From: kharin (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Tue Jul 16 2002 - 09:44:04 MDT
If you legalise it, you control it, you take it from the criminals.
I'm not entirely persuaded. Consider the Dutch example; sale of cannabis in licensed cafes is intended to also confine usage to said cafes. In practise, this is unenforceable and a situation develops wherein it becomes reasonably comon to carry cannabis around. Since the law is so widely ignored, the police cease to be able to enforce it, which allows criminal dealers to stay in business (since it is not possible to determine between illegal and bona fide sources). The evidence seems to be that most Dutch users purchase cannabis from the cafes, but their presence has certainly not extirpated the dealers (who are able to undercut the cafes; they lack many of the costs associated with running a cafe). I would admit that this is pedantry rather than the disagreement as such though; the cafes do have the advantage of being able to assure their clientele that they are not being sold parsley of course.
"Because you are exchanging a punative and retributive system
of "justice" with one concerned with individualised help/advice."
I would certainly not agree that moving towards a more therapeutic approach is anything but an advance, but I think I feel a bit more sympathetic to the point in question than you seem to. I would observe that much of the medical profession have been the most unstinting supporters of the war on drugs for years (while much of the police have become increasingly indifferent to enforcing said laws) and individuals like Professor Susan Greenfield* (who might not count if she had not been appointed to the House of Lords) continue to remorselessly focus the debate on the medical effects of cannabis consumption and ignoring all of the other political, legal and sociological aspects; the medical profession will never be willing to acknowledge an important point here, that individuals have a right to abuse their own bodies if they so wish (the recent Miss B case seems to be a very interesting example) and that the medical profession are required to surrender some control. The medical aspects of this only take you so
far.
* With whom my irritation goes back a great deal longer than this article.
"So? for some it isn't."
A very different issue than the main cut and thrust of the debate. While my instinct is very much to shun the tedious pharmo-mystics I suspect that a choice in the matter might not be on offer, anymore than it would be from the Jehovah's Witnesses. More generally, I don't see any great reason to privilege the noetic over the empirical (though that does not necessarily entail dismissing the noetic); as referred to elsewhere the issue of care towards truth seems rather difficult under those circumstances.
---- This message was posted by kharin to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25702>
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