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> willfully-contradictory positions (e.g. one can buy but the other can't sell, etc). This seems weird, but is actually a perfectly reasonable legal regime tha
by pdpi 7y ago
> willfully-contradictory positions (e.g. one can buy but the other can't sell, etc).
This seems weird, but is actually a perfectly reasonable legal regime that's all about power dynamics and enabling the authorities to approach people. Drug users and prostitutes are in much more vulnerable positions than drug dealers and johns respectively.
If you make selling drugs a crime, but not buying/owning those same drugs, now the police can approach addicts much more easily, and get them help (this is the much-lauded Portuguese model).
The same logic applies in reverse to prostitution: if selling sexual favours is legal, but buying is illegal, prostitutes are enabled to report abusive johns to the police, and authorities can approach them much more easily to try and get them off that life too.
- toyg 7y agoThis is the rationalisation of a legal kludge that is only necessary to assuage consciences that the state has not become "immoral". The facts on the ground are that, dissuasion or not, these economies will never go away ("oldest profession", after all). Full legalisation would allow for complete oversight of such murky sectors, which would ensure everyone's safety better than the current arrangements, at all levels. For example, in many countries there is no way for prostitutes to legally ensure their own security, because any sort of professional relationship with a sex-worker is illegal (even if the business itself is not); at that point, whether they have recourse post-abuse or not, is basically irrelevant. The legal situation around cannabis and prostitution is just a shitshow in most places, driven as it is by outdated sensibilities which have ossified through short-term political calculation. There is no point trying to find in it a logic that is simply not there.
- pdpi 7y agoI agree that prostitution should be legalised and regulated to make it safer for everybody involved (because I too don't think it'll ever go away). Cannabis? Probably — I don't know that it's that much worse than tobacco. Full-on legalisation is not universally desirable, though — there's always heroine, cocaine, crack, meth... — and the asymmetric legality thing is still a very useful tool in those circumstances.
- Zak 7y agoI would argue, from a pure cost-benefit perspective that full legalization of drugs is desirable unless someone has another credible plan for eliminating the black market without unacceptable consequences (e.g. a police state).
- ClumsyPilot 7y agoWhat's needed is evidence based approach, where wt draw a line at alcohol and all drugs less lethal/ addictive/ harmful (take your pick) are legalised. There are some truly horrible substances, but with current approach heroin and weed are sold by the same guy.