veiled4allah: thinking about the war on drugs

Rhubarb Features said:

Total comments: 1

As-Salaam Alaikum,

I think the war on drugs is quite futile, leading only to an increase in the "it's cool to do illegal things" mentality among the youth which in turn leads to a serious abuse of the drugs rather than experimental or moderate use.

It can also be a good excuse to lock up lots of poor people who don't have access to good legal advice and representation. Furthermore, it works at ruining the livelihood of poor people in the 3rd World who actually grow many of the drugs. Whole villages are sprayed in Columbia, even their food crops are ruined and whole families are sickly as a result.

The harm minimisation method is far better in my opinion coupled with decriminalisation of the plants used to make the various drugs because you can still work on the dealers and not penalise those people who may use drugs yet never engage in any other type of "crime".

This way they are not involved in the rather harsh "corrections" system, which, in most countries seems to promote recidivism rather than rehabilitation or reform. It's hard to see how getting raped and making cheap products/services to is going to help your drug problem.

John said:

Total comments: 2

had to slip this in, the CIA let's drugs into this country.
Ask former CIA workers or read some books(has to be some out there). They say it on TV. One told me online that he was working for the CIA on a boat and saw this drug shipment come in, he was told to be quiet about it(for as long as he worked for them, they tell all when the stop working if they want, the CIA doesn't care.) Maybe they ought to ask the CIA to help in the 'War on Drugs", they could if they wanted to. but drugs are "good" for the economy, so is the "black market"(acccording to my economics teacher)
asalamu alaykum,
John

PG said:

Total comments: 64

You've mentioned before that you lean toward a libertarian political stand, and of course the decriminalization or legalization of drugs is a major part of the American libertarian philosophy, on the grounds that the government should not dictate what people put into their own bodies.

I am all over the place on the liberal end of the drug debate. I am definitely opposed to putting nonviolent offenders into prison without offering extensive rehabilitation support. I sometimes think that legalizing and regulating narcotics, as we do with alcohol and nicotine, would be the way to go. (We certainly could use the revenue right now, says the tax-and-spend liberal ;-)

However, I think we have to acknowledge the effects of hard drugs on individuals, families and communities. It is not just the drug war that makes drugs dangerous and expensive. I think the inherent addictiveness of cocaine, heroin, etc. and their highly degenerative effects on the human body are problems in themselves. And the attendant problems (which we see when we legalize other addictive behaviors, like gambling) of prostitution and robbery to pay for the habit will not necessarily go away just because we have started treating heroin like vodka.

Still, I do consistently believe that our current drug war is a terrible waste, not just of police resources but of the lives of people caught up in it. It would be bad to have a mother who was a crack whore, but I don't think it makes life much better to have a mother in prison.

Al-Munaqabah said:

Total comments: 996

Thanks everybody for your feedback. Those are all important issues that need to be considered.

I think first we need to decide what the aim in anti-drug laws is. Is it to reduce the traffic in drugs? If so, it doesn't make much sense to penalize people who are just users. Is it to get people off drugs? If so, it doesn't make sense to toss them in jail or prison; they should be put in treatment instead. Maybe we should look at what harm a drug or a drug user causes to society. If there is little harm, then the state should stay out of it.

My dad, who is definitely a libertarian, believes that drugs should be decriminalized. I'm not sure of the specifics of his views. He might well agree with PG that hard drugs should still be regulated in some way.

There's also the larger question of whether the war on drugs is primarily a war against poor people, especially African-Americans, in the way that it is carried out. This is the particular angle that the Racial Disparity Project is working at. Once the incident reports have been filed, they will be analyzed to look for patterns in the race of the suspects.

We can also ask whether the corrections system is really accomplishing anything and how it can be reformed.

ubaid said:

Total comments: 6

assalam-o-alaikum,
you are doing some great work here, mashallah. thank you for linking to ublog i've been trying to leave a general comment for some time here, but couldn't find a guestbook, hence this misplaced comment

assalam-o-alaikum,
ubaid.

Al-Munaqabah said:

Total comments: 996

W'alaykum as-salaam and thanks for visiting, brother Ubaid. If you look along the left sidebar of the veiled4allah page, pretty far along, there should be a link to my guest map. Unless the host site was down when you checked.

Zack Ajmal said:

Total comments: 112

I have mixed views about drugs. The war on drugs is definitely a problem. However, I don't think legalization will solve anything. I am however in favor of decriminalization of usage of soft drugs (liek marijuana). Dealers do need to be punished. Plus I think poor neighborhoods are made worse by drug dealers and addicts looking for drugs. Something needs to be done to make the people in those neighborhoods safe.

I recommend reading Mark Kleiman about the topic.

natasha said:

Total comments: 19

It really frustrates me that the acceptable public discourse on the topic takes place in a vacuum of world history and current events. It's not acceptable to bring up the fact that Holland has less problems with drugs and their users now that they've decriminalized, and diverted resources to the treatment of hardcore addicts.

It's not acceptable to bring up the fact that marijuana was originally criminalized over the strong objections of the AMA, and then mostly because of industrial competition with hemp products. Or to point out that societies that have treated it similarly to alcohol don't seem to have had much in the way of problems with it.

Hard drugs do cause problems, but I think they should be treated as medical problems. Undetected nutritional deficiencies, psychological trauma or disorder, crushing poverty, all can make the use of hard drugs more likely. And if the goal is to keep the addict away from drugs, they couldn't be sent to a worse place than our prisons. It's almost as easy to get drugs in prisons as it is in our schools. The two most regulated, and drug saturated, environments in our society.

And the racial disparity in sentencing and prosecution is an outrage in every way. I'm too lazy to look the stats up, but given similar or even identical histories, a minority defendent is far more likely to be prosecuted than a white one. Further, given higher per capita rates of drug use in the white population combined with the fact that whites are the majority of the population, it's sickening that more minorities (in raw numbers) are arrested for drug offenses. The percentages are shocking.

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