Why are drugs illegal?

Ok, now I know this sounds like a stoner's question. Something that's tossed up during a session.

But seriously, I want to know when and why were each drug criminalised and I guess, who decides where to draw the line?
There are so many justifications that users can claim to campaign the harmlessness of a drug. Eg - If they harm no-one but themselves, acquire the drug with their own resources etc..

I don't know.. any thoughts?

I think Erowid details the histories of some drugs. I think the case with a lot of chems is that they started out legal and after the addictive nature of the drug was uncovered (or some other undesirable side-effect) were deemed illegal.

Illegality was just and is still is a convenient way of supposedly dealing with those who just want to have fun in a manner that those who are on the straight and narrow cannot appreciate.

Drugs with no medicinal value are illigal because of the potential for their abuse. Drugs with any medicinal value that have potential for abuse are prescription only.

Tobacco and alcohol are only legal due to historical reasons since they have been very deeply intrenched in our society. Banning these would cause what the Prohibition caused in USA (look this up if you have to). Imagine how many more smack and meth addicts we would have if drugs were legal. Probably as many as we have tobacco smokers. The general health level of the society would plummet even further from where it is due to tobacco smokers and alcohol abusers.

maybe it has something to do with how much infrastructure is in place to produce the drugs and how much those companies are paying their governments.

or maybe it has to do with pain, ingesting a lot of alcohol can hurt and you will throw up, so thats sort of like a biological control, and it you smoke a whole packet of cigarettes, heh ehe, but with pills for example you could take 20 very easily if you had them, with little pain, until they started taking effect and by then your body would have a slim chance of getting rid of them, you would have to ride it out unfortunately

i can never understand those double standards, why is alcohol legal and everything is not, and alcohol is addictive as well.

we should have a drug free world, think of where all that money could go, into cancer research, space travel, poverty, but until governments stop taking handouts from tabacco companies and ban cigs and alcohol they will have to put up with people taking other drugs, so if you ask me its all their fault

High Society by Ben Elton is a great book about drug legalisation.

I can't remeber where I read it but i read somewhere that most drug laws were originally introduced in the US to control ethnic minorities. eg. opium for the chineese, cocaine for the blacks, and pot for the latins.

edit: found this http://www.drugpolicy.org/race/historyofpro/

Originally drugs were legal with a libertine view of how they should be used, plus people have know their addictive properties since the beggining of the medical profession at least and prolly before.
American christian missionaries saw the plight of opium addicts in china during the period of the opium wars and reported back to their congress who lobbied to have opium declared illegal (mainly to break british trade with china) Australia soon followed by outlawing opium, associated with chinese migrants but not laudnum which still contain opium but was used by the anglo-celtic community. Drug prohibition was founded on inherent racism which then evolved in a morality argument that saw drug users as depraved.
As far as legalisation goes nobody is really arguing for straight legalisation, more decriminalisation with civil penalties instead of criminal ones. As far as these policies causing massive increases in smack and meth addicts, well it's just the opposite they show particularly in the netherlands that decriminalising something such as pot leads to a drop in the number of heroin addicts, whereas harsh penalties as given in sweden have shown to increase the number of overdoses without effecting the number of people using or taking up heroin.

^^^ I think you need to work on your analytical abilities. Decriminalising pot may well drop the number of heroin addicts, and personally, I have no problem with pot being decriminalised as it has relativelly low potential for abuse and addiction when compared to other things. I'd, however, like to see Netherlands decriminalised heroin. I'd like to see if that has any effect on the number of addicts.

Increasing penalties is another issue. Everyone knows that this does not solve anything. I personally think the penalties in Australia are absolutelly barbaric - someone with over 2g of meth can spend up to 25 years in jail. I can however understand this since this someone would perhaps not have that 2g of meth if someone else, up or down the line, doesn't get murdered. Many other crimes are associated with the lifecycle of a batch of a drug and this is why the penalties are so servere.

Judeo-Christian moralism.
Simple as that.

meh my analytical abilities are fine, i don't even focus on the person just the arguments. Oops
In the netherlands they haven't decriminalised heroin as they have pot, ie legal provision, they simply don't enforce the law on heroin addicts (a lot like informal police practices here regarding pot) and as a result they are a visible deterent to young dutch who see them as losers and do not try heroin.
if you want to learn more about dutch drug policy go to
http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/boekhout.dutch.html
Maybe it might change some of your conservative views that are inconsistant with harm reduction ideology

^^^ The article was a good read, I've read most of it. A little biased in the defence of Dutch policy, but still good info.

From the article:

Users of hard drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, are also treated
with relative lenience by the police. Even street dealing is tolerated to some extent, provided it does not lead to public nuisance.

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I would like to see some stats on the amount of heroin addicts in Australia and Netherlands relative to populations.

I would also like to see some stats on meth addicts. Sure, as stated in the article, Heroin addicts aren't alienated and appear everywhere in the cities in shameful public display, thus turning youths away from smack, but meth junkies often don't look any different tha over friendly people.

I don't know those stats, but I'd be very curious to see them.

There is another issue to consider. Australian culture is very different from Dutch. The policy that works there may fail horribly here.

I'll give a little example. About two and a half years ago I visited Israel. This was about 3 months before a wave of suicide bombings began. I stayed just out of Jerusalem but spent a bit of time in Tel Aviv too. I have never seen a more peaceful country. During my two weeks there, I did not see ONE public disturbance or even a hint of it. Jews, Muslims and Christians living side by side happily. Now where is this heading?

Israel has a policy of solidiers never partying with their weapon even when on leave. One can see a person in civilian clothes with an M16 or a Galil (israeli sub machine gun), in almost every direction you look. We went out clubbing one night and a site of a hot blonde all dolled up for a restaurant or a club with an M16 slung across the shoulder is not uncommon. My 3rd cousin was showing us around who was also on leave from the army and he told us they have never had an incident involving a use of a firearm by a soldier outside combat inside Tel Aviv.

Can you imagine a couple of pissed Aussie soldiers on leave with live weapons handy getting into a bit of an arguement over who spilt the drink on who or over a bird? Can you imagine machine guns with live ammo on Aussie streets in the hands of ANY citizen? (In Israel military conscription is compulsory)

I live in Perth, and I can't imagine Northbridge (club center of Perth) to be full of live weopons and not having at least a shoot out a night.

This is a typical demonstration of peoples' mentality and how certain things may work in some countries and not work in others.

Good point, one highlighted in the article.
I agree i don't think we could merely transfer dutch policy over here and have it work as well as it does there. Just as we couldn't with Sweden's policy Brian Watters you moronic imbecile! However, we have had harm minimisation in this country underpinning our drug policy since 1985, since then the only new harm reduction measure we have managed to implement is the king's cross SIF which only has a 1 year contract with very strict criteria regarding it's future existence which it prolly cannot hope to achieve in only a year. We need to be doing more in terms of researching other HR programs or continue along the merry path we are now. The drugs 'problem' just keeps getting bigger each year due to the way we respond to it, prohibition only in 50 years has shown to be ineffective we need to shop round for something better!

tobacco and alcohol historical drugs?? bullshit
the mummies had traces of marijuana and cocaine in them, not to mantion oracles using the ibis for hallucinogenic properties

SteveElektro said:

Judeo-Christian moralism.
Simple as that.

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agreed and i hate it.
as if the fucking god people of any denomination should have their rights over mine. especially when the greatest crock-o-shit fraud in history is the existence of any "god."
i might be drunk... but this shit pisses me off even more when sober.

.dR spgeddi said:

agreed and i hate it.
as if the fucking god people of any denomination should have their rights over mine. especially when the greatest crock-o-shit fraud in history is the existence of any "god."
i might be drunk... but this shit pisses me off even more when sober.

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beautifully put.

I agree with Runner.

It's because laws have to deal with the majority of society, and even if you and I can enjoy safe and controlled recreational drug use, there are many who can't. In my opinion, these are the same people who make up the statistics we read about in the papers in regards to fatalities and crime.

^^ a looser is a looser is a looser. no i dont mean you. i mean the failed near dead junky would be a looser anyway.
just as i am the guy who enjoys a drink does not mean i will be the man in the alley with a paper bag covered bottle of white metho. and, just as i'm the man who enjoys using recreational drugs (other than cigs and alc) does not mean i will be the herion junky breaking into your home to find cash etc to pay for my next hit.
take away all the drugs... loosers will find a way.

krustybarnes said:

I agree with Runner.

It's because laws have to deal with the majority of society, and even if you and I can enjoy safe and controlled recreational drug use, there are many who can't. In my opinion, these are the same people who make up the statistics we read about in the papers in regards to fatalities and crime.

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A logical look at drug laws reveals so much hypocrisy that any attempt to explain them as being in the interest of some 'greater good' for society can be shot down in flames.
It's moralism, plain and simple.

Another thread on a similar topic from this forum... which I found using the search function.

From in that thread, I also posted:

PS: PLEASE search before you post new threads, especially on topics like this... topics such as "legalise all drugs" tend to get a fair bit of mileage here: i.e.,

Times are changing - Are they losing the drug war?

Legalise everything? Opinions.

Legalisation of drugs? Recent uk discussion

Why isn't MDMA patented or legalised?

Why are some drugs illegal and others not?

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BigTrancer

BT