----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Pensinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 1:59 AM Subject: Re: Drugs
> Dan Minette wrote: > > Yes. If cocaine were worth no more than coffee there wouldn't be any > drug czars or any need for guerrillas. The only way to do that would be to flood the market with drugs. The market for drugs is much more elastic than it is for coffee, so I don't really see the value in this. > Because the first and only thing you try doesn't work perfectly you > stop trying? No, many things have been tried in Europe, and this is just one example. Decriminalization of pot has been very successful in Amsterdam. Decriminalization of harder drugs has been tried and undone in Amsterdam because it was a failure. > > What I find troublesome with your position is that you seem to suggest that > > there is an easy answer to the drug problem. Just let people use whatever > > they want in whatever quantities they want. The difficulty with this is > > > Where in hell did you get the idea that I think there is an easy > answer? By the way you present your argument. When I argue for something that I think there are minuses as well as plusses, I usually try to acknowledge the minuses while trying to show that I honestly Because of the way you simply state that fighting drugs is obviously wrong without discussing the minuses of your position. Also, hints of sinister government plots that are behind the war on drugs seems to fall in this category. I chose my words with a decent amount of care. Now that you've clarified your position, you've provided meat to debate various possibilities. Before, I thought that you considered it a no-brainer. >If there is an easiest answer, it's what we are doing now. Declare a prohibition and throw everyone and their brother in jail. > > > 1) It interferes with the ability to work, so the money has to come from > > someplace else > > Just because drugs are decriminalized doesn't mean drug testing > would cease or that drug usage - especially hard drugs - would > become socially acceptable. Look how we've stigmatized cigarette > smoking - and drastically reduced the number of people who smoke. And it is still rather large. Between a quarter and a third of high school students smoke, as of the late '90s very early '00s. http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/aag/aag_osh.htm > > 2) Unless subsidized by the government, it will still cost money. > > The government could do a hell of a lot of subsidizing with the > money they save from ending interdiction. Not as much as you might think. From a pro-legalization site, http://www.colombiareport.org/colombia150.htm I get the following figures: US drug interdiction budget: 18.2 billion Sale of cocaine in US: 52.8 billion Colombian farmer income from cocaine 1.2 billion Now, the US could probably go into the business of selling crack heroin, etc., but that would be legalizing, not decriminalizing. So, it would have to pay people to buy drugs? I'm not clear on how that would work. I think that the cost is associated with the legality of the sale and distribution of the drugs, not the use. So, decriminalization of the use of drugs should not decrease that cost. > > 3) If cheap, people will tend to keep on increasing their dosage until its > > near fatal, or at least its no longer cheap. > > Which people? All people? Addictions tend to follow patterns. Its true that there are various levels of addiction. One of the problems with a number of drugs that are illegal is that tolerance builds up and it takes increasing amounts to get the same effect. The tendency is to increase use to keep the feeling. Alcohol is different from that. It is fairly unique in how little difference there is between the amount it takes a social drinker to get as high as a late stage alcoholic. Grass, as far as I know, is less addictive than cocaine or alcohol, and its users are less likely to get out of control that the users of cocaine or heroin. >I admit that there are problems in this regard, but they are no greater than the problems we now face. Market forces indicate that when price goes down and demand is elastic, use goes up. >How much better is it to just throw people in jail. Just throwing people in jail is not much of a solution either. Realistically, it probably needs to be part of the range of possibilities, but I'd argue for more of a misdemeanor for hard drug use than a felony. There is no doubt that money spent on treatment would be far better than long jail sentences for use. But, the threat of a couple months in prison vs. treatment may still be a viable option. > > > 4) There is a strong association with hard drugs and other crimes. > > That's mostly because they are illegal and hard to get. You are seriously arguing that illegal drugs are hard to get? > There > > is a strong correlation between crack and violent behavior. > > Yea, crack is bad news. So is alcohol. Alcohol is not nearly as bad as crack. Bad news is a very general statement; I think it is useful to rank and qualify the amount of correlation. If the problem is not simplistic, the relative costs for each option depends on the exact nature of the substance involved. > Pun not intended, I hope. 8^) Nope. I was just thinking about the pictures my son and I took in front of our hotel on Times Square last fall. I remember what it was like there 10 years ago. We hurried past Times Square in the early evening then. Now, we were out with > > > > My position is not really supportive of the war on drugs; there are plenty > > of problems with it. As I stated before, drawing the line after instead of > > before grass seems very reasonable. But, I do think that the position that > > legalizing the sale of all addictive drugs would result in a far worse > > state of the nation than what we have now. > > > Well then we agree. I wouldn't legalize. Not even pot. I would > decriminalize and divert money spent on interdiction on education > and rehab. Decriminalize the use, or the sale also? If sales are legal, is that just small retail sales or massive operations too? > I would control the source of drug plants such that their > cultivation was no more or less profitable than other cash crops. You would flood the market with drugs? That's the case with other cash crops, so that's what would be required. > I would enlist the considerable talents of our sales/advertising > community to help educate the public and to stigmatize drug use. Stigmatation alone can reduce usage, but cigarette usage among teens probably gives a decent feel for what stigmatation alone can do. Those numbers are not pretty. > I would use the considerable talents of our medical community to > take what we've learned about drug use - why we desire them, how > they effect us, how the harm or don't harm us, and put the > information and any more we can glean from a vigorous research > program to use on solving the problem long term. I'm not sure that we can solve the problem, but we can probably do a better job of dealing with it. > Does that sound simple? No friggin way. It would be very > difficult, but it's a damned sight better than what we're doing now > to solve the problem, which is in many cases either > counterproductive or worthless. I think we have to acknowledge that the results for what we are doing now are mixed, and not all negative. Drug use is down over the last 10 years. Areas that were given over to the drug traffic are now accessible to families. Murders are way down from the mid-90s. That's not saying I am a strong supporter of the present program. But, I do think that one has to look at the plusses as well as the minuses of the present program, and the plusses and minuses of the decriminalization efforts for hard drugs that have been tried in the past. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation for your presentation of your position in greater detail. Your last post was a great aid in helping me refine my understanding of where you stood. Dan M. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
