Would anyone trust a doctor who had killed every patient who sought treatment for over half a century of medical practice? The answer is somewhat obvious. Yet in terms of drug policy, we are trusting that very same doctor.
It is a fact that our present approach is failing. There is no reductions in drug use or the crime associated with it for all the posturing and initiatives. If this was a medical treatment, it would be banned and those who sought to continue it would be prosecuted. At the very least those who advocate a dangerous medicine would be recognised as snake oil salesmen.
Drugs are only criminal because someone decided they should be criminal. Perhaps the time is at last coming when we should think again about what is really criminal.
Gabriele
3 years ago
The ‘war on theft’ will never be won, therefore we should make theft legal. Nobody would say it because it is a silly argument and the same is true when applied to the war on drugs. We do not fight crime because we hope to defeat it, but fighting it limits its negative effects.
Understanding whether legalizing some drugs will be beneficial on the whole it is a much more complicated affair than simply saying “it’s really hard to make them illegal”. This should be even more obvious now, when we are hurting the economy to save lives. We do that because we believe that saving lives is better in the long-term, even when it comes to economical well-being.
Has anyone ever fallen for your comparison of theft to the drug war? Or did you just make that up as you were typing? In case you need it rebutted, the obvious difference when police target theft is it never makes theft worse. Indeed most traditional crimes are like that (murder etc). But in the case of drugs (incl alcohol) there is clear evidence that prohibition makes it worse. Since they can’t remove the demand for drugs, all they can do is staunch the supply. Like plugging holes in a damn with your fingers, it’s a futile effort that only drives up prices and incentives for the criminals, including prioritising the hardest forms of the drug for ease of transport. The escalating levels of violence as one gang takes over from another in an endless Hobbesian trap are well documented in many books, including Chasing the Scream.
Your are correct, we can never countenance theft, or for that matter murder and fraud. However drugs are not venal, but recreational. If idiots wish to kill themselves by using them, let them. It is Darwinian Self Selection (DSS). The ‘war’ on drugs can never be won, and the collateral damage is huge. So let’s legalise them and let DSS take it’s course. Actually we have been here before, back in the 1920’s when the US idiotically enforced Prohibition. This lunatic decision spawned the greatest Crime Empire known to man and eventually, after much squealing and gnashing of teeth, lead to Repeal after 10 years of madness. Let us recognise our mistake and move on.
I was not arguing in favor of the war on drugs. The issue is too complicated to debate it in a comment. I was pointing out the sillyness of the original subtitle, that said “we will never win the war on drugs”.
The stringent prohibition imposed by the Volstead Act, however, represented a more drastic action than many Americans expected. Nevertheless, National Prohibition succeeded both in lowering consumption and in retaining political support until the onset of the Great Depression altered voters’ priorities. Repeal resulted more from this contextual shift than from characteristics of the innovation itself.
More importantly, it was part of the empowering of women, which were the ones most affected by the abuses of alcohol. It did also permanently change the benevolent attitude toward alcoholism. Before the proibition it was socially acceptable, even after its repeal that was not true anymore.
What you have so succinctly described is that dreadful phenomena when one section of society (invariably religious loonies) feels it has a ‘God’ given right to tell the rest how live their lives. Winston Churchill pronounced that Prohibition was “an affront to the whole history of mankind “. Who can gainsay him? As to violence against woman, surely unemployment was as great a factor as alcoholism in working class America?
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Well, yes, but we have known this for at least 30 years.
However, the following is interesting:
‘Although Mexican cartels produced fentanyl for the US market, they used to rely on precursor ingredients including from one state-backed factory in Wuhan (the Chinese city where Covid-19 reportedly originated).’
I have known this for some time, but many people will have been unaware. Essentially, for almost 30 years both Republican and Democrat administrations outsourced US jobs to China and Mexico, then allowed those two countries to openly ship into the US the very drugs that killed hundreds of thousands of the US citizens who had lost their jobs and purpose in life. And then they wonder why Trump came to power.
Would anyone trust a doctor who had killed every patient who sought treatment for over half a century of medical practice? The answer is somewhat obvious. Yet in terms of drug policy, we are trusting that very same doctor.
It is a fact that our present approach is failing. There is no reductions in drug use or the crime associated with it for all the posturing and initiatives. If this was a medical treatment, it would be banned and those who sought to continue it would be prosecuted. At the very least those who advocate a dangerous medicine would be recognised as snake oil salesmen.
Drugs are only criminal because someone decided they should be criminal. Perhaps the time is at last coming when we should think again about what is really criminal.
The ‘war on theft’ will never be won, therefore we should make theft legal. Nobody would say it because it is a silly argument and the same is true when applied to the war on drugs.
We do not fight crime because we hope to defeat it, but fighting it limits its negative effects.
Understanding whether legalizing some drugs will be beneficial on the whole it is a much more complicated affair than simply saying “it’s really hard to make them illegal”. This should be even more obvious now, when we are hurting the economy to save lives. We do that because we believe that saving lives is better in the long-term, even when it comes to economical well-being.
Has anyone ever fallen for your comparison of theft to the drug war? Or did you just make that up as you were typing? In case you need it rebutted, the obvious difference when police target theft is it never makes theft worse. Indeed most traditional crimes are like that (murder etc). But in the case of drugs (incl alcohol) there is clear evidence that prohibition makes it worse. Since they can’t remove the demand for drugs, all they can do is staunch the supply. Like plugging holes in a damn with your fingers, it’s a futile effort that only drives up prices and incentives for the criminals, including prioritising the hardest forms of the drug for ease of transport. The escalating levels of violence as one gang takes over from another in an endless Hobbesian trap are well documented in many books, including Chasing the Scream.
Your are correct, we can never countenance theft, or for that matter murder and fraud.
However drugs are not venal, but recreational. If idiots wish to kill themselves by using them, let them. It is Darwinian Self Selection (DSS).
The ‘war’ on drugs can never be won, and the collateral damage is huge. So let’s legalise them and let DSS take it’s course.
Actually we have been here before, back in the 1920’s when the US idiotically enforced Prohibition. This lunatic decision spawned the greatest Crime Empire known to man and eventually, after much squealing and gnashing of teeth, lead to Repeal after 10 years of madness.
Let us recognise our mistake and move on.
I was not arguing in favor of the war on drugs. The issue is too complicated to debate it in a comment. I was pointing out the sillyness of the original subtitle, that said “we will never win the war on drugs”.
The case you mentioned of the proibition is a good example of the complexity of such issues. First, it actually worked until the depression it. See Did Prohibition Really Work? Alcohol Prohibition as a Public Health Innovation.
More importantly, it was part of the empowering of women, which were the ones most affected by the abuses of alcohol. It did also permanently change the benevolent attitude toward alcoholism. Before the proibition it was socially acceptable, even after its repeal that was not true anymore.
What you have so succinctly described is that dreadful phenomena when one section of society (invariably religious loonies) feels it has a ‘God’ given right to tell the rest how live their lives.
Winston Churchill pronounced that Prohibition was “an affront to the whole history of mankind “. Who can gainsay him?
As to violence against woman, surely unemployment was as great a factor as alcoholism in working class America?
Well, yes, but we have known this for at least 30 years.
However, the following is interesting:
‘Although Mexican cartels produced fentanyl for the US market, they used to rely on precursor ingredients including from one state-backed factory in Wuhan (the Chinese city where Covid-19 reportedly originated).’
I have known this for some time, but many people will have been unaware. Essentially, for almost 30 years both Republican and Democrat administrations outsourced US jobs to China and Mexico, then allowed those two countries to openly ship into the US the very drugs that killed hundreds of thousands of the US citizens who had lost their jobs and purpose in life. And then they wonder why Trump came to power.