Legalizing Drugs as Solution to Crime?

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Chandos, I think that legalizing MJ would create more users than you think. I know when I was younger, one of the roadblocks for me was the illegality of it all. It's easy to walk into a liquor store and buy whatever; the idea of looking for a dealer is something else altogether. I know MJ is easy to find, but the stigma of the illegality is a stumbling block for many.

You might be surprised...

 

Doesn't happen with alcohol? I'm fairly confident the amount of alcohol smuggling and such occurring in the US is rather lower now than it was during the Prohibition era.

 

I suppose in some circles that there is a stigma still attached to it, even though smoking tobacco is a worse addiction and there is almost no stigma attached to that.

But there is not enough stigma attached to it to stop our last three presidents from having used drugs at one time or another. There's a whole range of people who have at least tried drugs at some point in their lives, so I don't think the whole stigma thing is really all that strong. But I have to admit that sometimes I'm still little shocked by some statements:

Stigma? For Paul it's a "huge compliment." As a parent it scares the hell out of me, and also as a parent, it should scare Paul. If Paul had said, "They offered to share a bottle of JD and get drunk with me," would it still be a compliment to him? Probably not. MJ still has a rebellious mystique about it because it is illegal and that young people, at a certain point in their development, get a strong sense of satisfaction from. Paul's statement is grossly irresponsible. But at the same time had he just mouthed a pointless platitude about "drug use" he would have appeared quite shallow and no one would have taken him seriously. Paul has a self-inflicted credibility problem either way.

But society at large has the same credibility problem. We are an indulgent society and people make lots of money off of it. Remember how I brought up the Super Bowl? We tell young people not to drink until they "are of age," (an age set by Ronald Reagan and the insurance companies), but then we know they are watching all those great, entertaining ads on the SB. Do you know the drinking rate among HS seniors? Take a guess. It's 66 percent. 66 percent! Look it up if you don't believe me. Is Paul the only one with the credibility problem now?

There are two questions that come to mind:

1. If MJ was legal, would we have great entertaining ads during the SB for that? No doubt if we treated MJ just like Bud Light there is no queston that usage would be at the same 66 percent among HS seniors. But that would be, of course, the objective of having those ads in the first place. Do these corporate people really believe that their ads don't reach young people. So of course, it would have to be treated just as smokes are in our society. Shout as loud as we can: "This is a hazardous substance and using this can wreak your health."

2. The other question is, if the rate is 66 percent and it's illegal now, what was the rate when it WAS legal for HS seniors to drink at 18 instead of 21? That is depending, of course, on when one actually started school. If the rate was about the same, then making it legal had little or no affect on usage among HS seniors. I've not been able to find the answer to that. But it would be interesting.

Edit - I didn't see the post above, commenting that "the black market is the same for drugs as it is for alcohol." It's obvious that that person has no idea what's going on in the bordertowns atm. It is said that from all the drug money that the cartels have amassed that they can field a well-equipped private army of thousands of soldiers in the field (paid for by the American drug user) and it can rival the federal army of Mexico and possibily win a war.

That's just not true. Why is it expensive to produce these drugs? They can grow them in mass quanities across the border. The real danger is that it might be cheaper than alcohol. And that would make it more popular. You know how much drug dealers make from this stuff now? Why would they celebrate when their product would drop in price from 1500.00 dollars an once to 50.00?

http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2009/03/drug-legalisation-as-last-resort.html

 

I'm sorry, Paul McCartney.

 

Perhaps I'm misreading your original post, but the second paragraph seems to imply that legalization didn't substantially decrease the amount of alcohol related crime. *shrug*

What Chandos said.

 

Of course it wouldn't. It would, however, make drug smuggling rather less lucrative and thereby weakening the organizations currently thriving on it.

 

I have found no data on this in the US. Can you post your source?

I know that typically most drugs sell for about $60.00 for a 30 day supply outside of insurance costs. I usually pay about 8.00 for a 30 day supply with insurance. I know people can make most illegal drugs in their basement if they know how. A 1.75L bottle of JD is about $50.00. I don't know if it would last 30 days.

I have heard what you are suggesting before, mostly that the mafia would become a legitiitmate business if drugs are legalized because they already have the equipment to mass-produce the drugs. All they need to do is front a company. The cartels would be finished because their distribution methods are so ineffiecent and so expensive that they would never be able to undercut the big drug compaines who already have all the warehouses and trucks in place. Cartels would still have to smuggle and be convert in their operations which is not cost effective. You can't pay people 10.00 an hour to risk their lives to smuggle drugs. A lot of them eventually get caught and go to prison, or get killed by rival drug lords.

 

Tal - Thanks for the links. I don't think that much smuggling of tobacco and alcohol goes on here. But a lot of people try to get those goods out of the US, rather than in. I know that there is some smuggling of US contraband into some Muslim countries because they are illegal as a result of the strict religious beliefs. But I can't find anything on it here.

I did find a law enforcement organization called LEAP which advocates drug legalization

http://leap.cc/cms/index.php

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I thought this was interesting as well:

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13237193

 

I myself have never smoked in my entire life, and I never plan to. The health problems attached to this self-destructive behaviour have been proven time after time.

I do strongly support the legalization of marijuana however. I know a lot people who blaze on regular or irregular occasions, and they aren’t ill affected by it. I think that the pros outweigh the cons in this situation. It could be regulated and taxed helping government revenue. Today, pot is not the drug that my parents or my parent’s parents grew up with. Often it is laced with dangerous chemicals that can get people hooked off of one use. If the government had control to what went into marijuana, this would be eliminated (I think that government should also crack down on tobacco companies to force them to make a more pure product).

As for hard drugs, I feel that they should not be legalized. Decriminalization of use is the way to go with these. People can use them if they have to, but selling them, and holding them in large quantities is still illegal. Safe injection sites have reported amazing benefits to the drug using community, and they even help people to come clean. Last I checked Vancouver had the only safe injection site in North America, which could have easily changed now though.

No one here is claiming that black market deals with drugs would go away with drug legalization (and if anyone reading this is, I am sorry to have generalized you hahah). But I (and I believe a few other members of the boards) believe that the decrease would be substantial; substantial enough to support legalization.

And, as for statements that legalization would make legions of high zombies fill the streets, I have this to ask: is public drunkenness not illegal? Similar laws could be put in place to stop potheads from taking their munchie runs to our grocery and corner stores.

 

Chandos, that's interesting, but honestly not surprising. I would expect wealth and oppulance to define addiction rates far better than legality, which explains why the US has the number of users it does.

I think two questions need to come up and be answered:

1.) How serious is the alcohol problem today compared to what it was during prohibition? I'm betting that it's comparable, maybe even less of a problem due to social changes.

2.) How serious is the marajuana problem today? If we assume marajuana would follow a similar trend to alcohol, then the ratio between illegal users and legal users should be similar, along with illegal addicts and legal addicts. Now, we're not talking about hard drugs like coke or X here, just marajuana. How much marajuana-related crime is there in, for example, the US today?

Of course, something else to consider is that research has repeatedly shown alcohol, in moderation, to be good for you. I don't think the same can be said for marajuana except in chemo-treatement.

 

Seeing as prohibition came in effect as a reaction to the existing extremely widespread alcohol abuse I do not think what you are getting at is very valid. To compare like you are doing NOG we would first need to legalize cannabis for a few centuries and then try to ban it.

 

Far better, perhaps, but still not particularly well. It seems to vary from drug to drug and country to country.

So I looked at the Economist piece and found this:

The Economist agrees with me, therefore I win. QED.

And just to drive home the link between prohibition and destabilized and failing states: Rolling Stone

 

Really? I see a fair amount of stigma attached to smokers where I live. Admittedly it is still legal, but it is frowned in in most circles. Maybe it's just us crazy socialist Canadians.

I think that the US would be making a mistake if they fully legalized drugs. They should keep the ones that are illegal on the books, but they should alter the sentencing parameters. Just give big tickets to the end users and spend more time and resources going after the dirtbags who sell the stuff. If you get caught selling to a kid, instant death penalty (or life sentence if you don't have the stomach for 100% effective punishment ) If you get caught with a grow op that is obviously too big for personal use, jail term. You get caught bringing the stuff into the country? Jail term. But if you get caught with a joint? $200 ticket and the police move on to catch the dealers. The focus must be shifted to the purveyors, growers, and smugglers.

 

That would be interesting indeed. However, I think we would first need to find out how they define drinking. If that 66% includes trying alcohol, even once, then it doesn't tell us much, as I'd imagine the vast majority of people sample alcohol before they are of legal age. On the other hand, if the study only counts high schoolers who drink fairly regularly (like say, once per week when they hang out with thier friends on weekends), then you can argue that it cannot get much worse!

While I have no evidence to support this, I suspect that since most high schoolers are under 18, (even most seniors are under 18 at some point in their senior year) it makes no difference at all whether the drinking age is 18 or 21. It's not like there is a stiffer penalty if you're 16 as opposed to 18, so I find it hard to believe that a 16 year old would care whether he was two years or five years from the legal age. If the legal age was 18 it would naturally increase access to those between the ages of 18-20, but most of those people aren't in high school anymore.

Speaking of age restrictions, New Jersey has passed a law that changed the legal age to buy tobacco products from 18 to 19. The goal here was to keep tobacco out of high schools. The majority of students turn 18 during their final year in high school (although if you have a birthday in the summer, you may well be still 17), but hardly any students turn 19 prior to graduation day.

 

That seems like a pretty pointless law to me. I suspect that most smokers started smoking at a fairly early age (like even before entering high school), so I'm not sure what this law really expects to accomplish.

 

I'd say it helps a little bit as the kids at my school would have the older students buy them their cigarettes. I've been offered $20 to buy a kid a single pack of cigarettes, keeping the change (multiple times to different people, usually $10-15).

However, if someone wants to do drugs, they usually find ways to get to them, regardless of any restrictions.