War on Drugs

[Artemas]

Long term what are the effects to American culture? I don't want to live in a world where drugs are treated like Bud Light. The Super Bowl commercials would be interesting to say the least.

This. It seems like a losing and expensive fight I know.

My parents were active in the foster care program when I was growing up, they took in drug and alcohol abuse teens. Most of them made it to recovery once they were removed from the problems that made them start using (poor families, crappy parents, crappy friends, etc). Some did not.

Even though they are adults and out of the system we still maintain some contact with and are there for if needed. When sober they are frequently some of the most academically intelligent people I know, but addiction and poor decision making kept them from completing college and getting decent jobs. I know a fairly brilliant mathematician who mixes concrete for a living because of a felony robbery conviction(which also means at-least in PA I can't let this person come into my house) and repeat DUIs. I don't want to see anymore people who fall into this trap.

Alcohol maybe equal to certain drugs but it is far less addicting to the vast majority of people. A bit like guns, just because it's legal to own doesn't mean everybody should. If everyone could make good decisions all the time and know their limits it might be possible for wholesale legalization.

Point number 6 is one I really agree with, but again it's expensive. We need to stop throwing addicts in jail and actually help them. Atleast the ones who want to be helped.

[RevolverRob]

If you legalize & regulate you'll be spending equal amounts of money or more in doing so.

The annual amount spent on the War on Drugs is between 15-20 billion dollars. The annual cost of incarceration of inmates in the United States is ~$65 billion.

Estimates vary widely but it is ~50% of individuals currently incarcerated are because of convictions caused by WoD. Ending the war on drugs, could save nearly 50 billion dollars instantly.

If all individuals were for instance heroin addicts, the average annual cost of methadone treatment is $4500/year, the average annual cost of psychiatric treatment a year would be ~$7500. That's $12,000 year, if we assume all of the 50% sprung from prison would need these treatments, then it would be 15.6 billion dollars in cost. In other words, we save $32.5 billion dollars ANNUALLY in prison costs...

Numbers for prisons from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarce..._United_States

Numbers for methadone treatment from: http://www.drugabuse.gov/publication...worth-its-cost

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And that's assuming a worst-case scenario. Realistically, I haven't accounted for the nuances of still continued police enforcement, but that is probably offset by the savings in judicial/legal fees paid for by John and Suzy Q. It also doesn't account for increased revenue from regulatory sales of illicit products.

The bottom line is the numbers don't lie here, the number of illicit narcotics users is so low in this country (relative to the total population), we have to save money by treating addiction, rather than spending it chasing and trying to enforce an unwinnable war. A war that is not only directly responsible for most of the violent crime in our country, and in a number of other countries, but actively challenges and erodes the constitutional rights of citizens right here.

-Rob

[MDS]

[...]much like the success that's been achieved with tobacco products.

A couple of thoughts. First, it's important to accept that what one person calls success, is something that another reasonable person can call failure. Second, what's been achieved with tobacco products was achieved within the context of legal (not merely decriminalized) tobacco.

If you merge BATFE and DEA, you get "agency to prohibit things impossible to prohibit in a free society." Even strong regulation is difficult, because the underground supply will be cheap enough, and therefore the profits high enough, that risk is worth reward. There's still plenty of street pot in Colorado, but I'm looking forward to see how the underground pot business evolves as the financial incentives dwindle.

Now, if you believe there's something special about drugs that makes them different from other dangerous objects that require maturity and discipline to avoid catastrophe, I'd love to hear what that is, exactly. If anything, drugs should be permitted even more than other such objects, because the vast majority of drug-induced violence revolves around the ability to supply or acquire the object, as opposed to simply using it.

[45dotACP]

Drugs are addictive...people do strange shit for and on account of their addictions. Legal or no, one of the main reasons for ER and Trauma center visits is alcohol....the most widely available and abused drug of all. It also has one of the worst withdrawals, frequently leading to severe pancreatitis, mental confusion, hallucinations, seizures and death due to abnormal heart rhythms and hypomagnasemia and hypocalcemia. Alcoholics are often malnourished and vulnerable to opportunistic infections beause they don't eat...they drink. Addiction, not availability is the problem for any mood altering substance...remember, most addicts have multiple addictions and comorbid mental and physical health problems....

[Default.mp3]

I don't want to live in a world where drugs are treated like Bud Light.

I'd just like to point out that Bud Light is a recreational drug, so... yeah. As a teetotaler, comparisons to other recreation drugs to alcohol in which alcohol is somehow held to be morally superior make little sense to me.

[orionz06]

Coffee is a drug.

[David Armstrong]

Won't comment on the legalization issue as there are so many nuances to it, but as another old drug cop I can say that yes, we have lost the war on drugs. Despite about a half century of drug wars where a large amount of our criminal justice resources (possibly the majority) have been focused on it, drugs today are more powerful, more plentiful, and less expensive than they were decades ago. Not sure what to do about it, but I do feel confident saying what we are doing is not working.

[RoyGBiv]

Well who is going to regulate the stuff? It's not going to be done for free. They pay people now to "fight" against it. Do a total 180 & you'll be paying different people to study, regulate, inspect, distribute, produce, package, and so on. You can't just magically legalize a product people put in their bodies & leave it at that.

I don't disagree, but that's still not sufficient "facts" upon which to base a plan or decision.

A couple of thoughts. First, it's important to accept that what one person calls success, is something that another reasonable person can call failure. Second, what's been achieved with tobacco products was achieved within the context of legal (not merely decriminalized) tobacco.

If you merge BATFE and DEA, you get "agency to prohibit things impossible to prohibit in a free society." Even strong regulation is difficult, because the underground supply will be cheap enough, and therefore the profits high enough, that risk is worth reward. There's still plenty of street pot in Colorado, but I'm looking forward to see how the underground pot business evolves as the financial incentives dwindle.

Now, if you believe there's something special about drugs that makes them different from other dangerous objects that require maturity and discipline to avoid catastrophe, I'd love to hear what that is, exactly. If anything, drugs should be permitted even more than other such objects, because the vast majority of drug-induced violence revolves around the ability to supply or acquire the object, as opposed to simply using it.

One of the frustrating things about internet posting is the ability for others to extrapolate a comment to unintended places.
Your comments are correct. I don't disagree, except the part about "reasonable person can call failure". Scratching my head there.

"Success with tobacco" was intended as a quick example of a drug use that was successfully lobbied against by society at large... From the Surgeon general (government) to private citizens tired of inhaling second hand smoke while eating dinner out. Seems to me a clear example of societal pressures (along with the fact that tobacco can kill you) working to diminish the use of that particular drug. Maybe I missed the connection to the rest of your comments (with which I don't disagree)?

[GardoneVT]

Let's roll this back a bit.

Drugs in general are a symptom. The problems are much more fundamental, and thus harder to solve.

We need a strict enforcement system on the part of government/LE because we DONT have a family structure anymore, for the most part. Without Mom & Dad to tell Junior and Juniette math is right and drugs are wrong, we get the status quo. Someone's gotta be there when Junior decides shooting a guy at the gas station is a worthy trade for his habit. Someone's gotta pick up the pieces when Juniette is punching out kids by the crate with different men and she's strung out to boot.

It all comes down to family. Many folks think rural societies are safer because there's fewer people. As a former city dweller in 'flyover country', the reason I can walk down a Sioux Falls ,SD street at 3am and can't do that in my hometown less an undercoat SMG is because people still raise their own kids in South Dakota. They don't in most of Chicago.

Between feminism, liberalism of the modern creed, and affirmative action we've collectively put the Nuclear Family in front of a fuel air bomb and lit the fuse. Relying on the DEA, the FBI, or the local Fugitive Apprehension Task Force to do what Mom and Dad didn't is a recipe for failure .

Decriminalizing the chemical coping mechanism that are narcotics is like handing a suicidal man a Glock 18. I'd rather we live in a country where its easier to have and raise a family then it is to get drive through cocaine.

Its a problem I anticipate will only get worse, because that means looking in the mirror and facing the harsh music that feel-good equality policy is a total failure. The drug war isn't the problem, the police isn't the problem, even the courts aren't the problem. The problem is we keep doing failed social policy and think it'll somehow get better the longer we ignore it. I've never seen a problem solved well that way.

[MDS]

"Success with tobacco" was intended as a quick example of a drug use that was successfully lobbied against by society at large... From the Surgeon general (government) to private citizens tired of inhaling second hand smoke while eating dinner out. Seems to me a clear example of societal pressures (along with the fact that tobacco can kill you) working to diminish the use of that particular drug. Maybe I missed the connection to the rest of your comments (with which I don't disagree)?

Gotcha. I don't necessarily have a problem with what happened to tobacco, because there's still plenty of ways that a smoker can commit slow suicide - as I believe is his right. But some folks think that the personal freedom and private property infringements of our tobacco policy is unacceptable - from that perspective, they have some reasonable basis for calling it a failure. So I only mentioned that point to highlight this idea that what you consider success, could reasonably be considered a failure by rational, reasonable people who have a different set of priorities than you. And this idea ties into the rest of my argument because I think tolerance and acceptance of "aberrant" behavior is the only way to limit the damage to society from that behavior.

Anyway, my main point is this: if we consider the way our society manages tobacco use to be a success, then we need to think about how that management started with total legality, then slowly constricted the times and places where tobacco use was legal, based on actual facts about limiting the damage done to others by smokers. This left a lot of leeway for smokers to do their thing, even if they're in the minority about whether it's morally or physiologically "good" to do it. And at no time was tobacco production or distribution made illegal. Do you think people would stop smoking if we passed a law? People are knowingly killing themselves with tobacco. They love the stuff more than life itself! Yet as it stands, tobacco-related activities continue to be notably non-violent, in spite of the highly-addictive and mood-altering properties of tobacco.

But the illegal drug situation is very different. We've created a high-margin business opportunity for folks who are ruthless and not risk-averse. Anyone with eyes even barely squinted open will realize that demand for drugs will not be denied. So, what kind of business environment does that create? Ruthless suppliers who won't bend to advertising regulations, who are more than happy to foster addiction in ruthless ways, who will acquire and defend market share with bloody violence, who encourage robbery as a way for customers to fund their purchases, who reinvest their earnings into such operational innovations as death squads and catapults. (“A catapult,” he repeated. “We’ve got the best fence money can buy, and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology.” - NYT)

If we have some moral aversion to the very existence of the drug trade, then we need to look deep inside and reevaluate our bold statements about "home of the free." But however that internal analysis turns out, we can't disagree that all available evidence supports the idea that the drug trade will exist, in one form or another, forever. There's also a lot of evidence to support the idea that legalizing that trade - that creating a business environment where producers, distributors, retailers, and consumers are all able to participate in this trade with only a reasonable amount of overhead and annoyance - that these things will create a legitimate business environment, where we can mitigate much of the damage caused to society by drug use, much as we do for tobacco use, and alcohol use, and prescription drugs.

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P.S. These arguments are a special case of the arguments against legislating "goodness" or morality. If we're not willing to live in a world where people live according to viewpoints that we find distasteful; if we're willing to use violence or the threat of violence to forge a world into our image - and make no mistake, making things illegal is an explicit threat of violence; if it's right and proper to punish someone because they willingly hurt themselves in pursuit of whatever reasoning tells them heroin addiction is good... then why is it wrong for ISIS to fight for a world rebuilt in their image instead of ours? There's a very good answer, but it has nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with tolerance and acceptance of "aberrant" behavior in a world that's bigger and more diverse than we can easily conceptualize. We must be careful to draw our lines of acceptable behavior around those actions that cause other people damage - and unwilling damage, at that - or we are tyrants, petty at best.