[bko]

The logic of drug criminalization is weird if you think about it.

Yes, drugs may be bad for you, but so is prison. So because drugs aren't bad enough for you to want to dissuade you from doing them, the government wants to make a bigger incentive by throwing the user into prison.

Penn Jillette encapsulates this logic pretty well:

> Do we believe, even for a second, that if Obama had been busted for marijuana -- under the laws that he condones -- would his life have been better? If Obama had been caught with the marijuana that he says he uses, and 'maybe a little blow'... if he had been busted under his laws, he would have done hard fcking time. And if he had done time in prison, time in federal prison, time for his 'weed' and 'a little blow,' he would not be President of the United States of America. He would not have gone to his fancy-a* college, he would not have sold books that sold millions and millions of copies and made millions and millions of dollars, he would not have a beautiful, smart wife, he would not have a great job. He would have been in f*cking prison, and it's not a god damn joke. People who smoke marijuana must be set free. It is insane to lock people up. [0]

Its really quite incredible the lack of irony among politicians

[0]http://bigthink.com/think-tank/penn-jillette-obama-is-a-hypo...

[vijayr]

It is not just the politicians - the amount of disgust among the general public for people who use drugs is unbelievable. I understand it is an insanely big problem, nobody wants drug addicts in the society. But it will happen, legalization or not, prison or not. People are going to use drugs anyway. So why not make life easier for everyone by legalizing it, setting up help centers to help those who want to be helped, reduce stress on cops/prison system and so on? By now it is very clear that any number of tough laws on this problem is not going to work - why not try the alternative?

[bko]

The funny thing is that, in my experience, even if you ask active drug users if drugs should be legalized (apart from marijuana), they often say no. People tend to sympathize on the personal level but society makes things so unpersonalized. For instance, if I was at a party and saw someone using cocaine or some other drug in a peaceful manner, I wouldn't call the police or be happy if he was arrested. When I point out the irony that the person is committing a crime that he believes should be a crime, he usually says, oh that person is doing it responsibly, its those other people. It's always "those other" people. Whether you're stocking up on antibiotic or saving prescription strength pain killers for future use, that's fine, even discussed openly in the workplace. But "those other" people can't be trusted with doing so.

[AnthonyMouse]

I wonder what the war on drugs would look like if we took prison out of the equation. So make using drugs the only offense and the penalty is the equivalent of a parking ticket. Selling, buying or possessing drugs would all be perfectly legal (to the extent cigarettes are) save that they provide instant probable cause for a drug test.

So you lose the possibility for the deterrent itself to ruin your life, but you still have a pretty significant social deterrent because use is still formally illegal so use in public space is impractical because the cops will show up and start issuing citations.

[WildUtah]

You'd still have violent drug gangs because dealing would be illegal. They'd need to continue lethal violence because they couldn't go to court to settle contract and credit disputes.

[AnthonyMouse]

Do read again.