I recently read an article in PC World about the sale of psychedelic drugs online. Interestingly, there are numerous substances that are potent, legal and readily accessible via the web.
Not surprisingly, some people are rather opposed to the sale of such substances online and one person has even claimed that one such substance, salvia , killed her son. Other people defend the sale of such substances. At this point, a few American states have taken steps to regulate the sales of such substances. However, the industry is largely unregulated.
On one hand, there are excellent reasons to believe that the sale of such substances should be regulated by the state.
First, there is the general concern that anything that people ingest should be under government regulation so as to help protect people from potential harm. While regulation and supervision obviously does not prevent all such harm (see, for example, the recent peanut butter contamination problems) it does much to reduce them.
Second, to the degree that there are good reasons to regulate access to other psychedelic drugs (LSD, Ecstasy and so on), there are good reasons to regulate these other substances. While most might lack the power of drugs such as LSD, the same logic (or lack thereof) would apply to these drugs as well.
Third, such drugs generally do not seem to be beneficial to people and it seems reasonable to deny people access to such substances “for their own good.” While some people find “getting high” appealing, it does not seem to make them better people or improve their existence in meaningful and significant ways. Rather, the use and abuse of such substances seems to degrade the quality of a person’s existence. Naturally, I admit this can be a mere bias on my part. My preference is for physical and mental health and I, like Aristotle, regard these as goods superior to mere pleasure. But, as Aristotle notes, many people value pleasure greatly and hence it is something worth considering.
Having said the above, there are also reasons why such drugs should remain freely accessible.
First, there is the matter of freedom. As Mill argued in his essay on liberty, there are good reasons to let people do as they will, provided that they do not harm others. If people wish to impede their faculties and waste their lives away doing such drugs, then they should be allowed to do so.
Second, there is the fact that rather potent drugs are legally available. After all, enough alcohol will get a person adequately high. Naturally, alcohol is somewhat regulated; but if we allow people to get drunk, then there seems to be less moral ground to stand on to condemn people who use salvia or other such substances. Consistency should seem to require that we regulate in a consistent manner.
Third, such regulation fails to address the real cause of the problem-namely the reason why people seek out and use such substances. While there is something to be said in curbing supply, as long as the desire to “get high” remains, then people will find something with which to satisfy that desire whether it is beer, pot, salvia or fermented yak milk. It makes more sense to try to figure out why people have this desire and focus on solving that underlying problem. After all, we can see how successful the “war on drugs” has been in the past and I think we can expect the same success in the future/.
I’m all for people being allowed to destroy themselves. I’m glad there’s always idiots who want to tell me that inhaling the smoke of burning cannibus is good for the. I suspect about 80% of WordPress users are also Reefer users… The problem is, that when things like drugs are legalized, after a few generations, the whole cultural attitude about the substanc eis changed. I think that drug legalization should be on a case-by-case basis. I hate the argument that because one drug is legal, others should be. Wood burns, and so does gasoline. But with very different results.
Hmmm, actually weed smoke isn’t bad for you. You’re the idiot for drawing conclusions based on nothing but folklore.
Instead of trying to demonize something I’m going to present scientific evidence:
“Guillermo Velasco and colleagues, at Complutense University, Spain, have provided evidence that suggests that cannabinoids such as the main active component of marijuana (THC) have anticancer effects on human brain cancer cells.”
Also give me one source that says anyone has died from Marijuana use. Oh wait…You can’t because no one ever has.
My step-father no longer smokes pot but did heavily in his younger years. Now it is excruciating having a conversation with him. He repeats everything he says, takes forever to get a thought out and I end up completing his sentences. I saw this change happen over the years and it is just said I tell ya. Not an argument against or for legalization just hate hearing how it isn’t harmful.
This isn’t scientific. Maybe your stepfather was not intelligent to start out with.
Barack Obama smoked heavily and he is an extremely intelligent man.
If you want the TRUTH turn to SCIENTIFIC evidence.
The argument that the war on drugs has not made us drug-free is not an adequate argument against the war. Afterall there is also a War on Murder, a War on Theft and a War on Rape. All of those crimes still exist–yet we still continue the wars. And I say continue the war on drugs as long as the people can stand it. There’s little of edifying value in them and I don’t want my kids living in Neo-Amsterdam. What the hell does Amsterdam do for the world? All of these places where drugs are legal–what have they ever done for liberty but allow people the “freedom” to destroy themselves? That’s not being an advocate of freedom and liberty–that’s surrender.
It’s an interesting perspective to put forward that an action needs to be in some manner useful to society in general for it to be considerd a ‘correct’ one. What I mean by this is that, if there is no consequence from a self-regarding act (Mill – on liberty) on any other party, then why shouldn’t people be free to do what they will to themselves? Why should Amsterdam have to do anything for the world? There is no need for a war on something which has no effect on you!
What world do you live in? Of course your drug use effects me. If society were populated by a bunch of stoned zombies, like some drug induced, I Am Legend, and I were the only person left who didn’t do drugs, I’m pretty sure I’D be effected. Children of drug users aren’t effected? Stop fooling yourself and stop making your morality merely a model of what YOU want to do.
Your morality is merely the morality of indifference and laziness. The idea that there is no consequence to societal drug use is provably false. Try living with a drug addict and tell me how it effects no one but the addicted. I have–so I can speak on it.
Something does not have to be “useful” to be legal. It does however, need to meet the standards and principles of a society, and thank goodness our standards haven’t fallen that low–yet.
Ok I take your point, living with a drug-addict would, I’m sure, have an effect on you. However, the point I was making does rely on self-regarding acts – an act which effects only the person doing it. For example: a person on a desert island who decides to take a load of MDMA is not harming anybody but themseves.
However, harm really only constitutes physical and only pretty serious psychological distress, which is an important point. So, even if a person taking drugs disstresses you, their right to decide what they do is paramount as opposed to your distress (say if you were just really annoyed at them). But this is quite difficult to quantify so it is up to an individual to decide whether their actions, or the actions of another are causing distress. Also, anybody’s morality is based on what they want to do – humans always choose to do the thing which they think will make them the most happy.
For a comment on “a philosopher’s blog” your not approaching this very philosophically – morality is clearly a human construct; a evolutionary necessity. Some of the greatest philosophers ever would agree: Neizche, Camus and Satre all wrote about the futility of human existence in a meaningless and, therefore, amoral world. What is your morality based on?
And anyway, aside from the merits of either philosophical consider how many people die from alcohol related illness or smoking. They are drugs just the same as the illegal ones. It’s just not consistent. By criminalising drugs then we are effectively fueling organised crime (and that includes terrorism) in a manner similar to the 1920’s prohibition!
Nieszche went beyond morality (Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Geneaology of Morality) and like him, I don’t base my opinions on drug use on a “system”. I base my opinion on drugs being legalized on the observable fact they they do terrible things to people and societies.
What makes you think that crime will be reduced by legalizing drugs? Other then the drug possession crimes themselves. Afterall–Afghanistan provides the world with 95% of its (the world’s) heroin. It’s the primary exportable resourse of that country. People will still commit crimes to get drugs whether they’re legal or not, and by increasing the availability we increase the number of users and thereby addicts. Also, by removing the stigma of illegality, we change the cultural attitude–in other words: More people do drugs.
So basically by legalizing drugs, you’re selling your nation down a road.
Yes Neitzche went beyond morality, therfore recognising it as superflous. Drugs do not do terrible things to people and societies – over use of them does.
Legalising drugs wouldn’t reduce the amount of people taking drugs. It would stop the money going to organised crime. If it were regulated then the government could tax its sale like it does with alcohol and tobacco and it could impose strong and feisable restrictions on its use.
And whats sending the world down a slippery slope is the causes for people to take drugs. If a society can’t keep people happy without the use of drugs then surely the solution lies in making people content not simply banning drugs.
Also, increasing the avaliability does not necessarily increase the mount of users. When alcohol was prohibited more people drank than when it was legal!
“When alcohol was prohibited more people drank than when it was legal!”
Citation, please.
Mafia activities were restricted until 1920, when they exploded because of the introduction of Prohibition. http://law.jrank.org/pages/11944/Organized-Crime-American-Mafia.html – American Law and Legal Information
The early experience of the Prohibition era gave the government a taste of what was to come. In the three months before the 18th Amendment became effective, liquor worth half a million dollars was stolen from Government warehouses. By midsummer of 1920, federal courts in Chicago were overwhelmed with some 600 pending liquor violation trials (Sinclair, 1962: 176-177). Within three years, 30 prohibition agents were killed in service.
Other statistics demonstrated the increasing volume of the bootleg trade. In 1921, 95,933 illicit distilleries, stills, still works and fermentors were seized. in 1925, the total jumped to 172,537 and up to 282,122 in 1930. In connection with these seizures, 34,175 persons were arrested in 1921; by 1925, the number had risen to 62,747 and to a high in 1928 of 75,307 (Internal Revenue, Service, 1921, 1966, 1970: 95, 6, 73). Concurrently, convictions for liquor offenses in federal courts rose from 35,000 in 1923 to 61,383 in 1932.
The law could not quell the continuing demand for alcoholic products. Thus, where legal enterprises could no longer supply the demand, an illicit traffic developed, from the point of manufacture to consumption. The institution of the speakeasy replaced the institution of the saloon. Estimates of the number of speakeasies throughout the United States ranged from 200,000 to 500,000.
http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/LIBRARY/studies/nc/nc2a.htm – The Schaffer Library of Drug Policy
“Afghanistan provides the world with 95% of its (the world’s) heroin”
“by removing the stigma of illegality, we change the cultural attitude–in other words: More people do drugs.”
“By increasing the availability we increase the number of users”
Citations?
The early experience of the Prohibition era gave the government a taste of what was to come. In the three months before the 18th Amendment became effective, liquor worth half a million dollars was stolen from Government warehouses. By midsummer of 1920, federal courts in Chicago were overwhelmed with some 600 pending liquor violation trials. Within three years, 30 prohibition agents were killed in service.
Other statistics demonstrated the increasing volume of the bootleg trade. In 1921, 95,933 illicit distilleries, stills, still works and fermentors were seized. in 1925, the total jumped to 172,537 and up to 282,122 in 1930. In connection with these seizures, 34,175 persons were arrested in 1921; by 1925, the number had risen to 62,747 and to a high in 1928 of 75,307 (Internal Revenue, Service, 1921, 1966, 1970: 95, 6, 73). Concurrently, convictions for liquor offenses in federal courts rose from 35,000 in 1923 to 61,383 in 1932.
The law could not quell the continuing demand for alcoholic products. Thus, where legal enterprises could no longer supply the demand, an illicit traffic developed, from the point of manufacture to consumption. The institution of the speakeasy replaced the institution of the saloon. Estimates of the number of speakeasies throughout the United States ranged from 200,000 to 500,000. – The Schaffer Library of Drug Policy (a history of alcohol prohibition)
The link you sent me begins the part on prohibition by stating: “During 13 years, what did Prohibition accomplish? There is no single compilation of Prohibition statistics which would enable us to determine the degree of success which Prohibition enjoyed during its lifetime.” Exacly.
Everyone reading this should know that the link sent is to a site which promotes illegal drug use and sale. So your boss may not be happy about your visit there. It also reveals the motives of the poster.
As for Afganistan and poppy–I thought everyone knew this but here is just one link. There’s tons more.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/04/AR2007080400671.html
Do you really need a citation that more availability means more use? Really? What if one country had absolutely NO drugs available, but in another you could buy crack cocaine at the corner store (like you seem to think would be a great idea). Which country would have the higher rate of use? Now of course, you’ll say “But we DO have drugs in this country.” And I’ll still say that availability and cultural acceptance have a very large part to play in drug use and abuse. When your sacred dope becomes more culturally accepted it will be legalized. Now–it’s not.
And don’t forget: At one point even heroin was legal. Ask Edgar Allen Poe how that worked out for him.
Well for a start I don’t have a boss and the website was the first to come up when I searched for prohibition statistics so, aside from that being irrelevant to the issue here, that does not reveal my motives!
And, as you quoted, there is no single compilation of prohibition statistics which would enable us to determine the degree of sucess… that’s not what I was talking about – I was demonstrating the amount of illegal activity which continued to rise dramatically throuhgout prohibition which does prove my original point which was that increaing avaliability does not necessarily increase useage.
Also I do not think it would be a good idea if people could buy crack cocaine at the corner store, I never even implied that. If anything I suggested that with legalisation of drugs then the governement would be able to regulate people’s usage much more effectively! Can we return to the point?
It is clear that cultural acceptance is not reflected by the law; if it were not culturally acceptable to take any form of illegal drugs then people wouldn’t take. What I am suggesting is that the law should reflect contemporary cultural opinion – 69 million americans have tried marijuana (drug statistics.org) There are 66 million protestants (and thats including all denominations – www .publiceye.org/magazine/v17n2/evangelical-demographics. html) in America. Which group has more rights and a greater voice in such a democratic country?!
Drug experimentation is not the same as cultural acceptance. People lie all of the time, and yet it’s not culturally accepted.
And how common certain acts are does not determine whether they should be legal. Almost every person driving exceeds the posted speed limit, everyday, and yet most of us would agree there should be speed limits.
Some drugs are legal yes, but each drug is its own issue and should be examined as such. Caffeine is not heroin.
Some drugs are good and help people–most of the banned or controlled ones do not or do so in very limited scopes. Overall I think that the ones that are controlled are the ones that SHOULD be. Government (In Democracy) is the collective mind of a nation, we get the one we deserve. People don’t want legal hard drugs in this country–and we’re all better off for that.
When we DO want legal hard drugs, that will be as much a symptom as a cause of where we are going. It will be a symptom of a dying culture in my opinion. And it may not be far off.
Yes I agree, there needs to be regulation. But by maintaining the position that drugs should not be allowed full stop then the possibility to regulate it is stopped completely. Fortunately or unfortunately, however you may see it, the government is awful at regulating the use of drugs at the moment, if they were legalised then anybody distributing drugs could be regulated much more easily.That would mean that the content of most drugs would become purer and there would be far less negative side effects and dangers of taking drugs.
The point about having such a high proportion of people prepared to experiment with drugs is that it represents not necessarily that the country is in favour of drug use but that it is not necessarily against it. It doesn’t matter if the majority of the population want something, if a significant minority do then thats a pretty valid reason to allow them to. For example: there are far more straight people than gays. However, it would be unreasonable to criminalise homosexuality simply because the majority of people are not that way inclined. The point is that people should have the right to choose what’s best for them – not have it dictated to them by the state.
Legalization reduces crime. There are no gangs who sell tobacco, because they can’t compete with legitimate businesses who don’t have to worry about being on the wrong side of the law.
Also, by your arguments, magnus, we should make unemployment illegal, because if everyone were to be unemployed, then you would be sad.
If you don’t want to do drugs you don’t have to, and if you don’t want your children to do drugs, explain to them why. It will do a lot more than the government telling them that it’s illegal.
Let’s legalize everything and then there will be no crime. It’s just that easy.
Legalization does not reduce crime because there is still the addiction aspect. And the drugs aren’t free. legalization only removes the middle-man–the gangs and dealers and replaces them with another middle-man–the government.
I know. I worked as a police officer in a city of only 33,000 but that had three methadone clinics. The people getting methadone would steal the methadone from one another.Not to mention drive away from the clinic while under the drugs influance (which doctors insisted wasn’t negative, but sobriety tests showed otherwise) and crash into people and property.
Good times, these times.
Here is a link to the United nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The article specifically speaks on Amsterdam, where as most people know, small amounts of cannibis are legal to possess.
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/about-unodc/costas-corner/amsterdam.html
Let me point out a specific paragraph of the article:
“A fundamental principle in economic science is that supply and price of a product affect its demand. With cannabis legally and plentifully available, its use is much higher in Amsterdam (almost 3 times more) than in the rest of the country (note: 80% of Dutch municipalities do not allow the sale of marijuana). Furthermore, in Amsterdam marijuana consumption is well above EU averages – and these figures do not count the tourists. An urban problem? Hardly so: there is no difference in the rates of marijuana use between London and the rest of the UK, or between Washington DC and the rest of the USA. Elsewhere in the world, the urban setting does not affect drug consumption rates: why should it affect Amsterdam? To conclude, the city has a health problem caused by marijuana availability, and this could get worse as cannabis becomes more potent.”
So-availability was concluded as promoting the drug’s use.
The article also states that Amsterdam pays the highest percentage of its GDP out of any nation in the world on drug control. .7%
And even that city started to see what it had gotten itself into, so had to crack down with even more controls on the sex and drug trade:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081206.wamsterdam1206/EmailBNStory/International/home
Crime is a culture. Drug use is a culture. The two cultures are born from a certain mind-set. Drug use is not an island unto itself. A person’s potential for drug use and addiction are affected by his environment, and he in turn affects his environment–usually in a negative way.
It should also be stated, that many “illegal” drugs are in fact legal under the direction of a doctor. Cocaine is used in the medical fields as is morphine and other opiates. So the argument that controls should be enacted but not illegalization is flawed. This is in fact, already the case. And people get around that sytem too; just ask anyone in the medical field the extant that people will go to to get Hydrocodone or Oxycontin. Ask any cop what they think would happen if we flooded the market by making hard drugs legal.
“Oh, but they would be controls,” you say.
Really? How do you control the drugs that are legally possessed by one person, but then illegally transferred from him to another, such as with methadone? Someone sitting in their living room, passing their drugs to another for some cash.
And America’s drug problem is relative. A small percentage of Americans use illegal drugs. Cannibis is most prevalent of course, and the “weakest” of the illegal types.
So maybe our laws ARE working. Perfect? What is?
Many people who are promoting legalization of drugs, are themselves, users. They don’t want to feel badly of themselves, so they overstate the numbers of people who use. “See, everyone’s doing it.”
I’d have a lot more respect for these folk if they’d just come out and admit that’s why they want to legalize.
What about the amount of people who travel to Amsterdam to buy drugs legally? It’s a huge amount of people! Supply relates to demand only in terms of price. More people buy it because they can afford it at a lower price – not that more people are subversively addicted to buying marijuana through a greater supply.
And also, you are arguing in a very simplistic and exagerated way; ironic considering that you stated that users overstate the amount of people who are drug users. There is a simple freedom at stake here. Similar to freedom of speech, it does not matter if you agree with what the person says, they should be allowed to say it unless it directly incites harm in some form. If drug use doesn’t harm society (and by this mean this in a rather extreme sense; that it does not prevent society from reaching a higher potential, financially etc, and nothing further) then what right does one individual have to dictate whether another may use drugs?!
Well, virtually every civilized nation–Amsterdam is a city–has come to the same conclusion that America has: Drugs (some, not all)have a negative effect on society as a whole. Most drugs were legal at one point, then as they began to be more avilable due to industry and transportation, they became more damaging. Some of them were outlawed. The experiment backfired in Amsterdam. It created a whole segment of their society who are a bunch of zombified lay-abouts. So now they spend more on drug control then anyone else in the world. Point being, what you’re advocating has been tried, and failed miserably. People didn’t like it, and voted for lawmakers who outlawed drugs. Democracy. We control our laws through voting–not just ephemeral ideas on individual rights. We did the same with alcohol. We wanted it more than a law to prevent its use, and we voted accordingly.
Again, you’re arguing for legalization of drugs, most likely because YOU want to use.
“What about the amount of people who travel to Amsterdam to buy drugs legally? It’s a huge amount of people! Supply relates to demand only in terms of price.”
So–I’ve proven that supply relates to use. It’s simple economics, so I’m arguing in a simple manner. Fewer people had Nintendo Wiis when they first came out, because not enough had been produced for the run on the market. Nintendo pumped out more Wiis. More people bowl on their TV now.