What happens when an entire country legalizes drug use?

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/01/16/drug_experiment/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed1

by robg • 16 years ago

32 51 16 years ago

wglb2• 16 years ago

Registration required. Personally, it is harder to find better journalistic photography on the web.

beoba• 16 years ago

Worked for me. Try querying your favorite search engine (Bing) for the opening sentence. I've found news sites tend to like you if you have a search engine as your referer.

"In the end, there was no way to ignore the problem, and no way for politicians to spin it, either"

wglb2• 16 years ago

Ah I meant to be more clear. I didn't mind registering for the site as there is good photography there. And thanks for the reminder on how to find it otherwise.

zemanel• 16 years ago

as far as i know, drug use has been legal here in Portugal at least since 10 years ago and, like, the sky is still up where it's supposed to be

Vieira2• 16 years ago

not legal, decriminalized.

pyre3• 16 years ago

I don't get the difference between "drug use is legal" and "drug use is decriminalized." It sounds like mere possession is legal, but selling/trafficking is not, I would qualify that as 'drug use is legal.'

madmaze• 16 years ago

I think there are a few counties that could benefit from this approach of battling ramped drug use. It seems to have done something in Cali aswell as here in Massachusetts, for Mary-Jane that is. I have witnessed a few of my school mates succumb to heavy use of marijuana and some of them have had their problems with the law, but the majority of pot-heads I know can hold it within limits and actually do rather well. I was amazed to see how much drug use there was going to school in boston. Freshman year I would estimate that about 75-80% of people smoked atleast weed and close to everyone drank. To put my estimations into proportion, I must mention that I dont smoke and i cant say I hung-out with lots of potheads.

To the point: I think there is a great number of people that can deal with light drug use in everyday life, but there are some, in my experience mostly bipolar or psychologically depressed people have a hard time controlling themselves. Therefore I think that it may be a good idea for other countries to try similar measures.

fourspace3• 16 years ago

It should come as no surprise that the right answer is treating drug addiction and substance abuse like medical conditions rather than legal ones. The idea that the government should regulate what I choose to put in my own body is preposterous to begin with.

If you want to criminalize something, try starting with the actions that drug addicts take towards others, not themselves. Driving while intoxicated, theft, vandalism and more serious crimes are already illegal and should stay so. It is impossible to violate your own rights; why should making a 100% personal decision be a crime?

corin_2• 16 years ago

Devil's advocate: should that right extend to allowing people to commit suicide without any attempt at prevention?

cabalamat• 16 years ago

You can hardly make successful suicide a crime. (Though there have been regimes that made unsuccessful suicide attempts illegal).

drivebyacct22• 16 years ago

It's tough because a "good" society would seek to help someone to prevent them from killing themselves. Counseling or treatment could help them. Maybe they've tried. Maybe they don't want to. Maybe they're plain tired of living. There are days that I feel bored with life. I would never do something so drastic as kill my life, but relative to many, I'm a spoiled little shit. I can only imagine how bad things could be for some. I hate it when people call those who kills themselves cowards. I couldn't imagine the pain I'd have to be in and the feeling of despair needed to kill myself. It's incredibly sad.

fourspace3• 16 years ago

The government doesn't "allow" free people (those not in prison, psychiatric hospitals, etc.) to commit suicide; they are free to do so if they choose.

Prevention is orthogonal to what I'm talking about. In fact, I'm all for helping those folks who are suicidal and will accept help. It's a shame that mental disease is one of the few afflictions that you can't admit you have, talk to others about or is even accepted as on par with more physical ailments.

idm5• 16 years ago

Devil's advocate: is criminalization tantamount to prevention?

alrighty-then2• 16 years ago

"why should making a 100% personal decision be a crime?"

Because that "personal decision" has a huge negative influence on a lot of people. Drug use affects your family and friends negatively, it affects your coworkers, your employer, random people that you run over with your car or attack violently while high, and it raises taxes or insurance premiums since it's very costly to treat drug-related issues at hospitals.

Sure, in the beginning drug use may be a personal decision that doesn't affect too many people - but once addiction kicks in - and it does to a very large percentage of users - your drug use has a hugely negative effect on everyone around you, and even strangers.

haribilalic• 16 years ago

Alcohol is a generally legal drug that has all the same issues.

fourspace3• 16 years ago

Lots of personal decisions have negative effects on those around you. That's not a rational reason to make all of those actions illegal.

GiraffeNecktie• 16 years ago

Human beings have been altering their state of consciousness with various substances for all of recorded history and probably for all time. Mostly use of drugs was in an approved social or religious context that provided structure and meaning to the experience. Certainly, there is always the risk of some kind of harm, but history has demonstrated fairly conclusively that the most harm comes when drug use is illegal. When you take away the social, cultural and spiritual support for the experience. When you create an underground market for drugs etc.

pharrington• 16 years ago

The idea that the government should regulate what I choose to put in my own body is preposterous to begin with.

The abolishment of the FDA seems like a pretty drastic measure by any standard.

However effective drug legislation really -is not about this at all-. As you alluded to in your second point, it should be part of the broader system of minimizing the damage to society. Drugs are harmful -to society- when the criminal element is the sole distributor, when quality and dosages are completely uncontrollable, and price and availability of the addictive ish are unpredictable. Thus it seems the only way to quell the social damage of drug use of for the government to not only decriminalize everything, but to also ensure drugs are given away by community centers with specialized staff.

Zak2• 16 years ago

it should be part of the broader system of minimizing the damage to society

That's certainly one thing it should be about. Whether it is appropriate for the government to decide what substances people are permitted to introduce in to their own bodies is an important question though.

Thus it seems the only way to quell the social damage of drug use of for the government to not only decriminalize everything, but to also ensure drugs are given away by community centers with specialized staff.

Alcohol was pretty unsafe during prohibition, often containing methanol, a toxin which can blind or kill. Legalizing it meant that anyone producing and selling impure, mislabeled or adulterated alcohol could be sued or jailed. The same could be done with other drugs.

eduardo_f• 16 years ago

It's the same in Spain. You get a fine (around $500), but you don't go to prison.

keefe• 16 years ago

immigration...

maeon3• 16 years ago

Malcolm Gladwell talks about this phenomenon in his book: "The Tipping Point". He calls it the 'stickiness factor'. He analyzes the phenomenon where children begin taking drugs even when they fully understand that it greatly harms them.

Teenagers are inherently, perhaps even genetically predisposed to imitate others and try on new behaviors and attitudes during adolescence. Second, the types of the people who are more likely to engage in dramatic, easily romanticized behavior such as early cigarette smoking or suicide are also more likely to be those that others tend to gravitate toward and seek to emulate.

When Portugal legalized all drugs, they greatly lowered the 'Stickiness Factor' for those drugs.

http://www.wikisummaries.org/The_Tipping_Point#Chapter_7:_Ca...

drivebyacct22• 16 years ago

Strange. I was always pressured to do drugs but refused. I'd always been curious about marijuana, and I knew the actual risks and major lack there of. Sometime in college I tried it, but only one other person knew and with the people I run around with, drug use isn't "cool". It's not as bad for me and doesn't have the morning-after effects of alcohol and considerably less is enjoyable enough to relax in the evenings. I guess I'm more of a minority than I'd assumed.

TGJ• 16 years ago

“We really needed to learn how to prevent and discourage the use of drugs, especially in adolescent years. But you should use tools appropriate to the purpose, and criminal sanctions carried a lot of costs that really weren’t appropriate.”

I've always thought that the war on drugs was fought on the wrong side. That instead of working towards punishing people after the fact, we should have figured out why people use drugs and how to fix that problem. As with most things though, the easy way (prosecution) is the most traveled.

idm5• 16 years ago

Mental illness is a major factor leading to the use of drugs, either by prescription or not. Lots of people have mental illnesses, therefore lots of people use drugs. Here's the trick: prescription drugs may be sanctioned, but they are not definitely safer, either for the individual or for society.

I tend to agree with you about the "wrong side" argument, but where I disagree is: sometimes, drugs are the fix for the problem. For one individual, maybe meth isn't the answer, but perhaps adderall is (i.e. still an amphetamine, but less acutely active)

wil2k• 16 years ago

Looking at the other replies, this topic just begs for a reference to the work of Terence McKenna.

Especially to a speech like "The World & It's Double"

Terence McKenna: The World & It's Double - 1/11 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkUkGUY7hsY

It goes into subjects like boundary dissolution, how this is not something that some parties (governments, many religions, etc.) really like.

It also mentions how particular drugs (the ones that make you productive, e.g. caffeine) are the ones that are allowed. Not those which make you snap out of the standard Western materialistic view of the world:

"All the boundaries we put up to keep ourselves from feeling our circumstance are dissolved [when using psychedelics]. And boundary dissolution is the most threatening activity that can go on in a society. Government institutions become very nervous when people begin to talk to each other. The whole name of the Western game is to create boundaries and maintain them."

"The drugs that Western society has traditionally favored have either been drugs which maintain boundaries or drugs which promote mindless, repetitious physical activity on the assembly line, in the slave galley, on the slave-driven agricultural projects, in the corporate office, whatever it is."

I've once listened to this when I was in a skyscraper, looking at the world below.. seeing all those tiny people and vehicles move and pondering about this is really something that puts things in perspective.

Finally, although I don't use drugs/alcohol/caffeine myself.. I too cannot help wondering why one should not be allowed to experiment with ones own consciousness. Why not allow this in a legal, safe, special environment which watches over things?

Perhaps not all drugs are suitable for this, but let's not forget that drugs like DMT, which as McKenna describes give one 'the ride of a lifetime', are naturally occuring in our own bodies... yet they are one of the most illegal things out there.

Isn't that odd?

#daretoask, #questioneverything ;)

What happens when an entire country legalizes drug use?

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