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If the U.S. were to legalize both the use and selling of known recreational drugs, should there be any limitations whatsoever? Can there be, without being unprincipled?
For example, should the most biologically destructive drugs (i.e. crystallized methamphetamine, crack cocaine, and heroin) remain illegal, while drugs proven to be substantially less harmful (i.e. marijuana, cocaine, MDMA) become legal?
- Created by Zach West
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On the issue of unrestricted (or virtually so) availability translating into more use, or not, does anyone here have any semi-solid statistics of what happened in China pre, during, and after Opium Wars with respect to the number of users ? I remember reading that large swaths of their urban population was engaging in opium use, but I can't find the source. I think at its heyday, about 1,000 metric tons of opium were being moved/year into China by the British East India Company.
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So now we are looking to China for examples of how to create policy? And, fyi, we don't have an out of control drug crisis in this country. We have a small - not growing - group of people who turn to drugs/alcohol to escape reality regularly. In fact if you segment it further, you'll realize that the hard core addicts of meth, heroin and other hard drugs are a very small number of people. It's not a national crisis, threatening to destroy our country or society. If you actually look at what's going on you'll then realize that some people do so due to mental illness, others (a significant percentage) are folks who grew up in very abusive situations and cannot find solace in other ways (the correlation between childhood abuse and drug addiction is significant) and some are just people who like to party. After 1.5 trillion dollars WITH NO RESULTANT REDUCTION IN HARM OR USE - one would think that you'd recognize we are on the wrong track, but more importantly, that in a free society, some folks will choose to escape reality and that the government has no authority to make them stop doing so. If they violate other folks rights, well then the state has a proper role in protecting those rights. That you don't understand this says more than you can justify by typing a thousand pages of blah, blah, blah.
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Sadly, folks like you want a Nanny-State. You want an authoritarian government to tell you what you can put in your body, what your doctor can do for you, what they should charge and the insurance you will buy. Okay, have at it, but you can't do so and say you support liberty in principle. You are an authoritarian statist, Jose. All your consequentialist arguments go to support the position you hold a priori; that people can't govern themselves and need elite leaders to govern their lives or we will fall into ruin. Libertarians believe that we need a minimal state to protect our rights, property, nation and commons - as the constitution originally provided for, and that people will govern themselves as sovereign individuals in far better ways than top down, authoritarian governments ever can. It's a fundamental difference in one's view of humanity and life - and you are on the side of the authoritarians.
Jose, I wonder, do you realize that you would need to trash our constitution to implement the kind of policies that you believe in? Progressvies as far back as over one hundred years ago were at least honest in admitting this. Do you believe, as Obama has said, that the constitution is just a list of negative rights and that to really fulfill the promise of America, we need positive rights? If so - that is actually the definition of un-American, yeah? When your positions directly imply a breach of our constitution, you become an enemy of freedom, do you get that? It's not a small point, but it seems to evade you completely.
I say you should move to China - and take Tom Friedman with you. See what it's like to live under an authoritarian government with unlimited power, and then come post about what you think the government should be doing.
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"So now we are looking to China for examples of how to create policy? And, fyi, we don't have an out of control drug crisis in this country. We have a small - not growing - group of people who turn to drugs/alcohol to escape reality regularly."
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No Glenn. The question wasn't meant as a suggestion to emulate China's policy. The question was meant to shed light and gather information on HUMAN behavior, whether Chinese or American, in an environment where society is saturated with psychotropic substances, an example of which China was during the period mentioned. Are you not curious to know if human beings behave differently if a drug is more available as opposed to when it's not ? Would you rather engage in endless theoretical speculations about whether such use would go up or not instead of looking at what is possibly ALREADY available evidence towards such behavior ? As for the rest of your nonsense, I am FOR the legalization of drug use, not against it. That is NOT to say that I am NOT interested in finding out about the consequences of such policy.
"When your positions directly imply a breach of our constitution, you become an enemy of freedom, do you get that? It's not a small point, but it seems to evade you completely."
You kowtow and bow down to the Constitution as the Muslims do to the Koran, yet you are accusing me of some sort of nefarious position. It is your BLIND reverence for the document that leaves YOU, and not I, in an unflexible and fundamentalist-like mind set. If you chose to worship a document whose PRACTICAL interpretation and application leads to the creation of a landscape where PROFIT and DIVIDENDS are put above life and limb that is your business, but that makes YOU, not I, more like a Chinese Communist Party member or an Ayatollah. I value a principle not just for its theoretical nobility, but for its practical power to better the human condition - a goal that you and your political philosophy claim to aspire to and share. No amount of name calling and labeling can convince me that a society that values a dividend over the condition of its poor is better than one that does not. I don't care if the founding manuscripts were the Bible, some ET script, or imperfect laws.
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Jose writes to Glenn: "It is your BLIND reverence for the document that leaves YOU, and not I, in an unflexible and fundamentalist-like mind set. "
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This statement along with the others tells us exactly where you are coming from. To me it sounds like you do not believe in the American way or the American Constitution. From that and your derision of capitalism it sounds as if you are a committed communist of the Stalinist style wishing to forget the horrors of Stalin. I know that you will tell me I am wrong, but after Khrushchev released the Stalin report a lot of people with similar beliefs to yours suddenly disavowed Stalin, but that didn't make their philosophy any less dangerous.
The Constitution exists as the glue that holds this Republic together. It protects the minority from being enslaved by a democratically elected majority and you wish to throw that all away replacing the Constitution with a blank piece of paper so a new Stalin can arise.
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It seems that after presenting a calculated 200 issues in part 1 of your missive that suddenly all these urgent problems have disappeared. It seems that proof on issue number one demonstrated superior US care to that of the left demonstrating your arguments to be totally wrong and bursting your bubble. I guess you still want to claim the other 199+ issues as true so you have stopped discussing them because down deep you know that they will be shown to be predominantly false as well. By not checking facts you presume that you can claim ignorance permitting you to use the rest of your arguments in another discussion. That is not intellectually honest, but that is what the left has been doing for years.
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That tells us one thing. It is not your interest in making things better for the average person rather your ideology that controls you.
I don't know what the statistics were in China a leftist state that seems to share some of your ideology, but China had an interesting solution for the drug problem. Simply kill the people involved and eventually all the drug users will be gone or simply find that drug use is no longer appealing. I don't know if that leftist technique will work in the long term or not.
However, a better statistic to enlighten you might be from the early 20th century before the Harrison Act was passed. We had a good number of addicts at that time. It is an interesting study because government intervention nationwide in the use of hallucinogens is a relatively recent phenomenon.
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Fyi, no libertarian is interested in the government "making things better for the average person". Who is this average person? And where in our constitution is the government empowered to engage in such an enterprise? If you believe that government is in the business of doing this, then you are no different in principle from Jose, but just differ by degree or in specific policies - but apparently believe you can run over my rights any time you are "making things better".
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Are there any libertarians out there?
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Glenn writes: "Are there any libertarians out there?"
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Yes, Glenn. There is one libertarian, you. The rest of those that might define themselves as libertarians are not libertarians because they don't believe there is a Libertarian King named Glenn.
For your information I don't call myself a libertarian though I have many libertarian leanings. I am too pragmatic to live in a place that never has existed and never will. Since I don't like dictators or Kings and prefer to walk upright with my feet to the ground I choose the Constitution as my guide. It's not perfect, but it seems to be the most solidly based guide we have at this time.
You seem to prefer your interpretation of the world that seems to be singular to you. I don't think that works well in groups greater than one in number, but my Constitution permits you to have your beliefs as long as you remain within the law.
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As I noted way back in this thread, it is a common exclusionary trait among libertarians - too many revel in telling each other that "you're not a libertarian."
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I self-identify as libertarian, I argue from a set of libertarian principles, and I believe that the nation and the world would be a better place if libertarian principles were fully in effect and fully embraced. But, as I've noted here and elsewhere - there is the libertarian ideal, there is the current reality, and there is the process of taking steps towards the libertarian ideal. The last bit is where too many libertarians fail - they won't accept anything incremental, they don't get that libertarianism requires a revised mind-set in the populace, and that getting to that revised mind-set cannot happen overnight.
This exclusionary arrogance is why the LP is, despite its old proclamations about being "America's third largest and fastest growing political party," I and many like me have broken with it. Barring a sea-change in the hard core libertarian's mind-set, the LP will never be much more than a refuge for the self-indulgent.
As for the statement "no libertarian is interested in the government "making things better for the average person," I'd counter that, yes, a libertarian can believe in the government making things better for the average person, because a libertarian believes that embracing libertarian policies at all levels of government WILL make things better for the average person.
Most government policies benefit some at the expense of many, which is, IMO, in direct violation of the "general welfare" clause of the Constitution, and in violation of the basic libertarian principle that the rights of one cannot infringe on the rights of another.
But, back to your question. Yes, there are plenty of libertarians out here. If you don't see them, then your definition is wrong.
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There you go again. You dismiss all, yet you accuse the others of being "elitist". Maybe once the first explorers are sent to Mars you will have your chance to be Libertarian on your lone trip in some space capsule. Until it lands and you have to come in contact other than by radio with other human beings. Good luck. It will be a wonderful 20 cubic meter libertarian world for a few months there.
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Peter writes: "As for the statement "no libertarian is interested in the government "making things better for the average person," I'd counter that, yes, a libertarian can believe in the government making things better for the average person, because a libertarian believes that embracing libertarian policies at all levels of government WILL make things better for the average person."
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Peter, I was about to say pretty much the same thing but you said it so much better with your characterization of the libertarian movement's "exclusionary arrogance".
I shied away from the movement because I didn't want to be associated with a bunch of wacko's. Today on the Internet I am able to hear Libertarians that actually have brains so my respect for the movement has grown and thus I respect opinions from Mises, Reason etc. as they reflect many of my own personal views.
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Rob,
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The number of people addicted to opiates prior to the Harrison Act was estimated to be 0.25 % of the population [1]. I think that is surprisingly small considering that it was freely available. In contrast, the estimates of opium addicts in China during the opium wars estimated to be 25 % in urban areas. That is why I asked the question. I was having trouble reconciling these figures.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Narcotics_Tax_Act [quote: By 1914, the problem had grown to the point where an estimated one U.S. citizen in 400 (0.25%) was addicted to some form of opium.]
With respect to the health care issue, we will have to agree to disagree. You can continue to argue with me as much as you wish, but I find the rescissions that took place unforgivable. I need no more evidence than that to judge whether greed can control itself when it comes to survival decisions. As far as I am concerned the free markets failed miserably, and since life and death are at play, not the price of a loaf of bread, I don't think that the free markets should be allowed to give it another "try".
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Jose, I think you ought to check your numbers and your definitions regarding drug addicted, drug dependent, drug impaired etc. and how the numbers were calculated. In the early 1900's a lot of people were on these types of drugs. I wonder if our social support system more recently hasn't moved individuals from one category into a worse one. In other words I believe the world that you think is so great is the cause of many of our worst social ills and the people that suffer the most are the poor and needy.
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Regarding you statement: "With respect to the health care issue, we will have to agree to disagree." You might feel that way, but I don't. Your ideas kill too many people. The reason we spend so much in this country and have made healthcare systems unaffordable in the western world is that the US learned to save so many lives. They did this because of the market and because of what you call greed. Those that you follow lead their people to death and despair.
Virtually all the issues you mentioned represent success for the market system and failure for your system and culture. I showed this to be true with your first issue colon cancer and I can show it to be true with most of your issues. That is why suddenly the long posts containing issues have ceased. Mine is the culture of life. Yours is the culture of death.
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[Virtually all the issues you mentioned represent success for the market system and failure for your system and culture. I showed this to be true with your first issue colon cancer and I can show it to be true with most of your issues. That is why suddenly the long posts containing issues have ceased. Mine is the culture of life. Yours is the culture of death. ]
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Rob,
Your "culture" and free markets resulted in tens of thousands of policies rescinded. That's misery and death so that a dividend can be obtained. It failed not once, not twice, not three times, but as many times as there was an individual whose history was dug into on order to justify not paying his or her expenses, which is tens of thousands of times. There is NO way around it - your culture - rescission for profit = misery = pain = potential death. That was the result of YOUR "culture", not mine. The same applies to medical access based on income. That is part of your culture as well. There is no reason to believe that the SAME people in charge of the SAME entities running for the SAME reason (i.e. to return a profit) would act DIFFERENTLY this time around. They didn't act differently each time they denied care to tens of thousands. They had a chance to change their ways each time a person was denied help, yet it took Congressional Hearings for the issue to be worked out. Yet, you still want the "free market" to go at it AGAIN - that is the definition of INSANITY (stupidity as well) - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a DIFFERENT result. My "culture" would be one where there are no such denials EVER and where everyone has access to care, whether rich or poor. It is not in my power to create it other than by exercising a single vote that is available to me, and it looks that what I believe on this matter will be voted against by the likely repeal of Obamacare.
If you have issues with the numbers I listed with respect to opium addiction take it up with the reference given in the Wikipedia article above . I am obviously only citing the article, not gathering the information first hand and compiling it myself. Alternatively, you can provide more credible sources if you think this one in doubt. Like I said, I found the number surprisingly small myself.
As for why the long posts stopped, it is for several reasons, none of which you got right. A few new XBOX games came out and I spent time playing them. I was busy with working on a turbocharger kit installation and it failed miserably. I also had to track down an autographed copy of Das Kapital that my grandmother left me upon her demise - bet you fell for that one, didn't you ? As you can see I was involved in "culture of death" type hobbies. All so that your crazed, paranoid, and dramatic descriptions of my person can come to fruition. To think that I can so greatly contribute to the demise of Western Civilization over the weekend, single-handedly as well, is indeed a remarkable thing. Now that I am done with "destroying" Western Civilization, I think I will set my sights upon degrading the Eastern Civilization as well. I will do that next weekend, unless a new game comes out.
Again, we will have to disagree on the health care issue. There is nothing you can do to change my mind about it.
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@ Neil McKenna,
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In your last comment, you expressed your pride in having served in the military, your disagreement with Glenn's arguments, your dislike of the Conservative talking heads, and all of them never served in the military. However, you did not present any reasoning whatsoever.
If you can dismiss someone’s argument by pointing out that they have never served in the military, can someone who has served for four years dismiss your argument by pointing out you only served for three years? Do you think it makes sense for someone to ask you, "Didn’t you love the country enough to serve, say, ten years?"
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