From: Anton Sherwood (dasher@netcom.com)
Date: Sat Sep 20 1997 - 07:17:43 MDT
Anton:
> some genius on the Dark Side of
> the bio-Force cooks up a new drug, which might be less benign
> than crack but that doesn't matter; what counts is that it is
> not vulnerable to your anti-coca. Now what?
Eliezer:
: The New Drug isn't prohibited, so no crack ghettos form.
Yet.
I can't believe reforming drug law is harder than creating
a virus that will wipe out all the coca plants (so someone
can't breed a resistant strain) without harming any more
useful life-form. And even if you succeed, legal reform
is *still* necessary.
Isn't there a ban (maybe ten years old) on "designer drugs"
meaning drugs that are similar to banned drugs but not
covered by any specific ban? Such a law is necessarily
vague enough to be applied arbitrarily.
Until prohibition is repealed and, its agents scattered
to the winds and salt sown where the Drug Czar's office
once stood, they'll stir up new crusades against new drugs
just to protect their budget. Look at MDMA: banned on
general puritan principles, long before the sensational
stories of poisonings. Look at tryptophan ....
Anton Sherwood *\\* +1 415 267 0685 *\\* DASher@netcom.com
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