It would help even more if we kicked out the DEA here in the US. In fact, banishment to an abandoned island wouldn't be too harsh a punishment at all for their crimes.
I'm with you, to a point. I'd much prefer if the DEA was stripped of its militarization and instead shifted to act as a quality/safety testing body for "illicit" drugs. Maybe enforcing certain purity standards and proper labeling of narcotics.
You know, something that would actually help the people using drugs-- "this batch of heroin in city X is actually 50% rat poison so don't use it" or "this stuff the dealers in city y call molly is actually MDPV and 25I-nBOME, be aware".
That'd help cut down a lot of the deaths and injuries from drug use. Imagine if you had a government agency looking out for you rather than trying to fuck you up for once.
Before government policy shifts enough to transition the DEA to that role, there will be full legalization. Once we're that liberal, you'll be buying your molly/heroin in regulated pharmacies, not from sketchy dealers who are willing to let you inject rat poison.
I think some college campuses try to walk the line with under age drinking. A quick search shows Purdue has a policy that grants students amnesty in the event of alcohol poisonings [1]. I don't know if anyone has run numbers to see the net effects of such a policy.
I imagine that it removes some of the teeth, but if the negative aspects associated with drinking decline, then it seems like a good basis for arguing that similar policies should be applied to harder drugs, even if they remain illegal.
My father is actually director of campus security at a large private college. He's as conservative as they come, but you probably wouldn't be shocked to learn that people in that position genuinely care about kids and just want them to not die. Dad supports harm reduction in regards to binge drinking and marijuana use, through gritted teeth, while a vein throbs and he curses about stupid kids trying to get themselves killed.
But he says it's hard to keep a hardline policy when you've seen a drunk underage kid die because they crawled under a bush to "sleep it off" in subzero temperatures, because they were too drunk to get home, but afraid to use the blue emergency phone and risk getting caught.
The alternative is to not use unregulated non-FDA-approved substances. But that would require self control. So yup, we need a nanny government to make us safe...
The DEA is currently what I would call to be "nanny government". It exists to limit your options and punish you for certain choices, in the name of your safety and in the name of "public order".
My vision for the DEA is more libertarian, shifting its functions to information gathering and dissemination rather than forceful modulation of the citizens.
We don't need a nanny government to keep us safe, we need the quality information to decide for ourselves what "safe" is and what margins of safety we are willing to tolerate. This works for some things but not others, obviously.
Addiction is more complicated than "a lack of self control." Addicts generally don't kick the habit and then start to reintegrate into society; it's the other way around. If stability is introduced into their lives, they become less dependent the escape offered by the drug. In fact, when their drug use is not criminalized, the vast majority of addicts are able to lead normal lives. This has been shown multiple times in multiple places, even in America as the drug war was gearing up. Moreover, even the drugs with bad reputations (heroin, cocaine) do not result in addiction for most people who try them. Those who become addicts largely do so because they have issues that they are using the drug to cope with. This is evidenced by the lower rates of addiction and petty crime in places where drugs are legalized rather than the sharp increase one would expect if drugs are as dangerously addictive as we are led to believe.
There's also no need for a nanny state solution for purity testing. There are already mobile chem labs at festivals which will test your substance for you and tell you exactly what's in it, and such services exist elsewhere also. Furthermore, if drugs were legalized, there would be far fewer instances of adulterated sales to begin with. It's done by unscrupulous dealers--already profiting from the inflated prices that a black market brings--who take advantage of the buyer's inability to go to law enforcement to report fraud. It's also done by addicts themselves who need to make money to get their next fix: it's easier to cut some of your stuff with baby powder and sell it than it is to steal money or property. Return to doctors the ability to prescribe narcotics to addicts and this problem virtually disappears.
The biggest cause of most (if not all) of the problems that the drug war is supposed to combat is the drug war itself. It's been that way since the beginning.
Any "solution" that involves everybody exercising perfect self control or personal responsibility is useless, even if it's technically true that it would solve the problem.
People simply don't work that way. You can't wish self control into existence just by saying it would be useful. It's like saying, "We wouldn't need lower shelves if everyone was over 6ft tall."
Your argument makes no sense - the FDA is itself an example of the government testing and issuing recommendations on drugs! How is that any less "nanny government" than having the DEA do the same for illegal drugs?
Because the FDA also makes drugs illegal for sale if they haven't been approved. And probably recommends cases to the DEA when someone is selling unapproved pharmaceuticals.
Sorry, but the constellation of ill-effects stemming from heavily militarized, increasingly lawless, and demonstrably corrupt police forces goes way beyond the relativly limited number of people who produce, distribute, and consume recreational drugs.
If you're wondering why you've been severely downvoted, it's probably because of extreme irritation with such willful blindness. We are well past the point where intelligent, well-informed people can kid themselves about the conspiciously nasty "side effects" from the War on Drugs.
No reasonable person is saying that recreational drug use isn't problematic. The question is how do we deal with those problems. Whatever else we may decide on, it's become abundently clear that the criminal law-enforcement based approach we're taking now is doing vastly more harm that it is ostensibly reducing. Moreover, it's doing serious damage to a growing number of people who have nothing to do with drugs. Indeed, the rot is seeping into the very foundations of democracy.
