How to make a free thinker mad

OK, most of you guys are wimpy socialists or democrats. Pfaugh. I want to be able to put anything I want into my body. The flip side of that discussion is that I want to own any weapon I feel I need, up to and including tactical nuclear deterrents. At least you don't have to aim them.

-- CharlesShapiro - 01 Oct 2001

Personally, I am a wimpy socialist. You are right -- being a liberal, I want to put just about everything in my body, including tactical nuclear deterants. -Anonymous

The problem with putting anything you want in your body is a. you put a strain on the public health system b. you put a strain on your family and co-workers, and c. you could be a hazard if you are operating machinery. Of course, sometimes prohibiting a substance just doesn't work, e.g. alcohol. But the prohibition of drugs is working to some degree. I'm not even going to address the issue of tactical nuclear deterrents. -- ChrisMartin - 14 Nov 2001

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Wait, I never said that drugs were not a problem. Nor did I say that the right to put anything in my body meant that I thought that doing so was necessarily a good idea. My quarrel is with drug prohibition laws. Remember the costs of these laws, which include 1/3 (or more, depending on how you count) of the folks in prison and a rapid erosion of everyone's right to live unmolested by police and informers. Unless you're going to say that hurting yourself is so wrong that the government thus has a moral duty to protect us from ourselves, then the only way to argue drug prohibition is on a cost-benefit basis. Whether it works or not, banning certain drugs is more costly than allowing them, at least by America's experience since the 1920s when these laws were enacted. BTW, don't forget to add nicotine (more fatal than alcohol), caffein, and many patent medicines to your list of drugs for which prohibition "just doesn't work". Unless of course you want to argue for banning coffee and cigarettes. It could be done, and you could even say that it should be done on moral grounds. That argument also leads to banning of hamburgers, sharp objects, most sports, many clothes, television, et cetera. Sounds dubious to me.

My main point was that guns and drugs are two sides of the same coin. If you are against banning the one, you shouldn't be for banning the other. I find a lot of 'conservatives' cannot quite swallow this. It's as if they'll trust you with a pistol, but not a joint. Pfaugh. I was kidding about the tac nukes though.

If you want to do a list, you can indent by three spaces and put a *:

• This
• comes
  • here
  • is a sublist
• out
• as
• a
• list.

A numbered list is three spaces and a "1".

-- CharlesShapiro - 15 Nov 2001

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My point is that caffeine and tobacco are like alcohol in the sense that if you try banning them, you get the typical effects of prohibition, e.g. organized crime, etc.

But with the drugs that are banned now, i.e. marijuana, cocaine, I think a lot of people do not do them right now because of the risk of getting jailed. Some anti-drug-war people say the drug war has failed because a lot of people are still growing and using drugs quite regularly. I think the drug war is succeeding because many more people would use drugs if they were legal.

The government does have a public health responsibility, too. So if more people were doing drugs, you'd have greater public expenditure on drug treatments. I don't know the numbers here so maybe the benefit wouldn't be worth the cost.

But my main point is that a lot of people who would do drugs aren't doing them because they're illegal.

-- ChrisMartin - 16 Nov 2001

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OK, let's get this very straight. Your view is that illegal drugs are so bad that they justify:

• The slaughter of innocents (e.g. shooting down civilian airplanes containing pregnant women)
• The imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of people who have committed no evil (e.g. somewhere between 1/5 and 1/3 of all the inmates in all the prisons in the USA in jail for "nonviolent drug offences")
• Brutal campaigns against peasants and governments across most of the Western hemisphere (e.g. aerial spraying campaigns and meddling in sovereign states in Colombia, Peru, Nicaragua, Brazil, and just about every other South American state)
• The siphoning off of billions of dollars and millions of lives from a real, taxable economy into a black market where there are no contracts and there is no law but force (How many liquor store owners have you heard of shooting it out in the street?)
• The endless hopeless idiotic waste and chatter of organizations trying to hold back the tide with their hands (http://www.dare.com)

I don't care what drugs my neighbor uses. I don't even care what drugs my friends use, as long as they don't get caught. As Jefferson said of religion, 'it neither breaks my arm nor picks my pocket' what you do with your personal body and your personal time. Until someone actually does something which injures me, my view is that he's free to choose whatever entertainment moves him the most.

What bothers me most about the drug war is that it is so clearly not worth the cost. Every drug is like caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine; the only real difference is how much you're willing to pay for it. From what I've seen, most folks are willing to pay far more for an interesting drug than the government even can pay to prevent them from having it. Trying to prevent them from doing so results in nothing but blood, pain, death, and waste.

-- CharlesShapiro - 20 Nov 2001

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I actually have a much more moderate position. I'm not totally against legalizing drugs. In fact, I think the tax revenue from drugs could be used for health care costs. In fact, if there were a referendum on legalizing drugs, I would probably vote for it.

I was just trying to point out that there are some arguments to be made for the war on drugs, i.e. it's not a total failure.

Happy Thanksgiving

-- ChrisMartin - 21 Nov 2001

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Darn. And here I was just getting into Serious Rant Mode. You right, the rate of use (and harm) from illegal drugs is way smaller than that for --say-- alcohol. And I'm only a slightly wild-eyed Libertarian on this issue, believe it or not. Some folks make a case for excluding government from all licensing of any recreational drug, but I am with you on this. There's a legitimate role for government in assuring that some folks (e.g. minors, or people who already under state supervision) don't have the same access to recreational drugs which the rest of us have. This implies licensing and taxation. In many respects I think that the model for alcohol might fit regulation of marijuana, cocaine, and similar entertaining substances.

OTOH, I am totally for draconian drug laws regarding antibiotics. They are not like recreational drugs. When you misuse antibiotics, you create a direct danger to the community, since the microbes in your body which develop resistance to them can then spread to other people, ultimately making the antibiotics useless.

-- CharlesShapiro - 28 Nov 2001