc. There’s philosophical differences from the Mental Health viewpoint vs. the Corrections viewpoint (Mental Health viewpoint assumes that most addicts will fall of the wagon at least temporarily, the CJ system tends to look at that as rules violations vs. mental health issues).
I believe that more $$ should be spent towards treatment and you’re absolutely correct (IMHO) re: the folks making $$ off the current system (everyone from private corrections companies, tether sales, drug testing places, to the cops who look for the big busts where they confiscate $$/property)
Still, legalization, to me, isn’t the answer (I looked above and see that I tried to get away w/o presenting a full position on the subject before… sigh).
It would undo the harm caused by them being illegal.
No matter how dangerous or addictive the drug in question is, prohibition does serious harm and virtually no good.
All of the harm drugs do to society is caused or magnified by the war on drugs. Stuffinb already pointed out why.
One more thing: By what right does the government tell people what substances they can and can’t use to make themselves feel good?
There is a lot of harm done by drug’s illegality. They are cut with dangerous substances. However, legalizing them would put them in a pure state. This would be good and bad. Too many shots of heroin and you still die, no matter if it is illegal or not.
wring Thinking on some of what you’ve said, I’m modifying my position slightly.
New Position:
Decriminalization of Cocaine and Heroin - treat as a mental health issue. the problem I see with this position though, is that it only addresses the end user side of the equation, not the supply side, but let me think in it a while
But I see no reason why MJ shouldn’t be fully legal (with of course the same restriction as that placed on acohol) and taxed.
If drugs were legal, it would probably be much easier for someone to find out how much is too much.
I also find it a little odd that AFAIK, none of those who want to see us continue the war on drugs have expressed a desire to have tobacco or alcohol outlawed despite the fact that they cause more harm to society than all illegal drugs combined. IIRC, tobacco is said to kill one out of three smokers, and alcohol is blamed for almost half of all serious car accidents, as well as countless instances of domestic violence, disorderly conduct, and casual sex with ugly people. By all logic, you’d expect anyone who wants illegal drugs to remain illegal to fight tooth and nail to get tobacco and alcohol banned. Perhaps they’re more interested in protecting the status quo than protecting society.