Comments on: Drugs are wrong? Really? How can you be so sure?

By: Semantic Overload

Semantic Overload — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 23:55:24 +0000

1. is turning out to be a ‘he said, she said’ style thing. So lets just leave it at that.
2. If preventing crime is ‘trying to accomplish the impossible’ there needs to be a re-evaluation of why were drugs made a crime. The flaw, and I have repeated this several times, is that all drugs are treated as the same. But they are not the same, and so need to be treated differently. Until that is accomplished, this so called ill-conceived war on drugs will continue to be a farce while the menace of hard-drugs continues to affect the society. Until people are willing to put their prejudices aside and evaluate things as they transpire (As opposed how they want to see it transpire), the war on drugs is never going to be won.
3. Alcohol consumption is a widespread practice over centuries. Well, so was sati. Then why was sati outlawed? Simply because it was not the ‘right’ thing to be doing. Now (with regards to alcohol) hiding behind the excuse of tradition and history to justify what should be a ‘crime’ is cowardice. And illegtimizing something far more benign (like Marijuana) is hypocritical.
4. My comment was that drugs are not indicative of the society loss of sense of right and wrong. In fact, with drugs this sense of right and wrong still prevails.
The battle against drugs is an misguided effort, and current course of action is best left abandoned. All that the war on drugs has succeeded in is incarcerating productive citizens whose only crime was that they chose to smoke marijuana in their own time. Much like others choose to consume alcohol in their own time. Fact of the matter is that drug addiction is a disease, until the law stops treats drug addicts as criminals and starts treating drug addicts as patients who need help, this war on drugs will never be won. Until the law realizes that people consuming soft drugs do so on their choosing much like with tobacco and alcohol, and that these people can still be productive citizens of the society, we will only see more productive people be incarcerated.

By: Vijay K. Narayanan

Vijay K. Narayanan — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 23:18:24 +0000

1. You only need to look at comment #1 above to know what I feel about the effectiveness of the laws. When I claimed we should fix the problem, that is precisely what I meant.
2. If preventing crime is just “trying to accomplish the impossible”, we can quote numbers selectively to argue against legalization against criminal activity. There are laws and there are criminals still. But that is not reason enough to stop trying and throw the laws away.
3. Yes, I agree that alcohol is bad too, or as you claim, worse than the softer drugs. In the case of alcohol, we would be trying to outlaw something that has been in widespread practice for centuries. With drugs, the practice is not as widespread. And drugs are outlawed in most countries. So using alcohol as bait in the argument is unwise.
4. I’m sorry but I find this line of argument ridiculous. Whenever someone tries to address a social ill, the opposition points to the other ills and claims those are bigger, more important. In the process, nothing gets accomplished. Yes, we will also try to tackle religious fundamentalism, war for profit, corruption, genocide and everything else hidden in your “etc.” (in which cases, you as you rightly claim, we only have laws as the preventive mechanism), but that is no reason to abandon our efforts to battle against drugs.

By: Semantic Overload

Semantic Overload — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:17:28 +0000

1) No where in An Irretrievable World, or the comments, is there any mention of ineffectiveness of drug laws. So The claim that the original post calls for reformulation of the drug laws cannot be true.
2) “If something doesn’t work, it must be fixed, not broken” — There are many reasons why something doesn’t work, it could be anything from ‘because it needs repairs’, to ‘its not the right tool for the job’, to ‘you are trying to accomplish the impossible’. With respect to drug laws, I am convinced its the combination of the last two. More stringent laws will NOT make for a drug free society, and part of it is because we have chosen to criminalize certain items that shouldn’t be.
3) If ‘mind alteration’ is the only reason to criminalize drugs, and the same argument applies directly to alcohol, but one chooses to criminalize only drugs and not alcohol, then that’s blatant hypocrisy. In fact, alcohol is more addictive and harmful than marijuana, so the “incremental degeneration” argument does not apply here.
4) As for the irreparable state of the our world, drugs are least of the problem. Try corruption, genocide, war for profit, religious fundamentalism, etc. It is problems like these that our only defense is the legal system, and sometimes not even that. There still is a sense of right and wrong operating against drugs. This is why only a small minority the world consumes drugs, and you don’t see junkies on every street corner across the world.

By: Vijay Narayanan

Vijay Narayanan — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:55:06 +0000

I don’t intend to start a “you said this, and I said that” war here. But I cannot help pointing out that you have said yourself that if the current laws don’t work very well, the laws must be reformulated to control the crimes more effectively. Precisely the point I have made.

The cornerstone (or one of those) of Suraiya’s argument is that since drug laws are ineffective, substance abuse should be made legal. I find this ridiculous. If something doesn’t work, it must be fixed, not broken.

That similarity clearly established, let’s move on to the point on which we disagree – is substance abuse amoral? What is moral and what is not is open to debate. I consider it amoral because substance abuse corrupts the brain and renders it incapable of sanity, if only for a short period. The same extends to alcohol as well. Now you can argue how one can be termed illegal while the other is not. I don’t have a direct answer for that.

However I would be a fool to buy into the “incremental degeneration” argument — that is just because we have accepted A, B and C, we should not have a problem accepting D as well.

Another point of mine which you seem to have misunderstood is that drugs are amoral because they are illegal. I have re-read my piece a couple of times but I haven’t found anything that would support this inference of yours. All I have said was that drugs are (in my opinion) amoral, and our world has come to such an irreparable state that our only defense against drugs is not our own good sense, but the legal system.

By: Semantic Overload

Semantic Overload — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:09:00 +0000

If an act is made legal, then its not a crime by definition. How about making, say, scratching one’s head in the bathroom illegal. Now there is no way that law can be enforced. You can spend millions on trying to enforce it, but you are going to get no where. Then, what’s the point in having the law in the first place.

Now that’s an absurd example, but its purpose was to illustrate the futility of having laws that can cannot be enforced.

Now, lets come to the very purpose of having laws. The purpose of laws is to have a formal categorization of ‘right’ acts and ‘wrong’ acts. And the assumption is that people will commit the ‘wrong’ acts if there was no punitive consequence associated with it, hence making such ‘wrong’ acts criminal and having a ‘correctional’ system associated with crimes.
Now, the question is, what is ‘wrong’ act we are trying to prevent by criminalizing drugs, and why are such acts ‘wrong’? I cannot find a convincing argument for criminalizing all drugs while tobacco and alcohol remain legal. Specifically, with respect to soft drugs like Marijuana and Hash, why is consuming them ‘wrong’?
Now, lets assume, for argument’s sake, that there is a very good reason why recreational drugs are all bad. If the laws enacted cannot keep people from committing these ‘wrong’ acts, then what has been accomplished by such a law? Obviously, very little. This suggests that the law, as it is formulated, is the wrong tool for the job.
Lets apply the same logic to murder, rape, burglary etc.; if laws, as they currently exist, cannot control murder, rape, burglary, then does that mean these acts have be decriminalized? No! It means that the laws need to be reformulated to actually control these acts. Consider homosexuality, it is illegal according to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Now there is no way to control anyone from being homosexual or not. So how do you enforce this law? In fact, you cannot. Now one may argue that this is so because homosexuality is not ‘wrong’, and that’s why the law needs to be amended. Well, then why cant the same be true of drugs? Alternatively, if homosexuality is indeed ‘wrong’, then the law obviously fails to protect its citizens from the people committing this act, so the law needs to be reformulated. The same holds true for drug laws.
In either case, there is something really wrong about drug laws as they stand today.

By: Vijay Narayanan

Vijay Narayanan — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:29:48 +0000

Let me just restate your argument on the economics of the drug trade. Money (and effort) has been spent in controlling what, under the views of the legal system, is a crime. This has gone waste, and we have nothing to show for it. So we should make the crime legal… instead of trying to see how the crime can be controlled more effectively.

Does this argument of yours also extend to murder, rape, burglary etc? Or am I just being prejudiced in calling murder a crime?

By: Semantic Overload

Semantic Overload — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:35:35 +0000

@Vijay Narayanan: The reasoning in Jug Suraiya’s original piece may not be “compelling”, but it was still a reason, and an analytical one at that. I quoted Richard Bach to state (loosely) that the reasons are valid, but have been misinterpreted (or even discarded) in favor of prejudice.

I agree that using economics as an excuse to legitimize what should be illegal cannot be justified. However, spending copious resources (money, people, time) on enforcing laws which cannot be enforced to begin with (e.g. America’s ‘war on drugs’ since 1974) cannot be justified either. Its a waste of resources with no gain. And this, yes, is an economic argument. However, its an economic argument to support a completely different conjecture, namely, that its the law has been incorrectly framed to begin with (hence its ineffectivness); its the wrong tool for the job. So although the argument may use economics as evidence, the conjecture itself doesn’t.

As for the ‘gateway drug’ theory, which says that the ‘soft’ drugs should be banned because they act as a gateway to the ‘hard’ drugs which are the real problem, the theory because both hard and soft drugs are banned to begin with. The reasoning is: ‘hey, if I am already doing something illegal by consuming a soft drug, and if caught I could be in really big trouble, then might as well go all the way. It couldn’t get any worse!’. However, if soft drugs were regulated, then there would a major disincentive to move from soft drugs to hard drugs, and hence the gateway theory would no longer hold. (and yeah, the reason why criminalization of drugs is not a disincentive for people to consume soft drugs is that the drugs laws themselves are, at best, ineffectively enforceable). Now if the soft drugs are regulated, then the entire might of drug-law enforcement can be put into cracking down on the hard drugs, which is easier to do, and in fact, it is the hard drugs which pose the threat to begin with.

And as far as ‘fixing’ the problem goes, how can we fix the problem if we can’t even agree on what the problem is? As is evident, I see the blanket criminalization of drugs as the problem. I think we need to be more selective on the drugs to which drug laws apply to. On the other hand, you view all drugs as dangerous and see them as a monolithic entity, and hence a monolithic problem.

By: Vijay Narayanan

Vijay Narayanan — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:08:20 +0000

Oh, and by the way, if you thought there was “compelling reason” in Jug Suraiya’s original piece, I’m afraid I fail(ed) to see any at all. I look forward to your bringing out some of that in your comments section.

By: Vijay Narayanan

Vijay Narayanan — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:06:16 +0000

Hi there. Thanks for visiting my blog.

I agree with you insofar as your pointing out that my opposition to drugs springs from my prejudice that drugs are wrong, and that I have not rebutted Jug Suraiya’s argument head on.

However, pray be it known I did not intend to take Jug Suraiya’s argument on the economics of the drug trade head on at all. Because once we start using the economics of an action as the cause for justification, we start traveling down a really dark road (to perdition). Consider this. If someone murdered her parents and then she claimed that she was doing this because she couldn’t support them financially, that isn’t justification that would hold any water. I know my analogy sucks, but so does that argument that economics is all there is to a case.

Second. As I have never had a dash of hash, I do not know the difference between the harmful and the not-so harmful varieties. I take your word on the prevalence of recreational varieties of drugs that are not as harmful. What guarantee do we have that the curiosity that got someone into recreational-coke in the first place would not push them further down the chain? You can counter this by saying that coffee is both prevalent and more harmful, and I don’t have an answer for that other than that I don’t drink coffee either.

I remain firm in my opposition to drugs and their legalization. Instead of looking to fix the problem, we are trying to make it everyone’s problem, which is no solution at all, irrespective of how much ever money is in play.