I've worked in a drug addiction treatment service on a voluntary basis and the devastation caused to addicts, their friends and families, and to wider society is huge.  I would support ANYTHING that could be shown to reduce that suffering but as far as I can see more effective law enforcement against pushers has to be a large part of the solution - insofar as their is a solution.  

Increasing the self-esteem and social prospects of those who get into (especially heroin) addiction is another large part of the solution, but a lot of drug abuse today is by people with money and prospects looking for even more thrills at everyone else's expense.  Sorry, but I just don't buy libertarian tolerance in that context.

Index of Frank's Diaries

This Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA  crash landed on
September 24, 2007 after it ran out of fuel over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula
it had a cargo of several tons of Cocaine on board now documents have turned
up on both sides of the Atlantic that link this Cocaine Smuggling Gulfstream
II jet aircraft # N987SA that crashed in Mexico to the CIA who used it on at
least 3 rendition flights from Europe and the USA to Guantanamo's infamous
torture chambers between 2003 to 2005.

Source: WHO Europe, Eurocare (European Alcohol Policy Alliance) and the Institute of Alcohol Studies.

....Something to think about in terms of priorities.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Thanks for your little summaries of comment threads, btw. I find them quite useful.

Imagine that.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Also I don't exactly hear people saying the right to take drugs. I think I'm hearing a lot of we have no choice - all the alternatives are worse.

With guns, there actually seems to be some direct benefit to banning them.

_{aspiring to genteel poverty}

Frank Schnittger:

I've only been able to follow this conversation in spots, and I don't have much time,  so please forgive me if I misunderstand or if I have missed something.

The arguments for legalization of hard drugs drugs seem to be:

1. People have a right to have some fun in their lives.  Alcohol and cigarettes are legal, so why not "hard" drugs.

2. Hard drugs are not necessarily all that damaging to health in themselves

3. many of the harmful effects are a consequence of them being illegal and uncontrolled - e.g. dirty needles, contaminated product, uncontrolled dosages, uneducated users

4. Addiction is as much a socially learned behaviour as it is a physiological disorder, if not more so

5. OK some people may get addicted, have violent reactions etc. but that is a problem that should be handled medically

6.  Criminalisation creates a huge class of unjustly convicted criminals

7.  The costs of drug related crime to society are huge and could be much reduced by legalisation

8. Criminalisation serves the interests of corrupt elites and security organisations

9. Prohibition has been shown not to work in relation to Alcohol

10.  Things couldn't be much worse than they currently are

anything else I should add?

A LITTLE BIT LESS EDGY

--so why were YOU rude about her?  Not anyone else, not any nasty person in Drugtown, just YOU, mate, being rude.

http://www.inyerface-theatre.com/what.html

(You already told us you only admire Jerome--hey!  BOOM!  Your eyebrows are on fire!)

Mind you, I think this may be a US/UK thing (honestly!) as my experience is that the underlying agression (BOOM!  HEADSHOT!) that generates rudeness and spikiness is...I dunno...a function of an uncaring...what; society?  Fundamental economic inequality?

Thing is, I already KNOW there are rude and spiky people around--I spend my days trying to keep their tone to a minimum because IT ESCALATES AGRESSION!

Or maybe it's cathartic, heh?

Anyways,

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

On the other hand, the only licensed sellers can be made to check ID and can be fined / incarcerated for violating rules.

Many "hard drugs" are damaging to health especially when taken over a prolongued period of time.

Alcohol is most definitely a hard drug by this rule.

If you need drugs to enjoy yourself, escape from reality, etc. you have a bigger and different problem which needs to be addressed

So, when you have a family or social gathering involving food, do you prefer incredibly tasty and interesting food or do you just go get McDonald's? Would you consider it necessary to have a good setting and food for a good social meeting? Also, drugs can be, like art, music, food and so forth, a sublime experience for the senses and the mind. It doesn't have to be (and for many casual users) this horrible cycle of violence, dependence and consumption just to maintain a "normal" attitude (or stave off withdrawal).

Legalising and regulating hard drugs ...

Do doctors and pharmacists prescribe alcohol and cigarettes?

It is impossible to regulate how even legally dispensed hard drugs will be taken ....

We can't do that with them being illegal either, so I think this is irrelevant. Worse, with them illegal a relatively responsible user can't be sure they aren't taking say MDMA cut with too much caffeine or with speed or whatever. This makes it harder for people to regulate their own usage. When I drink alcohol, I don't have to worry it is mixed with wood alcohol or has meth in it.

Crime will be with us always. Criminals will simply move on to other activities if drug trafficking becomes less profitable.

Not really. A great deal of crime went away after Prohibition ended.

The US will always have a war on something.

I don't think this is an argument for continued criminalization. Just a criticism of US political culture.

It will make drug hard drug usage much more widespread.  (How can we substantiate or refute this claim?   Did alcohol consumption go up after the Prohibition - yes)

I think prohibition was a distinctly different case, as previous to prohibition, drinking was a general social activity, taken part in by a vast majority of the population.  Hard drugs were not an indulgence of almost every family before the drug misuse laws were introduced.

It will expose children, disabled, socially inadequate and other vulnerable groups to greater peer pressures to experiment

I would say there would be less peer pressure, as there would no longer be the pressure to rebel.

There are already huge social costs associated with alcohol, tobacco, and the over- prescription of prescribed drugs. Why make that worse? We need to be more restrictive on drug use, not less. Campaigns to reduce alcohol consumption (drink driving) and smoking are having some success.

Campaigns to reduce smoking and alcahol consumption have succeeded because they have been based on medical fact. From the beginning much of the campaigns in the drug war have been based on Propaganda, (For example see Reefer Madness) When your users see the information they are being supplied is considerably disconnected from their experience, not only is the campaign going to ineffective, it will reduce the believability of future campaigns. I cant track it down at the moment, but a servey of Government anti drug campaigns in Manchester showed that every single government anti drug campaign since the 1970's had actually increased the number of drug users. (This may however be down to more accurate surveys after each campaign)

Many "hard drugs" are damaging to health especially when taken over a prolongued period of time. New ones are becoming available all the time and we don't have much data on their short, medium and long term effects yet

There are in fact good figures for this and many of the traditional hard drugs, if produced to medical quality are in fact particularly safe for health. Figures for this come from NHS supported addicts who were being supplied  at the time of the missuse of drugs act.

I'll answer the rest tomorrow, I was up too late last night.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

# It will make drug hard drug usage much more widespread.  (How can we substantiate or refute this claim?   Did alcohol consumption go up after the Prohibition - yes)

I see lots wrong with this argument, mainly its lack of subtlety (but yes, it will be used so...)  How about:

Step 1 - legalise soft drugs--marijuana, magic mushrooms, ecstacy/MDMA (sold like alcohol and cigarettes and with information leaflets in packets as to dosage, effects, precautions, etc.)  Wait 6 months.  

Step 2 - legalise the weaker forms of "hard" drugs (though I'd like to lose the word "hard" if possible): opium and coca leaves.

Wait 6 months.

Step 3 - Licence chemists to issue the remaining hard drugs (cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine) following the dutch model

Maybe Step 3 should be incorporated with Step 1, but I suggest that the demand for Step 3 drugs is a function of the illegality of Step 1/2 drugs.

The "They drank more after the repeal of prohibition" argument should be debunked as far as possible.  The numbers are very dubious (how to tell how much people were drinking during prohibition?) and the rise in and of itself doesn't tell us how this affected society.

#  It will expose children, disabled, socially inadequate and other vulnerable groups to greater peer pressures to experiment

This sounds all wrong to me.  Multiple Sclerosis sufferers benefit from marijuana (among other things it's a muscle relaxant.)  My experience of the socially inadequate is that they smoke more grass (and I presume take other illegal substances) than the wider population at present (my experience may be skewed of course, but I see it as a function of social marginalisation.)  At present all the above groups are exposed to peer pressure to experiment, however they experiment with substances that have had no "legal" controls placed on their quality and with no "legal" information as to dos, don'ts etc.  Someone with better social services experience could write this better, but just as it stands I have to ask: Why would they be more likely to use?  Once drugs are legalised the govt. can lose its hypocrisy and produce a new health model.  I just don't really get this argument, I suppose.

#  There are already huge social costs associated with alcohol, tobacco, and the over- prescription of prescribed drugs.  Why make that worse?  We need to be more restrictive on drug use, not less.  Campaigns to reduce alcohol consumption (drink driving) and smoking are having some success.

Again, I'd like to debunk the assumption.  Smokers on average die younger; the taxes they pay on cigarettes are a net benefit to the taxpayer.  Alcohol is a social issue which can only be solved by social interventions (such as building some factories which make wind turbines!  Drug costs are paid where the poor live I guess.)  Rather than ask "Why make it worse", ask: "Would these social costs be reduced by making alcohol and tobacco illegal?"  And again, a non-smoking, non-drinking population will age, get alzheimers, arthritis, suffer organ failure, the whole gamut--and how about diet?  Which leads to the end point: It is education that is needed, and the period leading up to legalisation would be a perfect time to really get to grips with what "a healthy lifestyle" means and promote it.

#  Many "hard drugs" are damaging to health especially when taken over a prolongued period of time.  New ones are becoming available all the time and we don't have much data on their short, medium and long term effects yet

Drugs are only damaging if taken at an incorrect dosage/frequency, that's the simple fact.  Sniff too much cocaine--heart attack.  Sniff a line once a month (assuming quality, which is what legalisation would give you), the physical effect is nada.  Really, nada.  The drug is not strong enough, and the body is resistant enough to suffer NO long term effects.  Ditto any other drug (unless the drug is dangerously toxic at the level of a single dose, in which case it should remain illegal--but I don't think there'll be too many takers for such a drug!)  New drugs can be licenced the way any other drugs are licenced (control trials etc.)

# We are promoting a culture of drug dependency.  reducing people to Zombies instead of educating them to be self-confident, self-reliant independent citizens who develop a greater capacity to deal with their "issues"

This is the moral majority argument.  We are currently promoting a culture of TV dependency, fast food dependency, car dependency.  "Reducing people to Zombies" is the sort of rhetoric that was big in the US in the thirties through to the sixties.  Self-confident, self-reliant independent citizens don't need the state to make things illegal so they can't do them!  Indeed, this argument is a direct product of people not being in the least aware of what drug use is actually about--which is a function of drugs' currently illegality!

#  If you need drugs to enjoy yourself, escape from reality, etc. you have a bigger and different problem which needs to be addressed

The answer to this approach is: "Thank you Dr. Freud, and when did you stop beating your wife?"  Just change "need" to "want" and add "sometimes" after "yourself" then you can see the puritan aspect here.  At this level of argument I would say, "And what makes food or sex different?"  That they're natural?  As opposed to...marijuana and opium and coca?  Is pepper a food, or is it only there to enhance the meal?  How about sweet chili sauce?  You're supposed to enjoy yourself sometimes; the argument that enjoyment shouldn't need enhancements...music is a social enhancer too.  This is the "use" = "abuse" argument and the answer really is, "Okay, please feel free not to partake."

# The fact that a large element of addiction  is socially learned behaviour doesn't make it any less real or difficult to overcome

When drugs are illegal users are less likely to ask for advice/help and therefore illegality makes any addiction more difficult to overcome and no less real.

# Addiction programs are notoriously unsuccessful (by and large) and most do little more than stabilise the level of addiction and mitigate the harm done

See argument above, also check out "by and large", look for best practice (prob. in countries closest to legalisation would be my guess.)

# You can mitigate the harmful effects of criminalising drugs,  by having needle exchange programs, methodone programs, prisoner and family support programs and focusing on larger dealers rather than users when it comes to law enforcement

Which is working or not?  Ceebs has posted comments from police chiefs stating that legalisation is the only route; this argument is again the moral one (it presupposes that the harm of a drug lies in the substance itself (which is really a strange argument, I think, unless one presupposes that "drugs" = "bad") rather than in the social setting, quality, and dosage of the substance

# Legalising and regulating hard drugs will create huge ethical diemmas for the medical and pharmaceutical professions who will be expected to prescibe and/or dispense drugs they know to be harmful to patients who are supposed to be under their care.

This begs the question "Are the drugs harmful?" to which the answer is: "No, not in the correct dose/frequency of usage".  And I expect that GPs would be glad to finally be able to treat users effectively (methadone, no!) rather than doing a merry dance around the illegality of the substances that have brought the users to the GP in the first place.  The chemists--I don't think it will be any more of a problem for them than handing out contraceptive pills and valium.

#  It is impossible to regulate how even legally dispensed hard drugs will be taken -  dosages, mixing with alcohol, whilst driving, whilst working in sensitive jobs requiring high judgment/motor skills which can be impaired by such drugs

Drugs are already being taken--with no controls, no safeguards, no protections.  Make it illegal to do any dangerous activities while under the influence and prosecute those who do.

#  The more restrictive the "legal" dispensing rules, the greater the scope for at least a residual "illegal" market with all the problems we have now

Again, I think this argument comes from a lack of knowledge of drugs.  Ethanol is not available in the Off Licence but who wants to drink it?  It is the effect people are after.  Make sure the drugs that produce the effect are safe (again, the "all drugs are bad" argument can't accept that a drug can be safe and produce an effect other than sobriety), that's it.

# Crime will be with us always.  Criminals will simply move on to other activities if drug trafficking becomes less profitable.

Criminal activity rises and falls.  Legalisation would see it fall.  The problem with legalisation is...?

# The US will always have a war on something.  If not Drugs, then Islam, or Russia, or Iran, or Venezuela, or greedy oil producers. The US needs to have an external enemy it can define as "other" in order to enforce conformity and compliance at home. As US wars go TWOD is no more innane then usual.

The problem as stated is that the US needs to have wars on something.  By stopping the US govt having needless and counterproductive (and funded by taxpayers) wars, maybe it will start having useful and productive wars (the war on malaria; the war on CO2 emissions).  This argument is "Well, might as well beat up on the druggies as anyone else" but yes, there is a truth in here because I do see problems with legalisation as follows:

--A single country that legalises can become a magnet for people from other countries that don't (the Amsterdam/only pub in town effect)

--The UN has passed laws banning certain drugs and I'm not sure nation states would be allowed (by the US!) to legalise eg opium or coca

--Those who make money from the situation as-is will do pretty much anything to keep the quo status; flakiness on the part of legalisation measures will be followed by very public social destruction of those involved (hence it's the police chiefs, respectable figures, who have to start the ball rolling, and they are!)

-------------

Hokkay.  I'd like to say "Thanks Frank!" for laying the arguments out like this.

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.