As a number of commenters pointed out on one of the threads about Schapelle Corby, one issue raised by the case is whether harsh criminal sanctions ought to be visited on people for the use of recreational drugs such as marijuana. A related matter is the allocation of police resources and the infringement of liberties inherent in the war on drugs. My own personal view is that the use of marijuana ought to be at least decriminalised if not legalised. My reasoning is basically libertarian but I don’t want to spell it out in full so as not to preclude input from people who are interested in debating this issue.
Elsewhere: John Quiggin argues:
The reason that attention hasn’t been focused on this issue is that, as a society, we’re fairly hypocritical about the war on drugs. At one level, we recognise that it’s essentially pointless and unwinnable, like a lot of wars. So we’ve gradually backed away from lengthy prison sentences for bit players, and even abandoned the idea that the capture of a few “Mr Big Enoughs” would make any real difference. But it’s still convenient for us that our neighbours should have draconian laws, the burden of which falls mainly on their own citizens. It’s only when a sympathetic figure like Corby gets 20 years for an offence that might have drawn a good behavior bond in Australia, or when some stupid young people end up facing a firing squad that the contradictions are exposed.
For me this is the only issue. If it wasn’t for this issue, then all this would never have taken up so much of our attention. When a kid can face execution or long-term incarceration, which in many ways is more painful, for acting as the dogsbody for a mainstream vice then we something is severely schizo in our moral-legal code.
This has nowt to do with Indo law or English law. This has to do with our immaturity when confronted with our own weaknesses. We are randomly scape-goating to protect ourselves from bearing full accountability for our own choices.
I think that - in the States at least - the war on drugs has much more to do with social control - particularly containing and incarcerating young black men with few economic opportunities - than anything else. And at another level, it gives the US a foreign policy lever - ie in Colombia and other parts of Latin America.
I’d say that a reasonable majority of neoclassical economists are in favour of not just decriminalisation but full legalisation of soft and hard drugs. Here’s an interview with Uncle Milton on the subject
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Misc/friedm1.htm
Arguments for keeping currently illegal drugs illegal are demolished by the simply process of substituting the word “alcohol” for the word “drug”.
The current anti-drug ads on TV and in Mags are a complete joke since it has been recognised that it is extremely easy to get amphetamines of a quality that is equal to medically produced amphetamines.
People buy drugs the same way they buy CDs. They go up to someone they know and say “Epicure/Green Goblin LSD tabs. What do you think?”
Big issue, then, judging by the deluge of comments. If there is a lesson to be learned from recent events, we isn’t learning it.
wbb, open your eyes. The most serious posts of Mark’s, and the closest to the painful sensitive spots of everybody left to right, are the ones which receive the fewest comments. It’s the ones on odd sexual things which end up in 200+ comment thread hash parties.
Consider the massive number of comments on Mark’s thread on Americans, Christianity, Jews and millenarianism. Two and counting.
Wot’s it about, homburgs, yamulkas and pigeon droppings?
(I get nervous under those high ceilings in big cathedrals. What’s up there?)
Just prayers, wbb, just prayers.
wbb “If there is a lesson to be learned from recent events, we isn‚Äôt learning it. ”
Please expand on this. I’m not quite sure I get your drift.
The lesson to learn is that while we continue to allow free reign to the forces which maintain draconian penalties for drug offences we will continue to get cases like Corby’s.
Illegal drugs are a huge market. Many many participate in that market. Our police forces occasionally catch somebody and then we throw the book at or even shoot that one insignificant individual. Scapegoating. In the name of deterrence. We have a communal mental illusion that there are evil drug dealers and there are innocent drug takers.
We pretend we are trying to protect the drug takers by eliminating the drug dealers. The dealers and the takers are in fact very much overlapping groups.
We take drugs ourselves. We buy from others. But if a dealer is caught we pretend that that person is in a different category from the person we have received drugs from. the drugs we take are OK. The people who pass on drugs to us are OK. The drugs other people take are evil. The people who pass on drugs to others are evil.
We will destroy randomly caught individuals lives to maintain this mental fiction.
We cannot justify the medieval severity of drug sentencing when vast numbers of people in society are involved. It’s only because the police catch and prosecute so few that we imgaine we are punishing extraordinarily guilty people. They are in fact the random and fatally unlucky tip of the iceberg. And of course the very stupid and naive.
In the present case, we have instead, focussed on why this case above others has attracted our attention. All interesting in an academic way, but the real cause of concern - that of disproportinate and hypocritical punishment went unnoticed in the uproar over the forensics and ancillary issues of racial politics and international relations.
There is a bloke doing 4.5 years in the same gaol as Corby for possession of “a handful” of Ecstasy tablets. If the popular press is to be believed, then a huge number of Australia’s youth have consumed Ecstasy. Maybe as many that consume the nicotoine, Australia’s most dangerous drug.
We are too complacent about these anomolies.
I’m not sure that I understand your argument harry. Alcohol = big problem for society, so let’s legalise all drugs and make the problem worse? Alcohol abuse is a problem that we need to work on, but I don’t see how legalising all drugs is going to help at all. I’d like to see more research on the marjuana (or however you spell it) and links to schizophrenia in susceptible persons and other long term effects of drug use. Why legalise more ways of frying your brain? We have enough problems with alcohol and tobacco as it is.
Mindy, one benefit that I can think of that would come out of legalising marijuana is that we would finally be able to get some reasonably accurate statistics and be able to start to apply findings in a way that could help people. We know lots about the impacts of tabacco and alcohol on the body, in families and in society, and this information can be used to help treat people, and to provide accurate facts so that people can make their own decisions. We are quite some way behind this with other drugs, which does us all a disservice IM(NS)HO.
If you believe the law protects us from marijuana, why not outlaw alcohol, as well, for the same reason, Mindy?
Why the inconsistency?
Some of the ideas presented in “Reefer Madness� lead nicely to some of my thoughts on alcohol in our society.
I recently read a comment by a person who stated that “America’s overall relationship with alcohol is massively unhealthy.� This remark triggered something that has been bothering me about the way in which our society views alcohol. More specifically, I believe that our society sends people widely different and mixed messages about alcohol.
On the one hand, we glamorize alcohol in our movies and in our commercials (remember the beer commercial that boldly stated: “It doesn’t get any better than this) and make alcohol so very accessible and commonplace.
On the other hand, we tell people about the dangers of alcohol and bombard them with statistics about alcohol-related accidents, fatalities, and people who have received multiple DUIs. Question. How can something as prevalent, accepted, and accessible in our society be so harmful AND illegal when consumed even in moderation?
Stated differently, consider the thousands upon thousands of bars and taverns in the United States. Now add to this list the restaurants, night clubs, sporting events, festivals, state fairs, hotels, casinos, carnivals, etc. where alcoholic beverages are regularly served. Finally, add the grocery stores, liquor stores, beverage stores, the Convenient Food Marts, the 7/11 stores, and the state stores where a person can purchase as many bottles, cans, and cases of alcoholic beverages as he or she desires.
The point: drinking alcohol is pervasively and intimately engrained in our society. Yet in all 50 states, driving with a blood alcohol level of .08% will result in a DUI or DWI if the driver is caught by the police. Obviously, something is not right in our society and the way in which it views alcohol.
If drinking one or two alcoholic drinks per day (this is said to be drinking in “moderationâ€?) is considered dangerous to one’s health, may impair one’s judgment, AND can result in a DUI or DWI-related fatality, perhaps it’s time that the number of bars and taverns is significantly reduced or eliminated. If drinking can lead to alcoholism by so many people in our society and result in severe health problems and alcohol-related injuries and fatalities, maybe alcohol should not be sold in the above list of stores and business establishments.
DenMan7
http://www.About-Alcohol-Abuse.com
Commo.
wbb, I would be happy to outlaw alcohol, but I also like to pick my fights and
I’m not going to win that one. I simply don’t believe that the legalising of more harmful substances to be a good idea. People can and do damage themselves enough with what’s already legal.
sorry, that should be ‘is a good idea’.