undercoverjoe wrote:
Decriminalizing drugs would free hundreds of thousands from prison, saving taxpayers huge incarceration costs. Billions and over the years saving trillions when you all all those freed citizens now being a contributor to society and the economy.
Well, there you go again.
If you make any addictive drug legal, you will create a segment of the population who will not be able to support themselves.
Every kid I know / knew can get alcohol by having a 21 year old friend get ti for them. Do you think this wouldn't happen with legal heroine, cocaine etc. ? Please note, my concern is for addictive drugs.
Here is some history for you Joe, from the peroid you want to go back to.
From: Scientific American July 1991, 20-27
"Americans had recognized, however, the potential danger of continually using opium long before the availability of morphine and the hypodermic's popularity. The American Dispensatory of 1818 noted that the habitual use of opium could lead to "tremors, paralysis, stupidity and general emaciation." Balancing this danger, the text proclaimed the extraordinary value of opium fn a multitude of ailments ranging from cholera to asthma. (Considering the treatments then in vogue-blistering, vomiting and bleeding-we can understand why opium was as cherished by patients as by their physicians.)
Opium's rise and fall can be tracked through U.S. Import-consumption statistics compiled while importation of the drug and its derivative, morphine, was unrestricted and carried moderate tariffs. The per capita consumption of crude opium rose gradually during the 1800s, reaching a peak in the last decade of the century. It then declined, but after 1913 the data no longer reflect trends in drug use, because that year new federal laws severely restricted legal imports. In contrast, per capita consumption of smoking opium rose until a 1909 act outlawed its importation.
During the 1800s, increasing numbers of people fell under the influence of opiates-substances that demand ed regular consumption or the penalty of withdrawal, a painful but rarely life-threatening experience. Whatever the cause-over prescribing by physicians, over-the-counter medicines, self indulgence or "weak will"-opium addiction brought shame. As consumption increased, so did the frequency of addiction.
The story of cocaine use in America is somewhat shorter than that of opium, but it follows a similar plot. In 1884 purified cocaine became commercially available in the U.S. At first the wholesale cost was very high-S5 to $10 a gram-but it soon fell to 25 cents a gram and remained there until the price inflation of World War I. Problems with cocaine were evident almost from the beginning, but popular opinion and the voices of leading medical experts depicted cocaine as a remarkable, harmless stimulant.
Cocaine spread rapidly throughout the nation. In September 1886 a physician in Puyallup, Washington Territory, reported an adverse reaction to cocaine during an operation. Eventually reports of overdoses and idiosyncratic reactions shifted to accounts of the social and behavioral effects of long-term cocaine use. The ease with which experimenters became regular users and the Increasing instances of cocaine being linked with violence and paranoia gradually took hold in popular and medical thought.
In 1910 William Howard Taft, then president of the U.S., sent to Congress a report that cocaine posed the most serious drug problem America had ever faced. Four years later President Wood row Wilson signed into law the Harrison Act, which, in addition to its opiate provisions, permitted the sale of cocaine only through prescriptions. It also forbade any trace of cocaine in patent remedies, the most severe restriction on any habit-forming drug to that date. (Opiates, including heroin, could still be present in small amounts in nonprescription remedies, such as cough medicines.) "