Thursday, November 30, 2006
Illegal drugs
My friend Quantum Thought posted a blast at Neal Boortz's espousal of the legalization of currently illegal drugs. He depicts the results as a total lobotomization of the population, a wholesale use of drugs across the country that is currently only stopped by their illegality. I disagree with him.
What I disagree with is not the deleterious effects of drugs on the individual, but his implied total irresponsibility of the adult population of this country. Legal or illegal, drugs are subject to the same abuse risks as alcohol. There are people who will become addicted. There are people who will abuse them on a binge basis and harm themselves and others. However, given the public awareness of the much greater risk of drug use, I think the actual usage will be hardly more than current levels.
In saying this, I am considering that the use of illegal drugs is actually greater than public awareness, and once they are legalized many users would come out of the closet, so to speak. Actually legalization might have as a fringe benefit the awareness that some people we trust are actually not as trustworthy as we think, due to their use of drugs.
However, the other part of legalization is often ignored in the polemics, that is regulation. Just as alcohol has restrictions on its use, no one under 21 can legally use it, it is heavily taxed, one may not legally perform certain tasks while under its influence, etc., so legal drugs would have to be regulated. In the case of drugs, with the risks being higher, the penalties should be commensurate. Where sale of alcohol to minors is basically a slap on the wrist, sale of drugs to minors would be a major felony. DUI law would have to be fine-tuned to correspond to degree of impairment, with drug use vs alcohol use at low-levels getting more harsh punishment and at high levels both getting prison time.
Much of the knowledge of the effects of drugs is well-known but not organized to present to the public or provide a basis for proper education. Instead of feel-good campaigns there needs to be proper presentation of the effects of drug use. I grew up in the old marijuana madness days and films on the effects of drinking. The truth was neither had any real impact. It was all second-hand. The things that had an impact were the actual experiences. If these are kept in relatively safe environments, then a person eventually learns to either keep them in control or avoid them altogether.
Side note on regulation, public use of drugs, including marijuana should be banned. I know from experience that one can get stoned on second-hand pot smoke. The risks of someone high on a recreational drug causing problems when leaving for home are much greater than with alcohol. In the case of private clubs, anyone leaving one can be presumed to be incompetent to drive. That is extreme and probably would have to be tailored a bit. Use of LSD could cause permanent banning from certain work or professions, simply because a user can have unexpected relapses unrelated to current use or abstinence.
My concern with the current drug war is that it is not working and we are seeing a parallel with the days of prohibition of alcohol. Yes, we interdict large shipments, but I think those are handled by the drug producers as cost of doing business, expect a certain loss rate and adjust production and pricing accordingly. Also, the forced pricing leads to major financial disasters for some and a life of crime for others to obtain the money to purchase drugs. These barriers are non-existent; those who want drugs badly enough will find a way to get them. The financial ruin--my house, my car, my etc, went up my nose--are causes for remorse but not prevention.
There are some who are determined to destroy their lives regardless of offered help. Legalizing drugs for them would take the criminal burden off of us--we would not be paying the costs of their depredations to get the next hit. It would also remove much of the financial incentive to produce and smuggle drugs, easing our border situation. [Yes, I know the flood of people is high, but so is the flood of drugs.] In this country, raising pot in public lands would disappear, if it could be raised legally. Sure, I can see an industry based on marijuana similar to tobacco. However, without the subsidies to grow tobacco, it will never reach the scale of tobacco.
By legalizing and regulating drugs, we move enforcement from the large-scale, federal interventions with their emphasis on trying to get "the big guy", to local enforcement at the transaction level where it belongs. The feds would get pulled in only for large-scale plans to break the law, either through tax-avoidance or smuggling. Local communities could then apply their own standards to enforcement within general law at the state and federal level.
All of this predicates a basic trust in the responsibility of the average citizen, which I think is justified. We live with tobacco and alcohol as legal intoxicants, and with some exceptions do quite well as a society. Drugs are more powerful, but not to the point of the panic that we see among some people when the subject comes up. Part of that panic comes from lack of knowledge of the actual effects of drugs and part of it comes from lack of trust in other people's judgment. This last is a real concern anymore, as from the boomers on, self-indulgence has become a standard [e.g. Brittany Spears], and little emphasis is place on the principles of character in the rearing of our children. [Don't blame it all on the schools, folks. We all indulge our kids more than we should because we can afford to.]
For myself, I would put my trust in the people in general and legalize and heavily regulate drugs. There may be some drugs that we would consider so dangerous as to be totally illegal anyway, but I doubt if they would be in the group that form our current enforcement and political issues.
What I disagree with is not the deleterious effects of drugs on the individual, but his implied total irresponsibility of the adult population of this country. Legal or illegal, drugs are subject to the same abuse risks as alcohol. There are people who will become addicted. There are people who will abuse them on a binge basis and harm themselves and others. However, given the public awareness of the much greater risk of drug use, I think the actual usage will be hardly more than current levels.
In saying this, I am considering that the use of illegal drugs is actually greater than public awareness, and once they are legalized many users would come out of the closet, so to speak. Actually legalization might have as a fringe benefit the awareness that some people we trust are actually not as trustworthy as we think, due to their use of drugs.
However, the other part of legalization is often ignored in the polemics, that is regulation. Just as alcohol has restrictions on its use, no one under 21 can legally use it, it is heavily taxed, one may not legally perform certain tasks while under its influence, etc., so legal drugs would have to be regulated. In the case of drugs, with the risks being higher, the penalties should be commensurate. Where sale of alcohol to minors is basically a slap on the wrist, sale of drugs to minors would be a major felony. DUI law would have to be fine-tuned to correspond to degree of impairment, with drug use vs alcohol use at low-levels getting more harsh punishment and at high levels both getting prison time.
Much of the knowledge of the effects of drugs is well-known but not organized to present to the public or provide a basis for proper education. Instead of feel-good campaigns there needs to be proper presentation of the effects of drug use. I grew up in the old marijuana madness days and films on the effects of drinking. The truth was neither had any real impact. It was all second-hand. The things that had an impact were the actual experiences. If these are kept in relatively safe environments, then a person eventually learns to either keep them in control or avoid them altogether.
Side note on regulation, public use of drugs, including marijuana should be banned. I know from experience that one can get stoned on second-hand pot smoke. The risks of someone high on a recreational drug causing problems when leaving for home are much greater than with alcohol. In the case of private clubs, anyone leaving one can be presumed to be incompetent to drive. That is extreme and probably would have to be tailored a bit. Use of LSD could cause permanent banning from certain work or professions, simply because a user can have unexpected relapses unrelated to current use or abstinence.
My concern with the current drug war is that it is not working and we are seeing a parallel with the days of prohibition of alcohol. Yes, we interdict large shipments, but I think those are handled by the drug producers as cost of doing business, expect a certain loss rate and adjust production and pricing accordingly. Also, the forced pricing leads to major financial disasters for some and a life of crime for others to obtain the money to purchase drugs. These barriers are non-existent; those who want drugs badly enough will find a way to get them. The financial ruin--my house, my car, my etc, went up my nose--are causes for remorse but not prevention.
There are some who are determined to destroy their lives regardless of offered help. Legalizing drugs for them would take the criminal burden off of us--we would not be paying the costs of their depredations to get the next hit. It would also remove much of the financial incentive to produce and smuggle drugs, easing our border situation. [Yes, I know the flood of people is high, but so is the flood of drugs.] In this country, raising pot in public lands would disappear, if it could be raised legally. Sure, I can see an industry based on marijuana similar to tobacco. However, without the subsidies to grow tobacco, it will never reach the scale of tobacco.
By legalizing and regulating drugs, we move enforcement from the large-scale, federal interventions with their emphasis on trying to get "the big guy", to local enforcement at the transaction level where it belongs. The feds would get pulled in only for large-scale plans to break the law, either through tax-avoidance or smuggling. Local communities could then apply their own standards to enforcement within general law at the state and federal level.
All of this predicates a basic trust in the responsibility of the average citizen, which I think is justified. We live with tobacco and alcohol as legal intoxicants, and with some exceptions do quite well as a society. Drugs are more powerful, but not to the point of the panic that we see among some people when the subject comes up. Part of that panic comes from lack of knowledge of the actual effects of drugs and part of it comes from lack of trust in other people's judgment. This last is a real concern anymore, as from the boomers on, self-indulgence has become a standard [e.g. Brittany Spears], and little emphasis is place on the principles of character in the rearing of our children. [Don't blame it all on the schools, folks. We all indulge our kids more than we should because we can afford to.]
For myself, I would put my trust in the people in general and legalize and heavily regulate drugs. There may be some drugs that we would consider so dangerous as to be totally illegal anyway, but I doubt if they would be in the group that form our current enforcement and political issues.
// posted by Bill @ 9:02 AM 
