Legalise All Drugs?
Crime and Punishment, Current Affairs, Law July 24th, 2007I heard an interesting debate in the ol’ radio (Law in Action) about legalising all drugs. Both arguments are strong in my opinion.
To Maintain Prohibition (aka War on Drugs):
Harmful drug use will rise, increasing the burden on social services (ok, this is the big one)
To Legalize (but have some regulation presumably):
Drugs are fun (allegedly) and many users don’t have problems.
We can monitor the users for ill effects through the official channels of drug supply.
Law enforcement focused on more harmful crime (users will not clog the courts, police time and prisons)
Less crime (since drugs would be affordable, crime to feed drug habits would be unnecessary. Also organised crime would be reduced since there is no need to import and distribute drugs illegally.)
Quality of drugs will be regulated and reducing risks for users.
Some people currently self medicate for legitimate illnesses – they could do so legally.
“Narco” states could be stabilized because illegal drug production would be replaced by regulated production.
Observations:
It is inconsistent that alcohol (and tobacco smoking) are legal and drugs are illegal. Many people die due to alcohol, so harmfulness is not the deciding issue?
Many people use recreational drugs (approximately 10% of the UK population in the last year), so banning is criminalizing a common behavior. If enough people do any activity, we should question laws that ban that activity.
Some drugs are linked with mental illness.
Most arguments on both sides have little evidence to support them.
Tricky one.
Anti Citizen One
July 26th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
An argument against prohibition states that by driving narcotics underground it puts the control and supply of drugs into the hands of unscrupulous criminals. Therefore the legalisation lobby point towards government regulation of drugs as liberating the means from the suppliers. In other words the government controls the strength of the drugs, the cost of the drugs, and the supply of the drugs.
There is a small problem with this. Where regulation occurs, a black market always continues to exist. Where the government take the place of the drug pushers, the drug pushers still operate but under different guises.
The big problem is the connection between drug use and crime. This is a two-way problem that is often dependent on environmental factors.
A person commits crime (i.e. robbery) in order to get money to pay for their drugs. The going rate for example of a Heroin addict requires more money than the average daily wage! Such an addiction can rarely be sustained by legal means.
Alternatively the use of drugs effects a change in the users personality that makes crime appealing. This has two manifestations. Moral and Medical. The moral change is the decision that goes= well drugs are illegal and I am breaking the law what is to stop me from engaging in other illegal activity. The medical change is simply a chemical shift in the personality i.e. drug induced paranoid schizophrenia.
The key problem is that the relationship between drugs and crime is not necessarily balanced and obvious. For example alcohol and cannabis can both cause chemical shifts in the brain that can lead to altered behavioural patterns. Yet both of these drugs (one legal one illegal) are exceptionally cheap, easily accessible, commonly experienced and could be easily controlled by the state. On the contrary LSD and Heroin (very different types by the way) do not ordinarily cause chemical shifts that effect behaviour, yet both have a strong relationship with criminal activity. LSD is laboratory formulated and is an industrial drug, Heroin is expensive to produce and leads to criminal activity in order to pay for it.
I would propose that these two drugs are an example of narcotics that the state wold have less control over.
The summary of the problems as I’ve looked at them is the moral/medical distinction. The state response to illegal narcotics is to criminalise the user. Thus all drug users (as distinct from drug abusers) are viewed as morally deficient. Even though as i’ve briefly explained the effects upon the personality are varied and its relationship to anti-social behavioural patterns is complex and environmentally caused.
What I believe is needed, is a maintenance of the status quo, legalisation will not lead to an improvement. But also a reevaluation of the place narcotics play in society. It is not a moral problem (discounting the sellers) but a medical one. Asides from environmental factors such as peer pressure ultimately drug use and its next but not necessary step drug abuse are the results of psychological types willing to engage in risk taking behaviour or seeking refuge in chemical comfort blankets. This is a large social problem that includes cigarette smokers, problem drinkers (who often seem to be just social drinkers) all the way up the ladder to opiate addicts.
What the consequence of reevaluation should be I am not certain. Education is no more than indoctrination. What we have to acknowledge is that increased narcotics use is a symptom of a sick society and not a cause of one.
July 26th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
2 brief notes.
1: LSD and Ecstasy both developed in laboratories for purposes of psychological/psychiatric research. One aspect included research into its hallucinatory and spiritual elements. Thus LSD therapy was coined, to describe therapeutic sessions that used the spiritual insights and symbols found in the hallucination in everyday mundane psychological and neurotic conditions. This raises the interesting question concerning the use of naturally obtained psychedelics from organic sources (fish, frogs, cactii, etc). Sources and uses that are culturally accepted in certain societies.
2: Self-medication. There are those people legitimately ill who use illegetimate substances to produce a desired effect. This therapeutic effect can be said to have greater value and validity to the effect sought by the recreational drug user. Ideally self-medication should be critically challenged. Sometimes the drug use for therapeutic purposes can mask drug abuse, its therapeutic usage can be a secondary advantage. Also the self-medicated therapeutic use of drugs can lead to secondary phsyiological and psychological medical problems that would otherwise not occur through legitimate means. (i.e. marijuana smoking and increased chances of lung cancer). Finally and of some importance some research has shown that the therapeutic use of some narcotics has nothing more than a placebo affect, that its advantages are outweighed by the secondary medical effects, and that its success is dependent upon the individuals perception of being in control of their medication.