The drug problem was studied years ago by the RAND corporation and the US Military - a pure cost-benefit analysis. They found that treatment and education are the most cost effective way to deal with the drug problem, and that prohibition was the most costly and ineffective means of dealing with it.
Therefore the government understands that the war on drugs is likely to be unsuccessful, and we have to ask ourselves, why do they persist with it? A few reasons present themselves: Ideological motivations, they just don't like the drugs. The fact that if you terrify the population you can use that as means for greater political control and discipline. And the fact that Tobacco and Alcohol companies would likely suffer as a result of drug legalisation, like cannabis.
Lastly the CIA has been found to be involved in the drug trade on a vast scale. This is not a conspiracy, there are many well-documented books on this. They need large sums of untraceable money for clandestine operations, and drugs are an ideal source of this.
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 know that at the time alcohol prohibition was instituted, fully 1/3 of the federal budget came from liquor taxes? Alcohol producers were incredibly powerful, yet their product was banned because of moral panic. To a significant degree, women's' suffrage happened when it did so they could vote for prohibition.
There is a great PBS series on this: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition. It's a story of a grass-roots national movement of Americans, many of them heretofore politically marginalized, rising up against money and power to effect change.
You have the moral panic thing backwards. Alcohol is by far the greatest cause of addiction, addiction-related violence, and economic misery due to substance abuse. So much so that hard drug use and addiction is a drop in the bucket. Alcohol prohibition was relatively well-supported in social reform theories compared to the Drug War. There is no functional basis to support legal bans on psychedelics and soft drugs.
The results of the Drug War are so racially biased as to make it effectively a New Jim Crow, and it makes one suspect that a lot of support for the Drug War, especially the part not based in drug-scare propaganda, is based in racism.
And that's not even getting to the employment of police, prison guards, parole officers, court officials, etc. that are highly dependent on the Drug War. And before you claim the prison population are not mostly drug offenders, take a look as the "customers" of the CJ system: a million and a half arrests per year, hundreds of thousands of prison sentences, and 20% of black people having served time for drug arrests, etc. It's highly racist and highly remunerative to the employees and vendors of the CJ system.
Alcohol is by far the greatest cause of addiction, addiction-related violence, and economic misery due to substance abuse.
I don't think it's been established that alcohol causes alcoholism. In fact, research shows that excessive drinking does not correlate with alcoholism[0]. A much stronger predictor of alcoholism is SES. So if we really want to fight alcoholism, we should be fighting poverty.
As far as I know, there are two broad types of addiction... physical addiction and psychological addiction. In terms of addiction to substances, people that become physically addicted to a substance will experience physical withdrawl symptoms if that substance is taken away. Psychological addiction is based on repeatedly trying to fix a psychological issue with a substance.
People are much more likely to become psychologically addicted to alcohol than physically addicted. Alcohol provides an escape mechanism for social issues, it is that quality that makes it addictive, it doesn't need to have the same level of physical addictiveness of other drugs in order to be addictive.
I feel you're right that, at the end of the day, prohibition has been based on public opinion. That said, the government does benefit from reasons OP mentioned, and thus politicians may be likely to push an agenda that strongly supports a war on drugs when speaking to constituents, rather than having an open conversation about the pros and cons of decriminalization.
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 perception about drug addicts. That they are ill people, not criminals. If the social perception of a drug addict is the same as an alcoholic, then there is a chance of stopping the war on drugs.
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, not prosecution is the answer for drug addicts. But there's legitimate moral reasons to oppose the idea.
Besides that, drug use is already well on its way to becoming decriminalized. The drug war is aimed not at users, but mainly at importers and purveyors. That poses another moral question: if drugs are harmful and addictive, why can't society ban people from selling them, like it does for all sorts of other harmful products? I understand the cost-benefit justification (bans are ineffective), but voters aren't driven by cost-benefit analysis. There are legitimate moral reasons to oppose the idea that we should just let people defy society and sell harmful products just because we can't effectively prevent them from doing so.
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.
I was prescribed Xanax, for anxiety attacks. The doctor verbally said to take it as needed, but did not warn of addictive potential.
The bottle however, states to take 2x daily, no warning about addiction.
Luckily, I am educated and intelligent, so I avoid taking it unless absolutely necessary, and now go months without needing it.
I have friends who were not so lucky - they interpreted "as needed" as to mean "as the bottle says if I feel any tinge of axiety". They got addicted and at best, had to go through expensive rehab programs. At worst, they succumbed to depression and died from it.
Please, do tell more me how a PhD student who follows their doctor's instructions, assuming they are a fellow expert, should be judged as having a moral failure.
touching story... nowhere I ever lived in europe I met people that got hooked on these prescription drugs (and even ended up worse), at least I didn't know. is this just my case? or some laws in US are less prohibitive (but where are the doctor's morals? don't tell me all are rotten)
you might find this interesting reading then. here's a quote from the executive summary.
> The United States is in the midst of an unprecedented drug overdose epidemic. Drug overdose
death rates have increased five-fold since 1980.1 By 2009, drug overdose deaths outnumbered
deaths due to motor vehicle crashes for the first time in the U.S. Prescription drugs, especially
opioid analgesics, have been increasingly involved in drug overdose deaths.
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.
The comments were horrible? I don't think so. There are also a lot of selfish people using drugs who screw others over at every turn. And you can't ignore that fact. A lot of people need to hit bottom in the process to recovery so you can't just give them the "victim" label either, it's about personal responsibility as well for MANY people. I'm not discounting abuse or whatever happenstance, but some are just bad people and it's not "horrible" to consider the reality of what they've done. Because some perpetrators of violent crime were victims before, but they have responsibility towards awareness and however they learn to come to terms with it is on them, not us.
If I choose to take drugs without the intention of becoming addicted, and I become addicted, then yes, I became addicted by accident. Even if I was aware of the risks of becoming addicted.
Much like how if I decide to drive my car without the intention of hitting anyone, then if I hit someone, it is deemed an accident. Even if I was aware of the risks of hitting someone with my car.
The analogy is "I decide to drive my car" while drunk "then I hit someone".
In which case you are responsible. There is no accident.
It's all a question of probabilities and risk. The probability to hit someone while driving normally are pretty weak, and the consequences fairly low in normal circumstances (i.e. while you respect every law). When drunk, the probabilities go through the roof, as well as how damaging the consequences can be.
When you start to take drugs, even considering all the surrounding context, the consequences can be terrible and the probabilities are quite high.
So no, it not an accident, assuming you see yourself as a human being, able to think about these. If you see yourself as a victim who couldn't foresee anything, then good for you.
The probably of hitting someone while drunk driving on a given day are actually fairly low, as in under 1%. The real issue is people get into the habit of driving drunk and some people will drive drunk 3-4 days a week for a decade. It's the aggregate numbers that are a problem, when 10+ million people drive drunk at least once a month it was a huge issue even if most of them never get into an accident.
People like to pretend driving drunk is somehow different from driving tired, but the risks are actually similar. In fact a large chunk of 'drunk driving' accidents have more to do with people driving home late than intoxicated. Speeding, talking even just to passengers, and just flat out not paying attention also present major risks.
> The analogy is "I decide to drive my car" while drunk "then I hit someone".
That's an analogy, but so is just driving. There is a risk of being presented with a situation in which you cannot avoid hitting someone every time you drive (the risk is significantly greater if you drink, but it is present irrespective.) If knowing that a risk exists with an action is sufficient to make it "not an accident" if the risk materializes when you have chosen to take the action, even when you have no intention for the risk to materialize, and even the contrary intention, then there is no such thing as an "accidental" collision -- whether with a pedestrian or another vehicle -- while driving.
If that principle, OTOH, is invalid and it is possible to have an accidental collision when driving, then the principle cannot be invoked to argue that no one becomes addicted to drugs accidentally.
I agree with your assertments about drinking and driving and the probabilities of harmful outcomes.
I just don't think it is a good analogy for hardcore drug use. Many of us did not choose to start taking drugs. Not with any real sense of context. The consequences are very often "not real" until they become "all too real."
A better analogy, would be "What do you do when you find yourself in a car moving at high speed with no brakes and no control over speed?"
This analogy specifically does not mention how you got into that position. Because its sort of irrelevant how your brakes came to be shot. What is relevant is how you can stop without causing damage to anyone else - in this situation, like with hardcore drug use, everyone involved is a victim. My point here is that recovery and harm reduction are not about casting blame. They are about finding a damn barrier to run into instead of a minivan full of kids.
The whole "drug users are victims" makes absolutely no more sense that "any criminal is a victim". You can't find a single person in the world who doesn't have bad circumstances. Even the people at Goldman-Sachs may have had a bad history of bullying, a difficult childhood because of divorce, a family that induced an unhealthy relation to competition or money, whatever. This example is not even a joke. Many "privileged" people had really bad psychological circumstances. But you won't say that any of the wall street crooks are victims.
I know a guy who spent 8 years of his life in prison, in many visits, mostly for petty theft and drug use/traffic (mostly cannabis). He had a really horrible life, and is a pretty cool guy, although he's obviously still struggling with addiction. He often says "there are only innocent people in prison, at least they all say that".
> "The whole "drug users are victims" makes absolutely no more sense that "any criminal is a victim"."
What about people who become addicted to prescription drugs like painkillers and sleeping tablets? There may have been sound medical reasons for their use at the start.
Why does the word "victim" matter either way? We should treat drug abuse as a health matter; some people can have a few drinks and eventually get addicted and can't stop drinking every night, others are not affected that way. My mom smoked until she died from cancer, me I never smoked so I avoided the biological component of nicotine addition fortunately.
> if drugs are harmful and addictive, why can't society ban people from selling them, like it does for all sorts of other harmful products?
That begs the question: should society ban the sale of harmful products? I can buy: a sword; a gun; a packet of cigarettes; arsenic; cyanide; Doritos; Dianetics; Season 1 of Survivor and so forth. All of these things may be argued by some to be harmful (and by others not to be).
Why may I not choose to buy cocaine, LSD or marijuana as well?
The reason is people take it as given if you mess yourself up the rest of us will have to pay for your treatment. If I have to pay for your mistakes, then I want some say in what you're doing.
Personally, I'd rather live in a more libertarian society, where you could do whatever you want (to yourself) and accept the consequences. But that's not the society we live in.
But alcohol and tobacco are just as harmful in the sense of having to pay for the treatments and the damage to others as the rest of the drugs. Why ignore them?
There are all sorts of restrictions on alcohol and tobacco. In the US alcohol would be illegal if the government hadn't tried and failed to make it illegel.
>> but voters aren't driven by cost-benefit analysis.
>So, what of it? We should keep doing things we know don't work because the uninformed don't understand?
So we live in a democracy, and so have to pay at least some attention to what the people want.
The alternative is a dictatorship of some sort. Historically, those tend to ignore cost-benefit analysis and whether or not things actually work just as much as any democracy. Main difference is that the opinions of only one or a handful of people matter, and you have no access to influence those opinions, no matter what you think of them.
We don't live in a democracy for exactly those reasons. We have a Constitution to prevent the will of the people from doing certain things. We have representatives to temper the will of the people even more.
We are very purposefully NOT a democracy, because it is well understood that majority rule for everything is VERY bad for the minority, and EVERYONE is a minority in some aspect of their lives.
Sure we care what the people want. If they don't want to die in fires we hire fire-professionals and fund them to prevent and extinguish fires, teach fire-safety, etc.
Somehow people don't consider it a dictatorship that we don't poll the common person for fire-safety law...
And especially in an area (drugs) where we know that hundreds of millions of dollars of propaganda and advertising have been spent on teaching lies, we shouldn't pretend that polling the victims is going to be informative in relation to their natural (untampered) desires.
But there's legitimate moral reasons to oppose the idea.
No. First, your assumptions around choice, etc. encode a whole panoply of privileged thinking. That all people have the same information, peer support, life context, apparent access to life paths and choices, etc. But let's just let that go. The other replies re: accidental addiction and a whole host of other information out there contradicts this position well enough.
The real problem with this conclusion is that it is morally illegitimate to allow a social and humanitarian problem to persist, intensify, and spread because of any so-called moral position. "Morality" that creates a set of decisions (punish drug users!) but ignores the ultimate moral fallout of those decisions is itself a position bereft of actual morality.
Alcohol is a drug, it is known for certain to be toxic, its abuse, and possibly even use (over years) is harmful.... yet society allows its use and even promotes it (and in Britain, its abuse is encouraged)
Yet alcoholics tend to be regarded as having an illness and are not treated as criminals, as opposed to what heroin addicts go through. Any discussion of the drug war that doesn't involve a discussion of the hypocrisy around alcohol is sorely lacking. And the drug war is about users - the UK government is currently stealthily spreading fear based propaganda around cannabis use through charity type organizations that are not obviously tied to the government.
And morality? Forget it. There really is no such thing as morality in Western societies today, except around the extreme things like pedophilia... and even then, that was hidden under the rug for decades - e.g. Jimmy Savile or the Catholic Church. Trying to bring morality into this sort of discussion is a feint. Morality tends to be an excuse for authoritarian attitudes and positions.
The best solution is to have an informed populace. Harm minimization and a more sophisticated understanding around altered states and psychological/spiritual issues by society. But that sort of thing does not mesh well with the agenda of a lot of politicians and other people.
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.
I think you're conflating the motives of agencies within the Executive branch with members of the legislature.
While it may be possible (for the sake of argument) that the DEA and CIA are extremely self-interested in the status quo, I fail to see the link to a career politician, who answers to corporate and private donors and sometimes constituents.
A congressman and an agency head have orthogonal goals and are accountable to vastly different interests.
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.
Public opinion does not drive policy in this case, it is driven by policy. The public has been whipped up into a frenzy about drugs for years using various fear tactics, primarily racism to scare them into having a particular opinion which you now cite as "the majority's moral opposition". The moral opposition is trained as part of a concerted and very successful propaganda campaign.
> 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 1971. Ever since then, public support for legalizing marijuana has been steadily growing: http://www.gallup.com/poll/1657/illegal-drugs.aspx. I don't think that jives with your theory of causation.
Anslinger was one of the most serious bureaucratic prohibitionists, immediately after its repeal was appointed to commission the agency associated with drug prohibition, did a 180 on all of his positions on Marijuana, and doctored scientific evidence to push for a new enforcement target, since he was given a large powerful agency with very little to do. Without a witch to hunt the witch hunter fades from relevance, so he manufactured one, and that's why we are where we are today.
Not really. Cannabis and narcotics were banned in a big series of regulations between 1906 and 1937 in the USA. That was the first war on drugs. The 2nd came in the early 1980's. recommend reading Johann Hari's "Chasing the Scream" for a definitive history of the war of drug prohibition, especially Harry Anslinger's campaign against Marijuana from 1930-1937, which indeed stemmed significantly from the lift of alcohol prohibition.
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
Also as people learn about the benefits versus the negative aspects through studies showing that there can be benefits under certain circumstances and that its use can be good for some people and that even abuse, compared to other controlled substances, is not that bad.
In other words people have better understanding of the narcotic, its effect and how it can benefit some people.
The 1936 classic "Reefer Madness" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reefer_Madness ) would like a word with you about how all was hunky dory in the world of drugs between Prohibition and Nixon...
Just apply the standards we'd use for any official enemy nation. The US jails more of its own populace than anyone else. For many people, the US is effectively a police state. Highly effective outcome of the drug war: social control of certain population segments.
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 marijuana already was illegal.
If that number is correct, is measures keeping marijuana illegal (maintaining status quo), not making marijuana illegal. You can't extrapolate that to a choice people would make when not constrained by history, and when not constrained by the persuasive force of current law.
> 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.
> So how can you say that moral opposition to drug use exists because of propaganda,
Because most of the opponents of legalization use the same talking points that the DARE and other school drug-abstinence programs use. Gateway drugs, etc. All the things we now know are nonsense. That's what makes it propaganda instead of information.
If these people didn't come to these opinions because of propaganda they'd use different terminology and different arguments.
> Moral opposition to drug usage is based on the need to establish social norms that discourage escapism and dependency.
No, because TV(, etc) is acceptable. Drugs are a problem because of our puritanical background. The issue isn't that you aren't being productive, it's that you're enjoying it.
The propaganda was not particularly effective while aimed at children since its primary vehicle was tying opposition of drug use as a way to signal and support racism which was a particular societal trait the children had not yet learned. Opposition of drug use was a way to express racism without actually expressing it once it became taboo following the civil rights era.
The racism strategy was a much more powerful and effective tool for the older generation. There has been an attempt to continue to artificially associate drugs with other 'bad things' (terrorism, for example) now that associating something with black people isn't a guaranteed way to make people hate it, but success has been limited.
The illegality of drugs means that criminal organisations use the manufacture and supply of drugs as one way to make money.
Terrorist organisations need to smuggle things into and out of their target country (weapons, money, people) and so they have expertise that they can use to smuggle drugs.
This link between terrorist groups and drugs is not new.
Even groups who are strongly anti-drugs end up having connections to drug dealing groups. The Provisional IRA was anti-drug, the Real IRA is so anti-drug that it's joined up with anti drug vigilantes, but there are links as far back as 1990 between pIRA and FARC and Columbian drug money.
To try to deny the links between terrorist groups and drug smuggling is weird in the face of so much evidence. Drugs were used as payment for the Madrid bombings.
This reminds me of an article I read where somebody recommended abolishing the $100 note, as it was too associated with crime, and it would inconvenience criminals to have to carry bigger bundles of $20s. I wonder if/how often criminal organizations use drugs as a substitute for money for being easier to transport, verify, etc. I wonder how much that would increase if they did abolish the $100.
> James, 24, looks like just another lost soul in the high street, shuttling between the six betting shops in an east coast seaside town. It's a weekday morning and if you catch up with him inside a bookmaker, you'll find him peering intently into the green glowing screen of an electronic gambling machine – feeding in £200, "a score at a time".
> But this is not a young gambler blowing his meagre wages. James is a drug dealer and his interest in the bookmakers – and the fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) in each shop – is all about laundering money. "That's what turns dirty money clean," he says. Dealers feed their drug money through the machines, losing a little and then cashing out with the vast majority of their stake, James says. They can then collect a printed ticket showing they have gambled that day – meaning that if stopped by police, they can answer questions about why an apparently unemployed young man carries hundreds of pounds in rolled-up cash.
> Earlier this month the Gambling Commission, the industry regulator, fined Coral bookmakers £90,000 in profits it made from one drug dealer who had laundered almost £1m in its shops.
I don't think the gamblers care. It's unlikely he was feeding £50 notes into the machines, but £20s and £10s.
> Impressionable children are indoctrinated against drug use, by US law enforcement, in US public schools.
If you mean things like DARE, its worth noting that studies of DARE have shown that (despite its name and how it is sold to parents, etc.) it has no effect on participant's attitudes toward (or propensity for) drug use, but does make their attitudes toward law enforcement more positive.
> it has no effect on participant's attitudes toward (or propensity for) drug use, but does make their attitudes toward law enforcement more positive.
I would say that's kind of true. I first believed what DARE said and never wanted to use any drugs. I eventually did try 1 and had a totally different experience that what they said and therefore took everything they said to be lieful propaganda.
>t has no effect on participant's attitudes toward (or propensity for) drug use
Which is really crazy, if you think about it. Multiple years of training and indoctrination have no effect. In some ways, that gives me hope for America.
The cynical view is that DARE is pro-law-enforcement training and indoctrination, where the anti-drug focus is simply window-dressing to sell the program to parents and the public.
Even if it doesn't trick kids into thinking police are cool (which, honestly, I don't believe it does), running a DARE course is easier than most other police work, and pulls in federal subsidies too. So it benefits police even if it doesn't convince anyone of anything.
I think popular attitudes have changed significantly, particularly with respect to Cannabis. I think we're at a point where more than 50% of Americans will want to see weed legalized, or at the very least decriminalized. When Bernie Sanders said the war on drugs was a failure, there was hardly any comment, and not much public outcry at all. I don't think it's a controversial statement anymore.
> women's' suffrage happened when it did so they could vote for prohibition
Woman's suffrage happened after the prohibition. The prohibition was the 18th amendment (taking effect on January 16, 1920), and woman's suffrage was the 19th amendment (ratified on August 18, 1920).
You're right about the timeline of amendments, but keep in mind that in western states (as well as in Michigan and New York) women had complete voting rights before 1920. In most other states they had partial voting rights. And since divorce was uncommon at the time, voting "dry" was a big priority for women voters.
> Did you know that at the time alcohol prohibition was instituted, fully 1/3 of the federal budget came from liquor taxes?
It's not about general funding (for which the government has many sources, including straight-up printing), but about untraced monies. Money is not all equal, and for certain purposes, taxed money is much, much less valuable than untraceable drug money.
I always wonder what would happen to drug use if it was widely and easily available. Would usage drop because it wouldn't be "rebellious" to get drugs?
That was at least the motivation for a lot of younger drug users I know.
In my country (India), there is a region in the Himalayas - Kasaul - where marijuana grows in the wild. It is so easily accessible that you can literally pluck some on a walk through the forest.
You'd expect with such easy availability, the locals would be all addled on weed/hashish all the time. Yet, most locals tend to be non-users. Most users tend to be tourists and outsiders who come solely for the purportedly "best in the world" hashish
Portugal decriminalised personal possession of drugs 15 years ago, which has given us some useful evidence. HIV infection rates and drug-related deaths have reduced significantly, and the prison population has reduced by over 50%. The proportion of people who have ever used drugs has increased slightly, but there has been a reduction in the number of regular drug users.
We don't really know what would happen in a laissez-faire system, but we can be fairly confident that a medicalised approach would have substantial positive effects.
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.
The article states that research shows no correlation between severe drug penalties and usage levels.
There's a few people offering anecdotes to counter that, but obviously actual research wins, the difference between Portugal and Japan are therefore likely to be cultural differences outside of strict drug laws.
Japan and HK both have significant organized crime that controls the flow of drugs into the country and drives the price way up. In Japan's case the Yakuza has effectively banned certain drugs they consider "too dangerous".
Source: I had Japanese roommates in college who turned out to be potheads. They raved about the super-cheap marijuana they could get in the US, which was 1/5 to 1/10th the price as was available in Japan.
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 cellphone contacts.
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.
There are hardly any pure Ainu anymore and they did not rebel against Japanese culture when they were discriminated against. Burakumin is more of a "They work in the wrong business" discrimination and is not based on skin color or a look. Burakumin tend to be Japanese in the Japanese culture and are not really outsiders.
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 that drug use is fairly low in my home country Norway as well despite pretty lax laws.
We are doing something very wrong with respect to heavier drugs like heroin though since we have a lot of overdose cases. But Switzerland and the Netherlands seems to be quite good at this and they have very liberal laws.
Very good point; however one thing to keep in mind that in Japan, Singapore, HK etc., drugs use is seen by the great majority as a huge moral failure and a failure to the family. Social pressure and stigma of drugs use is much more severe. It's not glamorized as "stupid things teenagers do". It's vilified as "the depraved things failed human beings do". Interestingly this tack isn't one western societies have used in their toolbox to counter drugs abuse.
I am not sure that having a strong cultural identity as anything to do with drugs consumption. For example, I am pretty sure Russians also have a fairly homogenous population with a strong identity, and they still have an alcohol problem (for other reason I am sure). But I can't see the correlation or the causation here.
Just add another example, beef consumption is very low in Hindu countries even for non-Hindus. Similar observations are true for Muslim areas and pork consumption. Case in point is that a strong cultural identity can bring about a soft enforcement of certain practices (in Japan's case potentially help to explain lower drug consumption rates).
Worth also noting that in Asian countries, attitudes to and awareness about drugs are very extreme. Beyond being far more socially deplorable, most people also harbour ignorant views on the physical harm drugs can and can't cause. There is also less glamorisation of it in media.
>I am not sure that having a strong cultural identity as anything to do with drugs consumption.
Why can't it? Drug use could be socially shunned, counter to cultural norms. Consider Islamic countries where alcohol use is haram. Consider also that alcohol use in both Japan and Russia is culturally accepted. Alcoholism is a significant problem in Japan too.
HK has insane amounts of expats, significant amounts of which smoke weed. Probably almost half the expats I met, mostly rich young folks though so it's not surprising at all.
If you're white and walking around during the night you'll constantly be approached by people trying to sell you weed and coke. (Steep prices, but significantly easier to find than in most western cities)
Edit: Wrote that in a bit of a hurry. When talking about HK you need to take into account the massive income inequality between expats and many of the locals working "normal" jobs.
Weed is rather expensive for many of the locals, but for some western bankers making 10k+ USD a month it's a relatively cheap way to take a break from the rather hectic life in HK.
The rational conclusion seems to be that whether drugs are legal, or decriminalized, are, at best, only part of what determines levels of drug use and drug-related crime.
China, too, have a far lower drug use rate. Not sure for Japan and Hk, but for China I think there are two main reasons. One, she was "locked in turmoil" during the 70s and the 80s, so did not get the influence from this period. Two, most young people are busy making their life, and have actually good hope to have a much better life than their parents (which is not that difficult).
China has a problem with Ketamine addiction, not helped by whole villages that mass produce the drug. There was a good documentary about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxXvTi3QRwA
China certainly has drug problems, but it is not like in West: i'd have to search carefully to find one French guy of my generation or below that never tried hash. In China most Chinese I know never tried. It's just not the fashion yet. Only a very thin slice of the society is in contact with drugs.
Personally speaking (although I'm hardly one of the "younger drug users" you refer to), I would continue to consume more or less the same quantity of drugs that I do now. I would possibly increase my intake very slightly, but not significantly. The significant differences would be that I would probably pay less, I would be consuming safer, regulated substances, and I wouldn't constantly be in fear of being sent to prison for a personal lifestyle choice.
Unless the penalties drastically increase, or I am convinced that what I am doing is morally wrong, I shall probably continue to take my drug of choice for the foreseeable future.
From what I've heard, the marijuana that grows in the wild tends to be of a far lower quality than that which is cultivated.
same for me, but I hate smoking. if things would be legal, I would much MUCH prefer different, non harmful way to consume it (food, of vaporizing some pure extract in e-cigarette style). usual vaporizers are only somewhere in the middle, plus more inconvenient.
I don't care so much about pricing, amsterdam levels would be OK for me. I consume so little that I would be OK even with higher pricing. But I could actually choose what type of effect, strength etc. I want, rather than random, mostly weak & expensive street stuff, bought from shady characters in dark alleys.
Unless society will be handling death/for life penalties for pure consumation here, I am not stopping consuming of a plant that used to grow all round us, was heavily subsidized when US colonies got independence etc. It just doesn't make sense, this is one of the cases of laws that are plain wrong (in case of this plant and all possible products from it). If there is such an immoral law, it actually feels good breaking it (but still preferring clean, legal, market-driven scenario).
Re: more drug choices -- that's exactly what's happening here in Colorado. There's a huge variety of choice. And at the dispensaries the staff generally very knowledgable, so it's almost like buying wine.
I've experienced it in Amsterdam (albeit in busy-over-the-counter style), glad to hear there is spot like that in US.
the thing is, effects (at least on me) can be so starkly different from type to type (i never experienced different stuff with same effects). very different to consistent dumb-down-but-generally-happy effect of alcohol (again, purely on me).
>I've experienced it in Amsterdam (albeit in busy-over-the-counter style), glad to hear there is spot like that in US.
It's considerably more advanced in (at least) Colorado. Due to the weird quasi-legal status in the NL, only flower, hash, and simple baked goods are available. The chemical extractions (e.g. glycerine, other solvent) that allow for a wider variety of products such as sodas are more strictly illegal in the NL. The black market supply in the NL hampers the diversity and quality of the actual products, too.
It's really quite a stark difference, and CO is leaps and bounds more advanced in this regard.
In the Netherlands, where marijuana is effectively legal†, the percentage of the population aged 15-64 which has used the drug at least once in the past year was 5.4 (2005). In the US the data was from 2009 (pre-legalization in Oregon and Colorado), and was 13.7%
Anecdata: I've lived in both places, weed just isn't as cool in NL as it is in the US.
† Use of marijuana in NL is totally decriminalized and it is easily purchasable by anyone over 18.
When I was quite a bit younger and did a semester abroad (from the US) I became friends with several Dutch students in our dorm/hostel. I remember, being the naive 19-year-old that I was, asking how cool it was that weed was legal there and stuff like that. They mostly looked at me with a tolerant but exhausted expression and said that it was more of a tourist thing. The impression I got was that it was treated by everyone the way I now look at teens who constantly talk about smoking cannabis or getting drunk as if it was the coolest thing ever. Basically it was like "yeah, sure, it's legal but come on, only dipshits make it out to be something more than a minor vice or guilty pleasure to be indulged infrequently".
I wonder if this is related to quality of life. A country like the Netherlands with stronger social services/safety nets and more 'liveable' cities must have much better quality of life for the bottom quintile of society compared to the states, and it's that quintile that is most likely to get addicted/cause other social problems.
It seems like a common thread through people getting addicted to drugs is trying to find an escape for a crappy/desperate life, so logically if it's less crappy people won't need an escape as much, right?
Worth noting that the government in the NL is working quite hard to make it less tolerated, e.g. shuttering coffeeshops through legitimate grievances such as selling to minors or through "neighborhood improvement" or "too near a school" reasons and by criminalizing the aiding of production (taken to absurd levels such that innocent garden supply shops can be criminally liable). Production has already been and remains illegal, and the government has rejected calls by various cities to experiment with sanctioned growing.
Before drugs were criminalizes in the early 20th centuries they were easily available at pharmacies, cocaine, heroin, p even hashish tinctures. The addiction rate was approxiamately the same as it is today, about 7% of the population. Most people don't get addicted to drugs, and don't want to abuse drugs. It's more of a psychological disorder, particularly exacerbated by childhood trauma and despair.
I believe so, I believe most kids are doing it because it's taboo and feels something adventurous to experience.
Now legalizing drugs would also give standards and tests. Instead of potentially toxic you'd get something tested (you may get shitty product still but the producer will get busted and closed easily).
Culture always shapes how we view substances. For folks in that region I'm not sure there's any stigma attached but I'll take a guess by saying they probably don't see it as a viable past time or fun to consume.
>In my country (India), there is a region in the Himalayas - Kasaul - where marijuana grows in the wild. It is so easily accessible that you can literally pluck some on a walk through the forest.
e.g. Hindu Kush. Interestingly, cannabis has been used in India since 2000BCE.
Aren't there some tolerated/accepted uses of cannabis in India? I suppose what I'm really asking is it actually tourists or aren't there some significant traditional uses such as bhang? I can certainly understand that some users would just be tourists, but most I'm not sure of.
No more than gambling usage has dropped because it's no longer rebellious to gamble.
Gambling legalization is very close to drug legalization in my opinion, and that has shown that usage will increase, and the behavior will be destigmatized.
In the US culture, I think a lot would depend on marketing and advertising. Consider the marketing of high fructose corn syrup, which is cheap, legal, hardly "rebellious," possibly a sort of low-grade high, and consumed in toxic quantities.
I'm not arguing against legalization. But I had a similar conversation with my kids about legalizing pot. I told them that whatever the health aspects of pot use are, the pot industry would use all of the tactics of the tobacco industry, to market pot as "cool" and perfectly safe.
High fructose corn syrup isn't marketed to consumers. It's marketed to corporations that otherwise would use sugar. Sugar is much more expensive in the US than elsewhere because of BS tariffs advocated for by Florida sugar barons.
True, the analogy isn't perfect, but I think it serves as a model for designing and marketing substances that are cheap, addictive, and ultimately toxic.
Where I live it's illegal for tobacco companies to market their product. In any way. Anywhere. They are hidden in the shops and if one wants to buy it one needs to specifically ask for it.
Lots of plants that have medicinal effects are immediately dangerous, especially compared to what ends up being a poor diet choice that takes a while to have much of any effect.
"Medicinal" partly implies that a small amount of the substance will have an impact on the body, and there are many substances in plants where the dose does matter.
They're not the only ones who benefit from the drug war. It's a tool in order to allow for mass incarceration of "undesirable people". The book "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander really spoke to me as a resident of Philadelphia. I knew full well that if a cop found 1/4oz of weed or less on me, they wouldn't do anything...but if I was black, I'd be put in jail. Now that marijuana has been "decriminalized" (I call it "equalizing" the law because it's now fair for all people) in Philadelphia, that's not as much of a problem in my city...but I'm pretty sure statewide it's still a big problem. Essentially, I think the drug war is a big, lame excuse for putting people in jail.
This is actually a very interesting aspect of the dangerous results of having lots of laws and bans. It is like companies which makes long lists of things which can get you fired. List which are such that everybody has done a fireable offense. This allows companies to fire people at their own discretion because they will always have something on you.
Likewise the corruption laws in developing countries seem to largely be about getting rid of political opponents. Everybody is basically guilty of corruption, but only those who are on the wrong side politically actually get prosecuted. Look at Russia, if you cross Putin they can charge you with corruption right away because they no almost everybody has done it.
In this regard laws which masquerade as fighting undesirable things in society really becomes a tool of oppression.
> why do they persist with it? A few reasons present themselves
Also: theatre.
Much like a lot of airport/airline security measures are theatre to reassure the common people that something is being done, the war on drugs continues because people who don't know any better (or don't believe the ineffectiveness argument) will feel less safe if it officially stops or even steps down a notch. This situation perpetuates itself, and any escalation doesn't get reversed, and feeds into the politics point others have already mentioned because people feeling less safe are less likely to vote for you next time.
My understanding wasnt that the CIA was directly involved in the drug trade, but that their normal activities create infrastructure for their partners that are shady international organizations that operate outside local laws naturally creates drug smuggling networks.
They work with local organized crime to create covert hideouts and border crossings for CIA use, and give them funding and weapons in exchange, and things like the drug trade come out of that almost automatically.
My favorite conspiracy theory regarding drug legalization is, "the rich" will want to legalize drugs to get rid of "the poor" on the theory that people who've been put out of work by machines are an unnecessary burden, and that widespread use of drugs among such people is a good way to reduce their numbers.
(I don't quite "believe" this theory in the sense of imagining a bunch of rich people sitting in a room, conspiring about this and cackling evilly. I "believe" in this more in the sense of, I think drugs are very bad for you on average and they certainly are the #1 cause of untimely death among the people I've personally known, and I think that the kind of people making policy decisions will not be that upset if large numbers of poorer people are very adversely affected by legalization, any more than they are upset by the adverse effects of draconian prohibition measures.)
Politicians do whatever gets them, and keeps them, elected. If they poll and find 70% of their electorate are in favor of something, guess how they're going to vote?
I really don't understand why people put themselves in echo chambers then complain to each other why the world is the way it is. It's a waste of time.
Actually, that's not true. In Florida a year or two ago, ~58% voted to legalize medical marijuana, but the vote needed 60% because it was a ballot initiative. How come the Florida reps didn't go ahead and do it themselves since obviously a majority of their electorate voted that way? It's about a lot more than the electorate.
More to the point, the 58% is the fraction of the people who feel strongly for or against the drug question. Those are likely not the same segment of the population that votes for the legislature, and neither group is representative of the population!
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.
How is what I said not true? The bar is said to 60%. I said 70% so it's actually easier than I thought.
You came up with a number that was close but not enough and you think that proves a point? Get the additional 20 out of every 1000 votes. The reason it's not 50% is because people don't want flip/flopping every few years.
The government is made up of people who respond to incentives. The war on drugs is happening because American voters will crucify politicians who are "soft on drugs". Since the politicians can't be "soft on drugs", neither can the appointed bureaucrats that answer to them.
> Tobacco and Alcohol companies would likely suffer as a result of drug legalisation, like cannabis.
To state this in another way- think of all of the Budweiser/Bud Light sponsorships and commercials and replace that Bud with the other kind of bud. That's about the scale and usage to expect, at the very least, if cannabis were to be completely legal everywhere alcohol is.
And all of the abuse, drunk driving, etc? Increase that somewhat. They won't be able to control all of it with treatment and education any more than they have with alcohol. Also, imagine the level of drinking at work even in the 1940's and 50's after alcohol prohibition was lifted.
Aside from cannabis, think of all of the other drugs that could be abused. Yes, drug violence, etc. will go down, but there is a tradeoff.
It's possible to have the thing on sale while banning advertising for it; much of Europe has restrictions on tobacco advertising, sale, "plain packaging" requirements, etc.
Note that drinking at work has gone away without government intervention.
Did the abuse of alcohol and it's impacts go up or down after prohibition? Probably depends on whether you count making gangsters rich and famous, and people dying from drinking bathtub gin as abuse or not, but even if you exclude all that, it's not a slam dunk that there would be a big shift in either direction for users, or that it wouldn't simply displace other drugs, legal or illegal, which you'd need to measure to get a true picture.
I suspect a major cause is that prohibition is a well known method, used to handle other substances which the state wants to limit access to. Narcotics is intended for medicine and research, which makes it easy to regulate to licensed organizations. They use the same method for substances that is used to create explosives, weapon components, radioactive material, and so on. In Sweden, even things like pure alcohol or pure oxygen is regulated and require a license, since the target audience for that is quite narrow.
No one ever got fired for buying IBM, and no politician got blamed if they create regulations that limit use to only the intended target audience. Its not about being effective.
So far as I understand, a treaty[1][2] is the root of this problem. I assume that the validity and efficacy of this treaty will come into question April 19 through 21. Amending this treaty would pave the way for sensible drug control.
And yet, there are plenty of Asian countries (Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, etc) where drug laws are much stricter than the US's, there are very few drug addicts, and there is very little crime.
And yet there are lots of European countries with low crime rates and liberal drug laws and low usage. That is the point. There is no clear correlation here.
But these asian countries and the european ones do have a number of things in common which is different from the US. Neither has poverty problems on the scale found in the US. Neither have racial conflict at the level found in the US.
And how comparable is really Singapore? It is a single city, tightly controlled with 3x the police force of a regular western country, where they practice DDR like surveillance in the sense that citizens are taught to report each other for all sorts of minor transgressions.
The US is a lot more similar to Europe so if one was ever too look at alternative policies I think looking at European experiences makes a lot more sense for the US than looking at Asian countries which are vastly different historically, culturally and in what political system they currently employ.
This is a dubious claim. How do you actually identify the number of people who are addicted? Even if there are fewer people addicted to the very few currently illegal drugs, are there fewer people addicted altogether?
I really find it absurd that stating facts is downvoted here on HN because it doesn't fit the hivemind. Singapore and Indonesia execute drug offenders and despite what I am told should happen in this thread, there is very little crime despite their crazier "War on Drugs". When compared to a country like Portugal, Singapore and Indonesia have far lower crime and drug use.
I think that what gets down-voted is more the implication that making drugs offences capital crimes is the chief reason Singapore and Indonesia have lower drug usage rates.
I believe that more significant influencing factors are that drug usage is socially unacceptable Singapore and Indonesia, that citizens are more willing to accept government control over their private activities, that drugs are harder to acquire.
It seems more likely that those countries are able to have capital punishment for (what the West would consider to be) minor drugs offences precisely _because_ drug use is already low and drug users are more consistently vilified by society.
Yeah, for evidence of the impact culture has, look at alcohol. In almost all countries it is treated similarly: after 16-18 years old, drinking is legal. Yet there are vast differences in addiction rates and per-capita consumption.
Execution is a very drastic drug-related harm. If we killed everyone at age 50 then cancer rates would fall drastically, but it would be completely unreasonable to suggest that we had effectively solved the cancer problem.
It is worth noting that Indonesia have changed their drug policies in recent years and are moving towards a medicalised rather than criminalised approach to drug use, largely as a response to rising rates of HIV infection amongst injecting drug users.
I didn't downvote, but others may have downvoted because you didn't give any sources, and you don't expand on your statement. Yes, there are fewer drug users in Singapore and Japan, but they are historically and culturally extremely different to the USA.
I'm not convinced on Indonesia[1] and Hong Kong[2]; I've visited both myself several times, and drugs were easily available.
I downvoted you because you're simply wrong with a couple of those countries, for example in Hong Kong there's a plenty of drug users. The statistics just aren't reported like they are in some western countries.
Singapore only executes drug dealers, producers and traffickers. This hasn't really had a significant effect on drug availability, and it still remains a major transit point for drug trafficking in Asia.
What the government knows (legalization with education and rehab being better than current methods) and what it does is normal. The government consists of hundreds of thousands of employees (military, civilian and contractor) plus a small handful of politicians who decide the rules.
Being politicians, it doesn't matter so much what they know as what their constituents want (or believe they want). Which leads to the government being a screwed up, multi-headed entity with many competing and opposing objectives and directives.
To your reasons, I'd add financial interests of those involved in the WoD. Think of pre-trial asset confiscation, WoD-based grants to local law enforcement, $ to aerospace companies for WoD surveillance and detection technology, etc.
Legalization would hit many powerful interests in their revenue streams.
Drugs are also a perfect excuse for anything. Drop a bag of something in someone's car and suddenly they have to prove it's not theirs. They can't, of course, so now anything you do to them is justified.
Did you accidentally beat up the wrong person? Plant drugs on them and charge them with resisting arrest and possession.
Can't "keep the black men as much as possible in prison" probably also play a "minor" role? War on drugs hits the poor and black communities the most. That is by design - the crack cocaine 100 times as powder cocaine being good example.
A lot of people in law enforcement, prisons, CIA and defense industry probably also did a cost-benefit analysis and found that prohibition is a very effective way to keep their jobs.
The prison lobby (guard unions, etc) is actually fairly loud about this. They make a lot of noise around things that put and keep more people in jail. It's way past "probably"!
> A few reasons present themselves: Ideological motivations, they just don't like the drugs. The fact that if you terrify the population you can use that as means for greater political control and discipline. And the fact that Tobacco and Alcohol companies would likely suffer as a result of drug legalisation, like cannabis.
I'm sure those are all factors, but I bet the biggest factor is just police forces pushing for huge amounts of federal funding.
Right. Can verify. Step one of the CIA "send operations people into a country to fuck them up" is generating the money necessary for the operation locally (with the first recommendation towards that goal being to deal drugs). Global drug legalization would make it very hard for the CIA to undermine foreign governments so quickly. If you take drugs out of the equation, it is hard to generate lots of cash quickly.
Also because the ATF and law enforcement agencies get huge funding allocations fighting drugs and have lobbied for more and stricter laws as well as increased spending; it's become culturalized and almost a heritage to the point of being something families and groups rely on almost religiously throughout generations, not to mention the moralities mixed in heavily with religion.
NNo, some people who work in the government understand that. Others have conflicting interests of cognitive biases or are stupid or have other reasons for disagreeing. 'The government' is simply not a monolithic entity and outside of certain narrow legal contexts pretending that it is leads to fallacious conclusions.
Or maybe they don't see Drugs as a problem. I don't think e.g. Victorian aristocrats saw poverty as a problem or that the slave traders saw exhaustion or torture and other forms of violence as a problem, far from it. I believe slaves would rather be given coffee instead of food coffee.
> And the fact that Tobacco and Alcohol companies would likely suffer as a result of drug legalisation, like cannabis.
is that true? these things aren't really mutually exclusive right? this is just my supposition, but I would imagine that there is market synergy between legal cannabis and alcohol and tobacco.
The conspiracy theory I hear more often that is quite a bit more believable (though still a conspiracy theory) is that legalization would be harmful to pharmaceutical companies, based on the idea that is way more profitable to get people hooked on prescription opioids or such than have them manage long-term pain by smoking weed.
its not exactly a conspiracy, is it? that implies that it is a secret and this is not a secret. pharmaceuticals DO directly compete with cannabis. they manufacturers of those drugs have a clear motive in opposing legalization of a competitor.
Nearly all countries have some ban so I doubt full legalization is the answer. I think if you approach it to minimise harm you'd probably have varying policies depending on the drug and the situation. For example cannabis, maybe legalize and tax like cigarettes. Stuff like Heroin and Meth don't legalize private sales but let drug counsellors hand it out to addicts to kill the illegal market, prevent them being harmed by contaminated drugs and stop them breaking and nicking stuff.
"Nearly all countries have some ban so I doubt full legalization is the answer. "
Most countries went with the flow of international pressure, rather than banning as a sovereign decision.
It came to a point in which any country that becomes sufficiently soft on hard drugs is labeled a "narco state", and that's widely considered reasonable grounds for a military invasion! What we're seeing today is the chilling effects of that.
> Stuff like Heroin and Meth don't legalize private sales but let drug counsellors hand it out to addicts to kill the illegal market, prevent them being harmed by contaminated drugs and stop them breaking and nicking stuff.
That's the worst of both worlds. What will happen is a lot of people will become "addicts", get the drug (legally), then sell it to drug dealers to cash out. Criminals will keep their profits high, but they'll decrease their risk (because the government will be a safe and reliable supplier).
It's been tried a few times in reality with Heroin and seems to work ok. Sometimes they make the addicts use it in front to the counsellor to ensure they are not taking it to sell on.
The people who aren't dependent and don't qualify for government provided dope. And there could be a lot of such people: imagine how much less risky a heroin habit sounds when you know that as as an addict you can get free clean drugs reliably, and that it will always be in front of a drug expert.
And it is less risky. I'd support a system that gives I'd more junkies of the junkies aren't destroying their health, aren't stealing, have jobs.
But of you're only allowing heroin use for dependent users in a clinic, you won't destroy the black market. There are still people developing new heroin addictions in Switzerland. And not only new users will use the black market to get heroin. Anyone who wants to use it in their own home, anyone who wants to keep their use secret will have no other choice.
Hassle? Stigma? Hardcore drug addicts will do anything to get their fix. I have known heroin addicts, for example (one was a friend who sadly got sucked into that world). When you're zonked out on heroin most of the time, the way society perceives you is of very, very little consequence.
As another commenter mentioned, I'd imagine a lot of drug trade (maybe not in heroin, but definitely in cocaine) is not hardcore drug addicts, but occasional (or even regular) users who live (relatively) normal lives.
You see, the problem with blanket statements like that is that they're always wrong. Doctors prescribe drugs all the time; there must be something positive to them for doctors to expose their patients to such danger, don't you think?
Therefore the government understands that the war on drugs is likely to be unsuccessful, and we have to ask ourselves, why do they persist with it? A few reasons present themselves: Ideological motivations, they just don't like the drugs. The fact that if you terrify the population you can use that as means for greater political control and discipline. And the fact that Tobacco and Alcohol companies would likely suffer as a result of drug legalisation, like cannabis.
Lastly the CIA has been found to be involved in the drug trade on a vast scale. This is not a conspiracy, there are many well-documented books on this. They need large sums of untraceable money for clandestine operations, and drugs are an ideal source of this.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR331.html
Noam Chomsky on the War on Drugs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-JX0yXDlh8