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Drugs are still being used regardless of them being legal or illegal.
I don't consider what a person does on their own time to be any of my business.
The war on drugs effectively creates a black market where drug dealers reign. Any product that has a demand has the potential to create a market. The scarcity of a product in relation to the demand establishes the profit incentive. Products become scarcer as restrictions are placed on them; if demand remains constant then profit goes up. Furthermore the incentive to increase demand exists to grow the market; drug dealers are incentivized to push more drugs, people begin using at earlier ages, addicts are given more drugs rather than help, etc.
It's prohibition is unlawful and unconstitutional in the first place, so yes, it should be legal. Property rights need to be restored.
It took a Constitutional Amendment to permit the US government to prohibit Alcohol - yet one is conspicuously lacking for all these other prohibited substances. While the States may have such a right to regulate business trade of substances (substance trafficking), generally they lack authority to interfere with private property rights.
Whether it's legal or not, it's being used. It's the 2nd most trafficked drug in the world, actually.
I tried it once during a particularly difficult time in my life (it did nothing for me), but I'm not a regular user and I personally will never seek it out as a preferred drug of choice. Nor do I think whether or not others use it is any of my business.
I can assure you it wasn't flour. Though I can concede that I probably couldn't discern between the high from the coke and the high from the roxies and Percocets I snorted at the same time.
Personal possession should be legalized, and funding should be diverted away from prosecution and incarceration into education and treatment programmes.
Production and distribution should be critically re-examined, along with every other substance, to determine the actual cost-benefit of legalization versus criminalization.
Wow! This is interesting. I have this stereotype of narcotics users as being compulsively addicted "junkies". You think of cocaine as being no different than say alcohol? Even in terms of it's potential to ruin whole families and communities?
Well firstly cocaine is not physically addicted. People get addicted to the feeling that it gives you both in terms of happiness and energy (it it is quite popular with doctors that have to work many hours...). It is more than possible to take it in moderation. I have maybe once or twice and don't see it as an unhealthy habit for me.
I think at the moment drink ruins a lot more families than cocaine. This is probably because alcohol is more common than cocaine but saying that if cocaine was legal it would ruin more families than alcohol is very speculative.
saying that if cocaine was legal it would ruin more families than alcohol is very speculative.
I don't think you see anywhere near the level of desperation for the next "high" that you get with crack cocaine for instance...if I am not mistaken. Crack cocaine has ravaged communities here in the US, while illegal. I am not sure that making it legal here would effect overall quality of life positively or negatively, but my strong suspicion is that it would be negatively. maybe I am wrong?
I'm not sure either. More the point for me is that we shouldn't criminally punish an individual that hasn't done harm at all (or maybe someone that has only done harm to themselves). That is fundamentally why possession of drugs is legal here.
Crack is an entirely different animal than cocaine, primarily due to expense, and method of use.
Crack is heavily cut and processed and formed into little 'rocks' that are smoked. These rocks, while significantly lower in terms of 'active ingredient' than the equivalent amount of cocaine, have a significantly stronger, (but more short-lived) effect than normal cocaine does. It 'hits you' almost instantaneously as it is absorbed rapidly in the lungs and taken to the brain, gives you what is most likely the most intense high you will ever feel, but it only lasts about 5 minutes; you crash rapidly, and that crash is what makes the user crave more crack almost immediately. An individual hit of crack is very cheap, but due to the short duration and that intense craving, a user is highly likely to blow through his or her wallet, whatever he or she can borrow, and whatever he or she can steal in the meantime to get the high back. It's not the same as what is normally referred to as physical addiction, but can be described as an analogue for physical addiction compacted into a very short timeframe. That's why it's known for ravaging communities.
By comparison, cocaine (while more pure), has a slower onset, a longer duration, and a more gradual comedown; by the time you feel the effects of snorting coke, your crack high will already be on the way out. The high itself lasts around an hour or more, and while the comedown is uncomfortable, it's got nothing on crack. As I understand it, cocaine can be VERY psychologically addictive, but it doesn't come with the protracted pseudo-physical addiction that crack does.
Crack is the scariest thing I've ever touched and I will never, ever go near it again. I tried coke after I tried crack, on a couple of occasions, and while I felt it, it was a letdown compared to prior experiences, despite being assured by the friend doing it with me that it was good.
If legalizing cocaine can reduce the demand for crack, then I'm all for legalizing cocaine. Coke is the white-collar high; crack is the ghetto expander.
Cocaine was banned in the US one hundred years ago. Since that time there have been no findings to even suggest that it is anything other than a highly addictive and highly destructive substance taken from Erythroxylon coca, a densely-leafed plant native to South America. Coca is the most powerful stimulant known to come from nature. There is nothing to merit a lift of its ban.
Simply because a law was passed doesn't make said law lawful or constitutional. It took a Constitutional Amendment to prohibit Alcohol, yet one is conspicuously lacking for these other substances - so where does the lawful authority come from to prohibit them?
USA tried that once. It was called prohibition, and during prohibition crime swept the country, organized crime lords got super rich, and far more teens were drinking and dying then they had before. It was such a disaster, some of the same groups that supported prohibition at first ended up campaigning for it to be repealed.
Prohibition and experiments where certain drugs have been decriminalized or legalized have repeatedly shown that prohibition of addictive substances causes more societal ills than allowing it to be legal but regulated. Examples include decriminalization of drugs in Portugal and legalization of pot in Colorado.
One does not need to support or use drugs to approve of legalization. There is a lot of evidence (including all the cases I mentioned above) that prohibition of addictive substances causes more problems for society than letting them be legal. People are going to be using them no matter what we do. Making them fully criminal just means the users now have to go to gangs and other criminal organizations to get high. This obviously puts them in more danger, increases the chance that they will engage in other illegal activities and makes the criminals wealthier and more powerful.
Simultaneously, we spend countless taxpayer dollars trying to stop an epidemic that only gets worse the harder we crack down. Instead, we could make the substances legal and regulated, collect tax money from sales and put in into treatment programs and research. Not mention it would free up all the money being flushed down the toilet by the War on Drugs.
There are several other problems involved with prohibition of these substances, but I hope you see my point. I believe that being opposed to drug and alcohol use should mean being opposed to their prohibition. It's time for society to stop wasting money and manpower on a lost cause and instead put that money towards helping people kick the habit and improving the neighborhoods and communities where they have the most hold.
And that's fine, I have no problem with that stance.
What I'm saying is that they won't be stopped by prohibition. There will always be drunks and users.
So what we should be working towards is a system that can provide the best help for those who have already become addicted, and help as many people as possible kick the habit. If we're tossing around a bunch of money to stop something, and its only getting worse, the money could be going to better things.
And simple common sense tells us that when something is illegal, people are going to be much less likely to seek out help or participate in studies regarding that activity. We know a lot more about extremely rare medications than we do about widespread illegal drugs. Doesn't that seem antithetical to devising a solution?
What I'm saying is that you don't have to look at legalization of these substances as tolerance of their use, but rather as giving us more direct ways to combat the problem.
I mean, your opinion is your opinion and you are entitled to it. And I do understand my opinion probably seems counter-intuitive. But history has repeatedly shown most forms of prohibition of addictive substances to be a disaster, while decriminalization has a stabilizing effect. So I believe that if one is opposed to these substances, the route I'm recommending is more effective and beneficial to that goal.
I would hardly say alcohol is more dangerous, in terms of health effects, than cocaine. Alcohol, when consumed in moderation, is acceptable. Cocaine, however, is highly addictive.
As far as addiction goes, unless we are talkin about crack, cocaine is considered about equal or even somewhat less addictive than booze. (Reference below). Additionally, alcohol's intoxication level is notably higher, which arguably makes it more dangerous to operate vehicles or heavy machinery while drunk than high on cocaine.
I'm not saying at all that cocaine is a better drug, but, in terms of addiction and intoxication it is definitely not considerably worse.
You made no indication of the degree in which drugs are to be considered a health issue.
You reasoned that cocaine should be illegal because it has health issues. I'm merely pointing out that alcohol has health issues too. Should alcohol be illegal based on your reasoning then?
