A Proposal for Legalizing all Recreational Drugs

creativedreams said:

I appoligize for letting myself get overpassionate and deteriorating the discussion by lowering the choice and manner of words I use. Looks like on this topic we may have to agree to disagree, although I may do a little more research and re-address this.

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No worries. :2razz:

During your research, I would invite you to consider the Institute of Medicine:

Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us

In summary, that article concludes that there is not enough data to determine if the drug laws have any preventative effect on the rate of their use.

creativedreams said:

drug use would spread like the plague through parental influence, advertising, etc. (common sense:doh)

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Are you suggesting that more parents would encourage their kids to use drugs if they were legal?

As for advertising...we already have restrictions on alcohol and tobacco advertising. There's no reason that we couldn't implement the same restrictions (or even harsher restrictions) on advertising for other drugs.

creativedreams said:

studies show if you put an electical charge between a mouse and it's food and gradually increase the electrical charge for each feeding time...the mouse will reach a point where it will not go to obtain the food.

replace that food with a drug, and the mouse will continue to go to obtain the drug until it dies.

How this relates is that when a person runs out of money to get food they will not risk life in prison to obtain the food

when a person runs out of money to get a drug they will risk life in prison to obtain the drug.:doh

If you can't grasp this then......well.......sorry:doh

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What does any of this have to do with whether or not the drug is legal?

Now that I'm off work and have more time...

Laws don't define social norms, social norms define laws. That means it's not necessary for something to be in the law books for it to be a social norm. What I'm getting at is, it's not necessary for drugs to be illegal in order for them to remain unacceptable in society. It's not illegal to be a fat alcoholic chain smoker, but still these traits are seen as undesirable by virtually everyone. By the same token, laws are not necessary for society to condemn drug abuse either. That means removing the laws will not necessarily lead to society's eventual approval of drug abuse. It could of course, in tandem with other factors, but it's not a given by any means.

More from the Institute of Medicine on that topic:

As traditionally conceptualized, the two prongs of drug control policy are supply reduction and demand reduction. Supply reduction is usually understood to be synonymous with enforcement of drug law prohibitions and international interdiction activities, whereas demand reduction is usually thought to encompass clinical treatment of drug abuse and addiction as well as the spectrum of activities aiming to prevent youths from using drugs (e.g., media campaigns, school-based education programs). This conceptualization is imperfect for two reasons. First, a large component of drug law enforcement focuses directly on reducing demand (e.g., apprehending and punishing users for possessing drugs). Second, the standard menu of demand-reduction activities tends to overlook (or take as given) the rich fabric of deeply ingrained social controls against illicit drug use, including legal controls.

In this chapter, the committee addresses sanctions against using drugs within the broad framework of social control. In people’s daily lives, almost all of their behavior is shaped, channeled and controlled by the expectations and norms embedded in their relationships with their families, friends, teachers, employers and various social groups and organizations, and these norms and expectations vary substantially over the life course. Informal social controls may discourage drug use or, conversely, may encourage and reinforce it, depending on the social and developmental context. Some norms and expectations discouraging drug use (including alcohol and tobacco use) are formalized and “enforced” in social groups and organizational settings through various mechanisms of social discipline; sometimes such “private” sanctions are explicitly permitted and enforced by law (e.g., dismissals for using illegal drugs or alcohol on the job or for testing positive for illegal drugs).

A central point of dispute in the drug policy debate is the nature of the link between the drug laws and other forms of social control against drug use. On one side, defenders of strong prohibitions and severe penalties argue that these laws are needed to express, symbolize, and undergird social norms against drug use (DuPont, 1996). On the other side, critics of harsh penalties and zero-tolerance policies argue that over-reliance on formal controls can displace or weaken informal controls, especially when the intrusiveness and severity of the laws generate social alienation and discord (National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, 1973; Erickson, 1993). Despite its importance, the relationship between law and other forms of social control is poorly understood (Black, 1976; Ellickson, 1987), although the “expressive” function of law, and its relation to social norms, are receiving increasing attention in the legal literature (Lessig, 1995; Sunstein, 1996).

Sanctions against drug use are a preeminent feature of policy on illegal drugs, yet very little is known about the actual effects of these sanctions on drug use (independent of the effects of other social controls). Some observers have argued that enforcement of sanctions against users imposes substantial costs on individuals and on society without a demonstrable preventive effect beyond that achieved by the underlying illegality of the drug and strong social disapproval (New York County Lawyers’ Association, 1996). Supporters of these sanctions argue that strong penalties against use, including criminal punishment, are necessary to deter drug use, to facilitate treatment of drug users, and to register social disapproval in the strongest possible terms—often called “zero tolerance” (DuPont, 1996). These arguments raise important empirical issues regarding the declarative, deterrent, and therapeutic effects of criminal punishment and other sanctions. This chapter addresses these issues.

Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us

Sanctions against users may depress prevalence in two ways: by expressing social norms against drug use (declarative effects) and by dissuading people from using drugs due to fear of being apprehended and punished (deterrent effects).

Laws against drug use may generate declarative effects by expressing social disapproval of drug use and thereby symbolizing and reinforcing social norms against drug use and helping to shape individual beliefs and attitudes (Bonnie, 1981a). To the extent that these norms are rooted in moral antipathy toward drug use, strong sanctions against the behavior may also generate moralizing effects. (Andenaes, 1974; Zimring and Hawkins, 1973). It should also be noted, however, that under conditions of normative ambiguity or discord, punitive sanctions may also generate “reactance” in an alienated population and might actually provide an inducement for violation through a “forbidden fruit” effect. It is often suggested that laws against use of illegal drugs and underage use of alcohol and tobacco have such effects, although there is little direct evidence of this (MacCoun, 1993).

The empirical literature bearing on the declarative effects of legal sanctions is scant, mainly because it is so difficult to distinguish these effects from deterrent effects or to disentangle the effects of preexisting social norms and informal controls from the declarative effects of formally prescribed sanctions. In one of a series of studies investigating this issue, Grasmick et al. (1991) showed that an antilittering campaign increased the likelihood of compliance because people felt that violating the norm would be an occasion for shame or embarrassment. Similarly, substantial increases in seat belt use and child restraint after enactment of mandatory legal requirements appear to be attributable primarily to declarative effects (in this case, probably a pedagogical effect) rather than deterrence (Institute of Medicine, 1999). (Interestingly, proponents of so-called primary enforcement of seat belt laws—allowing a penalty for failing to wear a seat belt even if the driver has committed no other violation—argue that an increase in the deterrent threat is now needed to increase the rate of seat belt wearing beyond current levels.) No studies have successfully isolated the declarative effects of sanctions against use of illegal drugs from their deterrent effects.

It is generally assumed that sanctions against drug use also depress the prevalence of drug use through deterrence—i.e., potential users refrain from initiating or continuing use due to fear of being punished. According to the basic postulates of deterrence theory, persons considering using drugs will weigh the expected utility of the behavior against the subjectively perceived risk of punishment. The deterrent effect of a legal threat is thought to be a function of the severity of the threatened sanction, the probability that it will be imposed and, under some circumstances, the swiftness with which it is applied.


In general, research on the relation between perceived risk of detection and punishment and self-reported drug use tends to show that perceived legal risk explains very little of the variance in drug use (MacCoun, 1993). Similarly, studies of the relation between prevalence of drug use and variations in legal penalties for drug use tend to find no relationship. For example, Chaloupka et al. (1998) found, using the Monitoring the Future survey data from 1982 and 1989, that variations in length of prison terms prescribed by state law were unrelated to prevalence or frequency of cocaine or marijuana use by high school seniors. They also found that substantial increases in prescribed fines would have little or no effect. These findings are unsurprising because, under present enforcement conditions, the deterrent effect of criminal sanctions against drug use is attenuated significantly by the low probability of detection for any given violation and even for repeated violations. Other factors, including the perceived benefits of drug use, fear of health-related risks, and informal social controls, may have a more significant influence on decisions about using drugs than legal deterrence. As in the case of underage alcohol and tobacco use, current enforcement may have a stronger effect on where people carry or use drugs, rather than on whether they do so.

Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us