war on drugs getting bigger?

[ivan]

yet another example of trying to take the brown man's drugs away

[dt_3pin]

There was a good article on Khat in the Stranger a few weeks ago, which involved Dan Savage cruising around in taxis trying to score some.

[archenemy]

And this is how we waste taxpayer money.

[AlpineK]

There isn't much proof whether it is a drug or not. I gotta get me some khat.

[archenemy]

A drug is anything that alters you--so this is a drug. The question is, "How fucking ridiculous is it to make it illegal". Lame.

 

It's like when I have been in So. Amer and chewed coca leaves to help with the altitude. It helps, it is natural, it is cheap. But our gov't would prefer to sell me some drug with side effects that I have to pay for the doctor visit, pay for the Rx, and spend a lot of time getting. Stupid. Just stupid.

[archenemy]

And this is so lame:

 

Operation Somali Express

 

 

Like little boys playing with their toy soldiers and making up conflicts in their minds where none exist in reality.

[ashw_justin]

Our country is the principal market for refined alkaloids, rich bored druggies begging to pour money into a lucrative and often violent third-world drug trade. The majority of the population of this country would never survive legalization. Shit, we can't even stop overeating. Furthermore if you legalized things, what makes you think that corporations wouldn't behave just as badly as the cartels? The source countries would still be getting fucked, and there would be more junkies than ever.

[JayB]

1. Our experience with prohibition pretty much disproves every single argument that you've just made.

 

2. Your desire for the state to control every aspect of human behavior - predicated on the notion that people should never be legally entitled to decide what's in their best interest, nor are capable of doing the same - is far more frightening than anything than any set of motives that could ever be attributed to any corporation.

 

When you were a child, did your older brother terrify you by telling you that there was a corporation hiding under your bed?

 

 

 

[AlpineK]

A drug is anything that alters you--so this is a drug. The question is, "How fucking ridiculous is it to make it illegal". Lame.

 

It's like when I have been in So. Amer and chewed coca leaves to help with the altitude. It helps, it is natural, it is cheap. But our gov't would prefer to sell me some drug with side effects that I have to pay for the doctor visit, pay for the Rx, and spend a lot of time getting. Stupid. Just stupid.

 

That's true I guess if we're going to stick with the pure definition we should outlaw coffee and tea.

 

Right now alcohol is legal and there's plenty of proof that it causes huge problems. In my view even though it's illegal I would say pot falls into the same class as booze. The government is not going to go back to the days of prohibition. There are plenty of, "drugs," that fall into this category.

 

The government should be going after the really bad stuff like heroin or meth, and at the very least ignoring other stuff.

[ivan]

my one khat experience was comic - a few minutes after my grandmother's burial in arlington national cemetery, my little bro (just a month back from iraq) and i try to see the capital building - we hadn't been there since after 2001 and we're pissed to see that you couldn't walk up the stairs anymore - so i duck behind the magnolia trees and start climbing (beautiful climbing too, say good old beckey 5.4) - my brother starts screaming at me as i'm 10 feet off the groudn "THE COPS ARE COMING MAN!" - i downclimb and emerge from the bushes just as they swarm over me - "were you climbing up there?" "of course not! see you later!" - they escort us off the grounds, dumping us convientely at the national arboretuem - taking the tour of the middle eastern plant section, we note a large variety of khat plants happily growing away beside their plaques - as we'd killed the whiskey flask around the time of the 21 gun we looking for something interesting, and going all multi-cultural seemed right - it must not have been the cia-stash though, didn't seem to do shit or maybe it did? as we were not long thereafter forcibly removed from the air and space musuem by a very large black woman who didn't like our jocund attitude towards closing time

 

so yeah, khat blad - very blad

[ivan]

we should outlaw coffee and tea.

 

i'm sure the mormons would be happy to do that if given the power

[archenemy]

A drug is anything that alters you--so this is a drug. The question is, "How fucking ridiculous is it to make it illegal". Lame.

 

It's like when I have been in So. Amer and chewed coca leaves to help with the altitude. It helps, it is natural, it is cheap. But our gov't would prefer to sell me some drug with side effects that I have to pay for the doctor visit, pay for the Rx, and spend a lot of time getting. Stupid. Just stupid.

 

That's true I guess if we're going to stick with the pure definition we should outlaw coffee and tea.

 

Right now alcohol is legal and there's plenty of proof that it causes huge problems. In my view even though it's illegal I would say pot falls into the same class as booze. The government is not going to go back to the days of prohibition. There are plenty of, "drugs," that fall into this category.

 

The government should be going after the really bad stuff like heroin or meth, and at the very least ignoring other stuff.

I agree with you on the direction and focus on hard drugs. But I don't follow the logic that a pure definition of drugs should lead to outlawing all drugs. That just doesn't follow...

[JayB]

Reposted from an earlier thread:

 

"As the [classical] liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil. A government that, instead of fulfilling its task, sought to go so far as actually to infringe on personal security of life and health, freedom, and property would, of course, be altogether bad.

 

Still, as Jacob Burckhardt says, power is evil in itself, no matter who exercises it. It tends to corrupt those who wield it and leads to abuse. Not only absolute sovereigns and aristocrats, but the masses also, in whose hands democracy entrusts the supreme power of government, are only too easily inclined to excesses.

 

In the United States, the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages are prohibited. Other countries do not go so far, but nearly everywhere some restrictions are imposed on the sale of opium, cocaine, and similar narcotics. It is universally deemed one of the tasks of legislation and government to protect the individual from himself. Even those who otherwise generally have misgivings about extending the area of governmental activity consider it quite proper that the freedom of the individual should be curtailed in this respect, and they think that only a benighted doctrinairism could oppose such prohibitions. Indeed, so general is the acceptance of this kind of interference by the authorities in the life of the individual that those who, are opposed to liberalism on principle are prone to base their argument on the ostensibly undisputed acknowledgment of the necessity of such prohibitions and to draw from it the conclusion that complete freedom is an evil and that some measure of restriction must be imposed upon the freedom of the individual by the governmental authorities in their capacity as guardians of his welfare. The question cannot be whether the authorities ought to impose restrictions upon the freedom of the individual, but only how far they ought to go in this respect.

 

No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism.

 

Whoever is convinced that indulgence or excessive indulgence in these poisons is pernicious is not hindered from living abstemiously or temperately. This question cannot be treated exclusively in reference to alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, etc., which all reasonable men acknowledge to be evils. For if the majority of citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority, it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgence in alcohol, morphine, cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be valid also for nicotine, caffeine, and the like? Why should not the state generally prescribe which foods may be indulged in and which must be avoided because they are injurious? In sports too, many people are prone to carry their indulgence further than their strength will allow. Why should not the state interfere here as well? Few men know how to be temperate in their sexual life, and it seems especially difficult for aging persons to understand that they should cease entirely to indulge in such pleasures or, at least, do so in moderation. Should not the state intervene here too? More harmful still than all these pleasures, many will say, is the reading of evil literature. Should a press pandering to the lowest instincts of man be allowed to corrupt the soul? Should not the exhibition of pornographic pictures, of obscene plays, in short, of all allurements to immorality, be prohibited? And is not the dissemination of false sociological doctrines just as injurious to men and nations? Should men be permitted to incite others to civil war and to wars against foreign countries? And should scurrilous lampoons and blasphemous diatribes be allowed to undermine respect for God and the Church?

 

We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual's mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community, bound to obey the dictates of the majority. It is hardly necessary to expatiate on the ways in which such powers could be abused by malevolent persons in authority. The wielding, of powers of this kind even by men imbued with the best of intentions must needs reduce the world to a graveyard of the spirit. All mankind's progress has been achieved as a result of the initiative of a small minority that began to deviate from the ideas and customs of the majority until their example finally moved the others to accept the innovation themselves. To give the majority the right to dictate to the minority what it is to think, to read, and to do is to put a stop to progress once and for all.

 

Let no one object that the struggle against morphinism and the struggle against "evil" literature are two quite different things. The only difference between them is that some of the same people who favor the prohibition of the former will not agree to the prohibition of the latter. In the United States, the Methodists and Fundamentalists, right after the passage of the law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, took up the struggle for the suppression of the theory of evolution, and they have already succeeded in ousting Darwinism from the schools in a number of states. In Soviet Russia, every free expression of opinion is suppressed. Whether or not permission is granted for a book to be published depends on the discretion of a number of uneducated and uncultivated fanatics who have been placed in charge of the arm of the government empowered to concern itself with such matters.

 

The propensity of our contemporaries to demand authoritarian prohibition as soon as something does not please them, and their readiness to submit to such prohibitions even when what is prohibited is quite agreeable to them shows how deeply ingrained the spirit of servility still remains within them. It will require many long years of self-education until the subject can turn himself into the citizen. A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police."

[ashw_justin]

1. Our experience with prohibition pretty much disproves every single argument that you've just made.

 

2. Your desire for the state to control every aspect of human behavior - predicated on the notion that people should never be legally entitled to decide what's in their best interest, nor are capable of doing the same - is far more frightening than anything than any set of motives that could ever be attributed to any corporation.

 

Let's not play stupid--alcoholism is a major factor (notice I am not saying cause here) in major health problems, fatal car accidents, domestic abuse, violence, unwanted pregnancies, birth defects, etc.

 

You're right, I've been pretty hard on corporate america lately. But I applaud your faith in the common unitedstatesian. If only we just made all vices legal and available (for the right price), then we could all live in a free, happy utopia with trademarked needles sticking out of our veins. Widespread drug abuse would transform our country into a bastion of freedom and choice... for about 20 years until complete societal collapse.

 

But let me peel back the layers of facetiousness lest I be misunderstood. I think it would be a good lesson for our species to learn if all of the highly addictive were allowed to destroy themselves. Think of it as a behavioral cleansing.

 

Just do it.

[ivan]

good quote - i actually read it this time - my favorite snippet:

 

"In sports too, many people are prone to carry their indulgence further than their strength will allow. Why should not the state interfere here as well? Few men know how to be temperate in their sexual life.... Should not the state intervene here too?"

 

that oughta eliminate about 90% of the wankers round here, meself most doubly included!

 

 

[chucK]

The problem with this overarching war on drugs is not because it is hypocritical. The argument that the legality of alcohol and nicotine logically dictates that all substances should be legal is pretty silly.

 

The problem comes when the public at large disagrees on the prohibitions. When the laws are in conflict with the masses, the govt has lost the "hearts and minds" of the people. If people are branded criminal because they smoke pot or don't fasten their seatbelts, then they're probably not going to consider the police force their ally. If you're exposed to excessive punishment because of something you do, you are NOT going to want to have any contact with police.

 

People say pot is a "gateway" drug. It may or may not be true in terms of directly influencing the escalation of one's drug habit, but it seems inarguable to me that breaking the law (even a stupid law) desensitizes one to breaking more laws.

 

If laws consisted only on prohibitions that a reasonable majority of people supported, you'd have much less problems in enforcement. The ordinary Joe would be the ally of the police, instead of someone afraid of them. Think about it, you'd probably not hesitate too much to turn in some scumbag selling meth to schoolkids, but you'd never narc on somebody smoking pot or driving without his seatbelt.

 

 

[JayB]

You're right, I've been pretty hard on corporate america lately. But I applaud your faith in the common unitedstatesian. If only we just made all vices legal and available (for the right price), then we could all live in a free, happy utopia with trademarked needles sticking out of our veins. Widespread drug abuse would transform our country into a bastion of freedom and choice... for about 20 years until complete societal collapse.

 

But let me peel back the layers of facetiousness lest I be misunderstood. I think it would be a good lesson for our species to learn if all of the highly addictive were allowed to destroy themselves. Think of it as a behavioral cleansing.

 

Just do it.

 

Yes - the Netherlands is tottering on the edge of collapse as we speak.

 

The notion that the large numbers of people who don't already smoke crack, inject heroin, etc would do so if it were legal is one of the most idiotic arguments against legalization that anyone has ever conjured up.

 

Likewise, the argument that the illegality of the same constitutes a protective barrier that prevents those who would otherwise abuse the drugs from doing so is equally ridiculous.

 

Per your line of reasoning, if prostitution were legalized, then every man in America who is not currently availing themselves of their services would suddenly do so, because no other considerations are involved in such decisions.

Just imagine if Walmart came out with it's own branded line of discount-hookers...!

 

Are you sure you aren't projecting anxieties that you hold concerning your own constitution and temperament onto society at large here?

 

 

[ivan]

that's kinda the point, jay - from my conversations with kids in my classes over a decade, many indicate to me that they want the government to play the job of parent to them, even when they're older - they want to not have the option to get in trouble, so support any goverment policy which takes freedom from those who do

[JayB]

Interesting observation, Ivan.

 

"The propensity of our contemporaries to demand authoritarian prohibition as soon as something does not please them, and their readiness to submit to such prohibitions even when what is prohibited is quite agreeable to them shows how deeply ingrained the spirit of servility still remains within them."

 

The other thing I'd like to point out is that any argument for drug prohibition that is based on the notion that it's society's duty to protect individuals from themselves could also be applied - and would be at least as apt - to free soloing.

 

 

 

 

[ashw_justin]

Yes - the Netherlands is tottering on the edge of collapse as we speak.

 

The United States are not the Netherlands. That's like comparing a spoiled 13-year-old to a college professor. Would you tell your 13-year-old daughter that it's okay to do heroin? (It's okay, she'll just use her judgment.)

 

The notion that the large numbers of people who don't already smoke crack, inject heroin, etc would do so if it were legal is one of the most idiotic arguments against legalization that anyone has ever conjured up.

 

Intentional oversimplification? First, greater availability would lead to greater consumption. Second, 'legal' equals profitable and marketable. If McDonalds' sexy ad convinces you to try a Big Mac and it sucks, you don't have to buy another one. It's not that simple with hard drugs.

 

Honestly, I want to believe in the ideal of free will and personal judgment. But in practice that ideal is defeated in a society where many if not most people are too stupid to take care of themselves (such as the US). Should we let them kill themselves? Perhaps. Is that going to suck for the rest of us? Yes. But how many will self-destruct? That's the key question--how many addicts does it take to ruin a society? Is that a storm that you want to try to weather? And for what? 'Freedom' to get wasted on hard drugs?

[Dechristo]

Yes - the Netherlands is tottering on the edge of collapse as we speak.

 

The United States are not the Netherlands. That's like comparing a spoiled 13-year-old to a college professor.

 

WHAT?

[ashw_justin]

Actually I haven't been to the Netherlands. I just assumed that since they have their drug situation mostly under control, they must be a smarter people.

[ivan]

Interesting observation, Ivan.

 

"The propensity of our contemporaries to demand authoritarian prohibition as soon as something does not please them, and their readiness to submit to such prohibitions even when what is prohibited is quite agreeable to them shows how deeply ingrained the spirit of servility still remains within them."

 

The other thing I'd like to point out is that any argument for drug prohibition that is based on the notion that it's society's duty to protect individuals from themselves could also be applied - and would be at least as apt - to free soloing.

 

 

 

scarey indeed - i had a class of seniors last year, the majority of which were theoritically fine w/ the government posting cameras in all the rooms of their house so they could be observed at all times

 

the spirit of servility is sizzling in its vitality - the benefit of legalizing drugs for these fawks is that it'll facilitate their voluntary culling from the herd

 

 

[billcoe]

Actually I haven't been to the Netherlands. I just assumed that since they have their drug situation mostly under control, they must be a smarter people.

 

You might try heading there, might broaden your horizons and change yer tune.

[Recycled]

 

scarey indeed - i had a class of seniors last year, the majority of which were theoritically fine w/ the government posting cameras in all the rooms of their house so they could be observed at all times

 

the spirit of servility is sizzling in its vitality - the benefit of legalizing drugs for these fawks is that it'll facilitate their voluntary culling from the herd

 

 

That terrifies me. Do you think their response was due to the perceived acceptability of voyerism as entertainment or really understanding the personal liberty implications?