Yeah, right. laws are there to enact retribution. Laws don't really *prevent* anything - since when did the speed limit discourage you from speeding? What discourages crime is law *enforcement*, which is something that occurs after the fact.
*edit* i know people who would willingly spit in the face of the law, if they knew they could get away with it. personal benefit is just a bonus.
a implies b, but b does not imply a. see what i mean? a law doesn't imply enforcement of that law. what does enforcement mean? it means that someone who breaks it is punished. to be sure, a large part of this is "you shouldn't harm another person." But law, at its base, is not a preventive measure.
the fact is, people only respond to force. most don't respond well to morals, if the immediate benefit is more appealing. Why do you think filesharing is so big?
Therefore, the law serves as a "morals-with-a-twist" - what people find unacceptable, they set a punishment for. in the case of a democracy, it's a way for the majority to impose a set of limits on what people should do, and preserve social stability. thus, when you break a law purposefully, and only for your personal enjoyment, it's an extremely irresponsible thing to do to yourself, your family, your employer, etc.
So the fault is not the law's, for being unfair, but yours, for breaking the law. It's a completely different argument than civil rights, because the civil rights activists had no way to change the system apart from breaking the law. In the case of potheads, though, the only thing that they can't change seems to be the belief that they are the victims, and not the perpetrators. in fact, i think people who smoke weed are a blatant mockery of the civil rights activists; while the civil rights activists were willing to openly defy the law and be arrested for it, the majority of pot smokers i know try to keep it hush-hush, at least from the authority. 'cause I'm a free-spirited libertarian, but I'll be damned if I let myself get jailed for it.
btw scinet, the argument goes both ways: if there were no market for drugs, there would be no profit for drug dealers, no abused children in drug running, no violence from drug cartels. Your money goes to support and propagate that very institution when you buy from dealers and such. Personally i think that the reason why hard drugs are so profitable are not because they are illegal, but because they are so addictive that the dealers/traffickers can charge as much as they want, because addicts will do whatever they can do get their hands on them.
The bottom line is, the problem isn't with the law, the problem is with the people who continue to flaunt their selfishness and expect to be catered to.
If they legalize it, they could tax it heavily to help pay for any health programs affiliated with it. Also they could make it so that there would be heavy heavy teffifs from importing it. There for more homegrown stuff would be made, and our econimy would be boosted because the money would stay more in america instead of going back to some cartel.
Right now it is easier for me to get illigal substances than legal stuff. Im sure if you legalized the same type of effect would happen through out the populus. ALSO! wed save alot of money by not having to support prisions filled with druggies.
The way I see it, the goverment wastes alot of money on trying to control illigal drugs. I think they would make more money due to the effect that they could TAX it and stop emploiment of drug control officers.
2ndly. Why should we protect people from killing or hurting themselves? If people want help they will ask for it. People dont like to be helped by force.
Belay the use of derogatory terms such as 'potheads', please.
You are actually correct in so far that a lot of a hard drug's, and cannabis is not a hard drug by far, price is derived from the addict's craving for his or her next dose, but it is also true that the drug's illegality makes an open comparision of prices, especially over large distances, very difficult, which means that the competition of a free market does not happen. At the same time, covert trafficking is, as was already noted, quite difficult. Both combined mean that a dealer will charge whatever he can, which means a fast financial, and then social, descent of a drug addict, which will then lead to increased money-aqucisition crime. One might now argue that the illegality of the addictive substance is only going to increase the speed of an inevitable process, since the addict will in any case succumb to the drug's temptation. This is not necessarily true. Take, for example, nicotine, which has a higher addictive potential than heroine. Nicotine's low price, and the fact that its damages to the human body do not necessarily hinder one from making a living, allows people to be addicted while remaining on a stable social level. Seeing that cannabis' addictive potential is below that of most other drugs, including alcohol, and its effects on the human psyche temporary unless in the case of severe misuse comparable to strong alcoholism, it seems justifiable to assume that it could take a similiar way as nicotine if it was to be legalized.
A major problem of this discussion seems to be that the anti-cannabis faction has inadvertedly filed cannabis under the 'heavy drugs', where it plainly doesn't belong. There is no large profit in cannabis smuggle outside special cases such as the (still comparably tame) smuggle occuring over the borders of nations that have legalized marijuana, for example the Netherlands. Generally, it's too easy to grow the plants domestically to make a true large scaled smuggling (and the crimes connected to it) sensible. Drug cartels do not build their power on hemp, but on substances of higher addictive potential, since they guarantee a steadier consumer base and higher profit margins between domestic production in third or second world countries and their sale in the first world. The argument that the purchase of a joint is going to support the untold crimes commited in the course of drug trafficing is thus at best a gross exaggeration. Yes, there are cases of violence under the influence of cannabis. But the fact that pepe quoted an English article deciping an occurance in Africa is telling. Do you see news reports of every alcoholiced crime in your <i>city</i> in your paper? Likely not, since there are too many. If a case of cannabis-related violence half the world away is worthy of a report, it's a telling sign of such crime's frequency. The argument that cannabis consumers are public hazards can thus not be accepted, either.
We are thus again arrived at the question Bill Hicks once formulated so aptly: <!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->What business is it to you what I eat, drink, take, consume, or do with my own body?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i never mistook cannabis for being a hard drug. I only merely stated my position because the subject of hard drug illegality came up. My argument was, and remains that the majority of people who use mary jane in the US are irresponsible because they break the law, and that this irresponsibility is not to be encouraged. Sure, civil disobedience, but civil disobedience implies a willingness to take the heat for breaking the law, not to keep it hidden. As long as I see that weed smokers try to avoid the consequences of their actions, my opinion of them won't change.
<!--QuoteBegin-Wheeee+Sep 27 2004, 02:30 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Wheeee @ Sep 27 2004, 02:30 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> btw scinet, the argument goes both ways: if there were no market for drugs, there would be no profit for drug dealers, no abused children in drug running, no violence from drug cartels. Your money goes to support and propagate that very institution when you buy from dealers and such. Personally i think that the reason why hard drugs are so profitable are not because they are illegal, but because they are so addictive that the dealers/traffickers can charge as much as they want, because addicts will do whatever they can do get their hands on them.
The bottom line is, the problem isn't with the law, the problem is with the people who continue to flaunt their selfishness and expect to be catered to. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> The argument does not go both ways, since <i>in theory</i> we can have a no market vs. current market argument, but <i>in practice</i> the market is there, and something must be done. The current model is non-functional, so alternative methods must be sought.
But for now, while cannabis remains illegal, tell me again who am I hurting and who is being abused by the plant I grow myself? Remember, this is not a superhuman methlab trick. Cannabis is as easy to grow as flowers, and the very reason I do that is that I don't have to pay a dime to criminals for it.
You may personally think whatever you like of the drug market, but even though it sounds bizarre, it does actually follow very literally the free market theory. Like in the corporate world, drug market shares are decided by quality, cost, penetration and brute force. The cartels compete by offering products that are superior to others on the market, lowering prices, maximizing distribution, and using the threat of violence to keep their corners of the racket for themselves. While the cartels are free to set their prices, they will not go below certain levels because the business is high-risk. Many couriers get busted, but it is estimated that if only one third of the shipments go through, the accounting will balance out. Naturally the producers want profit, and the profit is the very reason to get into the business. If Pablo Escobar could have made such a fortune by selling computers, don't you think he would have rather done that? Being a drug lord isn't all parties and steady cash flow.
The market resembles the computer market in one eery detail: If you don't know what you're buying, the seller will probably pull a fast one. It's just like spending 500$ on a last year's model of a video card just because you didn't know enough to understand it's a bad deal. The dealers usually set high prices for people they don't know or people who don't exactly know the worth of the stuff. Lower prices will be offered for those who would turn down a bad deal. The prices therefore are not a product of the addictivity, but it is natural for the producers to look for substances that with their addiction rates get a maximum number of repeat customers.
For example of the model see here: The 2001 war in Afghanistan halted the production of opium poppies there and threw the smuggling and distribution network into chaos for a moment, since the Northern Alliance who controlled the production were fighting in southern Afghanistan instead of keeping to their crops. This caused a steep rise in the price and an equal drop in the quality of available heroin in Europe, which mostly comes here through Russia. The problem with this is that the situation upset the normal balance of the market, and endusers began having difficulties to acquire sufficient amounts of low-quality heroin for their daily fix. Until this point Subutex, a drug designed by pharmaceutical companies to be used as a substitute in heroin-rehab programs, began its rise from the fringes of the drug abuse community to the mainstream. Subutex is ready available against forged recipe refills in the former east bloc countries, so finnish dealers began to make trips to Estonia to secure Subutex to sell in Finland.
What the dealers hoped to do is to stabilize the market again, since the combination of difficulty in providing a sufficiently high-grade product and rising prices sends people looking for alternatives, and if heroin is simply not available, the customer base might move into something else. In some other country it might be crack, but crack is a rarity in Finland, and pure cocaine is prohibitively expensive. If the heroin shortage would have continued, the addicts - the main source of income for the dealers - might have moved on and found different, less addictive substances, which would have diminished the market. It's sort of funny in a perverse way that a product from a legitimate pharmaceutical company helped save the heroin market in Finland.
<!--QuoteBegin-Scinet+Sep 27 2004, 04:03 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Scinet @ Sep 27 2004, 04:03 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> The argument does not go both ways, since <i>in theory</i> we can have a no market vs. current market argument, but <i>in practice</i> the market is there, and something must be done. The current model is non-functional, so alternative methods must be sought. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> @hard drugs: shouldn't our efforts be towards eliminating this market, and the people who perpetuate it, rather than promoting it through legalization?
also, i'm not saying marijuana use in and of itself is a bad thing, i'm saying that breaking the law is a bad thing, and reflects extremely poorly on the people who choose such a course.
<!--QuoteBegin-Wheeee+Sep 27 2004, 09:00 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Wheeee @ Sep 27 2004, 09:00 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> My argument was, and remains that the majority of people who use mary jane in the US are irresponsible because they break the law, and that this irresponsibility is not to be encouraged. Sure, civil disobedience, but civil disobedience implies a willingness to take the heat for breaking the law, not to keep it hidden. As long as I see that weed smokers try to avoid the consequences of their actions, my opinion of them won't change. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> So? A law can not be made or unmade on the grounds of the responsibility of the people affected by it. A very good case can be made that a significant part of the American gun community owns their weapons for irresponsible reasons, yet, the gun's legallity is being defended vigurously. If you want to outlaw things because their consumers are jerks, the police forces of your country are going to be very busy - especially since a big part of them are going to be imprisioned themselves.
The question is not whether drug use is good or bad for a person's body. It's not whether drug users are good or bad persons. It's whether there is a reason to invade an individual's privacy on the grounds of cannabis use, be that individual a saint or a lowlife in the gutter.
<!--QuoteBegin-Wheeee+Sep 27 2004, 04:31 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Wheeee @ Sep 27 2004, 04:31 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-Scinet+Sep 27 2004, 04:03 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Scinet @ Sep 27 2004, 04:03 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> The argument does not go both ways, since <i>in theory</i> we can have a no market vs. current market argument, but <i>in practice</i> the market is there, and something must be done. The current model is non-functional, so alternative methods must be sought. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> @hard drugs: shouldn't our efforts be towards eliminating this market, and the people who perpetuate it, rather than promoting it through legalization? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> The war against drugs was declared decades ago. It hasn't worked, has it?
<!--QuoteBegin-Nemesis Zero+Sep 27 2004, 04:35 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Nemesis Zero @ Sep 27 2004, 04:35 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> So? A law can not be made or unmade on the grounds of the responsibility of the people affected by it. A very good case can be made that a significant part of the American gun community owns their weapons for irresponsible reasons, yet, the gun's legallity is being defended vigurously. If you want to outlaw things because their consumers are jerks, the police forces of your country are going to be very busy - especially since a big part of them are going to be imprisioned themselves.
The question is not whether drug use is good or bad for a person's body. It's not whether drug users are good or bad persons. It's whether there is a reason to invade an individual's privacy on the grounds of cannabis use, be that individual a saint or a lowlife in the gutter. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> that's merely begging the question of whether people would own guns illegally and irresponsibly if they were outlawed, and in my view not pertinent to the question of legalization of marijuana. and what case were you referring to?
and i agree that the issue is whether there is a right to invade privacy, and i think i posited some very good ones. The same ones that allow the police to intervene in suicide, and put the person into rehab or counseling (if they survive). I suppose that if we are truly libertarian, government can't force a citizen to be a productive member of society. But as with all ideals, expecting a purely libertarian government is not a smart idea. The confederation of states after the american revolution is a good example of this, albeit on a federal vs state, and not federal vs individual, level.
Don't get defeastic here. The fact that what was in essence a PR action failed does not justify the legalization of drugs that have so high an addictive potential and damage a body or psyche severely and permanently. There's a threshold between the point where an average person can control a drug, or not. If a drug is on the wrong side of that divide, it makes sense to defend a state's citizens against it.
<!--QuoteBegin-Nemesis Zero+Sep 27 2004, 05:05 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Nemesis Zero @ Sep 27 2004, 05:05 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Don't get defeastic here. The fact that what was in essence a PR action failed does not justify the legalization of drugs that have so high an addictive potential and damage a body or psyche severely and permanently. There's a threshold between the point where an average person can control a drug, or not. If a drug is on the wrong side of that divide, it makes sense to defend a state's citizens against it. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> There is a difference between the PR 'war on drugs' and the actual measures taken to staunch the flow of illegal substances and destroy the production. In Colombia, it failed. In Afghanistan, it wasn't even tried. Myanmar's drug production still remains, and the entire 'golden triangle' is just as it always was. The point is that there is not much more the governments can do with their current model. Tightening the control does not seem to help, since even the strongly-guarded passthroughs between Mexico and the US are heavy-traffic smuggling points.
It would be difficult to call the war in Colombia 'PR', seeing that it is a murderous conflict fueled on the other side by US foreign aid, and on the other the money garnered from drugs. Even though the President of Colombia has again stated that peace negotiations are underway with the leftist FARC revolutionaries, this peace, as well as all the others before it, is likely to be broken shortly either by FARC or by the right-wing paramilitary AUC. The only reason the government still controls even a part of the country is the US aid. This is not to say that the government is benevolent, no. Portions of it fund the excessively violent and atrocious AUC's operations to clear countryside villages of suspected FARC supporters. The economy has been in recession for years and the country isn't safe for anyone. Colombia embodies well the real war on drugs which is random jabs at the third world source countries, not the PR talk of toughening up against domestic distributors.
The question is not whether it is moral to allow the use of heroin. The question becomes one of practicality: At what point will the judicial systems of governments be so bogged down by drug-related crime that they will cease to function normally because of the enormous work payload. Small time dealers are already overcrowding both the court rooms and prisons, while their punishments do very little to deter the market.
The proposition to open the market for all controlled recreational substances is to strip the criminals of the world a source of income beyond all measure. I for one would never touch anything but cannabis and mescaline, but even a tenfold increase in hard drug addicts (a statistical impossibility) would not compare to the human misery caused by the drug trade at the moment (also involved in and funding human slave market from the former Soviet states into Central Europe among other lovely things), and the misery it has already caused.
And that's why my great and honourable leaders (barf) decided to categorize drugs in 2 groups, 'soft' (semi-legal) and 'hard' (illegal) Legalisation doesn't have to mean -all- drugs should be legal, just the fun and non-addictive ones like beer, weed and shrooms. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
btw, you can say the same things about alcohol and that's pretty legal...
*edit* oh wait, another post just popped up. Oh noes! ***
OK, I want to see if I am understanding the pro-drug side of things well enough. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
The argument, in my understanding, is that the process of smoking weed is not inherently bad, "it hurts no one", and "it is my right". Connections are made to alcohol and cigaretts - it is a drug on par with those two.
I recently talked with a friend of mine who used to be a weed user. He said that unlike alcohol, the consumption of weed affects your decision making process almost immediatly. There is no level in which you are "OK" to do things - such as drive or operate machinery, be in charge of kids, etc.
In light of that, I argue that the process itself is bad. Just as the process of driving while drunk (even very mildly) may not harm anyone - yet it is still illegal - so should the process of smoking a mind altering substance be illegal.
Let me put it another way - would smoking a cigarette on a "smoke break" be illegal if it made the worker the equivilant of drunk? Would drinking be legal if every time you had a (1) beer you were drunk? Any sort of a drug that has that effect is strictly monitered (valium) and only served for medicinal use.
As for trying to make a connection to the civil rights movement, the only "vague" connection is in the realm of personal freedom... despite the fact that colored people were receiving legitimate persecution where as pot smokers are just feeling "oppressed" - though they still have the same rights as everyone else. The two situations are totally unrelated, and weed users are giving the civil rights movement a bad name by trying to claim an association.
<!--QuoteBegin-Pepe_Muffassa+Sep 28 2004, 11:11 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Pepe_Muffassa @ Sep 28 2004, 11:11 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I recently talked with a friend of mine who used to be a weed user. He said that unlike alcohol, the consumption of weed affects your decision making process almost immediatly. There is no level in which you are "OK" to do things - such as drive or operate machinery, be in charge of kids, etc. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> I have to disagree with your friend.
To me, it's just like alcohol. There's being drunk, and then there's <i>hammered</i>. You can be a little bit high, or you can be baked off your ****. However, operating heavy machinery or driving under the influence of anything is already illegal, even narcotic cough syrup. So where's your point there?
To address your other problems with it, I hope to god no one in your workplace is taking a break to have a beer or two, or they've got some serious problems with addiction. Arguably, pot isn't physically addictive, but that's another point. What I'm trying to get at is that any responsible person wouldn't get high during work anyway. Believe it or not, there are responsible marijuana users. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
moultanoCreator of ns_shiva.Join Date: 2002-12-14Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
edited September 2004
<!--QuoteBegin-Pepe_Muffassa+Sep 28 2004, 11:11 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Pepe_Muffassa @ Sep 28 2004, 11:11 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> As for trying to make a connection to the civil rights movement, the only "vague" connection is in the realm of personal freedom... despite the fact that colored people were receiving legitimate persecution where as pot smokers are just feeling "oppressed" - though they still have the same rights as everyone else. The two situations are totally unrelated, and weed users are giving the civil rights movement a bad name by trying to claim an association. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Who was trying to make a connection between weed and the civil rights movement?
Anyways, let's reframe this question and take the government out of it, because the government is really just and abstraction, a reification in fact, that doesn't contribute anything to the discussion.
What right do <i>you</i> have to tell <i>me</i> what to do with <i>my</i> body, if it doesn't infringe on <i>your</i> rights?
Legalize it, it would be cheaper and could be controlled by the FDA, etc. It's not as harmful as tobacco anyway. The only people who profit from it being illegal is the criminal underworld.
If you want a good pro marijuana argument, go to www.jackherer.com. The sight contains a interesting explanation to the benefits of marijuana and even has a 'mock' ammendment to US law...
Comments
Yeah, right. laws are there to enact retribution. Laws don't really *prevent* anything - since when did the speed limit discourage you from speeding?
What discourages crime is law *enforcement*, which is something that occurs after the fact.
*edit* i know people who would willingly spit in the face of the law, if they knew they could get away with it. personal benefit is just a bonus.
You need laws....to have law enforcement.
If a = b and b = c then c = a. Get it?
let a be law enforcement
let b be law
a implies b, but b does not imply a. see what i mean? a law doesn't imply enforcement of that law. what does enforcement mean? it means that someone who breaks it is punished. to be sure, a large part of this is "you shouldn't harm another person." But law, at its base, is not a preventive measure.
the fact is, people only respond to force. most don't respond well to morals, if the immediate benefit is more appealing. Why do you think filesharing is so big?
Therefore, the law serves as a "morals-with-a-twist" - what people find unacceptable, they set a punishment for. in the case of a democracy, it's a way for the majority to impose a set of limits on what people should do, and preserve social stability. thus, when you break a law purposefully, and only for your personal enjoyment, it's an extremely irresponsible thing to do to yourself, your family, your employer, etc.
So the fault is not the law's, for being unfair, but yours, for breaking the law. It's a completely different argument than civil rights, because the civil rights activists had no way to change the system apart from breaking the law. In the case of potheads, though, the only thing that they can't change seems to be the belief that they are the victims, and not the perpetrators. in fact, i think people who smoke weed are a blatant mockery of the civil rights activists; while the civil rights activists were willing to openly defy the law and be arrested for it, the majority of pot smokers i know try to keep it hush-hush, at least from the authority. 'cause I'm a free-spirited libertarian, but I'll be damned if I let myself get jailed for it.
btw scinet, the argument goes both ways: if there were no market for drugs, there would be no profit for drug dealers, no abused children in drug running, no violence from drug cartels. Your money goes to support and propagate that very institution when you buy from dealers and such. Personally i think that the reason why hard drugs are so profitable are not because they are illegal, but because they are so addictive that the dealers/traffickers can charge as much as they want, because addicts will do whatever they can do get their hands on them.
The bottom line is, the problem isn't with the law, the problem is with the people who continue to flaunt their selfishness and expect to be catered to.
Right now it is easier for me to get illigal substances than legal stuff. Im sure if you legalized the same type of effect would happen through out the populus. ALSO! wed save alot of money by not having to support prisions filled with druggies.
The way I see it, the goverment wastes alot of money on trying to control illigal drugs. I think they would make more money due to the effect that they could TAX it and stop emploiment of drug control officers.
2ndly. Why should we protect people from killing or hurting themselves? If people want help they will ask for it. People dont like to be helped by force.
You are actually correct in so far that a lot of a hard drug's, and cannabis is not a hard drug by far, price is derived from the addict's craving for his or her next dose, but it is also true that the drug's illegality makes an open comparision of prices, especially over large distances, very difficult, which means that the competition of a free market does not happen. At the same time, covert trafficking is, as was already noted, quite difficult. Both combined mean that a dealer will charge whatever he can, which means a fast financial, and then social, descent of a drug addict, which will then lead to increased money-aqucisition crime. One might now argue that the illegality of the addictive substance is only going to increase the speed of an inevitable process, since the addict will in any case succumb to the drug's temptation. This is not necessarily true. Take, for example, nicotine, which has a higher addictive potential than heroine. Nicotine's low price, and the fact that its damages to the human body do not necessarily hinder one from making a living, allows people to be addicted while remaining on a stable social level.
Seeing that cannabis' addictive potential is below that of most other drugs, including alcohol, and its effects on the human psyche temporary unless in the case of severe misuse comparable to strong alcoholism, it seems justifiable to assume that it could take a similiar way as nicotine if it was to be legalized.
A major problem of this discussion seems to be that the anti-cannabis faction has inadvertedly filed cannabis under the 'heavy drugs', where it plainly doesn't belong.
There is no large profit in cannabis smuggle outside special cases such as the (still comparably tame) smuggle occuring over the borders of nations that have legalized marijuana, for example the Netherlands. Generally, it's too easy to grow the plants domestically to make a true large scaled smuggling (and the crimes connected to it) sensible. Drug cartels do not build their power on hemp, but on substances of higher addictive potential, since they guarantee a steadier consumer base and higher profit margins between domestic production in third or second world countries and their sale in the first world. The argument that the purchase of a joint is going to support the untold crimes commited in the course of drug trafficing is thus at best a gross exaggeration.
Yes, there are cases of violence under the influence of cannabis. But the fact that pepe quoted an English article deciping an occurance in Africa is telling. Do you see news reports of every alcoholiced crime in your <i>city</i> in your paper? Likely not, since there are too many. If a case of cannabis-related violence half the world away is worthy of a report, it's a telling sign of such crime's frequency. The argument that cannabis consumers are public hazards can thus not be accepted, either.
We are thus again arrived at the question Bill Hicks once formulated so aptly:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->What business is it to you what I eat, drink, take, consume, or do with my own body?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The bottom line is, the problem isn't with the law, the problem is with the people who continue to flaunt their selfishness and expect to be catered to. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
The argument does not go both ways, since <i>in theory</i> we can have a no market vs. current market argument, but <i>in practice</i> the market is there, and something must be done. The current model is non-functional, so alternative methods must be sought.
But for now, while cannabis remains illegal, tell me again who am I hurting and who is being abused by the plant I grow myself? Remember, this is not a superhuman methlab trick. Cannabis is as easy to grow as flowers, and the very reason I do that is that I don't have to pay a dime to criminals for it.
You may personally think whatever you like of the drug market, but even though it sounds bizarre, it does actually follow very literally the free market theory. Like in the corporate world, drug market shares are decided by quality, cost, penetration and brute force. The cartels compete by offering products that are superior to others on the market, lowering prices, maximizing distribution, and using the threat of violence to keep their corners of the racket for themselves. While the cartels are free to set their prices, they will not go below certain levels because the business is high-risk. Many couriers get busted, but it is estimated that if only one third of the shipments go through, the accounting will balance out. Naturally the producers want profit, and the profit is the very reason to get into the business. If Pablo Escobar could have made such a fortune by selling computers, don't you think he would have rather done that? Being a drug lord isn't all parties and steady cash flow.
The market resembles the computer market in one eery detail: If you don't know what you're buying, the seller will probably pull a fast one. It's just like spending 500$ on a last year's model of a video card just because you didn't know enough to understand it's a bad deal. The dealers usually set high prices for people they don't know or people who don't exactly know the worth of the stuff. Lower prices will be offered for those who would turn down a bad deal. The prices therefore are not a product of the addictivity, but it is natural for the producers to look for substances that with their addiction rates get a maximum number of repeat customers.
For example of the model see here:
The 2001 war in Afghanistan halted the production of opium poppies there and threw the smuggling and distribution network into chaos for a moment, since the Northern Alliance who controlled the production were fighting in southern Afghanistan instead of keeping to their crops. This caused a steep rise in the price and an equal drop in the quality of available heroin in Europe, which mostly comes here through Russia. The problem with this is that the situation upset the normal balance of the market, and endusers began having difficulties to acquire sufficient amounts of low-quality heroin for their daily fix. Until this point Subutex, a drug designed by pharmaceutical companies to be used as a substitute in heroin-rehab programs, began its rise from the fringes of the drug abuse community to the mainstream. Subutex is ready available against forged recipe refills in the former east bloc countries, so finnish dealers began to make trips to Estonia to secure Subutex to sell in Finland.
What the dealers hoped to do is to stabilize the market again, since the combination of difficulty in providing a sufficiently high-grade product and rising prices sends people looking for alternatives, and if heroin is simply not available, the customer base might move into something else. In some other country it might be crack, but crack is a rarity in Finland, and pure cocaine is prohibitively expensive. If the heroin shortage would have continued, the addicts - the main source of income for the dealers - might have moved on and found different, less addictive substances, which would have diminished the market. It's sort of funny in a perverse way that a product from a legitimate pharmaceutical company helped save the heroin market in Finland.
The argument does not go both ways, since <i>in theory</i> we can have a no market vs. current market argument, but <i>in practice</i> the market is there, and something must be done. The current model is non-functional, so alternative methods must be sought. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
@hard drugs: shouldn't our efforts be towards eliminating this market, and the people who perpetuate it, rather than promoting it through legalization?
also, i'm not saying marijuana use in and of itself is a bad thing, i'm saying that breaking the law is a bad thing, and reflects extremely poorly on the people who choose such a course.
So? A law can not be made or unmade on the grounds of the responsibility of the people affected by it. A very good case can be made that a significant part of the American gun community owns their weapons for irresponsible reasons, yet, the gun's legallity is being defended vigurously. If you want to outlaw things because their consumers are jerks, the police forces of your country are going to be very busy - especially since a big part of them are going to be imprisioned themselves.
The question is not whether drug use is good or bad for a person's body. It's not whether drug users are good or bad persons. It's whether there is a reason to invade an individual's privacy on the grounds of cannabis use, be that individual a saint or a lowlife in the gutter.
The argument does not go both ways, since <i>in theory</i> we can have a no market vs. current market argument, but <i>in practice</i> the market is there, and something must be done. The current model is non-functional, so alternative methods must be sought. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
@hard drugs: shouldn't our efforts be towards eliminating this market, and the people who perpetuate it, rather than promoting it through legalization? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
The war against drugs was declared decades ago. It hasn't worked, has it?
So? A law can not be made or unmade on the grounds of the responsibility of the people affected by it. A very good case can be made that a significant part of the American gun community owns their weapons for irresponsible reasons, yet, the gun's legallity is being defended vigurously. If you want to outlaw things because their consumers are jerks, the police forces of your country are going to be very busy - especially since a big part of them are going to be imprisioned themselves.
The question is not whether drug use is good or bad for a person's body. It's not whether drug users are good or bad persons. It's whether there is a reason to invade an individual's privacy on the grounds of cannabis use, be that individual a saint or a lowlife in the gutter. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
that's merely begging the question of whether people would own guns illegally and irresponsibly if they were outlawed, and in my view not pertinent to the question of legalization of marijuana. and what case were you referring to?
and i agree that the issue is whether there is a right to invade privacy, and i think i posited some very good ones. The same ones that allow the police to intervene in suicide, and put the person into rehab or counseling (if they survive). I suppose that if we are truly libertarian, government can't force a citizen to be a productive member of society. But as with all ideals, expecting a purely libertarian government is not a smart idea. The confederation of states after the american revolution is a good example of this, albeit on a federal vs state, and not federal vs individual, level.
There is a difference between the PR 'war on drugs' and the actual measures taken to staunch the flow of illegal substances and destroy the production. In Colombia, it failed. In Afghanistan, it wasn't even tried. Myanmar's drug production still remains, and the entire 'golden triangle' is just as it always was. The point is that there is not much more the governments can do with their current model. Tightening the control does not seem to help, since even the strongly-guarded passthroughs between Mexico and the US are heavy-traffic smuggling points.
It would be difficult to call the war in Colombia 'PR', seeing that it is a murderous conflict fueled on the other side by US foreign aid, and on the other the money garnered from drugs. Even though the President of Colombia has again stated that peace negotiations are underway with the leftist FARC revolutionaries, this peace, as well as all the others before it, is likely to be broken shortly either by FARC or by the right-wing paramilitary AUC. The only reason the government still controls even a part of the country is the US aid. This is not to say that the government is benevolent, no. Portions of it fund the excessively violent and atrocious AUC's operations to clear countryside villages of suspected FARC supporters. The economy has been in recession for years and the country isn't safe for anyone. Colombia embodies well the real war on drugs which is random jabs at the third world source countries, not the PR talk of toughening up against domestic distributors.
The question is not whether it is moral to allow the use of heroin. The question becomes one of practicality: At what point will the judicial systems of governments be so bogged down by drug-related crime that they will cease to function normally because of the enormous work payload. Small time dealers are already overcrowding both the court rooms and prisons, while their punishments do very little to deter the market.
The proposition to open the market for all controlled recreational substances is to strip the criminals of the world a source of income beyond all measure. I for one would never touch anything but cannabis and mescaline, but even a tenfold increase in hard drug addicts (a statistical impossibility) would not compare to the human misery caused by the drug trade at the moment (also involved in and funding human slave market from the former Soviet states into Central Europe among other lovely things), and the misery it has already caused.
And that's why my great and honourable leaders (barf) decided to categorize drugs in 2 groups, 'soft' (semi-legal) and 'hard' (illegal)
Legalisation doesn't have to mean -all- drugs should be legal, just the fun and non-addictive ones like beer, weed and shrooms. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
btw, you can say the same things about alcohol and that's pretty legal...
*edit* oh wait, another post just popped up. Oh noes! ***
The argument, in my understanding, is that the process of smoking weed is not inherently bad, "it hurts no one", and "it is my right". Connections are made to alcohol and cigaretts - it is a drug on par with those two.
I recently talked with a friend of mine who used to be a weed user. He said that unlike alcohol, the consumption of weed affects your decision making process almost immediatly. There is no level in which you are "OK" to do things - such as drive or operate machinery, be in charge of kids, etc.
In light of that, I argue that the process itself is bad. Just as the process of driving while drunk (even very mildly) may not harm anyone - yet it is still illegal - so should the process of smoking a mind altering substance be illegal.
Let me put it another way - would smoking a cigarette on a "smoke break" be illegal if it made the worker the equivilant of drunk? Would drinking be legal if every time you had a (1) beer you were drunk? Any sort of a drug that has that effect is strictly monitered (valium) and only served for medicinal use.
As for trying to make a connection to the civil rights movement, the only "vague" connection is in the realm of personal freedom... despite the fact that colored people were receiving legitimate persecution where as pot smokers are just feeling "oppressed" - though they still have the same rights as everyone else. The two situations are totally unrelated, and weed users are giving the civil rights movement a bad name by trying to claim an association.
I have to disagree with your friend.
To me, it's just like alcohol. There's being drunk, and then there's <i>hammered</i>. You can be a little bit high, or you can be baked off your ****. However, operating heavy machinery or driving under the influence of anything is already illegal, even narcotic cough syrup. So where's your point there?
To address your other problems with it, I hope to god no one in your workplace is taking a break to have a beer or two, or they've got some serious problems with addiction. Arguably, pot isn't physically addictive, but that's another point. What I'm trying to get at is that any responsible person wouldn't get high during work anyway. Believe it or not, there are responsible marijuana users. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Who was trying to make a connection between weed and the civil rights movement?
Anyways, let's reframe this question and take the government out of it, because the government is really just and abstraction, a reification in fact, that doesn't contribute anything to the discussion.
What right do <i>you</i> have to tell <i>me</i> what to do with <i>my</i> body, if it doesn't infringe on <i>your</i> rights?
As long as the stuff is being used well away from people who dislike it
Me, i'm totally against smoking and using drugs. To the people who like it, do it. But don't force the stuff at people.
snuffs