2020 Elections

[Kron3007]

3) Yes, fentanyl should be legal.  Legalization dosn't mean you can sell it on the street, it means that there is a legal source that is regulated.  The main issue with fentanyl is that it is often found in other street drugs and people accidentally overdose. The whole point of a legalized supply chain is so that you can ensure quality control and accurate dosing.  People are using drugs, it is best to make sure they are as safe as they can be.   

There's something very disturbing about people employed by the government to administer poison (i.e. dangerous chemicals for no medical reason) and being paid by taxpayers to do so with the justification that we're administering the poison in a way that is "as safe as can be".

This gets into the whole idea of medically assisted suicide for people with mental illness. If a clinically depressed person wants to commit suicide, should the government provide the "service" so that it can be done as safely(?) effectively as possible?

On a very related note, I also find it very disturbing that the government runs and profits from gambling, preying on the vulnerable, but perhaps this is less harmful than leaving it to the private sector or pushing it underground...   

[marshwiggle]

With legalization, it is not necessarily government people administering it.  It is simply a legal framework for people to produce, sell, and use it.  Alcohol is a horrible drug that kills tens of thousands in the US every year, but is sold legally.  This makes sense because if it were not regulated, people would still drink but would do so in more dangerous settings and there would be safety concerns with unregulated production (ie methanol contamination).  There is also the fact that it would line the pockets organized crime. 

There are a few things that make alcohol different. The first it that alcohol is mostly a component of drinks; very little is sold or consumed by itself. Second, the main market for alcohol is not to alcoholics; it is to people who have a drink or two at a time. In fact, it is illegal to serve alcohol to a person who is already intoxicated.

All of these factors are very different than the sale of street drugs. Specifically, the people buying them are typically addicted, are actually trying to get them in their undiluted form, and are intentionally trying to consume enough to get high.

The pitch for legalization is not to promote drug use.  It is just an acceptance that we have lost the war on drugs and that there are more effective, safer approaches.  Taking the same course and expecting different results is insanity...

As I indicated before, if "posession" of drugs in legal, then it's very easy to hide the sale of drugs behind that.   Drug dealers will not remotely disappear.

On a very related note, I also find it very disturbing that the government runs and profits from gambling, preying on the vulnerable, but perhaps this is less harmful than leaving it to the private sector or pushing it underground...

I've never been a fan of this, and it hasn't eliminated illegal gambling either.

[financeguy]

I'm fairly libertarian on almost everything, including drug legalization. That said, I recognize that many drug users can not/will not be helped and will never stop the criminal behavior associated with their use until incarcerated or dead. You can not reason with someone who has specifically taken a substance to remove reason and enter an alternate reality. The fact that we continue to try to do so rather than locking them up once criminal behavior begins leads me to believe we are crazier than most on the substances. My general rule of thumb is pretty clear: Do whatever you want with your life unless and until if intrudes on mine, at which point I'm willing to be as aggressive as possible in preventing your ability to do so.

This is very similar to my stance on single motherhood or anything else where irresponsible behavior affects another person. Want to get knocked up by unemployed face tattoo guy who leaves and pop out a kid you have no ability to care for? Your right to do so but I'm totally for taking it away rather than subsidizing and socially reinforcing your decision. My libertarian switch is immediately flicked off once another person is affected. I don't understand why this general attitude of "do what you want until" is so rare in favor of totally permissive or draconian all the time.

[dismalist]

Most of the things we see that we don't like are not the product of drug use but of the illegality of drugs.

[mahagonny]

Not to mention cannabis can cause serious prolonged mental illness in some adults. Depersonalization, derealization, anxiety disorders. And increase the likelihood of schizophrenia in young adults who are genetically predisposed.

I know people hate to hear from the self-righteous about inebriating chemicals, but the facts are on our side.

Have you been watching reefer madness again?
[/quote]

What did I post that's not accurate. Show us.

I am not saying that there are no negative effects to drugs, but why do you care if I choose to use them?  Do you also want to mandate my physical activity level to help with my cardiovascular health and mental well being?  Will you force me to eat my broccoli too?  Again, it is ironic that the people who tout personal responsibility want to decide what I ingest.

I don't care a lot if you use them, although we would have a better world without it, but that's not going to happen. As P. J. O'Rourke said we don't have freedom of choice so we can be better. We have it so we can be anything we damn please.
What I hate though, and will fight, is when people promote recreational drugs who don't know about the potential for harm to certain individuals and don't go to the trouble to find out. I say it as one who has paid a big price and was sold a bill of goods by the culture of the sixties. And BTW, some of the same people who make fun of reefer madness get their information from people like the Grateful Dead and rappers who sing about 'purple drank' so I suggest your comment does not become a scholarly person like you are.

[Parasaurolophus]

I wish proponents of "harm reduction programs", such as safe injection sites, would publish statistics about their rate of getting people into treatment programs and how many are drug-free X years later. Any sane person can see that it's better to get these people (back) to being productive members of society than to incarcerate them, but it's not at all clear how frequently that happens. And there is evidence that the existence of safe injection sites will induce some people to try harder drugs ("moral hazzard"), but it should be possible to run the numbers and establish objectively whether the overall effect is positive.

I (probably like many other people) would be glad to support funding for these programs if the evidence indicates that they have an overall benefit. Just keeping people alive longer, without getting any of them out of their addictions, is an extremely low bar to set.

Insite, in Vancouver, has been operational since 2003. It was the first supervised injection site in North America. They keep pretty detailed records about their interventions, and they've been studied pretty extensively. In fact, it was a condition of allowing it to operate that it be rigorously studied. All the evidence indicates that it's significantly reduced harm. This is especially true for immediate harms, which are its primary focus (e.g. overdoses, drugs cut with fentanyl and carfentanyl, which you can screen for there, and sharing needles). The evidence also indicates it's been effective at increasing the use of detox services. You can read at least one of the many, many studies of Insite here (it's from 2006).

[Kron3007]

Not to mention cannabis can cause serious prolonged mental illness in some adults. Depersonalization, derealization, anxiety disorders. And increase the likelihood of schizophrenia in young adults who are genetically predisposed.

I know people hate to hear from the self-righteous about inebriating chemicals, but the facts are on our side.

Have you been watching reefer madness again?

What did I post that's not accurate. Show us.

I am not saying that there are no negative effects to drugs, but why do you care if I choose to use them?  Do you also want to mandate my physical activity level to help with my cardiovascular health and mental well being?  Will you force me to eat my broccoli too?  Again, it is ironic that the people who tout personal responsibility want to decide what I ingest.

I don't care a lot if you use them, although we would have a better world without it, but that's not going to happen. As P. J. O'Rourke said we don't have freedom of choice so we can be better. We have it so we can be anything we damn please.
What I hate though, and will fight, is when people promote recreational drugs who don't know about the potential for harm to certain individuals and don't go to the trouble to find out. I say it as one who has paid a big price and was sold a bill of goods by the culture of the sixties. And BTW, some of the same people who make fun of reefer madness get their information from people like the Grateful Dead and rappers who sing about 'purple drank' so I suggest your comment does not become a scholarly person like you are.
[/quote]

It's not that what you said is inaccurate, but I do feel it is blown out of proportion to some degree.  Many hate the comparison, but alcohol and tobacco are quantifiabaly more deadly than many other drugs but they get a free pass because society says it is ok.  The reference to refer madness is apt since you are focusing on the harms of cannabis as if it is a great danger while ignoring the fact that alcohol causes far more harm.  So again, I do not deny that there are negative effects of cannabis, especially for a subset of the population, but there are worse offenders.

Regardless, the negative effects of cannabis or any other drugs are a moot point when discussing legalization because the laws don't stop people from using them.  If the goal is to reduce the negative impacts of drugs across society, criminalization is the wrong approach.       

[Kron3007]

I'm fairly libertarian on almost everything, including drug legalization. That said, I recognize that many drug users can not/will not be helped and will never stop the criminal behavior associated with their use until incarcerated or dead. You can not reason with someone who has specifically taken a substance to remove reason and enter an alternate reality. The fact that we continue to try to do so rather than locking them up once criminal behavior begins leads me to believe we are crazier than most on the substances. My general rule of thumb is pretty clear: Do whatever you want with your life unless and until if intrudes on mine, at which point I'm willing to be as aggressive as possible in preventing your ability to do so.

This is very similar to my stance on single motherhood or anything else where irresponsible behavior affects another person. Want to get knocked up by unemployed face tattoo guy who leaves and pop out a kid you have no ability to care for? Your right to do so but I'm totally for taking it away rather than subsidizing and socially reinforcing your decision. My libertarian switch is immediately flicked off once another person is affected. I don't understand why this general attitude of "do what you want until" is so rare in favor of totally permissive or draconian all the time.

Sure, but much of their criminal activity is spurred by the fact that it is illegal.  Regardless, you should punish them for the crime they commit rather than why they did it. 

I think you also underestimate the number of functional drug users among us.  They are not all junkies looking for their next fix... 

[mahagonny]

Prof Kron, now you've got me going.
Laws don't stop people from using harmful things as long as the numbers of people who want them are sufficient to keep peddlers in business, but public opinion against tobacco, the tobacco magnates, litter in the streets, second hand smoke, smoking in bed/fires and the cost to the public health system from smoking have brought about a drastic reduction in the use of tobacco in the USA. Whereas the harmful effects of marijuana get downplayed, not known or flat out denied, and the drug still gets glorified in popular culture. That's why once in a while you will run into a noisy, informed person like me who says most of us don't know the real story. That's all I'm doing here. No argument about the futility of the war on 'illicit' drugs, nor on classifying them that way.
There's a stigma against speaking ill of cannabis. It's supposed to be something that you 'can handle.' Whereas peer pressure to smoke cigarettes is perhaps 1/10 what it was when I was young.

[marshwiggle]

Regardless, the negative effects of cannabis or any other drugs are a moot point when discussing legalization because the laws don't stop people from using them.  If the goal is to reduce the negative impacts of drugs across society, criminalization is the wrong approach.       

Legalizing cannabis hasn't ended the illegal trade. Part of the argument with legalization is that it would make illicit sales unprofitable. It hasn't.

[dismalist]

Regardless, the negative effects of cannabis or any other drugs are a moot point when discussing legalization because the laws don't stop people from using them.  If the goal is to reduce the negative impacts of drugs across society, criminalization is the wrong approach.       

Legalizing cannabis hasn't ended the illegal trade. Part of the argument with legalization is that it would make illicit sales unprofitable. It hasn't.

The stuff isn't legalized everywhere. It's "decriminalized" in places for carrying personal use quantities. The illegal trade will not stop until all is legalized, including commercial use, not merely restrictively decriminalized.

Depending on the tax rate. :-)

[Kron3007]

Prof Kron, now you've got me going.
Laws don't stop people from using harmful things as long as the numbers of people who want them are sufficient to keep peddlers in business, but public opinion against tobacco, the tobacco magnates, litter in the streets, second hand smoke, smoking in bed/fires and the cost to the public health system from smoking have brought about a drastic reduction in the use of tobacco in the USA. Whereas the harmful effects of marijuana get downplayed, not known or flat out denied, and the drug still gets glorified in popular culture. That's why once in a while you will run into a noisy, informed person like me who says most of us don't know the real story. That's all I'm doing here. No argument about the futility of the war on 'illicit' drugs, nor on classifying them that way.
There's a stigma against speaking ill of cannabis. It's supposed to be something that you 'can handle.' Whereas peer pressure to smoke cigarettes is perhaps 1/10 what it was when I was young.

Yes, publicity campaigns have curbed tobacco use.  Since legalization in Canada, I have seen more of that for Cannabis as well (espacially targeted at youth) and cannabis use among teens is down here following legalization, so it seems that making cannabis illegal did not reduce teen use.  You are basically supporting my point, that using our limited resources on education, treatment, etc. is more effective than criminalization.

When I was young, they used the reefer madness approach to drug education.  I feel this backfires as once it becomes evident that many of their "facts" were not valid, it makes their whole pitch suspect. 

I agree that the glorification of cannabis in pop culture is problematic, but I also feel that our cultural love of alcohol is worse.  This is in pop culture, but also in social interactions.  You are often a pariah if you dont drink.  I had a friend when I was younger that once told me to never trust a man that dosn't drink...and yes, he is essentially an alcoholic now.

[Kron3007]

Regardless, the negative effects of cannabis or any other drugs are a moot point when discussing legalization because the laws don't stop people from using them.  If the goal is to reduce the negative impacts of drugs across society, criminalization is the wrong approach.       

Legalizing cannabis hasn't ended the illegal trade. Part of the argument with legalization is that it would make illicit sales unprofitable. It hasn't.

Yes, they were naive to think it would vanish but I think it is about half of the market now where it used to be all of the market.  So, legalization has cut about half the funds from the black market.  It is also worth noting that this has only been a couple years.  Do you think bootleggers vanished immediately following prohibition of alcohol?  I suspect they slowly vanished as the legal market developed.  This is what I suspect will happen with cannabis.

[Kron3007]

Regardless, the negative effects of cannabis or any other drugs are a moot point when discussing legalization because the laws don't stop people from using them.  If the goal is to reduce the negative impacts of drugs across society, criminalization is the wrong approach.       

Legalizing cannabis hasn't ended the illegal trade. Part of the argument with legalization is that it would make illicit sales unprofitable. It hasn't.

Yes, they were naive to think it would vanish but I think it is about half of the market now where it used to be all of the market.  So, legalization has cut about half the funds from the black market and organized crime.  It is also worth noting that this has only been a couple years.  Do you think bootleggers vanished immediately following prohibition of alcohol?  I suspect they slowly vanished as the legal market developed.  This is what I suspect will happen with cannabis.

[financeguy]

I'm fairly libertarian on almost everything, including drug legalization. That said, I recognize that many drug users can not/will not be helped and will never stop the criminal behavior associated with their use until incarcerated or dead. You can not reason with someone who has specifically taken a substance to remove reason and enter an alternate reality. The fact that we continue to try to do so rather than locking them up once criminal behavior begins leads me to believe we are crazier than most on the substances. My general rule of thumb is pretty clear: Do whatever you want with your life unless and until if intrudes on mine, at which point I'm willing to be as aggressive as possible in preventing your ability to do so.

This is very similar to my stance on single motherhood or anything else where irresponsible behavior affects another person. Want to get knocked up by unemployed face tattoo guy who leaves and pop out a kid you have no ability to care for? Your right to do so but I'm totally for taking it away rather than subsidizing and socially reinforcing your decision. My libertarian switch is immediately flicked off once another person is affected. I don't understand why this general attitude of "do what you want until" is so rare in favor of totally permissive or draconian all the time.

Sure, but much of their criminal activity is spurred by the fact that it is illegal.  Regardless, you should punish them for the crime they commit rather than why they did it. 

I think you also underestimate the number of functional drug users among us.  They are not all junkies looking for their next fix...

The "why they did it" only matters to me to the extent that it indicates continued activity. Someone who is doing whatever they are doing while on drugs is not particularly likely to cease the underlying cause. I'm not primarily trying to punish, I'm primarily trying to segregate from myself and others who know how to behave. A guy who kills his wife and best friend after walking in on them is not likely to do that same thing again but someone with 15 DUIs is highly likely to get to number 16. Even though the former crime is more "severe" I am personally more likely to advocate strong punishment for the latter due to the likelihood of a repeat harming myself or others.

A hypothetical world where someone gets 5 years for the double murder and and 10 years for their 15th DUI is not crazy at all to me. The driver has proven that he will not stop. Why is he even able to get to number 15? If you think this is a facetious statement or pure hyperbole, it is not. There are no shortage of recipients of double digit DUI convictions or double digit drug related convictions beyond simple possession of the substance itself. These people don't tend to "get the point" after the first, second or tenth time. That's why I want the key thrown away, not because I have some prudish obsession with drugs. They are literally way more dangerous to society based on their likelihood to harm in the future than a murderer, a crime with a surprisingly low recidivism rate.

I also oppose public benefits of any kind for drug users. Again, I don't care if you want to use drugs, but if you can afford them, you don't need my money. Same with anyone who has a tattoo. Regardless of how much you "like" or "dislike" these things, they are discretionary purchases. The fact that most losers on the dole have multiple substances of choice and a body art collection resembling a tagged freeway underpass infuriates the rest of us more than imagined. We don't care if someone wants the take meth and have someone tat the spider web on their elbow but we don't want to pay for it. A lot of animosity toward drug users comes down to this aspect. Don't get in a car, don't care for a child while high, get off the dole and suddenly people aren't as concerned that you want to use.