From: wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr)
Subject: Re: Back to the drug debate
Organization: Northeastern Law, Class of '93
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 13:43:40 GMT


In article <1992Nov5.212141.25219@telesoft.com>, 
trevor@telesoft.com (Trevor Bourget @ignite) said:

> > Picture, in your mind, a drug sale.  One person hands money to
> > another person, and that person hands drugs to the first person.
> > End of story.  No victim, no crime, no "further ruin" to anyone.
> > And no reason for the state to get involved.  At least, not in a
> > free society.  [wdstarr]
>
> Picture in your mind an eight-year-old girl.  The nice man gives her
> candy.  The nice man takes her home.  The nice man molests her.  End
> of story.  No victim, no crime.  NOT!
>
> I'm sorry, but selling drugs to children IS a crime.  They don't
> have the judgement to know what's right and wrong, and it's too late
> when they figure it out.

Agreed.  I'm at a loss as to how to decide, for any particular person,
just where to draw the dividing line between childhood and adulthood,
but I certainly agree that the two _are_ different and that the laws
and freedoms that apply to them should be different.  I didn't mean to
advocate the legality of supplying drugs (other than Chocolate Frosted
Sugar Bombs :-) to children.

(The problem is, if I make it explicitly clear in every posting on the
topic that "I'm only talking about informed, consenting adults here,
folks," my articles tend to get really cluttered.  But if I don't, I
risk getting misunderstood.)

Sort of side note: Look at this on a pragmatic level... right now, the
penalties for selling drugs to adults are so draconian that whatever
additional punishment the state adds on for selling to children are,
from a cost-benefits-analysis point of view, almost irrelevant.  So
people sell to kids as well as adults on a general whoever's-got-the-
money-to-pay-for-it basis.  But think of how things might change if
sales to adults were legal, while sales to minors were punishable by,
say, ten years imprisonment, no parole (first offense), twenty years,
no parole (second offense), thirty years, no parole (third offense)
and forty years, no parole, and a gilt-edged certificate attesting to
your combined longevity and stupidity (fourth offense)...  especially
if, as a result of general legalization, the criminal justice system
now had the time and resources to _really_ go after _real_ criminals,
like sellers-to-minors.

> As to drug use, who is it that pays welfare support for the person
> who eventually loses their job: the taxpayer is the victim in this
> crime.

This is analogous to the argument that motorcyclists should be
required to wear helmets because "all of us have to share in the cost
of their medical bills when they wipe out and suffer head injuries."
The answer isn't laws that control how people behave and what risks
they voluntarily undertake; it's laws that don't force all of us to
pay for the results of their voluntarily-undertaken risks.  I support
the right of people (that is, informed, consenting adults) to use
recreational drugs, but I do not support their "right" to a publicly-
funded safety net to catch them when they fall.

-- William December Starr <wdstarr@athena.mit.edu>
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:58494 ca.politics:9379 ba.politics:6823