Two very good questions, and at the heart of the debate.
Re: "I guess the question hangs on two things: will penalizing people for inappropriate use be enough to combat the deleterious social effects..."
>>> It doesn't seem to have been so far - considering both our world-leading incarceration rate and our world-leading drug use rate - which is why many people are leaning toward treating personal use as a medical and an educational problem... which seem to be the only approaches we haven't tried honestly....
>>> There are also 'deleterious social effects' from our current 'lock up the users and keep profits high for the dealers' policy, such as: loss of respect for Government and the law, corruption of government officials, diversion of law enforcement resources away from violent crimes, stigmatizing (with criminal records) non-violent substance users, and reducing their lifetime economic opportunities, massive economic costs (born by the taxpayers) entailed by supporting the hydra-like superstructure of federal and state anti-drug efforts, loss of property and privacy rights for the entire society, etc.
>>> Basically, tens of $billions in annual costs for over half a century now... with no statistically significant progress and no end to the expenditures in sight....
Re: "...and will the "normalization" of drugs just increase the blackmarket aimed at juveniles?"
>>> My guess is: that depends on if the policies are properly crafted ("the devil is in the details").
>>> It would be hard to actually *increase* availability for juveniles though - polling indicates that juveniles claim it is as easy, or easier, to purchase illegal drugs than it is to purchase tobacco.
>>> In several European countries which have installed 'harm reduction' policies which de-criminalize and control some drugs while increasing resources to sound education and medical treatment, the percentages of drug use in both the adult, and in the juvenile populations, is orders of magnitude less than the US percentages. So, I guess, if properly done it *can* work. |
