The immoral war on drugs is costing Australian taxpayers $4.7 billion annually.

Herald commentator, Michael Duffy compiled the figure in response to a growing interest in the economic consequences of the war on drugs launched by president Nixon in 1971

"It gets interesting when you try to do a cost-benefit analysis on the prohibition. Basically, there aren't any benefits." - (quote from the article)

Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-cost-of-the-war-on-drugs-20091002-ggiw.html

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Also today, retired Seattle police chief and spokesman for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Norm Stamper, is speaking at the
Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House

Mr. Stamper presents authoritative and compelling arguments for decriminalisation  

Article:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/make-drugs-legal-says-former-us-police-chief-20091002-ggix.html

VIDEO:Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper on Ending the Drug War

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1MBrUMauak

i agree, the illegality of some drugs causes more damage than those drugs themselves.

i am not pro-drugs
i am pro-people and pro-cops.

money should go to charity

Problem is, people can have small quantities of drugs, can use them but importation, production and selling is illegal.

So our rules are half serious half joke.

Probably time to make switch, make it legal to produce, import and sell but illegal to use and anybody testing positive to drugs would be jailed.

Since first method did not work we might have a look what this one can do.

the laws are ineffective and cost lives.

same as the prohibition on alcohol was

Drugs like Ice increase the likelihood that users will commit a violent or sexual crime. We need stronger laws on drugs like these - especially for manufacturers, importers and dealers. Studies show that 35% of methamphetamine users have committed a violent crime, and that half of that percentage had never been charged with violence before they started using.

I have no problem with legalising marijuana, but Ice and drugs in the same category? No way.

Never mind about the war on drugs costing Australian taxpayers $4.7 billion annually... consider the even worse harm it does by introducing otherwise harmless people to the criminal element in gaols, not to mention the loss of respect for the law nationwide resulting from government failure to differentiate between truly harmful drugs and the rather benign.

People enjoy pleasure; it is one of the requirements most people have for enjoyment of life.  Sex and drugs provide the most intense pleasure most people ever experience. I have a theory that one reason people are turning more to drugs now is the difficulty government and its laws place in the way of a human body finding sufficient satisfying sex.  Count them up. Looking at someone you like can result in a charge of stalking. Family court provisions that can financially ruin a man in case of marriage breakup make men more wary of marriage.  Meanwhile, others who would very much like to marry are prevented from doing so.  Paranoia surrounding sex with bodies biologically well capable of sex but under a randomly determined legal age keeps lots of people from enjoying sex that in most cases would be utterly harmless. The idea that a married man will be satisfied sexually with just one partner for the rest of his life is a delusion. You can see evidence for these claims in the scandals over sex whipped up in the mass media, in the blossoming industry of counsellors and legal professionals surrounding divorce and family court cases, in the glut of TV sex programs continually bringing the antics of desperate housewives and the like continually into our homes, and occasionally in films such as Lolita and Samson and Delilah. Primitive cultures, and even our own culture many years ago were not surrounded by all these restrictions, but it is little surprise that people today need to look elsewhere for their pleasure.

If we could find a lawyer clever enough to bring a class action on behalf of all of us who have suffered loss of enjoyment of life, politicians past and present would have a lot to answer for.

Laws are created against the most basal of human desires in order to usurp control. There's really no secret there.
The lawmakers don't live by those laws, but they insist that their puppet governments do so in order to set an example for what is expected of their real workers "the plebs". The governments aren't very good at taking instruction, the plebs are far better at taking instruction up thu cakehole.
We (thu plebs) are far far better at taking instruction up thu cakehole than at any other time in history.
Give yourselves a big clap and a dildo up thu cakehole. Congrats.i

fawkes wrote on Feb 26^th, 2010 at 10:29pm:

Never mind about the war on drugs costing Australian taxpayers $4.7 billion annually... consider the even worse harm it does by introducing otherwise harmless people to the criminal element in gaols, not to mention the loss of respect for the law nationwide resulting from government failure to differentiate between truly harmful drugs and the rather benign.

Those "harmless people" deserve it for thinking that they are above the law. I have no sympathy for them. Most of the drugs that are restricted by the government cause detrimental long term effects to the body and in many cases, a decreased brain function. Do we really want this to exist in our community and have our children exposed to these substances? I think not.

Hlysnan wrote on Feb 27^th, 2010 at 9:04pm:

Those "harmless people" deserve it for thinking that they are above the law. I have no sympathy for them.

Are you one of the people who believe all laws to be perfect? That they are so perfect they will not be changed tomorrow? That they must always be obeyed, no matter what good can come from disregarding them? Personally, I believe that laws are studded with numerous faults and omissions, being no better than the flawed system that invents them. Because of that, I believe it's quite reasonable for people to question the law in particular situations, if that's what you mean by people thinking themselves above the law.

If people want to question the law, they can do it by lobbying politicians for the law to be changed. Or, if the opinion is such that is nowhere near mainstream politics, then creating a political party would be the better option. I don't accept people engaging themselves in criminal activity to be a legitimate way of "questioning the law".

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 1^st, 2010 at 1:39pm:

If people want to question the law, they can do it by lobbying politicians for the law to be changed. Or, if the opinion is such that is nowhere near mainstream politics, then creating a political party would be the better option.

A fine waste of time that has proved for everyone I know.  Are you able to quote me one single success story?

I think you need to read and digest what Amadd wrote above: "Laws are created against the most basal of human desires in order to usurp control. There's really no secret there. The lawmakers don't live by those laws, but they insist that their puppet governments do so in order to set an example for what is expected of their real workers"

Even though Pauline Hanson's "success" was short lived, many of her policies were adopted by the government, which had politically shifted after her dramatic entrance into politics. There is also the independent senator, Nick Xenophon, and the FF senator, Steve Fielding, who hold significant influence over the balance of power in the senate.

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2010 at 8:19pm:

Even though Pauline Hanson's "success" was short lived, many of her policies were adopted by the government

If you are offering Pauline as an example of success in politics, perhaps you need to ask her for an opinion. Having every major party plus the media join up to condemn her destroyed her political career and prevented her from achieving just about everything she wanted to accomplish. The fact that "many of her policies were adopted by the government" goes a long way towards indicating that her policies were not the disastrous calamity that her enemies had portrayed.


Hlysnan wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2010 at 8:19pm:

There is also the independent senator, Nick Xenophon, and the FF senator, Steve Fielding, who hold significant influence over the balance of power in the senate.

Both of whom, I suggest, have had no effect at all on eliminating the Immoral War On Drugs that this thread started off about.

The point is that Hanson's presence at Canberra actually shifted the views of the government, and so she was successful. She might not have gone as far as she wanted, but she had a significant impact. Also, whether Xenophon or Fielding oppose the "immoral" war on drugs is irrelevant, because I am noting the success of individuals in changing the law.

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2010 at 6:41pm:

The point is that Hanson's presence at Canberra actually shifted the views of the government, and so she was successful. She might not have gone as far as she wanted, but she had a significant impact. Also, whether Xenophon or Fielding oppose the "immoral" war on drugs is irrelevant, because I am noting the success of individuals in changing the law.

I'm surprised that you call it any sort of success to have your friends ruin the political career of the only politician brave enough to expose the other parties for what they are, and trying to represent her electors honestly. The only Hanson policies other parties adopted later were ones that it suited them to adopt anyway; other Hanson policies  that Australian electors wanted were buried somewhere in the hills around Canberra, never to be heard of again.

You claim to be noting the success of individuals in changing the law, but I'm not impressed by what you regard as "success" so far.

When the Government was attempting to pass the economic stimulus package through the Senate, it had to have the approval of the Greens, Family First and Xenophon to pass. While the Greens and FF both supported the package, negotiations had to be made with Xenophon, which resulted in $900 million being put forward for Murray-Darling basin funds and other projects. Is this not success?

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2010 at 8:52pm:

When the Government was attempting to pass the economic stimulus package through the Senate, it had to have the approval of the Greens, Family First and Xenophon to pass. While the Greens and FF both supported the package, negotiations had to be made with Xenophon, which resulted in $900 million being put forward for Murray-Darling basin funds and other projects. Is this not success?

No, it's fiddling at the edges.  There are plenty who say we would have been better off without the stimulus package you know... we still have to repay, somehow, all that money spent (wasted in some cases) on stimulus. Thieving a percentage of everybody's savings through interest rate rises and inflation is what we now face as a result of the stimulus.

And while your heroes have been fiddling at the edges they have done nothing about introducing the many things the people have long wanted, such as:

ending the immoral war on drugs
allowing the terminally ill a choice of dying by painless, voluntary  euthanasia; you yourself might want it one day
introducing some form of direct democracy; with that, we should be able to sort out the rest for ourselves.

What they have done, was fiddling with things that they wanted. Personally, I never supported the stimulus as I have a dislike for fiscal policy. They are not my heroes, but perhaps they are heroes in the eyes of the people who voted for them. If the mainstream public really wanted to legalise drugs, then a party following that platform would have run in previous elections and would have been successful.

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 11:02am:

What they have done, was fiddling with things that they wanted.

Yes, that's all we can ever expect when our votes go mainly to a representative of a party.


Hlysnan wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 11:02am:

They are not my heroes

Sorry, I thought they might have been, the way you were holding them up as examples of success.


Hlysnan wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 11:02am:

If the mainstream public really wanted to legalise drugs, then a party following that platform would have run in previous elections and would have been successful.

It would be lovely if that were true, but in truth it's one of the powerful misconceptions upon which our representative democracy is based. Firstly, the people who want to legalise drugs might not be the most intelligent and skillful of debaters in a political setting. If you  make them compete (even if fairly) in a setting that does not suit their strengths wouldn't you expect them to fail and keep failing forever, even if they outnumbered their opponents by a significant margin?

There is also the problem that for most people, drugs are just one of a million other things they need to deal with in their lives; to expect them to congregate spontaneously to fix the government's stupid laws is hoping for too much.  More likely they will be intimidated, fined, and gaoled individually in numbers too small to provoke them into collective action.

Furthermore, we are led to think that if 51% of voters support a proposition they deserve to win and enforce their collective will on the remaining 49% of the population. That is a terrible formula for finding the best outcome for the population as a whole, guaranteed to leave almost half the population dissatisfied. That dissatisfaction can be minor in some cases, and life-ruining in others, depending on the matters involved. Because of this, good, harmless people languish in our gaols whilst others blithely go about assuming they deserve to be there for "holding themselves above the law".

There must be better ways of protecting the lives of those doomed to lose in political votes.  It would be better, for example, if the government was not able to do anything without an overwhelming winning vote, more like 90% than 51%.

fawkes wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 5:57pm:

It would be lovely if that were true, but in truth it's one of the powerful misconceptions upon which our representative democracy is based. Firstly, the people who want to legalise drugs might not be the most intelligent and skillful of debaters in a political setting. If you  make them compete (even if fairly) in a setting that does not suit their strengths wouldn't you expect them to fail and keep failing forever, even if they outnumbered their opponents by a significant margin?

Surely there are plenty of intelligent and skillful debaters such as yourself who are sympathetic to this cause. Perhaps they also share your lack of faith in representative democracy, which might explain the absence of a successful candidate.


Quote:

There must be better ways of protecting the lives of those doomed to lose in political votes.  It would be better, for example, if the government was not able to do anything without an overwhelming winning vote, more like 90% than 51%.

Being in the minority on plenty of issues, I understand the frustration. However, since most issues have around a 60/40 split in the polls, wouldn't no action at all by the government be even more frustrating?

Hlysnan wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 9:42pm:

Surely there are plenty of intelligent and skillful debaters such as yourself who are sympathetic to this cause.

Plenty maybe, but not so many that would want to waste their time bogged down in our political process.


Hlysnan wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 9:42pm:

Perhaps they also share your lack of faith in representative democracy, which might explain the absence of a successful candidate.

Any sensible person would, after discovering how it worked.


Hlysnan wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 9:42pm:

wouldn't no action at all by the government be even more frustrating?

What I proposed would not restrict the government to no action at all.  It would just require them to design their legislation more carefully, so that 90% of the population would see that the legislation would benefit them, resulting in 90% support. The government would soon discover that no amount of rewording could ever make some of its proposals attractive of course, and would have to undergo a lengthy learning period whilst it learned to deal with that.

This Topic was moved here from Drug Policy by freediver.