david starling
Well-known member
I have no problem with countries legislating the use of drugs and allowing for a legal trade. I don't believe however that every society is in condition to succesfully do so.
Some countries have legalised drugs to a succesfull degree, but most of those countries were highly efficient democracies to begin with, with a low crime rate and low instances of goverment corruption, and a general custom of respecting the law by most of its citizens. The case Oddity made for legalising drugs in Canada comes as a perfect example, and I would agree with him that Canada is a prime candidate to attempt drug legislation given that it is a highly efficient country with a rather respectful society, and legalising drugs (at least some of them) would perhaps improve some of the problems they may have.
But when it comes to inefficient goverments with high levels of corruption, such as most of South America, parts of Asia or Africa, I would certainly be against drug legislation, given you would only be giving more power to those that have benefitted from the drug trade for years. I also have some views regarding imposing restrictions to the availabiliy of certain drugs, and also the implications of certain habits in society, but most of these can be debated in an ordained fashion. Also in most of these countries, large drug cartel conglomerates exist, which should be utterly destroyed.
We have a large drug cartel here, called "Big Pharma", short for the Pharmaceutical Industry. While it does good in some areas, it does tremendous harm in others. Lately, one of its prescription drugs, fentanyl, has been showing up in the illegal drug, heroin, a lethal combination. Oxycodone, another prescription drug, highly addictive, has become part of the illegal drug trade. No chance Big Pharma will be regulated more closely, since they contribute so heavily to political campaigns of both parties.
Your argument that the cartels need to be "destroyed", even though there's no way that can be done by governments they own, or can intimidate, makes me think legalization should at least be attempted, even in the third world. I don't see how it would make things any worse, and might make them better.
There was a Socialist, a real one, an anti-Capitalist, not a proponent of the Capitalistic Social-Safety-Net, on a call in radio show years back. He was living in what used to be called a "ghetto" area of L.A., and drive by killings had become so frequent, due to "turf wars" by local drug gangs, that he was saying that ending those should be a top priority. So, I called in and suggested that legalizing now illegal drugs would do that quite effectively, just as legalizing alcohol had ended the drive by shootings during alcohol Prohibition. His response was that we can't do that, because then the big Capitalist Corporations would take over the drug trade, and the poor neighborhoods would be deprived of the income the sale of illegal drugs was providing.
Just kicking it around. I don't have a perfect solution either, but I believe we should start by considering legalization as a vital first step, then deal with the new problems that will surely cause. But the new problems are almost certain to be far less violent than those resulting from the already proven failure of outright prohibition.