posted
1. Age restriction will make SOME individuals below that age try harder to get a fix. LESS individuals below that age will get a fix. Age restriction is not a principle we want to tamper with.
2. I have been to Kentucky.
3. My comparisons are neither disingenuous nor dishonest, not that it's particularly relevant because I neither advocate legalizing hard drugs nor think it is likely at all that we will do so.
4. Legal heroin would make it so that more people would become heroin addicts. Overall the benefits for that 'sacrifice' would be the argument you would make in favor of legalization, as in 'no more unregulated product killing people,' 'no more cartel growth in messko,' etc
5. Let's use a little harsh adult language here to underscore a point: were the united states to legalize all drugs, the cartels in mexico would be, how you say, proper ****ed. You might as well put a cup over a flame. The collapse would be gratifyingly instantaneous compared to other types of reform. They cannot simply 'move on' to similarly productive lines because nothing, absolutely nothing, exists that provides them with the profit motive and the enterprise environment that drugs do. You can't magically substitute it with another illicit trade; these aren't nether-gaps filled only through desire and willpower.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: 1. Age restriction will make SOME individuals below that age try harder to get a fix. LESS individuals below that age will get a fix. Age restriction is not a principle we want to tamper with.
2. I have been to Kentucky.
3. My comparisons are neither disingenuous nor dishonest, not that it's particularly relevant because I neither advocate legalizing hard drugs nor think it is likely at all that we will do so.
4. Legal heroin would make it so that more people would become heroin addicts. Overall the benefits for that 'sacrifice' would be the argument you would make in favor of legalization, as in 'no more unregulated product killing people,' 'no more cartel growth in messko,' etc
5. Let's use a little harsh adult language here to underscore a point: were the united states to legalize all drugs, the cartels in mexico would be, how you say, proper ****ed. You might as well put a cup over a flame. The collapse would be gratifyingly instantaneous compared to other types of reform. They cannot simply 'move on' to similarly productive lines because nothing, absolutely nothing, exists that provides them with the profit motive and the enterprise environment that drugs do. You can't magically substitute it with another illicit trade; these aren't nether-gaps filled only through desire and willpower.
On point 5. This assumes that the cartels gain *all* of their money from drug trafficking. One very popular racket in some countries is kidnapping. You grab someone off the street, demand that their family pay, say 500 dollars for them, let the person go if they do, if not they just drop the kidnapped person off a cliff. Then there's the slave trade. And others. Just because the cartels won't be able to get quite as much profit out of something else as they could selling drugs doesn't mean they won't *try*. And the alternative could be a hell of a lot worse than what we're dealing with now.
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quote:On point 5. This assumes that the cartels gain *all* of their money from drug trafficking.
It absolutely does not. It relies on the assumption that there are no similarly productive lines of criminal interest, which is true. The cartels as they are now cannot exist except as a creation dependent upon the massive drug trafficking industry generated by U.S. drug policy and the resultant environment of demand.
This is a far cry from saying that legalizing drugs will end all cartel-related crime overnight because the only thing criminals in mexico can possibly profit from is drug shipments.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I've written and deleted without posting four responses to Lisa and the Rabbit's arguments. I think the gay marriage discussions have made me gun shy about posting in contentious threads.
I don't believe that the savings of legalizing any currently illegal drugs will be worth the social and health costs that legalization will incur. My opinion is largely based off the costs I perceive from tobacco, alcohol, and prescription opiates, as well as the inability to regulate them effectively.
I think the trade-off would be between the criminal violence and interdiction costs we see associated with the drug trade currently and the domestic abuse, vehicular deaths, ill-health effects (destroying families, physical disease, psychological effects etc.), and increased treatment costs that I associate with the increased use and abuse of drugs.
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quote:I think the trade-off would be between the criminal violence and interdiction costs we see associated with the drug trade currently and the domestic abuse, vehicular deaths, ill-health effects (destroying families, physical disease, psychological effects etc.), and increased treatment costs that I associate with the increased use and abuse of drugs.
I guess my most serious problem with this is that I don't see that current laws significantly reduce the amount of drug abuse. Those people who want to use or abuse illicit drugs, seem to be able to obtain with relative ease under the current laws. Furthermore, the problems you list are most commonly associated with alcohol abuse and not particularly the use of illegal drugs. In the US, alcohol abuse is most common among teens and those in their early twenties for whom this drug is illegal. The problem with alcohol abuse among teens and tweens in the US is actually worse than in countries where the legal drinking age is lower.
If you look to places like the Netherlands that have far more liberal drug laws the the US, you don't see major problems with domestic abuse, vehicular deaths etc.
I just don't see any evidence to suggest that drug abuse and the harms that go along with it will increase dramatically if the drug trade is made legal.
And even if it does, I'm not sure you grasp the seriousness of the crime associated with the drug trade. We aren't talking about something that influences only a few people in inner cities, its devastating entire societies.
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posted
I attribute a lot of the cross-national differences to differences in culture, rather than differences in policy.
I understand the devastation, at least in the abstract. I also spent a lot of time in the Netherlands, and understand, to some degree, the cultural and social costs associated with legalization. I do think we would see significant increases in usage of any drug we legalized, even if it were strictly regulated, if for no other reason than that the cost would drop dramatically, making it more feasible for people to engage in the behavior.
I might feel differently if I lived in Trinidad, or Ciudad Juarez. All I can speak to is my own experiences and beliefs, though, and those lead me to believe legalization is not worth the costs.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I'm strongly opposed to the use of most of these drugs, but the harms the come from the illegal drug trade are a hundred times worse than any harms that come from the use of these drugs. And the harder the US tries to enforce the drug laws, the worse those harms get. We've spent billions of dollars fighting the war on drugs and yet anyone who wants them can still get them. We'd be far better off in most every respect if we simply legalized the drug trade and regulated it like we do with alcohol. We could then take a small fraction of what we've spent on prisons and enforcement, and put it into truthful education and rehabilitation programs.
quote:I guess my most serious problem with this is that I don't see that current laws significantly reduce the amount of drug abuse.
We'll I suppose this is hard to measure, and again we haven't defined significance, but wouldn't legalization increase availability and therefore people (again not sure how large this group of people would be) who just don't know any drug dealers and don't think of themselves as criminal might be given enough of a push to experiment with drugs?
I mean as far as marijuana is concerned I am in complete agreement that at the very least decriminalizing it has a net positive effect on society as opposed to our current policy. I know for many people the fact drugs like cocaine and heroine are illegal does not deter them, but I think it's reasonable to believe that there are still people who believe the risks involved make "just trying it once" not worth it.
I do however believe that we could be doing a lot to treat drug addiction that we are not currently doing. Firstly I think there should be clinics where sanitary hypodermic needles are provided free of charge, needles are relatively speaking not very expensive, the diseases that could be prevented are. Also I wish we had heroin clinics where people could voluntarily go to lower their dependence by getting controlled doses, without any fear of legal repercussions.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that we are wasting so much money on an unobtainable objective, but I've also see the ravages of drug addiction first hand with many lives other than the addict affected, I'd just hate to screw open the cap on something like this and find out a larger monster is being set loose.
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quote:I'm sympathetic to the idea that we are wasting so much money on an unobtainable objective, but I've also see the ravages of drug addiction first hand with many lives other than the addict affected, I'd just hate to screw open the cap on something like this and find out a larger monster is being set loose.
I don't care so much about the money wasted, I care about the communities being destroyed by drug related crime. I've also seen the ravages of drug addiction first hand, I have no desire to see that problem increase. But right now I'm living in a country ravaged by the international drug trade. It's definitely changed my perspective. The damages caused by the illegal trade of drugs are indeed a hundred times worse than the damages from the drugs them self. You'd have to persuade me that drug addiction was going to be a hundred times worse if drugs were legal for me to even consider it a break even.
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posted
Just to answer one of the questions posed by Boris: if you don't ration access to the drugs, the black market will disappear.* Just like we don't ration access to alcohol or tobacco. (But do for pseudoephedrine .) You could either kill yourself or waste your life with alcohol, just like you can with unlimited opiates. It'd be your choice.
*You'd need to avoid taxing it out the wazoo. I believe that cigarettes have a black market because taxes have driven the cost up by an order of magnitude. Alcohol, not so much. But opiates and weed are actually not expensive things, so you probably COULD tax it at something like 10 times market value and still keep it cheap enough that addicts can get as much as they want without needing to resort to expensive black market alternatives.
I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the arguments against legalization if our drug prohibition wasn't such an abject failure.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:I'm sympathetic to the idea that we are wasting so much money on an unobtainable objective, but I've also see the ravages of drug addiction first hand with many lives other than the addict affected, I'd just hate to screw open the cap on something like this and find out a larger monster is being set loose.
I don't care so much about the money wasted, I care about the communities being destroyed by drug related crime. I've also seen the ravages of drug addiction first hand, I have no desire to see that problem increase. But right now I'm living in a country ravaged by the international drug trade. It's definitely changed my perspective. The damages caused by the illegal trade of drugs are indeed a hundred times worse than the damages from the drugs them self. You'd have to persuade me that drug addiction was going to be a hundred times worse if drugs were legal for me to even consider it a break even.
Not to prematurely jump on to the slippery slope but where do we stop? What if drugs deteriorate into a lasting yet less significant evil in society, and something else comes up? People have posited weapons, human trafficking, kidnapping. It feels like we're treating a symptom rather than attacking the cause. Who knows, maybe there is no cure and society will always have these problems and all we can do is race from disease to disease. You're right that I haven't seen what goes on in places like Trinidad, but I've also seen what goes on in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia. I'm certain there are people using drugs, but it's not nearly as large of a problem as it is out here because the penalty is so severe.
Having said that I'd actually be interested in drug studies dealing with those two countries and I think I'm going to try to find some after I get done with work today.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
It'd be great if we could stop people from using harmful drugs.
But we can't. (Short of a significant loss of civil liberties.)
It'd be nice if the ravages of the illegal drug trade were enough to make illegal drug users stop using out of human decency.
But they aren't.
It'd be great if the people charged with enforcing drug policies were immune to corruption and manipulation.
But they aren't.
Wouldn't it be nice if throwing a lot of people in jail (and preventing them from raising their families, or contributing to the economy) served as enough of a deterrent to make it so we don't have to do the same things to their children?
It doesn't.
It'd even be nice if we could just confine the problem to the U.S., and say "well at least there's some marginal number of people who don't become drug addicts because of prohibition, and I think that outweighs the harms of the illegal trade in the U.S.."
But that rather dismisses the human suffering outside our borders directly tied to the demand for the illegal trade within.
I'd be thrilled to start with marijuana. It's probably the biggest opportunity: the most popular drug that isn't particularly dangerous by itself. (The one that serves to discredit anti-drug rhetoric, and is a "gateway" drug to an extent that derives from that fact.)
But here's the thing: nobody here needs anybody to tell them that being a heroin junkie is a bad idea.
That some people become junkies anyway will not change because it is legal. It will still look like an equally bad idea when it is legal!
What might improve, though, is our ability to identify and treat addicts. Hand out treatment program pamphlets at the pharmacy where you buy the stuff. Employers may choose to subsidize treatment - as they do with alcohol abuse - instead of simply firing addicts.
I don't see a great danger that the self interest that prevents most of us from doing hard drugs will be undermined by legalization. (It already prevents most of us from lying to obtain legal and - importantly - equally addictive painkillers.)
And we'll quit propping up the illegal drug trade, and quit incarcerating tens of thousands of people who otherwise can function in society.
Addiction might someday be solvable by medicine, but we don't have to wait for that to start undoing the harms that stem from forcing what seems like a nearly inevitable human behavior into a criminal underground.
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posted
If drug use is legal, would it still be legal for employers to fire for drug use and do random drug testing?
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quote:Not to prematurely jump on to the slippery slope but where do we stop? What if drugs deteriorate into a lasting yet less significant evil in society, and something else comes up?
There isn't anything that could easily replace the international drug trade. First, there is a demand for recreational drugs in wealthier countries. That demand has remained very constant no matter what we do to punish those who use. Second, there are people in poor countries who are willing to fill that demand because a) they are enticed by the money users are willing to pay and b) they don't see growing coca or opium of cannabis as something inherently wrong.
Nothing else is going to fit that niche nearly so well. Why? Because there isn't anything else that is illegal in the US that so many people want any way. I just don't see any large fraction of Americans getting involved in human trafficking, ever. Kidnapping is relatively easy to stop if you have a functional justice system. Its just too easy to catch kidnappers unless they kill everyone they kidnap. And once people realize the kidnapped persons will be killed whether a ransom is paid or not, ransoms won't get paid and the profit disappears. Guns are already legal in the US.
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: If drug use is legal, would it still be legal for employers to fire for drug use and do random drug testing?
A growing number of companies won't hire smokers. Since they are getting away with that, I imagine companies would be able to set policies against the use of other drugs, and use testing to enforce the policy.
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scholarette: presumably, since it isn't something that's forbidden to discriminate against. I suspect we'd see somewhat less drug testing as a condition of initial employment, but little drop in companies requiring employees be drug free. I think most of them are doing it because they find keeping employee drug use low improves performance, not because drugs are illegal.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Not to prematurely jump on to the slippery slope but where do we stop?
At sensible policy that doesn't try to spend billions to accomplish nothing but make everything worse.
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posted
Just as one could get fired for showing up to work drunk, I imagine one could get fired for showing up to work stoned.
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posted
The reason drugs are illegal is because we associate them with certain behaviors that are damaging. The first step toward legalizing drugs should be to separate those behaviors from the crime of simple possession, or simple drug use, so that those behaviors can be targeted by the law. It's neither driving nor drinking alone that we find objectionable, but the two together are a crime. Likewise for any other drug, if you are in a position where drugs affect safety, it would be a crime to use the drug, whether it be driving, operating a nuclear power plant, or performing surgery.
One of the most damaging behaviors in this regard is drug pushing, which is damaging to the victim. The biggest stumbling block I see to legalizing drugs is that as it now stands, it would be legal to advertise them. Even the prohibition on cigarette and alcohol advertising is considered "voluntary" so as not to violate the 1st amendment, and specific exceptions are made, in the form of magazine and point of sale advertisements. I myself could not see legalizing drugs as an option unless there was a constitutional exception to the advertising of such poison.
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posted
I don't think more drugs (with the possible exception of the ludicrously wide-spread marijuana) should be legalized, but I think that there is obviously a problem with the way drug offenses are prosecuted.
Legalizing something says, "it's not harmful enough for us to care about," yet we would still legislate the wearing of seat belts in cars and even having car insurance?
Most drugs are legislated against because we'd like a good excuse to destroy the chains of supply, when we find them, as we should. Obviously, this isn't working well because people get horribly rich off other people killing themselves--legally or illegally (cigarettes or heroin).
There was a time when many more drugs (although different from the ones we use today) were freely available. It didn't stop usage and people weren't okay with it. They legislated against it. The idea that cigarettes and alcohol were grandfathered in whereas other drugs like cocaine were not is not all that true: cigarettes and alcohol are only regulated (or banned for a much shorter period), rather than banned, because they kill people much more slowly than stronger drugs and their effects were far more subtle.
If prosecution is the problem, then it's prosecution that needs to change, not the illegality of poisons.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I find it unlikely they would legalize all types of drugs. The drug dealers would look to other products to import. Opium could become the new cool underground street drug or LSD would flood the market. I can't see PCP or Crystal Meth ever becoming legal. They bring what is most profitable for them. The chemists would be busy at work to make the latest and greatest product that isn't legal. The cartels that are already in the US would probably come to the surface in ways we've never forseen. Phoenix AZ, the #2 place in the world for kidnappings, many ransom related. We might realize rather quickly that we have an organized crime ring in every major city of this country that would put Capone to shame. The MS13 thugs would look to other sources of income. Home invasions perhaps. If they outlaw weapons there's a new product. Legalization of drugs will not put a criminal out of the business of being a criminal. He won't decide to get a respecitible job. Nonetheless, I do think they should decriminalize some drugs, particularly Marijuana, mushrooms or peyote. Difficult to understand outlawing an unprocessed plant.
Yes I know. This is a half-joke. But I've seen a lot of extremely helpful stuff get banned in the name of being "eco-friendly" lately. Usually these bans are pushed through by some of the same people who want to legalize extremely harmful drugs. So would someone like to tell me why it's okay for the deadbeat drug-addict dad to get his fix legally when I have to pay 5 times as much for an inhaler that holds 1/4 the amount of medicine and more importantly *doesn't work* half the time?
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Sorry, I only skimmed though this thread, but...
You do realize that there is no such thing as legalization of drugs.
Right now there is one law that says, in essence, you can't have it, you can't do it.
However, if say POT is "legalized", there will be thousands of laws regulating and taxing it. Law controlling who can grow it and where, import/export laws, tax laws a all levels of government, purity laws, potency laws, consistency laws, sales licensing and taxation, distribution licensing, several levels of inspection, intoxication levels, etc....
This means a huge bureaucracy that needs to continually be fed money. That needs to be continually expanded.
And it is not just criminal laws, it is civil law, liability, and resulting law suits. It is health care costs. It is education and treatment.
But also notice, that in the beginning, we had relatively benign Mexican Pot. They cracked down on Mexico, and then we had expensive and potent Columbian pot. Then continued law enforcement drove that out of business and it was replaced with HYPER-expensive hybrid pot.
By so severely cracking down on Pot, they drove the price so high, that it became cheaper to get high on Crack and cookbook Meth. By making pot so expensive, it made it easier and cheaper for entry level people to start with massively destructive drugs...like Crack and Meth.
Law enforcement is not deterring drugs, it is simply raising the price, and pushing people toward more destructive alternatives.
If pot became completely decriminalized, Crack and Meth would be virtually gone from the scene in a year. What is the point of messing with something so dangerous to make, and so dangerous to use, when you could grow your own pot in the basement?
Oppressive government drug enforcement against Pot has actually created the gang culture that thrives around Crack and Meth.
At least that's my opinion .
Do I think Pot is harmless, absolutely not. I know from experience that it is very harmful. But it is far less harmful in many ways than alcohol. It is also safer to use than alcohol. I can't think of a single genuine case of someone overdosing on Pot. But people die of acute alcohol poisoning every year.
posted
How about moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II?
quote: All President Obama needs to do is to declare that marijuana will move from being a Schedule I "dangerous controlled substance" to being listed as Schedule II.
This gets a bit arcane, but bear with me here. Federal drug laws differentiate between different drugs for different reasons. The list of Schedules runs from I to V (with I being the most dangerous, and V being the least). Substances change designations over time -- like what has happened to cold and allergy medicines (which contain the precursor for methamphetamine, and were more tightly controlled as a result). But the main difference between Schedule I and Schedule II is that Schedule I drugs have no medical use, while Schedule II drugs do.
Here is a partial list of Schedule II drugs (the DEA has the full list of all schedules for those interested): cocaine, opium, amphetamine (Dexedrine), Demerol, methamphetamine, Nembutal, PCP, and secobarbitol (Seconal). You read that right -- cocaine, crystal meth, opium, and PCP are considered "medically useful" in some situations, and marijuana is not.
posted
If we start with legalizing marijuana where will it end? The war on drugs won't be over. We still will have cocaine and heroin. And while it is plausible that congress could vote to legalize marijuana, no sane congressman/woman will vote to legalize cocaine or heroin. It would be committing political suicide. Because most people will not vote for someone who wants to legalize drugs that are actually dangerous. Or even drugs that aren't dangerous. There's a reason that most people have never heard of the marijuana party.
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quote:If we start with legalizing marijuana where will it end?
That's the wrong way to think about it. Think, instead: should this be illegal? If your answer is "no," then let's not keep it illegal.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:If we start with legalizing marijuana where will it end?
There are some straight forward questions that should be applied to every law besides whether the behavior proscribed by the law is undesirable. These are 1. Is law an effective deterrent and 2. Do the benefits of the law outweigh the cost? And by cost, I don't mean simply financial costs, I mean human and social costs as well. I think if you assess the laws that criminalize the possession and sale of marijuana, the answer to both those questions is very clearly no. The answer is probably the same for our laws banning most recreational drugs. The laws have not been effective at reducing availability or abuse of the drugs and the laws and their enforcement cause more harm than the drugs they seek to prohibit. They are bad laws and they are have devastating effects beyond the US borders.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:If we start with legalizing marijuana where will it end?
That's the wrong way to think about it. Think, instead: should this be illegal? If your answer is "no," then let's not keep it illegal.
I don't think it's reasonable to ask people not to pay attention to potential consequences. Otherwise, I'd expect to see more reasonable and civil rights loving folk fighting against the seat belt laws.
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posted
There's a pretty big difference between looking at the direct consequences of a change in law and looking at potential changes in the political environment that would potentially lead to other changes in law.
Especially as there are numerous other drugs (notably alcohol and tobacco, but hardly just them) that are legal, yet if we're on a slippery slope to legalizing other drugs because of them, it is a remarkably sticky and level slippery slope.
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posted
The fact that a law makes no sense doesn't mean that it is a viable option to change it. The fact still is that most voters do not want to legalize marijuana.
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posted
Looks like according to 538.com its sitting pretty much even right now, but with the anti crowd ahead by a tad.
Politically, I think just about everyone who'd favor legalization already voted for Obama, so he wouldn't have much to gain, and everything to lose, by fighting for it.
Perhaps something he could try during his second term?
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Boris: [QUOTE]How much welfare money goes to the guy who sits on his butt all day smoking weed instead of looking for a job?
This is a small but quite irritating thing. Where did you get this from? Did you just pull this from every cliche stoner movie?
I like pot. A lot. Yet Im two years into a masters degree during the week and have a part time job at the weekend. Am I lazy? No. Am I a drain on society? No. If I had kids would I neglect them sitting on the couch stoned? No.
Posts: 243 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: Politically, I think just about everyone who'd favor legalization already voted for Obama, so he wouldn't have much to gain, and everything to lose, by fighting for it.
I don't know about that. Libertarians didn't vote for him, but this would definitely appeal to them.
I don't smoke pot. I don't smoke anything, but except for trying pot when I was in high school (until the first time I got high, after which I decided it wasn't worth the brain cells), I've never been interested in it. That said, I don't drink alcohol, either. Just never had a taste for it. But I don't see why either alcohol or pot should be illegal for those who want it.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
The whole "drugs endanger the lives of others if, for instance, they drive under the influence" argument by Boris could very simply be managed by privatising roads. That way those under the influence could still be stopped from driving. No civil liberties case to be made because it's no longer a civil issue.
This is why I'm a libertarian: practical reasons. If these people are such a burden on the public health system, just don't serve them. Don't talk as if that's a genuine reason to tell me, in precise detail, how to drive or do a myriad of other things.
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quote:The whole "drugs endanger the lives of others if, for instance, they drive under the influence" argument by Boris could very simply be managed by privatising roads.
Forget the matter that privatizing roads would in and of itself be a gross violation of civil liberties and explain to me exactly how (from a practical technological standpoint) one would implement a private road system and how private road owners would be better equipped to prevent people from driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
While you are at it, please point to one municipality in the world that has successfully privatized all the roads.
You might as well talk about privatizing the air.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by cheiros do ender: The whole "drugs endanger the lives of others if, for instance, they drive under the influence" argument by Boris could very simply be managed by privatising roads. That way those under the influence could still be stopped from driving. No civil liberties case to be made because it's no longer a civil issue.
Aside from Rabbit's very good points about the practical impossibility of doing this, wouldn't it be fairly easy to just test the reaction time, physical coordination, and so forth of drivers suspected of driving under the influence? What's so difficult about that?
[Edited to change "be easier" to "be fairly easy", since anything that is possible is easier than something that isn't, even if it's very, very hard. I don't think that devising and implementing a test of this sort would be terribly difficult.]
quote:Originally posted by Noemon: wouldn't it be fairly easy to just test the reaction time, physical coordination, and so forth of drivers suspected of driving under the influence?
I wonder. That could very well open an entirely new can of worms. Some people just have slower response times. What if you're under the weather enough for your response time to be too low? Could you then be arrested for DUI?
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: wouldn't it be fairly easy to just test the reaction time, physical coordination, and so forth of drivers suspected of driving under the influence?
I wonder. That could very well open an entirely new can of worms. Some people just have slower response times. What if you're under the weather enough for your response time to be too low? Could you then be arrested for DUI?
It's worth considering whether we can/should test for impairment of ANY kinds rather than the relatively arbitrary presence of a substance. It'd probably be harder to test. But if someone is as impaired from a cold as another person is by pot, why should the first person be allowed to drive and the second person not?
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posted
Or drivers who are really tired. I have felt safer with drivers who have had a couple of beers than I have with my Dad before his sleep apnea was diagnosed and he would nod off all the time.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: wouldn't it be fairly easy to just test the reaction time, physical coordination, and so forth of drivers suspected of driving under the influence?
I wonder. That could very well open an entirely new can of worms. Some people just have slower response times. What if you're under the weather enough for your response time to be too low? Could you then be arrested for DUI?
I'd say that if someone has response times below a certain threshold, lack some minimum level of hand eye/foot eye coordination, they shouldn't be allowed to drive, any more than they should be allowed to drive if their visual acuity is below a certain threshold.
Whether those things are caused by a drug, lack of sleep, sickness, or whathaveyou doesn't really matter to me.
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.) You could either kill yourself or waste your life with alcohol, just like you can with unlimited opiates. It'd be your choice. 
