Reply #111: "Criminalization is sometimes the only thing that has an effect."

[mike_c]

Ultimately, my point is that criminalization has NOT had the desired effect. If it had, our prisons would not be full of drug users.

I'm confused-- have you had any direct experience with people who use narcotics? I'm thinking specifically about heroin and other opiate derivatives. You make it sound like they turn into raving monsters who'll kill their grandmothers for their next fix. That is, unfortunately, the cartoon version that law enforcement and national policy makers have promulgated for decades, but it isn't true, by and large.

SOME heroin users are party animals who get in way over their heads. Exactly the same thing happens with drinkers. Some are social drug users who do it occasionally, more like raver types (the general phenomenon, not any specific connection between raves and narcotics-- just an analogy). Ditto for drinkers. Some are quite, functioning junkies, using their dope and then going to work in the morning, just like everyone else. Some are what I think of as wastoids from the beginning, the sort of people who don't so much fall into the bottle-- or the dime bag-- so much as propel themselves full force into the most degraded state they can achieve. Junkies don't have any lock on that franchise. My ex was an alcoholic who did far more damage to her "body and mind" than most "hard" drug users I've known.

The truth is that most drug users are just like most drinkers, a circumstance that makes sense because they're ALL drug users. We look the other way, for the most part, when their drug of choice is alcohol, but like you, many people construe that to mean that there is some massive qualitative difference between skin-poping a little horse after work and having a few stiff drinks every night. I mean, sure, the experience is different, but the long term effects, the social effects, etc are not very different at all-- or they wouldn't be, if not for law enforcement and the criminalization of whole segments of society. And marijuana, the drug that is largely fueling this debate currently, is downright benign. Know anyone who abuses their prescription narcotics? You probably know several. Have they turned into raving maniacs?