Victimless Crimes - Drugs, Sex Work?

Well, your country needs to find another solution because the war on drugs has been an unmitigated failure from start to finish - and it's even more embarrassing for you when you consider that the US has a higher level of drug use than the Netherlands, a country where cannabis is legal and openly smoked in certain cafes. In fact, it has a higher rate of drug use - cannabis included - than virtually all other countries in the world, despite its more stringent laws (with a few exceptions in places like Oregon).

Criticising something without offering an alternative - that is certainly a waste of your time. Nice to see that you refuse to engage with people when their view point differs from yours though - clearly some sort of coping mechanism in action to handle the fact that you're wrong.

Anyway, for those that are interested, here is an interesting article on drug decriminalisation in Portugal and the effects - 14 years after its initial introduction. Warning: if you're expecting a surge in drug use and a near total collapse of society and all ethics, you will be disappointed.

http://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening

Enjoy!

 

You've been very clear about what you think about advocating legalization of dangerous drugs, but you haven't really presented any arguments for why you believe that (at least not explicitly). The closest thing you've done to presenting an argument is stating how dangerous and addictive drugs are, but the dangerousness of a drug is not, by itself, an argument* for criminalizing it. And if you aren't going to bother to present any arguments for why you think my views are indefensible, then why bother come on here and say that it is indefensible?

*An example of what would be an argument (although one I wouldn't find persuasive, at least not without a lot of facts and good reasoning) is saying something along the lines of, “This drug is very dangerous to the individual and to society. If it is legalized, its abuse will be very common, and society would suffer more than with prohibition...”

I'm not dismissing whatever substantive the arguments and facts may have been in that article, I'm just not going to engage them unless someone brings them into this discussion themselves. For any political position, there are zillions of web pages that provide arguments and evidence for that position, and I'm not going to do the work of analyzing one just because someone did three seconds worth of Googling. I'm sure that I too can play the game of providing a link to a site that does all my work for me, but I'm here on this thread to have a discussion, not a “who can provide the most links to opinion pieces that agree with them” contest.

If you think there was substance in the article, you're free to explain here in your own words what those substantive arguments and/or evidence is. You can present those arguments that you find compelling, and/or cite the evidence that you find compelling here on this thread. I understand that that takes time, and you don't want to invest that time (as does most meticulous research).

EDIT: Since I'm responding to you again, I want to hold your feet to the fire on one issue. Earlier, you said that I "Clearly couldn't care less about the impact of drug abuse and continually argues that there's really no impact [of drug abuse]." I would appreciate it if you either backed up that nasty accusation, or retract it.

 

As a former drug user I can attest that drug use is not a victimless crime.

 

Yes, it's almost as if...when you argue with someone...they present arguments as well. It's like, the nerve.

 

I don't think you can call either drug use or sex work a victimless activity, but I do not see a net societal benifit in viewing drug users or sex workers as criminals. The recidivism rate alone shows that arresting and jailing these people is not helping, and I struggle to think up a reason why either drug users or sex workers deserve to be imprisoned, fined, put on probation, or the like. In fact, The War on Drugs is incredibly damaging to our society (perhaps worse than the drugs themselves), and I somehow doubt that the antagonistic relationship with cops and other authorities helps keep sex workers safe.

 

I was thinking of mostly plant-based drugs such as LSD, marijuana, salvia, shrooms, those kinds of things. I should've specified. I live in New Mexico and people think Breaking Bad is so cool, but it's a little less cool when crazy tweakers live in your city or on your street or in your apartments, dealing and making and doing meth. I think the availability of less harmful drugs will make people less likely to seek out the more harmful drugs, with other options more available. Of course, this will not totally solve the problem, there will still be people out there determined to do heroin, whether they just want to try it or are already hooked, but it just seems like it would help a little.

When I was talking about sex work I meant like they have in Nevada, regulated with STD testing and making it as safe as possible for the workers. Of course, illegal or forced sex trade, human trafficking, sex slaves, and prostitution run by pimps should not be legal. I think there should be regulated services available for prostitution.

 

I don't think there's any real argument for criminalizing drug use and possession it's proven to be only on a personal scale, but I completely get the amount of shit in regard to supply and production given that a lot of big organizations that do some messed up shit; sex slavery, human trackin etc., base a huge part of their income on narcotics

 

The 'war on drugs' has been as much of an abysmal failure as the 'war on terror', but that doesn't mean that drug crimes are universally victimless. Even if we ignore the dangers of drugs on the individual and the often violent behaviour they cause, there's also the fact that drugs usually come with a violent underworld that won't be eliminated by legalising drugs. Because regulated drugs tend to be more expensive than illegitimate drugs, street drugs remain rather competitive. The twisted business models, existing client-dealer relationships and the power and resources of larger-scale illegal drug traders (especially the intimidation techniques of cartels) reduce any market justification for the legalisation of drugs to little more than a wave of a wand that won't get rid of the manifold problems of the existing drug trade in practice.

There's a difference between decriminalising consumption and legalising drugs and I'm willing to get behind the former when there is a good model with which to do so, but I don't follow any arguments that advocate for freedom of consumption. Addicts do not have a great deal of freedom of choice and the circumstances of drug consumption rarely occur within the realms of a debate employing econ. 101 logic. I don't see drug consumers as rational actors and I think that any personal freedom arguments aren't really applicable with the characterisation I find most accurate. I don't think full legalisation solves the problems of the illicit drug trade, and that would be the only compelling reason why I'd support it. Linking that back to the topic, there's no way to remove the victimhood of many people due to direct and indirect consequences of drugs and the drug trade and legalisation is not a practical solution in my view.

As for sex work, there's sex work and there's sex work. Most of the time, there is an exploitative or violent element. Even where sex work is regulated, sex workers experience disproportionate rates of violence and abuse, be it by clients or pimps. But sex workers are more protected by having a legal, regulated framework for sex work, rather than the even more exploitative reality of street prostitution. A sex worker who can go to the police for help when abused is much better than a sex worker who can't risk that. It also means that sex worker networks (such as apps to identify violent or manipulative clients) are able to flourish to protect those within the sex industry legally and even with the cooperation of police. But illegal sex work means that the sex workers suffer more than their clients.

I also don't support the so-called Scandinavian Model, which entails criminalising clients without criminalising sex workers. That's because a worker who can't ply their trade legally is going to do it beyond the bounds of the law so that they can actually do that work, which removes a lot of the protections that a fully legal system permits and encourages them to keep problems such as abuse by employers or clients quiet. That just doesn't help sex workers much at all. Unlike drugs, the victims of sex work are the workers within the sex industry, not the consumers, so criminalisation targets the wrong people to solve a problem caused by others.