Comments: "The war on drugs has not been a failure, because it has never been fought. "
The loudest voices against the war on drugs never offer a single solution (other than "hey, just make everything legal, duuuuude!) for dealing with the flood of drugs onto the streets by monsters and cabals of murderous thugs.
Clearly stuff like heroin, meth, and other hard drugs are incredibly awful and should not be just legalized and ignored. But what's the answer if not to try to stop and destroy the trade? How do you deal with illegal drugs if not jail time and other punishments?
Or do people really think everything would just be keen if we simply eliminated all drug laws?
Posted by Christopher Taylor at September 20, 2014 12:41 PM
The Zblog commenter is wrong. The criminalization of drugs began with a bang by way of the draconian laws of 1906, which was the first to federalize drug criminalizion. It was in response to the opiate addiction of the middle aged housewife, a demographic which the public could be directed to support. The Temperance movement had been strong for fifty years, and wasn't done yet.
Posted by james wilson at September 20, 2014 12:51 PM
The Dope Supporters are usually just engaging in ethical/political exhibitionism or they just want to smoke their weed like their dad used to drink after work. They don't think for a moment beyond the moment of stating their opinion.
Even if you legalize pot, unless you legalize it for minors or all drugs, you are still going to have an enforcement establishment and drug crimes.
The Libertarians strike me as similar to the Pacifists. They have no solutions, accept no responsibility, have not run real-life activities dealing with their ideas. They just think they can parachute drop their pet idea into a current society and only the things they want will change. Here's the truth about change or plans. Plans and changes don't just eliminate a problem they are constructed to deal with. They change many things, most of which you have not considered. Like Liberalism, you don't remove problems by implementing the New Plan, you trade one set of problems for a different set of problems, some or many of which are new and those will require a bureaucratic response.
Posted by tscottme at September 20, 2014 1:20 PM
tscottme,
Howzabout we do away with the idea of a Plan entirely? Since when have the bureaucrats NOT made a hash of things? And if plans and alphabet-soup federal agencies are so vital to the advancement and maintenance of a vibrant, growing society, can someone please explain to me how the United States went from a fifth-rate agricultural backwater in 1776 to a world power of the first rank in 1901, an era when there were no Plans and alphabet-soup federal agencies, or drug-laws for that matter?
Oh, and as for not accepting "responsibility", that's NOT my job. I have enough trouble being responsible for my own life, thankyouverymuch. Maybe other people should accept responsibility for THEIR lives, yes?
Hale Adams
Pikesville, People's Democratic Republic of Maryland
Posted by Hale Adams at September 20, 2014 7:52 PM
So you're from the anarchy wing of the Libertarian "party?" I am all for abolishing most govt agencies, but we will always have laws and law enforcement. Unless all drugs are legalized for all people everywhere, all of the time, all "legalization" does is change today's problems for tomorrow's problems. Drug laws are a fringe or minor issue and it's telling that of ALL the problems Libertarians could work on it's motorcycle helmets and dope they DO work on.
Like the Pacifists answering "so how would you prevent Sept 11" their answer involves either time machines or the whole culture is instantly transformed from one thing to ALL of their theoretical thing. I support Libertarians when they chip away at The Left, not when they are chipping away at the non-Left. Don't want to get caught up in the drug enforcement juggernaut, stay away from dope and those that use and sell it. You don't need it. Most people live their full life and don't use. You know it's illegal and you know people on the edges of it get caught up in sorrow. Give it a wide berth, instead of excusing people playing on the edges.
The Libertarians should be first pushing to end welfare programs, FDA, EPA, IRS instead of "unintentionally" exploding the population interested in getting more free stuff after they fake some vague disability and find a MD to give them a dope prescription. Curious;ly, they don't get around to the serious issues, but just the wild party issues.
Libertarians don't mind putting the blame for consequences of drug laws on non-drug users that support prohibition so Libertarians can't just deny responsibility for the consequences of their choices to legalize drugs. Either both sides are responsible for their consequences or neither is responsible.
Posted by tscottme at September 20, 2014 10:48 PM
A while back I suggested that the drug cartels and the Muslims would join forces. I Googled “alliance between drug cartels and Muslims” and got a fair number of hits. I bet the cartels are recruiting Black groups as well. Any groups that oppose the government and the patriotic citizens are desirable to the cartels. The various groups have figured out how they can benefit from this union to further their agendas so each side is happy. The cartels are all in favor of open borders. It will weaken our country and provide a conduit for their drug trade.
My uncle Louie Lozko, we all called him "Letsgo Lozko", he raised bantam chickens. He always said "If you lay down with dogs you'll wake up with fleas." Can't say the same about chickens, they don't have fleas.
Posted by chasmatic at September 20, 2014 11:27 PM
We keep wanting to soften the drug laws, then when people get screwed up by drugs, we want the State to coddle them, get them off their addiction, clean them up so they can go back out and start over fucking themselves up again.
The answer isn't prohibition, that just creates the criminal market and we waste jail space and money.
No we need to let the idiots do what they want but no help from the community; screw up and die. This isn't Beer Alley and Gin Lane choices.
Commit any crime to get money for drugs and receive a summary judgement of death. Sounds harsh however one does have the choice of life style. Despite the argument between Creationism and Evolution, Darwinism does prove to be a brutal teacher.
all this liberal psycho-bullshit over social weaknesses being diseases, Society can use a proven curative from the old formulary: Physician heal thyself.
Posted by Vermont Woodchuck at September 21, 2014 7:17 AM
"...but we will always have laws and law enforcement."
==================
The root of the problem is laziness and dishonesty, both a product of two of the basest human emotions/motivations: fear and greed. To state it another way: humanity involves, most simply, the conscious and principled discipline and control of fear and greed, which one has no choice but to experience as a higher biological organism.
A good way to think about how the non-human homo sapiens respond to fear and greed is that they seek to hoard profits and spread losses. The chief motivation is laziness and chief tool to satisfy all is dishonesty. The interesting thing about dishonesty -- self, other directed, and institutionalized -- is that the better one is at it (the more dishonest) the less detectable and more powerful it is.
What's interesting about laziness is how hard people work at not producing tradeable values. Consider a bum on the exit ramp day in, day out. I've seen some of them work their asses off at begging in the hot, cold, and rainy for years on end. How much easier it would be to work at a job?
It's the labor theory of value. The lazy look to a world where raw physical activity, disconnected from any other requirements, is of paramount value.
To look at it in its plainest form, there are those advocating that some fears are just too great not to force others to pay for general anesthesia, and the argument turns on which anesthesia and in what dosage is most "efficient" and "useful." Hey, maybe we can "privatize" the production and delivery of it, which still doesn't address the root laziness, dishonesty, individual responsibility or accountability.
Then there are those, "the nouveaux ancaps," who rightfully understand that you can't hold consistently to individualist principle and advocate any degree of state coercion, but have failed to understand that the state is an effect of a deeper problem. They think that you have to win friends and influence people by trying to explain that life would be so much better without the state.
But you can't truly understand anarchism until you accept that it doesn't matter what society "would be like" without the state.
It's not the issue.
The issue is that nobody has any right to chain me to their fears or satisfy their greed at my involuntary expense and anyone who thinks otherwise, even just a little tiny bit can just go fuck right off and there's simply no kind way to put that.
Posted by ghostsniper at September 21, 2014 1:34 PM
And again, the same point rears its head: what's your solution? You can argue "I am my own man and you don't own me!!!" all you want, but that doesn't do away with the points brought up here. You can insist that as a free man you can't be held back, but unless you're an infant or an imbecile you know we live in a society of multiple individuals and that your free exercise of your liberty is restricted by that society for its cohesion and existence.
Sorry guys. That's how it has to be or we will reach a point of collapse where tyranny takes over. Sure, we should always fight overreaching government, eternal vigilance, etc.
But there's no way to have a society without laws, rules and limits on what you do. And even if you legalize every drug ever, there STILL will be laws concerning them. And no matter what's legal, the criminals will still be out there pushing their stuff.
So what's your answer. And don't just repeat the same old tired libertarian bromides. What do you say? Or do you even have answers?
Posted by Christopher Taylor at September 21, 2014 5:03 PM
I say you are a mixed up *individual* and don't even realize it, but there it is right there in your own typed words.
Look, if you can't even straighten out your own life don't even think about involving yourself in mine.
Find the obvious errors in your 4 miserable paragraphs and you'll be on the way to answering your own questions.
IOW, try to get your head around the last paragraph in my post directly above yours.
Posted by ghostsniper at September 21, 2014 7:36 PM