I wrote my Sophomore english research paper over this exact subject. In response to all the people saying we shouldn't legalize things such as crystal meth, heroin, crack, etc because it would not lower the number of users: It wouldn't lower the number of users in the short term but in the long term the numbers will decrease. It only takes a small amount of education on drugs like crystal meth and heroin to understand that doing such drugs will affect your life negatively. People, for the most part, don't want to destroy their bodies or brains and if they do and they are fully informed of the decision that they are making then who is our federal government to step in like a toddler's mom and make the decision for us? In summation, legalize drugs but educate the public about the effects of drugs on the body so that people know the consequences of their actions. that's enough of this, gonna go load a bowl
All drugs being legal is an interesting idea but legal means what? He says that these drugs are sold at pharmacies and are legal. Well so are all prescription drugs and hey guess what? They are traded on the black market still. Legalizing will not rid the underground market. For example, guns are legal, and are traded on the black market. He makes bold statements about something he, and all of us, really don't know much about. There is no way to positively say one thing or another will happen though we are all entitled to our opinion.
Portugal's ongoing experiment in this area shows positive results. Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work? - TIME
Legal could mean different things to different people. Personally, I'd want a completely free, unregulated drug market. Get rid of the entire prescription system. If you want to buy a drug, you go to the pharmacy and you buy it. Obviously a black market would still exist, but it would be pretty hard to make money when any adult can just go to the same pharmacy you did and buy those same drugs.
Without the need for a prescription, I think you can almost eliminate the black market. But these things don't need to be sold at pharmacies. People can create dispensaries that do business in a discreet and responsible way (or some shit).
I agree. As long as someone with a degree in medicine is selling the drugs, I'd be fine with it. I just want their "dealer" to actually be aware of the effects so that they can warn their customers of certain drugs harmful effects.
All drugs should be completely legal, for cultivation, sale and consumption. The real question here isn't about if drugs like cocaine, heroin, meth, LSD, cannabis, etc. are "good" or "bad." Inherent goodness or badness of the object in question is a logical fallacy; drugs themselves are innocent of any ethical status, and it only when people use them, and their effects upon the individual and those around him does ethics come into play. The question we should be asking should be, "What right does the government have to prohibit the usage of these substances?" Is it for our own protection? Then why aren't alcohol, tobacco, and opiate based pharmaceutical drugs that are commonly abused banned for consumption? Why aren't cigarettes, which are directly related with more deaths than all illegal drugs combined, prohibited? And the correct answer should be, "People have the right to smoke or drink to death, if they so choose." Ok, well then, is it for the protection of others? What about all those drug related homicides? This, again, acts as another red herring. The drug didn't make anyone go out and strangle their grandmother for their spare change to buy some more heroin. The individual acted to do those things. People have free will. Blaming a drug for why you murdered someone is like saying, "The Devil made me do it." Last time I checked, the latter defense wasn't considered a viable defense in court. The reason people are so prone to using this defense is that it deflects any sort of personal responsibility that might be flung at you, the same as if saying that the reason you're a sadomasicist rapist is because your daddy beat you. "It wasn't my fault!" has embedded itself as the excuse par excellence for everyone these past couple of generations, and frankly, it really pisses me off. But I digress... Even if these were legitimate reasons, the government has proven itself to be helpless in trying to contain both the supply of drugs and the number of consumers. Teenage usage of cannabis, heroin and ecstasy have all gone up in the past decade, and the purity of these drugs, especially opiates, has increased several fold from the mid-80s. Why are kids so easily able to get these drugs? Because the cultivation, manufacturing and distribution lies in the hands of criminals, and I don't think they've got a policy about checking ID. That's another thing. Because these drugs are illegal, you create an underground market. Prices go up to such high heights that, if you're born in a lower-class environment and have little education - the abysmal quality of the public schools shall remain a topic for later debate - you'd be crazy not to go into a business that has such high profit yields. Even if you have a college degree and a stable career, if you could make tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars by growing some plants in your basement, why wouldn't you do it? If you make these drugs legal and put them on the same level as everything else, the inflated price inexorably drop drastically very quickly, and the incentive for organized crime to engage in drug transport and sale shall drop similarly as drastically and as quickly. Instead of the current mentality of the United States government, treating addicts equally as they would murderers, sometimes even receiving harsher sentences than someone convicted of manslaughter, you could shift to helping these poor souls, rather than locking them up for years on end at the expense of the public treasury. Hell, you could tax the hell out of these drugs and use that profit to fund rehabilitation centers. Drug addiction is not a crime, it is a disease, and should be treated as if it were any other disease - by helping the sick rather than putting them in a cage. Of course, then you have to stop and think, "Why are so many non-violent drug users being given such harsh jail time?" When you consider that the majority of the prison population nowadays consists of these non-violent felons, you begin to grasp the bigger picture. The prison industry has become one of the largest in the entire country, after Reagan started to enlist the help of private companies to build, maintain and run prisons. What does a prison need to operate? Prisoners! Without them, the industry dies. So, what you'll always want if you're in the prison system are harsher and more numerous convictions, to keep the prison population up and thus ensuring a job to those people that you employ. Thankfully for the prison industry, the federal government has been supplying them with raw material to work with for decades. Mussolini defined fascism as when corporate interest and the government's interest were the same, and the policies of one helped to sustain the other. What we have in this country with drugs, as well as many other issues, is nothing short of fascism; and I think that Mussolini knew what he was talking about. In every aspect, no matter what angle you look at it, the War on Drugs has been an utter failure. It only serves to perpetuate the current power interests of the government and the privileged few who have been selected out by the government to run the show. The War on Drugs is a war on you. It is a war that targets every citizen, treating everyone as proven guilty before they even opened their mouth. It is the greatest tool that the State craves - the power to keep it's citizens at their mercy at all times. I, for one, am sick of living on my knees.
If all drugs were legalized, our population would increase at an alarming rate. Wasn't there something called "Needle Park" in Zurich, Switzerland - where people were able to use drugs without police intervention? People would travel across Europe just to score some heroin in this park. Needless to say, that didn't work out very well. The last thing this country needs is to become a haven for the world's drug addicts. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for legalizing certain drugs like marijuana and psychedelics such as LSD, but I don't think that legalizing and regulating drugs such as cocaine or heroin would be beneficial to our country.
First, I was surprised by the source. I thought those folks were conservatives. Maybe they are Libertarians. Libertarians are fine with me. They're just conservatives who want to smoke dope and get laid. For me, it's a no brainer. I forget the exact year and I am not going to look it up. I'm going to say it was around 1910. Prior to that, there were no drug laws - period. Coca-Cola was originally a hangover cure - the Coca part of the name meant cocaine. All of those carnival elixirs were alcohol, cocaine and/or opiate cocktails. Marijuana grew naturally and plenty of people (mostly poor) smoked it because it was also FREE! Some people think that the banning of marijuana cultivation and consumption was aimed at those poor people. Most of those poor people were mysteriously black and some of them were inexplicably Mexicans. So, we can clearly see that race was not involved. Short version: it's no different and just as pointless as the Volstedt Act (which you may know as Prohibition). If there is a demand, it will be met. In our legal structure, you have to have a lot of guts to meet that demand in any meaningful way. That implies that you must be a little dangerous to pull it off. The war on drugs created the extreme problems in Colombia and Mexico. Enough is enough.
Like pretty much everyone here, I think that the safe drugs like weed, shrooms, and other soft drugs should be legalized. But I honestly think that hard drugs like heroin and meth should remain illegal. There is no argument about the fact that they ruin lives very easily. And I honestly don't buy that use wouldn't increase if they were legalized. While no one wants to become a heroin addict, there are a lot of curious people out there. I'm sure there are people out there that would just want to try some hard drugs once to see what they are like. And considering how addictive they can be, I'm sure there would be a fair number of people that would manage to get hooked. Despite what a lot of us say, hard drugs are not easy to get for the majority of the population. The drugs are available to almost everyone but people who are new to the hard drugs scene have to go out of their way to find a drug dealer that has those kind of drugs. I have never in my weed smoking like come across any hard drugs. The dealers I go to for weed sometimes have ecstasy and shrooms but never crack, meth, or heroine. Now, there is the minority that can easily buy hard drugs but those people are truly the minority. If I wanted some heroine, I'm sure I could manage to get it. But the thing is that I would be much less likely to track down someone selling heroin to try it once than I would be to buy some in cvs if it was legal. There are a lot of people who would see it on the shelves and say "why not? I'll just use it once." Then once turns into twice and so on until they are addicted.
if you really want to get all drugs legal we should start with steps like marijuana, then shrooms and lsd. We all agree that those should be legal
That isn't the same as legalizing. Nice try though. I honestly don't care about what is beneficial to this country. I should be allowed to purchase and consume whatever drugs I please. This is about freedom. I want to be free to do the drugs I want to do. The government has no right to control what I do or to jail me for putting something in my body. Come to New York. I'll show you where you can get the harder drugs. As for your argument, it comes down to freedom vs. security. If you want security that's fine, but personally I'd rather have freedom. Also, people would be a lot more educated on the harmful effects of heroin if it were legal and had to buy it in a respectable establishment like a pharmacy. Imagine that heroin addicts had to face a pharmacist every time they wanted to re-up? I bet the pharmacist would at least warn them about how bad their addiction/habit is. The pharmacist could even refuse to sell them the drugs and call 911 if they seem like they need medical attention. When was the last time a dealer refused to sell heroin to someone because they seemed fucked up? Legalizing turns a law enforcement issue into a medical issue and that's a huge plus in my book.
I can see that side of the argument too. It would be better for the people who are already users and abusers for sure. I don't think people should be prosecuted for using drugs because they are the victims. Still, I believe that hard drugs should remain illegal because the negatives are so great. For example, entire towns have basically been destroyed by meth. And I'm not talking about the crime that surrounds it but rather the actual effects of the drug on the people. Once you know people in that scene, it's easy to get but it's a little harder for outsiders to get involved in hard drugs by accident. It certainly happens but I think it would happen more if there was a box of meth sitting behind the counter in CVS. It's hard for me to imagine a world where there would be meth and heroin advertisements in magazines and stuff. Because that is what would happen if it was legalized. I think the best way to approach drug legislation is to legalize the soft drugs that don't easily destroy people. The majority of people who currently use illegal drugs use soft drugs (weed being the most popular). If those drugs were legalized, then the amount of people who encounter black market drug dealers would decline dramatically. While the people that I buy weed from don't sell hard drugs, other people's weed dealers do. So by legalizing soft drugs, there would be less people exposed to hard drugs. Also, by legalizing soft drugs, law enforcement could focus more on the distribution of hard drugs. They might actually stand a chance if they didn't spend most of their time busting weed related stuff. I'm not for going after the users of hard drugs but I have no sympathy for the drug dealers who profit on other people's drug addiction and destruction.
I have to question your reasoning for keeping "hard drugs" illegal. Yes, it's true that meth and heroin kill people. Yet, who the hell are you to dictate what people put into their bodies? What gives you this kind of moral highground? Would you say the same thing to people who eat too many hamburgers? Under your logic, we should ban McDonalds - eating fast food is very rarely, if at all, healthy. So, since the costs outweigh the benefits, it should be illegal to consume their products. This is absurd. I have the right to do whatever I want to my body, as it is my body, and my life. If I want to kill myself slowly, then let me do so. I don't need you, or anyone else for that matter, to wag their finger at me and tell me that my behavior is self-destructive and throw me in jail for it. Not only that, you assume that once these drugs are legalized, every corner drug store will have them in stock. Do you honestly think that chains like CVS are going to have black tar heroin behind the counter, with the amount of stigma attached to it? Like cannabis, the sale of opiates, meth and other "hard" drugs shall be the domain of a specialized industry, rather than the mass corporate manufacturing model. Besides, keeping these drugs illegal, like keeping cannabis illegal, hasn't decreased the amount of users. In fact, they've only increased due to the drugs illegality. They are easier for children to get, as well. The moral argument that, "Hard drugs are bad! Kill it with fire!" has not and cannot wipe away magically the usage of hard drugs. If people want something, they'll get it, no matter how illegal it is. Fundamentally, the argument, again, is about what right does a group of bureaucrats have to tell me what to do with my body? What right does the State have to dictate my personal choices? Bastiat, in his famous anthology of legal theory, defines that, since the State is nothing more than a group of individual persons, that they have no more rights than individual persons do. Consequently, the State has no ethical background to cling to when it says that "hard" drugs should be illegal, as no individual person has the right to dictate what you consume. To say otherwise would be to deny that people have the freedom of choice with regards to their own bodies, which is to say that they are "owned" by another, who dictates their choices for them. I do believe that there is a definition for this: slavery. I am convinced that this crusade - and that's exactly what this is - against drugs is merely another manifestation of modern man's desire to control others and usher in this sort of utopian community, where we are all "moral" and sing holding hands as the sun comes up. I hate to break it to ya'll, but there will never be such a thing. First, you'll have to define what moral character is, and then you'll have to change human nature to the point where it'll abide, at all times, with these utopian wishes. The greatest error of the past several hundred years without a doubt is this notion that human beings can be molded and changed fundamentally, since human nature, it is assumed, doesn't exist. I'd point to every existentialist community in North America during the 19th century, as well as nearly every country that has called itself communist or fascist, and ask you how long did their utopian ideals of human nature sustain their State. History provides this answer: not very fucking long. Note that I have not, nor have any desire to, consume hard drugs. I merely wish to promote individual freedom.
You got a source for that bolded statement? How do you know? Who would want to allow meth and heroin to be advertised in their "magazines and stuff"? Perhaps, but your entire argument forgets that the government has no right to tell an individual which drugs he is and isn't allowed to take. What gives you the right to say which are the "hard" drugs and which are the "soft" drugs? I mean, a case could be made that cannabis is harmful to your respiratory health if your main way of ingestion is smoking it. For the hundredth time, it's freedom vs. security. Why anyone would want security over freedom is beyond me though. BTW, Ulysses is right again.
And to quote Franklin, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Besides, what organization are you giving this power to protect you? Yes, a group of individuals who have a monopolization on the usage of violence. If we are to say that monopolies breed corruption, then what are we to say about the ultimate monopoly? This notion that problems can be solved at the barrel of a gun is not only illogical, it is immoral. I'd be hilarious, it it weren't so sad, that pot smokers make sound arguments against the illegality of cannabis, and then turn right around and use the same propaganda the State uses to keep "hard" drugs illegal. I honestly don't see how you could perform such an about face like that.
I believe if all drugs were legal it would weed out all of the weak minded and irresponsible individuals from society and leave us with more responsible and strong willed individuals. Of course if all drugs were legal we should definately have rehabilitation clinics and help for those who wish to stop or cut back on their drug use. With all of this nanny state construct, it is only weakening our responsibility and character as an individual.
Personally I believe if all drugs were legal, we would not have a quarter of the crimes we now have in the U.S. Our founding fathers set principles of freedom, where we should not be told what you can and cannot do. Both hard and soft drugs should be legal. If drugs were never outlawed, the black market would not exist. Innocent people in jails would be filtered and the truly dangerous criminals would be left. The streets would be a lot safer. We would not know drugs like cocaine, meth and heroin ever existed, because the black market created these ideas. People think if drugs were legal, then the streets would be polluted with crackheads. 99% of people have a sense of the harms. Now at this point, legalizing would be very tough, it will take some time and things might get worse before better. Maybe if the drugs were offered in pharmacies for addicts, it would put dealers out of business. Non-commercial dealing should still be illegal, but I think over time it would die off. If drugs were controlled by pharmacies, then this would destroy the black market and most of our crime. Addicts should be prescribed what they need, and nobody else should have access. Time will filter the drug trade.
I agree with almost everything you said except for this. If drugs were offered in pharmacies to any adult that wanted to buy them, that would put dealers out of business. Also, there would be no need to make non-commercial dealing illegal. We should only make the sale of drugs to minors illegal (and even if this wasn't in law, how many adults do you know that would give/sell drugs to kids?). Lastly, not only the addicts should have access to the drugs. Anyone who wants the drugs should be allowed to buy them. Get rid of the prescription system as all it does is create a black market and put the money in the hands of illegal dealers as opposed to putting the money into legitimate businesses like pharmacies.