Talk:Prohibition (drugs)/Archive 2

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Merge

I merged War on Drugs and Drug legalization. This is an encyclopedia and I don't think a list of points/counterpoints about the legalization of drugs belongs on the entry about the War on Drugs. I moved the list in question to a subset of the talk page...it's linked above. I also archived the old talk page as the War on Drugs page is slightly different now (incorporates parts of the Drug legalization page). I hope everyone is happy with the changes I've made. I just tried to make this article more presentable and readable. - Defunkt 07:47, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, not happy. Why don't we just merge War on Terror and Revolution as well. Well, perhaps not. The war on drugs is a completely separate concept from drug legalization, and redirecting people looking for information on the latter to an entry on the former is biased. While a continuous tit-for-tat argument might not be appropriate in either category (and indeed may just belong in a seperate article linked from both), removing such an argument is orthogonal to merging the two entries. Put it back. --Jherico 00:34, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

First of all, I fail to see how having Drug legalization redirect to the War on Drugs is biased. In June, on Talk:Drug_legalization, a merge of the article's useful information to the War on Drugs article was suggested. Because the War on Drugs article's opposing view section was in reality a messy point/counterpoint, and because of the standing suggestion, I moved the Drug legalization article's well written pro-legalization arguments to the War on Drugs article as a replacement. The point/counterpoint section dealt almost entirely with legalization, as do the sections I replaced it with. I contend that the opposing view of the War on Drugs is not "No War on Drugs;" it's drug legalization. Basically I see the Drug legalization page's content as describing an almost reaction to the War on Drugs, which, in this article's definition, encompasses modern drug laws. If the two subjects are completely separate concepts, why did both pages devote entire sections to each other? - Defunkt 06:26, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm not going to defend the presence of pro-legalization arugments on War on Drugs or try to say that the point counterpoint area belonged in either it or Drug Legalization. I call it biased because the very title War on Drugs has a political slant to it and implies information about a subset of the topic as a whole. How about this... A largely merged article titled Drug Laws with sub-sections on the war on drugs and its rise as a political concept in the 80s as well as anti-drug movements prior to it. A seperate article with a summary of the arguments and counter arguments linked from it, and some meta-text either in the article or in the discussion page advising against continuing to pontificate unless one has genuinely new information and not just another link to a study that supports a favored viewpoint. --Jherico 07:32, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

So you are suggesting we do away with a 'War on Drugs' article altogether, correct? I see from your user page that you're from the United States. Do you agree, then, that the War on Drugs is a proper noun and a very real thing? Because I don't think that's debatable. It is not a subsection or conceptual byproduct of our drug laws; it is something that directly affects legislature, law enforcement, and many lives every day (I know it exists in other countries, but I'm from my personal experience). I think many would agree that the War on Drugs article should remain the primary source for information about the War on Drugs. But the article, in the interest of neutrality, needs to represent the opposing view: drug legalization. As far as I know, and please correct me if I'm wrong, there is no "please stop the war on drugs but keep drugs illegal" movement. Instead, the primary opposing force is support for legalization. The War on Drugs is a not insignificant article while the Drug legalization article seems less than required when the well written information presented in it fits perfectly in this article. As far as the point-counterpoint listing goes, I have no opinion on what happens to that information as long as it is not represented as the primary opposing view in the War on Drugs article. If you feel it's important to include that list, albeit a little better formatted, in a separate page then by all means. It might be wise to include a link to the new page from the War on Drugs article, too. However, I think the War on Drugs article as it stands is well written and does a good job of explaining the War on Drugs as well as the opposition. - Defunkt 19:49, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I think you've mistaken the intentions of the previous poster. The idea is not to get rid of the article, but rather to rename it to "Drug laws" or something similar ("Prohibition (drugs)" seems more apt to me), and merge in any other pages that have duplicated material. I think this makes sense, since the term "War on Drugs" was coined by Nixon in 1971, while the entry quite rightly deals with the topic of drug laws as whole, including pre-1971. Your disagreement then lies in how much pro-v-against material should go there, Jherico seems to say nothing, Defunkt seems to say keep the text merged from "Drug legalization" and move the pt-counterpt to a new page. Personally, while I agree with most of it, I think the pro-legalization material is way too long. Remember this is an encyclopedia: stick to the facts. The facts are that people have opinions. The page is about drug laws, not about people's opinions on them, so a few sentences at most about people's opinions is all that is justified. So I'd argue for a separate page called "Views on drug prohibition", with both the text from "Drug legalization" and the point counterpoint stuff in it. It could also include a non-point-form exposition of the pro-prohibition viewpoint if anyone is offering to write one. --Rkundalini 03:59, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The problem with the merge is that the article is seriously out NPOV-wise. History and current efforts is great, but the swathe of anti-arguments isn't sufficiently balanced. Some pro-WOD arguments need to arrive here. --Giles Robertson

Split

So what do you all think of the idea fleshed out above? I am proposing to

  • Rename this article to Prohibition (drugs), or Drug legislation
  • Split off Arguments for Legalization to a new linked entry called Arguments for and against drug prohibition
  • Paste the point-counterpoint stuff (Talk:War_on_Drugs/Arguments) on the end of Arguments for and against drug prohibition
  • Place a note requesting changes improving NPOV on Arguments for and against drug prohibition

See above for reasoning concerning the split, and the naming of the new entries. Note, this is not just undoing the merge made above, it is making a cleaner distinction between the undisputed facts/history and the arguments/opinions, whereas previously both articles carried a bit of both. If there are no serious objections after a couple of days I'll go ahead. -- Rkundalini 23:49, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

going, going ... -- Rkundalini 05:50, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

gone! -- Rkundalini 02:37, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I like the third idea. It is important for people to know that this is a debatable issue. --Stilanas 12:25, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Post view of split

How has this worked out?

  • Perhaps Prohibition (drugs) should become History of Drug Prohibition, or a more politically correct title such as History of chemical substance use prohibition although I think that is unneccessary.

-- Eric Urban 7:05 PM 11/28/04(CST)

I don't really think Prohibition (drugs) should restrict itself to history. It should contain everything uncontroversial and factual there is to say on the topic without going into detail about reasons for it or arguments against it. I think it still needs a lot of work to achieve this, though. Rkundalini 06:59, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think that Drug legalization should redirect to Prohibition (drugs). It should instead direct to the Arguments for and against drug prohibition (or something along those lines). --Thoric 17:12, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)