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RandalCousins

Listed below are comments made by RandalCousins between Monday, 4th August 2008 and Wednesday, 13th August 2008.

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The war on drugs 2:05pm on 13 Aug 2008 Can't post the links - try searching on:

Transnational Institute WHO: Cocaine Project

and:

Report paints picture of global use of cocaine

for the BMJ report on the Briefing Paper before the full report was suppressed by the US
The war on drugs 1:35pm on 13 Aug 2008 If anyone has any doubts about the malign impact of the US on attempts to return to rational drugs policies, by the way, one useful bit of history to research concerns the largest global study on cocaine use ever undertaken - by the WHO in 1992-5.

We can't read the report, because it was suppressed under pressure from the US, whose representative explicitly threatened to withdraw funding from WHO projects if it were published:

"Almost as soon as the Briefing Kit started to circulate in the UN corridors, USA officials used their full weight to prevent the release of the study. "The United States government has been surprised to note that the package seemed to make a case for the positive uses of cocaine," was the response of Neil Boyer, the USA's representative to the 48th meeting of the World Health Assembly in Geneva. He said that the WHO programme on substance abuse was "headed in the wrong direction" and "undermined the efforts of the international community to stamp out the illegal cultivation and production of coca". He denounced "evidence of WHO's support for harmreduction programmes and previous WHO association with organizations that supported the legalization of drugs." Then came a clear threat: "If WHO activities relating to drugs fail to reinforce proven drug-control approaches, funds for the relevant programs should be curtailed"."

The Briefing Kit is quoted as having included the following:

" The conclusions strongly conflicted with accepted paradigms, for example "that occasional cocaine use does not typically lead to severe or even minor physical or social problems ... a minority of people start using cocaine or related products, use casually for a short or long period, and suffer little or no negative consequences, even after years of use. ... Use of coca leaves appears to have no negative health effects and has positive, therapeutic, sacred and social functions for indigenous Andean populations." The largest future issue, according to the study, was whether the world "will continue to focus on supply reduction approaches such as crop destruction and substitution and law enforcement efforts in the face of mounting criticism and cynicism about the effectiveness of these approaches. ... There needs to be more assessment of the adverse effects of current policies and strategies and development of innovative approaches. … Current national and local approaches which over-emphasize punitive drug control measures may actually contribute to the development of health-related problems.""

Is it any wonder, really, that there is such popular misunderstanding of the drugs issue (as exhibited by many contributors here), when our governments actively suppress the release of information that is politically inconvenient to them on the issue? Does anybody actually believe that this kind of activity is remotely appropriate for a supposedly democratic government? Doesn't matter what you think, really, because the US government doesn't care, and they've made sure you can't see the report to make up your own mind.

I'll post the source link for the above quotes in the next reply, in case anyone is interested in following this up.
The war on drugs 12:30pm on 13 Aug 2008 Jonathan:

The issue of second hand smoke is a legitimate one for collective action.

As for the idea that after we return to our former position when possession and use of drugs was legal, there will be lots of unemployed criminals - well, that's true. What will those people do?

The answer, I suppose, is it depends who you are talking about. The vast majority are low level dealers who make a bit of money on the side selling to their friends. Those peple won't be able to continue in the long run with drugs available over the counter in high street licensed outlets, if only because the criminal networks that presently supply them will dry up. The low level dealers are not criminals in any sense other than that they breach the prohibition laws, and they will just find other things to do with their time.

Then there are the higher level organiesd crime types. Some of them might well turn to other kinds of crime , but it will be much less profitable and/or much more risky (or they'd be doing it already instead of dealing drugs). In the end, the result will be a dramatic drop in the wealth in the hands of organised crime. Personally, I think that would be a good thing, but perhaps your view differs?

Laws should not be used to "set an example" or to "send a message". Doing so is an abuse of the whole concept of law, and ultimately discredits it. The law is (or should be) about protecting people's rights.

To say, as you do, that: "Whether being tough on drugs "works" or not is irrelevant" suggests confusion. The reason such a statement would be correct if it were made concerning, say, robbery, rape or murder is that those activities are wrong regardless of the law and regardless of the opinion of the person engaging in the activity or anybody else. The same is not true of recreational drug use, per se. The latter might or might not be stupid, harmful to the user, or unproductive for society, but what it certainly does not do is breach any other person's legitimate rights.

Unless you are claiming some kind of religious revelation as justification for declaring recreational drug use to be inherently "wrong", and also claiming the right to impose the consequences of said revelation upon everyone else, then the one and only potential argument you have for prohibition is the utilitarian one. And in that case the question of whether or not prohibition "works" is absolutely fundamental to your argument.

It doesn't work, and the cost/benefit balance lies massively in favour of relegalisation.

Finally you try to turn round the point that alcohol and tobacco are legal by effectively arguing that they are only legal for historical reasons. Are you unaware that the US did prohibit alcohol and paid a catastrophic price from which their society still has not recovered? The same kind of price is being paid by us now for prohibition of other drugs. Alcohol and tobacco are legal today because their use was fortunately too widespread for the prohibitionists to prohibit it in this country, particularly in the light of the disastrous US example. Heroin and opium were legal in this country, but were sufficiently little used that the prohibitionist could get away politically with their damaging programme, and whilst their prohibition has been in place we've seen massive growth in the use of these drugs, and an even greater increase in the harm done as a result of said use.

The point has been made above that tobacco use is in decline despite it being legal. Drugs use cannot be eliminated by making it illegal, and nor will making it legal again "add another drug to the list of problems".
The war on drugs 5:26pm on 12 Aug 2008 The Mao precedent is one that authoritarian types often come out with to argue for harshly repressive (murderous, actually) "solutions" to the issue of recreational drugs use.

It's tricky mostly because nobody really knows what happened (unless, like one or two people posting here, you choose to pretend you believe Communist regime pronouncements for the purpose of your particular argument of the moment, when almost certainly those pretending such would never dream of doing so in any other context).

It's likely Mao's policies did reduce drugs use dramatically, and drove what remained underground, at the cost of killing a lot of people. It almost certainly did not eliminate it, because experience shows that even in the most rigidly controlled environments - prisons - drug use can still flourish. So long as human beings control the implementation of any prohibition policy, and those who wish to use drugs are willing to buy, corruption and incompetence mean there will always be a supply. More repression simply drives up the price and therefore the incentives to supply and the amounts of money available to corrupt those charged with implementing the policy.

It's also likely there would have been a drop in drugs use in China at that time anyway, as the country emerged from a terrible period of war and civil war into the probably welcome stability and relative order of totalitarian dictatorship.

There's no reason to suppose drugs use ever disappeared, though, and as you point out it is certainly present in China today.
The war on drugs 2:25pm on 12 Aug 2008 bonitagringuita: "why does so much talk about drugs seem to suggest that a large number of drug users are addicts, when in fact a very small minority are?"

Because popular understanding and knowledge of the drugs issue has been clouded for decades by disinformation and propaganda - not just by our government (with our own tax money, by the way), but also by those who wish to glamourise, justify, or exaggerate their own or others' recreational drugs use.

The idea of being a helpless addict suits those who wish to justify their own recreational or escapist use of drugs, or their resort to criminal activity to fund said recreation. Much better to claim to be a victim of an evil drug than to admit to being an abuser of oneself or others.

The idea that drugs somehow magically take away the willpower of any who touch them suits those who wish to impose prohibition, by allowing them to pretend it's not an issue of individual responsibility but one of social protection. Drugs are supposedly just too dangerous for us to be allowed to choose for ourselves (despite the evidence that heroin and opium were freely available in Britain before prohibition was imposed and society not only didn't collapse but in fact was unusually well ordered by global and historical standards).

The salaries and budgets of countless government or charity employees depend intimately upon the idea that recreational drugs use is addiction rather than choice, and further that it is a medical issue rather than one of individual responsibility.

None of which is to say that there aren't individuals who are genuinely addicted, or for whom medical treatment is appropriate as a result of their drug use. Merely to point out that an awful lot of people have a direct interest in exaggerating the nature of addiction and its prevalence. And there has been an awful lot of said exaggeration.
The war on drugs 2:06pm on 12 Aug 2008 captainkirk88: "Hard drugs" are not "a different story altogether". Alcohol is a "hard drug" by any sensible assessment, not a "soft drug".

Any and all recreational drugs should be legal to use under reasonably controlled (licensed) circumstances that restrict legal sale to adults only and raise money through taxation to pay for costs incurred as a result of recreational drugs use (medical and other social costs, etc). Honest information about the potential consequences should be widely available and the products should be clearly, honestly and accurately identified.

We as a society should then recognise that the choice by a notionally informed adult to use a recreational drug and risk the consequences is one any adult is free to take, just as adults are free to take up any other risky recreational activity. Responsibility for any and all consequences rests with the individual who chooses to use the drug, and not in any degree with the government or anyone else. However, that individual is as entitled to take advantage of socialised healthcare as any of the rest of us are if we suffer through our recreational activity - at least once recreational drugs are re-legalised, the drugs users themselves will be paying for their share of that healthcare, instead of the rest of us paying for it as is the case under prohibition.
The war on drugs 1:40pm on 12 Aug 2008 The comment above from "UKIntel" is an interesting one. "UKIntel" comes across as right wing/authoritarian in this post, but in another post on the "Celebrating the Knife" thread he (I make an assumption here, obviously) shows evidence of some understanding of individual rights and the distinction between legality and morality, when he talks about the right to self defence. This would suggest he falls into the right wing/liberal camp (which is the one I share, as it happens).

It's not clear whether in his post on this thread he is using "liberal" in the incorrect US political sense (meaning leftist) or in the correct sense of meaning respecting genuine individual rights (freedom of speech, movement, association, property, self defence - not equality, respect, wealth and all those leftist pretend "rights").

Now why would a person who understands the importance of genuine individual rights fail to extend that understanding to the drugs situation in the way "UKIntel" does on this thread? Why does he lurch from referring with apparent comprehension to the kinds of constitutional protection the UK and US liberal tradition has insisted upon to protect individuals from tyranny, to an absurdly authoritarian state-worshipping idea of the state executing individuals for engaging in a proscribed recreational activity, or for supplying others with the materials to do so. Then there's his strange idea, in the face of all our knowledge of history, that the pronouncements of the Chinese Communist regime on their social achievements are somehow either honest or remotely applicable to our own society. Bizarre.

From the evidence of his posts, I can only explain the apparent contradiction by assuming for the moment that "UKIntel" has a somewhat hysterical mis-comprehension of the nature of recreational drugs and the users thereof. Most likely either some particularly harsh personal experience, or simply over-exposure to state propaganda. Possibly also a bit of mis-guided political partisanship, regarding druggies as leftist hippies and those who seek to re-legalise drug possession and use as necessarily also leftists?

UKIntel, you really need to find some honest information about recreational drugs. You need to come to understand that alcohol is broadly comparable to heroin and cocaine as a recreational drug, and that returning to the position in this country as it was prior to WW1, when both opium and heroin were freely available and widely used, is, or should be, at least as much a right-wing as a leftist policy. It's about returning the law towards its rightful position of protecting individuals from breaches of their genuine rights, rather than its modern leftist use of social engineering and control.
The war on drugs 2:59pm on 04 Aug 2008 NuclearChicken: "I would just like to point out that drug taking is neither immoral nor intrinsically evil, it is STUPID. And yes, I do include alcohol and tobacco in that statement."

Speaking of analogies, as far as I'm concerned, mountaineering is STUPID. It's very dangerous, self-indulgent and imposes costs on society when rescues and medical treatment are needed, and although I can understand that some people get a buzz out of it, I'm not personally tempted to partake.

But, strangely, I don't feel any need to lock up Chris Bonnington and imprison people manufacturing and supplying crampons and carabiners.
The war on drugs 1:30pm on 04 Aug 2008 ter2208:

It's precisely the producing countries that have the most to gain from relegalisation. The problems caused in these countries result from prohibition, not from drugs use.

Prohibition essentially exports many of the consequences of our rich societies' moral incontinence over recreational drug abuse, to countries ill-equipped to cope with such additional problems.

At the present time, a coca grower in Central America or a poppy grower in Asia is entirely at the mercy of paramilitary criminal or insurgent organisations because he cannot turn to the state for protection even if the state could provide it. Once these drugs are relegalised, he is just another farmer. The immense profits aren't there to attract the gangs to prey upon him and he can turn to the state for protection if they do nonetheless. Which is not, of course, to say that his life will be a bed of roses, but at least one of the ways in which we in the west subsidise his victimisation will have been removed. And the main source of funding for the aforementioned paramilitary criminal and insurgent organisations will simultaneously have been removed.

Here are the concluding comments of Sir Keith Morris (ambassador to Colombia 1990-94) in evidence to Parliament in 2002:

"Legalisation of drugs is another matter altogether. I have long known that many senior Colombian politicians privately favoured such an outcome. This was confirmed during a visit I made in November, the first since my own views has been much publicized there following my Guardian article of 4 July. Almost everyone I met raised the subject with me. All thanked me for having made clear the cost that Colombia was paying in the drugs war. All but one then took exactly the same line. Legalisation of drugs was the only solution to Colombia's long-running internal conflict. The case for it had to be made in the consumer countries. Colombians could not do it. Most left unsaid the reason why. They would be denounced in Washington as soft on drugs. Those who spoke thus included people at the most senior level in government, the central bank, the political parties and the private sector. Their public duties and/or their public stand mean that their lives are daily at risk from the drugs traffickers and the three illegal groups of extreme left and right which draw their principal funding from the trade. Their views deserve to be taken into account."
The war on drugs 1:08pm on 04 Aug 2008 my_comments:

Your error comes from confusing two different categories of activity. Drug-taking is entirely different from murder/rape/theft.

The latter are real crimes that would be wrong whether or not they are "legalised" by state laws - they involve direct attacks on other people. The former are personal recreational activities that do not involve direct attacks upon other people but that the state has criminalised for reasons of public policy. Prohibited drugs were legal before they were prohibited and can be made legal again. What was done by legislation can be reversed by legislation.

With real crimes, the whole point of the state is to control them as much as they can be controlled. As you rightly say, we do not and should not abandon that fight just because it will never be over or never won. The goal is to reduce the crimes themselves to the minimum possible, and we do our best.

On the other hand, the argument for drugs prohibition is based upon minimising not the drug-taking itself (or we would also prohibit alcohol consumption), but the associated collateral harm caused by the drug-taking to the victim and to those around him or her, and to society as a whole. If that is the justification then it has clearly failed and should be stopped.

If your suggestion is to relegalise "soft" drugs while keeping prohibition in place for "hard" drugs, then in some ways it represents the worst of both worlds. It keeps all the moral problems of prohibting people from exercising their freedom, provides a justification for all the bureaucracies and state agencies to keep spending our money on a futile fight, and keeps pumping money into organised crime.

Both the state bureaucracies (police, lawyers, prisons, social services) and organised crime will simply shift their activities into the remaining prohibited drugs. After a few years, cannabis would become a pretty unremarkable drug akin to tobacco, and we'll be getting the same hysteria about other demon drugs.

Relegalise the lot! Return to liberty and personal responsibility and rip the money nipple out of the mouths of organised crime and the state. But relegalised need not necessarily mean unregulated - alcohol is regulated today, and a similar approach should be adopted for heroin, cocaine, mdma, cannabis and every other recreational drug in existence.

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