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General Principles for Controlling Substances
Yesterday, Fred Cole challenged members who support the prohibition of at least some drugs to describe the first principles they use to come to their conclusions. That thread got pretty contentious, so I thought I’d start a second one answering his question.
Below you will find what I believe to be an excellent starting point for a general guiding principle related to making some drugs illegal. Before you read that, some guidelines and definitions.
By “drug”, I mean any of those substances commonly used recreationally. This includes, but is not limited to, alcohol and tobacco, as well as those substances more generally considered “drugs,” such as meth, heroine, cocaine, etc. That’s generally what we are all discussing, so there’s no need to ask question like “Oh yeah, well what about caffeine?”
By “make illegal” I mean control. By control I mean “make regulations at any level of government that specify how the substance is used, dispensed, manufactured, etc.”
By “general principle,” I mean a guiding rationale, that generally can be used as the basis for a decision, but may not be in some cases due to the specific nature of those cases.
My general principle is as follows:
There are some substances that ,when used in any quantity, render a person completely unable to function in society. Those substances should be carefully controlled. You should not be able to get those things over the counter. I would suggest that marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol are not in this group. I would further suggest that the drugs that do fit in this group should be determined by experts, such as pharmacists, medical doctors, drug and alcohol counselors, as well as recovered addicts.
My rationale is this: the use of these drugs causes undue burdens on society. Prolonged use makes it worse. Since “we” have to take care of people who use these drugs, “we” are justified — in a free society — in controlling the drugs, and taking appropriate action against those people. We can do so and still call our society free.
So, agree or disagree?
Published in General
May we go back to Spin’s “burden on society” rather than “resource of state”?
There already is.
As I’ve said, I am not sure which drugs fit into the controlled category and which do not. I would leave that to experts, so long as they used my guiding principle in making the decision.
I am fine with this change to the language, as that is what I mean.
Okay, so if you take a medical point of view, with regards to harmfulness, it breaks out like this:
That’s based on a study published in Lancet.
The problem with turning it over to a party of “experts” is that those experts will be subject to political pressures. Then you’ll end up with a drug control policy that has nothing to do with medical evidence, and instead is driven by fear mongering, moral panics, and politics.
Which is exactly what we have now.
Um, sure. I mean that there’s no interference on the part of the government between willing adult sellers and willing adult buyers. As to specifics, who sells what and where, I’d let the free market decide that.
According to your own definition:
I asked specifically about cocaine and amphetamines because, not only do they not render a person unable to functions, you could reasonable make the case that they enhance functioning.
As we all know he right to get stoned isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Bill of Rights. Was that an oversight on the part of our founders?
Cute, but not an argument in itself, since they also believed in unenumerated rights (which are mentioned, but not named, in the Bill of Rights).
While it’s possible to argue that the Founders would have never considered the “right” to a mentally-altered state as one of those unenumerated rights, the fact that other unenumerated rights – particularly economic rights – have been so grievously trampled on is a real calamity. So this joke is not a particularly funny one, at least not to me.
Did I miss the part of the Constitution that empower the feds to outlaw drugs?
It wasn’t intended as a joke. I support anti-drug laws, in general anyway. I am alarmed at the trampling of our real rights, enumerated and unenumerated. When peopled elevate the right to get stoned to the same level as those rights, I feel they have misplaced priorities.
I tend to support drug law at the state level. The federal “War on Drugs” is alarming, especially the asset forfeiture.
Be honest, this is a debate about how much ‘nannying’ adult citizens should be subjected to in a free society, and pawning it off on ‘societal functionality’ is a cop out. Either we are each responsible for our own choices, or not. There are any number of personal choices that one nanny or another might deem ‘harmful to society’. (In Wisconsin, it seems, supporting conservatism is one… )
Just get over trying to tell everyone what choices they get to make, and which ones you want made for them, and get on with accepting freedom means some will make choices you don’t approve of!
That said, I’m all for letting those who make poor choices live with the result.
I prefer to live in a society where crack cocaine is illegal and Cabernet is not. Drug laws should be decided by common sense, not some high concept such as rights.
That said, I agree with Fred that federal drug laws are unconstitutional.
What irritates me is when people believe the desire to take care of our bodies as we wish is only ever cover for the desire to get stoned. No, I don’t think there’s a specific “right” to get stoned. But a right to determine how we care for our bodies? Yes.
You can argue there’s no way to defend a right to determine our own bodily care that doesn’t also provide cover for druggies, too. That may, in fact, be the case.
Then you can argue that druggies are so very awful that the rest of us square types should be willing to forfeit our right to access certain resources for bodily care, and just shut up and suffer. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Great, you have that right. ( see what I did there? ) The fact is that your opinion of anyone’s ‘priorities’ for what rights they want to enjoy is just that, your opinion. You are welcome to it. The question is, should the force of law be used to enforce your opinions upon those who don’t agree?
The ‘right to get stoned’ is not the issue, the right to make my own choices is. It is about who is in charge of my choices, me, you, the state?
The same arguments against the ‘right to get stoned’ can be made by vegetarians against the right to eat meat, or by environmentalists against the right to drive a hemi, etc, etc. Individual freedom is exactly that- an individual choice, and part of enjoying individual freedom is accepting that all the REST of us have our own freedom, even when, especially when, their choices don’t match yours.
You point out a very important distinction that needs to made, and that’s the beauty of our federalist system. We should let the states make the important distinctions based on common sense instead of a blanket concept.
BTW, I think the food and drug administration is an abomination and should be shut down. At a minimum, it’s rulings should be non-binding.
And I prefer to live in a society where random others don’t get to make those kinds of value choices for me.
All your arguments against whatever drug you want to oppose were used to justify prohibition of Cabernet not so long ago. And not without the same level of truth. Alcohol ruins many lives- so why is that OK with you? Bad for society. addictive. Drunk Drivers. And what about the children!?!?
If federal drug laws were to be repealed, that would make it possible for one of our 50 states to legalize crack cocaine. You’d be free to move to that state, and I wouldn’t have to. We both get what we want. What do you think?
Then vote that way damnit!
I also support federalism, and while I would still support individual freedoms in my state/local politics, I can accept that it may not go my way. Clearly, that is exactly what the founders intended. However, there must be limits, as the war between the states illustrated. How many individual freedoms are you willing to allow the state/local government to usurp? Just the lowlife druggie’s choices?
There are limits on the power of the local governments to trample on individual rights. Just because you disdain the use of certain ‘drugs’ as not worthy of definition as a ‘right’, you should be very careful letting the government wield that kind of power over individual rights/choices. It starts with crack, then moves to Cabernet, and eventually to diet, hemi’s, etc. Be it federal or local, tyranny is still tyranny.
Huh? In what way did I not?
OK, so the only law on your books is “Must be 18” (or 21 or some such number). So that’s pretty legal.
Now I think you would agree that current illegality does little to deter drug use and that, for the most part, it simply raises the cost of business.
Assuming you do agree, would you also agree that beneath this layer of illegality we have essentially a free market? That is, there is no regulation, taxation, etc. Buyers and sellers transact freely.
Very happy to agree to that. Would agree also that the DEA should be shut down.
As to where things go from there… well, even getting there would be a huge victory. People can cooperate even if their ultimate goals aren’t identical.
Somehow all these arguments about legalization/decriminalization seem to assume that without the grand government prohibition, half the population would be addicted to heroin and crack…
I don’t choose to use those substances, but that choice is not because the government tells me not to! For a conservative site, there seem to be a lot who don’t really deep down believe that an individual left to make his own choices will make the ‘right’ choices. That isn’t conservatism! Conservatism starts with the assumption that ONLY the individual can make the right choices for himself, not any central, one size fits all authority.
Come on, fellow conservatives, lets have a little faith in individual freedom!
So … other than all the stuff that makes it unfree … we have a free market?
The rate of people being prescribed medication for ADD has been increasing steadily for many years now.
Not to mention lobbying from business interests which can make more money from some substances than from others, just like how the “Food Pyramid” has long been influenced by competing agricultural lobbies.
State and local authorities engage in asset forfeiture just as much (if not more) as the feds.
They work together on it. Even in states where it’s outlawed.
Other than it being illegal, it operates freely. True or false? And why?