I do believe we can continue prohibiting drugs and end the drug war at the same time.
Now I'm confused...prohibition IS the war on drugs, so continuing one necessarily means continuing the other. How can you end the war on drugs but still legally prohibit their use? Can you please explain the difference?
All I meant was that we need better drug education, but we can do that and keep drugs illegal at the same time.
Of course we can. But the discussion at hand is whether it makes sense to keep them illegal, not whether we can keep them illegal.
Again, ignoring basic economics. Even if illegal drug selling became more profitable as it became more dangerous, the high prices can only lead to a decrease in demand. If that's true with everything else ever, why isn't it true with drugs?
High prices do typically reduce demand, and drugs are no different. But again you're refusing to acknowledge that this causes more problems than it solves, and that there are better alternatives than prohibition for reducing demand.
EH.Net Encyclopedia: Alcohol Prohibition
I can't seem to find statistics on heroin or cocaine though....
I think you didn't read that source very carefully. Allow me to highlight a few of the caveats from your own source:
"There are a number of reasons to doubt that these policies were major factors in causing the pre-1920 declines in cirrhosis. First, cirrhosis had been declining since 1908, well before any of these policies took effect. Second, all these policies except war-time prohibition (which did not take effect until July, 1919) were weak; they did not restrict production until August 1917, and none outlawed importation or consumption of existing stocks. Moreover, Congress made no appropriation for the enforcement of any of these laws. In addition, there are other factors that potentially explain a decline in alcohol consumption or cirrhosis. Patriotism might have encouraged temperance, since food was considered vital to the War effort and beer production was associated with Germany. And the high morality rate in Word War I combined with the flu epidemic of 1918 might have removed many persons from the population at risk who would otherwise have died from cirrhosis.
Beyond the results presented here, additional results in Dills and Miron (2001)—which account for the effects of state prohibitions, pre-1920 federal anti-alcohol policies, alcoholic beverage taxes, income and other factors—demonstrate consistently that Prohibition had a small, statistically insignificant, and possibly even a positive effect on cirrhosis. Given the evidence that cirrhosis is a reasonable proxy for alcohol consumption, this implies Prohibition had little impact on the path of alcohol consumption."
Then there's this graph, immediately below the ones you referred to:
"Roughly speaking, therefore, there have been two periods with high homicide rates in U.S. history, the 1920-1934 period and the 1970-1990 period (Friedman 1991). Both before the first episode and between these two episodes, homicide rates were relatively low or clearly declining. Prima facie, this pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that alcohol prohibition increased violent crime: homicide rates are high in the 1920-1933 period, when constitutional prohibition of alcohol was in effect; the homicide rate drops quickly after 1933, when Prohibition was repealed; and the homicide rate remains low for a substantial period thereafter. Further, the homicide rate is low during the 1950s and early 1960s, when drug prohibition was in existence but not vigorously enforced, but high in the 1970-1990 period, when drug prohibition was enforced to a relatively stringent degree (Miron 1999)."
I do believe that rather than punishment, drug users should be forced into rehabilitation programs.
Then you don't understand addiction very well. Anyone with any experience with addiction can tell you the most important thing is that the person has to want to quit. If that essential ingredient is missing, all other efforts are futile.
It's the sellers I want imprisoned.
Why? And please don't think that's a stupid question. I really can't understand what it is about selling drugs to willing consumers that gets everyone's panties in a bunch. It's a mutual exchange between consenting adults. It's not like dealers are out there shoving narcotics down people's throats against their will.
When you focus on lowering the supply, you cause more problems than you solve. We've been over this.
A good example of ideology trumping reason, something I have seen a lot of lately.
Then perhaps you'd be kind enough to explain this "reason" that supposedly trumps the role that the Founders intended for our government's influence over our private lives. I'm dying to hear this.
Let's say, for argument's sake, that you bought the idea that criminalization discourages drug use. Then would it be acceptable?
I agree that prohibition might discourage drug use, with the possible exception of the "forbidden fruit" effect that many experts speculate about. It makes sense because in general the law reflects and reinforces our social norms.
But no, I don't think prohibition is an acceptable means of discouraging drug use for a variety of reasons. First, social norms exist even without laws to enforce those norms, so laws aren't required to discourage drug use and legalization doesn't automatically encourage drug use. Second, drug addiction is not a legal problem, it's a medical problem. Prohibition is the wrong tool for the job because it fails to identify the true nature of the problem. It's like using a screwdriver to turn a bolt. Third, I don't think the government should have the authority to dictate what we can and cannot knowingly and willingly put into our own bodies. Forth, it's been shown time and again that prohibition actually causes more problems than it solves.
Two good reasons: 1. MJ is much less dangerous than other illegal drugs; 2. It is much more commonly used than other illegal drugs and therefore the problems with criminalization are exaggerated.
1. The health hazards of drug use are good reasons why drugs should not be used. They are not and have never been good reasons why their use should be illegal. If you prohibit a substance because it's a health hazard, the you're going to have to prohibit a lot more substances to be consistent. Otherwise it's hypocritical. Could you please explain this slippery slope?
2. Yes, marijuana is more widely used, so the problems associated with its prohibition are more visible. But just because the problems caused by prohibiting other drugs are less visible doesn't justify continuing to prohibit them. You're actually supporting my argument here.
The UN has also credited Swedish prohibition of drugs as a success:
Looking at the UN, smelling a rat
What? Experts contradicting each other? Maybe these "experts" have their own opinions, are all only human, and can't help but push their opinions into their research.
Again you didn't read your own source very well. Note the title, it's essentially debunking that UN report on Sweden. Sweden has a relatively low rate of *legal* drug use, and Greece spends less on prohibition enforcement than any other EU country, but still has fewer drug users. Given these facts, a correlation between Sweden's strict drug policy and the low rate of drug use cannot reasonably be drawn. The UN needs to reassess the effectiveness of Sweden's drug policy in light of these glaringly problematic variables. From your link:
"Sweden is also lauded because of the vast resources it spends on drug use prevention and drug policy in general. But Greece, (a culture profoundly different from those of the Netherlands or Sweden) spending almost nothing, the least of all EU countries on drug policies, has even LOWER drug use figures than Sweden (if one chooses to believe the Greek data).
Looking at other figures from Sweden, ones that are not mentioned in the UNODC report, one sees that Sweden has relatively low levels of alcohol use, and low levels of tobacco use. (Liters of consumed pure alcohol per year in Sweden is 7, versus 10 in Holland and Greece, 14 in France. The percentage of daily smokers in Sweden is 16, versus 30 in the Netherlands and almost 40 in Greece) And the Swedes use relatively few pharmaceutical drugs as well, spending on them less than most countries in the EU (7% of health expenditures - the only country spending less than that is Norway, with 6%. The Dutch spend 12%!! The champion pharma client is Spain, with 23%)"
Why would we want to do that? They have an agenda to push.
That's a copout. Of course they have an agenda. That's what it means to have an opinion. The arguments they have made and the conclusions they have drawn in no way negate the authoritative scope of their opinions. The opinions of over 10,000 judges, lawyers, and police officers on legal and criminal matters are relevant and substantial because they are legal and criminal experts. Perhaps you'd rather acknowledge what Joe the Plummer has to say, and dismiss out of hand any credible expert opinion to the contrary because of some hidden and devious agenda you think they might have, but surely you can see how problematic that is.
(Continued)