The War on Drugs is Useless

Virus said:
You must be pretty easily persuaded then. In fact I feel as though I've wandered into a thread full of anarchists given the amount of terminal naivety.

One legalized drug; alcohol, kills 75,000 people a year in the US. It's the third leading cause of death. How about America's other favorite legalized drug? Cigarettes kill 440,000 people a year. It's the leading cause of preventable death.
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Would the situation be better or worse if we were to ban alcohol and tobacco? The available evidence indicates it would be worse. If they were banned, there might be some reduction in the statistics reflecting use and abuse, but the overall impact on society is so negative that no one who suggests such an approach is taken seriously. You won't even answer the question posed to you repeatedly about whether you think those legal drugs should be banned. 'Yes' is the only answer consistent with your stance on other drugs, but you don't seem comfortable with acknowledging that.

The Mexican drug war killed 10,000 in three years. How many gang-related deaths are there in America every year? Anyone wanna take a shot at that? Just take a guess, is it more or less than 500,000? Need another hint? There's 16,000 murders total every year in the US. So drug related murders are a fraction of that.

So given that legal drugs are the leading cause of death let's turn the government into a nationalized drug cartel to dispense even harder gear that's even more addictive. Good one. If we make hard drugs freely available and cheaper then less people will use them. Sure they will. On Planet X where economic laws run in reverse.
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Would the situation be better or worse if we were to legalize and regulate the use of hard drugs? The available evidence, looking at historical data of banning alcohol and trial studies of legalizing drugs, indicates it would be better. Looking at the situation from a harm reduction perspective, the evidence indicates that legalization is the approach more likely to reduce the overall harm to society and to individuals due to drug abuse.

The evidence you cite doesn't alter alter that expectation. It only confirms how bad the current situation is.
 
Virus said:
I'm not saying we should do anything.
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Therein lies the problem. You do think alcohol is prevalent because it's legal. You do think legalizing drugs would make them more prevalent.

Why, then, do you not believe alcohol should be banned?
 
A common complaint against legalization is that vastly more people would start using various drugs and that society would collapse.. (well, at least become rather nasty)

However, since the government itself (The GAO to be specific) says that drugs are generally available at low prices and in high states of purity..... We might conclude that most everyone that wishes to use drugs is currently doing so.
 
LSD, back in 'the day', was free.
Or, at most, $1/ dose.
(and what a dose!)

Owsley was not a ph.d chemist, or even a chemist. He just learned quickly.
As the controls were put in place, making precursors nearly impossible to obtain, the market changed considerably.

From what I've seen, the Bonaroo crowd now pays up to $10/ dose, for a 1/3 the amount of a late 60's dose. Economics has changed a lot in this matter. Now, even LSD has a considerable contribution to crime finances.
And the curious kids are more likely to consume something of questionable makeup.

Perhaps even more so with mdma.
Notice that root beer flavoring, sold in grocery stores, is now "safrole free".
The effects of prohibition, even with these non-addictive substances, has been profound. In the case of mdma, it has fostered a plethora of more toxic alternatives, from shadier sources.
 
dtugg said:
Prohibitionists, Joaquín Guzmán LoeraWP, Mexico's most powerful drug lord would like to thank you for making and keeping drugs illegal in the USA.
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As do the Gangster Disciples, the Latin Kings, the Four Corner Hustlers, the Mickey Cobras, the Conservative Vice Lords, etc etc.
 
The Drug Free america Foundation has been brought to you by:
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dtugg said:
Therefore we should ban alcohol and tobacco, right? That would surely solve the problem.
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Virus - this bit is really important. The fact that you won't answer the question is very telling. For a consistant approach to mind altering substances, you need to answer that alcohol should be banned and make the honest statement that you don't drink. I suspect you can't do both those things (although you may be able to do one) and that your cognitive dissonance isn't apparent to you (it is to everyone else).

The trouble you have is that you really do find difficulty in seperating drug use (fun, really, people wouldn't do it if it wasn't, most drug users aren't stupid) and drug abuse (bad - alcoholism, lung cancer and other problems) but most people using drugs are doing exactly that - getting high on the weekend and going back to work on monday to pay their taxes and move the economy along. Why do current laws criminalise these people merely for doing things that some people find hard to handle? We don't ban alcohol even though some people become alcoholics. We dont ban cars although some people crash them. We don't ban horse riding because some people aren't very good at it and fall off and hurt themselves. We dont ban motor racing (or any other dangerous sport) even though it kills the occasional unlucky soul ("he died doing what he loved") We don't ban strobe lights even though they make some poeple ill. We don't ban sugar despite the fact that some people are diabetic and can't handle it. We don't ban fatty foods even though some people eat too much and become fat. We don't ban peanuts although there are people that will react to them fatally. We don't ban any number of things that are potentially harmful because, in most things, we understand that the fact that some people can't handle something doesn't over-ride the freedom of those who can to do what they want with their bodies and go about their day.
 
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portlandatheist said:
The Drug Free america Foundation has been brought to you by:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=390&pictureid=3008[/qimg]
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That was most excellent.

My moral take on this is likely twisted, but, the tragedy to me is that America is drugged to the nines on some of the shittiest drugs ever consumed by humankind.
 
Alt+F4 said:
Interesting. I wonder why the tobacco, alcohol and big pharms industries are against legalization. They could make quite a profit selling cocaine, heroin and meth.
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My guess is they're afraid of any competition.
 
Yeah let's all rail against Big Tobacco. I'm sure Big Crack and Big Meth will be so much more benevolent.
 
Virus said:
Yeah let's all rail against Big Tobacco. I'm sure Big Crack and Big Meth will be so much more benevolent.
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Do you want to ban alcohol & tobacco? A simple yes or no will suffice.

I suspect you will attempt to evade the question, yet again, because your response will reveal your hypocrisy & inconsistency.
 
I told you before. This thread is about legalizing smack, crack and meth. Not banning alcohol. You're trying to divert the discussion.

You aren't trying to argue that we should sell crack at the liqour store because of hypocracy are you?
 
Virus you are not doing your argument any favours when you suggest that drugs such as methamphetamines and heroin should be illegal because they are dangerous, and then point out that alcohol and tobacco are very dangerous, and then refuse to discuss whether this amounts to a double standard.

The question is simple. If you think that legalising presently illegal drugs will cause more harm than the present system, then is it not a natural assumption that making presently legal drugs illegal will result in less harm to individuals and society as well?
 
McHrozni said:
And a drug addict isn't one?

Don't BS with "freedom of choice" please. Unless he was fully aware of all consequences, he couldn't make a free choice.

McHrozni
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So now the victim and the perp are the same person? Interesting concept. Perhaps we should ban all potentially self destructive behavior to protect the "victims."

And yes drug addicts choose to do drugs entirely of their own free will, at least initially. And I am quite sure that virtually all drug addicts knew before they started using that drugs can be bad for you and that you can get addicted to them. They just didn't think it won't happen to them. And any that didn't know that are just plain stupid. And there is no reason that we should make laws banning stuff just to protect the terminally stupid people.
 
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