Enough Already -- Stop Funding the Taliban Through Opium Prohibition

LOL. Unfortunately, I quit using that stuff years ago, so I can't help.

Actually, when talking about opiate law, particularly WRT Afghanistan, one of the best proposals I have seen is to legalize the poppy trade there in order to increase the supplies of painkillers like Morphine for use in pain treatment in countries where they can't afford adequate pain treatment.

In addition, it is difficult to separate the issues at least partially because our government keeps all illicit drugs lumped together. There are plenty of great arguments for regulation of opiates (see the above paragraph for one as well as the post above regarding the Swiss prescription heroin program), but the most compelling arguments are definitely for regulation of mar1juana.

Personally, I think we need to regulate ALL intoxicants based on several scientific measures (addiction rates, potential for abuse, physical harm, societal harm, etc.) and get politicians and law enforcement out of the process. Law enforcement should get involved when a violent or property crime is committed and if the crime is related to drugs, the sentence could be enhanced. Politicians should not be involved in the issue at all.

This is a healthcare and education issue, our political and law enforcement approach has been an unmitigated disaster.

 

And in the intervening century, we have found that even heroin "junkies" can become responsible members of society in the absence of prohibition.

That is not to say that I would make heroin legal to purchase, but I would make it available for maintenance through prescriptions as these programs have a great track record of bringing people in for treatment.

Chances are that if cocaine were regulated, its primary method of ingestion would be the same as it was in the 1800s and early 1900s, mixed in drinks like Coca-Cola and Vin Mariani (wine mixed with cocaine). Some people would certainly use various techniques to extract purer forms of the drug, but if we got serious about the regulation by tracking sales, we could identify probable cases of abuse before those problem users went all the way off the deep end.

No, but IMO, prohibition has had a far more negative impact on our society than regulated drugs would. We could come up with a strong system of regulation that would minimize the harms that drug use and abuse have on our society.

 

Perhaps this is the case, but I see our current drug policy as worse than anything else we could possibly try. Prohibition exacerbates every harm inherent in drug use and abuse and has not, to date, solved a single problem that I am aware of.

And at least one reason is that intoxicants other than alcohol are prohibited. Different people have different ideas of what "feels good" and regulation of intoxicants will allow us to find better, less harmful intoxicants as well as better, less harmful ways to use the ones that already exist.

For example, smoking mar1juana carries some of the risks of smoking tobacco. However, one of the common methods that medical mar1juana patients use is vaporizing, which is far less harmful and carries all the benefits of smoking.

We have many issues with prescription drugs because people are misusing them as recreational drugs. If drug companies were able to experiment with recreational pharmaceuticals, they could come up with drugs that are just as euphoric, yet less likely to cause physical addiction.

Not if there are restrictions on the amount that can be purchased, like a responsible policy would have. There would certainly be some people who would perform the extractions you talk about, but we can track their sales and flag them for interventions once their purchasing history shows potential abuse cases.

In addition, crack was made by and for drug dealers who wanted an easily measured, easily transported, and easily disposable product. if adults were legally allowed to purchase drinks with cocaine instead of caffeine, most people would simply consume the drinks rather than go to the trouble of extracting powder and then cooking crack.

Agreed. I would create an education system that would be required to have a license to purchase these drugs. Education is the number one way to keep people from using the most dangerous drugs.

If a fully educated adult wants to purchase, we should have a system that gives them a known dose of a product free of adulterants.

People want the high, they don't care HOW they get it. If they can get the high from drinking Cocaine-Cola or Vin Mariani, the VAST majority of people will simply consume it as it is sold.

There will be those cases of abuse, but abuse is a tiny fraction of the overall drug user community. The vast majority of people who use cocaine do not experience problem usage. This is different for heroin, as it is more addictive, but even heroin users can be responsible, employed taxpayers in the absence of prohibition.

You are correct, just as a battle plan never survives completely after an army has engaged the enemy. That is why scientific study into the best ways to reduce intoxicant abuse is central to the policy I would create. That way, we could, over the course of time, figure out what works best and implement changes accordingly.

Yes, they used to collect scrap metal to support their habits, but prohibition has simply made the problem worse, as evidenced by the success of the Swiss prescription heroin program.

 

There is already a pill form called Marinol, as well as a sublingual (under the tongue) product. Patients report better results with mar1juana than with the extract of THC in Marinol and other forms.

http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6635

 

Not according to the research that has been done. Criminalization has not shown to be an effective deterrant for children, as evidenced by the fact that half of our young people use illegal drugs before they leave high school, as opposed to Holland, where rates of teen drug use are roughly half what we see here.

 

There is a BIG difference between "addicts" and drug users. The vast majority of drug users are able to use responsibly. Past month cocaine users in 2006 were about 1% of the population according to SAMSHA, which would mean that we would have 3 million crazed cocaine abusers if every one of them were classified as abusers. Most people who use drugs, even cocaine, do not experience problem drug usage.

We do need to have programs (paid for by taxes on the drugs themselves) to deal with abusers. However, extreme examples of addicts do not extrapolate to the drug using population as a whole.

For anecdotal evidence, I have a good friend who used to do a few rails before going out to clubs when he was single. he was able to do this and then not use again for weeks or months until he went out clubbing again. I cannot understand or comprehend this since I found out at 16 that my body REALLY likes cocaine. However, he was able to use it responsibly and doesn't use at all anymore (mostly because he is married and doesn't go out clubbing anymore).