Legalise drugs to beat terrorists

[thebaxter]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c0eaf51e-450...0779fd2ac.html

The losing war on drugs wastes resources that could be used to fight terrorism and other crimes.

an interesting point of view that should be taken into account... instead of wire tapping we should be loosening governmental controls?

[Hyperspaceblastoff]

its useless
the politicians are too stubborn
well never win this fight
its been raged for a long time, no end in sight

[Heretic.Ape.]

@thebaxter: please copy the article and post in thread. Links become outdated quickly sometimes. Thanks
h.a.

[top]Legalise drugs to beat terrorists

By Willem Buiter
Published: August 7 2007 18:20 | Last updated: August 7 2007 18:20

The UK government is con*sidering reclassifying cannabis from a class C drug to a class B drug, carrying higher penalties for using and dealing. As an economist with a strong commitment to personal liberty and responsibility, my preference would be to see all illegal drugs legalised. The only exception would be substances whose consumption leads to behaviour likely to cause material harm to others.


Following legalisation, the production and sale of these drugs should be regulated to ensure quality and purity. They should also be taxed, as are tobacco products and alcoholic beverages. Greater resources should be devoted to educating the public, especially children and teenagers, about the health hazards associated with the drugs; more money should be spent on the rehabilitation of addicts.
Ideally legalisation should occur simultaneously in a number of neighbouring countries, preferably at the level of the European Union. When the Netherlands became an enclave of tolerance of drug use, drug users from all over Europe congregated there.
The principle-based argument for legalisation is that behaviour that harms others ought to be criminalised, not behaviour that hurts only the person engaged in it. It is not the government’s job to protect adults of sound mind from the predictable consequences of their actions.
If the public is ill-informed about the consequences of drug taking, there is an educational role for the state. Children should be protected from drugs, as they are from tobacco and alcohol. So should the mentally ill and mentally incapacitated. Parents should be paternalistic, but when it comes to mentally competent grown-ups the state should not be. It is not the responsibility of the state to ensure our “happiness” – whatever that is. That is the road to a Brave New World.
The argument that countries with publicly funded or subsidised healthcare have the right to proscribe the use of drugs likely to cause harm to the user is a ludicrous misuse of the concept of an externality. Should we ban rugby because it is more dangerous than tiddlywinks? If it is considered unfair that those who do not use drugs end up subsidising the care of those who do, this is an argument for the National Health Service to develop a policy of discriminating among patients on the basis of how they have contributed to their illnesses.
A pragmatic argument against criminalising drugs is that criminalisation creates vast rents and encourages criminal entrepreneurs to use violence, intimidation, bribery, extortion and corruption to extract these rents. Another pragmatic argument is that it is pointless to waste resources fighting a war that cannot be won. The losing war on drugs wastes resources that could be used to fight terrorism and other crimes.
Another important argument for legalising, in particular, all cultivation of poppy and of coca (and their illegal derivatives) is that this would take away a vital source of income and political support for terrorist move- ments, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (Farc) and various paramilitary groups.
The United Nations estimates that opium production in Afghanistan grew to more than 6,000 metric tonnes last year with a value exceeding $3bn. It is the origin of more than 90 per cent of the world’s illegally consumed opiates.
A significant portion of the profits flows to the Taliban, who act as middlemen in the opium business. They combine extortion and threats of violence towards the poppy farmers with the sale of protection to these same farmers against those who would destroy their livelihood, mainly the Nato allies and the Afghan central government.
Following legalisation, the allies in Afghanistan could further undermine the financial strength of the Taliban and al-Qaeda by buying up the entire poppy harvest. If a sufficient premium over the prevailing market price were offered, the Taliban/al-Qaeda middle-man could be cut out altogether, and thus would lose his tax base. Winning the hearts and minds of poppy growers and coca growers is a lot easier when you are not seen as intent on destroying their livelihood.
This proposal for legalising poppy growing regardless of what the poppy is used for is much more radical than the proposal from the Senlis Council to license the growing of poppy in Afghanistan only for the production of essential medicines. The Senlis Council proposal would not end the problem of illicit poppy cultivation co-existing with licensed cultivation. With the illicit price likely to exceed the licit price, the Taliban would retain a significant tax base.
Is legalisation of all opiates an integral part of the proposal that the allies procure the entire poppy harvest in Afghanistan? Consider procurement without legalisation. The allies would find themselves each year with the largest stash of poppy the world has ever seen. What to do with it?
The entire global medical demand for morphine, codeine and other legal poppy derivatives could be satisfied – possibly even free of charge. The global demand for medicinal opiates at a zero price would greatly exceed the current medicinal use of opiates, since many developing countries are either in effect priced out of the legal market altogether or are, for budgetary reasons, restricted to purchasing inadequate quantities that leave widespread, unnecessary suffering among poor patients. Supplying the world’s demand for medicinal opiates free of charge would create economic problems for the current licit growers of poppy for opium, in Turkey, India and elsewhere; well-targeted development aid could address this issue.
If poppies could not be profitably turned into biofuel and if opium and heroin remained illegal, the rest of the allies’ poppy stash would have to be destroyed. This would drive up the street price of opium and heroin and create even more massive rents for the remaining suppliers. Poppy growers would try to withhold poppy from the allies’ procurement round in order to sell it later in the illicit market. The Taliban would retain a tax base. Legalisation is crucial for the success of this squeeze play on the Taliban.
If opium and heroin were legalised, the allies’ stash could be sold to regulated producers/distributors of opium, heroin and other formerly illegal poppy derivatives. Our chemical and pharmaceutical industries, and indeed our cigarette manufacturers, would be well-positioned to enter this trade. The profits made by the allies on the sale of the stash could be turned over to the Afghan government. It surely makes more sense for the government to tax the poppy harvest than for the Taliban to do so.
So legalise, regulate, tax, educate and rehabilitate. Stop a losing war, get the government off our backs, beat the Taliban and deal a blow to al-Qaeda in the process. Not a bad deal!
The writer is professor of European political economy at the London School of Economics’ European Institute

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

[Purest]

The problem is, no politician is going to turn around and say "I want to legalise cannabis" purely because of the media backlash. The Green party are one of the only parties that are talking of legalisation of Cannabis, however due to the complete hash we call an electoral system in the UK they'll never get in power unless they get 90% of the vote

[thebaxter]

Thanks heretic.ape. will do,

also, its the citizens responsibility to check the government its our fault that those closed minded bigots are in office. Why don't we have more lobbying groups working towards change? Are we to Blame?

[Heretic.Ape.]

The problem is not that there are not lobbying groups... it's that the other sides lobbyists have deep enough pockets to be much more charitable with "campaign donations" and "gifts".
Humanitarianism, rights, freedom... these things are not very profitable.

[thebaxter]

Thats a valid point, how can we change that?

[dr ACE]

swim thinks 1 of the main problems is most people trust the government and what they say about drugs,blindly.the reality is its the experts in the drug field that the government should be listening too

[chemlove]

Originally Posted by Purest

The problem is, no politician is going to turn around and say "I want to legalise cannabis" purely because of the media backlash. The Green party are one of the only parties that are talking of legalisation of Cannabis, however due to the complete hash we call an electoral system in the UK they'll never get in power unless they get 90% of the vote

I totally agree with the first sentence. I believe that no politician will ever be willing to say in public that legalizing anything will be the best way out.

I also believe that the way to beat or win the war on drugs is to simply use honest education to give the people the knowledge of side effects and addictive qualities. I think once that happens drugs like Marijuana will be legalized.

[hoodabudda]

Originally Posted by Purest

The problem is, no politician is going to turn around and say "I want to legalise cannabis" purely because of the media backlash. The Green party are one of the only parties that are talking of legalisation of Cannabis, however due to the complete hash we call an electoral system in the UK they'll never get in power unless they get 90% of the vote

ron paul did. he's got my vote.

[Heretic.Ape.]

I think the primary fallacy of above arguments is they rely on presuppositions that simply aren't true: that decisions in policy are made by the people, and that people make decisions based on knowledge and reason.
Another component of this is that people are under the false belief that cynicism and apathy are qualities associated with intelligence. This is comforting because you can feel smart and hip to the issues but feel no pressure to do anything about it (thank god! political activism is such a drag and I could be watching everybody loves raymond on my new plasma screen ).
Also, it's not that people trust the government I think. Nobody trusts politicians, that's like a cliche. That's why governments have gotten smarter in how they present their anti-drug propaganda. They've started releasing bullshit studies in non-overtly government publications (the Lancet study on cannabis psychosis comes to mind), that's one reason it's always good to look at who exactly funded the research. Since "scientists" are the new priest class that define our mind-scape this has a bigger impact than some politico saying "drugs are bad".
Education would definitely help but it would have to involve information not simply on the myths and realities of drugs, but in pointing out the atrocities of the drug war in such a way that gets people riled up (if that is possible in this time of viruous apathy) since facts don't influence people, emotion does. This information would have to be distributed to the same degree that anti-drug propaganda is, which is completely unfeasible because the fat cat media moguls are in bed with the politicians. Like Abbie Hoffman pointed out, there is no freedom of the press unless you address equality of potential at the distribution level. Anyone can print a book, make pamphlets, newsletters, or websites. But if the information isn't sitting out in the new release section of Barnes and Noble, being played on cable for people to see while their spending their daily four hours of channel surfing, isn't in big sensationalist headlines on the front page of the newspaper (rather than little editorials lost in the middle of the paper), etc, the message continues to be heard only by those who seek it out--these people usually already agree with you.
So it comes back to the deep pockets. You need corporate sponsorship to get your message heard by the people via commercials during the superbowl, or to be heard by politicians via taking them out on an expense account, etc.
Then you need to play at peoples emotions, fears, self-righteous indignation, etc, rather than trying to point out how unreasonable current paradigms are. If people don't feel impacted at some personal level, they DO NOT CARE.

[eltimmy]

>its been raged for a long time, no end in sight

Nonsense.

Cannabis is never going to be demedicalized in California. Numerous other states in the U.S. are toying with the idea as well.

Other locales toss around decriminalization -- difficult to get arrested for small amounts of marijuana in the U.K nowadays, that's not how it always was. Politicians on the left and right are beginning to see the fallacy of the drug war. Right-wing libertarianism, now more in vogue than ever, favors decriminalization/legalization. Things are getting better now than they have been for some time.

But as heretic notes, there need to be fewer apathetic potheads and more intelligent, driven activists.

[hoodabudda]

Originally Posted by eltimmy

>its been raged for a long time, no end in sight

Nonsense.

Cannabis is never going to be demedicalized in California. Numerous other states in the U.S. are toying with the idea as well.

Other locales toss around decriminalization -- difficult to get arrested for small amounts of marijuana in the U.K nowadays, that's not how it always was. Politicians on the left and right are beginning to see the fallacy of the drug war. Right-wing libertarianism, now more in vogue than ever, favors decriminalization/legalization. Things are getting better now than they have been for some time.

But as heretic notes, there need to be fewer apathetic potheads and more intelligent, driven activists.

its already decriminalized under an ounce for sure and you would probably get it lowered to a misdemeanor if you had more. does swiy know when the next opportunity for citizens to vote on the issue is? swim just registered to vote and is excited about finally voting on somthing like this.

[lulz]

edit: article had already been posted

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37361

[Heretic.Ape.]

This article has been posted in the policy section.
Great Article on Drug War from Today's (19-8-2007) Washington Post

may want to edit out the quote and provide this link to avoid clutter.

[katukulysm]

Originally Posted by Hyperspaceblastoff

its useless
the politicians are too stubborn
well never win this fight
its been raged for a long time, no end in sight

that sounds like the truth right there.

[Nagognog2]

Originally Posted by Purest

The problem is, no politician is going to turn around and say "I want to legalise cannabis" purely because of the media backlash. The Green party are one of the only parties that are talking of legalisation of Cannabis, however due to the complete hash we call an electoral system in the UK they'll never get in power unless they get 90% of the vote

Just beware of the so-called Green Party in the USA. They are actually a front group for the Republikans - designed to pull votes away from the Democrats and throw elections to the Republikans.

(edit): I know the original poster is in the UK. I hope their Greens are for real.