Drug prohibition.

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I thought I laid out my own argument pretty well, but Jacob Sullum over at reason did a much better job than I:

My point was that just because you're around something doesn't mean you'll necessarily learn anything about it. Actually, I did learn a little bit about code and generally how it works. Still can't make an application or game, though.

Also, most people tend to suffer from the historian's fallacy which, again, does ABOSLUTELY NOTHING to serve the understanding of drugs, the drug problem, and why prohibition is idiotic.

Also doesn't help when you're only dealing with one aspect of the problem. If you only deal with the results you'll never get anywhere. You have to deal with the character motive and the setting and how it all plays together. A comprehensive view is needed.

Not to derail the thread, but I run into this exact issue when talking to medical people like doctors and nurses about guns; all they ever see is the end result of dead or wounded people in their hospitals, never the context that lead up to that eventuality. It's sort of a "false experience" thing to coin a phrase, dealing with some of the downstream effects of something does not make you an expert on the thing itself. Hell, look at how many cops have no idea about the root causes of crime and how best to deal with it, that alone ought to knock that theory right on it's ass.

Yes.


I remember my argument with her quite well. It went like this (many arguments I've had with people on this topic have taken this form):

Prohibitionist: 'drugs harm the user, therefore they should be illegal.'
Me: 'here's a bunch of evidence showing that drugs become far more harmful to the user when you make them illegal...'
Prohibitionist: 'drugs harm the user, therefore they should be illegal.'

In this case the topic is the harm drugs do to the user. To stop being ignorant, she would need to acknowledge that her personal experience of the damage drugs do is completely meaningless, and start relying instead on the various empirical studies. It's not exactly difficult to find reliable information about this.

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That was what I was originally getting at with my "game tester" example. Just because you deal with the problems doesn't mean you know the root causes or function.

I remember my argument with her quite well. It went like this (many arguments I've had with people on this topic have taken this form):

Prohibitionist: 'drugs harm the user, therefore they should be illegal.'
Me: 'here's a bunch of evidence showing that drugs become far more harmful to the user when you make them illegal...'
Prohibitionist: 'drugs harm the user, therefore they should be illegal.'

In this case the topic is the harm drugs do to the user. To stop being ignorant, she would need to acknowledge that her personal experience of the damage drugs do is completely meaningless, and start relying instead on the various empirical studies. It's not exactly difficult to find reliable information about this.

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Except that the harm that can be caused by an item is not "meaningless", it is a part of the whole subject. Simply treating the bit that doesn't agree with your view of drug use as "ignorance" is in itself ignorant.

A nurse or medical professional may only be dealing with the end product of a bad drugs experience, but does that also invalidate the experiences of drug users themselves, who may well have experiences both positive and negative? As mentioned, many ex-users end up in the business of providing counselling/awareness. Are they also ignorant, given that they have not only their own experience of drug USE at all stages, but also dealing with other peoples experiences?

Also, is this prohibition across the board? Is there any recognition in this thread of the varying potency of available "drugs", from dropping acid to having a bit of puff, or snorting a line of coke? What about the very obvious and clearly recordable fact that snorting powders knackers up your septum? (Picking a random downside.) Does the empirical evidence that making a drug illegal causes MORE harm to the user mean that there is NO harm? After all, being hit with a length of wood is generally less harmful than being run over by a speeding car, but it is still harmful.

But you don't go to jail if you pay someone to hit you with a 2X4 or run you down with a car; I've seen both things performed as part of "strong man" contests among other things.

I agree. I never said it was. Rather, I said that her personal experience of the damage drugs do is completely meaningless.


If they favour drug prohibition on the basis that drugs are harmful, then yes, they are ignorant.

I completely support people providing counselling and awareness of the dangers of drugs, by the way.


No. Why would it need to? If you're justifying prohibition on the basis that drugs are harmful, all I need to show is that legalization would make them less harmful, not that legalization would make them completely safe.

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Remember, I'm in the UK. BOTH of those activities, consensual or otherwise would land you in jail without having at least three different licenses from five different governing bodies.

Land of the not free...and your views aren't especially helping things over there, either.

So you make drugs legal. And people still abuse them, act like tossers, and sell all of their stuff to pay for them. Like they do with the ones that are already legal. Making items legal doesn't stop people abusing them, and no amount of educating about them stops people abusing them either. Nor does legalisation actually remove any of the harmful effects inherent in many drugs. Even selling them "Clean" as opposed to full of baby milk or rat poison doesn't stop Acid from giving you a bad trip, or even a good trip with "hilarious unintended consequences."

Also, the idea that legalising drugs would somehow stop people having to commit crime to afford them doesn't really fly. Cigarettes and alcohol are legal AND taxed and can get bloody expensive. They also have added health issues which soon mount up to a costly bill. Additionally, it would be the height of naivety to think that any government (especially one as ridiculously tight as the USA) would allow anyone to grow cheap weed. Making it legal won't make it cheap.

Just so y'all know, I'm not particularly pro prohibition for drugs, and certainly don't think that mandatory sentences for possession are a good idea. Just for cross-referencing, I also really enjoy firearms, and my favourite recreational drug is LSD. I just get weary of the dismissive attitude about peoples experience, knowledge, and all the (considerable) evidence that drugs can very easily f**k you squarely up as if it never happens. Plenty of smack-heads around here with no teeth and plenty of people who got hooked on hospital-grade morphine. Its not all happy smiles and good trips and yellow f*****g submarines and every great album you ever owned relied on great drugs. Apologies to Bill for the paraphrasing, but drugs killed him too, and that IS a great loss.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt139264.html

I would not assent to the following propositions: (1) legalizing drugs would make them harmless, (2) legalizing drugs would completely end drug-related crime, (3) legalizing drugs would stop drug abuse. I need you understand that I do not support any of those claims, and given your responses so far, I'm not sure you do. In fact, I hate drugs. I don't take any drugs recreationally (including alcohol and caffeine) and I don't like being around people who are on drugs.

Making items illegal doesn't stop people abusing them, either. It just makes them a hell of a lot more damaging.

Re education doesn't stop abuse - I would like to see some evidence in favour of that claim. This point isn't too important to my support of legalization in particular, but it's still an interesting question. At the moment I assume the commonsense positon; that is, educating people about drugs would reduce drug abuse. However, I am aware that commonsense is often incorrect, and invite you to convince me it's wrong here, too.

The idea that legalization would not remove the harmful effects of many drugs is wholesale nonsense. Legalizing drugs would allow them to become far more effectively regulated, so they wouldn't be cut with dangerous substances, and users could know the potency.

I'm sure the price of drugs would remain reasonably high due to taxes and such (that's not necessary, of course: if we wanted to cut down the price of drugs, we could just not tax them), and I accept that some people will surely still commit crime in order to fund a drug habit. But consider: by moving drugs out of the black market, we would cut out a significant avenue of funding for criminal organizations, allowing the money instead to go to legitimate sources. We would no longer be wasting money on trying to keep drugs illegal (prohibition is a costly project). We would free up a lot of police time. So I don't think the fact that people will still commit crime to fund their drug habit is particularly significant. This 'cost' (since prohibition doesn't seem to prevent this problem, I'm not sure it counts as a legitimate argument against legalization, but I'm willing to concede the point) is far outweighed by the benefits.

I take a dismissive attitude towards people's experiences. I do not take a dismissive attitude towards knowledge, or towards the evidence that drugs can very easily 'f**k you squarely up'. In fact, much of my argument is built on that evidence: the evidence that drugs f**k everybody up a lot worse when they're illegal.

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Education doesn't reduce abuse. Evidence: Pick any town in the UK of a Saturday night. There has never been so much literature, teaching and generally faffery about alcohol and STILL our towns are full of people drinking way more than is healthy or sensible, and vast damage is caused by it, to everyone involved. Alcohol Awareness courses are a compulsory part of Alcohol-related "punishments" and despite that, and all the rest, STILL there is a vast amount of abuse. That is not to say there hasn't always been substantial abuse of alcohol here, but huge amounts of "education" hasn't lessened it. The same can be said of smoking. What HAS lessened smoking here is making it bloody hard to find anywhere you can actually smoke. (And taxing it until the pips squeak.)

Plenty of perfectly legal materials are full of nasty crap that shouldn't be there by any application of common sense. The good people at Marlboro put cyanide in cigarettes, so why should we believe for a minute that unscrupulous (but legal) company selling us Marlboro brand Crack wouldn't cut it with something hideous?

As for criminal funding... there is always a route for more criminal funding, and there would still be a market for counterfeit "drugs" just like you can buy dodgy smokes in any town pub worth the name. Also, people would still spend more than they could afford in order to get high/wasted and go way beyond their means.

ON a semi-related note, I do wonder at the mindset of people, especially on these forums, that experiences mean absolutely nothing. Surely most "studies" are just a collection of "experiences" in the same place? Denying experiences suggests that these things only happen if they happen to a multitude of Scientists. Its about as daft as Godwin's bloody law.

I'm going to add that I've seen too many people who could have led decent lives ruined by a taste for random drugs (legal or otherwise) to think that making them legal would somehow be better, or that if those drugs had been legal at the time, they wouldn't have been ruined. There are occasional exceptions, where access to something "illegal" would be more efficient than a currently legal alternative, but that generally applies to medical applications, which obviously differ substantially from casual use. A bit of pot here and there is no particular harm, but a lot of it IS, and being able to freely buy it from the corner shop would not help that.

Could you point to any empirical studies on the matter? I've already said that I don't have much trust for commonsense or anecdotal evidence. Actually, I can't even provide the anecotal evidence here: I don't have much experience at all of towns on Saturday nights.

Bear in mind, also, that there could be other factors at play. Just because alcohol abuse has increased as education about it has increased (has it? that's a matter for empirical study), doesn't mean that the education isn't working. It could be working very well, but alcohol abuse may have increased for other reasons.

I, too, am skeptical that education provides significant benefit once abuse has started. It's probably more effective as a prevention rather than a cure. That said, pointing to the ineffectiveness of Alcohol Awareness courses is criticism only of courses like that; you can't use it to claim that all forms of education would be ineffective.


Perhaps they would, but we could easily introduce legislation to prevent it. The problem would not be nearly as pervasive if the sale of drugs was legal and regulated.


I already conceded the last point (but as I said, since it happens anyway under prohibition, I'm not convinced it's a particularly effective argument against legalization). As for the rest: are you seriously suggesting that criminals make half as much money from alcohol now as they did under prohibition (adjusting for inflation)? I accept they'd still get some money from selling drugs. The point is that their income in this regard would be vastly reduced.


I have never claimed 'experiences mean absolutely nothing'. Rather, my claim is that in this context, personal experience of the damage done by drugs is meaningless. Obviously, some studies are collections of experiences, and studies like this can be very valuable. What's your point?


Take a particular drug. Have you seen its effects both under prohibition and under legalization? This is the problem. Many drugs are already illegal, and that's partially why pointing to the harm they do now is completely meaningless. Further, why should we trust that the few people you know are representative of the millions of drug users out there? Personal anecdotal evidence cannot form the foundation of a rational position on this subject.

You say that if the drugs were legal, they would not have been better. How do you know this? Are you aware that heroin, for example, is an astonishingly safe drug with very few negative side effects, and only becomes the destructive monster it is today when it gets cut with brick dust, drain cleaner, talcum powder, etc? You have prohibition to thank for that.

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I'm writing mostly from experience. Most drugs suck but a lot of the problems with them more come from the legal status and the kind of fetish that develops around the taboo material than the drugs themselves. And that's from observing it and seeing how people treat it. It seems like a teen sneaking into the parents' liquor cabinet and that's how a lot of the use is handled and that mindset comes from the legal status.

Also, you obviously don't understand what crack is to say that they would have to cut it with someone. Crack is already cut: it's baking powder mixed with cocaine to make the little bit of cocaine there is go farther. It's a cheaper product to sell on the streets and it also has the benefit of being much more addictive. Shy of people wanting to just wither away and die, if drugs were legal, there'd be pretty much no reason for it because people could just have the cocaine they want.

Here, lemme break it down for you: