Legalizing Drugs Doesn't Solve the Problem

This was a thought that spawned in the gun control section. One of the biggest arguments for legalizing any drug is that it will solve the crime problem. I don't personally believe that is the case. I don't think that is a realistic view of how a lot of crime happens.

What it will do is reduce a lot of organized crime. And that is because of the wallet. And I do tend to agree with that. But one of our biggest problems is with addiction in America. So let me ask: do you think this is a good line of logic? Do you think that IF legalization were to occur, that we should also pursue a program of addiction treatment that is significantly better than what we have now? At least if we want legalization to have a significant impact on our society.

I will point out that 40% of murders involve alcohol use during or briefly before the crime. They also have a high usage rate in violent crime and robberies. We ended prohibition how long ago?


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blackjack50 said:

This was a thought that spawned in the gun control section. One of the biggest arguments for legalizing any drug is that it will solve the crime problem. I don't personally believe that is the case. I don't think that is a realistic view of how a lot of crime happens.

What it will do is reduce a lot of organized crime. And that is because of the wallet. And I do tend to agree with that. But one of our biggest problems is with addiction in America. So let me ask: do you think this is a good line of logic? Do you think that IF legalization were to occur, that we should also pursue a program of addiction treatment that is significantly better than what we have now? At least if we want legalization to have a significant impact on our society.

I will point out that 40% of murders involve alcohol use during or briefly before the crime. They also have a high usage rate in violent crime and robberies. We ended prohibition how long ago?

Click to expand...

Legalization is only one step. The other steps include honest education to allow informed decision making; reasonable licensing and regulation to allow for small business options and to prevent poisoning; and treating addiction as a medical rather than a legal problem.

Your concerns about crime are noted (I'd like a citation on that 40% figure BTW), but legalization will reduce crime levels significantly beyond merely the organized crime issue. This because all sorts of individual crimes like possession, use, and sales will disappear as well as most (if not all) violent crimes related to the black market process.

blackjack50 said:

This was a thought that spawned in the gun control section. One of the biggest arguments for legalizing any drug is that it will solve the crime problem. I don't personally believe that is the case. I don't think that is a realistic view of how a lot of crime happens.

What it will do is reduce a lot of organized crime. And that is because of the wallet. And I do tend to agree with that. But one of our biggest problems is with addiction in America. So let me ask: do you think this is a good line of logic? Do you think that IF legalization were to occur, that we should also pursue a program of addiction treatment that is significantly better than what we have now? At least if we want legalization to have a significant impact on our society.

I will point out that 40% of murders involve alcohol use during or briefly before the crime. They also have a high usage rate in violent crime and robberies. We ended prohibition how long ago?


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Click to expand...

When it comes to designing public policy, including drug policy, we must remember that utopia is not an option. We cannot create a perfect system, for many reasons.

So repealing the drug prohibition will not stop humans from killing each other, and it will not stop people from using drugs. But it will end all the social and legal pathologies brought by the foolish policy of prohibition.

Captain Adverse said:

Legalization is only one step. The other steps include honest education to allow informed decision making; reasonable licensing and regulation to allow for small business options and to prevent poisoning; and treating addiction as a medical rather than a legal problem.

Your concerns about crime are noted (I'd like a citation on that 40% figure BTW), but legalization will reduce crime levels significantly beyond merely the organized crime issue. This because all sorts of individual crimes like possession, use, and sales will disappear as well as most (if not all) violent crimes related to the black market process.

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Well my issue is that the crimes of those using won't disappear (like driving under the influence or petty theft by idiots who are under the influence). I think an ultimate objective should be to reduce addiction. I think our treatment of addiction is a joke in this country.


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Thoreau72 said:

When it comes to designing public policy, including drug policy, we must remember that utopia is not an option. We cannot create a perfect system, for many reasons.

So repealing the drug prohibition will not stop humans from killing each other, and it will not stop people from using drugs. But it will end all the social and legal pathologies brought by the foolish policy of prohibition.

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You beat me to the utopia fallacy.

Thoreau72 said:

When it comes to designing public policy, including drug policy, we must remember that utopia is not an option. We cannot create a perfect system, for many reasons.

So repealing the drug prohibition will not stop humans from killing each other, and it will not stop people from using drugs. But it will end all the social and legal pathologies brought by the foolish policy of prohibition.

Click to expand...

I'm not looking for utopia. I also agree it cannot exist. But we could significantly reduce our crime rates if we treated addiction. I mean if we left the drug laws as is....and magically we had better treatment and success rates on treatment of addiction...wouldn't we also see a reduction in crime? I wouldn't call that utopian. I'd call it realistic.


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blackjack50 said:

I'm not looking for utopia. I also agree it cannot exist. But we could significantly reduce our crime rates if we treated addiction. I mean if we left the drug laws as is....and magically we had better treatment and success rates on treatment of addiction...wouldn't we also see a reduction in crime? I wouldn't call that utopian. I'd call it realistic.


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Click to expand...

I do not object to treating addiction somehow, but I do not want a US Department of Addiction as we now have US Department of Education.

Consider that addiction to nicotine, alcohol and caffeine are handled by society acting in a reasonable manner, without government interference.

It's not supposed to completely solve the problem. It's about ending a war that has failed at untold socio-economic cost to the country and world, while also providing an extra source of income for criminals and criminal gangs.

If prohibition goes on long enough, then as with alcohol prohibition, the result may be an ongoing organized crime structure that moves into different areas of illegality once the prohibition ends. But, at the least, the crime around the prohibition nearly vanishes. Consider: precisely how much gang violence is around smuggled booze. (And not for nothing, but illegal drug trade is one of the mob's big moneymakers).

Certainly, crime surrounding illegal drugs will go down if prohibition ends. But that's not the only point. We'll stop forever excluding people from most of the job market by pinning a drug conviction to them forever. We can save tons of money from the prison system, perhaps redirecting it to other harm-reduction areas aimed at helping addicts.




If the War on Drugs had worked, maybe the calculus would be different. But it quite obviously has failed. So what could possibly justify an ongoing failed policy......"drugs are bad mmmmkay"?

Thoreau72 said:

I do not object to treating addiction somehow, but I do not want a US Department of Addiction as we now have US Department of Education.

Consider that addiction to nicotine, alcohol and caffeine are handled by society acting in a reasonable manner, without government interference.

Click to expand...

Addiction to nicotine and caffeine are not the same as alcohol. While the first 2 can impact your mood swings, they are not going to have as significant an impact on how you act according to the law.

But alcohol?

https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/alcohol/crimes/

I wouldn't say it is effectively handled. We have pretty high rates of addiction. And while I am not looking to force people into addiction centers. I do think we need to increase our understanding and handling of general addiction to things like alcohol and other drugs. They do have a significant impact on the lives of those who become addicted and those people often times are the poor and less able to cope with said addictions. They spend a lot on the substance, they are unable to maintain jobs because of it, and they suffer extreme health problems.

Trying to increase access and awareness is a start. You can't kill the "drug trade" and you can't make the problem go away. But you can reduce the demand by increasing quality of life and making it so people don't desire the addiction as an escape.


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Mr Person said:

It's not supposed to completely solve the problem. It's about ending a war that has failed at untold socio-economic cost to the country and world, while also providing an extra source of income for criminals and criminal gangs.

If prohibition goes on long enough, then as with alcohol prohibition, the result may be an ongoing organized crime structure that moves into different areas of illegality once the prohibition ends. But, at the least, the crime around the prohibition nearly vanishes. Consider: precisely how much gang violence is around smuggled booze. (And not for nothing, but illegal drug trade is one of the mob's big moneymakers).

Certainly, crime surrounding illegal drugs will go down if prohibition ends. But that's not the only point. We'll stop forever excluding people from most of the job market by pinning a drug conviction to them forever. We can save tons of money from the prison system, perhaps redirecting it to other harm-reduction areas aimed at helping addicts.




If the War on Drugs had worked, maybe the calculus would be different. But it quite obviously has failed. So what could possibly justify an ongoing failed policy......"drugs are bad mmmmkay"?

Click to expand...

I'm not saying we shouldn't end the war on drugs. I'm saying we should recognize addiction to substances isn't good. It isn't healthy. It is destructive. And people deserve more of an opportunity to get away from the stuff.

And if we end the "war on drugs" it will only be half the battle. It won't help the addicts.


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blackjack50 said:

Addiction to nicotine and caffeine are not the same as alcohol. While the first 2 can impact your mood swings, they are not going to have as significant an impact on how you act according to the law.

But alcohol?

https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/alcohol/crimes/

I wouldn't say it is effectively handled. We have pretty high rates of addiction. And while I am not looking to force people into addiction centers. I do think we need to increase our understanding and handling of general addiction to things like alcohol and other drugs. They do have a significant impact on the lives of those who become addicted and those people often times are the poor and less able to cope with said addictions. They spend a lot on the substance, they are unable to maintain jobs because of it, and they suffer extreme health problems.

Trying to increase access and awareness is a start. You can't kill the "drug trade" and you can't make the problem go away. But you can reduce the demand by increasing quality of life and making it so people don't desire the addiction as an escape.


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Click to expand...

I do understand that different drugs have different effects on humans, and that drugs are qualitatively different. Yes, alcohol and tobacco are 2 different drugs, and that they were 2 different drugs since God put them on this earth. And even after the Federal government created the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms.

So, which came first, the drugs or the law? Easy answer there.

Addiction is simply a human phenomenon, part of the human condition, in which some are effected and some are not, rather like eczema or other conditions.

The application of civil or criminal law to those conditions serves no purpose except to the various bureaucracies created to "deal" with them.

Neither war nor the criminal sanction can solve all man's perceived problems.

Thoreau72 said:

I do not object to treating addiction somehow, but I do not want a US Department of Addiction as we now have US Department of Education.

Consider that addiction to nicotine, alcohol and caffeine are handled by society acting in a reasonable manner, without government interference.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't want to see a "Dept of Addiction" either, but I do think it would be practical if we could put some of the billions we now waste in the "War on Drugs" to use in the treatment of addictions.

And blackjack50 is right, we need to figure out a better way to treat addiction. The whole, treating addiction with addictive drugs (methadone etc), amounts to little more than a racket and a sham. The recidivism rates are completely unacceptable.

countryboy said:

I wouldn't want to see a "Dept of Addiction" either, but I do think it would be practical if we could put some of the billions we now waste in the "War on Drugs" to use in the treatment of addictions.

And blackjack50 is right, we need to figure out a better way to treat addiction. The whole, treating addiction with addictive drugs (methadone etc), amounts to little more than a racket and a sham. The recidivism rates are completely unacceptable.

Click to expand...

I see addiction as part of the human condition. Some are more afflicted than others, no question. Some can handle it in a responsible manner, and some become consumed by the monkey on their back.

Sounds like a reasonable idea, but I am not convinced that a government effort would be any more successful than the effort by the American Cancer Society to end cancer. I'm just too pragmatic.

Would those addicted to sweets also be eligible for this government largess?

Thoreau72 said:

I see addiction as part of the human condition. Some are more afflicted than others, no question. Some can handle it in a responsible manner, and some become consumed by the monkey on their back.

Sounds like a reasonable idea, but I am not convinced that a government effort would be any more successful than the effort by the American Cancer Society to end cancer. I'm just too pragmatic.

Would those addicted to sweets also be eligible for this government largess?

Click to expand...

I have no faith in government institutions either. I'm thinking more along the lines of funding private institutions. But I admit under our current bureaucratic structure, this may not be possible. I am mainly commenting philosophically.

There seems to be an assumption that treatment works. My opinion on this is purely anecdotal, so I don't proffer it with any degree of authority, but in my experience with friends and several members of my family, a lot addicts will go to treatment and either leave and go right back, or finish and then go right back. I know someone who has been into treatment... god, probably a dozen times and it's done nothing for her. Or maybe put another way, she's done nothing with it.

I know another person who, after getting booted from the army, living on the streets, and abandoning his family for a good five years, finally just quit on his own. Because I know these people, I've also been exposed to others like them and the pattern is the same: you hit rock bottom and make that last decision to quit and you do it on your own, or you hit rock bottom, fall right through that, and die.

And I can't imagine that making drugs like heroin and meth legal would do anything except help to create more addicts than there are now. At least there's the legal and social stigma that hold a lot of people back from even trying the stuff. On the other hand, the vast majority of people don't become addicted. It's an occasional thing that they do once in a while and then they walk away from it. But I have to think that's not only because of the well known potential for addiction, but also because of the legal and social consequences.

Is the idea of free treatment attractive? Absolutely.
Is prison the answer for addicts? Yes, but only if they're made to stay until they've been clean for a long time. It would have to be some kind of hybrid prison/inpatient treatment sort of thing. But the problem with that is that a lot of these people wouldn't want to leave because they have nothing to go back to. To solve that problem it would require not just the forced inpatient factor, but the transitory services to reintegrate them with society.
Is society willing to bear that burden, particularly if and when a lot of those same people end up back in prison/inpatient treatment? Probably not.

There may be some things we simply don't have the answer for. Psychology does a pretty good job at identifying and diagnosing behaviors and illness, but in terms of fixing those, it's not even close.

In the end, the decision lies with the addict. And that's what it will always come down to (IMHO).

I know and have known several people with addiction problems, and just as the last poster noted, many of them go into rehab, get clean, and weeks or months later relapse.

As Amy Winehouse tragically noted, they tried to make me go to rehab, and I said no, no, no. Sad.

And because it is ultimately up to the individual, those with addictive personalities will find a way, whether it's legal or illegal.

Prohibition causes harm to all of society, users and non-users alike.