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Jock on drugs...

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Jock on drugs...

tagged with:

...but if some of you arrived here because of a scurrilous Labour leaflet trying to discredit me because of my opinion on drugs issues, I wanted to settle your minds, I hope, with a synopsis of my position...

I am indeed in principle in favour of legalizing the vast majority of recreational drugs - for adults. Once legalized, their supply should be regulated, controlled through a licensing system, and taxed - which can help fund more treatment instead of prison cells. It is not the state's job to prevent adults in particular choosing to put something into their own body, or indeed, like dangerous sports and so on, what they do with their own body, if others are not harmed by that. Such laws actually remove the ability of the individual to be morally responsible for what they themselves do.

That is not to say that I want to see an increase in drugs use. Just that I believe that it is the current approach, the "war on drugs", that creates and sustains an illegal underground market that encourages people into multiple addictions and puts people into the hands of criminal suppliers who could not care less about the health of their customers so long as the money rolls in. It was recently suggested that the international trade in illicit narcotics is now the world's third largest trading sector, after I think it was financial services and energy. When heroin was legal in this country we had 18 registered addicts in the country - despite it being used in common, over the counter, drugs such as cough syrups. Make it illegal and we have seen the level of addition soar exponentially.

This is a long considered and pragmatic position, that agrees with many professionals in the fields both of law enforcement and drug treatment. Basically, that the current system, based on criminal enforcement, puts far more people in danger from drugs - it makes it easier to peddle to children, because the peddlars are unseen and uncontrolled (and sometimes children in the schoolyard themselves). It creates the core of gang and gun culture. It makes it harder to seek help when, in doing so, you have to out yourself as a criminal.

From Colombia to Croxteth, Afghanistan to the Aylesbury Estate, more people die because of the criminal networks engaged in the drugs trade than from the drugs themselves. Our politicians know this and continue to pursue the obviously failed "war on drugs" strategy because it is a populist one that's sure to get some people huffing and puffing and voting for them - don't fall for it - they are nothing short of accessories to murder! We need a mature debate about these immoral laws (any law that actually colludes in and creates the environment that breeds killings in our communities is an immoral law).

Nonetheless, as the desperate Labour party scaremongers know, my theoretical position on drugs is not one that has much relevance in the role of a city councillor, which is why we Lib Dems have decided not to rise to this astonishing personal attack, marring as it does what has been a reasonably well conducted campaign so far, and concentrate on the positive things we wish to do within the remit of the city council. I do not want any more people, and predominantly younger people as many of the victims of the current drugs system are, dying because of a populist and immoral set of laws that create more problems than they fix.

Now, perhaps you will stick around a bit and read up on my positive ideas for the pressing problems on which Oxford City Council could have an influence, such as affordable housing, and partnership working to bring a bit of business sense and community ownership into the management and development of community owned assets - in the process, I hope, giving more opportunities to people to do something fruitful with their lives and leisure time and not get onto drugs in the first place!

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Comments

Submitted by James Schneider (not verified) on May 3, 2008 - 16:29.

I really couldn't agree more. People often want to tar us "legalize, tax, and regulate" types as being unpragmatic ideological libertarian drug pushers. In fact, the legalize, tax, and regulate position is inherently pragmatic and non-threatening. The status quo, which keeps thousands of people living outside the law, at risk from abuse and sex slavery, is threatening. The status quo gives us a position where the IMF estimates that 15-20% of global GDP is orginised crime. A phenomenal level. If drugs were brought above board it would be taken out of the hands of the gangsters and out into the open. This is the pragmatic position.

Submitted by Alan Page (not verified) on November 11, 2008 - 23:04.

Yes, yes. Blah blah blah. If prohibition doesn't work then campaign to legalise child pornography. After all if the state has the right to dictate what a person views on his computer, there are numerous other ways the state has the right to intervene in private behaviour. Most of the anti prohibitonist arguments also apply to criminal gangs involved with the creation and distribution of such filth as there is as clear a market demand for it as for narcotics. The internet will and has largely rendered monitoring and attempts to stop the trade as impractical and expensive as stopping drug traffickers. So why do anti-prohibitonists seek to avoid the arguments? The real reason that anti prohibitionists only focus on drugs is because history shows that it is a highly lucrative trade and that corporate interests should always overide human ones. The campaign to legalise is not an ethical one. It is a purely economic one. Lots of men in suits drooling over the prospect of having a capitve market guarenteeing a regular turnover. What more could a businessman want?

Submitted by Jock on November 12, 2008 - 00:38.

Oh dear, what have I done to deserve Alan Page on my blog!

Hi Alan!

I think you are wrong. There are clear differences from a libertarian/anarchist point of view. If we take as our starting point Herbert Spencer's maxim:

That every man may claim the fullest liberty to do as he wills compatible with the possession of like liberty by every other man.

One person's decision to indulge in narcotics, given a free market, would not be harming anyone else but himself. Child pornography clearly harms the unconsenting child. There's a gulf between them as a libertarian.

And we don't focus only on drugs, though it is a particularly egregious case because prohibition in thos case does a huge amount of harm. You can find a good book on a whole bunch of prohibitions here .

Submitted by Alan Page (not verified) on November 16, 2008 - 14:36.

Oh come on. Stop being so disingenuous. Sean Gabb has gone online saying that the viewing of Child Pornography should not be considered a crime. On the very grounds I have stated above. It is also fairly clear that the concept of "Consensual Paedophilia" and the eventual abolition of the age of consent is part of the libertarian agenda. You just need to google around a bit. (The Communist party also favour abolishing the age of consent on the same grounds. Something which makes me think that social class rather than political leaning colours such opinions.) I am not focussing only on drugs. The main question is whether Prohibition works or not. If it works for child pornography it works for drugs. The major differerence between Adam Smith, Richard Cobden and the original free market advocates were that they were focussing on essentials like bread, not entertainment product for the bored and unimaginative. So wheras i have a great deal of admiration for both of them, their contemporaries are simply trying to extend corporate influence and fill coffers rather than benefit the greater majority.

Submitted by Jock on November 16, 2008 - 15:40.

There is still a clear difference between child pornography and drugs. In a free market without coercion there is no harm involved in teh drugs trail until you get to the user. Yes, the user may be abusing him or herself, but that is his or her right - that is what we argue.

The production of child pornography, and Sean is quite clear about that, involves (usually) harm to the subject of the pornography and that should be dealt with. He is quite right to say that finding the product in someone's possession is part of a chain of evidence that could lead to the stamping out of the abuse at source, but that while it is a crime merely to possess, in the same way as with drugs, it wastes a huge amount of time and resource to police peoples' minds.

I completely disagree that "The Libertarian Agenda" (which is a myth of course - it is a very broad church only usually based on a couple of simple principles like self-ownership and non-aggression) is about extending "corporate influence" at all.

I suggest you have a look at the essay I linked to in this more recent post. It seems, from my experience of libertarian groups - forums, discussions, meetings and so on - that this reflects more of their collective opinion than the notion of us being corporate shills.

Submitted by Alan Page (not verified) on November 17, 2008 - 00:26.

Your comments are true but irrelevant. If prohibition worked for child pornography it would not be being produced and would not be available. The law prohibiting that, in libertarian terms, is wasted because it is bad. It is bad because it clearly doesn't work. Whether or not you or I agree about it being produced is not the point. The fact is whether or not a bad law should be abandoned for a more "enlightened" one. This is the argument used against narcotic prohibition so it is only fair to extend it. To suggest otherwise is to argue that the state has a right to intervene to protect (or, more realistically, to attempt to protect) the members of its community from external harm, by whatever means. To my mind prohibition of certain known to be harmful actvities is fair comment and essential. Sean Gabb seems to be of the opinion that funding an abusive market is ok, rather a bizarre stance for somebody so concerned with the inequalities and cruelties involved in its production. The difference between the classic free marketeers like Adam Smith and Richard Cobden and the current free marketeers you seem to support was made very clear yesterday on a messageboard on the "Sun" website where an anti prohibitionist commented that "one of the other benefits of a free market narcotics trade is that it will significantly reduce the chavvy underclass population so the rest of us can get on with our lives without having to worry about them." He was making exactly the same points as every supporter of the free market persuasion makes. Smith's position of "low prices and high wages" is totally lost, as is his anti monopolism. That is why Libertarians are, rightly, viewed as corporate apologists. I do find it rather ironic that for somebody to oppose childporn on one hand is perfectly aufait with the idea of children growing up with either addicts for parents or as addicts themselves. The idea that drugs only harm the user is a pernicious piece of corporate PR that people who have lived with the results know to be untrue. The ideas behind "consensual paedophilia" seem pretty close to Kinsey's reccomendations. Outlaw violence and coercion through use of the assault laws. Peter Tatchell has an online interview with a 12 year old boy who only likes sleeping with men and considers it wrong that his right to indulge that right should be blighted by the law, or the criminalisation of his innocent partner. Of course, I oppose any move in this direction. Just as I oppose any move in the direction you argue re. drugs. This is all a big attempt by corporate bodies to get back to the good old days of the 18th century where an elite generated lots of wealth, abused a lot of drink and drugs, and slept with child prosititutes. It is so utterly transparent an attempt to overturn everything the Socialists did in the last two decades of the 19th century that you have to be blind NOT to see it.

Submitted by Jock on November 17, 2008 - 00:37.

My braille keyboard is playing up, please bear wih me.

Submitted by Paul Lockett (not verified) on November 17, 2008 - 22:12.

Alan Page: "I do find it rather ironic that for somebody to oppose childporn on one hand is perfectly aufait with the idea of children growing up with either addicts for parents or as addicts themselves. The idea that drugs only harm the user is a pernicious piece of corporate PR that people who have lived with the results know to be untrue." It can be just as harmful for a child to grow up with alcoholic parents, but that's never resulted in the prohibition of alcohol in the UK. It's easy to find a way of using a good or service in a way that harms others and try to use that as an excuse for a complete ban. The problem is that it is so easy, that if you accepted it as a sufficient argument, you'd ban pretty much everything - cars, mobile phones, the internet, speaking,... A sensible legal system has to be built on the principle of people making their own lifestyle choices, with the law intervening at the point when those choices present harm to others, rather than pursuing the extreme precautionary principle.

Submitted by Jock on November 17, 2008 - 22:23.

It was also a straw man. I didn't say I was "aufait with the idea of children growing up with either addicts for parents or as addicts themselves". I was talking about legalizing not abandoning utterly personal responsibility or, even, compelling, people to take drugs....:)

However Alan has long hounded me on this issue. I just do not understand or accept his notion that libertarianism is about corporate power, or indeed that "corporate PR" has anything to say about currently illicit narcotics and drugs - indeed the protected part of the market, alcohol pushers, would I think lobby quite hard to preserve their near monopoly on mashing peoples' brains.

As ever, though, Paul, you put it far more eloquently than I!

Submitted by Alan Page (not verified) on November 18, 2008 - 02:19.

And so the only way to combat the "protected" economic interests of "Alcohol Pushers" is to reopen the Opium Trade. How can you possibly argue that this isn't pure market expansionism? That the interest is in purely generating profits for corporate interests rather than the greater good of society. That the way to deal with the health service being crowded up with liver damage is to hurl heroin and crack at people for the sake of profit? What is this? A competition to see who can can inflict the most damage onto a society's members? The solution is absurd, ludicrous and ethically indefensible. The only point at which I can find any point of contact with the absurdity and breathtaking stupidity of such a position is in the idea that people should be shown that there are more long term satisfying things they can do with their brains than fry them. As with your project involving bring online computer access to council estates, that is probably the only sensible and worthwhile part of your position. And yes, I include alcohol and consumerism in general in my equation as well. As for the point about having children bought up by addicts, perhaps you should check out a biography of Robert Southey. He was left carrying the financial can for Coleridge whilst the latter self centredly spent all his money on "recreational opium". His children were left fatherless for very long periods. If that is the kind of world you wish to inhabit, feel free. Don't expect the rest of us to follow you, we have more respect for the rights of children than Libertarians would appear to have.

Submitted by Alan Page (not verified) on November 18, 2008 - 02:02.

Indeed, but Libertarians also favoured the 24 hour liscencing laws, so where's the contradiction really lie? The only result of which has been to line the pockets of the alcohol industry at the expense of the nation's health. It also reversed the limitations imposed on the market in the 1890's by (ironically) the liberal party who sought to limit the supply through liscencing laws and bulk up the poorer communities who's working members were being paid in alcohol and pissing their earnings up against a wall. This is why Robert Owen did ban it in his ideal communities. I am rather amused to see the advocates of free market monopolist capitalism being so closely supported by supposed anarchists. It merely shows just how much we owe to Margaret Thatcher.

Submitted by Alan Page (not verified) on November 18, 2008 - 03:04.

Not sure whether these links will work but I would be interested to hear how far the Libertarian "right to self ownership" actually extends: http://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/interv_kate_m.htm http://www.libertarian.org.uk/lapubs/legan/legan038.pdf And the historical event they are trying to reverse: http://womfirst.alexanderstreet.com/teacher/aoc.htm

Submitted by Alan Page (not verified) on November 18, 2008 - 12:48.

I suppose the real crux of the issue is that I find the writings of Herbert Spencer to be ethically obscene in their outlook. A real profits before people advocate. As he opposed the kind of late 19th century reforms I am refferring to, it is little wonder that his disciples seek to abolish and overturn them. I also tend towards the idea of positive and negative freedoms, and a freedom that "would hopefully wipe out a large number of the chavvy underclass so the rest of us can get on with our lives without having to worry about them" is about as negative as it gets. I have no doubt, however, that corporate interests will triumph and that, with your support, we will eventually have free markets in both drugs and child pornography. It is not a utopia I particularly want to be a part of, but money talks and the mindless pursuit of profit must not be denied. Even by pseudo anarchists.