

Why we say yes to drugs - bearwithclaws
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/07/20/this_is_your_country_on_drugs/

======
mitko
Portugal has some pretty good results from their drug policy:

<http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/14/portugal/>

"Evaluating the policy strictly from an empirical perspective,
decriminalization has been an unquestionable success, leading to improvements
in virtually every relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-
related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than most Western nations
that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense."

------
sjf
I was hoping for a more insightful answer than: because people like to get
high.

~~~
Quarrelsome
It's kinda like the meaning of life though: "have kids" is a perfectly
reasonable explaination for ones "purpose" in life. However it's so boring and
straight forward that people continue to seek the "real answer".

~~~
anc2020
I'd disagree that the meaning of life is to have kids. Instead it seems like
its just the best approximate solution to not to dying - pass on your DNA. To
me the meaning of life is just to accept that you are alive and enjoy it as
much as you can (which may involve trying to live as long as possible). Oh
lord I just looked back at the title of this article - that's not what I'm
suggesting :)

~~~
jamesbritt
"I'd disagree that the meaning of life is to have kids."

It might very well be "to get high" ;)

A value in re-asserting a broad, cross-cultural interest in getting high is
that it helps demystify it, helps people realize that the drive to get high it
is not because of week will or moral turpitude or twisted genes.

It, like the desire to have kids, is simple a common, basic, human desire.

------
huherto
I am in Chihuahua Mexico. Two years ago this used to be a very pleasant city
but now it has become really violent. The death toll is about 900 people just
in the state and just in this year. This very serious situation has made me
change my position on drugs. The gun fire is doing more damage than the drugs
themselves. If people decide to damage their lives by using drugs it is their
choice and it is their problem. But with this war in drugs a lot of people
that have nothing to do with them are suffering. I know that Mexico has no
choice, we have to fight this war, but I would prefer drugs to be un-penalized
(but not legalized) in the U.S. and step up on prevention campaigns.

------
mgrouchy
I'm not so sure about legalization(not that I don't think it should happen,
but I'm more of the mind is it worth the trouble)

Steve Yegge wrote a great Article/Essay on this [http://steve-
yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali...](http://steve-
yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized-marijuana.html) . Seems to
me that the hardest problem surrounding is actually implementing the
legalization(IE// all the minuscule changes in law that surround it, taxing,
etc)

(this is more in response to many of the comments on here, not the article)

------
leif
Kind of tired of the argument. The people that use will keep using whether
drugs are illegal or not, the people that would use if drugs were legal will
still use the same drugs when they're illegal, and the people that don't use
will still think that the people that do use affect their lives.

Yes, there are drug wars, there is gang violence, and there are people in jail
who by most accounts shouldn't, but most of these discussions don't go
anywhere, and no real action is going to effect a significant improvement with
respect to any of these situations any time soon.

~~~
mahmud
_Kind of tired of the argument._

Where in the article did it argue for or against drugs? It is more of a
sociolgical reading, discussing patterns of drug use among Americans across
generations, rather than an activist paper calling for legalization, or a
populist one calling for stricter control. Anthropologists have studied and
documented all manners of "unacceptable" human behaviour in primitive/savage
societies, including cannibalism, incest, and pedophilia among others, but
that doesn't mean they're passing judgment on their subject culture. I think
we can extend a similar academic courtesy to the greatest and most savage of
all societies :-)

~~~
liquidben
I'd say that the instances where the article discusses the negatives of drug
prohibition policy far outweigh the instances where the article discusses the
negatives effects of drug use. In fact, the anti-drug discussion seems to go
no further than an anecdote about cocaine usage, as opposed to many paragraphs
spent retelling the pro-drug opinions of a Huffington Post writer that once
worked for the Marijuana Policy Project.

I'm not strongly against the opinions put forth in this article, but I think
that we should be clear that it is pro-drug.

------
meterplech
definitely interesting, but so what? if we cancel DARE should we replace it
with something else? should all drugs be legal? what's the point?

~~~
mahmud
The article is not making any point, for or against drugs. It merely
chronicles and analyzes (or at least summarizes a book that does) American
drug consumption habits.

Nothing more, really.

