On the occasion of William F. Buckley’s passing, here’s my favorite bit of insight from him.
“I have not spoken of the cost to our society of the astonishing legal weapons available now to policemen and prosecutors; of the penalty of forfeiture of one’s home and property for violation of laws which, though designed to advance the war against drugs, could legally be used — I am told by learned counsel — as penalties for the neglect of one’s pets. I leave it at this, that it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors.”
–William F. Buckley, “The War on Drugs is Lost”, National Review
Buckley is lauded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers of the last century, but people only accept leadership when it leads them where they want to go. His opinion on the futility of the War on Some Drugs is roundly rejected by the majority of today’s Conservatives.
While we’re on the subject, here’s another opinion on it from the same National Review, this one by Professor Steven Duke:
Why do so many conservatives preach “individual responsibility” yet ardently punish people for the chemicals they consume and thus deny the right that gives meaning to the responsibility? Many of these same conservatives would think it outrageous for the government to decree the number of calories we ingest or the kind of exercise we get, even though such decrees would be aimed at preserving our lives, keeping us productive, and reducing the drain on scarce medical resources. The incongruity of these positions is mystifying, and so is the willingness of conservatives, in order to protect people from their own folly, to impose huge costs in death, disease, crime, corruption, and destruction of civil liberties upon others who are entirely innocent: people who do not partake of forbidden drugs.
– Newt Gingrich, Charles Murray, and other conservatives are rightly concerned about the absence of fathers in the homes of so many of America’s youngsters. Where are those fathers? At least half a million are in prison, often for nothing worse than possessing drugs.
– Countless conservatives revere the right to one’s property. Yet many conservatives support drug forfeiture as gladly as liberals. Congress has made a criminal prosecution unnecessary for persons with property who are associated (even if indirectly) with illicit drugs. An apartment house may be forfeited if a tenant grows a marijuana plant in his bathroom. A grandmother’s home may be forfeited if a grandson hides drugs in the basement which he sells to his friends. The Supreme Court has said that there are constitutional limits on forfeitures, but it has yet to find any. With the notable exception of Congressman Henry Hyde (see his book, Forfeiting Our Property Rights), most legislators are unconcerned about drawing a line.
– Many conservatives strongly support schemes to “devolve” matters from the Federal Government to state and local governments. Yet there does not appear to be a single conservative politician in America who applies this principle to drug prohibition. The mystery deepens when we remember that this is precisely the way we handled alcohol prohibition. When we repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, we didn’t declare that all forms of alcohol distribution were beyond the reach of prohibition; in the Twenty-First Amendment, we simply let each state decide how it wanted to handle alcohol. Some remained dry. Many devolved the issue to cities and counties, some of which have elected to maintain prohibition to this very day. Judge Sweet and others make a powerful case for applying this approach to other drugs in addition to alcohol. Why hasn’t any conservative in elective office at least suggested that it be considered?
The only benefit to America in maintaining prohibition is the psychic comfort we derive from having a permanent scapegoat. But why did we have to pick an enemy the warring against which is so self-destructive? We would be better off blaming our ills on celestial invaders flying about in saucers.
–Professor Steven B. Duke, “The War on Drugs is Lost”, National Review
Drug prohibition has accomplished none of its intended goals. Just like alcohol prohibition, it has created a multi-billion dollar black market, and despite the expenditure of billions of dollars in the prosecution of this war, drugs are available in every city and town in this country, and they’re cheaper than they were just ten or twenty years ago.
What Conservatives don’t see is the collateral damage here. Just like alcohol prohibition created the organized crime problem and its attendant urban violence and corruption, so has the drug war caused the very same inner-city warfare that has given rise to gun control to “stop the carnage”. Conservatives largely fail to recognize that the very drug war they support is costing them their cherished gun freedoms. Just like the gang violence spawned by Prohibition brought us NFA ‘34, the gang violence spawned by the War on Drugs brought us the 1968 Gun Control Act, the 1989 import ban, and the 1994 Crime Bill. Yet the same folks who support the drug war are also the ones who adamantly refuse to learn from history, and who use the same arguments as their gun control foes when it comes to the favored prohibition of their choice.
“Look at the scope of the problem!” they’ll say. “Who in their right mind would advocate legalizing drugs completely? It’ll only make things worse!”
Well, replace the word “drugs” with the word “guns”, and you can’t tell the difference between a gun banner and a drug warrior–it’s the same stubborn refusal to look beyond their deeply ingrained emotional bias.
And thus we keep lighting the Bill of Rights one section at a time…the gun control fans from one end, and the drug war fans from the other, neither side realizing that they’re actively laying the groundwork for the destruction of their most cherished freedoms. Our society is suffering from a selective case of amnesia when it comes to learning from history.
38 Comments
March 2, 2008 at 6:32 pm
I believe you’re confusing “William Buckley” with “William Bennett“.
March 2, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Yeah, I did. I corrected that little oopsie.
Thankfully, the quote is Buckley, not Bennett, otherwise I’d look like a *complete* tool.
March 2, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Great post! Monday is political discussion day at work with my 59 year old hippie co-worker and tomorrow is going to be very interesting! I am enlightened! Thanks marko
March 2, 2008 at 8:32 pm
you see, I knew there was a reason I read this stuff! This, exactly, is one of the points I was hoping to reach during the previous interchange. Perhaps even the main point. And it is most heartening to see it espoused so clearly, both in your comment and your selection of quotations. Rock on…
David Glynn
March 2, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Call me a hypocrit then. I see a huge difference between my kid getting into the school gun club vs. getting into drugs.
My rights are not infringed one iota by your not being able to smoke, inject or snort noxious chemicals, or sell that crap to my kids in hopes of getting them to do it.
There is some moral relativism going on there and I personally won’t accept it as valid grounds for an argument.
March 2, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Excellent post Marko! I couldn’t agree more. The refusal of conservatives to think rationally about the drug war goes against so many of their basic principles. Support for the “War on some drugs” and insistence on pushing morality through religion are the two biggest reasons why I’m more libertarian than conservative. The war on drugs was lost nearly as soon as we started fighting it. It truly fits the definition of insanity.
March 2, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Rusty,
*my* rights are infringed by *your* desire to pass laws trying to prevent others from taking those chemicals, even though I don’t partake in them myself.
And what has the wholesale butchering of the Bill of Rights in the name of the War on Drugs gotten us? What have we received in exchange for no-knock raids, asset forfeiture excesses, drug dogs in schools, half our prison population serving time for drug offenses, one out of every hundred Americans in jail, increasingly draconian gun control, and literally hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the prosecution of Prohibition II?
Exactly jack squat in positive results, and a tattered Bill of Rights, that’s what.
I live in a town of 5,000 people. I don’t do drugs, but if I wanted to, I could get any illegal drug I want with a few phone calls. All the financial cost, and all the trampled civil liberties, and you still can’t prevent *anyone* from “smoking, injecting, or snorting noxious chemicals.” Despite the best efforts of the drug warriors, despite eighty years of waging war against ourselves in the name of sobriety and public safety, drugs are available everywhere.
What’s the definition of insanity again? Doing the same thing over and over while hoping for different results?
Well, the War on Drugs is insane…insane and self-destructive. And like I pointed out, all the gun control we’ve been blessed with in the last eighty years has been the direct result of legislative efforts to keep people from drinking, smoking, snorting, or injecting the intoxicant of their choice.
Like I said…a failure to understand.
March 2, 2008 at 9:18 pm
On the interweb, no-one can hear you scream…
March 2, 2008 at 9:19 pm
[...] Munchkin Wrangler remembers Bill Buckley’s position on the War on Drugs. Drug prohibition has accomplished none [...]
March 2, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I gotta disagree somewhat.
While I do support the end of the drug war, I’m under no illusions that the drug problem will get better. I think making the drug problem worse is an acceptable tradeoff to a) reduce the size of the federal police force and b) free up prison space to keep more real criminals locked up.
But I’m also expecting and okay with the rate of addicts, ODs, stoned car accidents etc to skyrocket. That’s the only possible consequence of making hard drugs more available. Just look at the problems PDs have with drunkards now; a relatively benign product compared to meth or crack.
I think the drugs/guns argument is a misleading analogy. More guns in the hands of the population is a self-correcting problem, since guns can be used to protect good people from bad. Hard drugs just create addicts. More easily available and lower priced hard drugs means more addicts, and nothing else.
Claiming that everything will be a shiny happy L Neil Smith novel with no adverse side effects does more damage to the argument than good, IMO.
March 2, 2008 at 9:48 pm
pdb,
I’m not claiming that there won’t be any adverse side effects to legalization…I’m claiming that they can’t possibly be half as bad as the side effects of prohibition.
More easily available and lower priced drugs may mean more addicts, or it may not. (Did the rate of alcoholism go up after repeal of the Prohibition…where everyone was drinking anyway?)
What it most certainly does mean is less “acquisition crime”, since the druggie now needs to steal only $20 worth of stuff to pawn for a daily habit instead of $400 worth of stuff, and it also means that the government no longer functions as a price control agent and profit guarantor for the illicit drug dealers. (How many shootouts between moonshiners have we had in the country since 1933?)
Lastly, think about your claim that “hard drugs only create addicts.” Consider the amount of drugs sold in the US every year, and then think about how many addicts we’d need to have running around if using hard drugs only results in addiction. It’s a statistic inevitability that the majority of drug users out there can moderate their consumption–use them recreationally, and still hold down a job and have a functioning life.
It’s like claiming that “alcohol creates addicts, and nothing else.” Out of all the people in the US who routinely drink alcohol recreationally, how many drink responsibly, and how many are complete non-functioning addicts/alcoholics?
Do you want to tell me that alcohol–which has great addiction potential, and which kills more folks every year than all illicit drugs combined by a very wide margin–is fundamentally different from coke and pot, and that people can be trusted to moderate their bourbon intake, but not their cocaine or pot consumption? And that’s not comparing apples to oranges, but Granny Smiths to Red Delicious’, if you will.
Do you drink a gallon of Maker’s Mark a day just because it’s cheap, available, and legal? Would you start snorting three eight-balls a day if cocaine were made cheap and legal tomorrow? If not, why do you think I would?
And sure…you’ll have addictive personalities who will make their hearts explode inside of a month if you could get a gram of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine at CVS for $2.99 all day long…but that segment of the population will terminate itself in short order. And that’s an acceptable outcome, because it wouldn’t infringe on the liberties of those who won’t self-destruct with drugs, be it alcohol or happy powder.
March 2, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Like I said in comments on a previous post of yours, the thing about Zippos and parchment is that it doesn’t matter which end you light first. The whole thing is gonna go up in smoke.
Your point is valid, regardless of who’s at risk. I have a kid that’ll be entering school before too long, and I have just as much to be worried about as anyone else. I believe my kid will make the right choices about drugs, just like I believe she’ll make the right choices about guns. Both are illegal, and both could be had for the right price.
YOU CANNOT LEGISLATE RESPONSIBILITY. Period. No matter how illegal you make it, if someone wants something or wants to do something, they will. Last time I checked, murder is against the laws of every city, county, and state, as well as federal law. People still commit it.
Now I’m not dumb enough to say that we should lift the ban on murder, but murder is a crime that involves one person (in the most extreme manner) violating another. If I decide one day to roll a joint and start puffing away, no one else is going to keel over and die.
Well, except maybe my mother…
As far as “hard drugs” are concerned? Forgive me, but I see a great deal of Darwinism taking place for a while. I’m sorry if that doesn’t bother me all that much.
tweaker
March 2, 2008 at 10:09 pm
(Did the rate of alcoholism go up after repeal of the Prohibition…where everyone was drinking anyway?)
The rate of alcohol consumption shot up markedly.
As you base your argument hinging on the 2nd Amendment, you should similarly know better than using Hollywood and the media as your filter for an accurate picture of Prohibition.
It didn’t create crime families, or organized crime. Remember, the Mafia existed in Italy prior to members coming over here, and setting up the organization – Italy, where there wasn’t any Prohibition. The structure and gangsters were already here, and already breaking the law.
It did empower them, that’s not to be disputed. And there was a lot of violence, again, sure.
But there was a dramatic drop in alcohol-related hospital admittances during Prohibition. I’ve seen the stats before, but overall alcohol consumption dropped precipitously. The amount of alcohol produced/shipped/fought over was about 20% of the pre-Prohibition amounts. (Which makes sense. If the amount was the same, why would it be so contested and fought over?)
I’m claiming that they can’t possibly be half as bad as the side effects of prohibition.
I don’t know that, and can’t say that. I think the side effects of prohibition must be dealt with. On that we both agree.
But I can’t (especially upon witnessing the current drug users and addicts) say that our culture and society is ready for immediate legalization. Quite the opposite, I think the obvious and almost certain Unintended Consequences will be brutal, obvious, and the backlash might well be worse than the current disease.
March 2, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Unix-Jedi,
the amount of gun crime in the UK dropped precipitously as well after they banned all handguns. Is a lower crime rate a fair price to pay for infringing on everyone’s freedom in order to control the few who can’t handle theirs?
In that case, you can transfer all the arguments for drug prohibition to the gun control debate, completely and unaltered. (And don’t even start with “there’s a constitutional right to own a gun, but not to smoke dope.” There’s also a constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, something that we all had to kiss goodbye so that some folks can feel good about trying to do something about “drug profits”.)
In this kind of conundrum, you have to take the position that preserves the most freedom for the most people, not the one that “saves the most lives”, or the one that lowers the crime or addiction rates. Isn’t that what we’ve been telling the gun control fans all along?
March 2, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Do you want to tell me that alcohol–which has great addiction potential, and which kills more folks every year than all illicit drugs combined by a very wide margin–is fundamentally different from coke and pot, and that people can be trusted to moderate their bourbon intake, but not their cocaine or pot consumption?
Yes. I’m no expert, but I think a reasonable case could be made that hard drugs like cocaine, meth and heroin are fundamentally different, addiction-wise, from stuff like alcohol and pot (I don’t believe pot is as addictive as alcohol, but certainly is habit forming and has other negative effects). No, moonshiners don’t shoot at each other anymore, but neither do winos hold up liquor stores, either.
I guess that my point is that people who are against the legalization of drugs do have legitimate concerns, that shouldn’t be belittled by accusing them of violating the constitution. Yes, unconstitutional crap has been pulled to prosecute the “war”, but that’s not to say that prohibition is inevitably so.
I would prefer a more 10th amendment approach and devolving the issue to the states. Then, all the addicts and hippies can congregate in lost states like CA and NY where it’s legal. Everybody wins!
March 2, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Marko:
the amount of gun crime in the UK dropped precipitously as well after they banned all handguns.
Again, I’m surprised. You should know it’s shot up.
From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.
Thus using that rationale is utterly fallacious. Just as claiming that alcoholism didn’t go down and the amount of alcohol consumed during Prohibition didn’t fall to a small fraction of before and after.
In this kind of conundrum, you have to take the position that preserves the most freedom for the most people,
And ignoring the blatantly obvious, basing arguments off of black and white Hollywood movies, and failing to plan for the side effects usually mean what you’re planning to do ain’t gonna work anywhere like what you think it’s going to.
Something we keep trying to get across to the nanny-staters, to little avail. It’s just as true for our arguments, too. As much as I, personally, want the ‘34 NFA dead and gone, I know that there’s no practical way that will ever happen.
Our culture can’t handle it right now. Nor are we headed in the correct direction to allow that. Which is the same direction that would make it an utter bloodbath if we deal with the kitten-stomping drug warriors via just legalizing everything.
March 2, 2008 at 11:00 pm
(Just to point out an obvious, immediate side effect: What will you say when every company requires a weekly piss test?)
March 2, 2008 at 11:10 pm
“Failing to plan for the side effects usually mean what you’re planning to do ain’t gonna work anywhere like what you think it’s going to.”
I’d say that pretty much describes the War on Drugs in a nutshell, U-J.
What will I say when every company requires a weekly piss test?
Not a thing. They can set any conditions they like for employment, and I have the choice to sign on the dotted line or not. Oh, and in most jobs that involve anything requiring liability risks, they already make you piss in a cup randomly.
March 2, 2008 at 11:43 pm
I’d say that pretty much describes the War on Drugs in a nutshell
Damn straight.
Having seem the prior Keystone Kops situation makes me not want to do it again. Instead of pounding my chest, asserting my manliness. “By Gum! Mah Grandpappy was stupid, mah Pappy was stupid, and By All That’s Holy, Ahm gonna be stupid too!”
In fact, as funny and entertaining as some of those complete and total CFs can be, if you and I were sitting on the sideline laughing, we as a society cannot tolerate that much breakdown. (Much as the current WoD is damn close to the same breaking point.) Gleefully cheering on chaos is not a sustainable ethos.
Not a thing. They can set any conditions they like for employment
Many do require that. Not all. But I promise you, the legal liability (remember that culture/society thing I was mentioning that was a problem?) will require that.
But at best you’d be outsourcing the Drug War to the civil system and private companies. Oh, and of course, anybody who has a government contract will be required…
March 3, 2008 at 4:26 am
[...] you must have an example, the War on Some Drugs provides an excellent one. This post is, however, more or less a theoretical [...]
March 3, 2008 at 7:31 am
Er, yeah gotta call you on the radical drop in gun-crime there Marko. Well, sure and maybe it did slacken off a little for a couple of years, but shootings are a growth industry here in the Uck.
I fear, though, that TWAD and it’s associated war against Terror *koff* has brought about such a fertile breeding-ground for wrong-headed thinking. Consider the Uck, and it’s position on guns. Given the villification of these horrible baby-killing monster machines, the majority people in the UK who want to have a gun demonstrably shouldn’t be allowed one. those who had the potential to be educated and responsible weapon-wielders have become so brainwashed that they wouldn’t go near one.
Similarly, when Druuuugs are villified and portrayed as The Root Of All Horrors, then the *majority* of folk will see them as such – and it’s been going on so damn long that even calling off TWAD won’t really be possible. Let’s face it, people who think accurately and habitually are – and always will be – the tiny minority.
*sighs*
Sad state of affairs, ain’t it?
March 3, 2008 at 9:54 am
I am a conservative and you are the one that doesn’t seem to understand my mindset. First, if you don’t do drugs, then banning them does not infringe on your rights. I don’t rape and kill, so for those activities to be illegal does not infringe on my rights. Nor do they infringe on yours, unless I have misjudged you.
Second, the bill of rights was never meant to enable drug abuse, nor was it designed to protect the guilty. Thanks to liberals and libertarian influences, it now does both. Legalization will make all that worse, not better.
Liberals want to control or ban guns because of their use by the criminal element. Like it or not, the drug culture is entwined with the crime culture. Enabling one enables and facilitates the other. The same cannot be said about guns…and if the stats are to be believed, the reverse is actually true. Putting more guns out there in the hands of citizens seems to be curtailing crime slightly. Liberals do not understand this, just as they don’t understand that you can’t cure a drug problem by feeding it.
I will not approve of legalizing any drugs until some sanity starts to appear in the judiciary. People can commit crimes and plead to lesser charges by claiming to be impaired. Victims of drug violence get their rights stepped on every day.
The only way I will ever agree with you is if addicts and abusers take responsibility for themselves. That means no special treatment in court, no special welfare or social programs for addicts, and a mandatory death penalty for those that kill while under the influence.
March 3, 2008 at 10:39 am
Infringing your rights is infringing your rights, Rusty – whether you happen to be using them at the time or not.
And you can’t have responsible drug use whilst legal drug use is impossible – anymore than you could have a campaign educating people on alcohol abuse, and how to drink responsibly during Prohibition.
This is one of many factors which worry me about about TWAD, and one I tried to point out in my previous post: If a Thing (such as drugs, in this case) gets nothing but villification from The Leaders, then any chance of responsible recreational use goes out the window – the only people left indulging themselves are doing so in a manner virtually guaranteed to Go Horribly Wrong.
The main bit’s in my first sentence of this post, though.
March 3, 2008 at 11:14 am
I think in a generation or two we will look back at these years of illegal drugs and say “boy were we crazy to have such idiotic laws, playing straight into the wallets of organised crime and destroying people’s lives”.
Maybe it is a basic need for every society to have a few big, common enemies. When the drugs are finally legalised, something else wil take their place as the greatest threat to our society.
March 3, 2008 at 12:41 pm
No, moonshiners don’t shoot at each other anymore, but neither do winos hold up liquor stores, either.
Wow. Epic Argument Fail there, PDB. Unless you’re secretly arguing for the repeal of prohibition.
Drug addicts hold up convenience stores because drugs are made more expensive by dint of their illegality.
Like it or not, the drug culture is entwined with the crime culture.
Oh for the love of God, Rusty, of course they are entwined. DRUGS ARE ILLEGAL! By definition anyone involved in the drug trade these days is a criminal. If all guns were made illegal, everyone involved in the gun trade would be a criminal too. You cannot use the current legal status of something as an argument for what the legal status of that something should be. Well, you could, but no one would take you seriously, attempting to use such circular logic.
March 3, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Mark this has nothing to do with rights and freedoms and everything to do with criminal law. If you want to play the ‘moral relativism’ game, I have trumped your drugs with murder and rape. I don’t use those “freedoms” either. You want to change criminal law to allow the use of drugs – and there may or may not be some merit to that, but to say MY rights are affected by this is simply a shower of chit. I suppose you might make a case for milder drugs like pot, but you are nuts if you want to legalize some of the lethal crap that is out there.
I believe that citizens have rights and freedoms but they also have responsibilities too, and that some drug addictions constitute criminal negligence of those responsibilities. Can you properly care for your children if you have a drug habit? What about their right to a safe and happy home? What about your coworkers on the job site? Until you can balance personal rights and freedoms with personal responsibilities, you don’t have an argument. Like it or not, the reality is that the use of drugs endangers others and infringes on their rights.
March 3, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Ahhh, but here we come to the rub – by having the possession and trade of these things as a crime, the whole “Innocent until Proven Guilty” thing goes clean out the window. By criminalising things, rather than actions – in your example, lousy deliquent parenting, drug-induced incompetence and (for the fun of it) people stealing to pay for drugs once they’ve lost their job by being caned at work – you’re using a huge brush.
I’ve got a good friend who has recreational use for various Class A Drugs, as they get called here in the UK. He holds down a good, responsible job. He’s a family man. He’s a lovely bloke to be around, even when he’s been tucking into his favourite pharmaceuticals. It doesn’t rule his life.
Not everyone who picks up hard booze is an alcoholic. Not everyone who wuffs a line of Bolivian Marching Powder is a murdering, theiving scumbag who’s five rounds centre-of-mass short of a platonic ideal.
Demonising and criminalising things removes individuality from the deal. Me? I’m too tightly wound to be able to deal with more than alcohol, nicotine and caffeine – I know my limits. Hell, I get sozzled too often for my own good and I know it.
I agree entirely with part of what you’re saying – it’s abour personal responsibilites, all the way – but people cannot be responsible for their actions when their belongings make them a criminal. If someone’s off their face on Coke and does something criminally stupid in charge of a child – nail ‘em to the wall. If someone’s driving on Ketamine and drives through a crowded bus shelter – string ‘em right up. If someone’s teapot convinced them that it’s Jesus and tells ‘em to murder their granny, then save up until you’ve got another 9 like ‘em and put up Electric Bleachers, it’ll save energy to do ‘em in job lots.
But the only way laws can make sense, in a world where the gulf of individual capability is yawning ever wider, is to punish deeds and outcomes – not the ownership of inanimate objects.
March 3, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Rusty,
you need to stop using the term “moral relativism” as if it had any bearing here.
Morality only comes into play when two or more people interact. Taking drugs is not an immoral act, just an illegal one. Comparing drug use to murder and rape is completely unwarranted–one involves only one person, the other involves violating the rights of another.
Now, when a druggie drives impaired and injures or kills another, then you have a case. But drug use in and of itself is not an immoral act, and it doesn’t violate the rights of another.
Your rights are indeed affected by the War on Drugs, even though you don’t take drugs. Just because the law hasn’t been used against you doesn’t mean that your right to due process hasn’t gone away when it comes to asset forfeiture, for example. You can lose your property without charges, a trial, or recourse if a police officer only suspects that it’s connected with drug use or distribution in any way, because they charge the property with the crime, and not you. There are hundreds of examples where innocent, non-druggie citizens have lost tens of thousands of dollars of property–cash, cars, and houses–because a tenant grew a dope plant in the basement, or the grandson was dealing from grandma’s back porch.
Just because you haven’t been at the receiving end of these excesses doesn’t mean you haven’t lost those rights.
March 3, 2008 at 6:55 pm
“I believe that citizens have rights and freedoms but they also have responsibilities too, and that some drug addictions constitute criminal negligence of those responsibilities. Can you properly care for your children if you have a drug habit? What about their right to a safe and happy home? What about your coworkers on the job site?”
Rusty,
Would these things be true of an alcoholic?
March 4, 2008 at 12:30 am
Morality is with us in everything we do Munchkin. You can sit on your hands and do nothing and still hurt others. Maybe the term ‘moral relativism’ means something different for you, but I am quite comfortable using it here. Equating illegal drug use to personal freedoms just doesn’t fly – especially when you consider the more dangerous chemicals. Does the average man have the ability to clinically judge the safety of illegal street drugs and their side effects? If not, then again, you don’t have an argument.
Yes, Chris, those things would be true of an alcoholic as well. Alcoholics infringe on the rights of others too – and it ain’t right.
As MarkHB says, we need to punish deeds. If our courts did that, you guys could make a case. Unfortunately, the emphasis of most judges is on rehabilitation and coddling criminals, and not on punishing them. Until you can make some provision for personal responsibility in recreational drug use, the moral high ground belongs to me and the status quo.
March 4, 2008 at 12:33 am
PS – it was a good argument though and you fought your points well.
March 4, 2008 at 7:42 am
Don’t worry, Rusty, I ain’t done yet.
If the behavior of alcoholics is, in fact, that bad, then should we not ban alcohol? Oh wait, we tried that and it turned out to ba an absolute disaster.
Even if it yeilded terrible results on a practical scale is it even a moral thing to do? I regularly sip scotch yet I don’t exhibit the problems you mentioned, so why do you equate the drug automatically with the abuse of that drug? I can use food, and I can misuse/abuse food and stuff myself full of McDonalds all the time and die in 5yrs of a heart attack, do you want to regulate food consumption because of the rampant heart disease in the country?
The amount of people who die every year in the USA from heart disease dwarfs the amount from drugs, are you sure you don’t want to give it a shot?
Your entire arguement rests on the idea of potential abuse, that because a drug can potentially be abused that we can have these bad effects and should therefore seek to prevent that from happening by banning the drug. Aside from the obvious problem with taking that idea to it’s logical conclusion with regards to personal freedom, do you really think you’ve been succcessful in preventing those problems?
Maybe we’ll just keeping upping the police state more and more till we make Nazi Germany look like a bunch of amateurs (We can beat those damn Krauts), and we’ll finally be able to die safe.
March 4, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Good morning Chris.
I don’t have the answers to everything. I personally reject comparisons between pot and alcohol. There are no similarities whatsoever; the intoxicants are different chemicals, they pose different hazards, and the comparisons get even more foolish as we move into the more dangerous street drugs. I too am something of a scotch snob, and resent your comparing my fine Highland Park to some weed grown by zit faced teen agers, or crystal meth concocted by filthy bikers.
Anyways, this is why I insisted on using the term ‘moral reletavism’ to the Munchkin’s ire – clinically speaking there is no similarity between these substances beyond the fact that they are intoxicants.
Personally, I see a huge difference between us scotch-sipping gentlemen and say, for example, a Hell’s Angel running a meth lab.
Your argument seems to be that since we allow people to kill themselves with booze we should allow it with drugs as well. I personally disagree because we will only create more criminals, put more stress on the police and the courts, put more stress on the social programs…and for what? So that we can assure ourselves that the druggies and turdies have a ‘fair chance’ to ruin themselves, their families and their potential? I do not get along well with the ACLU, needless to say.
As for the police state, yes, that is exactly what is coming. If people will not meet their personal responsibilities and obligations, the state will try to enforce them as they have in Britain and Europe – with the similar dismal results. The democrats are doing that already – that is why they are trying to grab our guns.
I would prefer that you were right, and that people could make their own decisions with the provision that they damned well answered for them. Unless that changes, things are going to get a heck of alot worse before they get better.
March 4, 2008 at 1:38 pm
“I don’t have the answers to everything. I personally reject comparisons between pot and alcohol. There are no similarities whatsoever; the intoxicants are different chemicals, they pose different hazards, and the comparisons get even more foolish as we move into the more dangerous street drugs.”
Rusty,
you’re right–there are few similarities. Pot isn’t nearly as addictive and damaging to society as alcohol. Booze kills more people every year than all illegal drugs combined, both directly (alcoholism) and indirectly (drunk driving accidents.)
If you can argue for keeping one legal while making the other illegal on the basis of societal cost alone, you’re on the losing end of the argument if you pick alcohol.
March 4, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Rusty,
Have you ever done pot? I tried at a few times in college, absolutely hated it, but the stoned feeling you get isn’t that vastly different from when you’re drunk, both drugs intoxicate you. As far as the consequences from usage, pot is without a doubt less harmful: I worked as a bouncer in various bars for years and can readily testify to how a drunk can be violent and out of control. Stoners, on the other hand, are rather passive, and the biggest problem associated with them is that there might be a shortage of junk food in the supermarket after they do a few hits.
The main point I am trying to make is that if drugs is a good idea why should the same not be true of alcohol? If 2+2=4 then 200+200 should equal 400. Prohibition only made problems worse. The police would be LESS stressed because they’re not wasting resources harassing some dude smoking pot and not harming anyone, let him go after the guy who actually is harming someone. Addicts would not need to rob people to get money to support their fix; they could maintain their habit on a Burger King job. Aren’t jails social programs? Drug user’s financial impact on us is less if they’re not in jail, if they can get by and pay taxes I’d rather have that then him not paying taxes and the rest of us supporting him.
It seems to me what this “debate” really boils down to us is essentially a culture war: you like us scotch sipping gentleman but you don’t like crunchy hippies who go on about saving the world but all they do is actually wind up doing is smoking pot and smelling bad. You’d like to see them just go away, you certainly don’t want to see their culture expand, hence you dislike of pot. If pot was only used by upper class WASPs who generally had their stuff together we’d be having a different debate. Just to be honest, I hate hippies as well; I wish I could snap my fingers and have them vanish. Also keep in mind that for every one of us who sip fine scotch there are 100 inbred trailerparkers who enjoy fucking their sisters, eating mayonnaise sandwiches, and drink Wild Turkey out of the bottle.
Make booze illegal and the Hell’s Angels will get in on that action as well, I’d prefer to see them out of business completely by taking away their product and seeing corporations with high QC standards take it over, at least I can buy some of their stock.
All that being said, throwing drugs users in jail isn’t doing you or I an ounce of good, drug misuse/abuse is a social/medical issue, not a criminal one.
March 4, 2008 at 4:34 pm
The thing that frosts me in the usual discussion about legalizing drugs is people say it is a victimless crime. Not true. I did a career as a child protection caseworker. The spouses and/or the children were always the victims. 90 percent or better of the tens of thousands of child welfare cases in America each year involve drugs or alcohol. Please do not ignore those facts when discussing the impact of drugs and alcohol on our society.
March 4, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Munchkin, the studies are not conclusive. I don’t trust them anyways because studies that prove ‘gun control works’ are a dime a dozen and worth just that. I may concede you…might…have a case for pot, but certainly not other drugs like PCP or meth or ecstasy. Some of the so-called ‘designer drugs’ are even potentially worse. We both admit that we can’t effectively deal with the problems posed by alcohol…why make that social problem worse by adding different intoxicants into the equation? I think we have to draw a line somewhere and that we are morally bound to do so. You keep coming back to personal rights and freedoms and I keep coming back to personal freedoms. Any answer we come up with has to have elements of both in order to work.
Pot came after my time Chris, so I have no real experience with it. I am ancient – when I was a kid street drugs were something that came out of the gutter and respectable people wouldn’t indulge in them. Booze and alcoholics were the big problems back then. I have seen tons of kids with chips on their shoulders using it to infuriate mom and dad and I agree that it generally doesn’t seem to hurt them much, unless they do something stupid while under its influence. I have also seen users that regularly take pot for ‘medicinal’ purposes and they look and sound like idiots or retards. They have obviously sustained some mental damage over the course of time. Pot is not a harmless weed. Can we at least agree on the more dangerous drugs?
I don’t think I am a snob either. I don’t want to live next door to a crack house or a grow-op. I do not want heavy users around my kids. I don’t see anything positive about putting more poisons in front of our kids to wreck themselves on. I suppose if that makes me a snob, so be it. In the real world, people like that are far more likely to infringe on your rights than the cops are. We can make these arguments from our comfy middle class homes, but I wonder what your attitude would be if you were inner-city single parents trying to raise children in the slums?
It’s been a pleasure fighting with you gents, but I am afraid I am probably not going to change your minds, and that I am not going to get my way on this one in any event. More people agree with you than I so it tells you what my opinion is worth.
March 5, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Rusty,
Why not move to a pleasant place that respects your lack of trust of your fellow man’s ability to be responsible, such as North Korea. Please do not assist the non-conservatives in the executive branch, and their ditto heads, in imitating North Korea. I would suggest China, but they appear to be moving to a more capitalist economy than exists in this country that once respected the individual, even if the individual makes decisions that one might disagree with.
The founders of this country were required to insert a Bill of Rights in our Constitution for a very good reason. The government cannot be trusted to behave as responsibly as it should. An individual behaves irresponsibly and few are hurt, the government behaves irresponsibly and those few increase exponentially.
I do not use illegal drugs, but resent the excessive and ever expanding limitations on my individual rights. When property can be charged with a crime the end of property rights and an open market economy is at hand. Maybe it will take a few decades, but we are following that Yellow Brick Road paved with good intentions.