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Mike Gravel on Drugs
Wags used to joke about a Ron Paul-Mike Gravel unity ticket. They're both old, they're both odd, they're both hated in their parties—they could rent out Ken Kesey's bus and convert into their own Straight Talk Express!
Well, here's Gravel sounding alternately super-libertarian and
semi-coherent.
If they can iron out the "spend taxpayer money on rehabilitating
drug addicts" bit, Paul and Gravel could make some noise.
|6.4.07 @ 9:38AM|#
Isn't there some 'unity 08' movement? Paul-Gravel? Gravel-Paul? Either way, I'd choose it over Rudy McRomney or any of the Big 3 Dems any day. Better yet than Gravel would be to have a Richardson-Paul. Sure, I have some problems with Gov. Richardson, but that would actually be a more serious ticket.
|6.4.07 @ 9:39AM|#
Don't agree with lots of Gravel's agenda, but he's mostly talking sense here, and seems to be speaking what he honestly feels == which, in politics, pretty much guarantees low single digit support. Sigh. In a better, alternative universe, we'd enjoy the Gravel / Paul general election debate.
|6.4.07 @ 9:54AM|#
If they can iron out the "spend taxpayer money on
rehabilitating drug addicts" bit
Gravel is making pleasant noises here, until you realize it's just
another tentacle of his single payer health care monster.
|6.4.07 @ 10:45AM|#
"Richardson-Paul"
But could a Texan and a New Mexican get along?
Would Paul have to provide some sort of reparations for the 1861
invasion of New Mexico by the Texas Brigade under Shelby?
|6.4.07 @ 10:48AM|#
Mike Gravel on Drugs
Maybe in the next debate (Rep or Dem) if someone could put MJ in
the air conditioner....
|6.4.07 @ 11:12AM|#
I gotta ask the libertoids: Does spending tax money on rehabbing
drug addicts( and probably failing a lot) offend your sensibilities
to the same degree as spending tax money of fighting a drug war
(and probably failing alot and killing a bunch of people)?
The first is going to be cheaper than the second, but even dollar
for dollar, is it an even-money outrage?
biologist|6.4.07 @ 11:15AM|#
if the tax money used came from taxes on the drug products themselves, then no problem, it's more like a user fee.
Nat|6.4.07 @ 11:26AM|#
if the tax money used came from taxes on the drug products
themselves, then no problem, it's more like a user fee.
I'm a libertarian Lite at best, but that's my feeling too. I don't
like sin taxes as a rule, but I would have no objection to taxing
marijuana (or heroin, cocaine, etc.) as well as alcohol and
cigarettes as long as the revenue was used solely to mitigate any
direct results of legal drug (over-)use. However, even if they
decided to use the taxes to fund whatever idiotic projects they
come up with (the way I think cigarette taxes work), it would still
be a minor outrage compared to the War on Drugs. In principle any
damage people do to themselves is their own problem, but in
practice, I don't think it's possible to fully escape the social
consequences of *any* kind of drug abuse, even when legalization
drops prices. I'd rather pay for rehabilitation than have some
junkie steal my computers or musical instruments.
If pot were legalized tomorrow, the government could institute a
500% tax and it would probably still be cheaper than current street
prices. Or so my friends tell me.
|6.4.07 @ 12:00PM|#
I gotta ask the libertoids: Does spending tax money on
rehabbing drug addicts( and probably failing a lot) offend your
sensibilities to the same degree as spending tax money of fighting
a drug war (and probably failing alot and killing a bunch of
people)?
The first is going to be cheaper than the second, but even dollar
for dollar, is it an even-money outrage?
Spending tax money to rehabilitate people is orders of magnitude
less evil than the drug war (especially if it was funded from taxes
on the drug). It is not that Libertarians support it
ideologically... It is that pragmaticly, if politicians were to
actually adopt this policy, it would be such a huge pro-Libertarian
move that we would be shooting ourselves in the foot by opposing it
just because it isn't 100% ideologically pure.
That being said, I worry that if the drugs were taxed, the taxes
might be made so-high as to not really change anything. If legal
drugs cost 50+ times the price of illegal drugs, it would not solve
the drug problem. Legal drugs would need to be comparible in price
to the illegal stuff.
For example, I have heard that high cigarette taxes actually
increase the consumption of weed. I don't know if that is true, but
I can see how it would be true.
dhex|6.4.07 @ 1:01PM|#
"For example, I have heard that high cigarette taxes actually
increase the consumption of weed. I don't know if that is true, but
I can see how it would be true."
why?
that honestly doesn't make any sense to me. (two different
products, effects, etc)
Robert|6.4.07 @ 6:56PM|#
They're both smokes, why wouldn't they compete against each other to some degree? Even what's inhaled from each is mostly the same on a weight basis. Of the remaining consituents, they're largely psychoactive in both cases.
Robert|6.4.07 @ 6:58PM|#
They're both smokes, why wouldn't they compete against each other to some degree? Even what's inhaled from each is mostly the same on a weight basis. Of the remaining consituents, they're largely psychoactive in both cases.
|6.4.07 @ 8:20PM|#
Nat: You are correct about tobacco taxes. Federal tobacco excise
taxes (as well as alcohol taxes) go into the government's general
fund, as did luxury taxes when they were still in effect.
Some other excise taxes act more like "user fees", with funds from
plane tickets funding FAA's air traffic control system, and gas and
diesel taxes being used to play carrot-and-stick with the
states build and maintain highways.
dhex and Robert: Mankiw's intro microeconomics textbook actually
includes a summary of a study on tobacco and marijuana cross-price
elasticity. Unfortunately, my copy's at work, and I can't remember
what the verdict was.
There are pretty intuitive arguments as to why they might be
substitutes or compliments. On the one hand, they're both smoky
ways to satisfy an oral fixation, or way to piss off your parents
and defy authority. On the other hand, alcohol and coffee (for
instance) are beverages with different effects and that doesn't
mean they "compete" with one another. In fact, they're often
enjoyed in conjunction, or one is used to ameliorate the effects of
the other. And inasmuch as smoking both cigarettes and pot
will doubly piss off your parents, their complimentarity
has a certain synergetic effect.
So I'm having an especially hard time remembering whether pot and
cigarettes were substitutes, compliments, or neither according to
the study. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they were
substitutes, because I recall feeling a certain libertarian elation
at the idea of tobacco-tax-raisers being rewarded with more pot
smoking teenagers. But I may be wrong.
|6.4.07 @ 8:32PM|#
you know when i saw that gravel subscribes to reason, i wondered what percentage of the articles he thought more or less hit the mark. i say this because alot of people tend to agree with libertarian-leaning essays and then end up disagreeing with libertarian policies because, well, they're "libertarian". i just wonder if hes one of those people that agree with specific arguments for limited governemnt but then dismiss broader calls for an open market based on the meme that free market economics are hocus pocus or 'not realistic' (based on one of the handful of generic arguments against it). what keeps surprising me is that youd think these people would eventually put 2 and 2 together. but for some reason they tend to remain blissfully unaware of what they themselves actually believe.
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