Slavery, in the Colorado and many other state constitutions, is explicitly forbidden. Colorado, at least, allows an exception for convicted criminals.
I can't believe it's 2016 and I find myself having to say "yup, slavery is bad, let's not do that."
Some years ago I read an interesting book on this, called The Pursuit of Oblivion[1]. In addition to providing a fascinating look at historical drug use across different cultures, the book also makes the general argument that the human drive to alter one's consciousness is as natural and inherent as the drives for food, sex, etc.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Oblivion-Global-History-Narco...
I wouldn't say that. For generally law-abiding citizens like me, the lack of availability has done wonders to protect me from drugs. At some point or another in my life, I've been tempted to experiment with the legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco, etc.). I've never been tempted to try LSD or cocaine (for example), because there is currently no legal way to obtain it and I definitely don't feel like engaging in risky activities just to try.
Making all drugs legal and accessible will definitely have a negative impact on one portion of the population (curious people like me). A certain percentage of curious but otherwise law-abiding people will destroy their lives once drugs are legalized.
You aren't the same sort of curios. I'm the sort that goes to Amsterdam as a vacation spot. I tried out things when I was younger. Drug education? Mine was in the 80's and 90's. I figured it was a bit ... overblown. The only addictions I've truly had were to nicotine and caffeine, both of which I have today. Completely legal too.
The thing is that it was possible for me to combine the anti-drug propaganda, tone it down some, and balance it with what I saw around me. I asked folks questions about stuff. We can educate, control strength and purity, and invest in treatment programs. We can educate on safety like say we do with alcohol. We can invest in much improved public transportation. And so on.
> A certain percentage of curious but otherwise law-abiding people will destroy their lives once drugs are legalized
I actually think the small percentage whose lives get ruined due to drugs will be smaller than the percentage of lives that are ruined and uprooted due to the war on drugs. Folks have lost houses and their children for pot - or lsd, even if they are as responsible as you can be with kids (relative babysitting for example, or they are at their mom/dad's house). Many have went to jail or prison and this is pretty common.
Most folks don't get addicted to drugs - a few have higher addiction rates, and I think we can minimize that with proper education and investment.
from http://www.vice.com/read/the-first-fentanyl-addict
"Roughly 10 to 14 per cent of all physicians will be substance-dependent over their lifetime, and the incidence in anesthesia providers is 2.5 times higher than other physicians, according to a five-year outcome study from 16 physician health programs in the US."
There are a lot of assumptions in there - the biggest one is that, in a legal market, drugs which are currently illegal today would still be more dangerous than drugs which already are legal. That's a big assumption, and there's plenty of evidence to suggest the opposite. For example, the success of diacetylmorphine maintenance strongly suggests that it is just as possible to be a regular user of heroin as it is to be a person who drinks regularly in the evenings but otherwise lives a 'normal' life.
On that note, we dramatically overestimate the danger of drugs like cocaine and dramatically underestimate the danger of drugs like alcohol and caffeine. Alcohol, incidentally, is one of the only drugs for which the withdrawal can literally be fatal[0]. (By contrast, while heroin withdrawal can cause dehydration and other problems, as long as those are treated correctly, the direct effects of the withdrawal are non-fatal)[1].
[0] Benzodiazepines can also cause the same effect.
[1] This does not mean that heroin detoxification is easy or should be taken lightly. Lots of things can still go wrong, and it's one of the reason why detox programs exist. But partly due to the legal status of heroin, we ascribe these to the 'danger' of heroin as a drug, all the while ignoring that alcohol detoxification shares all of these same challenges and many more.
this recent John Oliver piece on opiods holds a lot of truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdPrQFjo2o
Benzodiazepines are far more addictive than opioids, and while their abuse has declined a bit, a lot of people still abuse xanax and klonopin, and before that valium. that' a lot of doctors directly and indirectly enabling all those addicts.
why hasn't the war on drugs taken on the opioid and benzo manufacturers? it makes me wonder why pharmaceutical companies and their executives aren't locked up like the drug kingpins they are?
Your argument is offensive. If you need to be protected from your lack of self control then to make the rest of the world suffer is depraved.
My argument is not offensive, you simply chose to be offended.
> If you need to be protected from your lack of self control then to make the rest of the world suffer is depraved.
Yeah, let's get rid of all the guard rails on mountain roads too. Some of us like the adrenaline of getting near the edge and if you need to be protected from your lack of self control, too bad. My desire to ride the edge should trump your desire for guard rails... right?
And see, so drugs are good, right? Only such experiences lead to more such experiences, and on and on.
Addiction doesn't stem from initial bad experiences, but exceptionally good ones. You should fear the latter many times more than the former.
What would you forecast the expected effects of you trying LSD or cocaine would be?
A night of amusing delusions? Heightened spiritual awareness? A one-way ticket to pus-oozing blowjobs in bus station parking lots?
Part of the effectiveness of the Drug War has been to implant a binary perspective on the dangers of drugs: uncompromising, guaranteed, full-scale disaster. They manage to re-arrange everyday peoples' notions of cause and effect to make it seem as if the drugs are the problem leading to emotional disaster. This is a convenient scapegoat.
The real situation is the breakdown and loss of faith in the fully industrialized world is causing more people to want to escape than ever, breakdowns in family structure, financial stress, physical stress, loss of freedom and so on. These things can't be fixed easily and despite all of the drug arrests, people are continuously becoming more desperate.
For me? Probably not much. But who knows, maybe I'll try it the first time, nothing happens. 10 years later I fall on hard times and then I try it again to try and deal with my situation, this time become addicted, and then make my problems an order of magnitude worse.
That's how alcoholism generally works.
That's an argument for decriminalization, not legalization.
Is the law really the only thing that keeps you away from harder drugs? Don't you think that it's your own willpower?
Like you, I'm generally law abiding, but thanks to certain friends, I have easy access to a number of illegal drugs - and it's in an relatively safe environment where my chance of getting caught is quite low.
But despite that access, the only drugs I've ever used in my life are alcohol and marijuana (well ok, I'm literally addicted to caffeine). I've never even tried cigarettes.
It's not the law that keeps me away from certain drugs, I just don't want to do them.
> people will destroy their lives once drugs are legalized
I don't think this statement is really a good summary of that, though.
The better example is prohibition. I wouldn't say most people who consume alcohol are destroying their lives, but alcohol has a moderate impact on the liver. Regular use increases liver-related disease. And during the prohibition, liver disease went down starkly.
Say we legalize everything. Even if the additional addiction is negligible, any minor to moderate health detriment spread across a larger population (due to legalization) is a big societal cost.
Anyway, I think there is still a decent argument to be made about individual freedom being worth the cost, and a decent argument to be made about a substitution effect (given how bad we already know alcohol to be, a legal drug just needs to be no worse than alcohol).
Alcohol consumption went up during Prohibition, and went back down after it was repealed.
That's a real shame. LSD is incredible.
