Drug Wars

As a Baby Boomer, I'm a little dubious about Males' asertion: "For example, baby boomers rarely used illegal drugs as youths."

Contrary to Males' theory that rates of youth drug use is a poor predictor of future social problems, the sharp decline in cocaine use among black youths going back a decade or so ago is one of the best things that has happened to America in recent years.

Another interesting fact is the teenage blacks have very low rates of cigarette smoking, which bodes well for their future health.

I looked for Males' index, but couldn't find it at the California ADP web site (http://www.adp.cahwnet.gov/default.html). He doesn't mention where to find it in his op-ed either. Anyone know where to find it?

I clicked the link hoping to find that deregulation of heroin was something more than a strawman constructed by MY, but alas.

What are the most basic, incremental changes we could propose to federal drug policy? Well, let's see. Start with getting rid of the demented federal position on medical marijuana. While we're at it, let's pretend that John Ashcroft's crusade to overrule Oregon's assisted-suicide referendum using the Controlled Substances Act never happened. Everybody with me? Good, now let's talk about the next couple baby steps.

If everyone agrees that current policy is nuts, the obvious answer is to start changing it. Let's begin with the easy cases and not get bogged down in crazy talk about buying crack in the 7-11.

This post is uncharacteristically myopic, particularly with regards to your false dilemma of the status quo versus "total deregulation"/"heroin free-for-all." Given that alcohol and tobacco are, as you note, legal, widely-available, and yet highly-regulated in all sorts of ways, the response one would expect from a liberal who recognizes the destructive and arbitrary nature of the drug war would be to legalize and heavily regulate currently prohibited drugs. You'll still have an increase in the use of drugs like heroin and cocaine, but far less than the apocalypse you seem to envision, while eliminating the most destructive side-effects of prohibition - namely, a massive criminal underclass and the steady erosion of civil rights in the futile war against it. That would be a welcome improvement over the existing situation, and it's genuinely baffling to me that you don't even consider it.

Actually, you could, in 1900, walk into a drugstore and get opium or cocaine. So it has happened.

But more importantly - the argument about heroin is not that its sale shouldn't be regulated - which may entail where it can be sold, an age limit on sales, etc. - but that the Government, at the present time, has NO say on where it can be sold. Given the right grocery store, you can buy heroin there. Or, more realistically, given the right apartment - given the right schoolyard.

By banning the product, the state deprives itself of that combination of regulatory rules and incentives that allow it to exert more control on the product. My guess is that, just as you do not go to somebody's apartment to buy cigarettes or liquor, you will cease going to somebody's apartment to buy heroin. And, best of all, nobody is going to go by somebody's apartment and spray it with bullets because that is where you buy heroin.

Yeah, MY isn't exactly taking on a strawman here, as some uncommonly silly libertarian ideologues do, in fact, hold this view. But for liberal anti-prohibitionists, government regulation is a crucial part of the point.

there doesnt necessarily need to be an alternative to the drug war. some communities just put enforcement way down on the list of priorities, without actually legalizing or decriminalizing it. it does make sense to say end the drug war. you could just stop funding it.

I consistently find it bizarre that there are some people who seem to think it would be a good idea if you could just walk into your local convenience store and pick up some heroin or crack along with your Fritos and Diet Coke.

Bizzare, yes. But Better. And also, in the 19th century Heroin and other Opioids were freely available from corner stores.

Imagine the looks on the faces of the gangs and mafiosi who'd find legal-but-regulated means total defunding.

Contrary to Males' theory that rates of youth drug use is a poor predictor of future social problems, the sharp decline in cocaine use among black youths going back a decade or so ago is one of the best things that has happened to America in recent years.

Another interesting fact is the teenage blacks have very low rates of cigarette smoking, which bodes well for their future health.

An assertion is not a refutation.

Right on, Matt. The Netherlands and Switzerland have never recovered from their free-wheeling drug policies and most of the other countries in western Europe that have largely de-criminalized drugs (although they haven't been as carefree as the Dutch and the Swiss) are positively falling apart.

Yes, indeed, the total devastation of Europe through liberalized drug policies is more than enough reason to keep throwing thousands of poor Americans in prison every year (they're often minorities anyway). Rich Americans (especially those with political connections) can usually beat the rap, so it's not like there's any REAL harm done.

What the hell happened to reality-based, dude? What have you been smoking?

I understand how MY might prefer a well-regulated market for currently illegal drugs than some free-for-all. And indeed, I think most anti-drug-war people envision something like our current treatment of booze. But I can't see how total deregulation can be worse than what we've got. Right now, our police shoot 90-year-old grandmas in their homes (the old ladies' homes, not the cops').

I had to resort to a street dealer the other day to buy Sudafed. He offered me some smack too, telling me it would help take the edge off the Sudafed.

Now I'm a full-blown junkie, but at least I've got a reliable source for when I need to clear my sinuses.

Comparing the War On Drugs with a "war on mugging" is like comparing masturbation with rape. The key idea is that the government goes after a victimless crime. The war on drugs has cost much $$$, many civil liberties, and lives, and yet it has almost no effect on the end user. I can walk out my door and obtain any drug within 15 minutes. The biggest risks involved in such a transaction are there because the government has aggressively criminalized both the transaction and the use.

Yeah, MY isn't exactly taking on a strawman here, as some uncommonly silly libertarian ideologues do, in fact, hold this view.

Yeah, but just because the point is raised by a libertarian doesn't mean you have to pretend the libertarian position is the only position out there. And Matt demonstrates that he's perfectly aware of this when he alludes to current alcohol and tobacco policy. Again, this is a pretty uncharacteristic post, in much the same vein as Matt's old knee-jerk "fuck the planet" environmental policy posts - not just because they both go against left-liberal conventional wisdom, but because they both smack of intellectual laziness.

What a drag it is getting old
"Kids are different today,"
I hear ev'ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she's not really ill
There's a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day

The Stones...know woman.

Steve S,

Cocaine, and crack cocaine specifically, was/is an unusually destructuve drug, so I don't know that one can generalize from it to other drugs.

Interstingly enough, whiel I'm not an expert, my understanding is that the decrease in crack cocaine use was mainly demand side, and not the result of law enforcement. Poor kids growing up saw how destructive it was and, well, just said no.

Regarding the other posts, yes, I'd agree that Matt is being a bit obtuse here.

That being said, IMO complete decriminalization and deregulation most likely would be preferable to the status quo, not that I favor such an extreme approach, nor is such an appraoch remotely in the realm of the possible. TAny realistic moves in that direction would, I think, create a huge net benefit to our society.

Christmas--agreed on all counts.

So it's totally insane for the government to permit people to choose what they put into their bodies, but not for them to permit people to, oh, I don't know, jump out of planes, drive 200 mph around a track, bungee jump or wrestle alligators. Because, you know. The government is so good at protecting people from themselves.

Opiates have been legalized to the extent that if you are a heroin junkie, you can get methadone, although under really depressing, humiliating circumstances.

Is that what libertarians want for cocaine? Or do they want to be able to buy it like they buy vodka and cigarettes? Do they want for-profit companies to be able to sell it? To _market_ it everywhere other than on broadcast TV and radio?

With the possible exception of the Indians of the Altiplano, humans have not evolved _any_ defenses against abusing cocaine.

In contrast, Italians and Jews, whose ancestors have drinking for 10,000 years can handle alcohol quite well. Presumably, their ancestors who couldn't deal with drinking in moderation died out and the ones who could left more of their genes behind to carry one. Most northern Europeans and Africans, whose ancestors obtained alcohol more recently, have a fighting chance against not letting it destroy their lives.

In contrast, aboriginal peoples whose ancestors didn't come into contact with alcohol until just a few generations ago, such as American Indians, Eskimos, Australian aborigines, are absolutely brutalized by alcohol abuse.

You should read up on Inuit and Aboriginal communities to see what a drug for which you don't have an evolved defense can do to human beings.

War on Drugs = War on Marijuana

calvin has noticed that since "we" have been fighting the WoT, we haven't had time to fight the War on Drugs. In fact, thanks to our great work in Afghanistan, the quality of heroin has gone up remarkably. And, the farmers are making more money. Folks in the US who are using the stuff can't believe that the shit is that good and are dying from ODs.

Hey, let's just declare victory and withdraw. Make drugs legal. Get the government involved and eliminate the profit motive. It's been tried in other countries with greater success than the status quo. It won't eliminate all the problems, but it should significantly reduce the prison population and the amount of tax dollars needed to support that black hole.

I guess this is something liberals and libertarians are supposed to agree about, but I consistently find it bizarre that there are some people who seem to think it would be a good idea if you could just walk into your local convenience store and pick up some heroin or crack along with your Fritos and Diet Coke.

You find this bizarre? Really? I don't find it bizarre because I suspect the number of people who think this would be a good idea is vanishingly small.

I do think many there are lots of people who think prohibition mostly doesn't pass cost/benefit analysis. These people tend to think that a policy of education/taxation/regulation is far preferable in most cases to prohibition. So, it's prohibition vs. controlled distribution rather than prohibition vs. complete free for all. Most so-called libertarians I've talked to don't want heroin at Wal-Mart. They may think it ought to be sold by tightly regulated vendors, probably on a prescription basis.

Excellent point Freddie.

As for the "war on mugging" quip from MY: Why mugging? Why not shoot the moon and go with "war on murder" or "war on genocide" or something even more reprehensible?

Well, drugs should be illegal because drugs are illegal. An inspiring defense of the status quo, brought to you courtesy of the prison construction and heavy urban firearms industries.

Are you sure you've been watching The Wire? From the beginning?

I just find it particularly amusing that you used the walking into the store and buying heroin bit, since Heroin is actually a brand named owned by Bayer, for a product that you used to be able to walk into the store and buy.

Formerly, all private tragedies were not seen as needing the government's purview. Drug addiction was one of them. If you wanted to be addicted, you could be. The government simply didn't care. Addiction was a problem, but a private one.

Using a small portion of the government funds currently devoted to jailing drug to help people who don't want to be addicted seems like a better use of money and more humane. But that's just me.

Jailing non-violent people seems idiotic and cruel.

So we're all agreed that Matt was smoking the crack before he wrote this?

Wow, this is the worst post here since the broo-sketta post of a few years back. The straw man, the deliberate misstating of the de-reg argument...perfect!

A few libertarian extremists favor total legalization, but this is an insignificant minority position. Most of the time, when people talk about drug law reform, they're talking specifically about decriminalizing marijuana (or at least lessening the penalties and/or permitting medicinal use) and increased use of treatment rather than prison for hard drug use. Is this really so unreasonable? It's similar to what is already the norm in much of Europe.

Although it would be politically difficult, I think that legalization and regulation of marijuana would be good policy. It's not considerably more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco (indeed, a good case could be made that both of those substances are far more deadly), and locking people up in prison for marijuana-related offenses cannot be justified on either a moral basis or a cost-benefit analysis. Furthermore, a good system of taxation (high, but just low enough to suppress black market activity) could be a nice new source of sorely-needed federal revenue.

As for hard drugs like crack and crystal meth, they cannot simply be legalized, but our current system - under which users are saddled with lifetime felony records that prevent them from getting jobs or student loans - is cruel and ineffective. We need to look, here, to more successful European models. And, more importantly, we need to fix the problems with these communities that make people turn to drugs like these as an escape.

Well, I think pretty much any substance you want should be available and regulated like alcohol and tobacco* - and I'm definitely not a libertarian. Of course, I also think our alcohol prohibitions are way too strict, but there we have a problem:

It's my unscientific belief that our prohibitions are deeply tied into our drinking culture. I'm going to make some very broad generalizations about my perception of Southern European drinking culture vs. American (and Northern European drinking culture) and say that there's more focus on alcohol as part of the meal, less focus on getting hammered for its own sake. Broad generalization, but of a sort that lots of people appear to think is reasonably true. Supposedly binge drinking among teens is less of a problem in, say, Italy than it is in Britain, and the alcohol laws in Italy reflect this. (I believe Britain is laxer in this regard than the US, but the last time I was in either country I was 12, and the Italians offered me wine and the Brits didn't.) My own biases (largely reflective, no doubt, of my upbringing) are to prefer the Southern European attitude towards the culture around and legal status of booze. To change (either) one will I believe change the other, but there will necessarily be a period of transition - either the old laws will prove needlessly restrictive given their purpose in the new drinking culture, or bunches of teenagers socialized to seek drunkenness as a state-of-being second only to orgasm will drink-and/or-drunk-drive themselves to death. The consequences of such a transition would probably be even worse, public health wise, for things like cocaine and heroin. So I don't really know what to do about it.

*Ideally up to and including things like cyanide, but here I run into another problem I hadn't considered: I have no problem letting people buy cyanide if they want to kill themselves, but I have some issues with selling it to people who want to commit murder. Now, it's I guess possible, but extremely difficult, unlikely, and almost certainly unstealthy to murder someone via alcohol poisoning, but considerably less difficult on all counts to do it with cocaine or heroin (assuming convenient form). Hmm.

I run into people all the time who assert that legalizing drug use will result in benefits to society that are obvious and incontravertible. I don't understand their vision.

Will the crack, meth and heroin dealers be able to stake out their corners without worry that the police will be after them? How will that reduce the price and reduce the crime? Prices fluctuate up and down all the time, depending on supply. The price still has to be paid by people who don't have the money. How will that change?

The producers, importers or locals, will still price to make a profit and fight to keep other suppliers off their turf. And they will still do everything they can to increase the number of their customers. How will that change?

The drugs, especially crack, meth and heroin, will still destroy, rot the brains and lives of the people who use them. How will that change?

There seems to be an idea that if all these drugs were legal that there would be no illegal market but that's a fantasy.

Even if there were drugstores, the way there are liquor stores, most of these drugs would still be traded on the off legal market. People who buy single malt scotch don't wake up in the morning looking for it. And they don't buy it instead of food and housing.

I have dear friend who is rabid about outlawing cigarettes and yet wants to legalize grass, crack, meth and heroin. But he's a wealthy guy who resents that he can't by grass for the weekend. He doesn't know or care that crack has decimated three generations of people in Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore etc. etc. etc. just since the 1990.

All of which is to say, that when I read people decrying the "War on Drugs" and calling for legalization. I think they're annoyed that they can't have their weekend treat They're not thinking about the affect on the community beyond theirs.

Even if there were drugstores, the way there are liquor stores, most of these drugs would still be traded on the off legal market.

Uhm, why? I suppose there might be an underground alcohol trade I'm unaware of other than (a) creepy older people buying high school kids beer, and (b) people smuggling certain kinds of alcohol you're not supposed to bring into the country for trade/tariff reasons, but it's certainly not extensive. The existing avenues of alcohol distribution satisfy people's needs to buy it. Including:

People who buy single malt scotch don't wake up in the morning looking for it.

These people you claim don't exist, who happen to exist.

And they don't buy it instead of food and housing.

I don't know personally of people who literally chose to buy liquor over paying rent, though I've certainly heard of people choosing to buy it over food on particular occasions, and we're all aware that lots of people essentially lose their jobs/houses/means of buying food as a result of their inability to stop abusing alcohol.

I run into people all the time who assert that legalizing drug use will result in benefits to society that are obvious and incontravertible. I don't understand their vision.

Will the crack, meth and heroin dealers be able to stake out their corners without worry that the police will be after them? How will that reduce the price and reduce the crime? Prices fluctuate up and down all the time, depending on supply. The price still has to be paid by people who don't have the money. How will that change?

The producers, importers or locals, will still price to make a profit and fight to keep other suppliers off their turf. And they will still do everything they can to increase the number of their customers. How will that change?

The drugs, especially crack, meth and heroin, will still destroy, rot the brains and lives of the people who use them. How will that change?

There seems to be an idea that if all these drugs were legal that there would be no illegal market but that's a fantasy.

Even if there were drugstores, the way there are liquor stores, most of these drugs would still be traded on the off legal market. People who buy single malt scotch don't wake up in the morning looking for it. And they don't buy it instead of food and housing.

I have dear friend who is rabid about outlawing cigarettes and yet wants to legalize grass, crack, meth and heroin. But he's a wealthy guy who resents that he can't by grass for the weekend. He doesn't know or care that crack has decimated three generations of people in Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore etc. etc. etc. just since the 1990.

All of which is to say, that when I read people decrying the "War on Drugs" and calling for legalization. I think they're annoyed that they can't have their weekend treat They're not thinking about the affect on the community beyond theirs.

This is a really poor post, MY. You're playing into the hands of those who claim the alternatives are either the current total war-on-drugs policy, or total legalization and deregulation. That kind of talk is a shibboleth created by the war-on-drugs crowd. The real alternative, ever since the early '70s when Nixon was considering it before launching the disastrously ill-fated hard-line approach we have now, is heavily regulated, medicalized, but not criminalized availability of Schedule 1 drugs.

All of this stuff has been figured out, and it works. You set up a government system of "addict cards". To get your addict card, you have to go for a checkup with a licensed professional. Your addict card entitles you to come into a safe, monitored government facility, get a free hit once a day, and shoot up using a clean needle under the supervision of medical staff. You have to stay in the facility for some time afterwards; then you're free to go. It's safe, boring, and utterly unattractive.

In the Netherlands, where this system was fully in place by the mid-90s, they have a shrinking population of heroin addicts and a vanishing level of heroin-related crime. In the US, as the Males article makes clear, we have rising levels of hard drug use in older populations and skyrocketing levels of drug-related crime.

The problem is that Americans can't get their heads around the idea of "not illegal, but tightly regulated". If there are libertarians who think we should just let heroin be sold over the counter, they're idiots; but that's not the real argument that's going on here.

OK, if you don't think heroin should be sold to any adult who wants it, riddle me this: let's say someone buys heroin, who isn't supposed to. What do you do to him? Prison? No, we're civilized now, we've decriminalized heroin. Forced rehab? OK. What if he doesn't want to go to rehab? At some point, you're still talking about imprisoning people who want to take drugs you don't approve of, instead of gin or pot or whatever. That's just wrong.

OK, I just read brooksfoe's comment above mine. What if someone wants to do some hard drugs, just for fun, and they're not an "addict"? Prison for them, right? Or rehab until they admit they're an addict?

Q- Do you really think that there is no difference between buying a bottle of wine for dinner and buying crack to smoke? If so, you've proven my point.

Jan -

My intent wasn't to compare having a bottle of wine with dinner to smoking crack. My intent was to compare downing a twelve-pack of beer or its equivalent by yourself to smoking crack. I've never known anybody who uses crack or heroin the way that, e.g., my dad has a few glasses of wine with dinner (have known people w/similar pot habits, though). But I have known people who maintained stable lives while doing cocaine (not crack, though) on an occasional recreational basis, and known people who destroyed their lives by drinking.

Jan,

Do you really think there is a difference between buying crack to smoke and buying a bottle of cheap vodka to guzzle? What about buying a bottle of wine for dinner and buying some fine cocaine to snort for an evening out? See how hard this gets? Substances themselves aren't evil. It's all context.

Hey, great minds think alike. Anyway, there's some research to show (nope, don't have a cite handy) that recreational crack smokers are more common that you think. Also, there are plenty of functional heroin users.

I can't believe Matt posted this garbage.

The War on Drugs is fine as long as it does not

1. Continue to tie up resources with marijuana related enforcement
2. Continue to place individuals in prison for the consumption or sale of marijuana
3. Continue taking the valuable time of district attorneys and public defenders in cases where marijuana is the central concern

The real problem

Heroin probably wouldn't expand much beyond its present user base even if legal sanctions were removed. It's the needles. You have to be pretty hardcore to put up with sticking yourself with the needles, even if they're clean, and those people will use whether it's legal or illegal, so they're already mostly using. Also, heroin rushes the opioid effect in a heavily front-loaded pattern. Not too many people really want to be blasted out of their heads. Most of us, for better or worse, are too self-satisfied.

But all of us suffer daily the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and moderately-released opioids are good for what ails you, a true panacea for the spirit oppressed by pain, physical or emotional. Morphine pills available on demand would be much, much worse than heroin. No needles. No guilt-inducing initial rush of pleasure. Just the soothing comfort of poppy-induced Nepenthe. Potential customer base? About 100% of the population. Potential for trouble? Well, heroin is not what got us to control medications by prescription 150 years ago, it was morphine.

Loose and unthinking talk about legalizing drugs of abuse never seems to address the real problem that got us regulating drugs in the first place 150 years ago. The real problem is not the drugs preferred by the far fringe of the addict population, but their cousins with legitimate medical uses that have a far greater potential for abuse as self-medication for the masses.

The idea that you can have a "not illegal but tightly regulated" governmentally controlled drug distribution system is a fantasy. In the 70's the left reformers convinced everyone that the state mental institutions were oppressive (they were) and that the answer was to turn all the inmates out into community-based homes. but the community-based homes never materialized and the patients were dumped on the streets and left homeless.

The idea that the government will somehow provide services that will wean all these people from their drugs and prevent any new users is fantasy. The idea that people who want their crack now will stand in line at a government office when they can walk down the block and buy from their reliable supplier is fantasy.

And the idea that it would be better for the government to be the provider of crack, meth, and heroin is insanity.

So here's where I'm at: I don't want to be around people maxed on crack, meth or heroin. I don't want stores in my neighborhood selling them, and I don't want my town government handing them out. So why would I want them legalized?

Heroin probably wouldn't expand much beyond its present user base even if legal sanctions were removed. It's the needles

Almost no one starts IV, they start snorting. Same with cocaine or meth. You move to needles when the cost/benefit to your addiction overrides concerns like pain or distaste and it seems like a quaint reason to waste four or five fixes sticking it up your nose instead of booting it.

Two things, 1) Matt, what do you think of Colvin's (persuasively presented) capacity on S3 of The Wire to promote public health and decrease violent crime by a de facto regulatory scheme? A clear improvement over the status quo ante, no? 2) TAP ran an interesting article a couple years' back exploring the posibility of regulating rather than completely legalizing drugs, maybe you would find it apropos. Can't remember the author.

wow. what a terrible post. Did someone slip you a mickey?

Ads for heroin after cartoons and selling it out of ice cream trucks is preposterous (though it did make for a good cheech and chong movie). Even without regulation, the market would surely prevent this from happening. What parent would let their kids watch cartoons on a channel with ads for heroin or allow the kids to buy ice cream from the ice cream/heroin truck. If I were a competitor, I would make a big deal about how my cartoons have no ads for heroin and my ice cream truck sells only ice cream, not heroin.

If I had to predict where this stuff would be sold if unregulated, it would be in existing adult outlets that wouldn't face competitive repercussions for selling heroin and crack along with their fritos, diet coke and candy bars.

Matt's question is kind of like when a four-year-old asks you "What's sex?" or "Why did the French Revolution happen?"

But we can clear away a little underbrush. Almost all Americans at some point in their life will use some heavy-duty opioid painkillers. And 99% of these people will stop using those drugs when they don't need them. Studies have repeatedly shown that if you let the patient control the dosage, they will use less than if you let the doctor or the nurse control the dosage.

However, if you did use morphine regularly all your life, the effect on your body would be little to none (assuming you can get pharmaceutical grade morphine).

Much the same is true of the other drugs. Most people who try them quit voluntarily, and of those who continue to use them, most use them recreationally and it does not affect their performance on or off the job.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the effect of our drug policies on our national life. We've spent a trillion over the past 30 years fighting drugs, and American rates of drug use are higher than most similar nations. We put more people in prison than any other country in the world.

But who wants to go on and on? Instead, I will just ask why Matt thinks his local sheriff is better qualified to prescribe his medications than his doctor? Does Matt want to make alcohol and cigarettes just as illegal as marijuana? Does he think alcohol prohibition was a success and Repeal was a big mistake? Or has he ever, in fact, learned anything at all about psychoactive substances and why people use them?

It's hard to believe he has, judging from this post.

What if someone wants to do some hard drugs, just for fun, and they're not an "addict"? Prison for them, right? - too many steves

No, no prison for them. Maybe a misdemeanor fine. Prison, however, for whoever sold them the heroin. And because heroin will be available for free to anyone who has an addict card, there's no repeat business for heroin dealers, and that business will simply dry up -- high risk, no return. Pretty soon, it gets fairly hard for that potential casual first-time user to find anyone who will sell them heroin.

Just wanted to put in this, from my current fave song of addiction:

I was thinking I could clean up for Christmas
and then call it a day
tell you I was sorry that I made you a witness
to my moral decay
and that once upon a time
I believed it was a victimless crime

-- Aimee Mann, "Clean Up for Christmas"

Serial catowner seems to be typical of white middle class liberals who rail against the "war on drugs" because it deprives her of weekend grass. That would seem to be her real interest.

So we shouldn't be worried that she's venturing into the wilds of Detroit to buy real drugs. (Wilds of vast expanses of inner city Detroit that have reverted back to wilderness due to the ravages of loss of manufacturing jobs and the crack epidemic.}

It would be helpful if middle class boomers would specify exactly which drugs they're so concerned about legalizing.

Ok, there is something people don't understand about back when morphine and opium and marijuana and cocaine were legal, and that is, they were often the best medication available for the problems people had.

You see, young people, medical science did not always work the wonders that it does today. In fact, 1900 is sometimes referred to as the watershed year when doctors started doing more good than harm.

In 1910 nobody knew about antibiotics, there was no vaccine for polio, almost no cancers were treatable, a broken bone usually resulted in a permanent deformity and permanent pain, nobody had a clue about how to treat an ulcer, an irritable bowel, impetigo or asthma, etc etc etc

At the time, a conservative course of pain management was often the best course available.

Yea verily, and it came to pass, that in 1918 a man named Flexner had a briliant idea about how doctors could be come a state-sanctioned monopoly and get control of the dispensing of medications. They cut a deal with the druggists, went to the state legislatures, and we ended up with two new monopolies, druggists and doctors.

Even this situation didn't need to be as bad as things have turned out, but 15 years later Prohibition was repealed and a lot of policemen were faced with the unpleasant prospect of finding a real job. Reefer madness! Almost before you could say "Satanic marijuana Mexican cult" marijuana was made illegal, and the Dupont investment in chlorine to bleach the pulp made from the Hearst investment in pulpwood forests was (were?) safe!

Of course, when we consider the medical uses developed for pot by illegal users in spite of the opposition of the government, and what we're learning now about the cannabinoid pathways of the brain, it may appear that some of the decisions made in the past were suboptimal. To say the least.

In any case, the supposedly harmful effects of what were actually the best medications of the time were just the excuses used by people who made them illegal for other reasons.

It would be helpful if middle class boomers would specify exactly which drugs they're so concerned about legalizing.

As far as I can see you are the type of white liberal who is trying to do people favors by sticking them through the prison system.

Ol' "Jan" here is sure full of it. Yes, parts of Detroit are pretty green- because the city condemned abandoned properties, bulldozed the wreckage into cellars, let grass grow over all, and now the properties can't be sold without cleaning up the toxic products (like asbestos) that were buried on the sites.

The cause of Detroit's decay was the same as every other city of the period- the move to the suburbs, and the financial failure of the industries that had ruled the town. Drugs played a role that was tiny to nonexistent in the decline, as even white people can understand when they study the matter soberly.

But Jan's comment is a good example of how "drugs" are used to confuse and obscure the real causes of decay and poverty.

"I have no problem letting people buy cyanide if they want to kill themselves, but I have some issues with selling it to people who want to commit murder."

Although, I suppose, a gun would be both an easier and a more effective thing than cyanide to buy for murder in most of the continental US. Or a really big knife. Or a large brick and a tall ladder to drop it from. "It could be used for murder" is not particularly a reason to ban something.

"It is ONLY really used for murder" is a vastly better one that would probably apply both to many non-hunting guns and to cyanide.

Those who want to kill themselves, will, I'm confident, continue to have plenty of non-cyanide options.

The idea that people who want their crack now will stand in line at a government office when they can walk down the block and buy from their reliable supplier is fantasy. And the idea that it would be better for the government to be the provider of crack, meth, and heroin is insanity. - Jan

Jan, I suggest you travel to Australia or the Netherlands, lands of fantasy and insanity -- and, of course, much lower levels of heroin use, injecting drug-related HIV transmission, and heroin-related crime. I also suggest that you explain WHY it would be worse for the government to be the supplier of heroin. As everyone knows, anything the government hands out for free instantly becomes uncool. This is not crazy fantasy stuff; it operates in Europe, and it works. If you think it can't work here because we're multiracial and they're not, because we have ghettoes and they don't, blah blah blah - look up the definition of "banlieu", or pay a visit to majority-thug-Moroccan Osdorp.

Incidentally, I don't make the same claims about meth or crack, because I don't know whether this approach works with them. As serious drug experts will tell you, every drug is different and requires different approaches.

Also: since you apparently believe it would impossible for the US gov't to provide services to injecting drug users, would you classify the extant government-funded methadone clinic infrastructure as a fantasy? Or would that be insanity?

Andrew Edwards -

Points taken; it was a footnote that occurred to me in the middle of my post. Of course, it'd be easier to kill someone and fake a suicide with cyanide than a handgun or a knife, but that's really stretching the point.

Matt's using crack cocaine as an example is funny, because crack only exists because pure cocaine is illegal.

OK, if you don't think heroin should be sold to any adult who wants it, riddle me this: let's say someone buys heroin, who isn't supposed to. What do you do to him? Prison? No, we're civilized now, we've decriminalized heroin.

Um, you'd probably suspend the license to sell of the vendor who'd violated the regulation, similar to what you'd do now to an offending liquor store. The risk of losing profits is a substantial incentive to follow the law.

No actually I'm a white liberal who spent two years nursing crack babies, and worse, three and four year old formally addicted crack kids taken out of situations of abuse who who had no words, who could not talk, and did not know their names.

Those kids are fifteen now. There isn't even a ghost of a possibility that even one of those kids is OK today. The crack epidemic was unique in its effect on the community because so many women succumbed to it and its effects were so quickly debilitating. Crack's addicting potential turned endless neighborhoods of poor but still maintaining single mother headed households into neighborhoods of abandoned children.

Legalizing crack will not make this better. Taking the law enforcement out of the situation will make it worse. It will be come a mexican free for all.

There is no such thing as crack babies. Cocaine doesn't pass through the placenta. Crack heads don't eat, they usually drink alcohol, and while you almost surely shouldn't be using cocaine when you are pregnant. The crack baby phenomenon was an excuse to write people off. See a number of different studies (Chasnoff was probably the definitive) conducted since that fell off the radar like satanic cults, the day care pedophile ring, etc..

Say they did exist. You are still in the position of defending a system that creates a per capita prison population that can only be found elsewhere in the most authoritarian regimes on the planet. If you are looking for the egg in this chicken problem it's not drugs. They have drugs elsewhere.

Many babies are born to mothers who are alcoholic, often with the same consequences. So should alcohol be banned? Or should I say banned again?

Also, forget legalization. I would settle for Law enforcement and prosecutors loosing their immunity when they behave badly. The way things are now, smoking marijuana carries far more consequences than an overzealous DA and local law enforcement who wind up killing innocent people.

Lastly, isn't it Liberals who have been near hysterical in their accusations of totalitarianism, dicatorship, criminality and other assorted misbehavior by the Republicans. Well I guess we see now, the new boss is the same as the old boss. I can't wait until 2008 to vote against the Democratic knucklehead I just voted for two months ago.

I volunteered for two years on a ward in a hospital in Chicago specifically designed to take care of infants born addicted to cocaine. We were given definite instructions on how to hold and comfort them in their withdrawal. The babies on the ward were there because their mothers were crack addicts and their babies were therefore also addicted. Your information about cocaine use not addicting the unborn baby is wrong and I hope you will not pass this bad information on to anyone else.

I think it's awful that so many people are in jail because they can't think of anything to do with their lives except to use and sell drugs that make them stupid. I wish they could do something better with their lives, especially something that isn't illegal. But I don't see why making something that is overall bad for the society at large should be made legal because some people can't keep themselves from being manifestly stupid.

There is no reason why society should excuse people for the behaviors that result from taking drugs that make them stupid, violent, lazy, irresponsible, promiscuous, criminal, abusive or anything else. If that's what you do, that's what you are.

If you don't want people to say that's what you are, then stop it.

Jan, I don't even think what I said is a subject of serious debate anymore. Those kids surely needed help and God bless you for being there.

On the other hand, I'm really, really, glad that drugs don't make everyone into folks who want to see people thrown into dark, dank holes for doing things that are illegal and bad for them because if they did they would really scare the crap out of me.

Jan, I don't even think what I said is a subject of serious debate anymore. Those kids surely needed help and God bless you for being there.

On the other hand, I'm really, really, glad that drugs don't make everyone into folks who want to see people thrown into dark, dank holes for doing things that are illegal and bad for them because if they did they would really scare the crap out of me.

Violent, Criminal and abusive behavior are already illegal, so why not just punish people for that behavior.

Stupidity, Laziness, irresponsibilty, and promiscuity are not. But if they are ever outlawed, we will all find ourselves as tenants of the Gray Bar Hotel someday Jan. Yourself included. Don't tell me that you and everyone you know hasn't exhibited at least one of the four traits I just listed above at one time or another.

I find it odd that you would mix all of those traits together.

As for personal stories, I was raided by the DEA in 1991 because I was guilty of renting a house from an owner who was growing Marijuana at another location. Because of rent checks I had written the owner, I was charged with felony distribution. 7 months and several thousand dollars later all charges were dropped. During the entire 7 months, I was harrassed, threatened and browbeaten by the authorities to plead guilty to something I didn't do. My expereince was this, you cannot trust the Government to do the right thing. Once you get caught up in the system, it becomes a game that the Government cannot admit they made a mistake. Just like a stalker whose only hope is that you will eventually give in out of fear for your life. My Attorney told me that I was lucky I was white. If I was Mexican or Black, they may have chanced a trial despite the total absence of any hard evidence. I had a scale that measured in ounces ( I was working out and watching my diet) and baggies in the kitchen (everybody I know has these), that plus my rent checks to the landlord were the only "proof" they had.

This is the system you support. Nice theories about how to make perfect world where people are industrious, intelligent, Chaste and responisble, are the fantasy. My experience was reality.

On second thought, I like your idea better. Although I wanted to add a few things to the list that can result in hard time.

Arrogance
Being inconsiderate
Vanity
Gluttony

Oh, and Basketball.

Do you know how many inner city kids neglect their education betting on the one in a million chance that they will become star in the NBA? Ban it I say.

There's a lot of fanatical ignorance here -- especially from Jan, who was very quick to smear serial catowner without any evidence.

Jan, you have crack babies and you have fetal alcohol syndrome babies. Both very bad. Crack is illegal, alcohol is legal. But all you has to do is look at a crack baby, and that also tells you that the present drug laws are right, and also that Serial Catowner is a middleclass drug user. You have a lot of passion but no logic and only scattered facts, and the way you smear people is creepy. ("Mexican free for all"? I'm beginning to see where you're coming from).

Almost no one here has tried to sort out the intrinsic costs of drug use from those caused by illegality, inflated prices, and the criminal lifestyle that comes with drug use. For example, legalization would NOT mean that the thug on the streetcorner would be selling drugs with impunity. Legalization would put the thug out of business.

Pharmaceutical cocaine used to be routinely used (I believe tha novacaine is a similar compound) and when it was, it was far cheaper than street cocaine. (The link below, behind a pay wall, is all I could find on the subject just now). Much the same is true of heroin. Sorting out the costs rising from the high cost and the costs rising from the drug itself really needs to be done.

The present policy is particularly fiendish, because we have used the law to multiply the price of some of the few substances people are willing to ruin their lives in order to get. If something non-addictive is outlawed, people will mostly forget about it and it will go away. But addictive drugs don't go away.

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/003465303322369696?journalCode=rest

I am not in favor of flat legalization, but the argument here is abysmally bad.

Jan's 10:54 is totally loony. The failure of so-called "community mental health" tells us nothing whatsoever about drug legalization. Two completely different, unrelated things, and community mental health was never properly implemented -- it was mostly used just as a cost-saving measure.

They only thing that the two things have in common are that they make Jan unhappy because he/she feels that they have forced or will force him/her to deal with unpleasant people on the street.

My brother lives in Vancouver, BC, which has a tolerance policy for most drugs rather like the Dutch policy. Vancouver is not Utopia but it probably better off than most American cities.

And people -- Detroit was ruined by the collapse of the American auto industry. Not by black teenagers on dope.

"So here's where I'm at: I don't want to be around people maxed on crack, meth or heroin. I don't want stores in my neighborhood selling them, and I don't want my town government handing them out."

You don't get to make that choice, other than by staying home. Everyone else is making the choice on how to get their heads up without consulting you. You're around 'em now.

"So why should I want it legalized?"

Why should you care? What you want is a fantasy world that a pretty major use of governmental and societal resources, such as clucking disapproval, have been unable to create anywhere. We could go full-on Facist and put a stop to drug use. (Make drug possession a hanging offense, drug test everyone randomly, recruit everyone to spy on their neighbor)

Oh, and your crack about where Serial Catowner is buying his/her drugs shows some pretty serious misinformation. To the extent that drugs destroyed Detroit, suburbanites contributed heavily by driving in from Farmington Hills to buy coke. My friends who grew up in the suburbs over there bought pot at home, but usually drove to the city for harder stuff. They contributed more to the actual forces that destroyed Detroit, however.

"They" being suburanites in general contributing to the actual, mostly non-drug, reasons for Detroit's current state.

The "crack epidemic", much like the more recent "meth head" hysteria, is hype and distaste for the class using the drug (poor people) more than anything else. Crack was bad because it was cheap and used by inner city black people. Regular cocaine wasn't so bad because it is used primarily by middle- to upper-class white people. Meth is bad because it's mostly a poor, rural drug. MY should be able to see the class politics at work here, I would think.

Matthew Yglesias:

I consistently find it bizarre that there are some people who seem to think it would be a good idea if you could just walk into your local convenience store and pick up some heroin or crack along with your Fritos and Diet Coke.

If heroin deaths were 10 times as common with widespread legality (highly unlikely), they still wouldn't approach the deaths from tobacco.

Heroin addicts, unlike alcoholics, do not shoot up bars or run my kids over on the highways; of all the drugs, only alcohol causes significant deaths to non-users, with tobacco, from second hand smoke, a distant second.

Why do you think I should be able to pick up alcohol and tobacco, far more dangerous both to the user and the innocent than heroin, in the local convenience store, but not heroin? This is a failure of imagination at best, and mindless moralizing at worst.

But that's not how it should happen. We need some rational consistency with dangerous recreational drugs. May I suggest the model of Pennsylvania.

We are one of two states that have a state store system where alcohol can only be bought at state owned stores (except for beer). This could be extended to all dangerous, addicting drugs, including cigarettes and heroin. Picture ID and signature required.

I expect there would be an increase in deaths from heroin and cocaine, but a decrease in deaths from cigarettes and alcohol. But since a 5% drop in cigarette and alcohol deaths would balance a more than doubling of heroin deaths (not to mention the drop in deaths from the drug wars, etc) we would have fewer deaths.

To make it politically palatable (to the political bosses, not the people, the people are sheep, if they can be sold the Iraq war, we can sell them anything) I would privatize these stores and have the DEA closely monitor those awarded the franchises to see they followed the rules.

Fewer deaths, consistency in the drug laws, fewer prisoners being brutalized and sent back out to the community. What's not to like?

It's really easy for an upper class guy to think our drug policy is just fine, he's not going to go to jail if he gets arrested for these drugs. Mommy and Daddy will protect him and his money means they won't even charge him for the crime he SHOULD be charged. Yglesias repeatedly proves that he has NO clue how the law works for MOST people. He is completely clueless (or he simply doesn't care) that these drug laws ruin thousands of lives of people he wouldn't even be willing to eat lunch with.

I'm a big fan of Matt's writing most of the time, but this post tells us a lot about why the US has an insane drug policy. When a smart, well-educated liberal writes something like this, it illustrates the extent to which the propaganda function of the war on drugs has been successful with a whole generation.

I mean Matt usually would laugh at loud at a ridiculous strawman position like "heroin will be sold out of ice cream trucks." As somebody points out above, the idea that the criminal law is the only thing standing between the status quo and heroin sold out of ice cream trucks is incredibly naive.

And while I don't favor total deregulation, it seems screamingly obvious to me that total deregulation, although significantly suboptimal as a policy, would be VASTLY preferable to the current regime, which does almost incaluable damage and produces hardly any benefits, for reasons that many of the people commenting in this thread have already touched on.

Reading suggestion: Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics.

Jan consistently cites crack, meth and heroin but the prevalence of these drugs is a consequence of prohibition. I didn't go out on my 19th birthday and buy my first bathtub gin--I had a beer.

The legal precusors to crack, meth and heroin were cocaine, amphetimine and opium.

I think a legal market in these substances would provide safer, more dilute versions of these substances. Instead of crack you might have the original hi-test coca cola, instead of meth it would be legal (and useful) amphetimine, and instead of heroin you would probably see most people who choose to use opiates opting for something on the order of vicodin.

Think about it....if you drink, do you choose Everclear because it will get you drunk the fastest?

It seems we've moved past this, but I think it should be said again:

There is no such thing as crack babies.

http://www.cjr.org/issues/2004/5/voices-blake.asp

Many posters here seem to be using the "alcohol and cigarrettes are just as bad" approach to advocating drug legalisation. Tobacco is bad for you, but it is hardly mind-altering or life-destroying--to equate it with hard drugs or alcohol is absurd. It's true that habitual alcohol drinking can be worse than habitual marijuana smoking for some people, and as bad as crack or meth for others. But it is also more or less ingrained in the culture and history of western nations. More importantly, the fact that it is legal does not mean other drugs should be legal.

Sure, having small amounts of drugs shouldn't be a crime and we need to spend more money on treatment and prevention. Legalisation is a whole other matter. Arguments advocating wholesale legalisation of hard drugs are painfully naive--they forget that the laws of the polis have got to make an effort to check natural tendencies towards vice and self-destruction.

Even marijuana legalisation is difficult to imagine. One the one hand it would be nice to buy small amounts at the corner store for the weekend or special occasions, and not have to worry about getting caught or the difficulties of scoring weed (as things are now, you usually have to buy more than you want or need, which contributes to compulsive use). On the other hand it would be difficult to resist not buying a pack of (probably high quality) marijuana cigs every weekend. Those who say legalizing isn't likely to increase drug use don't understand how seductive (as well as destructive) marijuana really is. While legalisation might lead to elaborate forms of pot ettiqute (ie don't smoke in public places, don't smoke before 7pm etc.), it would surely bring about a new generation of habitual users.

Before we even have a debate about legalisation, we should experiment with the Dutch coffeeshop model in select American cities and see how that goes.

epistemology, those kinds of estimates are intrinsically vague, as it is in many cases impossible to establish a clear causality between the deaths and a single cause, such as alcohol abuse or tobacco use; that's why such estimates tend to phrase their findings using the expression "xyz-related", which has the advantage of being almost always true while evading scientific accuracy, since smoking two packs and drinking a few glasses a day probably doesn't increase your chances of longevity, but can be established as the sole or even primary reason for death in only a minority of cases (e.g. liver cirrhosis);

similarly, the use of the word "premature" needs to be clarified: life expectancy has risen by roughly ten years in the western world in the last fifty years, but that doesn't mean that a death of someone over, say, 60 and under 70 should necessarily be labeled premature - and even if those estimates were scientifically bulleproof, from a utilitarian point of view these earlier deaths are a good thing, since a lot of the costs are accrued by people living or being kept alive to a ripe old age

The most important change needed in drug policy is to end policies aimed at controlling supply. These policies are the source of the violence that often plagues drug markets and inner city neighborhoods.

There's nothing inherently "life-destroying" about any drug. The vast majority of regular users of illegal drugs don't suffer significant negative effects from their use (exactly like the vast majority of alcohol users don't become alcoholics). I've known many regular marijuana smokers, and not one of them appears to have suffered any damage from this almost completely harmless practice. (Can't say the same for my drinking friends I'm afraid).

As for smoking, lung cancer is largely a product of smoking cigarettes, and lung cancer is by far the most common form of cancer death in the USA. Does getting a fatal disease from a substance count as "life-destroying?"

Those who say legalizing isn't likely to increase drug use don't understand how seductive (as well as destructive) marijuana really is.

Please enlighten me. No, seriously.

Yes, plesae tell us more about the destructive powers of the devil weed.

Wait, scott wasn't joking?

Scott, if you find pot that "seductive," be careful. For your own sake, don't try any harder drugs.

With reference to "Jan", I have been a Registered Nurse, B.S.N., for 23 years. For five years I worked in a program that helped people with "incurable addictions". It usually took us about ten days to break the behavior pattern and help them change. Regular readers in the blogosphere may recall me commenting on these matters before.

In American drug policy you see the same foolishness as if we were to allow criminal prosecution of physicists who didn't agree to the laws of motion as stated by Bush and endorsed by a Diebold vote.

In about 1995 the American Public Health Association did a comprehensive review of the literature. Their conclusion was the Americans usually try about five psychoactive drugs before adopting a lifelong pattern of using two of them, typically alcohol and cigarettes, and that the state of public health would probably be improved if America's recreational drugs of choice were cocaine and marijuana. Shocking stuff, I'm sure, but at their convention legalization of drugs was backed by a majority.

Matt's mind-numbing ignorance flies in the face of every major commission that has studied this matter, beginning with the Indian Hemp Commission in 1895 and progressing through the U.S. Army investigations in Panama in 1926, the LaGuardia Report in 1943, the Shaeffer Commission in 1970, and right up to the most recent National Academy of Sciences report c 2000.

A lot of people don't realize that Drug Prohibition is used by major drug companies to push their patented products, always advertised as avoiding the dreaded effects of "addiction", and usually just as addictive, with added unwanted side effects, as the product they displace.

In short, criminalizing drug use has bent our entire public policy out of shape, and not in a good way. It's time for a change.

scott:

Tobacco is bad for you, but it is hardly mind-altering or life-destroying--to equate it with hard drugs or alcohol is absurd.

Are you suggesting that we ignore death, of users and those around them, and use mind-altering as the criteria for banning drugs? Then cocaine would be legal and alcohol banned. As usual with proponents of the current regime, your statements make no sense on the face of them.

Do you think addicting, mind altering dangerous drugs should be banned or not? Try to answer is some rational consistent way.

Thanks for your contribution: blind unthinking prejudice. A thousand dead a day from tobacco and you think it's not life destroying.

Let me just repeat what I said about the fiendish nature of our prohibition policy. If the government were to outlaw cinnamon, for example, and enforce the laws strictly, cinnamon use would decline almost to nothing. Cinnamon isn't a big part of most people's lives, and few wouldn't care enough to risk trouble.

But is you outlaw an addictive drug and drive its price sky high, not only do you fail at the attempt to control the drug, but you ruin people's lives. to the extent that the drugs are intrinsically as bad as is claimed, active attempts to discourage use would be justified. But cutting off supply and prosecuting users is sadistic.

Steves, Barbar, Paul...

If you don't know anyone whose daily weed smoking has harmed their health, relationships, and ability to stay in school or hold down a steady job, then count yourself blessed. Look, everybody with half a brain knows pot isn't good for you. Studies have shown that marijuana use among teens can have detrimental effects on their mental faculties (this is common sense after all). Practically every pot user understands that it harms memory and the learning process.

I wonder why I have to explain this to intelligent people.... but yes, marijuana can be destructive (to the user). It can be habit-forming. Today's "kind bud" is much more potent than the hippie weed of the 60s--the real effects of hydro over the long term are not yet properly understood. Indeed, the blase attitude towards the drug (it isn't harmful at all!) demonstrated by pampered liberalitarian types is part of the reason the public is so misinformed about its effects. It's the flip side of the "reefer madness" hysteria.

Yes, no question, the vast majority of pot users try it casually, have fun with it, and don't become regular users. But a large part of why they don't continue to use it is because it is illegal and frequently hard to find. And naturally drug use depends on socioeconomic categories--poor minorities in the inner city have more access to pot than young whites coming out of college.

I'm not discounting the possibility that legalizing might be a greater good than an evil, if you take into account the costs and consequences of the drug war as well as the potential revenues from taxing weed. I also think its less destructive than alcohol for many (if not most) people--it depends on what a specific personality is susceptible too. Certainly it doesn't lead to violence or drunk driving a la alcohol. However, it drives me nuts to see it described as harmless--I have seen too many lives damaged by pot abuse to buy into that.

So scott, you know of nobody who has been hurt by tobacco or alcohol? Since these drugs are clearly more dangerous and addicting than marijuana, why don't you favor banning them? Can you try to think this through more rationally?

scott just graduated from DARE last week. Let him show off with his new knowlege about "today's 'kind bud'"

Epistemology,

Sure, strictly speaking, tobacco is mind-altering in the sense that nicotine creates a high the user compulsively wants to repeat. As a good liberal non-smoker, I'm all for taxing the hell out of it, educating the kids, and banning it in public places. But you can't equate it with any substance (like alcohol, marijuana, cocaine) that is intoxciating to the degree that one should not work while one is on it. As long as it isn't in public, cigerette smoking doesn't harm anyone but the user. Why anyone would support legalizing other drugs while banning tobacco is beyond my comprehension.

As for your other assertions, my original post made it quite clear I am opposed to the current drug war regime--I would like to see a drug policy in the US similar to the Netherlands and other European country (which, btw, is a FAR cry from legalisation). In general I think it should be the goal of the government to promote policies that lead to less drug use and more healthy and happy citizens period. The government does have the right and the duty to act in the service of public health. But any humane government policy has to also take into account that people want what they want, and that certain drugs are going to have to be legal and tightly regulated.

So sorry if my answer isn't consistent enough--for my part I find the demand for consistency on this issue (if alcohol is legal, than other drugs MUST be legal too) perverse and counterproductive. I will say that the ends of the drug war are essentially noble ones--yet the means employed frequently conflict with these ends.

what is commonly meant by "mind-altering" with regards to drugs

you're on a long-haul flight, epistemology, and you are given the choice of your pilot using the following drugs:

a.) two packs of cigarrettes
b.) two bottles of wine
c.) a couple of joints
d.) a few lines of cocaine
e.) a heroine injection

similarily "life-destroying" in this context does not pertain to premature death (whatever that means exactly), but rather to the psychological and social ills caused by mind-altering drugs during the lifetime of the users

I know 3 to 5 people my age (~60) who've been smoking pot for 20-40 years. One has a mild lung problem. All of them have had normal job / family / home-ownership lives. They're probably better off than the alcoholics I've known in the same age group.

Tobacco is a major cause of fires too, which often harm non-smokers. And death is, in fact, life-destroying.

Toomanysteves:
Yes, plesae tell us more about the destructive powers of the devil weed.
Wait, scott wasn't joking?
Scott, if you find pot that "seductive," be careful. For your own sake, don't try any harder drugs.
------------------------------------------------------------=-

Your post reminds me of the scene in the movie "Half Baked" where Chappelle gets up before a Narcotics Anonymous audience to admit he is an addict, and then gets booed off the stage as a lightweight.

The one way that I think legalizing drugs will lead to disaster is contained in a remark from one of the commentors above: "Get the government involved and eliminate the profit motive." This is where the libertarians are right. The profit motive is, among other things, that which gives businesses an incentive to obey government regulation - since regulation is never going to work if it isn't self-regulation. The profit motive shouldn't be thought of as optimum greed. Store owners rarely point guns at their customers and demand all their money - although, of course, there would be a lot of profit in it for a time, and little cost, beyond the price of the gun. in reality, profit is thought of in terms of various levels, balanced against various costs. Selling liquor to underaged kids, which could be profitable to a liquor store, is countered by the cost of being caught and having one's liquor licence removed, which would be disastrous. Plus, of course, other liquor stores would be apt to rat you out.

The ironic thing is, the government knows this when regulating industrial goods. Banning a good - for instance, banning DDT - is done only after ascertaining that there are substitutes, for instance. The government doesn't want to face a revolt by the producers. Mostly, regulators do hear from suppliers and manufacturers when regulating industrial products, and respond to their comments. But consumer goods are banned to suit the moral biases of non-users. This is rather absurd.

The legalization of drugs won't work to stop the collateral costs of black markets if the government simply takes over the manufacture and distribution of drugs. That will always fail. A regulatory system that accepts drug dealing as a legitimate business has to be the first step towards taking down the drug war. Then it can affix the appropriate regulatory structure to the business.

Novakant, the answer is "d". An experienced pilot on cocaine. A lot of pilots use emphetamine already. Amphetamine and cocaine can be performance-enhancing until the crash arives.

I'd be concerned if he'd been going to long without sleep, though.

what is commonly meant by "mind-altering" with regards to drugs

you're on a long-haul flight, epistemology, and you are given the choice of your pilot using the following drugs:

a.) two packs of cigarrettes
b.) two bottles of wine
c.) a couple of joints
d.) a few lines of cocaine
e.) a heroine injection

similarily "life-destroying" in this context does not pertain to premature death (whatever that means exactly), but rather to the psychological and social ills caused by mind-altering drugs during the lifetime of the users

Um, I really hope that everyone would prefer a pilot on two joints to a pilot on two bottles of wine.

This is a sensible choice, right?

Yglesias isn't constructing and attacking a straw man. He is quite reasonably pointing out that if you are going to harrangue on about how we must "end the drug war," and how anyone who disagrees is maintaining an irrational faith based position, you are need to answer the question: "end the drug war in favor of what?" or, "which aspects of current drug regulation do you think constitute the drug 'war'"? Or any number of other similar questions. The assertion that anyone who disagrees with you is irrational is a pretty shallow assertion if you are unable to explain exactly what it is you stand for. And "ending the war on drugs" isn't an answer.

I thought his post was pretty clear on this.

Its like saying, "we need to fix social security, and if you disagree you're a moron!" but then getting pissy when people say, "how?"

And naturally drug use depends on socioeconomic categories--poor minorities in the inner city have more access to pot than young whites coming out of college.

Just thought I'd flag this. Because as we know college students have no access to pot.

O for heavens sakes. See Kaiser-Permanente's 20 year longitudinal study comparing chronic potsmokers who smoked every day with people who didn't smoke at all, and finding no significant difference in the health of the two groups. Honestly, if you can't crack a book, at least crack a magazine and learn some facts once in a while.

One of my favorites was the British study (c 2003) that found that people who had three glasses of wine would be better drivers if they smoked a joint before they left the tavern to drive home.

Now, who are the real lawbreakers? The International Labor Organization arm of the United Nations ranks nations based on compliance with labor laws, and the U.S. ranks in the lowest 20th percentile, along with countries like Iran and Afghanistan. This, rather than the supposed "addictive" qualities of drugs, is a likely culprit in our drug-taking national proclivities.

Or, IOW, it's enough to drive a man to drink.

To answer MY's question: the "War on Drugs" is the Federal-level policy. Note that in the linked piece, Jerry Taylor is talking about Federal this and that. It must necessarily be Federal level to work at the level of extremity it has evolved into.

The immediate result of ending the "War on Drugs" is thus fairly predictable: nothing at all. All 50 states and the DC already have laws against (most) drugs. The number of Federal prisoners in for drug offenses is small compared to those convicted by the several states.

After abolition, and given time, the laboratory of the states, aka Federalism, works its magic. Presumably marijuana, at least, would be legalized in places, first medically and then for possession in small amounts, and eventually maybe fully legalized. And that state won't go to hell because MJ is mild stuff. And we work from there towards further legalization, where it seems reasonable.

Scott - you are right about weed. It's very bad for people. We better ban it so that people don't use it.

Scott at 1:50:

Yes, no question, the vast majority of pot users try it casually, have fun with it, and don't become regular users.

True.

But a large part of why they don't continue to use it is because it is illegal and frequently hard to find.

Wrong. If you want it, you can get it, anywhere.

And naturally drug use depends on socioeconomic categories--poor minorities in the inner city have more access to pot than young whites coming out of college.

Totally ludicrous.

novakant:

Since the wine and heroin are clearly the worst, then you are arguing that they should be banned, and the rest made legal. No? Just more nonsense. This blog is part of the reality based community. If you want to spout patent, inconsistent, illogical nonsense, take it elsewhere.

If you propose to ban drugs on the basis of their addictive potential, danger to users or society, or their mind-altering potential, then clearly cocaine and and marijuana would not be illegal and tobacco and alcohol legal. Be honest. You mindlessly believe that, since the government bans them, that illegal drugs must be worse.

By the way, the US Air Force long had a policy of giving amphetamines (essentially meth) to pilots who had to fly for many hours. Not alcohol, not tobacco, but the illegal recreational drug amphetamine. Now what was your point again?

Yes, no question, the vast majority of pot users try it casually, have fun with it, and don't become regular users.
But a large part of why they don't continue to use it is because it is illegal and frequently hard to find.

Wrong. If you want it, you can get it, anywhere.

No live, Scott is certainly right on that point. Pot is pretty hard to get for most middle class people. I was a casual pot smoker through college, but have hardly smoked it since - it's just a hassle to find a dealer and worry about quality, and you can't just run out on a whim and buy a joint the way you can pick up a six pack of beer. On top of that, most potential casual pot smokers who have jobs, houses and kids don't want to get involved with the drug scene thanks to our government's overzealousness. If pot was as readily available as cigarettes I'm sure I would smoke 3 or 4 joints a month, and I'd be a happier better-adjusted person for it. Our pot laws are ridiculous, but it is probably true that pot use would increase a lot if it were legalized. And I think that's fine personally.

According to the DEA, the majority of people who regularly use illegal drugs *only* use marijuana. Based on that fact alone, I think it would make sense to examine legalizing marijuana apart from other drugs. Since most drug users only use marijuana, legalizing marijuana would cut the number of illegal drug users in half. Taking marijuana out of the illegal drug picture would totally eliminate many drug trafficking networks and would reduce the amount of money flowing into crime and corruption. Just as a matter of practical politics, it would tend to decrease the allegiance of marijuana users with the illegal drug industry.

Obviously the consequences of marijuana legalization should be considered, but they should be compared against the status quo, not against "what would happen if no one used marijuana"? Today marijuana is illegal and anyone who wants to get some can get some. Anyone who wants to get a lot of it can get as much as they can afford. Granted access to marijuana would be somewhat easier if it were legal, but would that easier access lead to a dramatic increase in use and abuse of marijuana?

I doubt it. I doubt that there are many people who haven't tried marijuana strictly because it was illegal who, if it were legal, would not only try it but become total potheads. I doubt that there are many people who have quit smoking marijuana solely because it was illegal and, were it legal, would relapse into a Cheech and Chong haze. I doubt that there are a significant number of people who are being kept away from substance abuse issues simply because marijuana is illegal.

Well, Vanya, I guess we can play dueling anecdotes: I'm in my mid-40s and have smoked pot maybe twice a year for the last fifteen years or so, and there has never been a time when I couldn't find some within a day or so if I wanted it.

What isn't an anecdote, but a fact, is that pot is the biggest cash crop in the country. It's all over the place. If you want it enough, which does not have to be all that much, it is indeed about as easy to get as cigarettes.

I went from using it maybe a couple times a week to maybe a couple times a year not because it is illegal, or hard to find, but because that's how I feel like using it. Isn't that the simplest explanation?

Drug prohibition is the most destabilizing domestic policy in America today. It is, by the FBI's own reports, responsible for nearly 60% of the total crime in the U.S. When we could buy heroin and cocaine from the Sears, Roebuck catalog (prior to 1914), when we were actually encouraged to take these drugs, we had literally no drug crime - and the addiction rate was under 2%, virtually identical to that of today.

Repealing drug prohibition will not end the quiet desperation of addction (and it may even trend higher for a time before settling down to its historic level of under 2%), but the massive and unprecedented reduction in crime will make America the freest and safest country on the planet.

I wrote a book titled The Naked Truth About Drugs, and I'll send a free copy to anyone reading this post - just email me a mailing address. Reading it, you will see why I believe repealing drug prohibition will be the most significant law and order legislation of the 21st century.

If you legalize marijuana, more people will use it. Period. End of the line.

Yes, I know, we have at opposite ends, "I'd never use the stuff because it's so low-class" and "Whatever, anyone can get it whenever they want." And there are certainly people (a lot of people) who fit into both of those categories. But the point is, that's not where you look for changes. You look for changes at the margin.

Legalizing marijuana will make it easier to get, and probably will make it cheaper as well. That means that people who, right now, would buy it if they had a little more money, or who would buy it but don't want to go to the trouble of finding a dealer, or who would buy it but are nervous about being arrested, will buy it.

Honestly, this is a really, really simple prospect. Whenever you make it more attractive to do something, more people will do that thing. It doesn't matter what the thing in question is.

Now, will the marginal change be very high? Maybe not. It could be that few people are at the margin right now. It's just vaguely possible that so few people are at the margin that the upswing will be almost unnoticeable. Personally, I doubt that, but it at least is an arguable position. What isn't an arguable position is "there won't be any more use of marijuana if it's legalized."

Personally, I would expect to see a modest upswing in the number of users -- probably a fairly slow ramp up as social pressures rebalance, followed by a peak as people experiment, and then a drop back down to a level that's still higher than the old status quo as the novelty wears off. I'd guess that if marijuana were legalized at reasonable price tomorrow, ten years from now you'd probably see around 120%, +/- 10% the current number of smokers. That's purely my personal intuition, of course.

I think you'd also see a fairly dramatic upswing in the amount smoked by users. That's where the legality and price margin would be a big deal -- there are plenty of people who are pretty committed pot smokers who are limited in how much they smoke mainly by a.) their budget and b.) the need to be at least mildly discrete at least some of the time.

This would all probably have some people running around tearing out their hair, and indeed, some negative social effect.

It would probably not have anything like the negative social effect of current police practices, or the money that goes into crime, or the prison population, or the coutroom overcrowding, that the current insane drug policy has. So I support marijuana legalization. But I don't try to pretend that there's no downside. It's just the the downside is almost certainly massively smaller than the upside.

TO: Michael Sullivan on January 4, 2007 06:32 PM

"If you legalize marijuana, more people will use it."

Not at all necessarily true. More people, especially children, have access to drugs today because the sellers are addicts, gangsters and predators who do not have the morals and ethics of society to concern them. Put marijuana and other drugs into the hands of responsible, regulated, licensed and taxed members of the community and they will respect the morals of the community they have a vested interest in. this will significantly reduce drug sales to children.

The Swiss have been treating incurable addicts with heroin under a regulated program that 1. gets the addicts out of the crime economic cycle. since addicts commit most of the street crime they have succeeded in reducing crime. 2. By getting the addicts into clinics the addicts are no longer perceived, by young people, as romantic rebels. They are just sick people. the real result is that young people there are not interested in becoming sick people. Fewer addicts is the result.

Swiss heroin model reporting benefits September 4, 2006

"In Switzerland, the medicalisation of heroin use has helped change the image of users: from rebels to losers," Nordt said. "In the eyes of the young, they're mostly just sick people, forced to get medical help."

In America the drug warriors tell kids to "just say no".

Isn't it amazing how all these wacked-out drug-defenders are so hot to cite statistics and studies and factual data they've read in their desparate attempts to back up their CAH-RAYZAY ideas? That's the kind of nonsense you don't have to listen to from us sound right-thinking anti-drug patriots, cause we all know in our hearts that we're right.

My complete essay response to Mr. Yglesias HERE

Matthew fails to understand the question, and many hear then get into an irrelevant discussion on whether drugs are dangerous.

The question posed by Jerry Talor is: "Exactly what would it take to convince you that the drug war was causing more harm than good?" There is no "compared to what" part to that question. It is simple. An equation taking a look at the harms of the drug war, vs. the benefits of the drug war. Simple. But one that prohibitionists refuse to answer.

So here we go off the top of my head:

Harms: Over $30 billion a year in taxpayer costs * Creating a huge obscenely profitable black market * Violence from criminals protecting profits * Deteriorating inner cities * An incarceration rate for black males over 6 times that of apartheid in South Africa * the United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prison population * drug-war based foreign policy causing destruction of Latin American countries * obscene profits leading to corruption of foreign leaders and our own police * increased militarization of police * thousands dead from the tactics of police in the drug war * thousands dead from drug overdoses, tainted drugs and fear of getting assistance that would not have happened under legalization * HIV epidemic in the IV drug community * loss of civil liberties * lack of respect for law enforcement * hypocrisy of public officials and pundits * development of such aberrations as crack, meth labs, etc. (just like the alcohol stills durin