LEGALIZING DRUGS

It is the delivery system of heroin, the associated crime, and the lack of assured content that presents the greatest risk, not the drug itself.

Further why don't people refine and inject alcohol? Why on a per-captia-user-basis is there considerably less crime with alcohol as compared to heroin?

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joefromchicago wrote:

OCCOM BILL wrote:
To adults, yes. Along with penicillin, viagra, Cocaine and Heroine. Btw, Oxy and Vicodin are yours for the asking at an awful lot of walk-in pain clinics if you have decent insurance and the desire for such. You can even get the balance of the insured to subsidize your fix if you wish. Same goes for a wide variety of "prescription drugs". This form of prohibition is an unnecessary failure as well.

Why doesn't that reasoning apply to machine guns as well? Just because machine guns are designed for the sole purpose of hurting or killing others doesn't mean that they can't be used responsibly. Why not just deal with the aftereffects of misuse rather than banning them entirely?

Focus Joe... we're talking about drugs here. Though; if I were King a background check would suffice for a man of your stature to get a permit to own a machine gun.

joefromchicago wrote:

OCCOM BILL wrote:
Not as far as drugs are concerned, no. Frankly; I think there ought to be a Kevorkian-pill for those adults who desire it. The folly of trying to protect people from themselves has gone on long enough. Last summer I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane for no good reason other than the rush. Would you prohibit this obviously dangerous activity as well?

If skydiving were as dangerous and had as many undesirable consequences as, say, heroin use, then I'd have no reservations about prohibiting it.

I would be surprised to learn Heroin use is more dangerous than skydiving. I seriously doubt that.

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OCCOM BILL wrote:

Focus Joe... we're talking about drugs here.

Focus, O'BILL, we're talking about the justification for your position. You say that you would rather deal with the aftereffects of drug usage rather than prohibit drug usage. I asked why that same rationale can't be applied to machine guns. Your response: "I'm talking about drugs here." Well, that's fine. But you still need to explain why drugs are different and why the policy for drugs shouldn't be adopted for machine guns.

And saying that drugs aren't machine guns won't cut it.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

I would be surprised to learn Heroin use is more dangerous than skydiving. I seriously doubt that.

You are surprisingly easy to surprise.

In a quick search, I was unable to find national statistics on deaths due to heroin usage. But I'll be content with one article which states that, in 1999, there were 111 heroin overdose deaths in Multnomah County, Oregon. In the same year, there were 110 heroin overdose deaths in King County, Washington. In contrast, there were 60 skydiving-related fatalities worldwide in 1999. So, in other words, it's probably not unusual to find more heroin-related deaths in one urban county in the US than skydiving-related deaths in the world for any given year. And if deaths associated with an activity can be used as a measure of how dangerous that activity is, then I think it's pretty clear that heroin usage is vastly more dangerous than skydiving.

To put it another way, if there were 111 skydiving fatalities in and around Portland, Oregon in 1999, I think there would have been a rather vocal public reaction. At the very least, people would have been looking up far more often as they ventured from their homes.

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[quote="Another "quick search""]Actual Leading Causes of Death

An unhealthy diet is actually a leading cause of death in the United States.

Biggest fears aside, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that uncovered the actual leading causes of death in the United States (in 2000). Overwhelmingly, these causes stem from our own, modifiable behaviors.

Tobacco (435,000 deaths, 18.1 percent of total U.S. deaths)

Poor diet and physical inactivity (400,000 deaths, 16.6 percent)

Alcohol consumption (85,000 deaths, 3.5 percent)

Microbial agents (75,000)

Toxic agents (55,000)

Motor vehicle crashes (43,000)

Incidents involving firearms (29,000)

Sexual behaviors (20,000)

Illicit use of drugs (17,000) [/quote]
Notice where drugs fall on this list if you want to broaden the criteria for prohibition consideration.

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OCCOM BILL wrote:

Notice where drugs fall on this list if you want to broaden the criteria for prohibition consideration.

Funny, I don't see skydiving anywhere on that list.

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joefromchicago wrote:

OCCOM BILL wrote:
Notice where drugs fall on this list if you want to broaden the criteria for prohibition consideration.

Funny, I don't see skydiving anywhere on that list.

My original contention was made in consideration of a case by case, death per act basis. I don't know where to find the information to show a ratio of:
Heroin per use Vs. Skydiving per Jump.

Conversely; what say you about the statistics that show both Tobacco and Poor Diet & Exercise being 20 times more likely to kill you than illicit drugs?

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OCCOM BILL wrote:

My original contention was made in consideration of a case by case, death per act basis. I don't know where to find the information to show a ratio of:
Heroin per use Vs. Skydiving per Jump.

I don't know where you'd get that information either. Drug users are notoriously unreliable about reporting incidents of heroin usage to the proper authorities.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Conversely; what say you about the statistics that show both Tobacco and Poor Diet & Exercise being 20 times more likely to kill you than illicit drugs?

I would have a lot to say about that. But it wouldn't be very fair of you to expect me to address your questions when you haven't extended the same courtesy to me. In case you've forgotten, here's what I wrote on Tuesday:

You say that you would rather deal with the aftereffects of drug usage rather than prohibit drug usage. I asked why that same rationale can't be applied to machine guns. Your response: "I'm talking about drugs here." Well, that's fine. But you still need to explain why drugs are different and why the policy for drugs shouldn't be adopted for machine guns. And saying that drugs aren't machine guns won't cut it.
Address that, and I'll be happy to answer your question about death rates from tobacco, poor diet, and drug use.

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I answered you. No need for a blanket prohibition there either... though I really don't think it's related. It is a silly comparison to insist on, since the two subjects have little in common.

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What's Wrong With the Drug War?
Everyone has a stake in ending the war on drugs. Whether you're a parent concerned about protecting children from drug-related harm, a social justice advocate worried about racially disproportionate incarceration rates, an environmentalist seeking to protect the Amazon rainforest or a fiscally conservative taxpayer you have a stake in ending the drug war. U.S. federal, state and local governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make America "drug-free." Yet heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other illicit drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get than ever before. Nearly half a million people are behind bars on drug charges - more than all of western Europe (with a bigger population) incarcerates for all offenses. The war on drugs has become a war on families, a war on public health and a war on our constitutional rights.

Many of the problems the drug war purports to resolve are in fact caused by the drug war itself. So-called "drug-related" crime is a direct result of drug prohibition's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand. Public health problems like HIV and Hepatitis C are all exacerbated by zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean needles. The drug war is not the promoter of family values that some would have us believe. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse.

--Drug Policy Alliance

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OCCOM BILL wrote:

I answered you. No need for a blanket prohibition there either... though I really don't think it's related.

That's fine. You've done a pretty good job of outlining a libertarian position: don't outlaw anything, just pick up the pieces after something goes wrong. And that may, in fact, be a more efficient way of running things. Of course, it is of small comfort to the person who is killed or injured by something that was easily preventible to know that his/her sacrifice was in the interests of social efficiency.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

It is a silly comparison to insist on, since the two subjects have little in common.

One can always find differences among things that are different. Apparently, it takes a bit more insight to look past those differences to see the similarities.

Now, as for your question:

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Conversely; what say you about the statistics that show both Tobacco and Poor Diet & Exercise being 20 times more likely to kill you than illicit drugs?

I don't know how many people have poor diets or exercise infrequently, but I have some reliable statistics on how many people smoke and use illicit drugs. In 2005, 3.7 percent of persons aged 12 and older used illicit drugs other than marijuana in the past month (making them, according to federal guidelines, "regular users"). In the same year, 29.4 percent of persons 12 and older used some tobacco product in the preceding month. That means that tobacco use is roughly eight times greater than illicit drug use. So what does it mean that tobacco-related deaths are roughly 25 times that of deaths related to illicit drugs? Well, it can mean that tobacco is, all other things being equal, about three times more deadly than illicit drugs. That seems somewhat farfetched, but I suppose it's possible. Another possibility, however, is that drug prohibitions are working, and that they prevent even more people from dying than would otherwise be true in a totally unregulated marketplace. Or it could be that a "tobacco-related death" is defined rather broadly, whereas an "illicit drug-related death" is defined rather narrowly. I don't know, and without some additional information, there's not much that I can conclude from that isolated fact.

Furthermore, I have no idea why you asked.

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I asked because the risks involved in tobacco and poor eating/exercise habits are both products of risky choices... just like drugs... only much more harmful, and quite legal. If prohibition were working; a person would have trouble buying drugs, which few do. In truth; it is a failure of epic proportions and the cure creates many problems that are worse than the so-called disease (like business men policing their business at the point of a gun... doesn't happen too often at pharmacies and liquor stores).

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The feds are still stuck in 1937 regarding drugs. Here is a link to a piece on legalizing medical pot.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/20/medical_marijuanas_moment.php

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LEGALIZING DRUGS

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