A continuation to my recent blog about how all drugs should be legalized. There were a few things that I did not address, and would like to do so now.
"A Drug Should Only Be Legalized if it's Less Harmful than Alcohol"
The widespread acceptance of marijuana legalization has, to a degree, been a result of this idea that if a drug is not "harmful", it should be legalized. The logic is that since smoking pot is generally less harmful than drinking, pot should be legalized.
Even though I see it as a positive that the ban on marijuana is slowly being lifted - very positive, in fact - I do claim that the above logic is a faulty one.
You see, the nasty thing about drug prohibition is the fact that it makes everything more dangerous than it otherwise would be. So, if we're going by harm reduction, the "more dangerous" drugs should actually be legalized first.
Drugs have been illegal for so long, people don't often even have a concept of them as legal substances. The impure drugs, the shady dealers, the uncertainty of what it even is that you're buying, all these things are a result of the drug prohibition, moreso than the drugs themselves.
Comparing other drugs to alcohol is wrong, since the drugs currently on the banned list are differ from one another, and they all differ from alcohol. I touched on this in my previous blog, but I want to repeat it: since what a lot of people know is alcohol, they automatically assume that the other drugs are simply alcohol, but worse.
This is not the case at all.
Alcohol is user for completely different reasons than, say LSD. And LSD is used for different reasons than, say, heroin. You can't lump "drugs" into one group and say that they're all the same, it's intellectually lazy and plain wrong.
Even though it can be argued that alcohol is "worse" than marijuana, alcohol prohibition would still be more dangerous than marijuana prohibition, because prohibition makes every drug more dangerous than it otherwise would be.
If alcohol was banned tomorrow, what would happen? Would people stop drinking?
Of course not. People would still drink, but it would just be illegal for them to do so. And the illegality would open up an entire market of illegal alcohol.
At the beginning of alcohol prohibition, alcohol consumption did fall, but after the initial drop, it started a steady increase again.
Illegal alcohol became more dangerous to use; we saw a rise of organized crime increased and became organized around alcohol, and public officials became corrupted as a result.
Also, something very important to note is that productivity did not rise during alcohol prohibition. An argument from drug far advocates often is that drugs make people less productive, and therefore drugs need to be banned to prevent people from becoming lazy and complacent.
All in all, alcohol prohibition increased government spending, increased crime, made the substance more dangerous, and saw little to no positive results - and was repealed for that reason.
This is hardly newsworthy, since a lot of people know that alcohol prohibition didn't work, but it's worth noting that alcohol prohibition was more dangerous than marijuana prohibition due to the more dangerous of nature of alcohol as a "drug".
The lazy and complacent argument leads me to..
"Drugs Are Bad Because They Make People Lazy and Complacent"
Even though this has to do with the nature of certain drugs, rather than their prohibiting, I'll address this anyway.
There are a ton of successful people who do and have done drugs. Whatever your favorite music is, it's likely that the people who did that music were very high on drugs when doing it. Also, damn near every WWF pro wrestler in the 80s did cocaine. If you don't believe me, just watch the damn interviews. The amount of cocaine in their noses was enough to form an entire economy. Yet, despite that, they performed, day in, day out, worked out, went on the road and did their job that earned them millions.
But even if this was not case, what business is it of yours anyway if people are lazy and complacent? If you're worried about your tax money going to the benefits that these lazy people end up on after they do drugs, then oppose the welfare state, not the drugs. What your enemy is is the government responsible for these people "leeching off of your tax money", not the drugs. The same government responsible for the drug war in the first place.
Also, do people become lazy as a result of drugs, or are lazy people simply drawn to certain drugs? If drugs made people lazy, people doing drugs would all be lazy, but this is clearly not the case. Drugs, no matter what kind, are not mind controlling demons, they are substances, used by people, and it's the user who makes his or her life choices, not the drugs.
And that's fact, Jack.
"Drugs Create Criminals"
This one relates to the one above: drug users are criminals, so therefore drug use creates criminals, and drugs need to be banned to prevent people from becoming criminals.
It's true that right now drug users are criminals. Obviously, since drug use is illegal, so they are criminals, by default. However, the claim that drug use, in and of itself, creates criminals outside of the crime of doing drugs is absurd.
While yes, there is a high, high correlation between committing violent and property crimes and drug use, correlation does not imply causation. The illegal nature of drugs does draw in a certain group of people to them, and these people are often prone to crime. In order to attain drugs, one has to deal with an already criminal culture, and of course one can get drawn into it.
But you can't just look at drugs and the amount of crime and say "Yup, drugs did it".
There's a plethora of reasons for crime in society, many different cultural nuances that can result in crime either happening or not happening.
Also, after a person has been arrested or in jail for drug use, it has a very negative effect on his standing in the job market, unfortunately. So, all of a sudden, crime becomes a lot more attractive. What the fuck are these people supposed to do? Not condoning property of violent crime, but it has to be taken into account that a lot of people have been let down by society by condemning them for their use certain substances, which is a victimless crime to begin with. I've never gone through stuff like that, but it's not hard to see the mindset. Society doesn't welcome you anymore, you can't get hired, you can't ahead in society at all, you're already a "criminal" in the eyes of society, so you might as well act like it.
Is it really that hard to believe?
We should not accept crime, but we should take a look what constitutes a crime. Can putting a substance in your own body truly constitute a crime? I think not, and that's why we should stop branding these people as criminals. Then use whatever resources we have to punish people for crimes that they do to other people and their property.
And to get back to what I said earlier: drugs don't take control of the users mind. Drugs don't have a crime increasing component in them that would cause people's personalities to do a magical 180, resulting in crime. You can't just take correlating numbers and point to a causality, it doesn't work that way.
You Only Want Drugs Legalized Because You Want to Do Them
No, I don't. I'd oppose a ban on fly fishing, too, even though I've never done, nor do I have an interest in doing so. I don't drink or do drugs, and I don't plan to. I smoke cigarettes, and will face the consequences of which, when the time comes.
I just give a fuck. There's nothing about using a substance in your own body that could possibly make it a crime, if one is intellectually honest with himself. While people are crying about stuff like gay marriage, we're still locking non-violent drug offenders in jail and ruining their lives, even though they did nothing to deserve. It's crazy, it's absurd, it's ludicrous and needs to stop.
I do not accept arguments that condone kicking innocent people in the head - and a drug user is always innocent, until he commits an actual crime, which most don't.
