Atheism

Politics

Memes

Mind

Matters

String

Random

Interact

Feedback

Email

Links

Debate

Home

The real world we live in is one of shades of grey, very few black and white issues exist. There are problems and issues that societies and governments face that are not solved by banning things but neither are they things the government or society should be seen to encourage.

As long as something is banned it takes a lot of pressure to remove that ban. Prohibition on alcohol is a classic example. It took a huge political movement to achieve prohibition, it took an equally huge movement to reverse it. There were and are evils in drink and drunkenness, there were much bigger evils caused by trying to enforce an unenforceable law. There is now a growing trend towards wanting tougher laws against tobacco and smoking while at the same time there is an opposite trend towards and end to prohibition on drugs. I believe both these issues should be tackled using a middle way.

Drug misuse can be very antisocial, in many ways it can destroy communities and lives. Currently more problems caused by drugs are caused by the prohibitions on drugs rather than their consumption. The media all too often shows the drug barons as thoroughly evil men and sees drug addicts as their duped victims. This is a gross distortion of the truth. Drug dealing is a sensible way to do business. Drugs pay. If you are a natural born capitalist then there is an obvious career path open to you as long as you have no scruples about using violence and deceit to further your aims. For many people that is a simple step to take and an easy one to justify to themselves, many people even manage to square it with their religious beliefs as well with no feeling of hypocrisy. Being a drug dealer is simply being a smarter and shrewder capitalist than the typical second rate used car dealer. Why sell your grandmother? There's more profit in cocaine.

The people who buy drugs know they are dangerous, they know they are illegal, they know they are being foolish. Nobody can get to the age of ten without hearing an anti-drugs message. The users cannot be seen as incompetent and innocent victims unless you start saying that people should not be allowed to make decisions about their lives until they are well in their twenties. Young people will always have a tendency to act stupidly and in ways which we would like to control. The point is we cannot control them. But we do have an ability to shape the society and culture in which those decisions are taken. We can make it easier for young people to make good decisions and we can mitigate the negative consequences of them making the wrong decisions.

Prudent Toleration

The middle way I am proposing is Prudent Toleration. The government can list goods and services as being tolerated but not approved, and allow them to be traded in controlled ways. This should not include punitive taxes, governments should not benefit from immoral earnings. However any normal taxes that would apply to other trades should apply; sales taxes, income taxes, national and local business and property taxes. This has the benefit of making the businesses open to regular accounting procedures, which should help keep them clean and out of the hands of organized crime. The companies involved in supplying the tolerated goods and services should be kept separate from other trades. Cigarette manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers would not be allowed to sell or cross promote any other products. While it would be legal to allow cannabis to be smoked in certain premises the licences should not be granted to ordinary restaurants or bars, drug supply could not be a sideline. Shops should be required to have a licence to sell cannabis and/or tobacco, and they would have to sell nothing else, this would be an end to the convenience store selling cigarettes, they would have to choose.

I would suggest all other currently illegal drugs could be traded in specialist drug shops, but these should not be free to sell alcohol, tobacco or cannabis. The current idea that cannabis is a gateway drug to heroin is a total fallacy; cigarettes are the gateway to drug use, cannabis is the gateway to the entire underworld drug trade. By putting in firebreaks between cigarettes and heroin that path will be blocked. Yes, people who want to use heroin will be able to buy it, they will be able to go straight to it, if they were mad enough to contemplate it, but the simple stepping stones would be moved further apart.

Coca, cannabis and opium are readily grown in appropriate climates. There is no reason for extracts of them ever to be expensive. Most of the current problems caused by drugs are the secondary effects of the illegal trade and the artificially generated profits and premium prices. Any substance that generates such obscene profits and price mark ups will cause problems.

Goods and services listed as tolerated should be allowed to advertise nothing more than their existence, category and contact method. This would allow prostitutes to operate without walking the streets; "Madam Cyn's Brothel: Dial 555 FORNIC8" This would be a much healthier state of affairs than the current position in which in some states prostitution is a criminal offence and the neighbouring state it is a thriving industry and a valued contribution to the local economy, neither state of affairs is healthy.

People need to see that the government does not encourage all that it does not forbid. There are many things which are undesirable and legal. Adultery, farting in company, prostitution, charging a fortune for tacky products, making hideous profits from hideous music, spouting nonsense about Uranus in Virgo, talking about the naturally superiority of the Aryans or how roads block lines of Chi energy and cars are bad for your Karma, long limousines, motorbikes with car-sized engines and soft pornography that degrades people. Just because it is not illegal it does not follow that the government or society encourages it.

There should be a spectrum of toleration. Some things are wholesome in infinite amounts, some things are largely wholesome but can be overdone, some things are almost always a bad idea and not to be condoned, most things are in the middle. It does not follow that just because you allow cannabis to be legally traded that you must support and encourage your local dealers and suppliers and award their industry. We should have the strength of character to allow and tolerate without being painted as supporting everything that is not specifically illegal.

Let us have the courage to be ambivalent.

Some things are wrong and should be illegal. Other things are wrong but are prudently tolerated.

We should speak out and tell those who take legal pursuits to unhealthy extremes that they are not examples of enterprise and enthusiasm but are sad obsessives. Bill Shankley (Liverpool FC Manager) said Football was not a matter of life or death, it was more important than that. People smiled. They should not have done. Football is just a game, it is not important. Neither is the record for the world's largest pie or sales figures for microwave ovens or diet cola. The fact that something is legal does not imply that it is wholesome or that it deserves our tacit approval. All too often we find our toleration painted as approval. We should have the courage to say what we really think. Freedom is not worth very much if you are expected to approve of all you do not wish to ban. Politicians should take a lead here, if I was Mayor, Prime Minister or President and I was invited to open an opera house I would tell them where to go, I don't like opera, I see it as overrated and over-subsidized, the fact that I don't want to see it banned does not mean I approve of it. I should not be made to feel guilty for this feeling. It is not necessary for liberally inclined people to wish an enterprise well just because it is legal. Morris dancing, Islam, vegetarianism, trails bike riding and the 'personality' cult of Britney Spears are all things I neither wish to see banned nor flourish. I think the freedom to think like that is very important.

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

mwillett.org: Debate Unlimited