Just in case anyone has forgotten, that is the position of Drug WarRant — legalize and regulate all drugs. Sometimes we end up talking a lot about marijuana, because it’s in the news so much now, but it’s good to remember that the end goal is legalization and regulation. Period.
And that’s the point in an excellent article at LadyBud (back in April that I missed at the time) by Angela Bacca: It’s Time To Legalize All Drugs, Not Just Marijuana
However, for all the reasons marijuana should be legal, almost all of them apply to every illicit substance classified and prohibited under the Controlled Substances Act, all drugs should be legal, all of them. […]
The same arguments used against marijuana prohibition apply to all drugs because the same legislators, government bureaus, private industries and law enforcement organizations profit off them.
Prohibition is the deadliest drug of them all. Yes, Prohibition is a drug. So many layers of society and industry shoot up Drug War cash like smack, they have literally become addicted to the money enforcing arbitrary drug laws generates. Their addiction has incentivized them to turn every American who gets their drugs off the street instead of in a pharmacy as ATMs. […]
In a legal market, more people would survive drug abuse. If all drugs, like food tested by the FDA or tap water monitored for cleanliness and safety, were subject to some sort of oversight, even the incompetent governmental kind, street drugs would be cleaner. Consumers would have legal recourse, like with pharmaceutical companies, to sue producers for selling faulty products. In a legal market, we have the ability to regulate drugs the way we do alcohol, tobacco and in some states, marijuana. With straightforward education, not D.A.R.E., and a legal market we could take the counterculture edge off of drug use and prevent some abusers from ever using. […]
It’s time to push this conversation, the Drug War is not just a war on some people, it’s a war on all people.
Nice.
I agree. But it’s really hard for the average man and woman to see that, even if they can see treating and regulating marijuana like alcohol. Pot is a very good drug in many ways, while meth, heroin and even acid can be very dangerous and thus bad. I’ve met several hard drug users who don’t believe in the legalization of hard drugs (nor the legalization of their drug of choice) because they can be bad and they believe hard drugs are illegal for a good logical purpose, while pot is illegal for a hypocritical purpose. My first thought of total drug legalization came out of the War in Iraq because I saw cocaine and heroin blow the limbs of my friends off . . . I saw MDMA blow buildings up and rape children. I say, legalize drugs for the people who will never touch legal or illegal drugs. Drug money is the reason why I stand for legalization, not for the drugs themselves. No matter how many times I experimented with the harder stuff, I don’t think I would have seen any reason to legalize non-cannabis and other all natural drugs had it not been for one of the largest defeats for and because of the Drug Warriors on the morning of September 11, 2001. No one in their right mind would ever expect the War in Iraq to exist without drug being illegal. Coke heads want coke, but children don’t want bombs and we should legalize crystal meth etc for the children who want to keep their little arms and legs attached to them.
“Consumers would have legal recourse, like with pharmaceutical companies”.
Sure. If they have tons of money and a really good lawyer. Otherwise, not much.
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As a rule lawsuits of that nature are taken on contingency. The problem with this POV is that it’s based on an utter misunderstanding of the billion dollar plus settlement against the tobacco companies. For some reason the brain dead public can’t differentiate between a loosely organized group of ad hoc law reform advocates and an organized industry with a specific financial motivation for the players to conspire to keep certain factual evidence from their customers resulting in those customers not having the ability to accept the assumption of risk from using tobacco products.
Is anyone aware of even a single lawsuit being *filed* against a doctor or a dispensary in California which could be reasonably attributed to the Compassionate Use Act and/or the Medical Marijuana Program Act? How about one of the other States with medicinal cannabis patient protection laws? Even just a single lawsuit *filed*? It could have been dismissed at its first hearing and the lawyer that filed it sanctioned by the Court for wasting its time with a frivolous case.
If there hasn’t been even a single lawsuit filed in litigious California in over 16 years what in the world makes people think it’s going to start now?
If I were going to start a company to sell cigarettes I’d brand them “Coffin Nails” and use a skull & crossbones as the logo. In advertising I’d say our customers who die from our products are the lucky ones!
Causes_of_Death drugwarfacts
All of Nature should be available to all who want it the same as wild mushrooms or animals or environments. White Powders are human inventions and require certain quality assurance and instructions for the safe, consistent and effective manner in which they were invented to do. Like bulldozers or semi’, they may require certain education and accountability. All substance use should be kept as far from the courts and church as possible.
The entire court system has boiled down to a money trap with nothing to do with Justice. Especially consensual vices. But even crimes with victims only profit the courts and prisons. The victim seldom gets their stolen merchandize back. Insurance might pay a portion, then raise the rates on everyone. Even the favorable result ending in a conviction. For a $5k auto or $700 appliance it will cost the tax payer $35-50k for prison costs. Lawyers and Bail bonds make out. All for victimless pastimes.
Drugs or doing drugs in and of themselves is not criminal. It can not be predicted as future crimes being committed. There is no crime unless the individual commits a crime and that is already on the books. It should have nothing to do with being intoxicated as an excuse or reason for extra punishment. The redundancy is a waste of taxes. Plus it should include corporation boards authorizing practices that do harm to the public. That would be worthy of taxes spent. Same with busting prohibitionist liars perpetuating the terror and trauma onto patients or anyone really.
With Nature, especially Cannabis. The laws are clearly designed for Wall St. profits selling the tools of the trade and keeping renewable resources curtailed. The guvmint follows Walmartians. The tax spent on the Ganjawar goes to Corporations, LEO paychecks and individual prohibitionists. That is the goal and the motive of every Calvina Califony DARE the FRCn PDFA groups out there.
No laws on Nature and regulations at the manufacturers end, not the possessor. For christ sakes it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to see that the DEAth Merchants selling the war also sell the treatments, including pisstastes and rehabilitation asylums. But also the side effects of the DEAth policy in making it dangerous and expensive. Every negative instance of doing drugs is caused by prohibition. Or human error as with legal Pharmaceuticals. Put the same obstacles on the medical profession as they do junkies and the same results and statistics will follow. One of the reasons for adulterations and prohibiting clean needles. D’oH! Is statistics they can’t get from Ganja tokers because there is no overdose or bad recipes and titration’s done in bathtub operations. This is clearly in your face obvious and anyone not seeing it should not be carrying live rounds or a badge.
Legalizing all drugs… including harder ones long discussion
I have always been cannabis only until I realized that discrimination by my peers over marijuana use was no different than discrimination because someone chose a different drug than my choice. All the same criminals,banks and law enforcement were making money from it and using that money to do more harm.
But as I looked at the drug war machine I also realized that the federal government doesn’t fight legalization of other drugs like they do marijuana,they moved meth and cocaine from schedule 1,,allowed the clinical studies necessary to accept medical uses for those drugs without so much as a ripple. That is why I believe once we take cannabis away from the DEA the organization will fade into history with an ever shrinking budget.
Exactly. The problem with prohibition is the black market; it matters not what drug is prohibited. Going through the exercise of debating marijuana legalization, it becomes crystal-clear that the same arguments apply to other prohibited drugs as well. I think that’s the biggest fear held by prohibition addicts, why they’re so afraid of mj legalization, and why they’re looking so hard for a “third way” to maintain their addiction — they’re afraid their house of cards will fall once the mj prohibition foundation is ripped out from under it, and they will be left to withdraw from their addiction “cold-turkey”.
Why do I support this?
Because “I would never do that to you — or anyone else.”
And since I don’t have the right to imprison or kill you for it, neither does anyone else, or any number of people.
Prohibition is addictive (by prohib definition, which makes everything addictive), but if prohibition were a major disease, a contagious SARS-like virus killing 100,000 people along the Mexico/U.S. border, North America would be in a total state of panic. Instead, much of what politicians and governments do with prohibition attempts to make it look harmless. “The crooks and addicts are just killing each other off,†fits well within eliminationist strategies and paradigms.
Human elimination is standard policy among right wing conservatives. It essentially defines them. It’s why Ronald Reagan waited seven years into his presidency to mention the word “AIDSâ€. Bush Sr. continued the tradition, believing the AIDS pandemic would solve itself through attrition and bring peace on earth by eliminating gays and intravenous drug users. As AIDS made its way outside the boundaries of alleged sinners, and into the world’s emergency medical blood supply, new ripple effects made government officials aware they needed to take action, because AIDS could now happen to them.
That’s how it is with eliminationism. What goes around comes around. Prohibitionism has always been a disease afflicting authority and authoritarians, one creating thousands of horrible symptoms within the body politic. Lesser bureaucratic illnesses have killed governments, and empires.
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I think that it’s important to emphasize that there is a wide continuum of potential re-legalization schemes. Legalizing heroin does not require our society to allow the sales reps from the heroin factory to set up promotional displays in the lobbies of elementary schools to pass out free samples. The Swiss HAT program is much closer to optimal but I wouldn’t make it so difficult to be included.
Speaking of whom, Switzerland recently reduced pot smoking to a ticketing offense costing the offender 100 francs.
http://tinyurl.com/kbea9gg
You mean we won’t be giving schoolchildren instructions in safe injection technique so they can boot up the pre-filled syringes of cocaine, meth and heroin (or all three, speedball anyone?) sold out of vending machines? Darn.
Swiss style maintenance programs are far better than what we have now, but they are overly restrictive. Having to go to a clinic every time you need to dose is a major burden. It would be better treated in an outpatient setting like other medical conditions. Clinics could then focus on providing services for the most marginalized populations, including low-threshold dosing for anyone who shows up dopesick (so no one would need to commit a crime to get well).
To be eligible for HAT you usually have to fail at methadone, not once but twice. Its as if we have this drug which we knows treats a certain condition better than all comparable medications, but before we give you this drug you must fail at all other treatments, maybe lose your dignity, ruin your credit, contract blood-born diseases, break up your family, spend time incarcerated, ect. Only after all that suffering will we give you what we know truly works. No other disease/disorder/condition/syndrome (whatever addiction is) is treated this way. Normally if one drug fails, another is tried.
The clinic system also doesn’t deal with the majority of opiate users, non-addicts. If addicts and pain patients can legally access opiates, does it make sense to criminalize recreational use? And where there is demand, there will be suppliers meeting that demand, though without addicts they face a much diminished market.
Any conversation about legalizing cocaine and opiates needs to stress Coca leaf and Opium- the plant drugs which prohibition works to replace with ultra concentrated problematic substances as crack, injected heroin, etc., to make its point that illicit drugs are ‘bad’.
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2013/01/stop-overlooking-opium.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-warriors-ignore-history-of-coca.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/harvey-wiley-father-of-drug-problem.html
Just caught the tail end of a “Brookings Institu
“Here is my final point…About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography…What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, or take into my body as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet? And for those who are having a little moral dilemma in your head about how to answer that question, I’ll answer it for you. NONE of your fucking business. Take that to the bank, cash it, and go fucking on a vacation out of my life.â€
― Bill Hicks
“Always that same LSD story, you’ve all seen it. ‘Young man on acid, thought he could fly, jumped out of a building. What a tragedy.’ What a dick! Fuck him, he’s an idiot. If he thought he could fly, why didn’t he take off on the ground first? Check it out. You don’t see ducks lined up to catch elevators to fly south—they fly from the ground, ya moron, quit ruining it for everybody. He’s a moron, he’s dead—good, we lost a moron, fuckin’ celebrate. Wow, I just felt the world get lighter. We lost a moron! I don’t mean to sound cold, or cruel, or vicious, but I am, so that’s the way it comes out. Professional help is being sought. How about a positive LSD story? Wouldn’t that be news-worthy, just the once? To base your decision on information rather than scare tactics and superstition and lies? I think it would be news-worthy. ‘Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we’re the imagination of ourselves’ . . . ‘Here’s Tom with the weather.â€
― Bill Hicks
“I know this is not a very popular idea. You don’t hear it too often any more … but it’s the truth. I have taken drugs before and … I had a real good time. Sorry. Didn’t murder anybody, didn’t rape anybody, didn’t rob anybody, didn’t beat anybody, didn’t lose – hmm – one fucking job, laughed my ass off, and went about my day. Sorry. Now, where’s my commercial?â€
― Bill Hicks
The problem I’ve encountered arguing for this, is that the emotional response is just so strong. Cocaine and heroin are BAD. Nobody should ever take them. And any and all logic flies out the window. Even if they think pot should be legalized, and recognize that making it illegal doesn’t stop people from getting it. When it comes to hard drugs, it’s back to ‘then we HAVE TO find a way to eradicate those things!’. And no matter what their opinions in the area regarding pot, legalization will let people get a hold of heroin and that just can’t be!!. No logic. Just emotion. No belief in harm reduction, only complete abstinence, because they’re SO BAD. It’s a tough hurdle to get over.
“Okay, they’re bad. Are they worse than murdering innocent people?”
That’s being remarkably defeatist.
I tell them to go snort pulverized NoDoz caffeine pills, or better yet smoke them, versus say drinking the original Coca Cola. DILUTE cocaine is an easy sell, and one strangely ignored. I say ask them why should cocaine only be available in its more dangerous forms?
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-warriors-ignore-pharmacokinetics.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-narcs-created-crack-richard-cowan.html