THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY: The War on Drugs 

And a truly hideous one that makes many people go literally insane.

Don't forget caffeine.

Brilliant! Repeat message, repeat message. Thanks!

Charles Martin Great straw man but I doubt you'll find any one in favour of drug prohibition seriously arguing that you will have zero drug users if our policies are followed.

brilliant

At 22:50 to 23:20, empirical evidence given that liberalization failed horribly in Netherlands and Britain. You can't get finer evidence on drug liberalization than those two countries, among the most developed and therefore arguably among the most capable countries to implement it.

Carl Edward Vincent Portugal would qualify as finer evidence on drug liberalization. As would Switzerland. Both countries took a different approach to the war on dugs - with Portugal decriminalizing all personal drug consumption. The money that was saved from not being spent on policing, court costs, incarceration, Hep C treatment, HIV/AIDS treatment, associated crime due to prohibition - was diverted to social programs including safe injection sites, free medical grade heroin, proper housing, employment opportunities, harm reduction and rehabilitation. Portugal went from having one of the highest rates of heroin usage in Europe to one of the lowest, from a high death rate from overdoses to almost a zero death rate, a significant drop in Hep C and HIV/AIDS infection, a significant drop in crime and a significant reduction in costs to the justice system. With few exceptions (like nicotine) drugs aren't addictive. Heroin, cocaine, crack - not addictive. What IS addictive is the result of taking those drugs, not the drugs themselves. Every hospital around the world dispenses opiates/opioids. Healthcare wouldn't exist without them. In dentistry, local anesthetics are 2% lidocaine hydrochloride and 2% mepivacaine (Carbocaine) - all from the cocaine family. Pain suppressive drugs like morphine, Buprenorphine, Diamorphine (heroin), Hydromorphone, Oxycodone, Oxymorphone - natural opiates and semi-synthesized opioids derived from opium - all prescribed routinely on a daily basis and without addiction. However, when administered over long periods of time, consumers can become addicted to the "feeling" these drugs provide, whether that is the feeling from having your pain numbed or the feeling from having your senses numbed. Our idea of what addiction is is based on "rats in a cage" experiments. Rats are put into a small empty cage with two water bottles. One filled with water, and the other filled with a water/drug mixture. The lone rat will drink from both water bottles and over time will choose the drug-filled bottle more often and will eventually die from it. Therefore, the drugs are addictive and fatal - only they're not. Psychologist Bruce K Alexander built "Rat Park", where the same bottles of the same water and water/drug mixture is placed in a large cage, with other rats, toys to play with, opportunities for sex - stimuli - and the rats chose to drink the water, and only occasionally, the water with the drug mixture - but never at a rate that would imply addiction or dependance and never at a rate that was fatal. If rats feel socially connected to their colony and live in a good environment, they choose drugs less often and it can reduce already established addictive behaviours.

"If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people." -- House Friedman was right in his full lecture on medical care too. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ss5PxPlnmFk.html "People ought to be free to hurt themselves as well as to to help themselves so long as they do it at their own expense." There's a myth that people actually want to do harmful things to other people or themselves. Working for immoral policies gives people with ethics a negative incentive to participate. C'est la vie; carpe diem.

Atheists - always so eager to demonstrate their perceived intellectual superiority among any audience. It’s almost as if atheism exists solely to fuel intellectual arrogance. Your religion has nothing to do with your stance on drugs, only your knowledge and acceptance of information. After listening to Friedman and sowell, it appears that drug prohibition is wholly ineffective.

Too bad you didn't listen to the other side. Pete Wilson nailed it at 22:50. You see, truth doesn't come from listening to just one side. Listen to the whole thing, it's just 26min31s, but really listen to both. I admire Friedman very much, but you can't be right all the time, and the empirical evidence given is decisive.

Sure. But it will diminish death and destruction by both the dealers, users and the government.

Milton shoved that all of the other guys "cogent" arguments were 100% assbackwards. He had nothing.

Old comment but I cant help replying... consequence and responsibility is NOT something you give people as if it was a recent discovery...You can't choose if you want consequences or responsibility. What we can choose is if we should throw away more money at problems that can't be solved by fear and punishment

+killingfloor70 This is a year after you commented but fuck it xP. The 40 billion is for 1 year while the 1-2 trillion is for the entire drug war.

I do not think Milton said that. Prohibtion causes more harm even to bystanders, like in Columbia, or the shopkeeper who gets robbed and killed for someone trying to support the habit, Milton said repeatedly. Government is not supposed to make us safe from ourselfs, against foreign nations perhaps, but only free.

Addiction is a myth. There are things people prefer doing more than other things, that's it. Study Edward Bernays, or Adam Curtis' the Century of the Self, or and/or watch this clip: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ao8L-0nSYzg.html Do a search on microdosing sometime. These things will never go away, and we should get over this bolsheviks. Depression is an adverse side effect of oppression too, the primary cause being economic abuse, but any form of abuse will make people sad. This should be common sense, but that's only my informed opinion. C'est la vie, and carpe diem.