Wahoo drugs!

Reason's Radley Balko has an article that got me worked up about drugs again. His article brings up the point that there are many people out there who are against drugs, to be against drugs. They're not rallying against drugs because fighting them will make life as a whole easier from people no all sides, but rather they're fighting drugs, because they are inherently wrong. I get worked up over this stuff because I can be single with no family, sitting home alone, put something in my mouth, and I become a criminal. I can be locked in a cement box for wanting to put things that I grow / buy in my mouth.

Now, let's get this out of the way, I personally do not take recreational drugs. That is, unless you count drowning your brain in alcohol as ingesting a conciousness altering substance. Well, er, I guess by definition alcohol is just that isn't it? Well, at least it's not like you can kill yourself or others while under the effects of drugs right? Ooh, right. You can. Shit. Well, I maintain my high horse position because, well, "Drugs are bad, mmkay!" (thank you Mr. Mackey).

The drug war today has many parallels to the prohibition attempted from 1920-1933 via the 18th Amendment. Proponents of prohibition made the point that alcohol was a detriment to society. The non-desirable effects resonated through all races, classes, and social structures. We are better off banning it to minimize these ill-effects. Once instituted, to the great surprise of everyone, a black market arose. Institutional corruption became a large problem as many authorities were soon bribed by or were complicit in the tacit approval of bootleggers. The black market thrived because a demand will be satiated by someone willing to make a (now quite large) profit. Alcohol related deaths were not uncommon and violence associated with bootleggers was widespread. We repealed the 18th amendment, not because we suddenly found out alcohol was a magical substance that did no harm. Prohibition was dropped because the cure was worse than the disease. Good people just wanted a drink now and then, and were willing to break the law to deal with people willing to indulge them.

If you replace alcohol with drugs and bootlegger with drug-dealer I see only one glaring difference between then and today. In the past the authorities in the U.S. swept across the nation trying to stamp out alcohol use. Today drug-warriors span the globe attempting to push back the tide of drug production and smuggling.

Well why don't you just legalize murder then? Because all people are going to do is run around raping, stealing, and murdering! The law is still the law. Murder is till murder. Theft is still theft. This is not an argument. I'm not afraid of some craze pot smoker running me down. I will grant you that the ill-effects of drugs like crack and meth are devestating not only to the people using, but to their families as well. That argument is bullet-proof because I can honestly think of no other situations in which the way someone lives is detrimental to anyone outside of themselves.

We need to be treating the ill-effects of drug use because that is the true problem. People desire to alter their conciousness. Alcohol and nicotine are exceptions but not because they're intrinsically safe. They're exceptions because we accept them as a society. We all need to get off our high horse and make rational decisions as to what we will and will not accept. With these decisions we must be intelectually consistent across the board, and we must face the reality of the consequences we bring to society.

I think it's a travesty that we have so many non-violent drug offenders behind bars. Supposedly 1 in 100 people are incarcerated in the US. We need to incarcerate the people who we are punishing for doing wrong, and let go those we're just pissed at doing something voluntarily (gambling, drug use, I would argue prostitution as well, but that's another post). Once these people have "paid their debt to society", good luck finding a job, any kind of federally subsidized student loan, or any number of other social benefits to help them turn their life back around.

Let's say you got this far, and you're all like, "But, but, but, the children! We need to protect them!" I can accept that, but what kind of reasoning is there for relatively safe adult drug use? This doctor isn't shitting himself when a father brings in his 19 year old on acid, so why should we as a society, collectively shit our pants when someone wants to do acid? Let's just say it's morally acceptable to strip search a child for ibuprofen randomly drug-test kids just for the sake of drug-testing kids. I will accept that line of thinking as soon as we randomly test anyone holding any public office in the United States. If you don't know why this is not currently the case, you are ridiculously naive.

Thank you for tuning into another episode of, "The wonders of the internet tubes!!1"