PeakTrader.com

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PeakTrader:

“Five myths about legalizing weeds, including: 1) If weeds were legal, more people will smoke them, etc.”

And yet the article states (among many contradictions):

“In 1978, the Carter administration changed alcohol regulations to allow for microbreweries. Today the craft-beer market is worth $10.2 billion annually.”

If marijuana was legal in the richest and biggest consumer market in the world, you’d see new Starbucks and candy-alcohol type businesses. It would be as popular as alcohol, and would naturally be a powerful complementary good for alcohol, like milk and cookies.

All the article reflects is with enough effective propaganda, you could get a country to vote for a Hitler.

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“More on the insanely racist and insanely expensive War on Weeds: 1) Even though marijuana is used at similar rates across racial groups, African-Americans accounted for 78% of those arrested in Chicago, 89% of those convicted, and 92% of those jailed for low-level possession. 2) In 2010, marijuana-possession arrests cost Illinois taxpayers $221 million.”

Don’t do weed and you’ll be sane and save lots of money. Yet, taxpayers, who obey the law still lose money. Anyway, where did those African-Americans, who some say are priced-out of the job market at minimum wage, get money for weed?

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People like Ron are either a dishonest activist propagandist or someone who believes freedom is being addicted to drugs, forcing everyone to pay the enormous social costs of drug users, or just doesn’t want to be deprived of the excitement of a drug user smashing into his life at any moment.

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Everyone should obey the law and achieve equal freedom.

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The pro-drug legalization crowd won’t use the scientific methodology, because it contradicts their propaganda. For example, both alcohol and drug use declined since 1980, because of many factors. This study found social norms had a significant effect on alcohol consumption:

Accounting for Changes in Alcohol Use and Abuse in the United States

“Per capita alcohol consumption, teen drinking, and alcohol-involved traffic fatalities show declines ranging from 16% to 40% since their peaks around 1980.

This article examines how beverage prices, the minimum legal drinking age, population aging, and teen attitudes contributed to the declines.

Consumption peaked in 1981 at 2.76 gallons of pure ethanol per person aged 14+, declined to 2.14 gallons per person in 1997-1998, and then rebounded to 2.31 gallons per person in 2007. The net decline from 1981 to 2007 was 16%.

Traffic fatality rates and the rate of alcohol-related accidents declined markedly after 1982. Total fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled declined by 49%, and the alcohol-involved fatality rate declined even more—by 65%.

The percentage of high school seniors who perceive “great risk” in having five or more drinks once or twice on the weekend increased from 35.9% in 1980 to 49.0% in 1992, and remained at 48.0% in 2009.

Similarly, the percentage of high school seniors who “disapprove” of people having five or more drinks once or twice on the weekend increased from 55.6% in 1980 to 70.7% in 1992, and remained at 67.6% in 2009.

Using national time-series data, we find that teen drinking is significantly related to norms concerning risk of harm and disapproval, and they account for significant fractions of the declines in teen use and abuse.”

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Of course, cars are much safer today. However, there’s been some percent decline in accidents, injuries, and deaths just from the change in social norms.

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Anyway, a month ago, I had to call 9-11 and make a police report, because a black guy in black clothes was running in the middle of a dark street at night and ran into a car, or the car and black guy met, at the intersection.

The driver told me he smelled alcohol on him, and given he was running erratically in the street, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was on marijuana, LSD, etc. too.

The driver was taken to the police station, although he just waited for a light and when it turned green, he moved forward and somehow ran over the guys legs. He said he didn’t see him, and I’m not surprised given he looked like a shadow running a little faster than a jog in the middle of the street.

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Also, I may add, I doubt the accident was racially motivated

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Moreover, the accident happened in basically a white neighborhood, although not far from a mall. With so few black guys in that neighborhood, I happened to see a black guy get run over, who may collect disability for the rest of his life, while wasting other people’s time unnecessarily, including with the police, the paramedics, at the hospital, follow-up care, social services, the driver who had to spend a couple of hours at the police station for obeying traffic lights, and me who spent over a half hour reporting the incident to the police.

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Anarchists like you should get some self-respect and logic to understand when someone responds to “the insanely racist and insanely expensive War on Weeds” rather than trying to twist nonsense into reality.

You’ve shown you see racism where there isn’t and don’t see racism where there is.

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Census data indicate Prohibition was effective in reducing alcohol consumption substantially.

In the 20 years before Prohibition, per capita ethanol consumption of all beverages averaged around 2.5 gallons per year.

The year after Prohibition, in 1934, it was 0.97 gallons per person and averaged about 1.5 gallons per person annually till WWII.

http://dryspace.org/data/tab1_09.htm

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The social costs of fried food are much less than drug usage.

Anyway, do you really believe the U.S., with it’s massive obesity problem, would be better off if there were millions of more Americans eating fried food, and millions of additional Americans eating more fried food, including the many more addicted to fried food?

Why do you want to promote fried food? Why not let sleeping dogs lie rather than create millions of new irresponsible drug users, along with millions of new responsble drug users, through legalization.

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Other comments, including AIG:

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/06/saturday-morning-links-7/#comments

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Who makes the world’s best beer? USA makes its case
September 30, 2010

“The leaders in this movement — smaller, independently owned craft brewers — represent the only growth in the U.S. beer market.

Last year, imported-beer sales were down 9.8 percent and light-beer sales declined for the first time in three decades, reports the Brewers Association trade group, while craft beer sales were up 7.2 percent by volume and 10.3 percent in dollar sales.

In 2003, craft brewers exported 434,000 gallons of their brew overseas; by 2009, that had jumped to 1.5 million gallons…a 246 percent increase over just six years.

Bob Pease of the Brewers Association reports: “More and more, we’re in demand with importers and distributors who want to know, ‘How can I get this brand?’”

Southern California’s Stone Brewing, is actively searching for a site to build its own brewery on European soil so it can distribute fresh beers that don’t have to be shipped.

A growing number of brewers from Europe, South America, Scandinavia, Australia and Japan now look to the United States for inspiration.

“The best beer being brewed in the world today is being brewed in the United States,” said Brock Wagner…who started making beer while a student at Rice University.”

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PeakTrader:

What has he (Sowell) written on drug legalization since 1984? Maybe, he realizes he was wrong after a broader understanding and 30 years of data, like he was wrong when he was a Marxist.

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For example, 30 years of data show the U.S. has been winning the “War on Drugs” by preventing millions of drug users & addicts and saving trillions of dollars in social costs. The “War on Drugs” not only stopped the steep rise in drug use, in the ’60s and ’70s, it reversed it.

U.S. Illegal Drug Use Down Substantially from 1970s
17 April 2012

“Drug use in the United States “has dropped substantially over the past thirty years,” thanks to local, state and federal government efforts, as well as international cooperation.

“The rate of Americans using illicit drugs today is roughly one-third the rate it was in the late ’70s.

More recently, there has been a 40 percent drop in current cocaine use and meth use has dropped by half.””

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Meanwhile, crime rates fell:

US crime rate at lowest point in decades.
January 9, 2012

“The last time the crime rate for serious crime – murder, rape, robbery, assault – fell to these levels…was 1963.”

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"Correlation is not causation."

So, when a speed limit is reduced from 70 MPH to 55 MPH, it’s just a coincidence people drive slower, and regardless whether or not there’s a traffic cop working the road.

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Morganovich, on your first day in econ 101, you’ll learn about budget constraints in utility curves, like laws, and you’ll learn it’s not only about one person’s utility curve, or a special group of people’s utilities, but also the summation of all individual utility curves in a society.

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“Crusaders [against alcohol and drugs] cannot accept the fact they are not God, that they have neither the right nor the competence to run other people’s lives.”

What about “crusaders” like Mothers Against Drunk Driving?

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Trilithonia:

“Don’t Legalize Drugs
Theodore Dalrymple

“There is a progression in the minds of men: first the unthinkable becomes thinkable, and then it becomes an orthodoxy whose truth seems so obvious that no one remembers that anyone ever thought differently. This is just what is happening with the idea of legalizing drugs: it has reached the stage when with the idea of legalizing drugs: it has reached the stage when millions of thinking men are agreed that allowing people to take whatever they like is the obvious, indeed only, solution to the social problems that arise from the consumption of drugs.”

http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_2_a1.html

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What are the solutions to the problems that arise from the consumption of drugs?

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It stands to reason, therefore, that all these problems would be resolved at a stroke if everyone were permitted to smoke, swallow, or inject anything he chose. The corruption of the police, the luring of children of 11 and 12 into illegal activities, the making of such vast sums of money by drug dealing that legitimate work seems pointless and silly by comparison, and the turf wars that make poor neighborhoods so exceedingly violent and dangerous, would all cease at once were drug taking to be decriminalized and the supply regulated in the same way as alcohol.

But a certain modesty in the face of an inherently unknowable future is surely advisable. That is why prudence is a political virtue: what stands to reason should happen does not necessarily happen in practice. As Goethe said, all theory (even of the monetarist or free-market variety) is gray, but green springs the golden tree of life. If drugs were legalized, I suspect that the golden tree of life might spring some unpleasant surprises.

It is of course true, but only trivially so, that the present illegality of drugs is the cause of the criminality surrounding their distribution. Likewise, it is the illegality of stealing cars that creates car thieves. In fact, the ultimate cause of all criminality is law. As far as I am aware, no one has ever suggested that law should therefore be abandoned. Moreover, the impossibility of winning the “war” against theft, burglary, robbery, and fraud has never been used as an argument that these categories of crime should be abandoned. And so long as the demand for material goods outstrips supply, people will be tempted to commit criminal acts against the owners of property. This is not an argument, in my view, against private property or in favor of the common ownership of all goods. It does suggest, however, that we shall need a police force for a long time to come.

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It might be argued that the freedom to choose among a variety of intoxicating substances is a much more important freedom and that millions of people have derived innocent fun from taking stimulants and narcotics. But the consumption of drugs has the effect of reducing men’s freedom by circumscribing the range of their interests. It impairs their ability to pursue more important human aims, such as raising a family and fulfilling civic obligations. Very often it impairs their ability to pursue gainful employment and promotes parasitism. Moreover, far from being expanders of consciousness, most drugs severely limit it. One of the most striking characteristics of drug takers is their intense and tedious self-absorption; and their journeys into inner space are generally forays into inner vacuums. Drug taking is a lazy man’s way of pursuing happiness and wisdom, and the shortcut turns out to be the deadest of dead ends. We lose remarkably little by not being permitted to take drugs.

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Respond to this:

Moreover, far from being expanders of consciousness, most drugs severely limit it. One of the most striking characteristics of drug takers is their intense and tedious self-absorption; and their journeys into inner space are generally forays into inner vacuums. Drug taking is a lazy man’s way of pursuing happiness and wisdom, and the shortcut turns out to be the deadest of dead ends. We lose remarkably little by not being permitted to take drugs.

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THEODORE DALRYMPLE
On the Legalization of Drugs

Living in a civilized society means accepting laws that we didn’t make.

5 December 2012
Discussing drug legalization with libertarians, as I did recently, can be a frustrating experience. This is in part because they rarely say exactly what they mean by “legalization.” Do they mean a controlled market that would barely represent a retreat from state regulation and interference, or an uncontrolled one, in which we would all be able to buy methamphetamine or crack at our local store?

There is a much deeper problem, though: their conception of what it is to live in a civilized society. They seem to think of people as egoistic particles that occasionally bump into one another rather than as necessarily and essentially social beings. No doubt there are some egoistic particles among us, but they represent only a tiny proportion of the total. On the matter of drugs, libertarians argue that it is no business of the state to tell citizens what to take or not to take, and that doing so is therefore an oppressive curtailment of freedom. The drug laws, they insist, don’t work in practice, because so many people break them—with impunity or not, as the case may be.

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon1205td.html

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Living in a civilized society means accepting laws that one did not make oneself, and that in any given situation may seem unnecessary; one has no right to complain if punished for breaking them. I accept the law as necessary even as I break it. One is not oneself the arbiter of everything. In some circumstances, it is right to prevent potential harms to third parties such as speeding and taking drugs produce rather than to wait for them actually to occur. It is a matter of judgment, not of principle, when those circumstances exist—and in my opinion, the taking of methamphetamine falls well this side of justifiable prevention.

Of course, restrictions on freedom may become onerous, and petty regulations may whittle away freedom altogether. But all freedoms are not created equal; a hierarchy exists among them; and a restriction on the freedom to intoxicate yourself or drive down Fifth Avenue at 100 miles an hour is not to be compared with a restriction on the freedom to say what you think. Speech codes are therefore a much more serious assault on liberty than are drug laws.

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PeakTrader:

It’s amazing, law-breakers create the damage, and yet you blame the brave people who limit the damage.

So, let’s reward the law-breakers, for their enormous damage throughout society, by making drugs legal. Let’s give them a big hand of applause.

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Ken, go after the criminals next time rather than continuing to prove you’re a jackass.

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GoneWithTheWind:

So we would “legalize” the bad drugs that kill and make so many people dramatically ill does that mean we should make all prescription drugs available over the counter? If not why not. After all I can save the cost of a doctors appointment and just by the antibiotics I need to cure an illness. You can buy these things over the counter in 3rd world countries so why not here. If you advocate making the dangerous drugs that kill thousands every year and enslave/addict hundreds of thousands every year why not make the drugs legally available that save lives?

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PeakTrader:

“More progress: Vermont becomes the 17th state to decriminalize possession of weeds.”

If Americans are going to jail only for possession of small quantities of marijuana, it makes economic sense decriminalizing it to a ticket and a fine, to save resources and collect revenues.

We’ll need those resources and revenues to deal with the massive devastation of drug use and drug related crimes (whether drugs are legal or not).

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http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/06/thomas-sowell-from-1984-on-why-drugs-should-be-legalized/#comments

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PeakTrader:

“Mexico’s Biggest Problem is the US Government”

Mexico’s biggest problem are U.S. drug users. They don’t care how much damage and propaganda they create, as long as they have their drugs.

Exploiting ignorance and blaming others are ways to justify their drug use.

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"Great moments in government waste"

Government needs to be controlled like drug addicts.

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http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/06/americas-war-on-plants-is-just-a-dumb-idea/#comments

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/06/great-moments-in-government-waste-of-taxpayer-money/#comments

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"Thanks largely to the drug war, nearly 2 million US children have a parent in prison and Sesame Street helps kids cope"

PeakTrader:

Those parents may be doing something constructive now, like making license plates for people to identify their getaway cars after they’re released, rather than having more babies.

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Juandos, looks like there’s more work to do:

Is Illinois winning the War on Drugs?
Chicago Tribune
July 24, 2011

Jack Riley, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Chicago…noted that Chicago’s decreasing crime is an important indicator that the so-called War on Drugs is working.

About 70 percent of all crime can be traced to drugs, he said, and crime in the city is at its lowest in years.

“They (police, DEA, etc.) believe in what we’re doing because they see the devastation drugs are causing.”

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And it doesn’t seem they’re going to jail just for marijuana possession, unless they’re habitual criminals, had charges reduced, or it was quite a lot of marijuana.

WhiteHouse.Gov:

“Most people whose only crime is marijuana possession do not go to prison. A survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics showed that 0.7% of all state inmates were behind bars for marijuana possession only (with many of them pleading down from more serious crimes).”

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AIG:

“A survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics showed that 0.7% of all state inmates were behind bars for marijuana possession only (with many of them pleading down from more serious crimes).””

WHAT??? But…but…but…I thought there were millions upon millions of people in jail simply because they smoked a plant? I was told so many times. Are you somehow implying, that I was deliberately misinformed?

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PeakTrader:

It’s only 0.7% of inmates:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/ondcp-fact-sheets/marijuana-legalization

And, yes, some people want you to believe jails are full of hard working honest people, who just happen to smoke a plant on weekends.

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Juandos:

“And it doesn’t seem they’re going to jail just for marijuana possession, unless they’re habitual criminals, had charges reduced, or it was quite a lot of marijuana“…

Exactly right…

I wonder how many Tom Gisby stories have to happen before people catch on?

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2013/06/the-strange-death-of-tom-gisby.html

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Juandos:

I wonder just many of those so called fathers being busted for some rearson regardling drugs were Orlando Shaw type individuals?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2337177/I-young-ambitious-Deadbeat-dad-22-children-14-women-says-loves-kids-hes-proud-legacy-live-on.html

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http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/06/thanks-largely-to-the-drug-war-nearly-2-million-us-children-have-a-parent-in-prison-and-sesame-street-helps-kids-cope/#comments

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