http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm
From 1972.
http://time.com/4278611/vermont-shumlin-marijuana-legalization/
From yesterday.
24 thoughts on “Licit and Illicit Drugs”
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From Chapter 68
Prohibition does not work. As the United States learned from 1920 to 1933, it didn’t work with alcohol. As the country has been learning since 1914, it doesn’t work with heroin. It isn’t working today with marijuana, LSD, or any of the other illicit drugs. Nor is prohibition likely to prove more effective in the future.
What prohibition does accomplish is to raise prices and thus to attract more entrepreneurs to the black market. If the drug is addicting and the price escalation is carried to outrageous extremes (as in the case of heroin), addicts resort to crime to finance their purchases–– at a tragic cost, not only in dollars but in community disruption.
What prohibition also achieves is to convert the market from relatively bland, bulky substances to more hazardous concentrates which are more readily smugglable and marketable–– from opium smoking to heroin mainlining, from coca leaves to cocaine, from marijuana to hashish.
Again, prohibition opens the door to adulterated and contaminated drugs–– methyl alcohol, “ginger jake,” pseudo-LSD, adulterated heroin.
Worst of all, excessive reliance on prohibition, on laws and law enforcement, lulls the country decade after decade into a false confidence that nothing more need be done–– except to pass yet another law, or to hire a few hundred more narcotics agents, or to license the agents to break down doors without knocking first, and so on.
Seems the penny’s dropped for Governer Shumlin.
Freedom is the issue and only is interfered with if these drugs hurt people . those taking or those dealing with those taking. I never had drugs but I think Mary jane should be legal. its not worse then alcohol and wouldn’t hurt people or society and then people can enjoy it and get a burdon off law enforcement. The harder drugs should not be legal as i understand they hurt to much everyone.
Simple.
abortion should be illegal and illegal immigration or any immigration.
Creationism should not be any longer illegal in state institutions.
Feminism should be illegal and gay marriage and any support of society that morally helps homosexuality.
I could go on and on.
In fact the Supreme court should, in present members almost, be illegal.
Well first free the joints and then work on the rest.
In the interview, governor Shumlin says
There’s a national conference I was planning to attend this summer, and I must admit one of the first things I thought of – when the location was announced as being in Colorado – is that there’s a bonus to it being in Colorado for a change.
Well, I probably won’t be able to afford to go after all – but it’s a nice thought.
I’m amazed at some of the social progress I’ve lived to see. Gay marriage, widespread (if sorta shallow) acceptance of environmentalism, sane policies towards drug legalization — what’s next in our little slice of paradise?
Religious tolerance.
What do you mean? Are you one of the “I’m being oppressed because I can’t legally discriminate against people” crowd then?
Or are you perhaps a Muslim sick of the stereotyping?
I agree. We have come a long way with religious tolerance. We tolerate it in the churches and in individual lives. But we do not tolerate it when it negatively impacts other people’s lives. We still have a way to go, but we have seen much improvement over the last decade or so.
I don’t think that Byers is an Indian name so I suspect that you are the result of immigration. And illegal immigration is, by definition, illegal. And you claim that feminism and gay marriage should be illegal. What happened to your belief that freedom should only be interfered with when it does harm? The only thing that feminism and gay marriage harm is your prejudiced beliefs.
I have a hard copy of the Consumer Reports book, purchased when it cam out.
I think it will someday be regarded as as one of the great world changing books.
I don’t see it mentioned often, but I see its reasoning often.
feminism attacks male status and position and lots of stuff. its a wicked thing against free mankind and the common peoples rights.
Any pro homosexual thing attacks the true normal status in these matters and attacks marriage as set by God and man.
I was born amongst my people and in my peoples nation. Iys impossible to be a immigrant to ones own people and nation. i
The indians never possessed Canada or even the bits they lived on as separate tribes. If moving to earth territory counted as immigration then all would be immigrants.
yet this is not the moral or legal concept oif why we invented the concept of immigration.
Immigration means one people group moving to another people group. the land is beside the point.
These concepts are historical by the way. Not novel.
Are you familiar with Milo Yiannopoulos? He has views on feminism that are not dissimilar to yours. He even has a t-shirt you might want to order:
Ah, that might be a problem.
Never heard of him and cancer is a ugly word. i like wicked better.
Its no different then a invading army that seeks to take from the native people what is rightly theirs.
I don’t agree with any other then the bibles idea on male/female relationship HOWEVER if we have a contract ALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR ALL and any person deserve to get what they can in their nation then this CONTRACT must be held or we return to nature.
Feminism , pretends to the contract , but actually seeks to raise women up and so knock men down. its a wicked agenda to divide things up based on sexual identity and that THAT is what it should be.
They do not seek humans doing well but men not doing as well so as women do well.
Then they presume to equality of ability and then accuse of interference if this is not met unless its hockey opr something they can’t fake.
it has affected millions of men and their women folk by association and so feminism is wicked . Its support by the state in institutions shows how organized this attack on the common people it is.
A great invading movement in human history.
Thats why it is wicked and must be revealed, accused, and destroyed.
What i say is too much for a t shirt.
One problem with drugs is that in English the word makes no distinction between a cure and a narcotic. So it’s a problem of the English-speaking world.
I think a cure is not necessarily a drug. The phrase as “take a cure” once mean’t a visit to a spa and drinking the water and “taking the cure” is to endure treatment intended to break an addiction.
Not all drugs are narcotics in the original sense of the word of “sleep inducing”.
An example of how the problem is different in another language?
The point is that this is very deeply a language issue. “Medication” and “recreational drugs” are two different worlds, but in English they are lumped together by the word “drug”.
Just don’t lump two incompatible things together and it will be possible to begin to address the problem. Drugs are not the problem, certainly not when they provide a cure. Drug abuse is a problem.
“Illicit drugs” doesn’t translate well internationally. “Narcotics” do better, even though English apparently has distorted the meaning of this word too. Which only proves my point.
If your point was about the vagaries of the English language, fair enough. But substance abuse is not just a problem for the English-speaking World. Do you have a view on whether certain drugs should remain illegal even though criminalisation is a failed strategy?
We can usually distinguish by context. But I recognize that can be more difficult for non-native speakers.
So can I, but when we enter a topic like “Licit and illicit drugs”, we are talking about the nuances of drugs, not of their context, and it becomes a language issue when the language lacks nuance with regard to the concept under discussion.
I suppose that in your traffic law (highway code) there’s a similar rule as in ours: You must not drive when under the effects of an intoxicating drug. The problem is not the drug per se, but the intoxication. Some easily identified substances, such as alcohol, are explicitly forbidden and traffic police seeks to detect them directly, but in case of further suspicion, traffic police may investigate effects of intoxication, regardless of any substance. It’s not permitted to drive sleepy either.
So, some substances are easy to detect and to identify, and for those an explicit list of illicit drugs makes sense, but other substances should be categorized more broadly by their effects/purposes as harmful or not. For example there is a synthetic drug called spice which is straightforward deadly poison, but hard to ban by chemical composition which is can be modified like Theseus’ ship. So it should be banned as a category of psychoneurological effects. Works for traffic law, why not for other laws?
Erik: I suppose that in your traffic law (highway code) there’s a similar rule as in ours: You must not drive when under the effects of an intoxicating drug.I’m in France. The laws are strict, though the enforcement not so much in rural areas.
I accept that people should not endanger others while under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. So driving or other activities that risk others whilst under drug influence should be illegal.
The taking of recreational drugs, such as alcohol, in circumstances where there is no risk to others is a separate issue.
Not sure of your point here. I claim making drugs illegal is counter-productive. Better to decriminalise, control and supply a clean product, heavily taxed. You think the answer to trying to reduce recreational drug use is more legislation?
Well, I am not sure of your point here. I brought a specific example – spice.
Are you suggesting to decriminalize this and supply a “clean product, heavily taxed”? What’s the point of decriminalizing straightforward poison? Is clean poison better than unclean?
There are many poisons available for purchase, if people want to poison themselves. I’m not aware that many people are dying from “spice” abuse. That milder forms of cannabis such as the raw leaf are illegal, tends to make more portable products more attractive to criminal suppliers. Have a look at the report linked in the OP.
Yes, except that they are labelled as such – rat poison or gasoline. They are not sold with the label “good for poisoning yourself”.
All you had to do was google spice deaths http://www.cbsnews.com/news/deaths-poisonings-from-synthetic-marijuana-spice-k2/
Had you been aware of this drug, you’d know that there is no abuse of spice as distinguished from use. There is no normal or medical use of synthetic cannabinoids. Only a few varieties can be used as antiemetics, but there are safer antiemetics.
A dealer of synthetic cannabinoids is a murderer or mutilator, just like someone who sells methanol saying it’s vodka is a murderer. No matter how little you drink methanol, it’s not “use”. It’s suicide.
Anyway, a bit about drugs that you are aware of. In my opinion, insofar as the effects of marijuana and tobacco are identical, they should get the same legal treatment – either ban both or legalize both. For medical purposes, marijuana deserves legalization though.
Why shouldn’t tobacco be banned? It kills many more people than “spice”? Decriminalizing marijuana makes sense to me. Controlling and taxing tobacco works – at least in the developed World.
Rat poison kills even less people, so it should be recommended over tobacco?
Seriously, there is a difference between a straightforward poison and not. You are not able to make this distinction. I would not trust you to recommend any legislation in this matter.
People should be free to poison themselves if they so choose, but I don’t understand why it is legal to produce and sell for profit a deadly poison such as tobacco. If tobacco was only discovered now and had to be approved before allowed on the market it would never be legal.
Ban the sale of tobacco, not the use of it. Grow your own if you really want to die of lung cancer.