What would happen if we legalized drugs?

[sanctus]

In exchange jobs in help systems (like therapies,etc.) would be created...you know it does not have to be a change from one day to the other.

[Ganoderma]

Originally Posted by vanamoinen1

Were we to stop our prosecution of the "war on drugs" think of all the people who would be out of jobs.

that's the problem with people these days. The total loss of freedom, family and everything they worked is totally ok as long as we can keep our jobs. I find it sick that people don't mind the loss of others for personal gain.

people going to jail and losing their work, perhaps even house/life because they are not working and can't pay for any of it, because they grew a few marijuana plants, for example, is quite wrong. sure there are people that belong in prison. but i seriously question the logic for more petty "crimes" which in traditional societies would just seem retarded...and frankly is retarded.

its a good point you have about all the jobs created from people going to jail, one that is brought up time and again.....but when should forced imprisonment be an industry? when did that happen? lets just pretend (i don't have any numbers, so just making them up) marijuana was legalized and no more people in jail for that. lets pretend that accounts for $40 million US$ a year in the states (fake number). take that money, and invest it back into your country. You are not only making stupid amounts of cash from the taxes on marijuana (look at alcohol and tobacco profits for the gov) but you are saving lots of money elsewhere that you can use somewhere useful.

in places like the states the extra money would probably be used to pay off debts of war, but if a place had a half decent government that cared about its people, it could really go far. but it won't, cause society just has not evolved that far yet

[Buffy]

Some figures to think about:

Originally Posted by The Economist, Lexington, 4/4/2009

America has less than 5% of the world's population, but almost 25% of its prisoners. It imprisons 756 people per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly five times the world average....For most of the 20th century America imprisoned roughly the same proportion of its population as many other countries--a hundred people for every 100,000 citizens. But while other countries stayed where they were, the American incarceration rate then took off--to 313 per 100,000 in 1985 and 648 in 1997.
...the war on drugs has pushed the incarceration business into overdrive. The number of people serving time for drugs has increased from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today, or 55% of the population of federal prisons and 21% of those in state prisons. An astonishing three-quarters of prisoners locked up on drug-related charges are black.

So you have to ask yourself, given that this level of extremism in prosecuting drugs as a crime--really only short of the "possess drugs and you die" in Malaysia and a few other SE-Asian countries--doesn't really seem to do much good, is it really worth it, no matter how "bad" drug addiction is?

As I ask my customers every day: what problem are you trying to *solve*?

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it,
Buffy

[Racoon]

The More Laws you create, the more people will break them.

The United States would do well to ease Drug Laws.
Because our laws have done nothng to ease Flow or Use, meanwhile we incarcerate Millions and destroy/hinder all those lives.. For what? for basic human weakness? For systematic disfunction?


The Money is better and more effectively spent in education and rehabilitation as opposed to prosecution and incarceration.

If the US legalized basic drugs, there would be an initial spike in use ,but regulated like alcohol and tobacco, it would gradually recind, As employers demanded non drug useage.
The money saved would allow Law Enforcement to tackle Real Crime. Instead of being bogged down with petty drug use.
Now there might be exceptions, and some drug convictions needed, but small time/ordinary users should be exempted from current law.

Every state is facing hard-core budget decisions.
We should legalize/Tax it. create revenue-reduce cost
As opposed to criminalize it-add expense .

[lemit]

Maybe we shouldn't change anything. The idea of a former federal judge at a fast food restaurant ("You are overweight and should not have the large fries. Next?") is enough to make me want to continue the current system.

--lemit

[sanctus]

Lemit, you always speak in riddles, I don't get what you mean :-) Can you elaborate?

[lemit]

Many years ago, I dated the daughter of a federal judge. Federal judges are not known for their humility and willingness to obey anyone at any time. They wouldn't do well at the unemployment office either, since they would interpret the laws in their own way.

Sorry to be obscure. Well, no, maybe I'm not sorry after all. I actually kind of enjoy stretching my brain a little. I know that can be a bumpy ride, but you have the option to disembark at any time.

--lemit

[sanctus]

Yes, but bear in mind that I learned english when I was 17, when I lived for one year in Australia, and otherwise have never lived in a english speaking country. So some things, which can be a little brain twister for some, can be a big one for me. Eg. I did not known for what federal judges are known for in the US...

Ok, you can say that it is my problem being on a forum where mainly people from the US are...and actually I agree :-)

[Turtle]

This is a seminal work on justifying doing away with laws against recreational drug use and other victimless crimes. I have mentioned it in other threads (can't find them now ), but I don't think I ever ran across the online version before. More rational arguments than you can shake a spliff at.

Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do, The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country

Originally Posted by Peter McWilliams

THIS BOOK IS BASED on a single idea: You should be allowed to do whatever you want with your own person and property, as long as you don't physically harm the person or property of a nonconsenting other.

Simple. Seemingly guaranteed to us by that remarkable document known as United States Constitution and its even more remarkable Bill of Rights. And yet, it's not the way things are.

Roughly half of the arrests and court cases in the United States each year involve consensual crimes—actions that are against the law, but directly harm no one's person or property except, possibly, the "criminal's."

More than 750,000 people are in jail right now because of something they did, something that did not physically harm the person or property of another. In addition, more than 3,000,000 people are on parole or probation for consensual crimes. Further, more than 4,000,000 people are arrested each year for doing something that hurts no one but, potentially, themselves.

The injustice doesn't end there, of course. Throwing people in jail is the extreme. If you can throw people in jail for something, you can fire them for the same reason. You can evict them from their apartments. You can deny them credit. You can expel them from schools. You can strip away their civil rights, confiscate their property, and destroy their lives—just because they're different. ...

[vanamoinen1]

Ganoderma: totally with you--and a bit of perspective: i live in fredericksburg, virginia which is a city encompassing a city heart and outlying areas falling in spotsylvania and stafford counties. there is a police training centre here and we have police with varying designated jurisdictions including both these localities as well as state troopers and sheriffs (oh, and park police--lots of battlefields here) with state-wide jurisdiction. routinely, we see 4 or 5 police vehicles congregating on simple traffic stops. now, i'm sure there are instances where 4 or 5 cops are necessary, and i'm sure that at some of those stops training is going on. but i'm equally sure that at many (if not most) of these stops, the cops are congregating because THERE ARE TOO MANY OF THEM AND THEY DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TO DO TO KEEP THEM OCCUPIED. but this top-heavy law-enforcement mindset is touted as a great thing--look how low our crime rates are! welcome to the people's republic of virginia.

to be fair, there is something to be said about deterrence, but one could also infer that the politicos in this state do not trust our populace to maintain some semblance of an orderly society. too many people rely on the law-enforcement/judicial/incarceration complex to earn their income. and because this vested interest provides these voters with a predictable, steady income, our politicians do not seek alternative methods with which to address drug use and drug abuse issues. lock em up and forget about them!

Turtle: re: your citation, this always amazes me: "Seemingly guaranteed to us by that remarkable document known as United States Constitution and its even more remarkable Bill of Rights." Read those bill of rights again--we have very little actually enumerated in the Bill which would appear to respect a notion of a privacy interest from which you can derive this position. the shibboleth of conservative politics, the "activist judges" have created this privacy interest for us by inferring them or extending them from the enumerated rights. and, strangely, although most americans would tell you that our liberty is granted to us by our constitution/amendments and our declaration of independence, the declaration does not authorize our law and the constitution deals primarily with the power we ("the people") cede to our governing bodies. why is there no amendment which specifically cuts out a privacy interest for individuals and where is the political will to get one added to the other amendments?

but the question relates to drugs. i'd argue that at least part of the current political posturing is akin to the "illegal alien" mindset: why grant any rights to people who are breaking the law? the argument is self-feeding--these people are illegally here because we defined the mechanism by which they got here to be illegal. and once painted with the "illegal" brush, the thing is not illegal because of an application of our definitions, but rather because of a mental tying of "illegal" to "immoral" or "evil". we do not consider that the laws AS DRAFTED are ineffective and possibly detrimental to us.

illegal drugs are illegal not through any inherency, but rather because we have defined them to be so. and similarly, once painted "illegal" in the reflexive thinking of the politicians, drugs (schedule 2 drugs, at least) must BE immoral and evil. granted, some drugs have deleterious effects on one's thinking, reacting and planning processes. but the care-taker/"government-as-an-in-loco-parentis faculty" mentality switches on and does not switch off (that switch is broken).

all of us here on this forum can discuss this issue 'til the cows come home, or they move to argentina. but our discussing achieves-------wait for it--------discussion. i do note that justice department is reviewing the inequity (possibly iniquity as well) caused by the federal mandatory minimums w/re: crack vs. powdered cocaine. this is a positive step. nevertheless, the sentiment required to disengage from "use drugs, go to jail" or virginia's: "use drugs, we'll see if we can take your house AND you can go to jail" is not incorporated into the majority position within our congress. reefer-madness-as-reality is still a valid and argued position on the hill. as to how to change that sentiment, i'm at a loss.