> Then came the 1970s and the drug war. “Oh my goodness, now I have a business,” he thought.
This guy is pretty interesting (and it's disappointing that he didn't do something more constructive with his skills), but this quote stood out the most to me. If you start limiting supply but not curtailing demand (e.g. a drug war), it makes it a lot more profitable to sell. And all that money makes it a lot easier for the sellers to become big and organized and dangerous.
I'm sure it's not that simple, but it really makes me wonder what would happen with widespread legalization.
With legalization, the drugs would be cleaner and dosing more predictable. We could then focus on helping addicts recover instead of worrying about the legal trouble and violence they might bring to our homes if we try to help them.
Being in my mid 50's I know lots and lots of people who at one time had problems with drugs and managed to recover from that and go on to lead reasonably happy lives. The ones that were unlucky enough to get arrested have had a lot harder time putting that behind them than the ones that weren't[1].
Being arrested puts you in the situation of Jean Valjean, released from prison, 'free' but not free.
[1 I know someone who was a drug addict and dealing. He got busted. The end result was he had to scramble and sell even more drugs to pay his legal bills. He was successful eventually. But ultimately also because he lived in California.
>With legalization, the drugs would be cleaner and dosing more predictable.
This is a huge problem. People have sold stuff that they claim to be LSD, MDMA etc while using other compounds that can be damaging to outright fatal.
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Then take things like anabolic steroids, especially injectables. If someone wants to use steroids, that should be their business as it doesn't hurt anyone other than potentially themselves HOWEVER purity. When you're buying stuff in a gym from a random guy or ordering from a Eastern European website or the darknet you only have the reputation of the seller to go by and you're injecting something of unknown purity into muscle which can (and occasionally does) result in abscesses/infection which can do considerable damage to your body. The infections are likely often from poorly manufactured 'gear' and not from operator error.
Why not allow people that want to use steroids, for their own athletic performance, go to a qualified medical professional to not only have the drugs prescribed but to have their blood work monitored so that on cycle, and post cycle, therapy can be handled optimally for health. People will use the compounds, so why not allow them to do so as safely (and legally) as possible? I know of at least two of my friends that have served time, one bought steroids in his youth and has lived with the stigma of being a felon for decades now, the other acted as an one of the individuals getting the money from a PO box a decade or so ago and then forwarding the payment on to the actual seller to add a layer of protection for the seller and again in his early 20's landed a felony conviction and did time. Now he's in prison again, after getting the first felony expunged, for selling ancillaries and peptides (peptides aren't even explicitly illegal, they're simply not approved for administration to humans by unqualified medical professionals!).
Why is legalization better than decriminalization? If legal drugs are anything like Juuls, widespread availability and removal of social stigma will just cause use to explode and you have 10x as many addicts as you did before.
AFAIK, countries that have tried loosening the laws on drugs have made good experiences. You would save a lot of money on law enforcement, plus you could tax drugs the way alcohol and tobacco are taxed now. With all that money, you could offer some reasonable therapy facilities.
Also, I don't think the stigma would just disappear for stuff like heroin. Heroin is terribly addictive, and staying away from it remains a good idea regardless of its legal status.
> Also, I don't think the stigma would just disappear for stuff like heroin.
Hopefully there's still strong sigma for life destroying drugs like heroin, meth, etc. But as for the others it's already disappearing for marijuana, and I could easily see it disappearing for LSD, mushrooms, cocaine, etc.
Based on my personal experiences, cannabis, LSD, and mushrooms are far less destructive than alcohol, which is perfectly legal in many countries.
Of course, one can easily destroy one's life with those "soft" drugs. Many people have. But simply making those illegal obviously has not helped much, either.
I have a hard time putting psychedelics in the same category as cannabis. And saying they are far less destructive than alcohol might serve the purpose of decriminalization/legalization (because you are right: they are safer), but it doesn't serve the purpose of whoever winds up taking them.
You can have a couple of beers for the first time, and that will give you an idea of what alcohol feels like. You can microdose, and that will give you an idea of what psychedelics are like. But as you scale the amount you take of each, each drink of alcohol will feel like another layer of alcohol, and each increase in dosage of psychedelics is going to feel significantly different than the last. Setting also has more impact on psychedelics than it does on alcohol. Six beers at an office party is going to feel the same as six beers at home. A full dose of psychedelics at an office party is not going to feel the same as a full dose at home.
If legalization were to happen, cultural shamanism would need to exist in some form. In South America ayahuasca doesn't drive those who take it to madness because there are experienced people not only guiding you through the process, but also preparing your diet and expectations before hand. In the late 60s if you were seeking out LSD for the first time, you likely already existed on the side of the cultural fence that advocated for open mindedness and acceptance, and some of your peers would probably already have tried it and would be able to guide you. Illegality today almost forces that same network to exist, as in you need to know people who have done it in order to find it in the first place.
The idea of Joe employee of the month hearing about legalized mushrooms in the news and how they're safer than alcohol, going to a dispensary and buying some with his hard earned USD and then going home to have his ego ripped out of him doesn't sit well with me.
> cannabis, LSD, and mushrooms are far less destructive than alcohol
Alcohol is tied, heavily, to crime. As much as 70% for domestic abuse issues, and closer to 30-40% for fatal accidents, assaults, etc. The stats below are from the 90s, but a similar, if slightly lower, correlation is still true in more recent statistics [2]
> "A discussion of the sources of data on alcohol and crime encompasses the National Crime Victimization Survey; the Uniform Crime Reporting Program; the National Incident-Based Reporting Program; surveys of probationers, jail, and prison inmates; censuses of prisons and jails; and the Fatal Accident Reporting System. Regarding the role of alcohol in crime victimization, approximately 3 million violent crimes occur each year in which victims perceive the offender to have been drinking at the time of the offense. Two-thirds of victims who suffered violence by an intimate reported that alcohol had been a factor. For about 1 in 5 violent victimizations that involved perceived alcohol use by the offender, victims also reported they believed the offender to have been using drugs as well. Approximately half the incidents described by the investigating officer as alcohol-related were between offenders and victims who were intimates. Data show that approximately 7 out of 10 alcohol-involved incidents of violence occurred in a residence. Among the data on drunk-driving arrests and fatal accidents are the number of such arrests. A trend analysis shows that over the last decade rates of intoxication in fatal accidents have declined across every age group. Data on the use of alcohol by convicted offenders show that among the 5.3 million convicted offenders under the jurisdiction of corrections agencies in 1996, nearly 2 million (36 percent) were estimated to have been drinking at the time of the offense. Alcohol use at the time of the offense was commonly found among those convicted of public-order crimes. "[1]
Does decriminalization do much to stop the crime and violence on the supply side of the illicit drug market? I'm assuming decriminalization makes possession of small amounts ok, but dealing and importing are still major offenses?
The dealer still has to import the drugs the same way as he does now, build a network of street dealers, etc.
Well my point was that they were originally intended to reduce nicotine addiction, but they are actually increasing nicotine addiction due to being perceived as safe alternative to cigarettes by teens. I suspect that legalizing drugs such that they are "cleaner and dosing more predictable" (aka "more safe") would inevitably cause an increase in usage and therefore addiction.
Sorry, I had no idea what a Juul was, and Google indicated it was a brand of e-cig. Only included the comment because I assumed other non-smokers would have no idea.
No. When you read the patents you'll realize that Jull vapes were designed mimic the psychopharmacology of cigarettes, which everyone knows are pretty damn addictive. Regular vapes have a different chemistry. You hope that Juul gets sued out of existence and that the FDA rouses itself to action.
So far legalization has not proven to solve the problems of demand or addiction. In the past several years legally available drugs have been the most abused and resulted in significant problems. I am not claiming this as a justification for increased enforcement either.
If you aren't solving for demand you either aren't taking the problem seriously or you have anterior motives to ending drug abuse.
Solving for demand means something like reversing the trend of disenfranchised people saying "fuck off to everything" [0]. How do you reverse alienation? Well, I can't purport to have the answer to that, but I can say that almost every popular political movement today is selling its own path to such a reversal (which, to be fair, they've been trying to sell for forever).
That said, two possible avenues imo would be to reduce criminal penalties for people who are only hurting themselves, and also to try to make the US healthcare model more efficient - to make it like what seems like every other country already has. Those are two spirals that seem to trap a lot of already-burdened people, that drive them either to misery or living in extremis.
> So far legalization has not proven to solve the problems of demand or addiction.
It solves the problem of peoples lives being (further) ruined by punitive policy. It opens up the possibility of seeking help without risking criminal conviction.
> It opens up the possibility of seeking help without risking criminal conviction.
There are numerous recovery clinics in the US. I’m not aware of any of them having a policy of reporting their patients to the police. What would they even be arrested for? Having been high in the past?
Fear of criminal penalties isn’t a barrier to recovery in the US. I’m not sure where you got this impression.
I'm not in the US, but it's a barrier everywhere AFAICT.
It's an admission of past criminal behaviour and potential future criminal behaviour. People who are addicted are very likely to be in possession for fear of getting withdrawals as much as anything else.
It seems as though Portugal has had a lot of success with its approach.
But you said that legalisation hasn't tackled addiction. So far I'm not aware of anywhere that the majorly addictive drugs (heroin, cocaine) have been legalised. Portugal has made inroads into its addiction problem with its decriminalisation program.
I suspect legalization would have positive effects in the US as well, but I do not suspect it will slow consumption. This is evidenced by juvenile vaping rates. The trends indicate that vaping is on schedule to far exceed historic levels of tobacco consumption by minors. Vaping is generally healthier than tobacco having little or no toxins, but the nicotine content is variable and can occur in far greater concentrations than in tobacco products resulting in greater addiction rates than tobacco. Whether or not nicotine were criminalized demand and consumption would continue to grow. The problem is not legality or even availability. The problem is demand. Children want to smoke nicotine products that taste like candy. The messaging is that tobacco is bad, but vaping is... (not communicated).
I suspect the differences in cultural attitudes between Portugal and the US are a large factor for the differences in evidence of success.
Anybody who tells you that legalization is going to solve the problems of drug addiction is lying, but I don’t think anyone has ever argued seriously that it would.
The point of legalization is to solve the problems of having a massive black market for drugs. Getting people to quit using drugs is a different issue entirely.
> So far legalization has not proven to solve the problems of demand or addiction.
Those are really biological issues.
If they were to make tobacco illegal tomorrow that also wouldn't solve for demand or addiction but would merely make it vastly more inconvenient for people to get their nicotine fix. But, as they've doing for (at least) the last 40+ years, if they try to get people to either not start or stop on their own (i.e. without jail time) then the problem just kind of fixes itself.
Two choices really and one leads to having the largest prison population on the planet with no real end in sight to the "drug epidemic".
Demand for tobacco id down specifically because there is ample activity and messaging to influence people away from interest in tobacco. If this same level of influence were applied for all drugs people would be generally much healthier.
You're mistaken. Prohibition has always failed. 18th/21st amendments and Portugal decriminalization. It's not to say hard drugs are great, but criminalizing them creates more violence and crime in order to access them.
Legalization solves several bigger problems:
- MIC/PIC over-criminalization for profit
- barriers to treatment
- higher prices plus criminal enterprises lead to violent crime, i.e., Mexico right now, and greater property crime of users to support habits
Solving economic, social issues is beyond the scope of drug policy but giving people hope, purpose, mission and security reduces usage. Having a functional community, society are preconditions to deterring substance abuse... whereas failed states and under/unemployment promote it.
No amount of self-righteous crusaders will change human behavior, but they can certainly make it worse with naïve policies.
>but criminalizing them creates more violence and crime in order to access them.
And fills prisons, which cost tax-payers a LOT of money, with people that often did nothing to actually harm anyone (I'm specifically speaking of psychadelics, marijuana and steroid convictions).
Yes, it did work for Portugal. Portugal does not have the pharmaceutical industry that the US does.
Due to criminalization of certain drugs and the extreme enforcement thereof demand for legally available drugs has never been higher in the US. The pharmaceutical industry is more than happy to fill that gap and meet the economic demand. By ignoring the data and eliminating access to controlled substances demand has not diminished but instead shifted to alternate products.
Criminalization/legalization ignores all the data and research on this problem.
The argument is that people are going for legal more potent, more dangerous drugs in US because much harmless marijuana is illegal (Just as when alcohol was prohibited
people switched from wine and beer to moonshine). This is true everywhere including US. Not just Portugal. So when relatively harmless recreational drugs are decriminalized, people won't go for fentanyl or oxy.
Then of course we have the moral argument. The addicts are an extremely at risk, isolated, poor community. They can't seek help as their very existence is illegal (they consume illegal drugs). If drugs were legal, they could seek help without fear or stigma, others could help them without fearing breaking law, NGOs could legally operate in this domain helping them (with disposable needles, safe usage etc.. not just in rehabilitation). All this is true for US. Not just Portugal.
> The argument is that people are going for legal more potent, more dangerous drugs in US because much harmless marijuana is illegal
I'd argue that there is demand for mind-altering substances in the US because of societal reasons. I count marijuana in there because I don't think any other country in the world has made a bigger deal of it than the US. It is a part of pop culture in a way that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world to my knowledge.
No judgment implied on people who use marijuana, of course.
Criminalization/legalization alone does not curb demand for health damaging drugs. The only important goal in talking about drugs is reducing intake to increase personal health. Everything else is either a beneficial byproduct of that goal (crime, dependency, disease) or an antithetical motive.
Marijuana availability would not increase personal health and there is no indication persons consuming legally prescribed opioids would prefer legal and unprescribed marijuana alternatively merely because it is less unhealthy. You can legalize or criminalize all of it, but either way demand for consumption will continue to increase in the US according to the data available.
And a drug war also encourages manufacturing and selling drugs that are as potent as possible, like fentanyl. The same happened with Prohibition: the underground market was all hard liquor, not beer.
Also, once someone is on the wrong side of the law it becomes easier to rationalize (or safer as there is no one they can turn to) breaking other laws. Human trafficking and guns use the same routes established and initially funded by the drug trade.
EDIT:
This also occurs at the street level. I've read stories of people not wanting to talk to the police about a murder because they are afraid the police will find some weed and arrest them instead.
>This also occurs at the street level. I've read stories of people not wanting to talk to the police about a murder because they are afraid the police will find some weed and arrest them instead.
Sadly a common example is the question whether to call 911 in case of domestic violence for the same reason.
They also love to shoot the family dog. And they get to play with sexy SWAT gear after just one week of training, that's why SWATtings are so deadly. US police have a serious discipline problem, foreigners regularly comment on that.
It's unfortunate that average street gangsters are even less disciplined than the cops. You'd love to see a firefight between a properly trained squad and police. The cops will run even faster than that coward sheriff when the very disturbed fellow shot up Parkland High School.
It is that simple. Here is a Nobel Prize winning economist agreeing with you:
“See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.”
― Milton Friedman
This guy is pretty interesting (and it's disappointing that he didn't do something more constructive with his skills), but this quote stood out the most to me. If you start limiting supply but not curtailing demand (e.g. a drug war), it makes it a lot more profitable to sell. And all that money makes it a lot easier for the sellers to become big and organized and dangerous.
I'm sure it's not that simple, but it really makes me wonder what would happen with widespread legalization.