Equivalent to being shocked that San Francisco massage parlors are fronts for brothels. San Francisco local law enforcement is populated by the Louis's of Casablanca fame. Note that the investigation and prosecution of the faux marijuana clubs was done by federal authorities (just as the feds had to prosecute some San Francisco brothels for trafficking in prostitute slaves).

What? You mean San Francisco has no modern day Robert T. Ironside?

Sheer idiocy. We would have lots of prison space for terrorists, and we do a lot to reduce terrorist funding if we simply legalized narcotics of any sort.

But then there'd be a lot of cops, prosecutors, trial lawyers, politicians along with the mobsters who subsidize them who'd then have to go out and find real jobs.

But then why stop the terrorists?

Because a free and prosperous society is worth protecting. OJ, just because you do, it doesn't mean that a significant number of Americans believe that Cotton Mather was the last word in statecraft.

If people are dumb enough to use drugs, let them. When they die, it's no great loss, merely applied Darwinism. And since legal drugs would cost virtually nothing, really dangerous stuff like crack which causes anti-social behavior would be off the market entirely. Marijuana, opium and cocaine are far easier and cheaper to raise than tobacco. Since the drugs would cost nothing, the criminal's profit margin would cease to exist, and the criminals would no longer be able to fund the parade of horribles that afflict our society from terrorism to rap music.

Marijuana is harder to raise than tobacco. I farmed for almost 30 years. Tobacco, like corn just needs to be planted, then sprayed and/or cultivated with a tractor. Marijuana on the other hand has to be watched closely, so you can remove the male plants when they start to flower. If the males pollinate the females you'll not get plants that provide the "buzz". Marijuana and tobacco both have to be hung to dry. Errrrr, ahhhhh, not that I ever grew any marijuana.

bart, you accuse lots of people of simplisme, but do you have any idea how many kids don't take drugs because they are illegal? And why don't they matter? I've smoked and drank, but I never did any form of drugs because it was illegal (for everyone, not just some arbitrary age limit).

What you are suggesting is that we surrender our own standards to the market -- which is ridiculous, even for a libertarian.

If you think people who take drugs are stupid and deserve to die, but are not willing to maintain a standard that would keep the majority wary of using drugs, then you are not defending any form of society at all and are, in fact, advocating anarchy.

What do you think would happen to the U.S. economy if productivity were to drop by, say, 10% because everyone smoked pot all the time? What is that cost?

My neighborhood recently had 6 marijuana growops busted within 3 blocks of my middle class house. Since then, the houses have been renovated and many wonderful families have moved in. If those growops were legal, such families would be moving out.

But you don't care. Or do you?

Allen,

Tobacco massacres the soil as anyone who studied colonial American history is fully aware. Also, anyone who has ever lived in a college dorm knows how easy it is to raise marijuana, there's always someone down the hall or upstairs from you with a heatlamp and a bunch of plants in the closet.

Randall,

Stuff and nonsense. The sheer numbers of drug users in the US demonstrate that anyone who wants drugs can get them without significant difficulty.

I'm all in favor of 'keeping the majority wary of using drugs.' That kind of education, as is alcohol and tobacco education, is essential. People shouldn't die out of ignorance, but if they choose to assume the risk and end up dead, well, them's the breaks. I choose to eat too much often and too drink to much on occasion. I also choose not to be in the position of needing to drive on occasions when I know that there will be a chance I will be drinking too much. I choose not to smoke or use narcotics. These are all questions of personal liberty, and a desire to limit my risk to some areas while avoiding it in others. I do not require, and most people do not require, government intervention to understand the concept of acceptable risk.

What is the cost to American productivity of keeping 500,000 non-violent drug users in prison under lock and key, guarded, fed, etc? What is the cost to American productivity of this huge drug enforcement apparatus we have? What is the cost to the American economy of drug users paying a premium to engage in illegal action when legal pot or coke would cost a fraction of what legal tobacco costs? And as my own example indicates, not everyone would smoke pot all the time if it were legal.

Why not just zone the marijuana plants into specific areas? If people were operating illegal abbatoirs in your neighborhood, it would have a negative impact on property values. But I hope that wouldn't mean we should illegalize the production and sale of meats.

So, what is it? Personal liberty or the cost?

You seem blissfully and willfully ignorant of what drugs do to people and their families. Smoking pot may, for many, be nonviolent because it turns 16 year olds into mush heads, but it certainly doesn't make them productive. And it is pretty well proven that, for many, one drug leads to another.

But then you advocate drug growing zones and government education programs -- and, of course, what follows is government regulation and taxes and then lawsuits because "the government allowed my Susan to do heroin and she blew her brains out."

Where's the "freedom" in that?

No. If "the sheer numbers of drug users" tells us anything, it is that making drugs legal and cheap (yeah right) will only dramatically increase that number to the point that it would commensurately decrease productivity.

Selling a birthright for a mess of pottage has never been a good idea.

as long as alchohol is available, people seeking oblivion have a ready means to achieve it.

regarding crack and other pychosis inducing drugs, people wanting them should be able to check into a facility and get all they want for free, just put it out in a big barrel. don't let them leave until they voluntarily stop and show no signs of violent behavior. think of it as a crack motel, since of course most "patrons" will o.d.

Frenchy: "Shocked! Ah eim shocked! Shocked to see a gigantesque drog operaishon onder ze guise of mariouanois de medicines . . . Shocked!. . . . eh, ees dees côte occidentale cheeba any good, by ze way, Thai-steek Rick?"

Thai-steek Rick: Frenchy, of all the bud joints in all San Francisco, you had to walk into mine . . . Have a glass of MDMA, on the house.

Ply it again, Sam . . .

Actually both.

Booze does terrible things to families, tobacco too. Should they be illegal?

I am opposed to tobacco litigation, even though my doctor informs me that I could reasonably claim to have been severely impacted by my parents' second-hand smoke over the years, the anti-fat foods litigation, so my feelings about litigation over drugs are identical. People who puff that first cigarette, eat that first Big Mac or snort that first line assume the risk and from then on, it's their problem.

Since the cost of producing narcotics is minimal, the competition would be heavy, as there would be few if any barriers to entry. If you can go down to the Safeway to pick up your pack of joints for a couple of bucks, you don't need to break into someone's house or rob the 7-11.

Also, I don't see too many streetcorner shoot-outs and drive-bys between people who sell Winstons and people who sell Dunhills, or people who sell Budweiser and people who sell Coors. All of that social cost would be gone.

bart:

Obviously tobacco should be and will be before too long. Alcohol has beneficial health and social effects.

First, I just want to say that being a cop in San Fran must be a terrible job. All those laws that you're supposed to enforce, but not really and if so much as look at someone crosseyed it's "Police brutality!" on the front pages.

Second, while I don't agree with Bart that every drug everywhere should be perfectly legal to buy at the Kwik-E-Mart, I also don't agree with Orrin that marijuana and heroin are exactly the same and should be treated exactly the same in the courts. Isn't possible to have a mild decriminalization of marijuana without kicking the props out from under our society? How about this: You can grow your own up to a certain limit (say, five female plants) and you can't sell it to anybody. Sure, there would still be people who sell illegally to each other, but that number would drop drastically, because why do something illegal if you can just grow it legally youself? Make the "Legal Smoking Age" or whatever 21 (make it that for tobacco too). Bart won't like this because it involves government limitations on his God Given Right to watch kiddie porn and peddle hash to schoolchildren and Orrin won't like it because it means admitting that weed isn't the Devil's Dandilion, but what do the more level-headed denizens of this blog think?

gov:

Sure, if you're unprincipled.

Why does this make me unprincipled?

Isn't possible to have a mild decriminalization of marijuana without kicking the props out from under our society?

Governor,

Not to worry. OJ feels the same way about Mallomars or Little Debbie snack cakes as he does about marijuana. For him, Devil's Food Cake really is satanic.

"Also, anyone who has ever lived in a college dorm knows how easy it is to raise marijuana, there's always someone down the hall or upstairs from you with a heatlamp and a bunch of plants in the closet."

If you lived on the fourth floor, you just set them in your windows. And those plants usually produced dope which was even worse in quality than plain ol' Indiana ditch weed. They were for show, just like any other houseplant

bart:

Free societies aren't prosperous.

Japan, Switzerland, the US aren't prosperous? Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Scandinavia aren't prosperous at least in relative terms? Name me an unfree society that has comparable prosperity. Certainly, there is no theocratic or theocentric society which does.

America. The others are declining in direct proportion to their increasing freedom.

Compared with the great prosperity one sees in theocracies like Iran or Saudi Arabia, or in recent history like Ireland under DeValera, Spain under Franco or Portugal under Salazar, all of which were economic, cultural and intellectual backwaters that hemorrhaged population.

Raoul,

You didn't have any ag students in your dorm did you? Cook College of Rutgers University is one of the best ag schools in the nation, or at least it was before we started pi$$ing away money on Division I sports.

Yes Ireland excels thanks to its Catholicism and the English influence as Spain has thanks to Franco's resistance to the French model.

Ireland's temporary boom is almost entirely the result of the weakening of the power of the Church that has been ongoing since the 60s. The same phenomenon could be observed in Quebec in the 50s. Also, they benefit from the presence of American corporations which use it as a cheap operations center for Europe. Dublin is lots cheaper than Paris, London or Frankfurt.

Spain is so Catholic that 76% of them in a recent poll support same sex marriage. It was specifically the rejection of Catholic corporatist economics in the mid-50s under Manuel Fraga which created the basis for Spanish economic growth. Until that time, Spaniards fled by the millions for such garden spots as Mexico, Cuba and Argentina, none of which could be legitimately thought of as First World nations in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.

It's the only healthy economy in Europe and, not coincidentally, in the state most like America--British and religious.

the devil's dandelion, hehe

aka poor man's heaven (which is probably why oj is against it; too much competition in the here and now)

OJ,

It only seems healthy because they managed to miss the European economic expansions of the 20s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, due to excessive clerical influence. So they start at a much lower base. Just look at how many immigrants fled during those periods. My goodness, in Germany in the 80s, half the people parking your car at the hotels were Irish, the others were Turks.

Temporary effects of British colonial domination. It has a higher per capita GDP than France already and that'll widen.

The Irish themselves point out that it had to do with their own economic decisionmaking at the behest of the Church. It took the Fine Gael government of Garret FitzGerald to dispense with the clerical influence and to move the nation forward. Fianna Fail hasn't reversed that fundamental sea change and has in fact strengthened it.

If you aren't going to give Zimbabwe a free pass for its current ineptitude, instead blaming it on colonial domination, how can you then give Ireland a free pass when it had sixty years of freedom from colonialism yet was still screwing up. Mugabe has had only 25 years, perhaps he is merely 'growing in office?' (Sarcasm intended)

It is also an open question as to whether the end of the EU subsidies to much of the Irish economy will torpedo the prosperity or if the imminent collapse of the EU will eliminate much of the raison d'etre for dealing with Ireland. The internal market is quite small.

Rhodesia was fine, then they tried the French model.

give it up bart, you are going to have to settle for being right, and leave the convinving of oj to some higher power than facts.

heck, there's a whole industry devoted to explaining how being French retards nations' development:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/019363.html

my comments are regarding the transformation in the irish economy since the late 1980's. i have nothing to say about france.

Ah, well, Ireland almost overlaps America in the World Values Survey:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/003456.html

It does better than Europe precisely because of its religion and English influence.

All forms of discipline will have a beneficial effect on productivity, as long as they "jive" and are generally enforced. (Facism in Germany before the war, or Japanese Imperialism). It also takes a long time for that momentum to run out after personal freedom takes over and destroys the discipline.

If anyone here is arguing that freely available drugs will increase productivity, then we probably have a good example of what drugs do to the brain.

But, in addition to discipline, freedom is also possible through Christianity -- free enterprise, free trade, free lending -- all made possible through Calvinist ethic and respect for law. Above all, it is a freedom that can be enforced because it is not the law of man but the law of God.

Remove the "law" from San Francisco and it would last 20 minutes, tops, before burning itself to the ground.

the amount of german munitions produced during wwII was less than what was produced in WWI -- is that the kind of productivity you are talking about ? totalitarian forms of government are not more productive than democratic forms.

you want to see productivity ? tell a junkie he has to do xx amount of work before he can get his fix, and then get out of his way :) what those people will do to get their fix is incredible.

The University of Chicago has always been well known for not only its School of Agriculture, but its Engineering School and its Athletic Department.

Slave economies are well-known for their productivity.(Sarcasm intended)

And I remember the old Soviet line, 'They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.' Command economies are grotesquely inefficient. Who cares how many gaskets you produce if none of them fit?

Israel, Taiwan, Japan and Singapore do pretty well without Christianity.

cjm - deliberately missing my point doesn't make you profound, does it. Drugs have an effect and it is rather obvious.

bart - and where were they before Calvin? Copying the U.S. is not exactly a proof, is it? Where would Israel be without the U.S.? Taiwan? Japan?

You are grasping, boy. You are grasping.

bart:

Singapore is a British creation. Japan an American one, now dying. Taiwan and Israel US vassals.

Jews and Cantonese were mercantile societies for centuries before the advent of Christianity or its appearance in East Asia.

Singapore is a Confucian state, with a British patina. Its leadership is quite specific about its essential Chinese-ness. Harry Lee was especially withering about American insistence on human rights.

Puerto Rico and Panama are US vassals too, but they aren't particularly prosperous. There are benefits to being associated with the US, and there are things to be learned from the US but that does not make the US dispositive in those nations' prosperity. Even if American hegemony is a necessary condition of their prosperity, it is quite obviously not a sufficient one.

The notion that Japan is dying is as overstated as the notion that Japan was a threat to the US in the early 90s. Japan is Japan, a highly efficient, conformist England.

Not successful or decent ones.

Puerto Rico is the most successful Latin American state.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rq.html#Econ

Ever been to Chile or Costa Rica?

Chile's Anglophilic dictatorship worked wonders.

Raoul: LOL