LEGALIZE IT
So I heard an interesting fact on the news yesterday that got me thinking. In San Diego there are a pretty high number of stabbings, and they just did a study on what might be the cause of the high stabbing numbers. The conclusion they came up with didn't surprise anyone with a fully functional brain, but it definitely raised some issues in my mind. According to the study, the leading cause of the 500+ stabbings that occurred in San Diego last year was the combination of Testosterone and Alcohol, or as I call it Testosterohol. What bothers me about this is the fact that Alcohol is directly attributed to violence, poor decisions, addiction, liver disease and death. If you drink alcohol, one of those previous 5 outcomes is very likely. But it's legal, and therefore acceptable within most social groups. This ties into my natural vs positive law debate, as the only reason why alcohol is more accepted is because it's legal and the only reason why Marijuana is considered bad is because it's illegal. Anyone who makes a claim that marijuana is worse than alcohol is not only misinformed, they are flat-out ignorant.
The prohibition of alcohol proved to be one of the most disasterous actions ever taken by our government. Organized violent crime skyrocketed, people like Al Capone and John Dillinger became hugely powerful due to their connections to bootlegging. Obviously the prohibition did nothing to combat the desire to consume alcohol, and there were speakeasies and moonshiners in pretty much every city/town in the nation. Marijuana was made illegal as the alcohol prohibition was coming to an end, and since it was not as widely used among American citizens, the propaganda had a much bigger effect on public opinion of the natural herb. But when the FACTs are examined, it is obvious that marijuana is almost harmless and alcohol is highly dangerous. Marijuana has caused people to visit the emergency room, but only 0.1% of all visits are related to the herb. Compare that to alcohol, which has caused more death than all drugs (other than tobacco) combined, (http://www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm) as well as more deaths per year than murder, car crashes and suicide combined. And that doesn't even take into account that at least 50% of those deaths are directly alcohol related.
Jimmy Carter once said "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual that the use of the drug itself." Too bad he didn't get reelected in 1980 instead of having Reagan accelerate the drug war even more with his right-wing Christian views. Carter understood that incarcerating someone for selling something that does more good than harm for the user is wrong. But in my opinion, anyone who is selling drugs is just being a Capitalist. Shouldn't republicans support legalization? If all drugs were legalized we'd save billions of dollars a year in futile policing of drug use and sale, and if we taxed them like cigarettes...fuggedaboudit. Say the average pothead spends $300 a month on their weed, if you taxed it just 10% (I'd tax it 50%) that would be $360 a year in tax revenue per person that we are spending instead. If only 1 million people did that (the number of users is closer to 10 million) that would be $360,000,000 we could spend on drug education in order to INFORM people about the benefits and harms of each drug.
The opponents of legalization claim that drug use would go up if they were legalized. But in many cases, the people who experiment with drugs do so because they are taboo and therefore more exciting. Take a look at this website to see the numbers of users in the Netherlands (where weed is basically legal, sold in most cities in "Coffeeshops")(http://www.ukcia.org/research/DutchPolicyAndCrimeStatistics.html). The rates of use are lower than in the UK or US, and the rates of violent crime and incarceration are vastly lower. Anyone who claims that those rates are lower because Holland is a small country is just ignoring the fact that the only countries (with 1,000,000 or more residents) more densly populated than the Netherlands are Taiwan, Singapore, Bengladesh and South Korea. There are other factors that contribute to the low crime in the Netherlands: socialized medicine, highly protective welfare system, generally homogenous populations (though not in Amsterdam) and wealth.
But one can't help but realize that a large number of urban crimes in the US are directly related to the PROHIBITION of drugs. If Cocaine was legal, it would be sold by a mega-corporation like Phillip Morris or Kraft and that would completely eliminate turf wars and battles for control of the supply route. Drug dealers kill each other because it's the nature of an illegal business. How rich and powerful would Capone have gotten without prohibition and bootlegging? Any time something is illegal, there will always be a black market as long as the desire is out there. When it comes to personal use of substances, however harmful or harmless, the decision should be ours to make. If the government prohibits something naturally occuring in nature, why do they allow us to consume processed sugar treats? My addiction to candy is far more harmful to my health than pot, but could you imagine the government banning all sugar? If you like the idea of prohibiting anything harmful, watch "Demolition Man" and tell me if you'd want to live in that kind of society. I'd much rather be allowed to make my own choices. Legalize it, don't critize it!
So I heard an interesting fact on the news yesterday that got me thinking. In San Diego there are a pretty high number of stabbings, and they just did a study on what might be the cause of the high stabbing numbers. The conclusion they came up with didn't surprise anyone with a fully functional brain, but it definitely raised some issues in my mind. According to the study, the leading cause of the 500+ stabbings that occurred in San Diego last year was the combination of Testosterone and Alcohol, or as I call it Testosterohol. What bothers me about this is the fact that Alcohol is directly attributed to violence, poor decisions, addiction, liver disease and death. If you drink alcohol, one of those previous 5 outcomes is very likely. But it's legal, and therefore acceptable within most social groups. This ties into my natural vs positive law debate, as the only reason why alcohol is more accepted is because it's legal and the only reason why Marijuana is considered bad is because it's illegal. Anyone who makes a claim that marijuana is worse than alcohol is not only misinformed, they are flat-out ignorant.
The prohibition of alcohol proved to be one of the most disasterous actions ever taken by our government. Organized violent crime skyrocketed, people like Al Capone and John Dillinger became hugely powerful due to their connections to bootlegging. Obviously the prohibition did nothing to combat the desire to consume alcohol, and there were speakeasies and moonshiners in pretty much every city/town in the nation. Marijuana was made illegal as the alcohol prohibition was coming to an end, and since it was not as widely used among American citizens, the propaganda had a much bigger effect on public opinion of the natural herb. But when the FACTs are examined, it is obvious that marijuana is almost harmless and alcohol is highly dangerous. Marijuana has caused people to visit the emergency room, but only 0.1% of all visits are related to the herb. Compare that to alcohol, which has caused more death than all drugs (other than tobacco) combined, (http://www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm) as well as more deaths per year than murder, car crashes and suicide combined. And that doesn't even take into account that at least 50% of those deaths are directly alcohol related.
Jimmy Carter once said "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual that the use of the drug itself." Too bad he didn't get reelected in 1980 instead of having Reagan accelerate the drug war even more with his right-wing Christian views. Carter understood that incarcerating someone for selling something that does more good than harm for the user is wrong. But in my opinion, anyone who is selling drugs is just being a Capitalist. Shouldn't republicans support legalization? If all drugs were legalized we'd save billions of dollars a year in futile policing of drug use and sale, and if we taxed them like cigarettes...fuggedaboudit. Say the average pothead spends $300 a month on their weed, if you taxed it just 10% (I'd tax it 50%) that would be $360 a year in tax revenue per person that we are spending instead. If only 1 million people did that (the number of users is closer to 10 million) that would be $360,000,000 we could spend on drug education in order to INFORM people about the benefits and harms of each drug.
The opponents of legalization claim that drug use would go up if they were legalized. But in many cases, the people who experiment with drugs do so because they are taboo and therefore more exciting. Take a look at this website to see the numbers of users in the Netherlands (where weed is basically legal, sold in most cities in "Coffeeshops")(http://www.ukcia.org/research/DutchPolicyAndCrimeStatistics.html). The rates of use are lower than in the UK or US, and the rates of violent crime and incarceration are vastly lower. Anyone who claims that those rates are lower because Holland is a small country is just ignoring the fact that the only countries (with 1,000,000 or more residents) more densly populated than the Netherlands are Taiwan, Singapore, Bengladesh and South Korea. There are other factors that contribute to the low crime in the Netherlands: socialized medicine, highly protective welfare system, generally homogenous populations (though not in Amsterdam) and wealth.
But one can't help but realize that a large number of urban crimes in the US are directly related to the PROHIBITION of drugs. If Cocaine was legal, it would be sold by a mega-corporation like Phillip Morris or Kraft and that would completely eliminate turf wars and battles for control of the supply route. Drug dealers kill each other because it's the nature of an illegal business. How rich and powerful would Capone have gotten without prohibition and bootlegging? Any time something is illegal, there will always be a black market as long as the desire is out there. When it comes to personal use of substances, however harmful or harmless, the decision should be ours to make. If the government prohibits something naturally occuring in nature, why do they allow us to consume processed sugar treats? My addiction to candy is far more harmful to my health than pot, but could you imagine the government banning all sugar? If you like the idea of prohibiting anything harmful, watch "Demolition Man" and tell me if you'd want to live in that kind of society. I'd much rather be allowed to make my own choices. Legalize it, don't critize it!
posted by Dan Pasternack at 1:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home