[Rhodes22-list] political - war on drugs - an alternative approach

[Robert Skinner]

DCLewis1 at aol.com wrote:
> ...
> Regarding drugs: If I understand correctly, the claim is that if we just
> legalized drugs the problem would go away.  I'm asserting the problem(s)  would
> just be different.  I think that if we legalized "hard drugs" (i.e.  drugs that
> are seriously addictive and seriously debilitating) the moral,  social, and
> economic costs to society created by a class of literally tens  of millions of
> addicts would dwarf our present problems by orders of  magnitude.  If drugs
> were legal, Brad's son would not be on the high seas  trying to interdict, he
> would be riding an ambulance stuffing body bags.  I  think that criminalization
> of drug use actually works to disincentivize a lot of  people that would
> otherwise try addicting drugs, and the moral, social and  economic costs associated
> with tens of millions of addicts is so extraordinarily  high that any
> disincentive is a good and useful thing.
> Dave
---------------------

Dave,

I understand and agree that disincentives related to 
the improper use of drugs are appropriate.

There are, however, two questions that need answers:

"What constitutes improper use of drugs?"

"At what point do the disincentives themselves become 
a problem?"

Proper drugs?

We have yet as a society come to an agreement as to 
what drugs are to be accepted as "OK".  We are now 
questioning both alcohol and tobacco, even though 
they have been accepted for centuries.  Marijuana 
has become more accepted as it migrated into white 
culture.  New "designer" drugs hit the bricks on a 
regular basis.  

Yet without anything even coming close to a consensus 
as to what drugs are OK, we find disinformation on 
all sides.  The government agencies whose lifeblood 
is illegal drug traffic publish false assessments of 
the value of their seizures.  The drug subculture 
discounts the real dangers to mind and body from 
drugs.  

There are few credible sources of information 
available to young people - those who are most 
vulnerable.

A reality check reveals that virtually all societies 
and cultures condone the use of one or another 
psychotropic drugs.  In the US, our Puritan black or 
white, all or nothing ethic does not permit the 
rational discussion that would treat the worst 
threats first.  

By defining the public health risks of indiscriminate 
drug use as a "WAR", we set ourselves up for failure.  
You don't win this as a war, you have to treat it as 
a social phenomenon with long roots and a constant 
future.  You don't wipe out an enemy, you understand 
and deal with a multifaceted problem -- always 
imperfectly, but always working on it.

Disincentives:

The "war on drugs" has resulted in one of the world's 
highest incarceration rates, based on our total 
population.  Incarceration as a disincentive is not 
working.  For some young males, prison is a ticket to 
three meals a day and a total immersion education in 
anti-social behaviors.  People coming out of prison 
after incarceration for offenses that are within the 
norm for their subculture have little respect for an 
uber-culture that (as they see it) has never accepted 
them.

Seeing prison sentences as a disincentive has many drawbacks.

The education option will require a lot of work.  
Ever since Ainsley went nuts on marijuana in the 
'40s, government pronouncements about drug use have 
been suspect.  To validate the information that is 
presented to our youth, we will have to abandon scare 
tactics and reclaim the high ground of truth -- and 
this begins with dismantling the "war on drugs" and 
the agencies that feed off it.  

Right now, the best source of information about drug 
use and its dangers is the Internet.  Unfortunately, 
there is also a lot of junk there as well.  We could 
use a social mechanism to review and validate the 
credibility of the more useful sites.

Education must be differentiated from politics and 
government agencies.

Urine testing for recipients of government money is 
an interesting idea.  We would have to pair that 
initiative with greater emphasis on prosecuting 
theft and treating addiction as a disease, as theft 
would be alternative source of money for the addicted, 
and jail does not cure.

I wonder if legislators can cope with this sort of
problem?  If not they, then who?  Time to rethink the 
problem and its possible solutions!

/Robert Skinner