Monday, March 27, 2006

End Prohibition (Again)

My friend Marc Victor, a criminal defense attorney, has written a nice article on why the drug war is stupid beyond belief (unless you happen to be a drug dealer or employed by the DEA - 'cause then it's awesome!).

4 comments:

Lippard said...

I think Marc has it right. The March 2006 issue of Liberty magazine had an article by Bruce Ramsey about the war on drugs, arguing that libertarians tend to ignore some of the more difficult issues about drugs such as those around meth. He argues that large corporations wouldn't get into the meth business because of the liability issues, which may well be true. But if it were legal to develop and sell recreational drugs, I suspect there would soon be safer, less addictive, less harmful substitutes for meth.

I think the next step is to try to get public policy to be more rational about the use of drugs for the control of pain--Radley Balko has been documenting the irrationality of throwing people like Richard Paey in jail for getting multiple prescriptions for OxyContin.

steve said...

Which reminds me, when's "the Wire" season three hitting DVD? I'm going through withdrawal here (no drug-related punsintended)!

Einzige said...

Jim,

Meth could definitely be characterized as the 21st century's answer to bathtub Gin.

Steve,

I dunno when the official version comes out, but on eBay there's a ton of apparent bootlegs available. I may just break down and make a purchase! What a fantastic show.

Solan said...

If they have a problem with Meth, what about glue? Glue is legal, and it dissolves the brain in no time. Time to put a wedge between legal and good-for-you. There is no reason to make the one equal to the other.