Blank White Template

You are not Kate so I cannot debate with you

If I may quote myself without seeming vain. From the stream description: "others welcome to jump in the discussion anytime!"

So go ahead if you like!

I have a feeling this is just Think_Tank 2.0.

I mean pretty much, similar concept but more of my personal opinions if anyone wants to challenge them. The Tank is general questions.

Whoops, the 3rd word shouldn't be there. My proofreader is fired.

Great question! I've been traveling this weekend so did not see your post right away. definitely a great topic so I will contribute when I can.

it isnt

🫦👀

Didn't prohibition drastically reduce the amount Americans drank?

Perhaps. Not to be flippant, but wouldn't sawing ones legs off drastically reduce the occurrence of foot-related maladies?

Yes, I suppose, but it would be completely illogical. Banning an addictive substance causes no physical harm to a potential addict.

Tell that to the addicts who went blind or died drinking actual poison with their ethanol. I'll direct your attention to the industrial ethanol that the government added methanol to "to discourage abuse". Just one of the side effects of their well-intended policy, and more collateral damage from the "noble experiment".

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't drink, or at the very least that you wouldn't miss it if you had to quit.

I am by no means defending the federal government's morally unacceptable behavior, lol.

That's fair. I'm pointing out the fallacy of your claim that "Banning an addictive substance causes no physical harm to a potential addict."

But in that case, it only caused harm because the government purposely intended it to.

I believe the government's intent was to dissuade, not to injure. But the intent didn't cause the outcome--the policy did.

Whether intended or not, a consequence of banning that addictive substance was leaving 100% of demand for it to be filled by criminal organizations, with predictably catastrophic, unnecessary and completely avoidable results.

The government didn't make people bootleg moonshine and bathtub gin, nor make people buy and consume it. Just like how when I leave my trash out, I don't force ants, rats, seagulls and raccoons to rummage through and eat it. But I'm rightly expected to know what that decision will inevitably lead to. The government is similarly accountable for every negative that stemmed from prohibition, whether direct or not, and whether intended or not. To absolve them of responsibility is to imply that they weren't responsible for engineering the situation that led to the resulting negative outcomes.

There's also the chance they just didn't give af what collateral damage they caused, in which case their protestations of wanting to help/save people are a laughable ruse. That seems more likely. I'd rather live under an evil government that knew what it was doing than a clueless toddler of a government that didn't know its head from the ass it was stuck up.

Heh, a more relevant answer would be that prohibition drastically reduced the amount Americans drank 𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺. It had far less of an impact overall. I mean, it made Al Capone rich and gave birth to the roots of Nascar. It's grandest success was pushing an activity that was never going to be stopped into the shadows where it 1) handed the revenue, tax free, to criminals (and not just because they dealt in booze), 2) couldn't be regulated and 3) demonstrated the ultimate futility of attempting to legislate away undesirable behavior in cases where collective will exceeds public harm. Ditto porn, prostitution, gambling, weed, and arguably a sizeable number of other controlled substances.

Drug use can cause harm directly through overdose or other mechanisms. It can also cause harm through addiction. By prohibiting drugs you can reduce both types of harm by not exposing people to the substance. This could be a benefit to society by reducing the burden these harms place on other people in the society.

Where there's a will there's a way. Criminalizing drugs guarantees that they're unregulated, resulting in impure products whose proceeds benefit the criminal enterprises who are left as the sole means of production. It also treats addicts like criminals instead of *gasp* actually trying to help them.

England (I am aware that this is not England) used to allow addicts to register with and obtain their drugs from the government in exchange for enrollment in diversion and rehabilitation programs. Some people just want to ruin their lives, but others were effectively steered back to a sustainably functional path in this way. (I'm not certain why Britain ended this policy.)

It's also worth noting that part of youth is the desire to rebel. And rebellion means doing shxt you're not allowed to. So decriminalizing drugs makes them less attractive as a means of rebellion. In fact, if you want a young person TO do something, the best way is to tell them NOT to. This is a small part of why D.A.R.E backfired so spectacularly.

Decriminalizing drugs does not increase usage. People don't run out and pick up a heroin habit simply because they can do so without knowing an underworld contact to provide it to them. (Although plenty of people became opioid addicts from whatever snakeoil the Sackler family was busy getting rich off.) Most people know that drugs are bad. Their "badness" is largely WHY most people choose to either stay away from them or use them. All drug criminalization does is fill prisons with non-violent users at great expense, with the effect of turning them into more effective criminals.

Rehab and diversion programs are how people are actually helped.

As tempting as it might be to say "legalization", because it saws the criminal underworld's legs off and beats them over the head with them...I really don't want to see J&J branded Ecstasy or Pfizer branded Methamphetamine. The best compromise I see is to stop punishing non-violent addicts with prison and show them a little Christian mercy and forgiveness ffs. Especially the first-time offenders.

I don’t think prohibit and criminalize mean exactly the same thing. For example a theater might say that talking on the phone is prohibited, but that doesn’t mean talking on the phone is illegal or criminalized. Also speeding is prohibited by law but it not a criminal offense. Even in Portugal where drug use was famously decriminalized in 2000, drug use became an administratively sanctionable misdemeanor, but not a crime. Another way prohibit drug use would be to make the supply of drugs so limited or expensive to effectively prohibit their use. And finally drug use could be prohibited in some situations (in public, in a preschool, etc) but allowed in some situations (in a supervised injection site).

I've been lazy and failed to adequately define terms. Good on you for picking at that.
I take prohibition to mean full criminalization of, a la "the noble experiment" (the 18th Amendment, or "alcohol prohibition). The policy was an unmitigated disasterpiece.

Decriminalization essentially means it's fine to possess small quantities and use a substance, but possessing large quantities, producing or trafficking are all still against the law.

Legalization means big pharma can manufacture, trademark, advertise and distribute whatever substances are allowed, and they'll be regulated, controlled and taxed just like alcohol and tobacco.

Drugs aren't monolithic, but I can't really think of any synthetic drugs that ought to be completely legalized. On one hand, downward pressure on prices means less incentive for criminal drug production. On the other hand, it would normalize drugs that society does well to roundly discourage. And natural drugs don't need legal intervention because nature can't be legislated away. Nor should it. As the late comedian Bill Hicks observed, "doesn't criminalizing nature seem a little, unnatural?"

TL;DR My assertion is that decriminalization of drugs (all of them) is the way to go. It allows society to continue patting itself on the back and throwing criminals in prison, while sparing the end users who, for the most part, are either harming no one, or simply need some compassionate intervention.

I’m ok with reducing penalties for drug use. I feel like addicts are victims for the most part. Still not comfortable with condoning the use of drugs.

I got a bit of a lift hearing that a bunch of people in jail for non-violent weed crimes were released. I'd love to see the sentences for everyone currently in jail solely for non-violent drug related offenses commuted to time served, but the prison industry (and a lot of uptight squares) would balk at having 20% of inmates released overnight. (I also vied to release people in prison for things that are no longer against the law, and having their records expunged, but apparently doing something essentially harmless before society acknowledges that it's essentially harmless is as bad as doing something actually harmful.) The war on rationality (that's what the war on drugs is at this point--the drugs won somewhere back in the 80's) makes me go cross-eyed with rage. I still remember almost having an aneurysm after seeing some propaganda video about terrorists getting their funding from people buying weed on the street. Even if that was true, it's the fault of the people responsible for clinging to failed drug policy, not the end users. So the same people who shxt the bed, then rolled around in it and pointed a feces covered finger towards the group THEY relegated to buying weed--now LEGAL many places--on the streets, are going to complain that the purchase of weed is financing terrorists? I mean, to my thinking that would make the government complicit in terrorism, except street drugs don't fund international terrorism in the first place, the government was using that as a fear tactic in an effort to perpetuate prohibiti--oh dear I've gone cross-eyed again.

I definitely hear you regarding not wanting to condone drugs. I close friend of mine opined that when society makes something legal (as if prohibiting it is the default), it gives it a stamp of approval. The problem is, the purpose of the law isn't to appease folks who get their panties in a was when they see other people doing things they themselves wouldn't personally do. The purpose of the law is some combination of 1) protect the vulnerable, 2) protect our general safety, 3) ensure our rights as citizens against abuses by other people, by organizations, and by the government itself. Tossing people with a J in jail for life when it's less harmful than tobacco, alcohol, teflon fumes or eating out of microwaved plastic is a literal failure of item 3 on that list (possibly twice over, since pfas is still a major ongoing problem). Ditto all so-called "consensual" or "victimless" crimes.

I voted to legalize marijuana in my state. Even that has not been entirely benign is you look into the impacts of illegal marijuana grows on rural California communities after prop 64 passed.

When an win-win scenario is unavailable, go with the one that's less terrible.

TL;DR, you don't need to be comfortable with the choices other people make to accept that it's their choice to make. So long as it only directly affects them, the issue at stake isn't "are we comfortable with them doing that", it's "are they harming a vulnerable group or our general safety." If the answer is no, the law has no business interceding.

Unless one lives in a survivalist cabin, is it possible to do anything that only directly affects one’s self?

“are we comfortable with them doing that?” How this question is answered is one of the things that separates different cultures.

“accept that it's their choice to make.”
There are many choices I don’t have to accept.

Fair point, and that's a two-way street. Who prevails? The mighty? The just? The wolf that gets fed? If live-and-let-live isn't an option, it's a slippery slope to the highlander endgame of "there can be only one", and from there to "no one is free to do anything".

Although the law won't stop that outcome in any case.