Legalizing Drugs

[Maclowery]

I mean if I had my vote it'd be Preteen Pot Activist, in my ~2 years of not realizing what a terribly lazy, selfish person I actually was going to turn out to be.

[Arthur Dent]

We work with a lot of kids living in poverty and squalor, largely caused by drug abuse. For two Sunday nights in a row, I spent a few hours teaching an 8 year old kid how to use the stove and microwave because, as the mother said to our children's director, "y'all keep sending us food has to be cookiedand D (the kid) can't cook it so we can't eat it." At 8 years old, D is responsible for all the cooking and care for his brothers and sisters while the mother feeds her drug habit. And this isn't inner city Baltimore. This is small town America.

I'm not saying that as an argument for legalizing or not legalizing drugs. I am saying, in my experience after working with these families and these kids, that drugs are the single most destructive and evil thing currently on this planet.

That's quite a depressing story.

I do want to challenge your inference that depressing situations like this are caused by drugs. In fact, on a larger scale causation is two way with depressing situations leading to drug abuse, and of course, drug abuse can make it much more difficult to escape such situations. I don't know if you've followed any of the discussion about this recent study finding that poor middle-aged whites have a accelerating death rate in America completely at odds with the rest of the world, and in fact, other U.S. demographics. The deaths are caused by self-destructive behavior very often involving drugs. Have drugs suddenly gotten worse just in the U.S. for poor middle-aged whites? No. But opportunities for this group have deteriorated badly and those deteriorating prospects are associated with poor choices that make the situation worse. Looking at it from a more individual level, research with addicts shows that chemical addiction is not a very good explanation for behavior. The vast majority of crack and meth users, for example, don't get addicted. Here's a nice article about research into users of hard drugs discussing this.

Excerpt:

These findings made Dr. Hart rethink what he’d seen growing up, as he relates in his new book, “High Price.” It’s a fascinating combination of memoir and social science: wrenching scenes of deprivation and violence accompanied by calm analysis of historical data and laboratory results. He tells horrifying stories — his mother attacked with a hammer, his father doused with a potful of boiling syrup — but then he looks for the statistically significant trend.

Yes, he notes, some children were abandoned by crack-addicted parents, but many families in his neighborhood were torn apart before crack — including his own. (He was raised largely by his grandmother.) Yes, his cousins became destitute crack addicts living in a shed, but they’d dropped out of school and had been unemployed long before crack came along.

“There seemed to be at least as many — if not more — cases in which illicit drugs played little or no role than were there situations in which their pharmacological effects seemed to matter,” writes Dr. Hart, now 46. Crack and meth may be especially troublesome in some poor neighborhoods and rural areas, but not because the drugs themselves are so potent.

“If you’re living in a poor neighborhood deprived of options, there’s a certain rationality to keep taking a drug that will give you some temporary pleasure,” Dr. Hart said in an interview, arguing that the caricature of enslaved crack addicts comes from a misinterpretation of the famous rat experiments.

“The key factor is the environment, whether you’re talking about humans or rats,” Dr. Hart said. “The rats that keep pressing the lever for cocaine are the ones who are stressed out because they’ve been raised in solitary conditions and have no other options. But when you enrich their environment, and give them access to sweets and let them play with other rats, they stop pressing the lever.”

Single most destructive and evil thing on the planet? I don't see that at all. There's a lot of competition there.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

We work with a lot of kids living in poverty and squalor, largely caused by drug abuse. For two Sunday nights in a row, I spent a few hours teaching an 8 year old kid how to use the stove and microwave because, as the mother said to our children's director, "y'all keep sending us food has to be cookiedand D (the kid) can't cook it so we can't eat it." At 8 years old, D is responsible for all the cooking and care for his brothers and sisters while the mother feeds her drug habit. And this isn't inner city Baltimore. This is small town America.

I'm not saying that as an argument for legalizing or not legalizing drugs. I am saying, in my experience after working with these families and these kids, that drugs are the single most destructive and evil thing currently on this planet.

That's quite a depressing story.

I do want to challenge your inference that depressing situations like this are caused by drugs. In fact, on a larger scale causation is two way with depressing situations leading to drug abuse, and of course, drug abuse can make it much more difficult to escape such situations. I don't know if you've followed any of the discussion about this recent study finding that poor middle-aged whites have a accelerating death rate in America completely at odds with the rest of the world, and in fact, other U.S. demographics. The deaths are caused by self-destructive behavior very often involving drugs. Have drugs suddenly gotten worse just in the U.S. for poor middle-aged whites? No. But opportunities for this group have deteriorated badly and those deteriorating prospects are associated with poor choices that make the situation worse. Looking at it from a more individual level, research with addicts shows that chemical addiction is not a very good explanation for behavior. The vast majority of crack and meth users, for example, don't get addicted. Here's a nice article about research into users of hard drugs discussing this.

Excerpt:

These findings made Dr. Hart rethink what he’d seen growing up, as he relates in his new book, “High Price.” It’s a fascinating combination of memoir and social science: wrenching scenes of deprivation and violence accompanied by calm analysis of historical data and laboratory results. He tells horrifying stories — his mother attacked with a hammer, his father doused with a potful of boiling syrup — but then he looks for the statistically significant trend.

Yes, he notes, some children were abandoned by crack-addicted parents, but many families in his neighborhood were torn apart before crack — including his own. (He was raised largely by his grandmother.) Yes, his cousins became destitute crack addicts living in a shed, but they’d dropped out of school and had been unemployed long before crack came along.

“There seemed to be at least as many — if not more — cases in which illicit drugs played little or no role than were there situations in which their pharmacological effects seemed to matter,” writes Dr. Hart, now 46. Crack and meth may be especially troublesome in some poor neighborhoods and rural areas, but not because the drugs themselves are so potent.

“If you’re living in a poor neighborhood deprived of options, there’s a certain rationality to keep taking a drug that will give you some temporary pleasure,” Dr. Hart said in an interview, arguing that the caricature of enslaved crack addicts comes from a misinterpretation of the famous rat experiments.

“The key factor is the environment, whether you’re talking about humans or rats,” Dr. Hart said. “The rats that keep pressing the lever for cocaine are the ones who are stressed out because they’ve been raised in solitary conditions and have no other options. But when you enrich their environment, and give them access to sweets and let them play with other rats, they stop pressing the lever.”

Single most destructive and evil thing on the planet? I don't see that at all. There's a lot of competition there.

Fascinating.

[planet planet]

I go back and forth. Sometimes I feel the way you do, Wart. Then I think about how drugs like heroin and crack more or less make people zombies, and make people sick and desperate. How these drugs end the users' lives, and make it pretty likely that the users will resort to behaviors that impose negative externalities on the rest of society like theft, muggings, property crime, prostitution, and premature mortality and socialized healthcare costs.

I agree that criminalizing drug use has been a huge failure (unless you are the DEA or a private prison operator). I don't know if full legalization works either. I also don't know what effect, if any, full legalization would have on usage rates. My guess is not a ton of extra people will decide to take up heroin just because it becomes legal. An advantage of full legalization is that it eliminates cartels, and lets the government tax and regulate. Regulation may prevent deaths; tax may help pay for treatment and rehabilitation that is missing in our country now.


TL/DR: I don't know. It's a tough problem that smarter people than me can't solve.

Ten Years Ago Portugal Decriminalized All Drugs. What Happened Next?

Wait, what? 40% of people in the US over 12 yo. regularly smoke pot? I'd like to see where they're getting those numbers.

[cardinalkarp]

But too each his own, ans long as you don't hurt anyone else, including unborn kids if you are pregnant.

You can't take drugs (regularly) and not hurt anyone else. It's impossible.

complete bull. C'mon, Fat. You know better.

I would have to agree w/ this. Being a former user of many different substances it WILL negatively effect relationships whether you intend it to or not.

[wart57]

But too each his own, ans long as you don't hurt anyone else, including unborn kids if you are pregnant.

You can't take drugs (regularly) and not hurt anyone else. It's impossible.

complete bull. C'mon, Fat. You know better.

I would have to agree w/ this. Being a former user of many different substances it WILL negatively effect relationships whether you intend it to or not.

I need to do a better job of proofreading, one of my biggest pet peeves is the use of to, too and two! I want to scream every time I see I made this [expletive] up!

[cardsfansince82]

I think it's very possible to use marijuana responsibly and not have it harm your relationships or life functions. That said, I'm about as pro weed as you can get and I still recognize there are limitations.

I've spent some time in Denver post legalization and there are some noticeable differences. Maybe I was just expecting them or looking for them, but they were there. It seemed like any employee I encountered even outside of dispensaries was stoned out of their mind and gave poor service. I saw two separate pedestrians come extraordinarily close to getting run over by cars where the driver didn't even brake at all. I saw several other instances where it was obvious the driver in front of me was impaired in some way. Legalizing weed overall would be a huge net positive when you figure the cost spent on policing, cost spent on incarcerating, the tax revenue that would be realized, plus all the small business opportunities. But there will be some drawbacks.

I have no interest in living in a world where meth and stuff like that is freely available.

[heyzeus]

[wart57]

I think the only reason pot may be legalized is all of the tax revenue that can be made by the govt, and money that can be made by banks since most banks still won't deal with dispensaries due to fear of federal restrictions.

http://www.dailyherald.com/article/2015 ... 151108917/

[Radbird]

I think it's very possible to use marijuana responsibly and not have it harm your relationships or life functions. That said, I'm about as pro weed as you can get and I still recognize there are limitations.

I've spent some time in Denver post legalization and there are some noticeable differences. Maybe I was just expecting them or looking for them, but they were there. It seemed like any employee I encountered even outside of dispensaries was stoned out of their mind and gave poor service. I saw two separate pedestrians come extraordinarily close to getting run over by cars where the driver didn't even brake at all. I saw several other instances where it was obvious the driver in front of me was impaired in some way. Legalizing weed overall would be a huge net positive when you figure the cost spent on policing, cost spent on incarcerating, the tax revenue that would be realized, plus all the small business opportunities. But there will be some drawbacks.

I have no interest in living in a world where meth and stuff like that is freely available.

I live out here and haven't noticed anything like what you're describing. Maybe I'm not looking for it. Or maybe everyone in Boulder was already stoned.