Should Prohibition be Abolished?

Wicknight

Wicknight wrote:

At the very least it effects the health service that have to fix him 20 years down the line when he has destroyed his liver, lungs or heart.

Would you approve of banning tobacco and alcohol on that basis? How about high cholesterol foods that can cause heart problems?

Wicknight wrote:

Secondly, people are already told what they can and cannot consume. I cannot market petrol as the new hip drink to 20 something ("Redbull but with a bit extra kick") Despite this rather bizare "down with the nanny state" attitude a lot of people here have, we expect and demand that government health services make sure everything else we consume is safe, from our water to our food, to medicines, simply because we can't and don't want to have to educated ourself on advance chemistry and biology, or put our trust solely in the corporations selling the products. But when it comes to drugs people bizarely say that the "you are on your own" attitude is some how now fine.

This whole argument reminds me of the bit in the Simpsons where Krusty is marketing his home pregency test and it has in small warning letters "May cause birth defects". The idea that something like that would ever get on the market is so laughable that it is used to great comical effect in the Simpsons.

But on the issue of drugs that seems to be exactly how pro-legalisation people think the world of health and safety is run or should be run. It isn't, it is not how society works, and i am pretty sure it is not how you would actually want it to work.

Do you think a resturant should be able to kill you with ecoli posioning so long as they put a little warning on their menus saying "Food may not be safe".

(and btw before anyone says it, I think the current system of selling cigaretts with warning labels is as ridiculous as selling cocaine or E with a warning label)

The government not allowing a firm to market petrol as a hip new drink and the other examples you have given are examples of the government regulation of a market that is failing due to assymetric information. That is, regulation of supply not consumption. In your example the is not ban on drinking petrol but rather on taking advantage of a lack of knowledge on the consumers part to sell them a product which may damage their health unbeknownst to them.

For cannabis the costs of educating people on it's effects would be far, far less than the huge cost society incurs in it's prohibition.

I think in a free society which values personal liberty, people making their own informed choices should be preferred to the state making those choices for them. Do you agree?

Zombrex

Deleted User wrote:

Would you approve of banning tobacco and alcohol on that basis?

Tobacco definatly as it is a substance that has not safe level on ingestion. Alcohol does, and I would be for much stricker licensing laws to limit bing drinking.

Deleted User wrote:

How about high cholesterol foods that can cause heart problems?

This old argument again ... "sure everything is harmful if you take enough of it" .. thats obvious, the point is that food must be sold at a safe level.

For example you cannot put more than the safe level of paracetomol in a tablet. If someone goes out and buys 20 tablets and downs them all in one go, and dies of liver failure, not much you can do about that, just like there isn't much you can do if someone eats a steak a day and dies of bowel cancer aged 50.

But that isn't a justification for turning around and saying there is nothing wrong with putting an unsafe level of the drug in a single tablet. If you tell me the completely safe level of E, cocaine or heroin consumption I would be all for that being legal at that level.

Deleted User wrote:

In your example the is not ban on drinking petrol but rather on taking advantage of a lack of knowledge on the consumers part to sell them a product which may damage their health unbeknownst to them.

No, even if you put a warning label on your drink saying "warning, contains petrol, may cause death" you would still not be able to market and sell it as a drink (ie something to be consumed).

Likewise, even if you put a warning label on your ecstacy tablets saying "warning, may cause serious brain, liver or heart problems" you should still not be able to see it as a legal recreational drug to be eaten. Just like Krusty putting "May cause birth defects" on his pregency test would be a breach of about 30 health and safety laws, hence the humour.

Deleted User wrote:

For cannabis the costs of educating people on it's effects would be far, far less than the huge cost society incurs in it's prohibition.

Says who? The government spends millions each year on alcohol and anti-smoking campaigns, yet the level of teenage smoking and binge drinking continues to rise.

It is ridiculous based on current evidence to suggest that if we legalise something and then tell people its dangerous so don't do it unless you want to harm yourself, people won't do it. The very fact that something is legal is an endorsement from society and the state that it is ok to do.

Deleted User wrote:

I think in a free society which values personal liberty, people making their own informed choices should be preferred to the state making those choices for them. Do you agree?

Where is this "informed choices" bulls**t coming from. People don't make informed choices about alcohol or cigarets. People don't go "ummm, i have considered the science and biology and I think that the risk of heart and liver problems in later life is worth the buzz I will get out of downing these 5 triple vokas" ... it doesn't work like that. I wish it did, for a start no one at all would take up smoking if they actually understood and apprecated what it does to you (or take E or heroin etc).

Wicknight

Wicknight wrote:

No, even if you put a warning label on your drink saying "warning, contains petrol, may cause death" you would still not be able to market and sell it as a drink (ie something to be consumed).

Likewise, even if you put a warning label on your ecstacy tablets saying "warning, may cause serious brain, liver or heart problems" you should still not be able to see it as a legal recreational drug to be eaten. Just like Krusty putting "May cause birth defects" on his pregency test would be a breach of about 30 health and safety laws, hence the humour.

If someone knowing the costs wanted to consume something, being aware of the costs I wouldn't seek to criminalise them for doing so. They should be free to make that decision for themselves.

That petrol product would never come to market without a lack of information on the consumers part.

Wicknight wrote:

Says who? The government spends millions each year on alcohol and anti-smoking campaigns, yet the level of teenage smoking and binge drinking continues to rise.

Yes, the government spends a lot on it but how much would it cost in terms of tax losses, police time, court usage and the prison system to prohibit alcohol and tobacco. The government is always going to have to intervene in that role wheter something is illegal or not anyway

I might draw your attention to this which http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/index.html demonstrates the huge cost of marijuana prohibition in the US . It's supported by many of leading economists in the US.

wicknight wrote:

It is ridiculous based on current evidence to suggest that if we legalise something and then tell people its dangerous so don't do it unless you want to harm yourself, people won't do it.

It's ridiculous based on current evidence to suggest that if we make something illegal people won't use it.

Any way how to minimize drug usage is a related but not the same question as the question of prohibiton prohibition.

wicknight wrote:

The very fact that something is legal is an endorsement from society and the state that it is ok to do.

The fact that something is legal means that you can use it without making a criminal of yourself. Legalistation of something is not the same as society endorsing something.

Wicknight wrote:

Where is this "informed choices" bulls**t coming from. People don't make informed choices about alcohol or cigarets. People don't go "ummm, i have considered the science and biology and I think that the risk of heart and liver problems in later life is worth the buzz I will get out of downing these 5 triple vokas" ... it doesn't work like that. I wish it did, for a start no one at all would take up smoking if they actually understood and apprecated what it does to you (or take E or heroin etc).

I think that they do. People make rational decisions on the margin. They weigh the costs of the usage vs the benefits they'll derive from it. Depending on if that net benefit is positive or negative from that individuals perspective, they'll decide wheter to use it or not. Now this individuals usage of drugs may have an external cost on society as a whole. How would you make them take that into account? The same way the government generally makes people take external costs into account, by internalising the cost on society into that individuals cost i.e. taxation.

People do gain utility from using drugs. Now this benefit may be very difficult to measure and certainly varies between people but it does exist. This difficulty in measuring is why it is best to leave the decision up to the individual, who is best able to make that decision. The goverment should aim to make sure people are capable of making an informed decision as far as possible by being aware of the costs of usage

If you see no benefit and only costs, as coming from the usage of alcohol, for example, then of course there will be no rationale for consuming it.

I think the question of prohibition should be made on a case by case basis rather than trying to throw all drugs into the same basket. The problem is that most people don't analyse the question of prohibition in rational manner and just divide drugs into legal and illegal ones

Uthur

Wicknight wrote:

We expect health and safety departments to protect us from everything from dodgy resturants to unsafe food chemicals. I mean even if Heniz put "these baked beans can cause heart failure" on the side of the package they still would not be allowed sell them. I fail to see why we should just ignore this when it comes to drugs and allow people to sell anything they want no matter how harmful it is.

Even if Heinz beans were very bad for you they should still be allowed to
be sold. If an adult wants to eat an unhealthy food, or do an unhealthy
drug they should be allowed to. The state should force all products to
have warnings on the label though so you know what you're getting, but
if you are over 18 and know the product has risks then that should be your
choice.

Zombrex

Uthur wrote:

The state should force all products to
have warnings on the label though so you know what you're getting, but
if you are over 18 and know the product has risks then that should be your
choice.

So a company should be legally allowed to make a profit out of producing, marketting and selling heroin to adults?

shltter

Wicknight wrote:

So a company should be legally allowed to make a profit out of producing, marketting and selling heroin to adults?

Well companies are allowed to legally make a profit from killing people with tobacco and some of the most "respectable"business and political people have made their money out of selling alcohol to people who sometimes end up as addicts or killing themselves and others while under the influence of the drug that they were legally allowed to consume and that someone made a profit on.


My two cents
we are repeating the mistakes of prohibition of alcohol in the US in the 30s we are making gangsters rich and spending millions of Euros trying to fight a battle that we can never win.
What I would suggest would be to put these drugs on free prescription available to registered addicts
That would deprive the gangsters of their lucrative market and mean that the
future of drug dealing would be very limited as soon as they got someone hooked the person would be able to get the drug free. No money in that for drug dealers
Drug addicts would have no need to steal to fund their habit which accounts for a massive percentage of street crime.
The sexy side of these drugs would be lessened as they would be available from chemists and it would remove part of the sense of danger etc.
We would be putting addicts in touch with the health service and targetting programs to help people off drugs would be easier.

Obviously this is relation to "harder drugs" cannabis should just be legalised straight away and regulated similar to tobacco and alcohol

Zombrex

shltter wrote:

Well companies are allowed to legally make a profit from killing people with tobacco

That doesn't make it right ...

shltter wrote:

What I would suggest would be to put these drugs on free prescription available to registered addicts

There would still exist a market for people who aren't addicts yet. Would the people using E or cocaine on a night out be able to get a free prescription for recreational use on a Friday or Saturday night?

Victor

I wonder what one does with the (legalised) crack cocaine addicts*, do you lock them up? Surely a breach of civil rights?

Like the two guys who stabbed all the people on South Circular Road. While I realise they were probably looking for money for drugs, that wasn't their only motivation.

rubadub

Wicknight wrote:

you cannot put more than the safe level of paracetomol in a tablet. If someone goes out and buys 20 tablets and downs them all in one go, and dies of liver failure, not much you can do about that, just like there isn't much you can do if someone eats a steak a day and dies of bowel cancer aged 50.

But that isn't a justification for turning around and saying there is nothing wrong with putting an unsafe level of the drug in a single tablet. If you tell me the completely safe level of E, cocaine or heroin consumption I would be all for that being legal at that level.

Well doctors administered mdma in tablets up until the mid 80's I presume these were a "safe dose", there are millions of mdma users and very few deaths from it, if paracetomol was put up for review today it would not be an OTC drug, there are many allergic reactions to OTC drugs resulting in deaths. Heroin is still administered in many countries too, presumably in safe doses.

Wicknight wrote:

So a company should be legally allowed to make a profit out of producing, marketting and selling heroin to adults?

If you look at the criteria used in selecting which drugs should be legal and compare it to currently legal drugs, then yes, a company should be legally allowed to sell heroin. I am not saying it is morally right, but it is legally hypocritical to prohibit its sale.

Victor

rubadub wrote:

Heroin is still administered in many countries too, presumably in safe doses.

As morphine (similar but not the same) and similar, I suspect not heroin itself.

rubadub

Victor wrote:

As morphine (similar but not the same) and similar, I suspect not heroin itself.

No, I mean heroin itself, AKA heroine, diacetylmorphine, diamorphine, acetomorphine. There are doctors in the UK addicted to it who prescribe it to themselves, they also lead normal lives as they are using standard doses of a pharmacuetically pure substance, just as many doctors are hooked on nicotine and are fully functional.

Zombrex

rubadub wrote:

No, I mean heroin itself, AKA heroine, diacetylmorphine, diamorphine, acetomorphine. There are doctors in the UK addicted to it who prescribe it to themselves, they also lead normal lives as they are using standard doses of a pharmacuetically pure substance, just as many doctors are hooked on nicotine and are fully functional.

The only use of perscribed diacetylmorphine substances is to heroin addicts to help with withdrawl. It hasn't been used as a pain killer in the UK for 50 years as far as I know. It might be a case the doctors in the UK perscribe themselves these withdrawl remedies but it would be similar to having a heroin addiction I would love to know how you define "fully functional"