Political Science 1020E Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Cold Turkey
27 Apr 2018
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1) Drugs that are taken to alter consciousness but arent prescribed
for medial reasons
2) The banning of drugs is not based on how harmful they actually
are. This makes why they are banned something of a mystery in
Wolffs eyes.
3) In the UK alcohol caused 22,000 cases of premature death each
year. Known to cause brain damage, especially to heavy users.
Causes road traffic deaths and incidences of violence.
4) One large problem is that they rarely work. People continue to do
drugs regardless of its legality. Another is that it infringes on
personal freedom. As well, by filling out prisons up with drug
users it only increases the strain on society by having to spend
more money on running these prisons. The government should
get involved when drug use harms a third party. For many drugs
the only party that is harmed is the user, meaning that the
government should let them do what they want.
5) I think the most realistic strategy is to treat drug use like a health
problem to help them get better. If we continue to just send them
away cold turkey or hit them with a fine, its not addressing the
underlying problem. By helping them get better, you eliminate
the need for drugs.
6) I think preventing drug use is more like preventing pollution.
Some drugs do serious harm to the user and those should have
highly restricted use. Whereas other drugs such as marijuana
dont have aggressive side effects and should be tolerated to
maximize overall efficiency of a government.
7) It is argued that we should legalize all drugs considering the social
costs of imprisoning even a small amount of the people caught;
the cost of the existence of a black market; and the problems of
poisoning and overdosing associated with unregulated supply.
Problems with this are we dont know the effects of the black
market shutting down (would crime stop or would offenders find
new crimes to get involved with?); what would the new prices be?
(If theyre too high a new black market might appear to undercut
regulated prices; increase the risk of dangerous crime (shop
assistants stealing them/addicts robbing customers outside the
pharmacy); people might assume that just because the
government allows you to buy it, it is in fact healthy for you to use.
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