The Drug War

[Kim]

Originally Posted by shiney

As long as nobody starts using the topic as a platform for legalization or to push views on why x sucks or how great drugs are or how the government lies and seriously they don't cause that much harm I am okay with it but the moment it goes that direction the topic dies. Please quote this PM in your opening post.

I wanted to start a discussion on the drug war, checked with shiney, and here we are. Need to be really careful with this topic, because it would be really easy to go somewhere we don't want to even on accident.

It can be agreed that a lot of money is spent on the drug war, and that most everyone is at one extreme. Usually, either you agree that drugs are bad, and that it is the government's job to protect us from drugs and the negative affects, or you push for legalization.

Drugs undoubtedly have very negative effects, and only some of them are health related. The question is whether or not we should be protecting people from themselves. Is it their right to harm themselves? If you say they have the right to harm themselves, then should police stop trying to stop people from committing suicide? The principle is similar, if not the same. What also needs to be taken into account is the effects drugs have on those that aren't taking them, and for this I will use a personal example.

I had a friend in High School, whom we'll call Mike, who was in and out of rehab all the time, and you could see the toll it was taking on his family. Last time he got out of rehab, he moved away from his family, by his choice or theirs I don't know. After all this myself and my roommate Adrian were basically his only real friends left, because when he wasn't on drugs, Mike was a good, fun kid.

Several weeks ago, Mike called up and asked if he and a friend named Derrick could stay at our house for a night or two. We said sure. He and his friend show up and we're having a good time seeing Mike after missing him for a while. We found out that Mike and his friend were on their way to Mexico, as Mike had a warrant out for his arrest. On their way they had been stealing from stores all the way down, and selling the stuff at pawn shops, trying to get enough money for the trip. Although we should have, we didn't say anything and agreed to let him stay one more night. During the day, Shawn's longboard went missing. Shawn is another roommate. Most of us didn't notice, and the person who did notice, a roommate named Logan, thought it might have been missing already. Later that night, Logan get's a call from one of Shawn's friends who had been over earlier, asking Logan to move his laptop to Shawn's room from the band room. Logan goes to do so and finds, surprise, no laptop. He calls Shawn's friend to make sure that was where it was, asks everyone who lives at the house if they've seen it, and decides it was Mike. Adrian takes Mike's license plate number, and we confront Derrick as Mike was asleep on the couch. After a long talk, and several threats to call the police, we finally got him to admit the stuff was in the car, and we went and got it out. They had also stolen a bag of Logan's tools, which he managed to get back at the same time. We kicked them out, and called the cops on them the next morning after much internal deliberation. Needless to say Mike is no longer our friend and Mike now has no friends. Derrick beat the crap out of Mike in California and left him stranded at a homeless shelter.

Mike is a good example of what drugs can turn someone into. Of course there are arguments that it depends on the person, and not all people who do drugs are like that, but there are too many cases like this for it not to be taken into account.

An argument for allowing drugs is that the government would generate revenue from taxes and it would keep drug dealers and the like from making money off of it. There are others, but I'll address those later tonight.

Anyways, let me know your oppinion on this topic.

[Fifthfiend]

I actually believe in both legalization and that many drugs are totally awesome, but I'm choosing to interpret Shiney's warning as not to be obnoxiously stupid and knee-jerk ideological in advancing either of those points of view ("Drugs are awesome and the law sucks and if you don't think so you're a tool of the man, man!")

If I'm interpeting him wrong I'm sure he'll holler at me about it.

Anyway I feel I should note at the outset of this discussion that we don't really have a "drug war"; what we have is a war on some classes of people who happen to use certain particularly selected drugs under certain circumstances.

[adamark]

The Drug War is a convenient way of using America's historic puritan ideals against the lower class. Essentially, the authorities use the pre-text of "fighting drugs" to hassle people. It's Social Control 101.

Incidentally there is a new book out about how the constitution is not even important in these matters anymore, having been bypassed by previous generations. I can't recall the title of the book at this time. When Americans wanted to prohibit alcohol in the 1920s, they needed a constitutional amendment to have the authority to do that. But only a few decades later, no constitutional amendment was required to outlaw lots of other classes of drugs, many of which were less harmful than alcohol. So basically, the constitution was trampled on between 40 and 70 years ago, and since then the government can have a "war" on any drug it wants because no one has the balls to tell them that they are ignoring the U.S. Constitution. In fact that "trampling" of the constitution has become an American tradition, with each new set of "leaders" doing more and more unconstitutional and illegal things and no one being able to stop them. The government has ripped itself off the leash of the constitution.

[Odjn]

To clarify what Fifth just said in his second paragraph:

There are certain conditions where it is illegal for you to do drugs. If you have no connections to the police force, you will go to jail. If you or your parents do not possess an adequate amount of money, you will go to jail. If you are the wrong color, you will go to jail. If you are homeless/poor, you will go to jail. If you are 'trailer trash', you will go to jail.

Conversely, the more privileged Americans can ignore the law like most other laws.

[Igbutton]

Well I wouldn't care if pot was legalized, I think it smells like crap so it's just as disgusting as cigarettes to me.

But for 'harder' drugs I just can't imagine a system that allows their use that wouldn't result in abuse and many more stories like Mike's. Certainly people exist that can keep their shit together and snort coke, but even if the ratio of 'Mikes' to level-headed druggies was 1 to 1 (I think the number of Mikes would outweigh the other by a landslide) it would still be too many.

So I think the drug war while ripe with corruption and profiling like Odjn/(Fifth?) implied it's still better than complete freedom of choice and I don't believe there is a middle ground that leave us any better off.

Of course, complete legalization would probably result in a higher imprisonment and overdose percentage than we currently have, and thusly the number of fucked up druggies would, in theory, decrease to a much more acceptable level over time. In a big picture way that's a good thing but I think the shit that would happen during that decrease would be unacceptable.

[CABAL49]

The Drug war, imo, is a way for everyone to make money. So much money is wasted trying to stop drugs from entering the United States and it is very inefficient. A more effective way to use that money would to buy out the land people are using to grow drugs on in other countries and give them something else to make money off of. The people who actually grow the drugs, I am referring to cocaine and such, are poor and don't actually get the money. The operations launched by the FBI can be very wasteful.

Marijuana on the other hand, is as about as dangerous as beer or cigarettes. Beer may not send you on a trip but it definitely impairs your judgement and causes damage to your organs.

[katiuska]

One of the unfortunate side effects of the heavier marijuana penalties imposed in the 80s is that it helped precipitate a shift toward more harmful drugs -- a lot of sellers especially figured that if they're risking just as much anyway, the latter presented more of a payoff.

In general, I think approaching abuse -- insofar as it will happen regardless -- as a health problem more than a criminal one offers a better chance for people who start down that road to make decent lives. Whether decriminalization encourages more people to start trying stuff, well, I don't know, but if we had a system that better coped with that when it happens, it wouldn't become so destructive.

[Odjn]

I think this is an informative link on some of the stuff that's happened in the Drug War.

[bass_virus]

To me the whole idea of a war on drugs seems kind of rediculous to me. I mean there is never going to be any point in time when we can say "got it all, nobody is doing any drugs in this country." I can understand making selling drugs illegal, but the idea of making possession illegal seems kinda socialist. Plus I can't imagine the reasoning behind even bothering with trying to stop pot anymore considering just how deeply it's woven itself into society.

[Fifthfiend]

Bass virus, this is the discussion forum, not the calling things ridiculous forum. It's entirely possible some person on this forum is for the drug war, and they don't need to be insulted just cause for whatever reason they support the drug war. Discussion warned.