Legalizing, rationing, and the black market

[Police Officer]

I was sent this via PM. I figured it would make a good thread.

As you have been a member of this forum for a considerable amount of time and you have seen a great number of the arguments raised against drugs prohibition, if inarticulately, I wonder how you manage to maintain a serious intellectual opposition to drug legalization. I would be grateful if you could briefly account for your belief so I can see exactly why people are still recalcitrant in accepting legalization as a pragmatic necessity. For instance, do you believe that we should keep the harder and more addictive drugs illegal whilst legalizing softer drugs such as cannabis or ecstasy? Do you think that alcohol and tobacco should remain legal? Where do you think prohibition is successful? Would you agree to legalization under strict terms of regulation?

I must say that it is NOT a necessity. Eating is a necessity. Breathing is a necessity. Being able to consume highly addictive narcotics that turn people into animals during addiction is a want.

I think we should keep all of the current narcotics illegal. I think that legalizing some and not others would be opening Pandora’s Box. That’s the problem with the pot argument.

Prohibition is successful in that it helps to keep crack, heroin, and methamphetamines harder to get (edited from "out of people’s hands.") To legalize these drugs is to open the flood gates and saturate the populace. It’s nice to think that people will use them in moderation, but that’s not just realistic.

Legalization under strict terms of regulation will not work. Look at oxy.

I must admit, one of my greatest sticking points when I first heard the legalization argument was the worry about protecting minors from drugs, especially considering that we are doing such a bad job with alcohol and tobacco. Thus I would be much more in favor of the legalization of drugs if we introduced a chip and pin ID card system for all drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, which had to be presented at the point of sale. This would then be scanned into a database and your name, address and picture would be available for the salesperson, who would then log exactly what you bought and how much you bought. I think this way we can monitor use patterns and seriously restrict the sale or provision of drugs to minors. Any person found guilty of supply to minors would face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years, any person guilty of sale without a license would face a maximum of 5 years and an unlimited fine. This system, I would say, would only be efficacious if at least some drugs were legalized. My thinking goes thusly - the reason prices for drugs are so high is because of the risks involved in trafficking them. So you create a legal market which undercuts the black market. To prevent the black market equalizing or lowering prices you up the risk factor, so that drug supply becomes so risky and the profits so small that almost all of the black market will disappear.

Many States have laws that follow that line that help to monitor the purchase of products that contain ephedrine. Does it make it harder for the cooks? Definitely. Impossible? No. They just have junkies go buy the stuff for them so there’s no suspicion.

Anyway, I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the matter, especially if you, like me, have concerns that you would like resolved to more readily accept the necessity of legalization.”

LOL I know this is no shocker but I don’t share your desires to get drugs more readily available and legalized.

Here's a question: Has anyone here ever lived anywhere that had a rationing system?

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Good thought provoking thread, even though I disagree with your analysis