Decriminalizing Drugs

The cost of prisons is obviously rising as well; in the 1980s 150 million year and in the 1990s it went up to over 200 million and certainly much higher today

But to entertain your idea of legalization you and many others who support legalization commonly cite prohibition. So why not do the same for weed cocaine and heroin you ask? Well I guess just weed but lets face it once you open that door it will never be shut. But don’t get caught up on that last statement.

The end of prohibition was also accompanied by a sharp rise in alcohol use. Between 1934 and 1944, per capita consumption in the US jumped from .97 gallons to 2.07 gallons. If illicit drugs were legalized, might not consumption similarly increase?  History is full of cautionary examples.   In the 1970s doctors routinely began  prescribing valium for everyday use of anxiety. As the number of prescriptions increased so did the incidence of abuse.   Valium was sending more people to the hospital at record numbers more than any other drug combined due solely to it being legalized.  Clearly making drugs easier to get can increase the extent to which they are abused  and one can only imagine  what would happen if such potent toxicants like weed, crack and heroin were legal?

So my argument revolves around why legalize drugs when you can reduce the harm that they cause by simply decriminalizing them.

Also don’t ever compare the US to Portugal that’s an extremely horrendous and unfair comparison

But if you want to read a good book on this topic where I picked out all of my facts from check out Michael Massing’s The Fix

     A girl in Hawaiil was refused an organ transplant becaus she had trace amounts of marijuana in her blood.  She later died as a result.

     Prison population is a huge problem in this country.  Absolutely huge Stiln.  You are correct.   We have ordinary law abiding citizens who are in jail right now because they were caught with a pipe and a small personal stash of weed.  Us taxpayers are paying for it, and meanwhile he's sitting in jail.  His son misses him as does his wife.  Later on he'll have to find a job in this economy (good luck) because he just lost the job he had.  There are many more important issues that our PD's could be concentrating on.  Rape... murder... theft... assault... home invasions... destruction of property... but no.  Let's spend our valuable time on this guy that wants to chill for a minute and smoke a natural plant. 

Makes total sense.

     We can eat cannabis.  The hemp oil has every essential amino acid known to man.  And it's good for you.  Imagine that. 

     We can use it as medicine for pain relief, insomnia, loss of appetite, anxiety, depression, epileptic siezures, nausea, vomitting, glaucoma, emphysema, arthritis... it slows the growth of tumors.  It kills cancer cells.  It combats AIDS.  It helps people deal with symptoms of Alzheimer's.  The list goes on and on.

     We can grow hemp and make clothes that are softer and more durable than cotton.  26X more longer lasting than cotton!  4X softer!  We can make paper that lasts longer and all of this... the clothes and the paper... it would all be made at a fraction of the cost compared to what it is now. 

     We could make houses out of hemp that would literally last thousands of years.  The material is stronger than what we're using now and it breathes better.  Termites would be out of business.  Water damage would not even be an issue. 

     The tax money could be used towards our education systems.  Our roads and highways.  The parks for the kids.  We would be able to knock down our deficit little by little.  There are some estimates that our country could earn as much as 50-75 billion a year from the taxes.  And some say it would be more than that.  A lot more.

     Or we could just keep doing this...

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V--tz3IMCY4

https://www.canorml.org/healthfacts/drivingstudy_new.htm#01

This is the source on the driving test done in Canada.

i think bath saltz should be promoted and mass produced

we need to thin out the population

Wow surfape

I like it!

Did you know that.......?

In 3 months a single acre of Hemp can generate the same amount of pulp for making paper as 4.5 acres of trees which takes 15 years or more...

The more you know.......

it's mostly mowie wowie

but its got some labradore in it

https://www.aclu.org/drug-law-reform/against-drug-prohibition

     This is an old article but it when you read it I think it does a good job of making you think that we've been approaching the drug situation wrong all along. 

     Drugs are here to stay.  They're not going anywhere.  I don't want shops in my community selling cocaine and heroine, but I know that if we have that, we won't have any armed criminals selling contaminated drugs to our kids.  And the kids won't be able to walk into a shop and buy a kilo.  Not only that, 99% won't want to anyways because they're smarter than that.

     Almost all of the crime related to the drug industry occurs between the people within the industry upon disagreements.  Jose can't take Bob to court for selling him $100,000 worth of bad cocaine because he can't.  He'll shoot him in the streets.  And if there's any innocent bystanders... oh well.

     Sure we'd have to spend some money on treatment programs and making sure the drug is safe, but much of that money will come from the generated tax.  Crime and prison population will drop by leaps and bounds.  Every state would generate billions of dollars to spend as needed on what they deem necessary.     

     "Ending prohibition is not a panacea. It will not by itself end drug abuse or eliminate violence. Nor will it bring about the social and economic revitalization of our inner cities. However, ending prohibition would bring one very significant benefit: It would sever the connection between drugs and crime that today blights so many lives and communities. In the long run, ending prohibition could foster the redirection of public resources toward social development, legitimate economic opportunities and effective treatment, thus enhancing the safety, health and well-being of the entire society."

From Stiln:  The end of prohibition was also accompanied by a sharp rise in alcohol use. Between 1934 and 1944, per capita consumption in the US jumped from .97 gallons to 2.07 gallons. If illicit drugs were legalized, might not consumption similarly increase?

If those numbers are accurate that is a 10.3% increase, which isn't good news. 

     Let me borrow the following from the link I posted...

     Once alcohol prohibition was repealed, consumption increased somewhat, but the rate of liver cirrhosis went down because people tended to choose beer and wine over the more potent, distilled spirits previously promoted by bootleggers. So, even though the number of drinkers went up, the health risks of drinking went down. The same dynamic would most likely occur with drug legalization: some increase in drug use, but a decrease in drug abuse.

     Even if drug use were to increase by a relatively small margin, I believe the benefits of legalization would far out weigh the negatives.  People would be doing drugs in the comfort of their own home and the drugs would be tested for purity and safety.  And they're not hurting anybody except possibly themselves. 

     Weed isn't even an issue.  As far as cocaine and heroine go, I would venture to say that 99% of the use would be casual use on a non-regular basis.  For the other 1%, there would be more treatment centers and counseling programs for these people than there are now and they wouldn't be sharing dirty needles in the dark alleys of the inner city.  Overdoses would decrease.  The contraction of AIDS would decrease.  Crime would decrease. 

     I just really believe it would be a win-win situation for our country as a whole. 

     I'll check it out Stiln. 

     Keep in mind though that legalization does not "encourage" anybody to take drugs.  That's not what it does.  There wouldn't be ads on TV telling the public to "use this brand of cocaine" because it's cool".  Yet you see this for alcohol and cigarettes (magazine ads) all the time. 

     People are smart enough to know that, in general, drug use does not lead to good things.  For the most part, people make wise and informed decisions. 

     I'm not sure why you think Portugal is a "poor analogy", but the fact still remains, they legalized drugs and their crime rate went down.  It doesn't take a genius to figure out why this happened.  Bottom line is, their approach is working, and ours clearly isn't.

     Decriminalization is certainly another option.  I'm not saying otherwise.  I'm just not for it.  There is nothing wrong with using cannabis, morally or otherwise, and it is against our freedoms and rights to prohibit the growth of a plant that has not only proven to be harmless, but beneficial to our well being.

jmilrod...

You're right.  Most people simply aren't aware of how much we could benefit from hemp.  The usage from this plant is utterly amazing, and we can't even use it.