It's Time to Legalize Drugs

[oberliner]

Excerpt:

Legalization would not create a drug free-for-all. In fact, regulation reins in the mess we already have. If prohibition decreased drug use and drug arrests acted as a deterrent, America would not lead the world in illegal drug use and incarceration for drug crimes.

Drug manufacturing and distribution is too dangerous to remain in the hands of unregulated criminals. Drug distribution needs to be the combined responsibility of doctors, the government, and a legal and regulated free market. This simple step would quickly eliminate the greatest threat of violence: street-corner drug dealing.

We simply urge the federal government to retreat. Let cities and states (and, while we're at it, other countries) decide their own drug policies. Many would continue prohibition, but some would try something new. California and its medical marijuana dispensaries provide a good working example, warts and all, that legalized drug distribution does not cause the sky to fall.

Having fought the war on drugs, we know that ending the drug war is the right thing to do -- for all of us, especially taxpayers. While the financial benefits of drug legalization are not our main concern, they are substantial. In a July referendum, Oakland, Calif., voted to tax drug sales by a 4-to-1 margin. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates that ending the drug war would save $44 billion annually, with taxes bringing in an additional $33 billion.

Without the drug war, America's most decimated neighborhoods would have a chance to recover. Working people could sit on stoops, misguided youths wouldn't look up to criminals as role models, our overflowing prisons could hold real criminals, and -- most important to us -- more police officers wouldn't have to die.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/16/AR2009081601758.html

[downeyr]

1. Also...

...if people accepted that marijuana isn't "devil weed", Obama or whoever could push for legalization and taxation of drugs in order to pay for a large chunk of health care reform.

[rve300]

2. How do you pay for the health care of abusers?

Do you tax the drugs like you do tobacco? Or do all citizens have to pay for the negative long term health effects that most recreational drugs have on the body of users. To cover the cost the taxes would be so high that a black market of untaxed drugs would continue. That would mean nothing would change and all the same players would be in the same situation they are now. (producers, pushers, gangs, junkies, cops, prisoners) In case you didn't know. The world has a HUGE criminal black market for all sorts of perfectly legal goods and services.

Or on the other hand. Maybe you expect anybody to do anything to their body and the public will pay for the emergency room visits and the recovery and everything else involved? Or are you going to ration out the drugs so no one users gets too much at any one time? And when he smokes his limit of meth for the month by the 15th, he will understand that it's for his own good that he waits for 2 weeks for his next fix. I'm sure that will work.

[oberliner]

4. How is it paid for now?

The argument presented in this piece is that the number of drug abusers will decrease, not increase, as a result of this policy change.

[rve300]

6. One sentence.

I see no actual argument as to why the writer believes abusers would decrease. I personally can not see any scenario where the removal of the stigma and threat of penalty will reduce drug use.

How is it paid for now?

If an abuser can afford it, recovery is paid privately or by a family member. Very few street level junkies get help for free. Rehab is expensive and is big business. If the government makes drugs legal, then they would have to add rehab to any health care reform. Which brings me back to my original point. Do you allow a person to become an abuser and then expect the public to pay for his rehab.

In Australia you can not legally set off a fire cracker because they consider the increased emergency room visits too expensive for the health care system.

[oberliner]

11. I guess the argument is a little iffy

It seems like they are saying that here in the US the rate of drug users is much higher than in countries where drugs are legal.

[Mopar151]

5. What do we do for "vodka" or Thunderbird? n/t

[rve300]

7. We tax it at a very high rate

And there is a very large black market for boot leg alcohol. What do you think the ATF does?

[RedCappedBandit]

8. Go ahead and use the money saved

from ending the war on drugs.

:shrug:

If that's the only argument against the legalization of drugs, fast food might as well be criminalized as well, right?

[rve300]

9. All that savings

will be used to create the bureaucracy that regulates the new legalized industry.

And now everyone gets free rehab!! You can't have it both ways. If you want the freedom to put what ever you want into your body, then you cannot ask for the public to pay for the results. You can not be a libertarian and a supporter of single payer govt run health care at the same time.

[Fumesucker]

10. You obviously have never taken the Political Compass test..

Social libertarianism and economic libertarianism are orthogonal to each other.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/





From surveys done multiple times DUers tend to fall in the lower left quadrant.

[RedCappedBandit]

13. I never said anything about being a libertarian

Funny that you just outed yourself, though.

Not that it was much of a surprise.


Perhaps you can provide a link to backup your premise that "Very few street level junkies get help for free"
What is a street level junky anyway? Who says they're even the most prominent consumers of rehab services?
Alcohol is perfectly legal.. how many victims of alcoholism wind up in rehab?

Care to explain why coverage should be provided for diseases like depression and cancer, but not addiction?

I realize this post is a bit unorganized. But then, your argument is so ludicrous and fallacious it's hard to address it succinctly.

[rve300]

18. Put another trophy on your wall.

I honestly don't know why everyone here has made such a game about outing other posters.
Do you print out the thread, have it framed and hang it on the wall like the head of Moose?
If the purpose of this board is to sit around and bitch about the world to like minded souls, never allowing a poster to stay from the herd, then the board will never have the impact that it is intended to have.

I am not against the legalization of most drugs. This post was my way of pointing out my views on the health care debate.

I like to think that I lean libertarian and made an assumption that most folks on this forum do to.
I hate government run health care because of the restrictions it puts on the public in Australia.

I do not have a link to back up my premise. After walking around the planet with my eyes open for 40 years I just figured it was common knowledge. I would love to see you provide a link to a live in rehab center that opens its doors to the public for free.

And you are correct, addition is a disease. President Obama has talked about spending money in a smarter way with prevention and early detection. If you what to prevent the disease of addiction then you ban all addictive substances and activities.

Which brings me back to my ludicrous and fallacious argument that you can't seem to address succinctly.

If you want control of your own body to do with as you please, then you need to keep the government out of health care.

[Xicano]

3. Who Owns Your Body?

Simple fact. People who don't have autonomy over their own bodies are only one thing. Slaves!

[armyowalgreens]

15. Druge abuse effects more than just the abuser.

[Xicano]

16. So you're saying people should not have full control over their own bodies?

"Effects more than just the abuser"? Why use a charged word like "abuser"? Not all alcohol users are alcohol abusers. Like wise, not all other than alcohol drug user are abusers either. Using that choice of words reminds me too much of what republicans do when they want to push an agenda. Like how loosely they throw the word terrorist around.

But back to the notion about justifying outlawing activity with one's own body. I am going to assume you're referring to the potential cost to society and the effect it might cause the family.

Getting badly hurt or killed sky diving or any other sport, along with a number of other activities has the same costs. So the monetary cost to society argument is a purely biased one. If the argument is about the potential criminal acts upon other people an intoxicated person might engage in. Well, we already have laws making that sort of conduct an act of crime. The act of consuming an intoxicant is not a criminal and making it a crime to prevent a real crime is a form of preemptive punishment for something someone hasn't done.

If the argument is about the pain it might cause family and friends. Again what about the pain friends and family suffer when someone close to them gets badly hurt or killed sky diving or from some other sport? And again, this is not a criminal act and making it a criminal act to prevent friends and family from maybe suffering some pain is a form of preemptive punishment for something that's not a crime to begin with.

The most basic of all human rights is autonomy over one's own body.

[armyowalgreens]

17. Yes, that is essentially what I am saying. And by comparing alcohol to methamphetamines...

You look like an absolute fool. Your skydiving comparison is ludicrous.

You clearly have little understanding of the addictive nature of many of these drugs. You don't need an addictive personality to become addicted to heroin or meth.

A very small percentage of sky divers die. An extremely large percentage of heroin, meth, cocaine, etc. users become addicted on destructive levels.

[TexasObserver]

12. Yes, it is, and a Republican Commission in the 1970s concluded as much.

And Reagan's former Sec of State, George Schulz, came out for it a while back.

It is a monumental misallocation of government resources. Wanna pay for health care? Stop building our entire police/judicial/imprisonment complex around finding, catching, prosecuting and incarcerating people who choose an illegal high over more legal ones, such as alcohol and Rush Limbaugh's and late Justice Rehnquist's method - prescription drug.

[armyowalgreens]

14. I don't think it's a good idea to legalize things like heroin, cocaine and meth