"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-r...
More info here : https://youtu.be/xD1nDGeiSAs
It makes sense that a society with those values, along with Confucian history, would ban drugs.
Besides the wealth of extremely addictive substances (and activities) that are legal (some regulated), there's also at least one illegal drug that you're never going to be (chemically) addicted to: LSD.
The "we're protecting you" logic behind making arbitrary drugs illegal is nonsense. It's even more weakened by the fact that at least a few of the illegal drugs with "no medical purpose" have, in fact, some medicinal use: Marijuana for anti-nauseau, combating eating disorders, and pain relief, and MDMA for PTSD.
I think we're talking at cross-purposes. I'm talking about the ravages of drug addiction on society. It's not about protecting you, it's about protecting society from you.
The reason drugs cost so much is because they are illegal, not because they cost a lot to produce or distribute. So we make the drug dealers rich, or we put them in prison, and this has a corrupting effect on police, border patrol, and who knows how many other organizations.
Plus we spend a ton of money, lives, and energy fighting something in a obviously losing fight. Isn't it better to educate, and help people with addictions? Or do you support the prison industry ;-)
Ever considered that this has something to do with it being the most accessible and normalised?
If you could pick up crack at your corner store, if it was advertised everywhere, if crack brands sponsored large sporting events and people commonly went for a puff after work, do you really think it won't be the most ravaging drug in the world, and exponentially worse than alcohol?
Did anyone ask for drugs to be legal for kids? or to not be regulated at all?
> We even tried to make it illegal but it wasn't tenable.
Neither is the war on drugs, you have to be blind to not acknowledge its huge failure, both economically and socially.
You can do this with literally anything.
Yes you can. But the evidence shows that crime related to supporting a drug habit actually exists compared to a Facebook habit.
Addiction comes in many flavors. Gaming addiction don't add substances to your body that your body cannot produce and regulate by itself.
Rather than treat the mind, I believe in treating the spirit.
Yet, in a large amount of places, some form of gambling is indeed legal (usually heavily regulated of course, but legal nonetheless).
In several nations (or states), there's even a form of completely legal, state sponsored gambling (with often ridiculously lower odds compared to private gambling offerings).
The issue here is that the "treatment" might be worse than the "disease". The vast majority of narcotic users (and gamblers) actually are responsible in how they use the narcotic (play the game). And illegal drug (or gambling) enterprises are also associated with an uptick in crime. Such is why the original "Prohibition" (of alcohol in the US) failed in the first place.
It doesn't help that current governments often tend to treat even simple possession of certain narcotics as a fully-fledged crime. As opposed to not caring except in the case of addiction, where it is at that point a medical problem. (Even the United States' old alcohol prohibition did not outlaw possession or consumption.)
Alcohol is more addictive than many illegal drugs. Why does the above reworking of your comment feel erroneous?
If they were legal, prices would come down. Fewer crimes would need to be committed to pay for them. Enforcement dollars could be redirected to education and treatment of addiction. And maybe the drug wars ravaging nearly every country to the South of us would go away.
If we are talking about other drugs, can't say anything...
So how do you avoid revolution and keep voters happy? Legalize drugs, supply computer games and VR, provide UBI.
(Don't take this the wrong way. I support legalizing drugs. The social costs of the war on drugs are to high to believe that there is a net benefit.)
I do not support legalizing drugs, decriminalization yes.
I am afraid that capitalism and greed, lobbying and 'free market' will be given a chance to make big profits from it. And put more people into addiction in result.
Alcohol is terribly addictive and destructive. Far more so than many illegal drugs. Its legality has nothing to do with these issues.
That's probably true. I doubt it's more addictive than heroin though, which was why I used that as my example for the other end of the spectrum. If alcohol was as addictive as heroin, I'm quite confident it would be just as illegal.
Nobody denies that heroin is extremely addictive. Total harm and "potential for abuse" caused by alcohol and tobacco would likely land it somewhere on schedule 2 or 3 if they weren't economically useful for their profits, despite their "potential for abuse".
Furthermore, marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug by the DEA, making it illegal at the federal level (no known medical uses), which based on your reasoning, would indicate it to be addictive.
Yet, prescription opiates, which people are overdosing daily, is legal.
And, you spelled 'wrong' as 'wong'.
(And yes, obviously the laws aren't entirely consistent on this. They should be, but they aren't. That's not a valid refutation of my main point.)
Most of these substances you are describing are older; from what I see, I'm afraid the narcotic regulation of more "traditional" narcotics largely rested on societal structure. Tobacco and alcohol are narcotics traditionally used for a long time by Europeans. Alcohol prohibition was tried, but failed in part, I feel, because many of the people in power didn't really, deep down, believe in it at all. (If I recall, at least two Prohibition-era American presidents, Warren Harding and Woodrow Wilson, had private liquor stashes available during their time in the White House.)
Marijuana, cocaine, and opium are not traditional European narcotics. As such, it was something "other people" used; the ill effects were much more easily demonized. There was some fairly racist propaganda surrounding the original Harrison Narcotics Tax Act that kind of demonstrated this point.
Obviously the ill effects of narcotics (such as addiction) are the driving force behind these prohibitions, but in my opinion a fair bit of the current "scheduled hierarchy" of narcotics is not really based on medical science.
Sounds to me like we're in agreement. I'm not sure why you started your comment with "Mmm, no." The laws aren't perfectly consistent on which side of the line they place different substances on (for a variety of historical reasons), but the underlying reason as to why drugs are illegal in the first place is (quite obviously) because of their addictive nature.
Aside from just the people who have bought into the scaremongering about drugs, there is a significant contingent of people who see it as 'unfair' that anyone could use a drug and get even temporary happiness. Nothing offends Americans (I simply don't know how prevalent this is in other countries) more than the idea that someone else might be having an easier time than themselves. It's why many would prefer companies to go without substantive punishment for harming many people over having one person receive a large punitive judgement in court cases. The McDonald's coffee lawsuit is usually the canonical example. If McDonald's had only paid the lady actual damages, they would have simply continued their practices and harmed more people. But that is preferable to the situation where that one lady got a 'payday'. Apparently nothing is worse than the feeling that someone else has had it easier than one has had it ones self.