Bearing The Burdens - Or - What Will They Do?

Dave has an outstanding post up dealing with the drug legalization question. I'm always interested in the comments as a very rough gauge of popular sentiment.

A legalization fear I see a lot these days is based on “if we leave those people alone what will they do?”

Of course the question started gaining a lot of ground when the communists started asking questions about the capitalists. Such as: “What are they going to do? It is unpredictable and could be bad. They must be controlled.”

And worst of all they like what they are doing. What more proof do you need for the need for control?

BTW it has been my experience that once a person gets to the above point mentally (what will we do with zombies run wild?) it is not long before they throw in the towel on prohibition.

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And Dave. Look up Nixon's methadone program. Reports back in the day said that 50% to 60% of the troops were on heroin in 'Nam. Nixon was worried about the "drug epidemic" this would cause in the US. So he did methodone. The program was a roaring success. "Free" government drugs and supervision vs the chaos of the street. But after a year or so it seems that something like 80% or 90% of the enrollees dropped out. To become street drug users? No. The environment was better in the US vs wartime 'Nam and they no longer needed drugs to cope. That left only the genetically susceptible.

Addiction Is A Genetic Disease

Everyone gets PTSD if the trauma is severe enough. The deal is: because of genetics 80% of us get over it in about 3 to 6 months. For the other 20% it can take significantly longer.

Always keep in mind that being in that 20% group is not enough. Genes don't make you automatically an addict of anything but food, air, and water (No - I'm not going to nit pick the left out details). For you to get long term PTSD you must be not only be genetically susceptible but also traumatized.

I don't know about you but Lets Make War On The Traumatized does not sound like marching orders. It sounds more like "I'm going to sit this one out". I will not volunteer. But change that to "lets put extreme hurts to users of unapproved drugs who use them for unapproved reasons" and the support is just phenomenal. About $75 billion from Federal, State, and Local Governments alone. Not to mention your lovely local neighborhood war zone (Interzone?) delivered to almost every city of any size in America.

So we come down to "who will bear the burdens of legalization" because we already know who is bearing the burdens of prohibition. The 10,000 or so murdered in the crossfire (2,000 just bystanders or sleeping quietly in a bedroom). The neighborhoods destroyed (only "those people" live there - in my town the shorthand is "West side" - when I lived in Chicago quite a few people actually called it "The Zone"), and the $75 billion a year taxpayers squander to keep the whole deadly farce running. And the folks who are generally anti-statist are those who most support the state on this question. Go figure.

Cross Posted at Classical Values