From: "Paul Hager" <hagerp@moose.cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: spelling this stuff out clearly
Organization: Computer Science, Indiana University
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 13:46:08 -0500

dolan@nrlmry.navy.mil (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:

>Alan,

>The problem of civil forfeiture laws, and similar abuses of the search
>and seizure clauses of the Constitution, are problems of electing the
>wrong politicians, ones who hold civil rights in contempt.

>Bad law in a good cause is rampant throughout the criminal justice
>system, and needs to be addressed as its own problem, perhaps by a
>constitutional referendum affirming that we want the constitution
>interpreted on its face when it comes to our rights, not on what is
>convenient to the criminal justice system.

>I hold probably less truck than you with RICO and a long list of other
>abuses of the legal process recently legislated. There are just some
>folks who can't stand "innocent until proven guilty", and insist on
>vague statutes like "consipracy" so that they can get on with the
>punishment business without ever having proved an injury done to the
>law or to any citizen, and we keep electing them to Congress and the
>White House, and appointing them to the police.

>Just don't let the real need to eliminate _this_ poison turn you to
>favoring introducing a worse one, legalizing wider substance abuse, in
>its stead.

NOTE: "... favoring introducing a worse one ..." -- see below.

>Let it send you to work with the League of Women Voters to help get us
>a better class of politicians, a step that might do some actual good.

>Kent, the man from xanth.
>"The Birthright of humankind is the stars!"
>--
>Ignore the header, and don't expect me to see a news reply.  We don't get news.
>Use email to: <dolan@nrlmry.navy.mil> or <dolan@192.138.87.240>

As I have indicated in two posts now -- one of which I emailed -- the
actual mortality figures for the most hyped of the illegal drugs, cocaine,
heroin, and cannabis, place them FAR below tobacco, and considerably below
alcohol.  Cannabis, if fact, is so low on the harm scale that it's not
even worth mentioning.  As I also noted it a post I did email, the
Feds protected themselves by including a qualifier in the Federal Narcotics
Act stating that "relative harm" was irrelevant -- in other words, don't
bother us with the facts.  It is reminiscent of the way Indiana almost
legislated Pi to be 3.  And protecting this idiocy is the "rational basis"
test, a doctrine that gives legislatures the benefit of the doubt in a wide
range of legal areas.

When you talk about the bad laws and talk of how they "poison" society
and then turn around and call drugs a worse poison, you create an
environment in which abuse of power is fostered.  If illegal drug use
is worse -- as you claim -- then the arguments of people like Daryl
Gates, Bill Bennet, and H. Ross Perot, that we should be willing to
give up some constitutional rights in order to fight the "drug
scourge" carry considerable weight.  Frankly, if you believe in this
drug scourge idea, why are you not willing to choose the lesser of
the evils and eliminate some protections for the duration of the war?

It is my view that even if illegal drugs were as bad as prohibitionists
claim, we should still abandon the drug war because of its effects on
our constitutional form of government.  I have said elsewhere that it
is impossible to fight a drug war against the citizens of the country
without doing colateral damage to the Bill of Rights.  Rights, once
lost, are very hard to get back.

A final thought on all this.

Kent has mentioned in several posts how his wife's experience as a
drug counselor has demonstrated how destructive illegal drug use is.
Others have responded that she is falling prey to selection error --
seeing only the tiny minority of people who have problems and failing
to see the majority who don't.  Apropos of this, I'd like to relate
an incident that happened a couple of years ago.  An acquaintance of
mine, an M.D., is involved in a community clinic in L.A.  He and I
got into a discussion about the drug war.  As we talked, he vociferously
maintained that cocaine was a killer and talked about the large number
of people that had been coming into the clinic recently with cocaine
problems.  Of course, I pointed out that use started dropping in the
late 70s after we liberalized the marijuana laws and wasn't it interesting
that the explosion he was observing was after the latest instantiation
of the drug war.  No matter, he was adamant: cocaine was bad and had
to stay illegal.  He was somewhat flexible on the idea of medicalization
but no amount of evidence, no citations, would shake him from his
belief that cocaine should stay illegal -- he, after all, had seen it
all with his own eyes.  I told him about selection error -- he would
have none of it.  I then asked him about legalizing marijuana.  He
said, of course, I've used pot myself, it's a benign drug and it's
stupid to keep it illegal.

It is not my desire to promote marital discord in the Dolan household
but I reiterate the point made by a number of people that it is a
common mistake for people to make a selection error.  The value of
science is that it objectifies and allows us to see what is actually
going on.  Very bright people, like my M.D. acquaintance, fall into
the trap and then have a very hard time extricating themselves and
the real danger is that they may become unwilling to allow themselves
to be swayed by scientific evidence that contradicts their experience.
The key is to apply the same kind of skepticism and intellectual
rigor that animates science in one's own life and experience.  In
this particular instance, it would allow Mr. Dolan to see if it is
possible to reconcile his wife's experience with that of Holland where
an end to use crime and wide availablity of marijuana has been
accompanied by a decline in hard drug use.  I'm sure there are
counselors in Holland who treat people who are disfunctional from,
say, cocaine abuse.  However, I'd bet that these counselors don't
jump to the conclusion that Kent's wife has because they also
know how effective the Dutch program is on a society-wide basis.
More objectivity, more science, ergo, different conclusion.
-- 
paul hager		hagerp@moose.cs.indiana.edu
"Run 'em down, Fred!  They don't belong here!  Run 'em down!"
-- Bobby Fischer to Fred Cramer, who was driving him through a
a crowd of spectators after Fischer adjourned game 1 in his
1972 match with Spassky.
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs