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Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

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Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#231

Post by bryondowd »

rayiner wrote: post #210
soneca wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The history said, in this case, that money and power did not win the dispute, not that their influence does not exist or should be considered negligible. So, if in the case of drugs, society moral standards, money and power are all at the same side; what's the chance of grassroot movement changing the laws? That question was not rethorical, but giving my own answer, I think the path is changing the perceptio…

You're ignoring a morally significant dimension to the problem. Nobody becomes a drug addict by accident. They choose to do drugs and take the risk not just of bodily harm, but of becoming unable to support their families and becoming a burden on society. And your suggestion is that society should spend money to treat them of an illness that was their fault to begin with. I happen to agree with you that treatment, no…

Actually, a fairly large number of people do get addicted accidentally. It often starts with a serious injury, leading to prescribed painkillers, and even using as directed by your physician can develop a dependence. Not to mention those with chronic pain who can't just stop taking them. And that dependence can take over and escalate very easily. I've seen and heard of plenty of hardworking upstanding people one would never expect becoming addicts and eventually turning to illegal means to scratch the itch.

And then there's the other end of things, where you've got young teens experimenting and getting hooked while they are young and stupid.

Or those who are being abused or suffering mental health issues with no access to mental health services, and end up self-medicating just to get by. You can say 'they should have just gotten help' but it's hardly that easy, even for an adult, and you can't expect a 14yo kid with apathetic (or worse) parents to figure out how to get help for themselves or even know that they need that sort of help. Never mind the stigma associated with seeking help.

So no, even look at morality and not cost, it's very closed-minded to assume all drug addicts should be held to blame for their own addiction and just left to wallow in their misery.

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#232

Post by DanBC »

rayiner wrote: post #210
soneca wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The history said, in this case, that money and power did not win the dispute, not that their influence does not exist or should be considered negligible. So, if in the case of drugs, society moral standards, money and power are all at the same side; what's the chance of grassroot movement changing the laws? That question was not rethorical, but giving my own answer, I think the path is changing the perceptio…

You're ignoring a morally significant dimension to the problem. Nobody becomes a drug addict by accident. They choose to do drugs and take the risk not just of bodily harm, but of becoming unable to support their families and becoming a burden on society. And your suggestion is that society should spend money to treat them of an illness that was their fault to begin with. I happen to agree with you that treatment, no…

There is considerable overlap between people who've experienced abuse and people who are addicted to drugs.

In that light your comments about "they chose to do it" are horrible. People are self-medicating to relieve trauma. It might not be an effective way to relieve trauma, but given the piss-poor state of psychological treatment or judicial system for survivors of abuse it's not surprising people end up with sub-optimal solutions.

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#233

Post by pbhjpbhj »

bdavisx wrote: post #162
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

58% of the population or of the voters in that poll?

People who vote are the electorate, if you don't vote, you don't matter. But to answer your question, it was voters.

Then what the sibling comment above says would be my point also. 58% of people who voted on one issue is not going to be representative of those who vote in elections; ergo the candidates would be wrong to simply bypass the system and vote in an issue that hasn't otherwise passed.

I'd like to see more direct democracy though, more atomic voting to address issues individually; that would perhaps help in this situation.

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#234

Post by humbleMouse »

talles wrote: post #214
humbleMouse wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Street dealers don't really sell weed as they used to now that better and legal weed exist, so they went on heroin." This is an extremely misguided statement. The demand for high quality weed has never been higher. It doesn't matter if you legalize it, because you are still taxing it 50%. The individual sellers and producers will keep doing their thing. I can tell you right now that people who sell weed don't just m…

> The demand for high quality weed has never been higher. That's my point too. And I believe that this increase in demand for high quality weed made many street dealers that sell shitty weed go for heroin. Now heroin is a cheap and common option at your local street corner. > (...) those types of dealers have been selling every kind of drug they can get their hands on and will never stop. Exactly. As you put it, they…

I guess to clarify is that what I see (Minneapolis-based) is that weed dealers tend to deal strictly with weed, and the other type of dealer just sells anything and everything they can get their hands on.

Furthermore, the weed dealers I know who have been doing it for 10 years+ have no intentions to stop making money when it is legalized here at some point. They are not going to start selling heroin.

In Minneapolis all of our high quality weed basically gets driven here from LA/Colorado/Anywhere people have grow houses. The keyword here is "high quality". Anybody selling low quality weed is definitely selling coke/heroin as well. That's just the nature of the market here.

I guess I am kind of rambling but I find the economics of black markets fascinating. My main point is that I contend your claim that street dealers who sell shitty weed are now "switching" to heroin. This is just not true, and doesnt make sense. If you are selling heroin, you are one of those dealers who will sell ANYTHING you can get your hands on, including shitty weed/good weed/coke/whaetever. Once a dealer decides to sell things that come with heavy jail time then they dont give a fuck what they are selling. They are just in it for the $$$

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#235

Post by magicGLASSman »

mikeash wrote: post #227
magicGLASSman wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this fact is what makes the experiment perfect. If people all move from one place because of poor policy it will give that state the incentive to adjust their policy. People should have the freedom to chose the goverment that is most inline with their values. Forcing someone to stay somewhere and pay taxes to a say unjust war or something they are morally opposed to seem to be a terrible existence.

The problem is that there may be policies which work well if the population participates in them consistently, but which fall apart if everybody gets to pick and choose. The whole point of government is to do these things.

But if most the people agree that the policies are good and best combination of all the other states wouldn't they pay those taxes voluntarily instead of having to be coursed into paying? That is democracy right? otherwise it seems kinda selective as to whose votes mater the most.

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#236

Post by [deleted] »

gohrt wrote: post #226
rayiner wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The drug prohibition is a direct effect of the lift of alcohol prohibition: officials and LE officers needed something to do after there was no more alcohol smuggling to go after, so a new target was invented. That's a ridiculous proposition. There was a 40+ year gap between the two. > The public has been whipped up into a frenzy about drugs for years using various fear tactics Nixon coined the term "drug war" in 1…

What I see in that graph is that Americans get more pro-marijuana as they see the oppressive effects of the out-of-control drug war, overcoming their deference to authority

[deleted]

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#237

Post by Torgo »

jernfrost wrote: post #199
jfmfhhdkdkd wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Japan and Hong Kong and many others still have far lower drug use and crime rates despite their very tough laws on drug use, when compared to Portugal.

Very had to compare to Japan because Japan essentially legalize organized crime. Yakuza are allowed to operate as long as the follow a minimum set of laws. Basically Japan is following a tradeoff where they have chosen organized crime of lots of unorganized or violent crime. So it will be very hard to compare such a system with a western country which deals with these issues in such a different manner. I can mention…

Maybe we should legalize organized crime instead of drugs. The logic is about the same.

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#238

Post by cfcef »

hobs wrote: post #182
rangibaby wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan has low crime rates because there is no visible underclass like blacks in America or immigrants in Europe. There are drugs that are partly or fully banned in other countries that are freely prescribed here (rohypnol, for example). Mushrooms weren't banned at all until recently. An ex's brother was prosecuted for weed but let off after paying a fine. Another guy I knew who sold was let off in exchange for his ce…

I havent been to Japan, but what about the Burakumin and the Ainu? Didnt Japan pass a law to stop discriminating against the Ainu at one point?

The Ainu barely exist anymore, and the whole thing about the Burakumin is that they aren't visible and all their descendants hide any connection. A better example would be the Korean descendant population, but that's still a tiny fraction of the population. (I think 1 million out of 130 million or <1%?) So there's no good comparison in Japan to the ~17% African-American population.

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#239

Post by rayiner »

gohrt wrote: post #225
rayiner wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government persists with the drug war because Americans have a moral opposition to drug use: http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2014/study-public-fe... . When I was a kid in the 1990's, 70-80% of polled adults wanted to make even marijuana illegal. For drugs aside from marijuana, that's still the case. Your alternate theories about money and control directly contradict the history of prohibition. Did you kno…

Is it true that > The government persists with the drug war because Americans have a moral opposition to drug use: or > Americans have a moral opposition to drug use, because the government persists with the drug war ? Impressionable children are indoctrinated against drug use, by US law enforcement, in US public schools. > 70-80% of polled adults wanted to make even marijuana illegal. That's impossible, because mari…

> Impressionable children are indoctrinated against drug use, by US law enforcement, in US public schools.

That's one theory, but it does not jive with the data. Millennials grew up with teachers shrieking "just say no!" at school assemblies. They were the most heavily propagandized generation with regards to the drug war. Much more so than their baby boomer teachers who grew up in the 1960's. Yet they're the ones leading the way on legalization of marijuana. So how can you say that moral opposition to drug use exists because of propaganda, when the more heavily propagandized generation is also the one with the least opposition to drugs?

I have a different theory. Moral opposition to drug usage is based on the need to establish social norms that discourage escapism and dependency. In an industrial society with booming demand for labor, that's an important social norm to instill in people. But in a post-industrial, automated society, with a robust safety net, that becomes much less important. It's not like teenagers sitting in their basement smoking pot today would otherwise be going off to work at busy factories building a solid future for their families.

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#240

Post by soneca »

rayiner wrote: post #210
soneca wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The history said, in this case, that money and power did not win the dispute, not that their influence does not exist or should be considered negligible. So, if in the case of drugs, society moral standards, money and power are all at the same side; what's the chance of grassroot movement changing the laws? That question was not rethorical, but giving my own answer, I think the path is changing the perceptio…

You're ignoring a morally significant dimension to the problem. Nobody becomes a drug addict by accident. They choose to do drugs and take the risk not just of bodily harm, but of becoming unable to support their families and becoming a burden on society. And your suggestion is that society should spend money to treat them of an illness that was their fault to begin with. I happen to agree with you that treatment, no…

I'm not saying there are not legitimate moral reasons to oppose decriminalizing drugs (although I disagree with them). I'm just saying that if you want to decriminalize drugs, the most effective way in my opinion is to convince those that oppose it based on moral reasons to change their mind.

The same moral reasons you listed to condemn drug addicts can be applied to alcohol addicts. But those are saw more as ill people by the same society that consider drug addicts criminals. So I think it is a possible path.

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