Worlds most screwed up drug enforcement.

[JKane]

From the Scott Adler thread upon learning of the drugs he was allegedly caught with...

So are the penalties lower? As long as this isn't his third strike isn't he likely to be out soon?

Another thread says GHB is indeed 'Schedule 1' (what isn't?) so while some may be relieved it wasn't coke or the vile meth the courts may not be able to make any distinction.

Not to endorse his actions at all, but why the fuck can't we have drug laws approaching sensibility in this country, with Meth, Crack and Heroin at the top of enforcement priorities and penalties?

Instead we've currently got the whole of LA County chasing their tales trying to find a way to bust pot dispensaries at the moment. Anybody with a brain would load up all the officers available for that into buses and drive them to the Antelope Valley or Inland Empire for a weekend of busting Meth houses...

AND the less Pot we get from Mexico the less that entire country is encouraged to fall to pieces.

How do we get these bullshit racism-based schedules (is it even plural or is absolutely everything schedule 1 now?) tossed if favor of ones drawn up by medical and law enforcement professionals based on actual harm done to addicts and others?

[Guest satr]

GHB is most commonly used as a date rape/party drug. 8 years ago when I was 21 years old I went to meet a guy I was chatting with on the Internet. When I showed up there was somebody else there and he said the guy was running late. I proceeded to have one beer and noticed no taste or color change to warn me of anything. I felt all the effects of a date rape drug, but in my naivete and youth I had no idea what was really going on. No reason to go into more details, as I don't want to relieve the experience. Of course I do not believe GHB is as addictive heroine or turns you into a walking meth zombie, but if it was the case that Scott was selling GHB in west hollywood, a town where 1 in 4 guys are HIV positive and barebacking is common, I do think this is serious and deserves prosecution. Especially considering that they found 3 full containers of it and not just a couple pills. Why hire an escort, when you can just trick a young guy to come over and put some stuff in his drink? The only other time I was drugged was when somebody gave me a "booty bump" of crack cocaine while I was escorting. He snuck it in and later I went to the ER because I couldn't figure out what was making me feel so weird and they ran a blood test and found out. That incident was horrible and I became involved in an investigation after I reported it, because the guy had done it before I found out. I was not afraid to tell the police the whole story and that I was escorting at the time. The detective on the case considered the escorting part to be extremely minor and not worth pursuing compared to the drug offenses. I give Scott the full benefit of the doubt and hope he gets a chance to defend himself well.

From the Scott Adler thread upon learning of the drugs he was allegedly caught with...

Another thread says GHB is indeed 'Schedule 1' (what isn't?) so while some may be relieved it wasn't coke or the vile meth the courts may not be able to make any distinction.

Not to endorse his actions at all, but why the fuck can't we have drug laws approaching sensibility in this country, with Meth, Crack and Heroin at the top of enforcement priorities and penalties?

Instead we've currently got the whole of LA County chasing their tales trying to find a way to bust pot dispensaries at the moment. Anybody with a brain would load up all the officers available for that into buses and drive them to the Antelope Valley or Inland Empire for a weekend of busting Meth houses...

AND the less Pot we get from Mexico the less that entire country is encouraged to fall to pieces.

How do we get these bullshit racism-based schedules (is it even plural or is absolutely everything schedule 1 now?) tossed if favor of ones drawn up by medical and law enforcement professionals based on actual harm done to addicts and others?

[TampaYankee]

It's pretty simple really. Our drug enforcement policy has traditionally been based on ideology more, and science and medicine not so much. True there are scientific and medical reasons at the root for some of the policy behind restricting harder drugs. Whether the methods to inhibit use of those drugs are effective is another matter entirely. History would dictate that those methods haven't been effective and maybe have been counterproductive if not downright harmful.

Softer drugs such as marijuana, mescaline, and mushrooms have been conflated with the harder drugs on the grounds that they are stepping stones to the harder drugs. In fact, this philosophy has probably contributed to most crossover that probably was never there naturally. When society declares certain products and nonviolent activities to be criminal in nature, it causes otherwise noncriminal inviduals to consort with criminals that engage in multiple illegal activities On a level playing field there is no more reason to suspect that marijuana users would consort with criminals than there is for alcohol users or cigarette smokers to consort with criminals. The fact is the law has pushed these people into consorting and financially supporting criminals. The same was true during Prohibition.

As for marijuana, the roots of anti-marijuana laws go back to the 1920s where such laws were drafted in the Southwest as a means to repress the Hispanic community which had some traditional culture of smoking marijuana. It was a mechanism to marginalize the community by painting them as drug addicts and thieves. Those laws eventually made their way to Washington where they became nationalized. Similar arguments can be made about other drug laws and black community. That is not to say that there was not reason to curb drug use, only that it became a mechanism to marginalize minorites as much as a mechanism to manage public health, maybe more so considering how effective our anti-drug policies have been.

One of the biggest mistakes in our drug policy has been to criminalize use. It has led us to imprisoning more of our citizens that in any other country in the World, on a per capita basis. It has overwhelmed our courts, needlessly ruined lives, not only directly but indirectly as well, busted state budgets for prison housing, led to severe prison overcrowding causing courts to declare many institutions of meting out cruel and inhumane punishment, ordering inmates to be set free. Worst of all, it has subjected nonviolent persons and petty criminals to extended association with hardened criminals before being let back into society -- certainly not the kind of edcuation these people should have been exposed to.

What amazes me most though is that anyone could objectively view the so called War on Drugs and conclude that we should continue to do the same thing. It's proof that some people may be educated but do not learn.

[TampaYankee]

Just to be clear, JKane's post addressed issues of US and California drug enforcement policy, not any allegations about an indivdual. Any mention of an individual was only to identify the source of the quote off which is post was spun. The issues he raises are independent of any personality or allegations which are irrelevant to the discussion.

We are not going to engage in speculation about individuals or allegations. As with any other news story we will follow the case as it is reliably reported.

[Guest StuCotts]

Here is an article that makes the pot situation in California sound hopeful. A positive result would be a blow for sweet reason. It will be wonderful if the optimism doesn't turn out to be pie in the sky.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/us/28pot.html?_r=1&hpw

[JKane]

GHB is most commonly used as a date rape/party drug. 8 years ago when I was 21 years old I went to meet a guy I was chatting with on the Internet. When I showed up there was somebody else there and he said the guy was running late. I proceeded to have one beer and noticed no taste or color change to warn me of anything. I felt all the effects of a date rape drug, but in my naivete and youth I had no idea what was really going on. No reason to go into more details, as I don't want to relieve the experience. Of course I do not believe GHB is as addictive heroine or turns you into a walking meth zombie, but if it was the case that Scott was selling GHB in west hollywood, a town where 1 in 4 guys are HIV positive and barebacking is common, I do think this is serious and deserves prosecution.

Sorry to hear about your experience. I was surprised it's now apparently a common 'party' drug as I'd only heard of it as date-rape before.

You make some good points, sounds like this does belong higher on the enforcement list than pot.

[Lucky]

The New York Times revealed today that the federal government has not punished marijuana smugglers from Mexico as long as they smuggled lass than 500 TONS of marijuana. All at the same time they were going after small time pot smokers.

[Guest epigonos]

In 1969 then President Richard Nixon announced the start of a “war on drugs”. From the very beginning the entire campaign was an abysmal failure. The major principle, governing this ridiculous war, has been to go after the suppliers and look upon the users with compassionate understanding. In the eyes of many users have been considered helpless victims of suppliers – after all drug users are considered by these bleeding hearts as suffering from an illness. This is same type of enabling that has also been extended to alcoholics and the obese.

Now as I see it we have two choices: 1.) We can go after the users with a vengeance by, for example, seizing 50% of their assets with each conviction. The likelihood of this ever happening is slight and none. In the eyes of many people such a position would be seen as cruel and unusual punishment 2.) We can legalize ALL drugs, require users to registrar and get the mob and various cartels out of the business. We could then tax the hell out of the business and balance many government budgets. Now this is no more likely to happen than number one because of all the self righteous morons who find the concept of legalized drugs immoral. They would far rather see the corruption, violence and death that our current system feeds.

Therefore lets hear a mighty cheer for the status quo because that is exactly what we are going to have.

[KYTOP]

Now as I see it we have two choices: 1.) We can go after the users with a vengeance by, for example, seizing 50% of their assets with each conviction. The likelihood of this ever happening is slight and none. In the eyes of many people such a position would be seen as cruel and unusual punishment 2.) We can legalize ALL drugs, require users to registrar and get the mob and various cartels out of the business. We could then tax the hell out of the business and balance many government budgets. Now this is no more likely to happen than number one because of all the self righteous morons who find the concept of legalized drugs immoral. They would far rather see the corruption, violence and death that our current system feeds.

Therefore lets hear a mighty cheer for the status quo because that is exactly what we are going to have.

Is legalizing drugs going to stop the over doses and deaths from drugs? The assaults, robberies, burglaries that occur to feed one's habits? Taking half of nothing is nothing for those that have already lost everything they have and maybe even their families to feed their habit. Ever held someone in your arms as they convulsed, vomited, and foamed from the mouth when they are coming down off of their severe high? I have, and I guess that I am immoral to not think that is ok? Ever consoled a family after telling them what happened to their drug addicted child? Ever consoled a young teenager after being slipped GHB and raped repeatedly? You really think legalizing drugs will solve the problem?

Has legalizing alcohol stopped alcoholism and caused AA to be disbanded? Mended the broken homes or retrieved the jobs lost because of one's abuse? Stopped drunk driving? Ever pulled a young mother's dead body from behind the wheel of her car that was T-boned by a drunk driver while her baby, that will never know her mother, cries from the car seat? I have. Since alcohol is legal the problem should be solved and shouldn't that young mother be alive today?

Legalizing alcohol never solved the problems that alcohol creates, it just took the money from the mob and gave it to Budweiser so we could tax it. How will legalzing drugs solve the problems drugs create? And other than marijuana, I don't see where anyone could possibly compare the use of alcohol and drugs. The problems that drugs create in our country and its negative effects on people's lives, or lose of life, is multipled numerous times worse than alcohol.

I have no idea what the solution to our drug problems are. I wish someone did, but I know glorifying the use of drugs will not solve it. Saying it is ok for people to destroy their lives, or the lives of others, and to just legalize it I do not believe will solve a damn thing either. If you think that me a moron and my opinion is immoral, so be it. I hope you get the chance to visit the morgue one day to witness your morality.

[TampaYankee]

Is legalizing drugs going to stop the over doses and deaths from drugs? The assaults, robberies, burglaries that occur to feed one's habits?

It might. If not stop then maybe decrease the incidences of deaths, ODs and criminal violence.

First, IMO legalizing marijuana is a no-brainer. The benefits far outweigh the negatives.

For harder drugs, decriminalizing use if done right would take the profit motive and hence the criminal element out of distrbuting drugs. That would reduce significant violent crime. It would also reduce the benefits associated with and therefore the need to engage in robberies, burglaries and assaults to pay for drugs or to rip off supply from others. Unauthorized distribution would remain illegal with severe penalties.

In addition to providing a cheap if not free source for drugs, it would provide for pharmaceutical grade, strictly regulated standardized strength, making the user less at risk less of accidental overdose or subject to the effect of tainted drugs. If drugs consumption was limited to onsite at approved dispensaries, not only would safe drug doses and quality be regulated but physicians would be on hand to monitor users health issues and regulate permissable doeses.

Legalizing alcohol never solved the problems that alcohol creates, it just took the money from the mob and gave it to Budweiser so we could tax it. How will legalzing drugs solve the problems drugs create? And other than marijuana, I don't see where anyone could possibly compare the use of alcohol and drugs. The problems that drugs create in our country and its negative effects on people's lives, or lose of life, is multipled numerous times worse than alcohol.

Legalizing alchohol was never intended to solve the problems it created, only to solve the problems that making it illegal created. The problem is not with alocohol or drugs, it is with human beings. We know about things we shouldn't do yet we are drawn to do them all the time. Whatever laws we pass we will never change human nature and human frailties. The question is how do we deal with them to minimize the effects on each of us as individuals and also on all of us collectively as society. We can pretend that we can repeal human nature through laws which is folly or we can recognize the shortcoming of human nature and search for ways to mitigate the effect of those shortcomings on us.

I have no idea what the solution to our drug problems are. I wish someone did, but I know glorifying the use of drugs will not solve it. Saying it is ok for people to destroy their lives, or the lives of others, and to just legalize it I do not believe will solve a damn thing either. If you think that me a moron and my opinion is immoral, so be it. I hope you get the chance to visit the morgue one day to witness your morality.

I'm with you here. I don't know what the solution is. Clearly what we have now isn't a solution. A strong argument can be made for legalization based, in part, on the points above. I seems to me that the arguments for legalization are more rational than for the status quo. My gut tells me that. However, it also tells me that assisting individuals to consume what amounts to addictive poisons doesn't offer me much if any comfort in that solution. Frankly, it boils down to the dilemma that the rational solution doesnt feel right and the feel-right solution doesn't seem rational based on experience and logic. In the vernacular of today, we seek the unattainable perfect at the sacrifice of the practical good, realizing that 'good' is a relative term.

The problem with the status quo is that it is the Law Enforcement approach with penalties that has been shown NOT to work over and over. It can never succeed absolutely. There will always be those who believe they can skirt the law with success and benefit. The concept is based on making the infraction detection sufficiently effective and the penalties sufficiently severe that scofflaws become the rare exception rather than the common occurence.

Infraction detection is necessarily limited in a free society. While the severity of penalties has been up and down depending on the times and locations it is clear that the penalties have never been sufficiently severe to drive drug sales and use to obscurity. To the contrary it is a multibillion dollar business worldwide -- hundreds of millions in the US. If society is serious about using law enforcement as the mechanism to effectively eradicate illegal drugs then it must be willing to adopt the penalities that will achieve that end. To date it has not been serious. Singapore is serious.

The legalization approach seeks to manage individual personal disaster with benefit to society through decreased crime and attendant costs, while the status quo seeks to eradicate, without any broad success to date, individual personal disaster at the expense of those individuals (through criminalization) and at great expense to society in terms of violent crime and the expended resoures to address that crime.

How much longer will we stay this course? Do we have the guts to stray from it? Are we better off as a society feeling good morally about our choices even though we continue to fall short of real success and fail some of our brothers and sisters and children in some measure every day? Maybe we are. Maybe to live with our society we have to adopt precepts that are incompatible with some practical solutions. We pay a price either way.

Sorry to go on and on. Just got cranked up and carried away.

[caeron]

Ever consoled a young teenager after being slipped GHB and raped repeatedly? You really think legalizing drugs will solve the problem?

Emotion makes good rhetoric, but poor policy, I think.

Alchohol and drugs have been with us since near the dawn of man and telling people they can't by force of law might only work if you are willing to execute everyone caught with drugs within 48 hours without appeal. I think we don't need to explore whether that cure is worse than the drugs.

All these horrors you talk about happen even though they're illegal, so how then is making them illegal having any apparent effect? Anybody here who hasn't tried drugs because they were illegal? I didn't think so.

Legalizing might well cause more people to use. But it would allow honest, open, true communications about the drugs. Taxation, treatment, quality control.

Outlawing liquor didn't cure our human need for booze. Talking about alchoholism and treatment openly did. A lot of things about booze have changed in the last 40 years.

Making all these drugs illegal criminalizes the sickness of drug addiction and vastly complicates the the treatment and public discussion of addiction. It feeds a vast criminal network that is murderous.

What we are doing is failing, and has created a new mafia.

It has been failing for 40 years since Nixon first talked about the war on drugs in 1969.

We need a new approach.

[KYTOP]

I'm with you here. I don't know what the solution is. Clearly what we have now isn't a solution. A strong argument can be made for legalization based, in part, on the points above. I seems to me that the arguments for legalization are more rational than for the status quo. My gut tells me that. However, it also tells me that assisting individuals to consume what amounts to addictive poisons doesn't offer me much if any comfort in that solution. Frankly, it boils down to the dilemma that the rational solution doesnt feel right and the feel-right solution doesn't seem rational based on experience and logic. In the vernacular of today, we seek the unattainable perfect at the sacrifice of the practical good, realizing that 'good' is a relative term.

The problem with the status quo is that it is the Law Enforcement approach with penalties that has been shown NOT to work over and over. It can never succeed absolutely. There will always be those who believe they can skirt the law with success and benefit. The concept is based on making the infraction detection sufficiently effective and the penalties sufficiently severe that scofflaws become the rare exception rather than the common occurence.

Infraction detection is necessarily limited in a free society. While the severity of penalties has been up and down depending on the times and locations it is clear that the penalties have never been sufficiently severe to drive drug sales and use to obscurity. To the contrary it is a multibillion dollar business worldwide -- hundreds of millions in the US. If society is serious about using law enforcement as the mechanism to effectively eradicate illegal drugs then it must be willing to adopt the penalities that will achieve that end. To date it has not been serious. Singapore is serious.

The legalization approach seeks to manage individual personal disaster with benefit to society through decreased crime and attendant costs, while the status quo seeks to eradicate, without any broad success to date, individual personal disaster at the expense of those individuals (through criminalization) and at great expense to society in terms of violent crime and the expended resoures to address that crime.

How much longer will we stay this course? Do we have the guts to stray from it? Are we better off as a society feeling good morally about our choices even though we continue to fall short of real success and fail some of our brothers and sisters and children in some measure every day? Maybe we are. Maybe to live with our society we have to adopt precepts that are incompatible with some practical solutions. We pay a price either way.

Sorry to go on and on. Just got cranked up and carried away.

My original response was fueled, or in your words "cranked up" by the comment that one that doesn't agree with drug legalization is a moron and immoral. I think that my comments, or mostly questions, do not defend the status quo but try to say we have a HUGE problem. A problem that I believe, and even your comments make clear to me, will not be solved by legalization. There have been many changes made over the past few years whether people believe it or not. Even in conservative areas it is unusual for a 1st time user, or small possession charge, to result in jail time. It usually results in probation and a completion of a rehab program of some type. Is this helping and could the expansion of required rehab or required in house rehab for later offenses help? Not sure. There is some debate on this at present but it is fueled more by prison over crowding than by the real problem itself.

I strongly believe that a new national debate needs to take place to try to find solutions to ease the problem. I realize that this problem will never be completely solved. But it grieves me greatly that so many, especially in the gay community, just seem to accept drug use many times even glorifying it, and turn away from the reality of it. Maybe it is our "Live and let live mentality" because of the judgement many in the gay community face. Yes we are losing the war on drugs, but we must keep fighting, and with any losing fight you have to sometimes change strategy.

[KYTOP]

Emotion makes good rhetoric, but poor policy, I think.

We need a new approach.

There is a difference between emotion and the reality of the problem. Being on the front lines sometimes makes that reality too real. Ignoring the reality of the drug problem will never help to solve it. Nor will the acceptance of drug use as ok solve it. I agree we do need a new approach but just don't think legalization will solve the reality of the problem or even the emotion involved with the lives it destroys.

[caeron]

There is a difference between emotion and the reality of the problem. Being on the front lines sometimes makes that reality too real. Ignoring the reality of the drug problem will never help to solve it. Nor will the acceptance of drug use as ok solve it. I agree we do need a new approach but just don't think legalization will solve the reality of the problem or even the emotion involved with the lives it destroys.

And I think you're arguing for prohibition. People are still using. Nothing has changed in 40 years except that we're paying a metric shitload to pay to have various drug users and dealers locked up. We're living with the criminal consequences of creating murderous gangs that are killing lots of innocents in mexico.

Frankly, I'd rather those who wish to use drugs die, than innocents.

Prohibition didn't work then, and it isn't working now. Staring at the reality of the evils of drink and drug addiction doesn't mean that society has the power to make that go away. You may _want_ prohibition to work very badly, but it doesn't.

Short of totalitarianism, I don't think it can ever work, and I don't want to live in that society. By process of elimination, that leads to some form of legalization.

I think many labor under the belief that the problem is fixable by society somehow. I don't think it is. Society used to think homosexuality was fixable. It wasn't. People will drink and do drugs as they have since we came down out of trees. Head in the sand doesn't change our fundamental impulses.

Science may find a way to rewire our impulses some day, but threat of jail clearly doesn't work.

[TampaYankee]

I doubt that hard drugs will ever be legalized, and if they ever are it won't last long. Just see the Amsterdam experience where they are backing away from defacto legalization or noncriminalization of hard drugs. This notwithstanding all of the rational arguments for legalization.

The reason is simple and twofold. It comes down to accepting drug use as an open aspect of life and it comes down to blame. People do not want to see family members addicted to drugs and to the attendant consequences that brings. Also, people do not want to live in the presence of drug users, next door or down the street. Of course it happens all over the place but that is not sanctioned by society. Thus society is not to blame directly.

Also, drug use is terribly destructive on a personal level and on a societal level. The question is: Who is to blame for this destructive impact? If drugs are legalized then society must shoulder much of the blame as it facilitates the act of drug consumption. If drugs are illegal then we can blame those who are too weak to abstain and those who choose to break the law and commit crimes, both petty and heinous. I do not believe that society wants to shoulder the blame. It prefers to put the blame at the feet of personal responsibility.

None of this leads to a practical solution but it helps us to live with the defacto circumstances today and hope for a better alternative tomorrow. There have been many tomorrows in the War on Drugs. There will be more. As with Sisyphus we strive to push our heavy load to the summit of success. Like him we never make it but the nobility is in the unending effort.