[kenberg]

Exactly what a rational drug policy would be is not clear to me. Marijuana is easy for me. I have done many dumb things in my life, somehow I avoided this one, but if someone else wants to partake I say let him.

Cocaine? I really know very little, but I gather it was once legal:
Some get a kick from cocaine
I'm sure that if
I took even one sniff
It would bore me terrif
ically too

Or maybe Mr. Porter was living in Paris, or somewhere, when he wrote that, I dunno. I gather that his parties were interesting.

In my mid 20s LSD was very popular. Not with me.

I very much don't wish to use any police resources, and certainly not any prison resources, for stopping potheads from doing their thing, but beyond that I am at a loss as to just what a rational policy would look like.


But focusing on Mr. Gray, I think that growing up with no father, no money, and a mother that is strung out on drugs is not what you would call an auspicious beginning.And then there was the lead. And the schools.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2015-April-29, 11:14, said:

Exactly what a rational drug policy would be is not clear to me. Marijuana is easy for me. I have done many dumb things in my life, somehow I avoided this one, but if someone else wants to partake I say let him.

Cocaine? I really know very little, but I gather it was once legal:
Some get a kick from cocaine
I'm sure that if
I took even one sniff
It would bore me terrif
ically too

Or maybe Mr. Porter was living in Paris, or somewhere, when he wrote that, I dunno. I gather that his parties were interesting.

In my mid 20s LSD was very popular. Not with me.

I very much don't wish to use any police resources, and certainly not any prison resources, for stopping potheads from doing their thing, but beyond that I am at a loss as to just what a rational policy would look like.


But focusing on Mr. Gray, I think that growing up with no father, no money, and a mother that is strung out on drugs is not what you would call an auspicious beginning.And then there was the lead. And the schools.

I think a national drug policy is easy: if you've got 'em, smoke 'em.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2015-April-29, 14:37, said:

I think a national drug policy is easy: if you've got 'em, smoke 'em.

You include PCP in this suggestion?

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2015-April-29, 14:47, said:

You include PCP in this suggestion?

If it'll burn, sure.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2015-April-29, 15:01, said:

If it'll burn, sure.

I'm no expert on this stuff but I think it can be smoked, yes.


I looked up some stuff on
http://en.wikipedia....i/Phencyclidine


Pot smokers may be zoned out but harmless. Not so true of someone on PCP I think.

[blackshoe]

The problem is not the smoking, or the ingestion, or the injection, or whatever, of some drug. The problem is what people do who have smoked or ingested or injected or whatever. Or who are trying to obtain the means to support their habit. If they commit violence against another person, that is the problem. If they commit no violence against anyone, there is no problem. If they commit violence only against themselves, that's sad, but it's still no problem. There may be other considerations (for example, a parent who neglects his children, or a supplier who knowingly commits fraud — think tobacco companies) but the preceding is the basis in my opinion.

Another point: prohibition does not work. You'd think we'd have learned that in the short time in which the 18th Amendment was in effect (1920 to 1933). Our grandparents (or in some cases great-grandparents) did; that's why they repealed it with the 21st Amendment.

[kenberg]

blackshoe, on 2015-April-29, 16:01, said:

The problem is not the smoking, or the ingestion, or the injection, or whatever, of some drug. The problem is what people do who have smoked or ingested or injected or whatever. Or who are trying to obtain the means to support their habit. If they commit violence against another person, that is the problem. If they commit no violence against anyone, there is no problem. If they commit violence only against themselves, that's sad, but it's still no problem. There may be other considerations (for example, a parent who neglects his children, or a supplier who knowingly commits fraud — think tobacco companies) but the preceding is the basis in my opinion.

Another point: prohibition does not work. You'd think we'd have learned that in the short time in which the 18th Amendment was in effect (1920 to 1933). Our grandparents (or in some cases great-grandparents) did; that's why they repealed it with the 21st Amendment.

My starting philosophy runs something like this: If I tell other people what they must do then I bear at least some of the responsibility for how it turns out. I really don't relish having the responsibility for anyone's actions except my own, so I figure it is best if I don't tell other people what to do. Up to this point, we may well agree.

But this is only for starters. Here we are speaking of drugs, and as I say if some pothead wants to puff away, I don't see why I need to get involved. But PCP is different. Let's just agree at teh outset that I have no personal experience at all here and so I don't really know much. Imagine "or so I understand" appended to each statement about effects.

Significantly often, PCP leads to a psychotic break and/or violence. No person who is thinking of his own long term best interests would have anything to do with it. Put poeple do use it. Sometimes they hurt only themselves, sometimes the results are much worse. Of course usage will be a disaster for the user in the long run, but he doesn't think long term and he may well do a lot of damage to others before he eventually ends up in the morgue. For the rest of us, for society at large, it is our bests interest to prevent this if we can.

Sure, the "if we can" is an important caveat. But the analogy with prohibition is not quite apt. I drink wine. Many do. We don't have psychotic breaks, we don't go out and kill someone. And so we don't take kindly to someone saying that we cannot do it. Prohibition is probably relevant when we are speaking of pot laws. Lots of people smoke pot, and while it doesn't interest me I don't expect a pot smoker to go on a violent rampage.

Not all drugs are the same. Smoking pot is, imo, stupid but I can solve any problems that I see with it by not smoking it. PCP? It's a different story.

So I repeat: A rational drug policy may be a little tough to formulate. All of us forum posters are totally rational, and even here we don't agree.


And now back to Baltimore, the topic that revived this thread. The life of Mr. Gray, the lives of the many who live as he did, the lives of the officers who interact with them, all of these lives are far from my own experience. I have been handcuffed, I have been placed in a police van (I was once young, what alse can I say) but nothing at all like what goes on every day there. It is beyond me to have any really strong intuitive feeling for it all. My hope would be that some strong local leadership would arise and there would be concentrated sustained effort at making lie better. However real the problem is (or to whatever extent individual complaints are sometimes bogus) with police misbehavior, dealing with that will only be part of the solution and I would expect it to only be a very small part of the solution.

I gather they are making progress with the investigation of what really led to Mr. Gray's death. Whatever the outcome, there will still be many wasted lives in the neighborhood he lived in.

[y66]

It is news to me that people who drink don't kill or abuse more people than people who use PCP or whatever your favorite scarier than pot drug happens to be. It is also news to the World Health Organization that alcohol use is not lethal:

Quote

Worldwide, 3.3 million deaths every year result from harmful use of alcohol, this represents 5.9 % of all deaths. Edit: forgot this one.

The harmful use of alcohol is a causal factor in more than 200 disease and injury conditions.

Overall 5.1 % of the global burden of disease and injury is attributable to alcohol, as measured in disability- adjusted life years (DALYs).

Alcohol consumption causes death and disability relatively early in life. In the age group 20 – 39 years approximately 25 % of the total deaths are alcohol-attributable.

There is a causal relationship between harmful use of alcohol and a range of mental and behavioural disorders, other noncommunicable conditions as well as injuries.

Source: WHO Alcohol fact sheet

Let's stop getting hung up on the alcohol vs pot vs scarier stuff argument that produced our counter productive drug enforcement policy. And let's stop pretending that it's hard to come up with a more rational policy than the one we have now because it just isn't. Hamsterdam *was* created in a day.

[kenberg]

I am not pretending anything.

[barmar]

blackshoe, on 2015-April-29, 16:01, said:

Another point: prohibition does not work. You'd think we'd have learned that in the short time in which the 18th Amendment was in effect (1920 to 1933). Our grandparents (or in some cases great-grandparents) did; that's why they repealed it with the 21st Amendment.

It's not clear that Prohibition and the War on Drugs are really comparable.

Alcohol consumption has always been extremely common. Most people drank in moderation, but some vocal moralists considered any use to be bad, and they managed to get Prohibition passed.

Drug use, on the other hand, has never been mainstream, even before it was criminalized. Marijuana is heading in that direction because of relaxed attitudes, but it's still nothing like alcohol.

Prohibition failed because they tried to ban something that practically everyone wanted. The War on Drugs continues because it primarily affects minorities. Although I should admit that this is also because of selective enforcement -- they don't go after rich people snorting coke, prisons are full of crackheads. But the result is that the people most influential in making laws are not the ones who need drug laws to be relaxed.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2015-April-30, 05:51, said:

My starting philosophy runs something like this: If I tell other people what they must do then I bear at least some of the responsibility for how it turns out. I really don't relish having the responsibility for anyone's actions except my own, so I figure it is best if I don't tell other people what to do. Up to this point, we may well agree.

But this is only for starters. Here we are speaking of drugs, and as I say if some pothead wants to puff away, I don't see why I need to get involved. But PCP is different. Let's just agree at teh outset that I have no personal experience at all here and so I don't really know much. Imagine "or so I understand" appended to each statement about effects.

Significantly often, PCP leads to a psychotic break and/or violence. No person who is thinking of his own long term best interests would have anything to do with it. Put poeple do use it. Sometimes they hurt only themselves, sometimes the results are much worse. Of course usage will be a disaster for the user in the long run, but he doesn't think long term and he may well do a lot of damage to others before he eventually ends up in the morgue. For the rest of us, for society at large, it is our bests interest to prevent this if we can.

Sure, the "if we can" is an important caveat. But the analogy with prohibition is not quite apt. I drink wine. Many do. We don't have psychotic breaks, we don't go out and kill someone. And so we don't take kindly to someone saying that we cannot do it. Prohibition is probably relevant when we are speaking of pot laws. Lots of people smoke pot, and while it doesn't interest me I don't expect a pot smoker to go on a violent rampage.

Not all drugs are the same. Smoking pot is, imo, stupid but I can solve any problems that I see with it by not smoking it. PCP? It's a different story.

So I repeat: A rational drug policy may be a little tough to formulate. All of us forum posters are totally rational, and even here we don't agree.


And now back to Baltimore, the topic that revived this thread. The life of Mr. Gray, the lives of the many who live as he did, the lives of the officers who interact with them, all of these lives are far from my own experience. I have been handcuffed, I have been placed in a police van (I was once young, what alse can I say) but nothing at all like what goes on every day there. It is beyond me to have any really strong intuitive feeling for it all. My hope would be that some strong local leadership would arise and there would be concentrated sustained effort at making lie better. However real the problem is (or to whatever extent individual complaints are sometimes bogus) with police misbehavior, dealing with that will only be part of the solution and I would expect it to only be a very small part of the solution.

I gather they are making progress with the investigation of what really led to Mr. Gray's death. Whatever the outcome, there will still be many wasted lives in the neighborhood he lived in.

One aspect about drug use that seems overlooked is that for some (I think many) users drugs are self-medication. Hard core drug users are ill, not bad. I never realized just how few life choices some people have until I became a nurse and worked in a child/adolescent psychiatric facility where I found children and teens who were un-fixable, so emotionally and physically damaged as to have nothing but instinct in lieu of choice.

Most of us never see this level of humanity - at least not up close on a day-to-day basis. It is a much greater slice of life than most of us can imagine. For most of us it is almost impossible to believe that humans can be damaged to the point where they have no choice - it was for me until I witnessed it - but it is real and makes one understand that there are many who cannot think like we do, even if they could somehow understand it.

It is immensely sad to deal with this level of human damage. There seems to be no answer. Criminalizing their drug behavior seems somehow a waste of time and effort.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2015-April-30, 11:35, said:

One aspect about drug use that seems overlooked is that for some (I think many) users drugs are self-medication. Hard core drug users are ill, not bad. I never realized just how few life choices some people have until I became a nurse and worked in a child/adolescent psychiatric facility where I found children and teens who were un-fixable, so emotionally and physically damaged as to have nothing but instinct in lieu of choice.

Most of us never see this level of humanity - at least not up close on a day-to-day basis. It is a much greater slice of life than most of us can imagine. For most of us it is almost impossible to believe that humans can be damaged to the point where they have no choice - it was for me until I witnessed it - but it is real and makes one understand that there are many who cannot think like we do, even if they could somehow understand it.

It is immensely sad to deal with this level of human damage. There seems to be no answer. Criminalizing their drug behavior seems somehow a waste of time and effort.

We may be more in agreement here than you expect. I think that most of us have known people whose lives are simply a mess and seem to be unfixable. Sometimes it is impossible to understand how this came about, other times you look at their early life and you see that it would be a miracle if their lives were not a mess. In the case of Mr. Gray I follow Will rogers in only knowing what I read in the papers but good God, why would we expect his life to go well given what we read.


My view of life is that what we become is partly a matter of inherited genes, partly a matter of early environment, partly a matter of choices that we ourselves make and, truth be told, partly a matter of dumb luck. "There but for the grace of God..." is more than just a catchy phrase.

I am currently reading The girls who went away. It's a study of women, now in hteir 40s and 50s, who when young surrendered their children for adoption. For me it is fascinating, which is not the same as saying that I agree with all of the views of the author. She, the author, strongly feels that everything possible should be done to allow the young woman to raise the child rather than to surrender the child for adoption. There are many interviews with the women and in some of them I find myself thinking thank God for the adoption. But it has given me, an adopted child, a lot to think about.

I apologize for all the references to God, I am no more of a believer than you are, but I often find the metaphor useful.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2015-April-30, 12:07, said:

We may be more in agreement here than you expect. I think that most of us have known people whose lives are simply a mess and seem to be unfixable. Sometimes it is impossible to understand how this came about, other times you look at their early life and you see that it would be a miracle if their lives were not a mess. In the case of Mr. Gray I follow Will rogers in only knowing what I read in the papers but good God, why would we expect his life to go well given what we read.


My view of life is that what we become is partly a matter of inherited genes, partly a matter of early environment, partly a matter of choices that we ourselves make and, truth be told, partly a matter of dumb luck. "There but for the grace of God..." is more than just a catchy phrase.

I am currently reading The girls who went away. It's a study of women, now in hteir 40s and 50s, who when young surrendered their children for adoption. For me it is fascinating, which is not the same as saying that I agree with all of the views of the author. She, the author, strongly feels that everything possible should be done to allow the young woman to raise the child rather than to surrender the child for adoption. There are many interviews with the women and in some of them I find myself thinking thank God for the adoption. But it has given me, an adopted child, a lot to think about.

I apologize for all the references to God, I am no more of a believer than you are, but I often find the metaphor useful.

Ken, I only wish I were as intelligent and wise as you. I posted as a "just so you'll know" kind of thing because it came as a shock to me that there are so many kids (in Tulsa, anyway) who never had choice, which we all assume (including me, until I found out differently) is universal.

These were not bad kids who also made bad choices - these were vacuums of empty neediness wearing human bodies. These kids prefer beatings, pain, sexual assault, or any other perversion rather than neglect.

And they never get well, only incrementally better able to cope.

It is when dealing with kids like this one wishes there were a god to fix it all, but the fact of these kids' lives flatly denies such existence.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2015-April-30, 13:43, said:

Ken, I only wish I were as intelligent and wise as you. I posted as a "just so you'll know" kind of thing because it came as a shock to me that there are so many kids (in Tulsa, anyway) who never had choice, w

So do I

What you describe exceeds anything I have seen or wish to see, but I do think some environments are truly awful.

[billw55]

Winstonm, on 2015-April-30, 13:43, said:

It is when dealing with kids like this one wishes there were a god to fix it all, but the fact of these kids' lives flatly denies such existence.

Or at least, one who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent (?). The three seem to be mutually exclusive in view of facts in evidence.

[blackshoe]

Ken and Winston both make very good points.

The quote from the WHO misses the point. If people who drink harm only themselves, that's not, in general, a reason to prohibit them from drinking, or to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages. People who drink and hurt someone else are a different story, but the WHO quote doesn't address them.

As for the "war on (some) drugs," it doesn't seem to me that putting a couple of million users in prison has done much to stem the tide.

In the end, the solution, if there is one, is to change the socio-economic conditions that lead people to try to escape their lives through drugs - whatever the drug. I don't know how to do that.

[Winstonm]

billw55, on 2015-April-30, 14:44, said:

Or at least, one who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent (?). The three seem to be mutually exclusive in view of facts in evidence.

Quite. If there is on, he ain't our buddy.

[y66]

I inadvertently left out this item from the World Health Organization's alcohol fact sheet: "Worldwide, 3.3 million deaths every year result from harmful use of alcohol, this represents 5.9 % of all deaths."

[mike777]

y66, on 2015-April-30, 22:01, said:

I inadvertently left out this item from the World Health Organization's alcohol fact sheet: "Worldwide, 3.3 million deaths every year result from harmful use of alcohol, this represents 5.9 % of all deaths."

compared to how many deaths from prohibition proven causes?

If prohibition=fewer then we should know that.
------------------------
-----------------------

In any case those who advocate for other drug laws need to be clear on what they advocate.

At this point what they want seems to be all over the map and very unclear.

[Trinidad]

I think there should be some room between "harmful use of alcohol" and "prohibition".

Rik