The legalization of illicit drug debate.

[axmdr40]

I moved this from the gun control thread...lets end the hijack and start it here...this issue is huge, and I think discussing it is beneficial.

There is certainly a market for drugs. We are all discussing kids at school and street corners, but the reality is that drugs are a huge business in white suburbia. The demand is what keeps the drugs coming in and, morality aside, that demand is never going to go away. It is a $200+ billion industry.

The original thread was on how to lessen gun violence. I still think that taking the money out of the hands of drug dealers is the best way to do that.

I'm sure it was no joke...

The thread started with a discussion on "sensible" gun control to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

Drugs sell...and the profits are astronomical. There has been a market for drugs as long as people have existed (I'm throwing my drug of choice, alcohol, into the equation).

As long as folks want to do drugs, someone is going to sell them. I don't think the competition mindset between legal and illegal businesses is all that different, but the "tools of the trade" sure are! Therefore, we have an extremely violent drug market.

It's in our own interest as gun owners to push for legalization. The reduction of violent crime in the cities would eliminate the reason for many stupid gun laws.

I don't think you guys get it. YOU"RE NEVER GOING TO CAPTURE THE MARKET FROM THE DRUG LORDS!!

Drug profits are astonomical...yes...So let's harness the power of extreme and uncontrollable addiction for profit. You may say that its the same with alcohol or tobacco...I say it's close, but it's different. One beer, one cigarette, it isn't going to kill you...it isn't going to get you hooked, and you body recovers from these substances. But one ecstacy pill kill non-regenerative brain cells, on needle of heroine can kill you.

Of course there is a violent drug market...The violence would double, triple, whateverwordmeans100timestheamount what it is now. In the past, South American drug lords have controlled entire countries with their reign of violence and payoffs. The can and will fight back.

[dgg9]

I don't think you guys get it. YOU"RE NEVER GOING TO CAPTURE THE MARKET FROM THE DRUG LORDS!!

This is flatly false. When the profit vanishes from that market, the criminals leave the enterprise. This has been observed with Prohibition.

It costs MUCH more money to import and distribute something illegally than legally. The amount of money made on, say, aspirin, would not support a parallel illegal market. Who would buy aspirin from a drug dealer when it's cheap and safe to buy at the 7-11?

Criminals are not attracted to no-profit enterprises. When drugs are legal, there is no illegal "market" anymore.

[dgg9]

Drug profits are astonomical

Ask yourself why sometime.

One beer, one cigarette, it isn't going to kill you...it isn't going to get you hooked, and you body recovers from these substances. But one ecstacy pill kill non-regenerative brain cells, on needle of heroine can kill you.

Alcohol and cigarettes kill orders of magnitude more people than ecstasy and heroin, so this argument is a non-starter.

[D-FENS]

Pot is the nations number 1 cash crop.

Food for thought.....mmmmm...foood

Emptymag better give me back my Funyuns

Anyways, if you legalize drugs and have them manufactured and over-seen by something like the FDA. You could easily undercut any street drug prices. You could undercut them so bad. So, drug users say "Hey, I can buy pure drugs that aren't tainted through the process of getting into my nose, arm, lungs, etc and pay less....hmmm." Crime would go way down. Instead of a druggie needing to accomodate a $500 a day habit with theft and robbery, they could do it on a much lower budget, in turn decreasing the amount of crime needed to facilitate their addiction. Not to mention, when things are legal, their use declines severely. That's been proven by every other civilized country with legal drugs. It's not something kids care about and addiction usually sets in when people are in their teenage years. If it's not illegal, what's the draw? People get started on shit like crack because you can get high for $10-$15 instead of having to buy a bag of pot at $40.

[KIGY]

Legalization would result in:

1. Purity assurance under Food and Drug Administration regulation;
2. Labeled concentration of the product (to avoid overdose);
3. Obliteration of vigorous marketing ("pushers");
4. Obliteration of drug crime and reduction of theft crime
5. Savings in expensive enforcement
6. Significant tax revenues.

Other reasons ?

[axmdr40]

Where is the illicit alcohol production today? Everything you said was claimed during Prohibition.

Drinking alcohol was not criminalized under prohibition...using drugs is illegal...its a different debate. Prohibition also happend 80 years ago, globalization has made the market extremely different...the comparison is a simplification of a much more complex issue.

You're reversing cause and effect. BECAUSE there is an illegal market, illicit drug producers now have a reason to exist. The best way to get rid of drug dealers is make it illegal.

I never said that illegal drug trade is the result of illicite drug producers. The cause and effect of the illegal drug market is so easy, a caveman could understand it ( thanks geico!). What you aren't understanding is that drug production and trafficking is a globalized market, they have huge stakes in this. Any legal market would be undercutted by the illegal drug trade, because their business would still be deemed illegal, and people would continue to buy from the illegal drug market.

What the "hardcore, highly armed, highly motivated, and higly networked individuals" want it immaterial if there's no money to be made. And it is the illegality that provides them with money and arms.

These guys don't dissappear, they will take on the legal drug trade in anyway possible. Either by undercutting the market and I state above, or by organized violent act...I would see them as a new breed of terrorist.

Your opinion is duly noted, yet plenty of companies make alcohol, which causes more deaths than all illegal drugs combined.

Very true, but, and I guessing no such gathering of statistics has taken place, but I would like to see the deaths per thousand or million or something. I be the ratios would tell us something.

First, the primary thing to legalize is pot, which alone would reduce the problems of the Drug War. Yes, there is a safe amount of pot.

As for the other things, there are plenty of recreational users of those substances who hold down jobs, etc.

Ok, for me, the argument that there is a safe amount of pot is extremely vague. Don't tell me it isn't a gateway drug, because that's a bold faced lie, and everyone knows it. As for recreational users who hold down jobs...does that make it ok? Could they do their job better. Could our economy improve if all the functional alcoholics and drug users were clean and sober?

Will there be a hard core group of abusers? Yes. But you're asking all the wrong questions. Here's what you should be asking:

1. All those drugs are ALREADY ILLEGAL, yet there are addicts. The WoD has failed. So why do you defend it?
2. Is criminalization the best way to handle the hard core of drug abusers?

1. Did I defend the war on drugs at any point during this discourse?....hmmm
2. Is legalization the best way to handle the existance of hard core chemicals that fuck people up beyond no return in small amounts?

[axmdr40]

I have another class....I have lots of thoughts on your replies, and I'm enjoy this debate a lot.

[billamj]

Legalization would result in:

1. Purity assurance under Food and Drug Administration regulation;
2. Labeled concentration of the product (to avoid overdose);
3. Obliteration of vigorous marketing ("pushers");
4. Obliteration of drug crime and reduction of theft crime
5. Savings in expensive enforcement
6. Significant tax revenues.

Other reasons ?

While some of your arguments are valid, there are at least reasons to believe that some of them are invalid. We already know about people who traffic in cigarettes, so I would anticipate the same thing happening with drugs. That would also mean that there would be enforcement expenses, perhaps not to the level of today but it would still be there. Obliteration of pushers and drug crime? You can't possibly be serious. For every drug legalized, there would be two or three new ones popping up that would still be illegal. That is another thing that has been going on for time in memorium. Would it help with some of this nation's problems, yes. Would it be a drug problem cure, no way.

[KeithPA]

How could a drug producer undercut the price if the feds regulated it? They couldn't, what would the point be of importing drugs when we would produce our own. It would still be illegal to import them, so why would they risk it for such little reward.

It's never going to happen though, they will never legalize. It produces jobs. Think of all the DEA agents that would loose their jobs, not to mention local police that would have even less to do. We throw billions of dollars fighting drugs on the criminal level, and that produces alot of jobs for people.

Besides the fact we know lobbyists normally get what they want. I'm sure every alcohol producer has hundreds of lobbyists making sure that drugs don't get legalize, as it would cut into their business.

[dgg9]

Drinking alcohol was not criminalized under prohibition...using drugs is illegal...its a different debate.

It's exactly the same debate if you're talking about the crime and violence associated with importing and distributing a proscribed commodity...and how the profit from that fuels crime cartels.

Prohibition also happend 80 years ago, globalization has made the market extremely different...the comparison is a simplification of a much more complex issue.

Prohibition is a textbook example of what happens when you proscribe a commodity. The WoD is following the identical script with identical results.

Why be determined to not learn from history?

What you aren't understanding is that drug production and trafficking is a globalized market, they have huge stakes in this. Any legal market would be undercutted by the illegal drug trade, because their business would still be deemed illegal, and people would continue to buy from the illegal drug market.

This is refuted by every molecule of observed reality. Do you buy black market aspirin? Do you buy black market beer? If not, why not? Who would buy anything from an illegal dealer when the same thing is cheaper and legal?

Read some studies on illegal drugs -- the vast majority of the cost is precisely in the fact that it IS illegal. A substance that has to be illegally imported and distributed -- with all the extreme costs implied in that -- can never compete with a legal business that does not have to pay any of those costs. The profit margins for legal commodities are usually razor thin; there's no way illegal commodities could compete. And again, no one in his right mind buys an unlabelled, unknown substance from a dealer when the safe, labelled thing is available, for less.

These guys don't dissappear, they will take on the legal drug trade in anyway possible. Either by undercutting the market and I state above, or by organized violent act...I would see them as a new breed of terrorist.

So where are the Medellin alcohol cartels? Will you please answer this question and stop evading it? It is directly on point to this whole debate. If what you say is true, then a huge percentage of alcohol should be sold by street corner illegal dealers, rather than liquor stores. Since that is not, in fact, true, it refutes your argument.

Very true, but, and I guessing no such gathering of statistics has taken place, but I would like to see the deaths per thousand or million or something. I be the ratios would tell us something.

Pretty good statistics exist. Alcohol and nicotine cause hundreds of thousands of deaths a year. The next nearest illegal drug is not even in the same ballpark.

Ok, for me, the argument that there is a safe amount of pot is extremely vague. Don't tell me it isn't a gateway drug, because that's a bold faced lie, and everyone knows it.

Only "everyone" who hasn't actually looked into the subject knows it. That's one of those statements that is retailed uncritically, but falls apart under any real scrutiny.

I encourage you to research it a bit, but the short answer is: the substance of pot itself is not a gateway. The ILLEGALITY of pot is the gateway.

As for recreational users who hold down jobs...does that make it ok? Could they do their job better. Could our economy improve if all the functional alcoholics and drug users were clean and sober?

That's an authoritarian Nanny State argument, which I reject. Are my liberties contingent on my utilitarian output?

1. Did I defend the war on drugs at any point during this discourse?....hmmm

Of course you do. If you claim drugs should be kept illegal, that implies the Drug War.

2. Is legalization the best way to handle the existance of hard core chemicals that fuck people up beyond no return in small amounts?

Since ILlegalization is not preventing these people, where's your argument? In any society, at any time, there will ALWAYS be an intractable core of addictive people. Obviously the WoD is not stopping this from occurring. Given that, what use is it?