Talk:Arguments for and against drug prohibition/Archive 1

message: This entry has been stitched together from material from the former Drug legalization entry (which was merged into War on Drugs, now called Prohibition (drugs)), and from the former War on Drugs entry itself. The aim was to move the bulk of argumentative, opioniative material out of the Prohibition (drugs) entry. The first set of material is an extensive argument for the legalization of drugs. A corresponding section putting forth the argument for prohibition does not yet exist. This is why I've flagged the article as non-NPOV. See also the discussion that took place on Talk:Prohibition (drugs) before I split the material off. The second set of material is point-counterpoint stuff, so it should give a fairly balanced view, albeit one not well-suited for an encyclopedia but perhaps a necessary evil for such a complex and controversial issue.   Once a decent section on Aruguments for prohibition has been contributed, the article should be moved out of NPOV dispute and in to Wikipedia:List_of_controversial_issues. Rkundalini 02:55, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: seems like there's now a decent argument against section. Per your comments above, I'll remove NPOV tag and see what happens.Feco 23:29, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: If you feel it's a problem you are, of course, free to add in the "last word" for Illegalization. Ravenswood 02:04, July 20, 2005 (UTC)
Actually drugs do get the last word. Its up to us to alter our conscienceness or not.
You know what I think is funny?  How anything that doesn't fit Fox News's definition of "Fair and Balanced" is accused of being full of spin.  What I mean by this is that often times giving each side of an issue equal support is not actually fair.  It would be like a baseball umpire keeping the game tied on purpose even though one team is far outperforming the other.  Maybe proponents of drug legalization have the truth on their side on this one.  There shouldn't be an obligation to fill half the page with arguments from one side if they aren't based in reality. Toby Ziegler 04:20, March 15, 2006 (UTC)
This article is ludicrously unbalanced.  Four times as much space is given to arguments for legalization as against.  Furthermore, the arguments against legalization are all neutralized by a "counter-point", whereas the arguments against legalization, many of which are poorly written, get no counter-point.
That the arguments against legalization may actually be rather strong is not something that can be considered by the reading audience since any attempts to add counter-points to the legalization points are instantly deleted by Diza, or at least were today.
Thus, we are left with a supposedly neutral article which espouses a number of manifestly hilarious concepts.  For instance, the statement that drug addicts have no control over their actions and are involuntarily driven to commit criminal acts. Who here seriously believes human beings are forced by nature to take drugs, become addicts, and commit crimes? Anyone?
Although the For prohibition argument goes first it is rather short and desperately needs expansion.  The majority of the world's nations (everyone except the Netherlands) must have a reason more substantive than the few words currently in the wiki for their stance on drugs.  What are those reasons?  Personally I am against prohibition so I struggle to think of reasons for but there must some and they must be good.  Any For people have some good material?  --AndrewC 08:57, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: I added 
"Drug prohbition as a solution to perceived problems of society"
and
"This viewpoint can be seen as socialist because the people are protected from a perceived negativity that they would not be protected from in a free market capitalist economy. It should be noticed that while chemical addiction is a real and easily tangible thing mental addiction is not and that many other items not considered "drugs" are potentially addictive and thus their users could be exploited just as easily as someone who is addicted to a drug."
The second statement in the second addition borders on being biased, but I tried to present it in a NPOV.
My thoughts on this point:
"If a War on Drugs encourages drug use, does this mean the War on Terror encourages the use of terror? Did the War on Poverty encourage poverty? Did the War against Iraq encourage saddamy?"
I cant offer a counterpoint to it because I beleive it is a horrible point in the first place. "saddamy" is a horrible way to term the actions of Saddam Hussein because it is very close to sodomy. I changed it to 
"Did the war against Iraq encourage the formation of Dictatorships and undemocratic actions such as genocide?"
-- Eric Urban 7:05 PM 11/28/04(CST)
:The War on Drugs may not encourage drug use directly, but it makes selling drugs highly profitable, and thereby creates a motive for drug dealers to encourage use of drugs.  It also indirectly glorifies drugs by making them a forbidden fruit.  The best method of reducing the use of drugs like cocaine and heroin is the same one employed to reduce use of drugs like tobacco -- that is to ban promotion of the drug, discourage its use without prohibiting it completely, and prohibit use of those drugs in as many public places as possible.
:I don't see the relevance to terror or poverty.  Drug use (or more specifically, the desire to alter ones own consciousness) is a natural animal drive, like hunger, thirst and sex.  The same cannot be said about terrorism or poverty -- the bulk of the population do not desire to be impoverished, nor to terrorize others.  On the other hand, a small number of people cannot seem to help themselves in their desire to keep others under their thumb, and will certainly resort to using their power to keep others as powerless as possible through impoverishment, fear mongering, and of course through creation of superfluous laws and restrictions.  Of note, neither the War on Terror nor the War on Poverty has done all that much to combat their respective evils... so it's a moot point.  Poverty and Terrorism seem to be on the rise -- so maybe these wars do encourage what they fight against.  --Thoric 22:02, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Additions

message: I removed the following because, most importantly, it is not an argument, it is a series of rhetorical questions.  Presumably, they are meant to imply something, but encyclopedia articles do not imply, they state facts.  In addition, I can't possibly imagine the logic behind this being an argument for drug prohibition.  The War on Drugs is different from the War on Terror and the War on Poverty; one is a mostly legal and partially military solution to a problem revolving around the creation and distribution of certain plant materials and other chemicals, one is a mostly military and partly legal solution to a problem revolving around idealogy, and the last is a cultural and legal solution to an economic problem.  In addition, I don't think any of the three wars have had much success, so the implication is false (and would be irrelevant even if it were true).  Just because a couple phrases begin with the same two words doesn't mean the same ideas apply. Tuf-Kat 17:31, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)
:If a War on Drugs encourages drug use, does this mean the War on Terror encourages the use of terror? Did the War on Poverty encourage poverty? Did the war against Iraq encourage the formation of Dictatorships and undemocratic actions such as genocide?
: Seconded. When I was categorizing all the points, I had no idea what that one was even talking about, but I hate removing stuff, especially in an article like this. --Headcase 03:26, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Removal

message: I edited the amoral section, basically condensing the counterpoints to morality being subjective, and the previous author's point of the contradiction in advocating drug prohibition but not alcohol, tobacco, or others.
Going through this entire article, it seems COMPLETELY slanted towards the drug legalization side.  And many of the arguments are fallacious and branch into other topics (Both the Counterpoint For and Counterpoint Against seem to advocate legalization).  I think the arguments really need to be reorganized...
Particularly, I think all of the arguments that keey stating "There is nothing that shows prohibition has limited drug use." need to be eliminated.  It is fallacious in that there is nothing to compare prohibition to, because the United States has had a prohibition policy for a long time.  Thus, one can't really say that drug use has been on the rise, and automatically state that prohibition has failed to curb drug use, because there are a LOT of other factors involved to single out prohibition policy as the single one, and there is no reference point to tell where drug use levels would be if we DIDN't have prohibition.
But, I'm just a newbie here at wikipedia, and I don't want to do anything outside of my jurisdiction.  What do you guys think?
:I think the solution is really to attribute opinions to those who hold them.  If the DEA claims that drug use will make you rape your mother and NORML claims DEA agents routinely rape your mother, we should coument those arguments, even if they're silly.  This would apply, for example, to the bits about drug prohibition not decreasing drug use -- Wikipedia shouldn't endorse certain arguments as valid and others as invalid, but rather explain who believes what.  Similarly, if no one actually claims that imprisoning a large portion of the population is inherently detrimental to democracy, then that argument should be removed even if it is logical.  Basically, logic is not relevant, as Wikipedia documents illogical views and does not make up logical ones.  This would, of course, require rewriting the whole article, more or less, but that's what should be done. Tuf-Kat 23:05, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)
: It seems to me that either more Wikipedians advocate drug use, or the ones that do are more determined to prove their point, or people against prohibition are just more likely to read this article in the first place. I think it's all three. --Headcase 03:28, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: For the most part, Wikipedians are above average intelligence, and/or somewhat more opinionated than average -- they can think for themselves and realize that the anti-drug propaganda the American (and other) government has been pushing is not entirely true.  I would hope that most Wikipedians "do their homework", and actually research subjects before writing about them.  It doesn't take all that much research to realize the truth about drug prohibition... you just need to take a look at some comprehensive reports on the subject -- ones that weren't funded by the DEA or ONDCP.  --Thoric 04:16, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ("Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity, opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are incapable of even forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein)
a statement to the effect that drug prohibition(the subject is not americas specific 'war on drugs') does not effectivly reduce drug use is supported by regions of the planet that have legalized drugs and seen a decline in use. The assertion that there is no point of comparision is a very ethnocentric view. HighInBC 18:02, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amoral Section 

message: I noticed that many external links in the article had footnote numbers specified for them.  Since this isn't the Wikipedia standard, I removed them. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work</span> 16:58, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Non-standard link footnoting

message: I hate hate hate the boilerplate text I've placed at the top of the page. Could somebody re-word it to make it sound better? Also, how do we go about making it an official Wikipedia Boilerplate so it looks nice and can be used on other pages? Ravenswood 23:12, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
:I edited it, but I still don't like it. Ravenswood 07:21, July 26, 2005 (UTC)
::I think the best solution is to remove that text entirely. In fact, I decided to be bold and remove it. In general, messages on the article page should be directed at readers, not editors. I added the "controversial" template to this talk page so editors are aware they should read up before editing. Carbonite | Talk 16:50, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boilerplate Text 

message: I feel inclined to say something about the "Crime Rates" section of Arguments for Prohibition. I do not believe this to be a remotely valid argument, since it considers possession as a crime committed by users. It seems to be a logical fallacy without relavency. While crimes committed by actively addicted drug users would certainly be an interesting metric and potential argument, it is not rational to include simple possession as part of the metric. I'm inclined to ask that this section be modified to exclude possession as a crime that justifies prohibition, or the complete removal of this section. Please comment.
:Studied drug addicts in Baltimore committed crime (including the possession of the drug as a crime) on an average of 255 days per year, during which time they were "actively addicted" to heroin.
:If possesion of books were illegal, and a study of whether readers were criminals, and possesion of a book was counted, then the study would of course show that crime was tied to reading.
:The arguement seems to be that possesion of drugs causes crime, when in fact it seems that the prohibition of drugs <INS>then including this new crime in the study</INS> has skewed these crime figures.<INS> It is like saying meat eaters are more likely to possess meat, it is an arguement unrelated to the topic</INS>. This seems like double speak to me I am going to remove it as nobody has argued against it. HighInBC 17:38, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crime rates(removed section) 

message: "Opponents point out that property crime to support addictions to LEGAL drugs (such as alcohol) is hardly unknown and that if all drugs were legalised they would be more affordable and therfore there would be less necessity for addicts to resort to crime to fund their addiction"
Is hardly unknown? That implies that it is known, which seems to contradict what the sentance as a whole is attempting to convey.
70.32.224.116 06:55, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would have no objection to a major change in that area, it does seem a bit unencyclopedic. HighInBC 16:58, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  This part doesn't make much sense 

message: This section only discusses Latin America. Given the current world crisis, the role of drug trafficking in financing terrorism, Afghanistan having displaced Colombia as the world's major producer of illegal drugs, and Afghan heroin increasing its share of the US market, it would seem advisable to expand this section to include South and Central Asia and the Middle East. The same arguments would apply ; drugs being illegal drives the trade into the hands of terrorists and their close allies, and legalization would deprive terror groups of a major source of their income.
:Do you really believe that the US government has no hand in foreign drug markets?  Commodities produced for mere peanuts and traded for small fortunes are all that keeps the US enconomy alive.  Foreign drug imports are like government contracts ;)  --Thoric 00:50, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Effect on producer countries

message: ...
...
...hmm, I'm writing a research paper on this...
...
...great citing of sources...
...the teachers just love citing...
...hehe...
...216.11.222.21 13:33, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Writing a research paper

message: I believe the external links passege should be reoredered ,as to an researcher to have an esier time finding sources for this debate. --Procrastinating@talk2me 15:53, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: external links ,reorder by PRO AND CON

message: The Pro legalization segment was very badly written.
I have integraded my changes into the Pro section in a single edit:
*removing NPOV statemnt 
*removing illogical or contradictory claims(sometimes made in the the line..)
*rewording into a neutral point of view
*reordering and merging of similar claims into segments.
*I haven't removed anything.
*added the monopoly claim.
See For my published version User:Diza/My bucket
I hope I have'nt missed anything ,though I tryied to diffrintiated the claims there still could be some similiarties.
I may have some typo's so help me out. :)
--Procrastinating@talk2me 18:09, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  rewrite of the "Arguments against prohibitionn" segment 

message: It is ironic that increasing worker productivity is protrayed as an argument for drug prohibition, when opium smoking was specifically prohibited in North America due to the fact that Chinese immigrant workers were able to work longer hours in unfavorable conditions because smoking opium made work more enjoyable.  Also note that legal stimulants such as coffee and tea tend to make office workers more productive as well.
The only drug that has been proven to cause a strong and notable negative impact on productivity is alcohol, and it is certainly self-regulated without problem in the workplace.  Employees that come to work drunk are usually fired.  --Thoric 21:27, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, I think that either a note should be placed stating that this claim is unsubstantiated(like many prohibitionists and anti-prohibitionist claims alike). Or, a citation showing it is true should be added. I do not think it should be removed because it is a well known and well used argument. Whether it is right or wrong it should still be there, but it should be made clear whether there is evidence to support it or not. I am adding a  tag to it, if no citation is added in a day or so I will add a not stating that no evidence has been presented to this argument. HighInBC 15:51, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not see the logic of the claim, it is preferable that you at least try to make it more NPOv before totally removing it. for the sake of apperance if not anything else. I have put it back . Youy do have to recall though that this is NOT meant ot be a NPOV clear artcle, just look at it's title...--Procrastinating@talk2me 11:42, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All articles (in the main namespace...) on Wikipedia are supposed to conform to NPOV. This article is supposed to present the logical arguments that have been made in regards to a specific social policy, from either side. It doesn't mean that uncited opinions or allowed, or that you can make things up for any side (and uncited claims and made up stuff are rather indistinguishable). --Eyrian 13:11, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Incidentally, where was it debunked? --Eyrian 19:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Worker productivity 

message: I am a little bothered by these edits:  
They are all done by differnt IP's by are all the same POV link adding. I beleive it is one person, if you are please explain on this talk page why you think this link is appropriate? One should not argue a point here simply by being persistent, please explain your opinions. HighInBC 17:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a fucked up spammer. He is most invited to join this discussion or be reverted by the mnay authors of this artcile untill he get tired of it. don't get too excited about it, it's part of the game :) Procrastinating@talk2me 22:27, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV links : Facism

message: This article is incomplete without a link to Major Studies of Drugs and Drug Policy at http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/studies.htm
It is not like these arguments are exactly new. There have been numerous major government commissions that have studied the subject over the last 100 years. That link contains the full text of most of them. Anyone who reads it will find that they all reached remarkably similar conclusions. 
Until you have read those, you simply don't know the issue. For those who are new to the subject, the one book to read if you only read one is the Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs at http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm That will give you a good summary of what you would learn if you read all the other major studies.
Wolfman97 15:49, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks I am sure someone will look into those. HighInBC 16:01, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Naturally there are More sources out there. the point is to make the information concise enough for a quciker read than a full length book. if there's something NEW to add, please do. --Procrastinating@talk2me 23:57, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Necessary References

message: This argument is a logical fallacy and should be removed. 68.40.167.60 12:57, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, lots of things we consume are toxic to some degree, I think less toxic is a valid arguement against the prohibition of consuming an item. That logical fallacy refers more to moral problems, not health problems. That is just my personal reading of it though. HighInBC 13:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Just because illegal drugs cause less health problems than legal drugs doesn't mean that the health problems they do cause are insignificant. 68.40.167.60 15:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No of course not insignificant, but not so signification as to make the arguement invalid. I am interested in more editors opinions on the matter, as it does not seem clear cut. HighInBC 15:38, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Illegal drugs are far less toxic than legal drugs 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Arguments for and against drug prohibition. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20080610200719/http://www.independent.co.uk:80/news/uk/crime/antonio-maria-costa-cannabis-call-it-anything-but-soft-441735.html to http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/antonio-maria-costa-cannabis-call-it-anything-but-soft-441735.html
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Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 18:14, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified