Maybe not all drugs. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here. There are very dangerous drugs that can cause addiction such that people will kill for more (and can never get enough).
That said, wiping away weed, peyote, and LSD from the list of criminal substances should make the DEA’s job much more realistic.
Criminalization helps nothing, achieves no positive goals. Quite the opposite. We've been trying this for about a century, we've seen the results. At some point you have to act on the evidence.
We're talking about maybe a slight increase in health issues (legalization does not imply a significant increase in use, eg cannabis usage in the Netherlands is pretty average for Europe), as opposed to the entire monstrosity of the War on Drugs, including the empowerment of violent criminals ranging from local gangs to international cartels.
The really addictive and dangerous drugs are the ones that society would most benefit from decriminalization. Sure, it's not great when college kids get a criminal record from smoking reefer, but that's the least of our drug problems in the US. It's the dangerous drugs that are killing people and orphaning children, and those are the people who have the most trouble getting effective help due to the criminal nature of their addiction.
Portugal had a bad heroin problem in the 90s. How did they fix it? They decriminalized possession of every drug, including heroin. Instead of sending users to jail, they now send them to treatment. It was an overwhelming success.
Some drugs are dangerous because of the drug war. Crack cocaine for example has little reason to exist except that it is easier to smuggle than powder cocaine. It's also harder to hold dealers to account for poor quality control when they are unable to be regulated or monitored.
Sorry, but you don't seem to understand why crack was made.
It's not because it's easier to ship, it's because you can double or triple your money...
Example... 1 kilo raw coke...40k [US price] cook that same 1 kilo into crack and now you have 3 kilos of crack that you can easily make 100k or more off in the street
The drug it's self, in crack form, is 10x more addictive then powdered cocaine. The user experience of a "high" only last for a few minutes, side effect being users use the product faster. This is why it's a lucrative market for gangs and street dealers. If you hold territory to distribute your product, you increase your revenue. Cash is what every dealer wants, product is what ever user wants. Supply and demand effects.
Don't know why some may believe people make crack because "it's easier to transport"... no, no its not, especially when you consider liquid cocaine. Yes cartels smuggle liquid cocaine![1]
It's about money.
Cartels have billions & billions of US dollars to spend, they spend big money on R & D too.[2][3]
1kg of coke becomes 3kg of crack ... I seriously doubt that. When you cook crack you wash any impurities out of the coke (and convert the salt to base). If anything it should weigh less (I think?).
Even for most of the really dangerous drugs, both society overall and the addicts suffer more harm due to the war on drugs than they would have with a pure, cheap supply.
Experiments with e.g handing out heroin to addicts pretty consistently reduces both direct harm from overdoses and secondary effects such as crime. The latter in large part because the less harmful, because it is pure and consistent, medical grade heroin is cheap.
There are some drugs that serve no purpose if most drugs are legalised, because safer options with the same effects exists. E.g many opiates are pretty interchangeable for addicts - the reason why oxycodone has been a recruitment avenue to heroin abuse for example, and a reason for the use of fentanyl - and so some of the most dangerous analogues could remain restricted without retaining a black market demand.
But overall the war on drugs is immoral and unethical, and politicians maintaining it have blood on their hands.
If you take a snapshot of the state of things at the height of opioid prescriptions and a snapshot now it's hard to say that it wasn't a hell of a lot better.
People weren't ODing or engaging in petty crime with anywhere near the same frequency when they could get their fix from their doctor. The feds cracked down and people turned to the black market and that gets us to where we are today.
Obviously manufacturers giving doctors kickbacks for getting people onto addictive substances is far from ideal but the enemy of my enemy is my ally and all that.
Yes all drugs: consider reading "Legalize This" a super-short and superbly written book by a philosopher and legal scholar who has been thinking about this issue for decades.
I got a simple explanation, so feel free to quote the book if it has an argument to counter it.
Drug addicts are a high risk group for triggering cost in social safety nets. The risk of driving under the influence of drugs are higher for drug addicts, there is a higher risk that parents fail their responsibility while under drugs, and as with other addictions there is an increase in risk for failing to pay rent and having enough money to pay for food. Drug addicts are also more likely to get sick and needing health care (relevant for countries where the government guaranties health care).
Since the government is expected to step in and pay for the social safety net, it then make sense that they implement laws to manage the risk and reduce costs. One way to do so is to make drugs illegal, especially those direct associated with risks that increase government costs.
If the government did not have any responsibility to supply a social safety net then there would be no need to have those laws.
If I just stabbed someone, there is a clear explanation for why I am being put in jail. If I am possessing a drug, why a I being put in jail? Because of some hypothetical possibility? Because I belong to a group of people that have a higher chance of doing something that might end up in something bad happening?
Justice needs to answer an individual why they are about to be deprived of most of their liberties. Putting someone in jail is the worst thing the government does to individuals; such a severe action requires a personal explanation.
Sometimes the law is designed to target something that might happen rather than a personal action that caused something to happen.
One such law that exist in most countries triggers if you drive while under the influence just by yourself on a lone road. You can still end up in jail. In the eye of the legal system it is bad enough that an accident might happen. Same for driving a car deemed unsafe. There is similar laws around the world against guns and explosives, where simply possession is enough to run fault of the law.
As with most laws, first time offenders generally should not end up in jail (US can be a bit strange and unfair on that point). However a lot of laws all over the world are simply about what might end up happening given a risk factor.
The analogue of that law would be to prosecute someone under the influence of drugs who is out on the streets.
The current drug laws are more analogous to putting someone in jail if they purchase alcohol and put it in their trunk because there's a chance that they might drink and drive.
I think that argument falls apart as soon as you consider alcohol. Alcohol certainly qualifies as a hard drug, based on its impact for both users and bystanders (especially in your example with driving). We tried to ban it and that made things worse.
Also, isn't imprisoning people a huge cost itself?
Governments did indeed try that and would likely still want to do it, but there were way too much cultural values embedded in alcohol and production is also too easy that controlling it is not possible.
Alcohol is however generally not defined as a hard drug. Soft drugs would be alcohol, marijuana, sleeping pills and sedatives, while hard drugs includes heroin and cocaine. Netherlands has a very strict line between the two in both enforcement and punishment. Netherlands has a war on hard drugs, but is celebrated for not having one for soft drugs.
When it comes to alcohol and driving, Sweden for example uses a system that directly punish that circumstance. Driving licenses are very expensive to get and take a lot of time. Getting hit by a DUI not only mean you have to retake the tests and pay for a new license, but you are also likely to get a ban for up to 3 years. For many that is a very harsh punishment and one enough to discourage drunk driving. For sever DUI with blood values over 1.0 you also risk jail sentences up to 2 years. Any DUI involving other drugs than alcohol is regulated under the harsher rules. You do not need to trigger an accident for this to happen.
Drug laws does not need to be all or nothing. Scientists could/do define the risk profiles for different drugs in different circumstances and law makers can make more lenient or strict laws depending on those risk profiles. Sadly culture do play a role in permitting some high risk over other, but that doesn't mean risk management is bad explanation for why laws exist that punish non-violent drug user. It only make them inconsistent.
> Alcohol is however generally not defined as a hard drug
> Scientists could/do define the risk profiles for different drugs
The scientific risk profiles I've read have alcohol right up there on the top of the ranking for hardest, most damaging drugs. Sometimes it's at #1, but it's always right there in the big 4 with cocaine, heroin, and meth.
"Not defined as a hard drug" is a policy choice, almost entirely because of cultural/historic reasons, as you point out. Prohibition didn't work for alcohol, and it's not working for other drugs.
DUIs, on the other hand... harsh prosecution of DUIs is fine because they're crimes with victims, where other people are put into serious and immediate danger. That's a better approach than the overly broad, costly, and ineffective policy of simply incarcerating everyone for drug use.
Cultural and historical reasons do play a huge role, but we can see similar cost-saving argument for a drug that is distinctly less harmful than all the other drugs: Tobacco. My country is likely to start banning it sometimes in the few decades, and the argument being used is one dominated by costs and risks. Smokers are seen as a drain on the health care system, a health risk to other people in terms of second hand smoking, a major problem with littering, and irritating to people in public spaces. A lot of apartment owners and spaces around them are already trying to forbid it.
It will hopefully never end up as bad that people go to jail for it, but as culture is changing and public opinion about smoking goes more negative, tobacco as an accept social drug are loosing acceptance. In theory they could change it so that smokers loose access to public health care but I doubt such solution is preferable over simply making smoking illegal.
Last year they even made an half-attempt at making smoking illegal during a very dry period under the argument that smoking was a major risk for causing fire.
While yes there are very dangerous drugs that can cause addiction there is ZERO evidence that large scale criminal prohibition reduces the number of people addicted to those drugs, assists anyone to become clean or does anything at all to resolve the issue of addiction
In contrast there is A LOT of indications that even for very dangerous drugs that can cause addiction criminal drug prohibition makes the problem WORSE, creates worse outcomes for the general public, erodes basic human rights, and wastes resources that should be put into treatment instead of criminalization
I would say punishment of abuse doesn't get us very far. What do we do with alcoholics? Sure, we punish them if they drive while intoxicated, but other than that, they are offered treatment and if they refuse it, they just suffer the consequences of their addiction until they decide treatment is a better option.
>they just suffer the consequences of their addiction
No, their family and society as a whole suffer as well. I'd even go on to say that drug addiction is usually more destructive towards others than towards the addicted individuals themselves.
I'm not advocating for keeping the so called "war on drugs" up, but let's be real here, people.
Remember all laws are only compulsory because they backed by the threat of violence, the threat of jail.
Everything else is just a suggestion. Even if you suggest "well just fine them", what happens if they do not pay the fine? Generally the answer is jail.. so you have simply moved jail one position down
In general if you are not willing to kill someone over X, then X should not be illegal because all criminal law is backed by the threat of government initiated violence
because you are looking at it from a punishment, and read that would I would all crimes to be capital punishment.
In reality I oppose capital punishment at all, as violence is only ethical in self defense.
This foundation is how I approach the law as well, as I believe a person does have the right to defend with lethal force someone from taking their property including their TV, I do not however believe that violence is ethical as punishment. There is a big difference between the 2
This is comes in to play as well when we talk about crimes and police responses, if you are not willing to have the police use Lethal Force to enforce a law, you likely should not be supporting that law.
I do support the police is using lethal force to stop Theft, and other property crimes. I do not support the police using lethal force to prevent a person from voluntarily consuming a substance of their own desire, or from growing a plant the government as deemed illegal.
Take for example the case of Eric Garner, he was accused of selling Cigarette's with out the proper taxes or regulations. I am sure many here support those regulations and taxes just simply believe he should not have been killed by the police. Where as I understand that any criminal law will be enforced with violence, as such I understand that every law has the potential to result in deadly force. So I oppose the very regulations that put both the police and Eric on a path to where they had to conflict with each other at all resulting in the loss of life
That's literally what the US has been doing (well except the parole part). Glad the drug problem is solved as of today because of that. Addicts sure are good at thinking about the longer term impacts of their habits vs taking a hit of the substance they're addicted to. Scary jail doesn't stop drug use
Emotional Harm should not be the basis of Public Policy, and that is what people generally talk about with "hurts their family" it is emotional harm of their loved one physically harming themselves.
That is a very dangerous path to start making public policy because of emotional harm.
One should only punish physical harm to person (i.e battery) or property (i.e theft)
No addict is going to volunteer to go to treatment until they hit rock bottom. Forced treatment never (rarely?) works because it wasn't the addicts decision to do it. There are a lot of functioning addicts that are sustaining, but do not see the havoc that they are causing for those caught in their circles.
I guess that would have to define "abuse", which to me and my statement means you are abusing others to feed your addiction, i.e your are stealing, assaulting, or commiting other crimes against other persons.
Use would not involve that, as if you maintain your use with out abusing others than i would not classify that as abuse.
Of course to some people any Use is abuse but then why have 2 terms
Maybe not all drugs. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here. There are very dangerous drugs that can cause addiction such that people will kill for more (and can never get enough).
That said, wiping away weed, peyote, and LSD from the list of criminal substances should make the DEA’s job much more realistic.