Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Open thread (with question of the day)

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Is there a case to be made in favor of legalizing drugs that does not logically also require being in favor of legalizing gambling, such that slots and casinos are inevitable?

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    • Sounds a bit like a lot of the callers on EEI, along the lines of: “hey, what do you think about flipping Baldelli and Brad Penny for Hanley Ramirez?”

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      p>The Royals are not exactly a model franchise, but I don’t think they’re THAT suicidal.

  2. “I do illegal drugs, I don’t do illegal gambling (and if I wanted to do slots and casinos, I’d just drive to Connecticut), so let’s legalize drugs and not care about gambling.”

  3. “Drugs” seems to be increasingly like “weapons of mass destruction” — a catch-all category that hits several levels of magnitude.  Society is endlessly trading off safety for enjoyment and convenience, and the only question is at what level is the optimal tradeoff.

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    p>But as for “drugs,” well, heroin is basically addictive poison, and marijuana is harmless only in large doses — like cholesterol.  I was reading a scare-brochure on marijuana the other day, and pretty much everything the brochure said about marijuana is also true about fat.  Caffeine is a drug.

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    p>To me, legalizing marijuana is like legalizing penny slots — sure, you could hurt yourself if you overuse this product, but you’d really have to try in order to get to that point.  That is more a sign of a willfully self-destructive personality as much as anything else.

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    p>Legalizing resort-casinos is akin to legalizing heroin or crack cocaine to me — much, much worse.  I just don’t see how one leads to another.

    • With gambling, there’s no floor — since salvation is always in the next roll, deal, or pull on the handle, it’s OK to rack up the kind of debt that drove Philip Markoff to murder.

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      p>The worst-case scenario for overdosing on pot is that you fall asleep, or get stopped for driving 15mph in a 45mph zone.  Fewer people die from marijuana than from stepping out of the shower; some sources I’ve seen have the number at zero.

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      p>A broad, sane approach would be to recategorize everything according to its actual demonstrated risk, including alcohol, fast food, recreational drugs, etc., and align the policies according to the actual risk.

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      p>This doesn’t even address the possibilities for turning this cash crop into a revenue opportunity for the state and/or the feds; that’s a whole other topic.

  4. I agree that legalizing all drugs, without any regulation, seems to logically extend to legalizing all gambling, without any regulation.*

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    p>However, what about when we have some restrictions?  If we don’t allow wide open drug use, what’s the “equivalent” amount of gambling restriction?

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    p> * the exception being consumer protection on what is advertised.  If I buy a kilo of coke, I should be sold a kilo of coke.  Likewise, if I play at a casino they shouldn’t be allowed to deal from the bottom of the deck.

    • Is heroin/crack capable of being used safely?  I think it’s not in dispute that many people who go to casinos and/or play slots are not gambling addicts, and can happily gamble now and then without any adverse consequences.  Is there a similar population for heroin/crack users?  And if not, then is it really fair to treat the two similarly, as I think both you and sabutai are doing?

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      p>Also, we know that marijuana is now the largest cash source for Mexican drug cartels, bringing in $8.5 billion in 2007.  Does that figure into a legalization decision?

            • Google shows multiple sources: here’s ABC news.

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              p>One of the ironic effects of the war on drugs was to improve the quality and purity of the local crop.  Also to streamline the distribution process.  American ingenuity at work!

          • They have legal medical use, so there are probably legal operations that feed some of their output into the illegal traffic stream.  Years ago, it was Mexico and Central America, but technology, hydroponics, etc. have shifted the production patterns.

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            I mean, Maui Wowie, Panama Red, Acapulco Gold
            Kif from East Afghanistan, and that rare Alaska Cold

            And there’s sticks from Thailand, ganj from the island,
            And Bangkok’s blooming best
            (and some of that wet imported ****
            That capsized off Key West).

            There’s Oaxacan tops and Kenya bhang, and Riviera fleurs
            And that rare Manhattan Silver, that grows down in the New York sewers.

            Shel Silverstein, The Smoke Off.

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            I thought pot mainly came out of the Pacific Northwest…BC Bud and all that.

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            p>Marijuana is a hardy crop and can be grown just about anywhere… As with wine and coffee terroire is important to differences in the genus… where rich lava based soil (Columbia,Mexico, Jamaica, etc…) can grow large amounts, it can still thrive in cold climates (BC, mountainous Afghanistan…).  Opium and cocaine, on the other hand, are fairly climate specific.  Cali, on the other hand, has a ‘budding’ hydroponics sub-culture.

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            p>Insofar as legalizing marijuana goes, on the merits it’s neither here nor there for me.  However, legalizing marijuana, it seems, will also legalize research on marijuana… Crack is a cocaine derivative and  morphine, codeine and heroine are all derivatives of opium, which were made possible by the free trade in opium in China (by the Brits) in the 19th and early 20th century… Who knows what pharmacopieal wonders will be created by garage chemists given a relatively free market in marijuana?  Not legalizing marijuana isn’t necessarily a bar to creation of stronger derivatives, but it does make such derivations much less likely, I should think.

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      • See, for example, the 1988 Koop Report. In comparison to nicotine, heroin is arguably easier to regulate and control and far less deadly. Relatively few heroin addicts die of overdoses; most get sick and eventually give it up (or die of something else). A significant share of heroin-associated deaths occur because it is illegal, rather than from the drug itself. The health impact of nicotine addiction is far worse than that of heroin addiction.

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        p>In terms of health consequences, marijuana pales in comparison to nicotine and alcohol. Nicotine is the ONLY legally-available consumer product that causes death when used in the intended manner. Why is nicotine still unregulated? We all know the answer. M-O-N-E-Y. As in the cash-crop that keeps states like North Carolina alive.

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        p>Money is — rightly or wrongly — the basis of power in today’s culture and economy. The prior administration (aided and abetted by the rightwing) was doing all sorts of demonstrably horrific, immoral, and outrageous crimes against humanity — kidnapping, abuse, torture, murder, etc.

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        p>None of that had anything like the impact of the economic collapse. When you take money away from people, you get their attention. The turning point in the Obama campaign was the collapse of the economy.

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        p>Rightly or wrongly, that’s how we are (IMHO).

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        p>In my view, the reason that predatory gambling is so incredibly dangerous is that it strikes at this most-important aspect of the already-vulnerable. Legalized gambling, when sponsored by the state, actively and knowingly confiscates the one quantity that our culture values above all else — money.

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        p>The only way folks at the bottom of our society are going to claw their way back into the mainstream is to make, and keep, money. State-sponsored gambling cuts those people off at the knees. THAT is why, in my opinion, it is terrible and immoral public policy.

        • I mean, I don’t know much about heroin.  I’ve never used it, and I have never talked about it with anyone who has.  So maybe it’s true that, as you say, “heroin is arguably easier to regulate and control and far less deadly” than nicotine, and that “[t]he health impact of nicotine addiction is far worse than that of heroin addiction.”  But I kinda doubt it.  Among other things, isn’t the concentration of heroin when used as it normally is used much higher than the concentration of nicotine in a cigarette?  Nobody mainlines nicotine, do they?  Doesn’t that call into question the utility of comparing how addictive “heroin” and “nicotine” are, without allowing for those kinds of distinctions?

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          p>Also, nothing in the NYT article you linked supports your statement that “Nicotine is more addictive than heroin.”  According to the article (emphasis mine),

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          The Surgeon General of the United States warned today that nicotine was as addictive as heroin and cocaine and recommended the licensing of those who sell tobacco products and tougher laws prohibiting their sale to minors.

          • The point remains. I chose a more-accessible cite; if you prefer, I offer a private communication from Jack Heningfield, a tidbit offered up by Google. From Heningfield (emphasis mine):

            Nicotine, cocaine, heroin, and alcohol all meet criteria as addictive or dependence producing drugs, though none of these drugs causes addiction in all who are exposed (cf., APA, APA, WHO, Sur. Gen., FDA, NIDA, etc.). The risk of addiction following any use, the prevalence of frequent use among current users, and the occurance of APA, DSM-defined dependence among current users ranges from about 2 to 10 times greater for cigarettes than for these other drugs (Anthony et al. 1994, Exp.Clin. Psychopharm.; NIDA’s Monitoring the Future Survey, FDA in Fed Register, Aug. 11, 1995; Surg. Gen. 1988).

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            p>If you don’t mind, I’ll defer finding and posting the links cited by Heningfield — I’m willing to trust him, for now.

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            p>The issue with “addiction” is that, like “intelligence”, it is difficult to define and difficult to measure. Does it refer to the difficulty of quitting? Does it refer to severity of withdrawal symptoms? Does it refer to the percentage of users who become habituated? Professionals in the field (therapists, for example) prefer the term “substance dependence”.

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            p>I think our drug laws have far more to do with our biases about morality than with the facts about their use or abuse. I also think that the bulk of the harmful effects that we ascribe to drugs are, in fact, the effects of their illegality.

      • People seem to have more devastating consequences from heroin & crack. I don’t know any recreational users of those drugs. On the few occasions where people who used  those drugs have crossed my path, it was not a good situation, they were quite ill and devastated knowing that they were in a terrible situation. It was plain ugly.
        I don’t think anyone who uses heroin, crack or other powerful drugs can remain a recreational user for long.  But then  we probably don’t hear about successful recreational users anyway, so I could be wrong, they could be out there.  

  7. Just do it. Consistency has never been an especially strong feature of our political system so far as I can tell (ask the Korematsu family).

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    p>But if you you mean a principled distinction, I think it is hard to find. Gambling and drug use are both activities that should be allowed in a free society, in my view, subject to reasonable regulation, because they are essentially voluntary and the primary consequences fall on the practitioners themselves. As a practical matter, laws against them also are ineffective, and have real social costs right now (for example, gamblers have lots of ways to wager at present even in Massachusetts, and illegal drugs produce lots of crime).

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    p>A better question, I think, is whether there is a principled distinction to be made between allowing the sale of alcohol but not marijuana, or a state-sponsored lottery but not casino gambling.

    • it is ridiculous that alcohol is legal and marijuana is not, also Mass Lottery is legal, casino gambling is not. It’s irrational.

    • Oppose casinos but not  MJ on a NIMBY argument.

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      p>Casinos: sprawl, concrete and asphault, blocks my view, causes traffic jam.

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      p>Marijuana: … what was the question again?

  8. it’s pragmatic. As in. We’d be better off if we legalized drugs, we wouldn’t be if we legalized gambling.

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    p>A commitment to doing what’s best is about as principled as I can think of, btw.

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