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Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

economist.com

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Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#191

Post by dragonwriter »

notsony wrote: post #182
jliptzin wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is clearly talking about same-sex marriage. And if you're trying to make a slippery slope argument against same-sex marriage, that's been done 1,000 times before and it hasn't served the "family values" crowd too well lately.

> He is clearly talking about same-sex marriage. How do we know that? When did the word equality mean only heterosexual or homosexual couples? It's a marketing myth that "gay marriage" is the same thing as "marriage equality". They are not the same, they are two very different things.

> How do we know that?

Because marriage equality is a well-established term with a clear unambiguous usage in political discussions. Sort of like "pro-life" and "pro-choice", which could (divorced from context) each have a wide variety of possible meanings, but which, in the actual context of modern American political debate, have very specific meanings in terms of particular opposing positions regarding abortion policy.

> It's a marketing myth that "gay marriage" is the same thing as "marriage equality".

It would be more accurate to say that "marriage equality" is a brand that has been established by advocates of legal marriage without distinction based on the sex of the partners.

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#192

Post by ludamad »

baldfat wrote: post #52
ukigumo wrote: post #31

It's not often that I have the opportunity to feel proud of the legislators in my home country, but Portugal has been on the leading edge of drug prevention and rehabilitation since we moved from a "war on drugs" to a program of health risk prevention and removed the weight of criminal charges and proceedings from the equation. Some interesting articles below: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/03/portugal-drug-de…

This is my fear. The "War on Drug" really is a health issue, but most people I know that are against the war basically want to smoke more and more pot and/or Libertarians and the reply to stop the war is not and we can help more people.

Most people I know don't let legality get in the way, but would very much like to not be criminals!

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#193

Post by Nursie »

tajen wrote: post #166
paulhauggis wrote: post #153

I'm all for drug legalization, however, this should also be a part of the laws: -Businesses should be able to fire someone for being under the influence of any mind-altering substance. The CA proposition a few years back had a clause in there that made it very difficult. Calling addiction a "medical issue" makes it even worse because the differences between recreational use and addiction aren't that easy to distingui…

> If a company sells it and you choose to take it and die, your family shouldn't be able to sue the company or the government. So companies are free to do as much advertising and marketing as they like to make drugs pervasive, and only the consumer is supposed to resist? It's a heavy penalty on everyone's brain cycles. In Europe we generally forbid ads, marketing and product placement for alcohol and tobacco. [edit:…

>> "Upon consuming this drug, you are not allowed to work for x years, drive, or be treated for health",

Why the hell would you be so nasty about it? This is pure hysteria.

Most drugs do not last all that long, are less harmful and addictive than alcohol and there is no reason at all to try to exclude them from work, care or driving (beyond the time the drug is in effect, obviously).

We don't turn people away from healthcare because they have the odd drink do we? So why would we do it with ecstasy? Or cannabis? Or... ?

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#194

Post by dragonwriter »

notsony wrote: post #188
MichaelGG wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, marriage, as far as it needs to be a government-sanctioned thing for wherever reason, should be a partnership of 2 or more consenting entities that are legally allowed to enter contracts. Like an LLC kind thing - the whole point, as far as government goes, is to provide asset management, is it not? Adding arbitrary restrictions is inelegant.

This. Why can't more people see it the way you have described? True marriage equality does not discriminate. As it stands, the campaign for "marriage equality" is deceptive and has only been concerned with marriage between homosexuals - other minority groups be damned!

> the campaign for "marriage equality" is deceptive and has only been concerned with marriage between homosexuals

No, its not. Marriage where one or both partners are homosexuals is legally permitted (and has often occurred) without marriage equality.

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#195

Post by MichaelGG »

aquadrop wrote: post #80
Nursie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> In Russia drug addicts were (and still are, to lesser extent) responsible for very large if not largest portion of crime, especially burglary and theft ... So, don't dismiss parent comment so easily. My issues with the parent comment are not that addicts never steal, it's the ignorance of lumping all drug use into the same category and then saying 'drugs' make you steal. It's the same in the UK - addicts of one so…

>> However the proportion of drug users who are addicts is small and the proportion of addicts that steal is small so saying that drugs and theft Probably we have different view on who is a drug addict. Hard drugs addicts (like heroin, ketamin, etc) have very large criminality involvement, because those drugs make them fall very fast. >> Again, a tiny proportion of drinkers may cause a problem Maybe small proportion…

Hard drugs, like ketamine, the stuff they give children during surgery, a medicine on the WHO's list of essential medications.

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#196

Post by MichaelGG »

_yosefk wrote: post #14

"...the impossibility of winning the “war” against theft, burglary, robbery, and fraud has never been used as an argument that these categories of crime should be abandoned." (From Don't Legalize Drugs, http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_2_a1.html )

Why'd they give up on the war against homosexuality, then, too? Or the war on mixed race marriages? Or universal suffrage?

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#197

Post by Nursie »

paulhauggis wrote: post #189
Nursie wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> -Businesses should be able to fire someone for being under the influence of any mind-altering substance. Pretty sure they already can, you do not come into work drunk, for example. >> -The individual should pay for all of their own issues, medical expenses, etc due to drug addiction. ... It's unfair for me ... You already pay lots and lots and lots and lots of money to drug-war enforcement efforts. The cost of hea…

"Pretty sure they already can, you do not come into work drunk, for example." We don't have medical alcohol, so it's not the same thing. "You already pay lots and lots and lots and lots of money to drug-war enforcement efforts. The cost of health problems related to drugs would be minimal compared to this." The costs can't really be calculated at this point. We don't really know how many more or less people will need…

>> We don't have medical alcohol, so it's not the same thing.

Yah, we do. Addicts in the UK are given maintenance IIRC.

Alcohol is also used in cases of methanol poisoning and various other emergency treatments, though that's not quite the same thing I guess.

>> We don't really know how many more or less people will need medical care after the legalization of many drugs. However, in my experience, it will most likely be many more than we estimate now.

It'll still be cheaper than the prisons, the militarised police etc etc.

Of course, like you, I'm not naive enough to think those things will just go away.

>> I'm unclear why the reason I need to legalize drugs is to appease a criminal from not robbing me.

>> If heroin is as bad as you describe (creating addicted criminals that want to rob me), why again should it be legalized?

Legalising would help you be less likely to have a criminal rob you by not pushing up the prices of their addiction to the point they feel they have to do this.

But we're talking here about your demand that we not fund any healthcare or rehab once we have legalised/decriminalised. This is all part of the picture of helping people to recover and contribute to society rather than casting them out and saying "you fix it", which has a long history of not working.

I mean, you're just kind-of OK with legalisation, not outraged at the billions spent in your name on making everything worse, but you're demanding that not one red-cent be spent on helping people? Sick dude.

>> You aren't really making a good case, sorry.

There are not many cases that can be made when someone has already decided that everyone else in society is not their problem.

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#198

Post by tdkl »

notsony wrote: post #177
intopieces wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment to yours refers to same-sex marriage between two people. Please don't be disingenuous. There are no major organizations or groups of people advocating for the other situations you mentioned. You knew full well before you typed your comment what the person was talking about.

> There are no major organizations or groups of people advocating for the other situations you mentioned. So you want to dismiss the ideas above because they belong to a minority and are not supported by the majority? Wow, you sound like a bigot. Remember just a few years ago there were no major organizations or groups of people advocating for... same-sex marriage.

Same-sex marriage doesn't result in higher risk for offspring with serious disadvantages.

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#199

Post by nitid_name »

notsony wrote: post #177
intopieces wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment to yours refers to same-sex marriage between two people. Please don't be disingenuous. There are no major organizations or groups of people advocating for the other situations you mentioned. You knew full well before you typed your comment what the person was talking about.

> There are no major organizations or groups of people advocating for the other situations you mentioned. So you want to dismiss the ideas above because they belong to a minority and are not supported by the majority? Wow, you sound like a bigot. Remember just a few years ago there were no major organizations or groups of people advocating for... same-sex marriage.

It's not germane to this discussion. The previous poster only brought it up to draw parallels between a straight person being for allowing gay marriage and a non-smoker being for legalization.

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#200

Post by tajen »

Nursie wrote: post #193
tajen wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a company sells it and you choose to take it and die, your family shouldn't be able to sue the company or the government. So companies are free to do as much advertising and marketing as they like to make drugs pervasive, and only the consumer is supposed to resist? It's a heavy penalty on everyone's brain cycles. In Europe we generally forbid ads, marketing and product placement for alcohol and tobacco. [edit:…

>> "Upon consuming this drug, you are not allowed to work for x years, drive, or be treated for health", Why the hell would you be so nasty about it? This is pure hysteria. Most drugs do not last all that long, are less harmful and addictive than alcohol and there is no reason at all to try to exclude them from work, care or driving (beyond the time the drug is in effect, obviously). We don't turn people away from he…

I was just following OP's opinion that consumers shouldn't be treated for health. If you want my own opinion, health is cheap for everyone in my home country, drugged or not, and I don't see why it's different in US/AU. Thanks for the downvote Nursie.
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