Here is a link showing a retired police captain explaining why the war on drugs is a failure. Try and argue against this guy, no seriously. He makes a very compelling case.
I don't agree. It seems to me that the idea of decriminalization/legalization has been steadily gaining in popularity pretty much all over. The arguments need to be laid out and debated on before you can expect people to change opinions which many have held for decades, but once you do it, I think a lot of people are ready to at least thing about. (Doesn't mean they'll change their mind of course.)
I think there's little doubt that the war on drugs isn't working. It's really a matter of fleshing out other possibilities.
It's also not like "legalization" is an unambigous idea. There are lots of possible ways of doing it. And lots of ways of talking about it.
This might also be of interest to people.
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I don't agree. It seems to me that the idea of decriminalization/legalization has been steadily gaining in popularity pretty much all over. The arguments need to be laid out and debated on before you can expect people to change opinions which many have held for decades, but once you do it, I think a lot of people are ready to at least thing about. (Doesn't mean they'll change their mind of course.)
I think there's little doubt that the war on drugs isn't working. It's really a matter of fleshing out other possibilities.
It's also not like "legalization" is an unambigous idea. There are lots of possible ways of doing it. And lots of ways of talking about it.
This might also be of interest to people.
Damn you! I posted the link because I don't know how to embed vids...
I agree with the sentiment that people aren't going to run out the door and start smoking pot if it's legalized - or drugs in general, for that matter.
The ones who want to do it are the ones who currently use it.
Some people might start, but that wouldn't be any kind of significant number. I know for myself, I'm not going to go run out and buy a bunch of drugs if they are legalized. Why would I want to do that? They're just as harmful as when they were illegal.
Now, getting a gym membership... that should be mandatory for all citizens!
I don't agree. It seems to me that the idea of decriminalization/legalization has been steadily gaining in popularity pretty much all over. The arguments need to be laid out and debated on before you can expect people to change opinions which many have held for decades, but once you do it, I think a lot of people are ready to at least thing about. (Doesn't mean they'll change their mind of course.)
I think there's little doubt that the war on drugs isn't working. It's really a matter of fleshing out other possibilities.
It's also not like "legalization" is an unambigous idea. There are lots of possible ways of doing it. And lots of ways of talking about it.
This might also be of interest to people.
I think it has more to do with demographics than anything.
I get what you're saying and I'm participating in the thread because I agree with you, but I don't think I can put much faith in the 'critical thinking will win the day' in an issue by issue discussion.
I don't think I can put much faith in the 'critical thinking will win the day' in an issue by issue discussion.
I don't think 'critical thinking' has much to do with it in the long run. I think mostly everybody is just getting tired of the drug war. Too much money spent, too many bodies, too many prisoners, not enough tangible results.
Eventually I think the majority is willing to try pretty much anything else.
I don't know if it was ever mentioned, but Canada actually criminalized marijuana before the U.S. (1923 vs. 1937). Back in the 1920s, Canada fancied itself as promoter of drug control and was setting the bar.
At the time, there was a bill going through to criminalize opiates (including codeine, although that was later repealed), and someone wrote "Cannabis indica" just prior to the bill being passed. To this day, it is still unknown who wrote it on and why there is no record of even a discussion regarding criminalizing marijuana at the time. Marijuana use was not common back then, and the science of the day was that it was fairly harmless.
There's also no reason to think there was any science behind the decision. The major report of the era, and it was seven volumes in length, was Britain's Indian Hemp Drugs Commission report, published in 1894.
"Moderate use practically produces no ill effects," according to the report, and the evidence the commission heard "shows most clearly how little injury society has hitherto sustained from hemp drugs."
It's funny that a law was passed which has had such an effect on Canadians (and maybe the world) because some twat decided to push his own agenda undemocratically like that. A law which essentially started the need for a black market for the product and sub sequentially gave organized crime a foot in the door into drug distribution.
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Last edited by FlamesAddiction; 05-10-2014 at 01:27 PM.
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The only way to win the war on drugs is to reduce the price of the drugs. Lower it enough and the entire economy of drug dealing goes away. Why worry about getting shot to make a few bucks? It won't be worth it.
The argument of legalization does not make that criminal element go away. If the price is high enough, there will still be a black market and people protecting their product with guns. The question is will that be enough? People are accustomed to buying weed in a simple bag and won't care that the seven eleven brand is in a shiny box.
I am all for legalizing all drugs, with rules of course, and adding harsher penalties for things like DUI
“Ultimately, the most effective way to reduce the extensive harms of the global drug prohibition regime and advance the goals of public health and safety is to get drugs under control through responsible legal regulation,” says a new report from the Global Commission on Drugs. The group—composed of establishment luminaries such as former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, billionaire Richard Branson, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and honorary co-chair George Shultz, who served as US Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan—unveiled its recommendations this morning at a press conference in New York. A delegation, including former president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo, then met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has previously called drug addiction “a disease, not a crime.”
“Stop criminalizing people for drug use and possession,” the report says, but not only that: “Stop imposing ‘compulsory treatment’ on people whose only offense is drug use or possession.” That last clause marks an important shift. Before, the liberal and humanitarian approach to drugs was to approach it as a “public health” issue rather than a criminal one, which in practice meant confining drug users to for-profit treatment centers rather than for-profit prisons—an improvement, perhaps, but ultimately just kinder, gentler form of mass incarceration.
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