The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel

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Obviously making it illegal hasn't done anything other than encourage drug use and abuse (drug use has exploded since the war on drugs started).




A) I never said LSD.
B) You never refuted the points I made. Most likely because no prohibitionist rhetoric actually thinks about the users themselves other than in the view that they should be sober and nothing else matters. That worked out great during alcohol prohibition and is doing much of the same for the rest of prohibition.





No system is perfect but it's more effective than if it were a black market of cigarettes and alcohol. You cannot control people's behavior 100% but you can certainly make more effective conditions for people. The current prohibition environment means that sales and uses are both open to children much more so than if it were legal and actually controlled. Controlled is a funny word to use for "controlled substances" given that there's the least control possible with regards to quality and who it can be sold to.




Again, you're approaching it from a position of superiority which is unhealthy. A parent-child relationship will not help this. You, of all people, should be against such paternal actions from the government.

But then again, you show no understanding of markets and how an actual free market works versus a black market. I guess this is understandable since you've never engaged in any black market transactions but the logic is pretty simple in how it'd cut off funds to pushers, discourage growers, and save money on jailing costs, courtroom costs, and police costs (and the time wasted by the latter two enforcing such useless laws).

Well we do have an historical model in prohibition.

With the onset of prohibition, organized crime moved quickly to establish a supply for a population that continued to demand alcohol. Prohibition was a demonstrable failure as public policy, and when it was lifted, the legitimate sale of alcohol removed any profit motive for organized crime to continue providing it.

Now, this is not to say that organized crime packed up and left. But they did turn to new goods and services.



I am not going to argue with you on this one. From a medical perspective, I have issues with the whole range of psychotropes. Abuse of both legal, prescription drugs and of restricted and prohibited recreational drugs (including alcohol and tobacco) present issues of medical concern. Let's not limit ourselves to LSD, cocaine and Ritalin.

However, I question the viability of the approach we currently have. We approach recreational drugs from the nanny state approach of, "we know best, so we are going to ban them," but we countenance tobacco which imposes huge public costs. We allow for the prescription of oxycodone, and expect that physicians and pharmacists are somehow going to police its use.

I think it's a bit of a bankrupt policy.



I am not sure that I buy the "floodgates" argument. Juveniles are already getting more than merely cigarettes and alcohol. Present approaches have been a resounding failure at stemming abuse by young people.

I agree that a policy that makes a bad situation worse is not the right approach--but I am not yet persuaded that a change in approach is necessarily going to make this bad situation worse. (Though I remain open to the possibility).



This raises the significant public policy question: who pays for rehab?

I will suggest that one of the reasons that we have some of the issues that we currently face is that the public sector has been steadily eroding the supports in place for the urban underclass. We have closed beds in psychiatric hospitals, we have made access to transition programs more difficult.

The high demand for rehab is, I suggest, one of those examples where we have been penny wise and pound foolish. By saving money on program spending, government has created an unfunded pressure elsewhere. At root, I believe that public spending should be undertaken in a way that looks beyond merely the bottom line in terms of understanding its cost and its benefits.