As i understand it drug prohibition was a product of Anslinger’s racism rather than religion. Basically an American race policy gone viral across the globe.
As i understand it drug prohibition was a product of Anslinger’s racism rather than religion. Basically an American race policy gone viral across the globe.
Like here ?
I don’t think our positions are far apart at all. We want to reduce the harm resulting from drug use. We just need to figure out how to best do it. And in order to have a constructive discussion we (as usual) need to leave moralistic arguments out and look at the facts.
Of course it makes intuitive sense that making something illegal would limit the use, but in reality that is not the effect when it comes to drugs. When we make an addictive and popular substance illegal we are simply handing over the production and distribution to the black market, and no substance will become safer by handing over the production and distribution to criminal elements working outside the law.
Another aspect is to get realistic and evidence based information about the actual effects and dangers of the drugs. Right now the vast majority of people discussing the issue do not understand how the different drugs works, which is shown very clearly in the US legislation. In the US cannabis, LSD and heroin are all classed in the same group, which is quite absurd. Heroin is incredibly addictive and fairly easy to lethally overdose on. Cannabis is only mildly addictive and has zero potential for overdosing, LSD is completely non-addictive and also virtually impossible to get a lethal overdose from (you need over 10.000 ‘hits’ to have a 50% chance of dying). They are completely different beasts. It makes no sense to treat them the same, since apart from being chemical substances that can be consumed they have almost nothing in common.
What we learned from Portugals’ experiment is that when laws are relaxed and resources are moved from law enforcement to treatment the abuse factor drops substantially, and surprisingly overall consumption tends to drop as well. Portugal saw a decline in all drug use except for cannabis, which increased slightly. And since cannabis consumption is very unproblematic that’s barely an issue.
I will confess that I’m quite positive to the use of some drugs however. I would not mind at all to see the consumption of for example psilocybin (i.e. Magic Mushrooms) go UP, because all my research indicates that it’s not only safe, but actually very healthy. Trials with psilocybin have been uniformly positive, with users showing permanent positive effects to mental health and general well being 14 months after receiving the drug. My personal experience verifies this and it is my belief that some of the substances classified as psychedelics could revolutionize the mental health industry.
How addictive would you say it is - percentage of users.
Phew - I had never heard of that man. Really nice fellow there. 
But while he certainly played a part in codifying drug prohibition Harry Anslinger has not invented the concept. Drug prohibition predates him by centuries, and its first roots are not in the West. (History of drug prohibition.)
Inrerestingly even before Anslinger drug prohibition in Western nations often had a strongly racist aspect. Unlike for example in China where prohibition laws were introduced in order to combat the social and economic devastation caused by the British fueled epidemic of Opium addiction.
Well in the "Rational Scale to Asses the Harm of Drugs" heroin gets the highest addiction score of all drugs, and the few people I’ve talked to about it who have personal experience all report becoming addicted either immediately or after a very short period of use. However, that only includes those who actually became addicted. According to this source 23% of users become addicted. That may not seem super high but it basically means that by testing a substance you have a 1/4 chance of ruining your life, worse odds than Russian roulette.
The problem here is that we have very little evidence to verify that hypothesis. I know of no recent examples where a previously banned drug has been made widely available or where a previously widely used legal drug has been outlawed.
The oldest European law to control drugs, the British Pharmacy Act of 1868 caused an immediate sharp decline in opium-caused deaths - but of course you might rightly argue that this was almost 150 years ago and is thus not necessarily applicable to our day.
Could you provide me with details on what that Portugese experiment was about? I am not familiar with it.
The bolded part is he problem because it fails to recognize that the drugs are already widely available. In some ways they are actually more available than legal drugs, because criminals work weekends and don’t check for ID. Users don’t have a problem finding distributers, and the problem for addicts is finance, not availability. Which is why they turn to crime. So drugs need not become more available through legalization, they just become safer. A pharmacy won’t mix your drug with rat poison to increase profits, unscrupulous criminals will. A pharmacy also won’t try to convince you to switch to a more addictive and dangerous drug, or offer you free samples, a criminal drug dealer will.
Here’s what seems to be an unbiased article on the matter (I didn’t want to link to something too positive).
True enough, but I shouldn’t expect the background check for addiction to be particularly draconian (what are they gonna do, call your past dealers for references ? :p), nor would “yup, I’m an addict all right” be a particularly difficult hurdle to jump for someone dedicated to procuring sweet, sweet free smack.
Especially considering it’s, yanno, *the Netherlands *(and Denmark). Freetown Christiania might have become a shadow of what it once was drug-wise, but I can tell you from (second-hand) experience that it’s really not hard to find just about any drug you might possibly like in these places, from common as dirt weed to decidedly exotic fare like ayahuasca.
Good point I think, in that case it was a War by Drugs rather than a war on drugs. But how much was that incidental to simply the commercial exercise of the drug trade ?
That’s roughly whatCarl Hart says. But I think also, as he says, it’s complicated by the way circumstance is left out of the view - for example he gives the high heroin addiction rate of troops in Vietnam compared to how they left their addictions behind them when they came home.
So I guess you could qualify it by saying it has a 23% addiction rate in the domestic social setting in which it’s studied.
I always thought it was pretty much a one way ticket to junkiedom, turns out I was wrong. But it’s all around where I live, it’s easy to find old needles in alleyways, and people slumped just in the street.
If drugs were available like an average consumer product (I do not think that is what you are advocating) then I am not sure that a pharmacy would not do just that. Experience with the tobacco industry suggests scepticism. If you are the producer or retailer of a legal consumer product you usually have a vested interest in boosting sales.
But given your reference to the Portugese model it seems to me that you actually advocate pharmacy sales of the drug as part of a “controlled” addiction. Is that what you have in mind?
Thank you. That was an interesting read. I like that the article is not trying to paint the experiment as an unmitigated success. But the Portugese experience would indicate that theirs might be a viable approach.
Its worth pointing out that Portugal has decriminalized drugs only to a point. Production and trade remain strictly regulated and posession of small quantities, while not prosecuted as a crime, is not entirely legal and can still carry a fine. This Portugal under this program still discourages drug use.
One should also consider that decriminalization was accompanied by a significant expansion of addiction treatment programmes and thus it is not unreasonable to assume that an unknown part of the observed effects are attributable to these programmes.
Having said all that: It looks like the Portugese might be on to something.
The British originally had not introduced opium to China as an instrument of warfare. The East India Company simply needed a source of revenue in order to finance their purchase of tea and othe Chinese products coveted in Europe. European exports had virtually no market in China at the time, but opium produced in the Bengals did. War broke out when the Chinese Empereor attempted to stop the opium trade that by the time threatened to ruin his country both socially and financially. Estimates have it that by 1838 China had between 4 and 12 million opium addicts.
Now this seems like a situation that would reinforce a prohibition argument. Why would opium destroy China, but not other places ? Is this the same kind of government fearmongering and statistics manipulation that we see from our own governments ?
And if stress drives people to use opiates, what does that say about quality of life under the Emperor ?
I always meant to get round to this book Empire of Crime: Organised Crime in the British Empire: Amazon.co.uk: Newark, Tim: 9781845967611: Books
“In 1908, British reformers banned the export of Indian opium to China. As a result, the world price of opium soared to a new high and a century of lucrative drug smuggling began. Criminal producers in other countries exploited the prohibition and gang wars broke out across South-East Asia. It was the greatest gift the British Empire gave to organised crime.”
I believe opium traders lobbied parliament to make the stuff illegal for the above purpose. It turns out that all the modern drug war foolery was presaged by the British Empire, even swapping Royal Navy ships for CIA Cessnas full of cocaine.
Assume they legalize it , tomorrow.
What does this cost us? I assume the FDA can handle a few drugs with little to no problem (?)
What drugs stay illegal? Will they still be manufactured and sold illegally? Will these same illegal activities involve jail time?
I can see and get behind the legalization of pot. I don’t partake but I can see the basis for it. I wonder how many people are truly in jail for having a bag of weed, or a joint on them. I would almost go so far as to say that these people (for the most part) would NOT be in jail if they weren’t also a part of some other illegal activity.
In short, I don’t think all of the ramifications of (make most or all of them) legal have been thought through.
Life in 19th century China was by and large comparable to late 17th century Europe. Meaning peasant life was pretty shit and famines/epidemics were cyclically common, rural education was more or less nonexistent and social stratas were very rigid anyway ; which fostered growing resentment and agitation. Also there was nothing good on telly :). So it’s not exactly surprising that Chinese peasants, which comprised 90% of the empire’s population, would chase nice dreams - but then again opium had been freely available in China much earlier than that, even if its relative scarcity made it more of a rich man’s vice.
It’s only when it became a source of huge wealth (and, as far as Europeans were concerned, the only way to get stuff sold on the Chinese market) that it started getting actively pushed on the less fortunate population, by profit-seeking Chinese and British traders & smugglers alike.
I don’t think the situation is at all comparable with even the most progressive and drug-tolerant societies of today, where even when drug use itself is not necessarily penalized, it is absolutely not encouraged and people regardless of their station in life are explained repeatedly and from a young age what drug use entails (via school programs, via movies and sitcoms, etc…). Beyond that, the understanding of the addiction process and the ways to alleviate it as well as the social safety network are obviously much better today than in the 18th century.
BTW, the British forbidding opium sales in 1908 is a bit misleading - by that time China was more or less wholly subjugated by the various European powers, opium had very much become a side show in the grand predatory capitalist feast that was China and the Qing dynasty was all but toothless. The Qing emperors started crying foul (and banning the stuff) much earlier however, as opium addiction became a visible and quickly spreading problem courtesy of the EIC. Prohibition didn’t exactly work out for them, however - it’s harder when the criminals outgun you *and *your local drug enforcement administration is actively dealing said drugs :D.
That’s interesting - but I would ask who was counting the addicts, and did they have an interest in inflating the figures - given that the bigger the number the worse the British look.
This is all very interesting historical perspective explaining how and why we got to where we are in the drug prohibition situation today. The question at hand is where do we go from here? Users, dealers, and traffickers alike will always get what they want. It’s just an economic balancing act determining the price in both monetary and crime rate terms.
There is no reason to believe the likely outcome for gradual legalization of well-known drugs like heroin, cocaine and a few other naturally-based substances would be any different than what has happened (or not, as the case may be) with marijuana in CO and WA. Reefer Madness is not running rampant in those states. Nothing changed with the exception of fewer users in jail and the government raking in significant additional tax revenue.
I don’t think anybody tallied actual addicts (as in going door to door asking who’d chased the dragon lately, or even watching the door of opium dens to count the people going in) - the imperial bureaucracy was pretty efficient, quite large and notably punctilious, but I don’t think even it was up to that kind of noational or even regional demographic study with the means of the era. But we **do **have very detailed logs of exactly how many crates of opium were produced on Indian opium plantations, and how many the EIC loaded on their boats in Indian ports ; and from there get an approximate idea of how many people used in China based on average use per capita.
But don’t get me wrong : I’m not casting nationalist stones, as the opium issue was definitely not solely a British sin even if, admittedly, it takes some *serious *jingoistic chutzpah to start shooting people over their not wanting to buy your products :). As I said a large part of the Chinese administration in the south was in on the traffic regardless of their own laws ; and besides the Brits could only bring the stuff to the shore (or, when the Emperor forbade that, to Chinese or Wako junks a small ways away from the shore) and sell it in bulk as they were not allowed on Chinese soil outside of specific ports - the retail distribution was always handled by Chinese merchants, peddlers and of course later the various criminal syndicates and secret societies.