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I read this article the other day by a top Harvard economist stating his case for legalizing drugs. I have heard parts of this before from more fringe elements for years but this is the first time I have heard it this coherently from anyone with more than just complaints about not being able to make hemp clothing to back the argument.

I have been something of a proponent for a while just because I believe in personal responsibility rather than government oversight. The economics in this article just seem to provide a bonus to me though.

For the record, I am a bit weird on this issue as I have never so much as experimented with any drugs at all, not even a single hit off a joint. Never even tried cigarettes, for that matter. So this is not some crusade on my part to legalize what I am already doing.

I can say that I am not for it. I know people who are advocates of legalizing marijuana but I am not one of them. I feel that it would just be one more thing to worry about on the street and just cause more people to be impaired and not fully coherent.

A few thoughts:

Making something illegal does not mean that it goes away. Alcohol was illegal in the US at one point, abortion has been controlled by laws over millenia, prostitution is illegal in most parts of the world, cheating on your taxes is illegal, murder is illegal, and in some places playing your music too loud is illegal. However, people still get drunk, have abortions, buy sex, don't pay their taxes, kill people, and play Stravinski concertos too loudly. (Some people even do all of the above!) Laws are created to guide behavior by imposing penalties if you don't comply. If you kill someone, you'll go meet a large guy named Beaufort and become his bunkmate in the Big House. If you play Stravinski too loudly, a SWAT team will bust down your door, jack up your family, and rudely unplug your stereo.

The question is; Are there other ways to encourage certain behaviors without criminalizing a lot of people? Sure. We've decided not to criminalize mothers for having an abortion, but instead criminalize the doctor. We don't criminalize kids for purchasing cigarettes, but do criminalize the cashier for selling them. We generally don't arrest people for buying sex, but we regularly arrest prostitutes for providing it. In all these cases, we don't criminalize the persons that are creating the demand in the first place, but we do criminalize and penalize those that are trying to be good business persons and meet an obvious demand.

How is the drug "problem" different? You can't be arrested for possessing alcohol, but you can be arrested for possessing drugs. Alcohol is in itself a drug, can produce anti-social behaviors, but possession and moderate use are not criminalized. Crack cocaine is a drug that produces anti-social behaviors, but possession and moderate use are criminalized. Why the difference? Should we perhaps modify our drug laws to reflect those used for alcohol? In other words, distribution of drugs or alcohol to minors would be criminalized. Anti-social behaviors caused by excessive use of drugs or alcohol (crash you car, beat someone up, rob someone while under the influence, etc) would be criminalized, but not possession or moderate use.

I'm not advocating the above. In fact, I voted "no" on the poll above. I do believe, however, that our current laws regarding drug use are not working because they have not successfully modified the behaviors of drug users. I think that we need to do a major re-evaluation of our drug policies and see if there is a better alternative.

Please note something I did not make clear in my original post. I am not advocating for complete deregulation of all drugs and corner shops where you can go get heroin or cocaine for your upcoming party. I am also not advocating a reduction in education where the subject of drugs is concerned.

What I am advocating is a change in the current drug laws that drive the drug trade underground.

Just to complicate things, I'm going to bring up two points. First, I read the Miron article. Here's what I wanted to bring up.

One, I lived, for several years, in a county in North Carolina that was renowned for years for the quality of it's...ahem...moonshine. Illegally produced and sold alcohol. The business still exists-admittedly without much violence associated with it-and succeeds because the alcohol can be sold more cheaply because no taxes are being paid on it. Perhaps not relevant except for point two. Cigarettes. How many cartons of cigarettes leave North Carolina, a major tobacco producing state, and wind up in New York-or anywhere with high taxes on them-I don't know for sure but retailers that sell large quantities and are near interstates leading north do an amazing business. I remember one in particular where I lived in whose parking lot could be seen license plates from virtually every state east of the Mississippi along with four or five Canadian provinces. The cigarette smuggling business has for a long time been known to be a source of organized crime revenue-which does have a certain element of violence to it.

The reason I mention these is that I've heard the "good tax revenue" argument for legalizing drugs since I was in college in the 1960s and it seems that were we to legalize drugs they would inevitably be taxed-the government couldn't resist that temptation-thus creating a motive for illicit production and distribution-which would, of course, be illegal-thus creating crime and it's associated violence. Not a statement of morality here, just a couple things to consider.

Not sure I'm ready to vote up or down on this one ,.. for me anyway, we need to at least address the issue of what drugs we're talking about. Marijuana and heroin, for instance, I would deal with differently. As I would, say, psilocybin mushrooms and crystal meth.

As to whether removing the legal barrier to possession/comsumption of "drugs" would be beneficial to society ... I guess it would depend on the execution of it. If we thought the individual States would be circumspect, consistent and Solomonic in their dispostion of legal issues that did arise--it would be interesting to be in court the day they were hearing DWT (Driving While Tripping) cases--I can definitely see the potential benefits of removing the back-alley and/or cartel aspects from the equation.

On the other hand ... best intentions aside, I can also see the potential for simply replacing one social "ill" with a host of unintended new ones. Like just for instance, the likelihood of a new outbreak of lung cancer in a few years after several million people who don't do cigarettes suddenly discover the joys of inhaling, and the skyrocketing price of Doritos.

How involved should the government be in our individual liberties? I mean, I like to feel protected, but I believe it was Jefferson who said that he who will trade his liberty for his security deserves neither.

Mixed feelings. Individual liberty is great, but in my opinion your rights to them end where it puts the lives of my loved ones in danger. Question is, why do we treat alcohol and 'other' drugs differently? I don't really get the distinction between weed and alcohol personally, although I don't smoke it. On the other hand, highly addictive or dangerous drugs I think may be somewhat more 'inherently' dangerous and deserve to be treated differently from a legal standpoint. Btw Om, crystal meth is bad bad stuff - I think you may have meant something else? In Hawaii, it was a huge problem, probably as bad as crack addiction is in some places...

I think maybe what I was saying there wasn't well articulated. I was suggesting crystal meth is really bad. I chose the shrooms by comparison under the (admittedly controversial) premise that as a naturally occurring substance, not unlike marijuana, to me seems a far less "serious" and/or harmful "drug."

That and I was once in a room where some people knew some other people who had once tried them and lived to tell about it.

Not only that, but he was smoking a blunt when he said it.

Well ... that's what I heard anyway.

Agree with your premise, based on what I've *cough* been told *cough*

I think, like most things in life, there are hierarchies in terms of potential harm. I don't want truly horrible drugs like meth, crack, heroin available to any one, any time, any where. I don't think its got a whole lot to do with 'freedom'. No one ever died from taking a bong hit - or at least not that I'm aware of - you can't say that about many others.

Om and Boone-the direction you guys have taken makes it very hard for me to stay intellectual and clinically "distant" like I try to do so much when thinking about a subject under discussion.

Why?

Because I had friends who died from a couple of the drugs you mentioned. One from meth, three from crack-people I had known well enough to call friends-so it's kind of hard not feeling angry-very angry after watching people you know spiral into a life of wretched conditions, doing things that you know would never have entered their minds when they were themselves and not the creatures they became.

I learned a lot, too. I learned that the power of some of these-like crack and meth especially-is so absolutely overpowering that they render people incapable of doing anything that doesn't relate to filling that addiction-no matter how horrific or degrading. My gut-level, personal, non-intellectual reaction is to say dear God NO!-don't let these hideous substances be available anywhere for anyone at anytime. What they do is like a human Chernobyl.

And then, because I just don't like the feeling of being angry-especially when it is accompanied by a feeling of futility, I let reality soak back in, try to realize the situation is complex enough for simple answers not to suffice-and go on.

This debate is one I've tried to keep, internally, on as intellectual a level as possible so as to keep a realistic perspective-one of "What, if anything, can actually be done-or should be done". Pretty much though, I'm leaving this one for others to decide-it gets too personal for me to trust my judgement. This is why I was kind of peripheral in my initial post on this thread-not too close.

I remember Bill, Jennifer, Brian, and Les when it gets too close.

And then I get angry again.


Sorry if this is too maudlin but I had to let it out-it goes away faster that way.

Serv,

Absolutely no apology necessary. I share your feelings, and I too have watched dear friends spiral downward into drug addiction. In my cases, only one was to what I consider a "hard" drug, LSD. In his case, it was more a matter of watching the person I knew die, to be replaced by one in which I could not recognize my friend. He literally became a different person. Scared and depressed me back then, still does to this day.

As I suspect you could tell from my initial post, I do draw a very clear distinction between such as marijuana and crystal meth. The former I view as no less harmful or addictive than booze or cigarettes (in fact, based on watching other friends suffer the effects of alcohol and nicotene addiction, I find it less harmful). The latter I find scary ... and when I'm not being intentionally lighthearted about it, the fact people are out there this minute manufacturing the stuff knowing full well its effect pisses me off something awful.

It's not much fun, but it's probably good it makes us angry. If it makes enough of us angry enough, perhaps we'll all take the first halting steps toward making it a cause celebre. The kind the "right people" find it irresistible to get involved in.

I can't say anything more than brother Om on the subject, and certainly can't put it as eloquently as you serv...I've had a couple good friends die, not from drugs themselves, but because of being in places they wouldn't ordinarily have been because of their drug-centered lives. Probably closer to home are a couple of high school and college buddies who, at least from my external perspective, became entirely different people as a result of drugs - especially a couple of them who did a lot of acid. Just watching them change before my eyes was enough, even for someone fairly adventurous as I was, stay as far away from that as I could.

I can certainly understand your difficulty in maintaining a cold, clinical viewpoint.

I'm just wondering where does it stop? alcohol was illegal so they ended up legalizing it to try and control it better. Weed is illegal and now we are at the point of talking about legalizing it. What's next? Where does it end?