Teahive wrote:
Not at all.
I fully recognize that drug abuse causes suffering. I simply hold that, all things considered, legalization, regulation, and treatment would bring a preferable outcome compared to the WOD.
Of course...the result of our 40yr WOD....the THC content of pot has skyrocketed ( in addition to god only knows what contaminates like Paraquat). What other logical reason is there to explain how pot's THC content which had probably been more or less constant after centuries of likely use just happens to decide to take off coincidental to the gov going ape-ship trying to ban pot. That's the thing with an illegal product, just like moonshine during prohibition the pushers have a powerful incentive to keep increasing the THC content; and/or add "extras" to give it more "kick". They run the same incarceration risks regardless, better to increase the bang of the product to increase usage and generate more profit. Not like they would have to follow laws regulations on THC content, not selling to minors etc., like a licensed provider would. They (the pushers) have zero incentive not to sell to whomever is willing to pay for it.GIThruster wrote: And this is probably the biggest trouble with cannabis--especially the stuff out there today that is 20-30 times as potent as what was available back in the 60's and 70's--a single "blunt" or cannabis cigar tobacco-wrapped consumable has more than enough THC in it to cause people to hallucinate, and this is how the product is most often consumed.
williatw wrote:Of course...the result of our 40yr WOD....the THC content of pot has skyrocketed ( in addition to god only knows what contaminates like Paraquat). What other logical reason is there to explain how pot's THC content which had probably been more or less constant after centuries of likely use just happens to decide to take off coincidental to the gov going ape-ship trying to ban pot. That's the thing with an illegal product, just like moonshine during prohibition the pushers have a powerful incentive to keep increasing the THC content; and/or add "extras" to give it more "kick". They run the same incarceration risks regardless, better to increase the bang of the product to increase usage and generate more profit. Not like they would have to follow laws regulations on THC content, not selling to minors etc., like a licensed provider would. They (the pushers) have zero incentive not to sell to whomever is willing to pay for it.GIThruster wrote: And this is probably the biggest trouble with cannabis--especially the stuff out there today that is 20-30 times as potent as what was available back in the 60's and 70's--a single "blunt" or cannabis cigar tobacco-wrapped consumable has more than enough THC in it to cause people to hallucinate, and this is how the product is most often consumed.
Sure, they would still have the same incentive to increase usage. However, if legalized and regulated, they would also have incentive to maintain the ability to sell without unkind attention from those that set/maintain the regulations. I believe that would be a negative feedback, would it not?Diogenes wrote:Obviously they would have no profit incentive to increase the potency if it were legalized.williatw wrote:Not like they would have to follow laws regulations on THC content, not selling to minors etc., like a licensed provider would. They (the pushers) have zero incentive not to sell to whomever is willing to pay for it.
Obviously...that why Michelob adds Opium to my Amber Bock Beer to increase sales...Oh wait they don't; must be because as a licensed provider who wants to stay in business and not in jail they have a powerful incentive not to. Unlike illegal bootleggers during Prohibition who mixed all kinds of things in their hooch to give it extra "kick".Diogenes wrote:Obviously they would have no profit incentive to increase the potency if it were legalized.
That's just sloppy thinking and not worth an answer. If you want to make an argument for a causal relationship, the onus is on you to make it, not invite us to assume something based on what is easily coincidence. I can think of many other causes that have nothing to do with WoD. The onus is on you to show causality or make another argument, but don't invite us to assume your conclusion. That's something any 12 year-old should know better than to do.williatw wrote:Of course...the result of our 40yr WOD....the THC content of pot has skyrocketed ( in addition to god only knows what contaminates like Paraquat). What other logical reason is there to explain how pot's THC content which had probably been more or less constant after centuries of likely use just happens to decide to take off coincidental to the gov going ape-ship trying to ban pot.
Oh come on GIT you gotta be kidding...a licensed providers have to follow regs on THC content etc. if they wants to stay in business. If the THC content on legal pot (smoked or edible) were set at less than 1%, they (the legal providers) would have to follow them. An illegal provider doesn't; perhaps they would have gone ahead and increased it anyway even with no specific WOD it doesn't really nullify the point. Bad guys don't follow the rules by definition; they really have no incentive to. After all you were going to jail if caught selling pot regardless of the THC content. At the very least you must concede that the approx. 40 year WOD didn't prevent the sharp increase in THC content (and pot availability and usage, and increased public acceptance even if it didn't cause it.)GIThruster wrote:That's just sloppy thinking and not worth an answer. If you want to make an argument for a causal relationship, the onus is on you to make it, not invite us to assume something based on what is easily coincidence. I can think of many other causes that have nothing to do with WoD. The onus is on you to show causality or make another argument, but don't invite us to assume your conclusion. That's something any 12 year-old should know better than to do.
You didn't respond to my second point I noticed:GIThruster wrote:That attitude of rebellion is what enhanced the potency of cannabis, not the WoD; IMHO.
In other words your beloved WOD didn't seem to stop the increased THC concentration did it? In other words your trillion dollar WOD not only hasn't eliminated usage much, said usage has expanded as well as concentration, and much lower cost.At the very least you must concede that the approx. 40 year WOD didn't prevent the sharp increase in THC content (and pot availability and usage, and increased public acceptance even if it didn't cause it.)
Of course you argue that, but I have read your links and examples (and much more about China, the Opium Wars, and the time after that) and found them wanting. They simply describe very different situations. There are other historical precedents which are more similar to today's situation, and their outcomes aren't anything like what you are expecting.Diogenes wrote:I know that you do, but I argue that you have not accurately considered what the grass would look like on the other side of the fence. You have a utopian dream idea of what will happen, and you aren't interested in looking at what actually did happen in real life.
Of course not. Why are you pretending that the WoD would or even could have had such an effect? You'd need a worldwide government to accomplish what you're suggesting. This is another specious argument that has nothing to do with the real issues.williatw wrote:In other words your beloved WOD didn't seem to stop the increased THC concentration did it?
Teahive wrote:Diogenes wrote:I know that you do, but I argue that you have not accurately considered what the grass would look like on the other side of the fence. You have a utopian dream idea of what will happen, and you aren't interested in looking at what actually did happen in real life.
They simply describe very different situations.
Teahive wrote: There are other historical precedents which are more similar to today's situation, and their outcomes aren't anything like what you are expecting.
Found this:Diogenes wrote:The only two examples of which I am aware of anything being similar to what Libertarians are arguing for, is China's horrible disaster with drugs, and the horrible disaster which occurred at the Platzspitz in Zurich Switzerland.
So they didn't legalize and regulate the narcotics trafficking they merely turned a blind eye to the illegal trade use in this park. That is quite different from Colorado's legalization with regulation. They (the Swiss) merely allowed the drug dealers/users to do what they wanted to completely unregulated. Users weren't buying legal product from licensed providers, they were simply allowed to do whatever they wished; by definition unregulated. No lawful business drugs or otherwise would function well that way.After years of steadily rising crime and other drug-related problems, this city once associated more with banking and solid civic virtue than with marauding groups of addicts has ended its innovative experiment with an open drug market in a public park here.
The smashed windows of a Chanel store and a central branch of Credit Suisse, as well as the shooting of an unidentified man on Thursday, betray the sharp tensions that have stemmed from the closing last week of the Platzspitz, a park where the illicit activities of thousands of drug addicts and dealers were tolerated in recent years in a policy of containment of the drug problem.
Andres Oehler, a municipal spokesman, said the City Council had decided to shut the park, now sealed behind 10-foot iron fences hastily erected on the adjoining bridges, because "it was felt that the situation had got out of control in every sense."
But closing the park left several unresolved issues, including the fate of what has become a large international community of addicts in Zurich and the question of what exactly went wrong with an initiative originally aimed at helping drug abusers.
Addicts were drawn from all over Europe in recent years by the Socialist City Council's decision to offer clean syringes, the help of health officials and a large measure of tolerance in the Platzspitz, a once-elegant garden behind the stately National Museum.
The city characterized its approach as an enlightened effort to isolate the drug problem in an area away from residential neighborhoods, curb AIDS and foster rehabilitation. Its policy reflected a strong current of feeling among some European experts that it is the illegal and clandestine nature of the drug business, rather than the drugs themselves, that causes many of the associated problems.
But the situation gradually degenerated. "You give a little finger, and they want the whole hand," said a senior city official who insisted on anonymity. "You turn a blind eye to the small deals, and the big ones come. It was a spiral."
Regular users of the park swelled from a few hundred at the outset in 1987 to about 20,000, with about 25 percent of them coming from other countries. Then, Mr. Oehler said, dealers from Turkey, Yugoslavia and Lebanon moved in last year. Thefts and violence increased, with 81 drug-related deaths in 1991, twice as many as in 1990.
"We were having to resuscitate an average of 12 people a day, with peaks of 40 a day on some days," said Dr. Albert Weittstein, the city's chief medical officer. "Our people were running up around the park blowing oxygen into people's lungs. We started with three doctors, but recently had to put in two more. It has become an impossible strain."
Groups of as many as 50 addicts now gather in the streets adjoining the park, where they are jostled by police officers with orders to disperse them. "This is a crazy decision, we'll be in the whole city now," said one young man, a syringe casually tucked behind his ear, as a policeman pushed him away. He declined to be identified.
On a nearby bench another youth, apparently oblivious to the approaching police officers, calmly tightened a belt around his upper arm before plunging a needle into a bulging vein below his elbow.
Christoph Schmid, a 21-year-old Swiss addict who has been using the park for the last two years, took a measured view of the action. He said the closing and the police crackdown would cause him and others "enormous difficulties" -- heroin has become harder to get and its price has already doubled to about $230 per gram -- but he also said the Platzspitz had recently become too violent. "Too many kids were getting hooked too easily," he added.
The park -- beautifully situated at the confluence of the Sihl and Limmat Rivers, which isolated it from neighbors despite its central location -- is now a monument to vain utopian hope and sordid devastation. "Anarchy is possible," proclaim graffiti scrawled across the National Museum. A bronze statue of a stag has been adorned with the word "Dope" in fluorescent orange paint.
On the ground lie thousands of discarded syringes and syringe packets, now being collected by garbage crews. The rhododendrons that once lined the paths are dead; so, too, are many of the trees. Most of the expanses of grass have been reduced to mud.
Peter Stunzi, the director of the city's parks, said that because the park had become what he called "Zurich's municipal urinal," the soil is such that it will be difficult to plant anything in the near future.
He added that he believed it was right to close the Platzspitz because "Zurich could not be responsible for the drugs of Switzerland and the rest of Europe." But he added, "My worst nightmare is that these people will now have nowhere to go."
The city government wants all those who are not from Zurich to leave. Signs have been posted around the city warning that the authorities will no longer tolerate the public shooting up or handling of drugs or gatherings of groups of addicts. All those not from the city should "go back to the communes, where they will be helped." Checking for Outsiders
Mr. Oehler, the city's spokesman on drug matters, said that by April hostels in Zurich where addicts are allowed to sleep for about $3 a night will no longer accept anyone who does not have an identity card proving Zurich residency. But he conceded that "the problems will take a long time to resolve."
The city's new measures appear to be coming into force amid tensions in the nine-member City Council. One member, Emilie Lieberherr, who is responsible for social affairs, has protested the action as ill-considered. And there seems to be a general feeling that while mistakes were made, frontal attacks on drug abuse are not the answer either.
"We hoped we could minimize the social costs by creating an open market where people could get help," Dr. Weittstein said. "We thought we'd ferret out the dealers, but we failed, and we did not consider the dynamics of a still illegal business, which meant that dealers and users were attracted from far afield."
He added that the failure of the park did not, in his view, resolve the argument over whether drug prohibition makes matters better or worse. "I believe and most Swiss experts believe, that prohibition does a lot of damage," he said.
Drugs used in the park were still technically illegal. But attempts by plainclothes police officers to clamp down on dealers achieved little.
There are an estimated 30,000 drug addicts in Switzerland, a country whose industrious precision has created enormous wealth and a sparkling order, but also a conspicuous alienation among youths.
About $1.5 million will now be spent on renovating the park, Mr. Stunzi said, and it is hoped that a pristine Platzspitz might reopen by the spring of 1993 at the earliest.
By then, Zurich hopes, its self-created reputation as a drug capital will have faded. But for now, its streets are full of the confused ebb and flow of a disoriented mass of youths. Outside the park's closed gates, when the police move off, hordes of addicts quickly return to try to salvage with spoons some precious white powder that had spilled to the ground.
Photo: Platzspitz, a Zurich park where an experimental open drug market had been permitted, was closed when officials decided the situation had gone awry. A needle lay on the grounds near the National Museum. (Rolf Edelmann for The New York Times) Map of Switzerland showing location of Platzspitz park in Zurich.
Nonsense. Speakeasies functioned quite well that way. And note, you're here arguing for what you're often telling us you won't argue for--full legalization. You've often said it's the WoD that is the trouble but now you're saying more. So which is it? Is decriminalization enough or is it not?williatw wrote:Users weren't buying legal product from licensed providers, they were simply allowed to do whatever they wished; by definition unregulated. No lawful business drugs or otherwise would function well that way.