should marijuana be legalized??

I wasn't generalizing my argument to all illegal activities, just drugs.

Are you seriously suggesting that you can't see a difference between telling people what drug they can use in their own home, and telling people they can't kill someone? Why are you even making an analogy like that.

I can see several good reasons for a restricted legalization of drugs:

We would win the "war" on drugs immediately, save billions of dollars, and lives, and eliminate a major portion of the current criminal sub-culture. Once controlled we can actually begin to help the people who really want help.

And most importantly, we can give people the freedom to make their own choices in their lives, even if we don't like their choices.

On the observation that learning from precedences usually works, even though it doesn't always work.

If you apply the same result to opium and hemp, what was the right time to criminalize those?

Donald Rumsfeld, after all, thinks that the situation the US faced in 2003 with respect to Saddam Hussein was like the situation that Chamberlain faced in 1938 with respect to Hitler.

rosborne979 wrote:

I wasn't generalizing my argument to all illegal activities, just drugs.

I know you weren't. That was my point: why aren't you generalizing it to all illegal activities?

joefromchicago wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:

I wasn't generalizing my argument to all illegal activities, just drugs.

I know you weren't. That was my point: why aren't you generalizing it to all illegal activities?

I think we already went over this. The difference is that most of what's bad about drugs today is an artifact of them being illegal: the poor quality that randomly kills users, the murders and the corruption needed to produce and distribute them, and many other things. This is not true of murder. Most of what's bad about murders is the murders itself. Any extra harm its criminalization might create is negligible compared to the harm of from the murders.

Out of curiousity, how many people agree with joefromchicago's co-relation of legalization of marijuana and murder?

IMHO I think joefromchicago is crazy.

Sure you could apply the same theory of illigalization to murder, but really they share nothing in common making any co-relation between the two illigalities irrelevant.

Its like comparing chalk and cheese. Sure they both start with C, but that doesnt make them the same.

I think we already went over this. The difference is that most of what's bad about drugs today is an artifact of them being illegal: the poor quality that randomly kills users, the murders and the corruption needed to produce and distribute them, and many other things. This is not true of murder.

Most of what's bad about murders is the murders itself. Any extra harm its criminalization might create is negligible compared to the harm of from the murders.

Meanwhile, you have presented no evidence that legalizing Marijuana would on net cause more harm than good. America is a free society. People who want freedom don't have to prove its good effect. In trying to do it anyway, we've been very accomodating to you. But really it's the people who want to restrict freedom who have to make a case for the limitations they seek to impose. So what's your evidence in the matter?

Thomas wrote:

I think we already went over this. The difference is that most of what's bad about drugs today is an artifact of them being illegal: the poor quality that randomly kills users, the murders and the corruption needed to produce and distribute them, and many other things. This is not true of murder.

You have got to be jesting. Are you saying that cocaine, for instance, is addictive because it's illegal? Are you suggesting the heroin is potentially lethal because it's unregulated? Would legal cocaine be any less addictive or legal heroin any less lethal? Really, Thomas, I'm surprised that you would even hint at such a feeble argument.

Moreover, as I've explained to you before, the murder and corruption that accompanies the criminalization of drug usage is an argument against all prohibitions, not just drug prohibitions. After all, the prohibition on cable television theft just drives up the price of illegal cable hookups as well. All prohibitions are accompanied by some consequential criminality, above and beyond the criminality of defying the prohibition itself. Extortionists are involved in murder and corruption as well: should we, therefore, legalize extortion?

I don't have any.

Well, I suppose it would depend on who you ask, but, as a general matter, I think the world would be better off if there were no alcohol or tobacco at all.

But then any evidence of the societal effects of legalized marijuana -- pro or contra -- must be based upon counterfactual reasoning, which makes my reasoning and conjecture as solid as any evidence can get in this kind of debate.

We simply don't know whether the overall societal effects of marijuana legalization will be good or bad unless we legalize it, but then that is the same dilemma we face with practically any law.

I am not suggesting that cocaine is addictive because it's illegal. I am suggesting that most addicts of heroin, cocaine, and other drugs could lead a more or less normal life if they could buy their drug in well-specified dosages, with predictable and good quality.

Finally, I am suggesting that the illegality of most recreational drugs favors the selling of highly addictive drugs such as crack over the selling of less addictive drugs. If the probability of being caught is the major part of a drug's production cost, you might as well be hanged for crack as for pot. (Again, notice the parallel to alcohol prohibition, which diminished the sale of booze much less than the sale of beer, wine, and other soft drinks.)

No, for two reasons: (1) My freedom to extort would, ipso facto, infringe on your freedom from extortion; by contrast, my freedom to smoke a joint infringes on none of your freedoms at all -- certainly not ipso facto. (2) While the criminalization of extortion may cause some collateral crime committed to make specific extortions possible, I expect the criminalization reduces the damage extortionists cause to society enough to outweigh the increase in collateral crime. I don't expect this to be true for drug consumption. There I expect the social cost from increased collateral crime to outweigh the benefit of decreased drug consumption.

Thanks for your candid answer. Would you agree that the evidence speak much much more strongly to the harmful effects of contract killings and extortion? Would you say that this makes the case for outlawing contract killings and extortion much stronger than the case for outlawing recreational drugs?

This non-addicted lover of wine and beer couldn't disagree more.

I disagree. Legal marijuana, cocaine-fortified Cola etc were a fact before World War I. We know what the social effects were. Admittedly, you may -- and do -- disagree that the experience of this period makes an adequate precedence for today. You are entitled to this opinion about history. But even if you're correct on this point, there is one thing you are not entitled to do; and that is to declare this history "counterfactual" just because you find it irrelevant.

Whatever your opinion about legalized recreational drugs before World War I is, they were a fact, as was their limited effect on public health. None of this is counterfactual, even if it were irrellevant.

I agree. And in all these cases my answer is: let's find out!

Thomas wrote:

I agree. And in all these cases my answer is: let's find out!

And in this case my answer is: let's not!

Fine. You're outvoted by 82% in the poll.

Why would they buy drugs in well-specified dosages? Who would insure the quality of those drugs?

Well, the selling of highly addictive legal substances is more profitable than the selling of less addictive counterparts, so I'm not sure why drug sellers would switch to less addictive drugs after legalization.

I don't argue with that, but I only noted that decriminalization would lead to lower prices for all criminal activities. I offered no opinion as to whether such decriminalization would be a good thing or a bad thing, just that it would be a cheaper thing.

Thomas wrote:

Whatever your opinion about legalized recreational drugs before World War I is, they were a fact, as was their limited effect on public health. None of this is counterfactual, even if it were irrellevant.

No, it is both.

I agree. And in all these cases my answer is: let's find out!

rosborne979 wrote:

Fine. You're outvoted by 82% in the poll.

Why should I care?

I never hear anything good about meth yet it's still the most "popular" dangerous drug out there. People are going to do drugs regardless of our policies. Imprisoning drug users does not solve the problem but only creates a burden to the taxpayer.

I can think of many possibilities: (1) Competition between greedy producers. For one thing, killing your customers is bad for business, so I expect producers in a free market not to do it unnecessarily. (2) The drug market's version of consumer reports, combined with the preference not to die from their next shot if they don't have to. (3) General laws against fraud. I'm sure current law makes it illegal to print "three pounds of oatmeal" onto a package, fill only two and a half pounds of oatmeal into it, and sell it to you. The same law would apply to those who sell the wrong dosage of a recreational drug. I'm sure there are options as well, but these three should do it for now.

You state your point about profits as if it were a fact. Do you have evidence for it? I just browsed the financial statement of companies like Anheuser-Bush, which makes Bud Light, and the Brown-Forman Corporation, which makes Jack Daniels. If anything, the hard-liquor companies seem to be less profitable, not more.

Drug sellers currently prefer highly addictive drugs because the benefit -- user's high -- is greater, while the cost -- being arrested and jailed -- is the same. It's a variant of the proverb: hanged for a lamb, hanged for a sheep. That's why hard liquor made up a higher percentage of alcohol consumption during prohibition than before and after it. And that's why, after the end of drug prohibition, I expect a much greater boom in the more harmless drugs such as pot than in the more addictive drugs such as crack.

Another economic reason that makes vendors prefer addictive drugs under current legislation is monopoly profits. Criminalization makes it hard for users to switch and force vendors to compete. This gives each individua vendor some monopoly power of his customers. As economics 101 tells us, monopoly profits are high to the extent that demand is inelastic (irresponsive to price changes). So, since the demand of addicted users is much more inelastic than that of casual users, it is currently in the interest of sellers to make buyers as desperately addicted as possible. By eliminating monopoly profits, a legal, competitive market would further curtail the supply of hard drugs relative to soft drugs.

Translation: "I don't like the historical facts, so I don't just try to distinguish them, I pretend they aren't facts at all." If you read the fifth chapter in Mill's On Liberty (1869), you will find that he defends free trade in opium with fairly similar arguments as I defend a free market in dope, apparently against counterarguments fairly similar to yours. It is simply not true that our discussion about drugs is a new one.

Gee, it almost seems as if we disagree on that one.