>Ahhh, an understandable question. Criminalizing drug use gives friends and
>families of people whose lives get messed up by addiction another lever to
>try to help them.
I am not following what you mean here. To help the user or the friends? Care to elaborate?
> Criminalizing drug use gives people who suffer direct neglect and other
> dangers due to someone else's drug use ways to end the harm to themselves
> or to have others help them reduce the harm.
You mean turn in their own family members 'for their own good'? This presupposes that being incarcerated has a positive effect in reducing drug addiction. Does it? What I've read suggests otherwise but I'm willing to read more. Any suggestions?
>Maybe you are lucky enough not to know anyone whose life is so messed up
>by drugs they literally cannot take the first steps to help themselves but
>encounters with the criminal justice system CAN be an excellent way to get
>these people's attention and sometimes to divert them from self-destruction.
I have known several people who have gone to prison (not jail) and not one came out a "better" person in any sense. I know that people I've known is not a statistically valid sample to draw broad conclusions from but again I would need to re-check recidivism rates for drug offenders. I think drug offenders generally come out of the prison system more messed up than they went in. Anecdotally, the last person I know who went to prison for a drug offense sold several ounces of weed to a friend of a friend. The guy was an undercover and also a despicable person. A wife beater with a junk addiction. The police were aware of his "problems" but he got results so they gave him a long leash. My friend was sentenced to 5 years and actually had to go live with his mother for 9 months while he waited for space in the state prison. He was a promising architecture student who sold a little weed to pay expenses. I don't see the benefit to him, his family, or society by incarcerating him. Maybe I'm missing something but I doubt it.
>The same goes for criminalizing the performance of many
>activities--driving or piloting a vehicle, caring for children, while
>under the influence. I am willing to entertain the idea that one should
>not criminalize the drugs but only doing nearly all ordinary activities
>while under their influence. And perhaps I would be entertained to hear,
>say, a defense of the merits vs the risks of shopping while tweaking (high
>on meth), but I am not going to look hard for such an argument.
Not driving inebriated, not caring for children while under the influence of mind altering substances, not smoking weed before piloting a plane. These are restrictions on privileges granted by society. They don't speak to the larger legal issue of why certain classes of drugs are prohibited for use in private and not others. I have never heard anyone who advocated legalizing drugs who held the position that this would mean that restrictions on their use would be less than alcohol. As an aside, my cousin was killed by a tweaked truck driver who ran him into a bridge abutment but I still favor legalizing meth.
>I should note I live in a jurisdiction that has a strong system of drug
>courts that feed into decent but of course underfunded and overstressed
>treatment programs. I am sure WA penal institutions are full of people
>serving ridiculous sentences for drug possession, but WA laws are not
>QUITE as draconian as other states. At least in some areas, cops are also
>fairly open about how enforcement for simple possession is low priority.
>All of this makes it a lot easier for me to total up a LOT of REALLY
>negative effect of meth, the example of choice, and put that into my
>equation about what I want to tolerate and what I do not.
I currently live in Missouri and have for several years. Meth is more common here than in most states. The courts suck, the cops suck. This is a Republican state that crows about zero tolerance very loudly. You are fortunate to live someplace with greater tolerance. It makes a difference. I lived in Olympia for a short period of time and the difference is amazing. You might feel differently if you lived elsewhere. Maybe not.
John Thornton