Make Drugs Legal

Great Debates
1

I think we should make recreational use of drugs legal. This would include alcohol, pot, heroin, cocaine, PCP, Ecstasy, and anything else you can think of.

Method:

  1. License some company or companies to manufacture the drugs for distribution under some kind of quality control. The reason would be to standardize what it is you get when you buy drugs.

  2. Distribute the drugs in a free-market basis in something like a liquor store. Packs of joints behind the counter, heroin pills/powder in a bottle, etc. Make some kind of competition to keep prices low. Perhaps even cap the prices artificially to make the prices stay low. Reason is that it might help to control drug-related crime.

  3. License users of the drugs with some kind of ID card saying they’re of legal age to participate, make the users take some kind of simple test in which they’d have to acknowledge that they won’t turn around and sell the drugs to those without the cards. Or maybe not. This item is debatable, maybe not to society’s best interest.

  4. Don’t tax the bejeezus out of it. Purpose is to take the huge profits out of current drug distribution methods, thus hopefully taking the fun out of street crime.

  5. Spark up a doobie and watch Monty Python as a free and fun-lovin’ citizen without worrying about it. You’re doing it anyway, so WTF, you know?

  6. Prosecute DUI to the full extent of the law, as well as public intoxication and other nusiance-type disturbances using whatever means your State allows.

  7. Allow for dry counties/cities/states. Some people don’t want this stuff in their back yards, leave them free to live their lives the way they like.

So what do you think?

2

I don’t think you understand exactly why such drugs are illegal. It’s not because they’re illegal by default and we just have to say, “These are now legal”… there is a description of “potentially dangerous” substances (or something) that is used for this basis. Under the description, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc. are listed as controlled substances.

To legalize drugs, we simply need to redefine what a “dangerous substance” is.

3

I pretty much agree, except for #7. If you don’t approve of the use of currently-illegal drugs, don’t use them. You simply do not have the right to an environment where everything you don’t approve of is forbidden.

4

Hmmmm, but drugs (or many of them) aren’t like other consumer products such as, say, chocolate or potato chips in that:
[li]they can be intrinsically quite harmful in a short space of time[/li][li]they are physiologically highly addictive.[/li][li]they often significantly alter the way that people behave[/li]
To which I’m sure the argument is “Well, you have to right to avoid them, don’t you?”, sure, I do, but that doesn’t make me immune to their second-hand effects (from serious stuff like dangerous driving right through to stuff like people dropping litter or vomiting in my front garden because they have temporarily lost their normal inhibitions)

I dunno, I can see where you’re coming from in terms of an idealistic logical view, but in practical terms, I think it would just cause a lot more problems than it solved.

Now if there was some sort of non-harmful, non-addictive recreational drug like Huxley’s SOMA, then maybe I’d be closer to being convinced, but I still think the main problem is that whilst some people turn happy and lovely when intoxicated, many turn into obnoxious and dangerous wankers.

5

“So should we ban alcohol then?” will be the inevitable reply…

6

To which I’d say “shrug” - dunno, the police can just about cope with the effects of drunken idiots at the moment, they would probably need a bit more help if drugs got legalised (at least until the population started to crash), we might end up in something more like a police state because of the extra presence.

Oh, I don’t know, it’s a complex issue, probably too complex for this sort of treatment.

7

Well, when you consider the large amount of law enforcement resources currently devoted to the futile effort to eliminate illicit drugs, things should balance out.

8

I do not have a cite for this, so I hope someone can help me, but to me the difference between the drugs listed in the OP and alcohol is that there have been many cases (anecdotal, on the news) of things like PCP and Ecstacy killing people with one hit, just because of the reaction in their bodies. (I’m not saying this right and it’s coming out elementary). The reason I don’t take X is because there’s that Russian Roulette factor that I don’t believe is there with Miller Lite.

jarbaby

9

I think legalising drugs is a great idea, for numerous reasons (prohibition isn’t working, the cost of policing the war against drugs, that the current situation just creates a market for criminals to thrive on, etc, etc)

However, there’s one rather large problem.

Unless a large number of countries act together on it, wouldn’t the first country to make drugs legal and low cost be flooded with addicts from countries where drugs are illegal and expensive?

10

Only if that country lets them in. I imagine one would have a tough time convincing the authorities that “they won’t let me smoke crack” is a legitimate reason to be granted political asylum.

11

There is still though, the issue of people who turn into DangerousObnoxiousWankers™; we have enough of these due to alcohol, wouldn’t the numbers increase if drugs were legalised (or do you think people would just move from alcohol to other drugs.

(actually on thinking about it, there’s also the problem that this would happen a lot more in public places, whereas at the moment, drug users tend to hide themselves away), so I think I probably would see a lot more DangerousObnoxiousWankers™ about, as well as Stoned Happy People.

12

I continue to be of the opinion that we should legalize all drugs AND impliment very stiff penalties for being publicly intoxicated on anything that would become legal in this manner. If you are stoned at McD’s and you get busted, you’re fucked.

Do it in your own house, or face serious penalties. Period.

If this can be shown to be a workable substitute for criminality, then perhaps we can go to decreasing the severe location restriction and set up trippin’ parks, etc. But frankly, I think every drug user in the world would be happy to get some legally made, nice and pure LSD-25 or government hash that they’d sit in there houses and shut the fuck up.

13

Good idea, but would that be a sufficient deterrent?
It’s all very well punishing people harshly, but that doesn’t help the victims.

14

Actually, we do.

If a given community’s majority decides that they wish to keep drugs illegal, they are certainly able to enact the necessary laws, as long as said laws do not violate those of a higher jurisdiction.

If you were to live in such a community, while the rest of the country was getting high, you would have two choices: move, or work to overturn the laws. Ideally, the laws of any community are representative of the desires of the majority of citizens.

I personally do not approve of the use of currently-illegal drugs, as well of some of the legal ones. Were such a national legalization to happen, I would most likely decide to live in a community that prohibited their use.

It’s pretty easy now for kids to get ahold of cigarettes and alcohol, which are currently legal but restricted in much the same way as proposed for other drugs in the OP. I wouldn’t want to worry about my children having that kind of access to heroin, cocaine, or even pot. It’s bad enough now that they are so accessible – I don’t want them waiting outside the drugstore, asking an adult to buy them some crack (although of they were behaving like that, I would have screwed up pretty bad as a parent).

The issue of responsibility for children aside, I agree with erislover’s proposal to keep drug use at home. As long as it doesn’t have to affect others adversely, I couldn’t care less what people choose to do at home.

15

But the motivation behind drug legalization is that it is largely a victim-less crime. So how do we solve the problem? Remove the criminality of use. However, public intoxication is really the main concern even in alcohol. I don’t see a good argument to promote public intoxiation or believe me I’d try and put one forth; however, i don’t see a very good argument against legalization in the manner I describe. In private property the only things, IMO, which should be illegal are crimes with victims; consentual drug use has no victims.

Then we still must tackle the problems associated with habitual drug use itself, such as physical deterioration (nasal cavity damage from cocaine, for example, or the reported brain damage caused by MDMA), mental side-effects (amphetamine psychosis for example) and other very real problems that come from habitual drug use. As for these, however, I see no legislative cure; that is, these things don’t go away because we made drugs illegal. We still have crack babies (was it every really an “epidemic”?) we still have ODing from heroin, and so on. Legalization of marijuana was established olmost 100 years ago, and marijuana use is still strong. It is a waste of police efforts to criminalize a victimless crime; instead, they should focus their efforts where there will be victims: in the streets when people attempt public intoxication.

I think the matter centers on what exactly a person can legally do to themselves. Can a person legally commit suicide? Can a person legally subject their body to pain and torture (ie- some of the more obsessive bondage recipients)? Because we live in a fairly liberal society still people seem to except that the government will help out people who have seriously fucked themselves with welfare programs, medical care, etc. Such public welfare programs do seem to be gaining momentum even if they are simultaneously being held under scrutiny with respects to implimentation. I see no reason why such a trend won’t continue.

Ok, enough rambling here. To perhaps offer a more concrete solution I think that current drug enforcement teams should shift their enforcement off of trying to eliminate a strong blakc market and instead focus on enforcing responsibility. It seems to me to be a more practical approach.

16

It’s all very well punishing people harshly, but that doesn’t help the victims. **
[/QUOTE]

Mang- I don’t know if you are anti legalization or not, but the whole idea behind prohibition is that the penalties associated with drug use will deter people from using drugs. Right? So if people think that would work they should also think that penalties for being intoxicated in public would deter people from being intoxicated in public.

We punish people harshly now for using drugs and the victims do not get any help. Hopefully, if legalized there would be less victims.

17

For me, #4 seems like the problem. And it’s because #4 is a problem that I can’t get behind grug legalization.

Drug sales WILL be taxed, and heavily so. There’s just too much money to be made – and too many acts of gratuitous, publicly-funded morality to be engaged in as a result – for it not to happen. We presently take as much as 60% of some dead people’s money just because we can, and there doesn’t seem to be any sustainable groundswell of support for backing off of that one, so I don’t see where drug sales are going to be any different.

What bugs me is that once drugs have been taxed and government programs have been funded with drug tax dollars, we will have developed a system whereby some politicians and some citizens will have an interest in seeing that at least some people continue to damage themselves, their families or others by persiting in their drug use. this is because, without the tax dollars, the politicians will have to start cutting programs or raising other taxes in order to make up for the lost revenue. And the citizens may run the risk of having some formerly drug tax funded programs eliminated from their lives, even if those progams happen to be doing them some good. To me, this seems like a morally unworkable situation.

If we were ever to legalize drugs, however, I think #7 would be a great idea. That’s federalism. It’s how representative republics are intended to work. If my qualms about the morality of the thing don’t make sense to you, then go someplace where your neighbors will agree with you, and do as you please. Only allow me to live under other laws that seem right to me. I’ll pay my taxes and you pay yours and good luck to us both. E pluribus unim.

18

Let me say first off that I don’t use any drugs except for caffeine and alcohol,but…

I agree that drugs should be legalized across the board. Also that they should be strictly controlled.

The reasons have already been mentioned, but to expand a bit:

  1. Prohibition does not work. I don’t think there is anyone in law enforcement today who would question the fact that the “War on Drugs” is an abyssmal failure.
  2. Prohibition allows for the black market to thrive. In the 30’s the gangsters were all in the business of selling illegal alcohol. If drugs were legalized, a great deal of the motivation for gang activity would disappear. How many drive-by shooting have occured lately over the rights to sell whiskey?
  3. It’s a whole lot easier for kids to get marijuana or ecstasy or whatever than it is for them to get alcohol. Why? Your local street dealer typically does not ask for ID. Liquor stores do.
  4. I don’t have the statistics to hand, but I have heard that our country has the highest prison population in the world. Also the highest percentage of the population in prison. And a majority of those in prison are for drug offenses, mostly minor offenses like marijuana possession. The cost of this, both in economic and spiritual terms, is enormous. (Anyone have actual statistics?)

And most importantly, from my libertarian point of view:

  1. Nobody has the right to tell me what I can and can’t do with my own body, or in what ways I can or can’t alter my own consciousness, as long as I’m not harming anybody else.
19

People, people, people…

I’ll try to keep this short. You cannot legalize drugs. The drug user is not an individual that says, “I can afford drugs now, but when I have no money, I guess I’ll just have to stop using drugs.”

An addicted drug user, which you will be producing wholesale, will do anything in their power do get drugs.
ANYTHING. Believe me, I’ve worked with addicts for years.
They steal, kill, swindle, beg, and sell themselves on the street for drugs.

Individuals that want to legalize drugs have one or more of these things in common:

  1. They are idiots.
  2. They are potheads.
  3. They have no experience in the crime and punishment or treatment acts of society.
  4. They are broke.
  5. They have been busted.

People that can get drugs without a problem don’t complain about their legalization.

Drug related crime is not the fault of “The Man.” If you make them legal, you don’t eliminate the problem, you just legalize the problem.

Murder is bad. Lots of people go to jail for murder. Our court system is bogged down with appeals from murderers. I got an idea. Just legalize murder.

The reason drugs are illegal is because we have to protect users from themselves. Don’t bother disagreeing with me.

You might be able to do drugs without a problem. Kudos to you. Unfortunately, you are a member of a society that doesn’t wish to harbor junkies and be the unwitting victims of drug related crime. It’s bad enough as it is.

Besides, you want to leave your joins in the hands of Corporate America?

When crime escalates, the price will too.
When deaths escalate, the price will too.
When the governments realizes the money to be made and taxes go up, the price will too.

And most importantantly, when demand goes up, the price will too.

The problem is, you don’t want the responsibility of monitoring the use, you just want to smoke bud on the street.

And forgive my language, but you can fuck off if you’re going to come back at me with Amsterdam.

20

Don’t they act the same way now? The hope would be that they would 1) be able to go somewhere for help more easily, and 2) the cost of drugs would be low enough that they could get the money for them through legal ways.

**

**

Individuals that do not want to legalize drugs have one or more of the following in common:

  1. They are idiots.
  2. They have never done any drugs and think “drugs are bad”.
  3. They think they can predict what a society with legal drugs will be like based off a society prohibiting drug use.
  4. They are rich and can afford drugs as they are.
  5. They enjoy making criminals out of harmless people.

We have not eliminated the problem with prohibition either. The hope of legalization is not to eliminate crime, but to lessen it.

[quote]
Murder is bad. Lots of people go to jail for murder. Our court system is bogged down with appeals from murderers. I got an idea. Just legalize murder.

[quote]

Drug use is NOT bad.

[quote]
The reason drugs are illegal is because we have to protect users from themselves. Don’t bother disagreeing with me.

[quote]

Who are we to protect anyone from themselves? Why don’t we say people with diabetes in their family can’t eat sugar?

You can just fuck off. Period.