Drug Prohibition is Illogical

All basic drugs, but not all "substances." Obviously, dangerous chemicals, drugs and biological agents would be restricted. Chemical weapons, enriched uranium and such chemical or biological substances would be prohibited. Prohibition in a general sense isn't logical, but I was referring to marijuana (or similar recreational substances), I should have been specific.

Agreed. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the costs to maintain such a system is high. If people could go to the store to buy marijuana cigarettes, legal business would make money instead of the criminals. The DEA and similar agencies would still tackle gangs, illegal smuggling and other Law enforcement or security needs related to substances. So I doubt they'd be out of work.

The price to the consumer might drop, but the financial benefit to the State would increase. The cost burden of a bloated prison and court system would be reduced by a third at least, then the State would bring in income from sales-tax and income-tax. I suspect new jobs would be created to run the factories, warehouses, trucking, sales, marketing and advertising aspect of this new industry.

This is literally taking money from criminals and giving it to the State.

 

As an owner of un-enriched Uranium, I have no idea how this is obvious to anyone.

 

Do you think you could get through customs with enriched Uranium? I don't know the answer to that, but I suspect no.

 

Drug prohibition, (while I agree should have no place in a free Constitutional republic such as ours, which one would think we learned after the prohibition era and all the crime it caused, but I digress) is not about preserving the individual from the consequences of such drug abuse as you postulate in the op. It's about sparing society at large from having to do so.

But I agree for differing reasons that not only is prohibition counter productive, but I would argue it's beyond the Constitutional pervue of the Federal Government to enact such laws. Indeed more often than not, such prohibitions are not even enacted by an act of Congress as laws are supposed to be, but rather are enacted on the whim, of unelected bureaucrats in our unelected, unconstitutional fourth arm of government.

 

People go through customs with that sort of dangerous material everyday. Particularly those working in the area's of medical scanning/diagnostics.

 

"The More You KNOW!"

Well, I learned something new and disturbing thanks. The fact remains that even if recreational drugs were legal the DEA would still have a job to do policing dangerous and deadly substances, breaking up gangs, smuggling operations or illicit opperations.

 

That's redundant.

 

Hilarious. But I happen to believe that if they State does well we'll have services like the Fire Department, Police, Teachers, the Post Office, Water and public roads and bridges. I would rather the money go to the administrators of these types of services than a street-level drug dealer. That's just me, I like infrastructure and increased jobs potential.

 

I doubt they have the equipment necessary to tell the difference.

 

Are the addictive natures of all illegal drugs more powerful than alcohol and tobacco? If yes, how much more powerful?

 

Common fallacy being that the government does care about you otherwise. In reality, government doesn't care any more about you than a business does. Where a business is only concerned with making a monetary profit - meaning they only care about getting your money - government officials are only concerned about power - meaning they only care about getting your vote. Too often people assume that government represents what the public actually wants. This isn't true. Government comprises of people with goals and limitations - and it can't be assumed that those people are any different than businessmen.

 

You're definitely correct. You take a utilitarian approach. Drug prohibition causes more problems than it fixes, therefore it's bad for society.

I was taking more of a binary approach in this thread trying to point out the basic logical fallacy of the principle of prohibiting drugs - or anything for that matter.

 

Essentially it would - as far as crime is concerned. Granted, there is a black market for legal drugs like cigarettes and such; but we don't see the same level of crime and gang violence revolving around black market cigarettes. Furthermore, the black market for cigarrettes arises pretty much solely from high taxes imposed by the government.

Not necessarily. I won't argue that some anti-prohibitionists ignore the ill-effects of the substance, but not all of them. Most anti-prohbitionists either rationally appose prohibition because the consequences of the prohibition are worse than the substance itself. Even though we recognize the substance as having drawbacks, the reprecussions of repercussions it are almost always worse.

 

The resulting crime is what matters.

How could we forget?

 

See the fallacy I pointed out with the original thread. I think you would be surprised.

 

Nobody argues that people should go out and smoke crack of shoot heroine. Nobody argues that doing these illegal drugs doesn't cause problems. Anti-prohbitionists don't ignore these effects. The pro-prohibitionists are the only ones ignoring effects - that is the effects of prohibition.

We wouldn't be making it a socially accepted practice, unless of course you argue that everything the law dictates what is socially acceptable - which is completely ridiculous. Making an activity legal is not synonomous with making it socially acceptable.

Please explain what a moral cost is?

Your child could find that today even though though these are illegal. The only way this argument holds any water is if drug usage would increse - and such an assumption is suspect. Read the op.

Do you want him exposed to a society where violent gangs can illegally profit from the sale of an illegal drugs - thus fueling they're shenanigans?

Anyway, since when in America could someone prohibit something just because they don't want their kids around it? If that's the case, there's lots of stuff I'd like to put on my list.

 

Are the addictive natures of all illegal drugs more powerful than alcohol and tobacco? If yes, how much more powerful?

 

"MARIJUANA QUOTES FROM FAMOUS PEOPLE"

http://eazysmoke.com/marijuana-quotes.htm

"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."
- Albert Einstein quote on Hemp"

looking in a mirror wondering if he would be able to see his reflection if he was going the speed of light..... hmmmm

 

Only a set of terribly unjust laws would give one person the ability and the moral justification to ruin other peoples' lives because he had a little headache. You used your fear of terrible consequences to justify meting out terrible consequences.

I've got to think there was a more dignified way to deal with the whole thing. One that could have gotten them away from you, or the smoke away from you, without having to resort to what, based on your knowledge of the area description of your fear, was probably a fairly harsh penalty.