United States: Should we end the war on Drugs?

[DivinePaladin]

Nautilus said:

DivinePaladin said:

That last bit is very disingenuous when you consider that the Netherlands has outright supplied its addicts with drugs (namely heroin) to give them a safe place to use, and that this has completely curbed new users of the drug. They use, can't hurt anybody while using, aren't using something that may be laced or even more dangerous, and they don't spend their money on this. And it doesn't cost much in terms of taxes - last I heard the lack of dangerous overdoses and the medical cost of said overdoses has more than offset the tax burden on this program.

 

Criminalizing drugs tends to make things even more dangerous for anybody involved. I know that's a slight generalization but it's held true enough times for it to be a valid one. 

 

Source on Netherlands:

https://news.vice.com/article/only-in-the-netherlands-do-addicts-complain-about-free-government-heroin

Yeah, I have heard about that.Still, I find that wrong.

First, it is "working" in Netherlands because its a really advanced society, so they have more common sense than countries from the third world, and even USA(dont mean to offend anyone).But there is also the fact that the number of users(that does this legally) must be small, so the number of overdoses would reflect that.

Having said that, Im totally and completely against that.There is a limit till when you say "Its your body, you can do whatever you want with it".Lets say there is a person that loves stabbing itself, but not to the point that it will kill himself, but enough that would leave uncountable scars and maybe even leave permanent damages on the body.That person would be internalized in a medical facility, for sure.I see as using those strong drugs as the same.For every 1 person that can "handle" its addiction and use few enough to not bethat harmful(and even then will leave damage in a small period of time), there will be 3 persons that will be destroyed by it.That would be especially true in countries like USA, or Marrocos, or Chile for example, places where the general education of the people would be lower.

It would not work, and would just create more problems than solving them.

That's a big strawman. As somebody who is essentially straight edge - I don't follow liberally, for example I drink very infrequently, so I don't classify myself as this personally - stabbing yourself and leaving heavy wounds is not something comparable to using drugs of any kind. That's the exact argument made for alcohol during the Prohibition era, that alcohol was poison and that allowing it in our country was encouraging suicide essentially. 

 

Moreover, how many people have died in drug wars in the US? It surely rivals the amount of pure overdoses. If we weren't a hugely conservative country, pushing through safe havens for drug users where they can use clean product in a contained environment would only help matters. Let's be real, the war on drugs started chiefly because of gang violence, and gangs chiefly rose up because of the drug trade. Without product to sell, gangs become essentially non factors in society until they find a way to provide a good that is addicting that the government can't regulate as quickly. 

 

And as an aside, more people per capita used specifically heroin in the Netherlands at the time of this policy opening than do in the US now, at the height of the US epidemic. And as the article notes, there are almost no users under 40, because there's no market for heroin, and as such there's no way for impressionable young adults to be influenced by it. You're correct on one front, that the Netherlands is much more advanced societally than the US is, but the writing is on the wall. We're just much too much a Christian nation, and we'd make it a moral issue of how the government is supplying drugs, and we would demonize anybody who tried to push this concept. I mean the media is destroying or ignoring Sanders for suggesting that we regulate more to improve quality of life and the lower and middle classes, and he's not even saying anything NEW to American politics. 

 

I'm by no means advocating heroin, obviously. Again, I don't use. But if regulating and giving away a dangerous drug for free to users helps limit the number of users, that should be a path looked into, not brushed off because it's immoral.