Legalizing drugs cuts crime in two ways. Directly, by reclassifying a bunch of formerly criminal drug users as just drug users. But also indirectly: it makes them cheap, which makes them unattractive targets for organized crime. If western politicians could just get over their taboos about drug use and let idiots stuff themselves with whatever drugs they like, not just nicotine and alcohol, we would make the US richer and safer.
And this isn't a hypothetical: more than 12 years ago, Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs -- from marijuana to heroin -- and plowed the money saved by no longer jailing addicts into treating them. The result has been lower rates of addiction and HIV infection, and higher rates of treatment:
Now possession is a misdemeanor, like a traffic violation, punishable by a fine or community service, and accompanied by a screening for risk factors of addiction, with encouragement to enter treatment programs:
It hasn't been a magic bullet, but nor has it been a disaster. And what is a disaster is the current policy: drug money fuels endless violence and murder inside the US and across central and southern America.
The social fabric of my home country (Trinidad & Tobago) is being torn apart by violence from drug trafficking, and there's nothing we can do about it as long as the amount of money to be made by risking the drug trade is so enormous. We can't lower the price, because we are not the market: the US is.
I wish more people in the US were aware that their paying $100/gram for the occasional fun evening is paying for murder on the streets of my home town. And I wish more people realized they don't have to stop taking cocaine; they just have to lower the damn price.
You missed a third way, and possibly the most important. When something goes wrong in an illegal activity, the justice/legal system can't be used to address the situation. For example if someone gets shortchanged, fails to pay, or supplies product of a different quality than expected.
Having to get justice outside of the legal system is a driver behind violence and other additional illegal acts.
I wonder if the "third way" here isn't more "by dropping prices and making drugs more affordable many drug users are less likely to engage in petty crimes to raise money to pay for their habits"
EDIT: Should probably emphasize "addicts" to differentiate from recreational users.
What I wrote about isn't just the end users, or them committing crimes. But even as an end user, if your dealer shortchanges you or gives you counterfeit currency, or even whacks you over the head, you have no real recourse via the legal system. You'd have to take matters into your own hands. Similarly if the dealer has things like that happen to them, or even "contract" violations with their supplier, they too have to take matters into their own hands.
> If western politicians could just get over their taboos about drug use
This is a bit naive. I don't think taboos are responsible for drug prohibition. I think it's the economic interests of industries which benefit from drug prohibition, like police, prisons, alcohol, and pharmaceuticals.
You didn't deserve to be downvoted for this comment. The taboos may keep these things in place, but we have to ask how the taboos got their in the first place. In the case of cannabis it was largely as a result of DuPont being unable to compete with industrial hemp, and leverage a little racist fear-mongering by borrowing the Mexican term marijuana to make it appear extra dangerous. Take a look at the film Reefer Madness from the 30s to see the ridiculous propaganda that they were feeding to the public.
I think you got the original causes right on, but I don't think it's taboos that keep them in place; I think it's a jobs thing (for cops and DEA agents).
I suspect the police force would dislike being put in this category. But in general, I can't really agree with you. It's hard to deny that in Western culture there have been moral/religious taboos around drug use for centuries. People act strangely on drugs and that quite frankly scares the heck out of many people. Once laws are in place all sorts of unintended consequences occur around beneficiaries (ie Hippies!) but the root cause is this long running taboo around drug use. That's why this is so powerful to me.
The legalization argument has strong undertones of free-market, common-sense economics to it. Solutions where government gets out of the way are not typically favored by government.
To modify your point:
Better question: why does $_GOVERNMENT so frequently think the right answer to a problem is $_GOVERNMENT_ACTION?
Examples include: $_HUGE_SPENDING_PROGRAM, $_HUGE_SOCIAL_WELFARE_PROGRAM, taxpayer-funded bailout of $_INDUSTRY, massive new regulations for $_INDUSTRY, price controls on $_PRODUCT, etc.
Maybe it's simply the general distrust of the individual and free markets by those in government, combined with voters who believe what politicians promise regarding that same government.
To the contrary, legalization has the implication of regulation, taxation, and increased government oversight. Politicians fight it because they believe it is politically expedient for them to do so.
As it stands, you have the criminal justice system attempting to shut down all behavior using the coercive police power of government. This is the strongest force that government has over the people: depriving citizens of life, liberty, or property.
Legalization means allowing the people to choose to engage in an activity, thus shifting to the permissive oversight role of government. In this case, the citizen has the implicit trust of the government in that he may act as he chooses toward the previously-banned item. If this second route involves more parts of government, so be it, but at least it returns some autonomy / choice / liberty to the individual.
Depending on what politicians do, we may be stuck in a bad in-between state where you have the full police state going strong to prevent non-authorized dealing as well as the oversight / regulation function.
I fully trust that the politicians will continue to pursue power at any cost, including the liberty of the people and the sovereignty of the nation.
Exactly. The reason they fight it is because talking about legalizing drugs is a sure way to lose votes.
Opposite of how we all like to think of the tech industry, politics are slow, clunky, and bureaucratic — for good reason. It takes a long time to go from "random HN/reddit commenters talking about legalizing drugs" to "politicians talking about legalizing drugs."
While all three are definitely expensive, I'm not entirely sold that you can compare weed legalization/war on drugs with war on terror.
Drug trade has a very tangible economic driver that can be modified with legalization.
For terrorism, or other warfare methods, there isn't a simple economic driver you can attack. People are struggling for power and resources. You simply cannot make everyone happy.
You of course have the choice of simply withdrawing from the struggle, but as soon as you start doing this there really isn't an end in sight. This is not a choice US can take without dire consequences.
In wars between states, you can negotiate, but in wars of ideology/religion, that's not so easy.
> but as soon as you start doing this there really isn't an end in sight.
That's based on the flawed assumption that people just are out to get you.
People are out to get the US to a large extent because of how much the US has been meddling all over the place.
Stop the one sided support for Israel, and stop supporting Middle Eastern dictators, and don't invade any more countries, and a large part of the recruiting-basis for islamic fundamentalists for actions against the US would start falling away pretty quickly.
> In wars between states, you can negotiate, but in wars of ideology/religion, that's not so easy.
It might not be so easy, but it is far more effective than military actions that breed new generations of people who hate you for ever person you kill - whether a legitimate target or "collateral damage".
Ok, that's pretty obviously a fraud. But what it made me start thinking is if you can take an empty plastic handle and a radio antennae and sell millions of dollars of them ... there must be a ton of stuff that doesn't really do what its supposed to but people buy anyway.
True liberty: the right to do things which others consider immoral but are only self-victimizing or victimless has been a long struggle in the "free" world, not just in the US. The porn filtering fiasco in the UK is just another example in the same line. There are always people who think there should be an official moral staandard which applies to personal behavior.
Moreover, the typical political response to problems these days is to throw money, regulations, or laws at it to force it to be fixed. It's hard for politicians to realize that society and culture can't simply be commanded around.
Another way it cuts crime dramatically: it neuters the drug cartels by removing at least half their market (plausibly a lot more, as their infrastructure including manufacturing would be eroded). That didn't seem to fall into your two examples.
At least 60,000 people were murdered by organized crime just in Felipe Calderon's six year term.
One more way: by legalizing and taxing it, there properly should be more money available for treatment, helping to eliminate dangerous lifestyles that often cross over into crime.
There are so many more direct and higher order effects of drug prohibition, just in regards to crime.
1: It gives easy revenue for criminals.
2: It puts many people into the "criminal" category, making them much less willing to interact with law enforcement and making it more likely that they will be willing to consort with true criminals.
3: It takes away resources from the criminal justice system, and further perverts it as well. It breeds the sort of police officer who is unskilled at forming a bond with the community they serve and with basic policework and instead focuses on making drug busts. It also breeds the sort of "assumed guilty" plea bargain dominated prosecutor model.
4: As a consequence of 1 and 2, the cognitive dissonance of the law banning victimless drug use causes many police officers to lose their respect for the law as well. And because of the wealth of criminal drug dealing enterprises there becomes a natural synergy which promotes police corruption.
5: Similarly, due to drug forfeiture laws it becomes possible for the way that police undertake law enforcement activities to dramatically affect their own budgets and resources. Naturally police organizations tend to be drawn to the activities which provide the most revenue, drug busts, to the detriment of other policing.
6: Because of the drug/criminal connection combined with rampant police crack downs due to the above factors drug busts can often be dangerous, which pushes police officers even farther away from a healthy relationship with their communities and increasingly toward a militarized relationship which spills over into every citizen/police interaction and further poisons the relationship.
"If western politicians could just get over their taboos about drug use and let idiots stuff themselves with whatever drugs they like, not just nicotine and alcohol, we would make the US richer and safer."
Seriously? I'm not sure if you're saying to legalize all drugs, but that's how I'm interpreting this....
Legalizing addictive drugs will make us safer & richer? I feel like if we legalized heroin, we'd have junkies all over the place running around stealing whatever isn't bolted down just to get the next high. It affects far more than just the user, it affects the families, the kids, the neighborhood, the town, etc. Even if we taxed it, those taxes would likely go right back into having more security: police officers, hospitals, etc.
Sure pot might be more or less harmless, but letting people stuff themselves with any drug of choice seems very wrong. There are some drugs that I think should absolutely be restricted very tightly.
I am absolutely saying to legalize all drugs, even the incredibly addictive ones. Spend a fraction of the money you spend now on locking up drug users to treatment of addicts.
If drugs were all legal tomorrow, would you run out and try heroin? No. Most people don't want hard drugs, and the people who do can already get them, and those people aren't all becoming drug addicts, otherwise Burning Man would be a city of 50,000 hopeless junkies every year.
Drug addiction -- like alcoholism -- happens only to a fraction of users, and in both cases factors like poverty, genetics and bad home situations are contributing factors.
Drug addiction absolutely does affect more than just the user, but the effect of legalizing drugs (again, not hypothetically, see Portugal) is less addiction, not more, and better treatment for those who do become addicted.
Making it illegal doesn't stop those who will use it. It didn't stop my brother, who ended up dying from a heroin overdose.
But legal alcohol was always available and my mother was able to drink herself to death. Legally. So let me call the cops on you for having beer in your house and kick in your doors and kill your dog and hall your ass off to jail for your protection.
Why would heroin junkies run all over the place stealing stuff if they could get heroin at for low enough prices that it'd be easy to finance on a normal job?
And yes, a heroin junkie can hold down a normal job especially if they have a steady supply of heroin. Many do. The biggest problem with living a normal life for a heroin junkie is the time and effort spent chasing down heroin supplies and cash.
You might very well know heroin junkies without knowing it - someone with sufficient cash to not have to worry will most of the time appear completely "normal".
That's not to say that heroin doesn't have a lot of problems, but clean heroin, used with clean syringes, is still fairly safe. What isn't safe is the alternative - what we see today: products that have been mixed with all kinds of crap, of varying strengths, dirty syringes, and price levels that drive users to crime because it's the only way they can afford their habit.
And do you really think that lots of people would suddenly decide "oh, cool, heroin is legal now - lets shoot up"? Heroin junkies are hardly top of the totem pole, and being able to go to a pharmacy and buy it would hardly make it cooler.
What affects the families, the kids, the neighbourhoods the most is when we treat users as criminals because of their addiction, and force many of them to carry out crimes to meet needs they have minimal control over, as well as make it risky for them to seek help when they need it without facing legal threats.
"I feel like if we legalized heroin, we'd have junkies all over the place running around stealing whatever isn't bolted down just to get the next high."
Why? Do you know anyone who doesn't use heroin now, just because it's illegal?
Highly addictive opiods such as percocet, oxycodone, codeine, etc. are legal (although regulated). Many of the risks associated with heroin use derive from its illegality, in the sense that people use heroin which has unknown purity (i.e. can be cut with other drugs), use unsterilized needles, and take unsafe dosages (i.e. there is no physician regulating the amount they consume nor preventing addiction).
My point is not that heroin is a safe drug, or that anyone should take it. But drug laws are applied with incredible inconsistency. Cocaine, which is potentially addictive and dangerous, is a Schedule II drug, while marijuana and even hallucinogens such as LSD are Schedule I drugs (meaning they have strong potential for addiction and no recognized medical use, which is simply untrue). Addictive opiods marketed as prescription drugs, meanwhile, are legal with regulation. Not to mention alcohol and tobacco, two highly addictive and unhealthy drugs which are perfectly legal.
A pet peeve of mine since you mentioned codeine, that neatly shows just how fucked up government regulation in this area can be:
There's good evidence that restrictions on quantity of acetaminophen/paracetamol sold in a single transaction reduces overdose deaths. E.g. in the UK it is estimated that restrictions to 16 (in regular shops) or 32 tablets per sale (in pharmacies) has saved 600+ lives since 1998. There are still 100+ deaths a year from it, though.
Yet the sale of pure codeine is substantially more heavily regulated than the sale of co-codamol and other variations of paracetamol/acetaminophen or ibuprofen mixed with codeine at ratios that means that anyone with a serious codeine addiction finding themselves unable to get a prescription or find a dealer for pure codeine might find the mixed products available over the counter as their only source at times. Yet chances are they will have to take a potentially dangerous dose of other painkillers to get their codeine high.
So, we have evidence that people often intentionally or accidentally die of acetaminophen/paracetamol as well as ibuprofen overdoses. Yet we consider it acceptable to require codeine to be mixed with these (and other) drugs for over the counter sales.
Codeine alone is one of the safest opiates we know, with a substantial safety margin for use, but also highly addictive, and so chances are a subset of users will get sufficiently addicted to be unable to properly control their usage, even in the face of taking substantial risks.
In other words: Fuck off and die a painful death if you get addicted enough to fail to manage to resist (or pay attention to) taking too much of the other drugs it's mixed with. Oh, and when you die, remember it's because we intentionally ensured you had a supply that was effectively mixed with poison.
That codeine addiction is often the result of its extensive use as a prescription painkiller and in hospitals exactly because it is so safe on its own just makes the whole thing more offensive.
"I feel like if we legalized heroin, we'd have junkies all over the place running around stealing whatever isn't bolted down just to get the next high. It affects far more than just the user, it affects the families, the kids, the neighborhood, the town, etc. Even if we taxed it, those taxes would likely go right back into having more security: police officers, hospitals, etc."
While it sounds really appealing, there is no evidence to support this. What there is evidence for however (see Portugal), is that decriminalizing drugs and advocating treatment programs will lead to fewer infections, crimes, and even fewer addicts.
I mean we can argue all day long over the emotional aspect, but real-life data is hard to argue with: Decriminalization (along with rehabilitation for those who want it) reduces crime. Full stop.
A dose of heroin costs a nickel. You don't have to steal very much to accumulate a nickel. The reason that junkies are thieves are the prices caused by prohibition.
Legalizing alcohol will make us safer & richer? I feel like if we legalized alcohol, we'd have drunks all over the place abusing their partners and killing people with intoxicated driving.
Do you think laws deter needle drug addicts? If not, getting rid of the laws isn't going to increase the number of needle drug addicts. And that's on top of studies showing treatment is much more effective and cheaper for harm reduction.
It doesn't matter. The real cost of heroin, once supply is up and running in the huge, safe, FDA controlled factories that makes all the other pills we take it will cost less than a bum can get in an hour. It is completely generic. How much does an Aspirin cost?
> I feel like if we legalized heroin, we'd have junkies all over the place running around stealing whatever isn't bolted down just to get the next high.
Diacetylmorphine, brand name Heroin, costs about $0.25 a day, or $1 per day for the pharmacy grade injectable version.
Junkies are called that because the original Heroin addicts wandered around trading junk, bits of scrap and garbage that could be sold to junk traders to get the pennies it took to support their habit.
The present high price of Heroin is a deliberate policy decision. It's a transfer payment from your stolen TV to the drug cartels, in much the same way that Social Security is a transfer payment from your employer to your grandma.
Is there any hard proof that marijuana prices have been affected by the availability of medical marijuana? Further north they certainly haven't (medical marijuana sells for more), and the same people end up distributing both kinds to consumers.
Taking a quick look at crowdsourced prices, weed in CA looks to be about $200/oz, which is not very cheap.
edit: $100 a gram.... what?! Are you talking about cocaine?
$200/oz is hard proof that medical marijuana(MMJ) has driven down prices. I live in Colorado and used to be friends with the proprietor of an MMJ dispensay and he used to buy it for $4000 a pound or $250 an ounce and that was their per pound wholesale price. It was common when the MMJ businesses were starting up in CO for dispensaries to sell for ~$400 an ounce and grams at $20 which I believe was mostly comparable with street prices. The prices were driven down as more and more dispensaries entered the market and the competition became more fierce as a result of the market saturation to the point where they were advertising sub-$10 grams and sub-$200 ounces.
That $200/oz price may not be cheap to you, but it is half of what it used to cost and less than half of what these hippies can make selling it in New York.
"$100/gram" was just a random number; I have absolutely no idea what any drugs cost. But yes, I was referring to cocaine, which is the one that causes the most trouble for my country. You guys grow your own weed.
While I agree with your points, I wonder if legalization temporarily boosts other types of crime, as former "criminals" seek other forms of easy money to maintain their lifestyle and social status. Drug dealing is a form of gainful employment for many who have few other skills.
American prohibition covered that ground. There's a short spasm by organized crime as they fight to stay alive, and then the system goes into cardiac arrest. Ideally you have a government that simultaneously hammers organized crime at the same time their funding is drying up.
I have heard this argument a lot and I don't buy it, because if there were some other thing they could do to make more money easier than drugs why not do that now? I mean it is not like they couldn't stop trading drugs today if that is what they wanted.
Sure but in that case the value of the crime goes down (either because it doesn't make so much money or because it is harder or more dangerous) in which case (law of supply and demand) the supply of criminals goes down too.
And which crimes should they go for? Guns aren't needed when you don't need to defend a territory. Smuggling would be an obvious next step, but what should they smuggle? Diamants? Counterfeit goods? Women?
All those are much more difficult to smuggle than drugs and the price per kilo is much, much less so they would have to invent new ways of smuggling. At present drug prizes it makes sense to build one way semi-submercibles (or even submarines) to get the stuff from Columbia to the US, I doubt the risk is worth it if you are to smuggle counterfeit goods at a few dollars a pound.
I want to know if Portuguese emergency rooms (and hospitals in general) are having to deal with more drug addicts and drug-related acute health problems (overdoses are only one variety) and drug-related complications to existing health problems.
Everyone knows about overdoses. But if you take opioids to the point you become physically dependent and then you need surgery, the anesthesia provider has to work around a body with a different (narrower!) dose-response curve to anesthetics: Normal people have a broad range of doses which provide pain control but don't kill them. A long-term addict has a very narrow range between "Not feeling it" and "Heart just stopped."
That's just one example. I'm sure there are others. How are Portuguese healthcare providers dealing with this?
There may be something that the United States can do to help your country in this area, but there are also things that your country can do to help itself. Why have your lawmakers decriminalized or legalized the growth and distribution of these controlled substances?
Supply and demand. Your response only tackles half of the problem - demand - while ignoring the half that hits closer to your home.
I lived for years right by the Haight entrance to GGP. I wouldn't call the participants in the drug scene there hippies. There were a lot more crusties and gutter punk types, along with stereotypical thug dudes and tweakers. A lot of people were really aggro and there was some sort of fight nearly every day. A friend of mine would buy her pot over there and her dealer was a clean cut looking late 20s guy from the avenues, who used a cane because he had been shot in the leg. Gun violence didn't seem very hippie to me, either.
One of the odder things to me about the area (everything was odd to some degree, including my presence there) was that there was so much drug activity right next to the police station.
The more stereotypical flower children hang out inside the park a bit at Hippie Hill. (Some SF old-timers use the word hippie for any sort of 'street punk'.)
I feel like you missed the tongue-in-cheek aspect of this article.
It's essentially a list of positive changes stemming from legalizing marijuana under the guise of "unintended consequences" (the poor hippies!) that will also seem beneficial to many.
The funny thing is that the farms that supply dispensaries need labor and often pay under the table. One of these kids could make a few hundred bucks a day for a week trimming and then use that cash to do a fair bit of traveling. Nobody is getting disenfranchised here, it's just a bit for the article to get your attention.
EDIT: What is with people deleting comments lately? So you're comprehension on a subject wasn't perfect and sparked a discussion, big deal! It's nothing to be embarrassed about, people make mistakes. Look at my past comments, I say stupid crap all the time and nobody has taken my keyboard away....
I didn't take the article as tongue-in-cheek, I took it as a serious list of the positive benefits of legalizing weed, and took it as an opportunity to soapbox for the benefits of legalizing everything else.
That is what it was about, but didn't you notice it was written from the perspective that legalizing is bad because it's hurting this group of people? There's a significant dose of irony here.
> Unlike that issue, the main issue is whether the weed is harmful to its users.
I am pretty sure if (I'd love to say when but let's be realistic) we get proper legalization (as opposed to decriminalization), we will have to start considering regulation on smoking marijuana just like we need to regulate smoking tobacco. Perhaps not as much as smoking tobacco because we know that second-hand tobacco smoke can cause cancer but there might be further discussion on how far this freedom takes us. We might still force people to go on smoke breaks to smoke rather than let them smoke at their desks.
Do you know if the smoke "sticks" to the paint on the walls like tobacco smoke tends to do? Is comparison to tobacco even fair? Sorry, I have to resort to asking others as I don't have much personal experience in this matter.
I re-read that page now that I'm home, it doesn't say what I thought it did re relative tar levels of MJ vs tobacco. But it does make the obvious conclusion that people smoke less pot if it's more potent, and inhale less tar as a result.
Must MJ smokers I know in Cali actually don't light up any more. They use some sort of steaming device that basically transfers the active ingredient into the air without the ash and burning....
they're not "steaming devices" - they do not use steam but rather just hot air. they're called vaporizers, and what they do is cause sublimation of THC into a vapor, which is inhaled along with hot air. this eliminates the presence of tar, which is a byproduct of combustion.
There is probably some differences but most of the carcinogens should be in both. A consequence of burning plant material AFAIK. Maybe somebody better versed in the subject can chime in.
Hm, I don't think so. While it's true that inhaling burned plant material is never a good thing, there is no evidence so far that smoking cannabis causes cancer.
Search for Dr. Donald Tashkin who has done extensive studies on this subject.
Afaik tobacco smoke is also radioactive due to phosphate fertilizer [1][2] so I assume this is also a major factor leading to its carcinogenic properties.
I think it's extremely interesting. At least in California, hippies have had a lot to do with the advocacy of weed as a benign recreational drug over several decades, so they deserve a share of the credit for the quasi-legal status the drug now has. They took on most of the legal risk and while exemplifying the positive aspects (by being 'mostly harmless,' so to speak) so that you could enjoy this freedom, whether or not you personally choose to exercise it.
What is "the situation," though? The legacy of hippies is much, much more than just "the kids who wear those clothes and hang out in that area." Someone mentioned that the post was tongue in cheek, but it reads to me more like tone-deaf.
It's like basing commentary on the current state of internet business on people who have the "Bill Gates in the 70s" Poindexter look.
It's funny you use that analogy, because the hippie subculture is a bit more complex than just scruffy kids in hemp shirts.
As a very very brief capsule summary, the 'hippie trail' that started up in the 60s features stops in India, particularly Goa - a bit more westernized than other parts of India, nice weather, very very cheap, and so on. In the late 80s and early 90s the hippie community there turned on to a subset of industrial/electronic music and melded it with a flavor of middle eastern music (thanks to the Moorish conquest of the Iberian peninsula a few centuries prior to the Portuguese colonization of Goa) to produce a musical fusion that became known as Goa Trance. The Levantine musical influence combined with fairly high-tech electronics shortly made Goa a very popular destination for Israelis who had just completed their military service, and Israeli musicians who had a lot of the musical heritage at their fingertips became major players within that scene, resulting in distinct sub-genres.
Meanwhile, the music and the small industry of all-night parties and record labels etc. spread to other popular destinations such as London, Amsterdam and San Francisco, and Tokyo (which also happen to be foci of audio/synthesizer engineering excellence). I made a whole bunch of Israeli friends in the 90s who came to SF because it was part of that music scene while also being in close proximity to Silicon Valley; almost all of them joined or founded startups. I know for sure some of them read Hacker News.
Now, I wouldn't say that the current state of Internet business depends on hippies any more than it depends on Bill Gates' Poindexter look, but there's a closer connection between hippies and the tech scene than you might imagine. While I'm not a hippy myself, as an electronic musician/audio pro/hacker I think the hippie movement has had an important rule in cultural and technological cross-fertilization.
For another take on that "What the dormouse said" by John Markoff that traces a whole lot of the early beginnings of Silicon Valley culture back to 60's and 70's counter culture, including extensive LSD and pot experimentation (in some cases on corporate time, encouraged by people in charge...) and participation in the anti war movements etc..
I for one will weep no tears whatsoever if the ending of easy money for people dealing drugs causes the end of hippy culture. The cost-benefit analysis of "worldwide drug war" versus "some chilled-out kids living in SF" is pretty simple.
how is pro-weed zealotry stupid? it's essentially saying that people's lives are being ruined, staggering amounts of government money being wasted, and entire classes of criminal being created by trying to ban something that (a) shouldn't be banned in the first place and (b) cannot be banned effectively anyway.
if the zealots are all on the wrong side, that just shifts the entire centre of gravity of the discussion (see the overton window for more on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)
The original comment is deleted by now, but it jumped into arguing whether weed is harmful or not, which is totally orthogonal to what the article discusses, to then conclude that it isn't and because of that it should be legal, without backing any of the arguments and just using HN as a soapbox. This is zealotry.
I feel like the topics Priceonomics covers have been getting less interesting over time. I suppose that's natural for a content engine, but this piece left me feeling sort of disenchanted.
I'm used to graphs and visualizations on Priceonomics, and there was a distinct lack of hard data from this piece. It felt much more subjective than what I'm used to.
In short, I don't doubt the conclusion, but this doesn't feel like a normal priceonomics piece. Just my $.02.
Yes. It's not just the decline of quality analysis/execution, but the actual topics are becoming dumber (and more overtly political). I wish they had a way to filter based on bylines. Generally the articles by Rohin Dhar are awesome.
If you use NewsBlur to subscribe to their feed, you can use the "intelligence trainer" feature to filter based on author, tags, or phrases in titles -- works quite well almost always. (Not sure if other feed readers have the same capability.)
The genius of the blog was taking on the surface boring topics and, through quality analysis, doing something awesome. That might be hard to identify programmatically.
Imagine for a moment if meth were legalized -- production would move beyond shady basements with lax safety measures, distribution would move beyond inner-city gangs and other unpleasant cartels, consumption would move beyond lonely apartments and back-alleys, and storage would move beyond dirty needles and shoddy pipes (it could even be refined into pills).
Now realize that the entire pharmaceuticals industry is born from this desire for safe production, distribution, consumption, and storage of drugs -- and the hypocrisy of selective drug prohibition.
If all drugs were legal, would people still take meth?
I suspect meth is abundant now because of logistical reasons i.e. it can be manufactured in the country it is sold, using precursors that can also be obtained there (legally or otherwise), rather than having to grow plants (coca, poppies, marijuana) which can be seized whilst growing or being imported from overseas.
A good drug policy would make meth seem like the bad idea that it is by providing superior alternatives.
Before prohibition, dextroamphetamine was vastly more popular than methamphetamine. I'd love to see a return to the good old days of dextroamphetamine in every corner store. It would save so many people from meth and coke.
I know I'm treading on very thin water here, but meth in and of itself isn't terrible. A small dosage will give a similar reaction as Ritalin. Were meth legal, Silicon Valley would be drowning in it, and not for 3 night binges.
Just wanted to point out that drugs are insufflated, smoked, or taken intravenously so that the chemicals enter the bloodstream and hit the brain quickly (so I'm not sure tablet meth would be a big hit).
Meth is a very destructive addictive substance. Legalized, it would addict and harm more people than pain pills, and not really add any benefit to society or individuals. The gang violence from keeping it illegal isn't too bad now, is it?
It is always a rough transition when government changes its policy to one of more morality and fairness. Protected business interests who have shaped their business model around shitty laws now are at a disadvantage to businesses that can spring up around new rules. That doesn't mean our laws shouldn't change for the better.
I don't think you're supposed to care. I just think its an interesting observation for a couple reasons.
One, there's modest historical significance to the hippie movement, especially in SF. Hippie culture dying out is news worthy.
Two (less interesting, more obvious), is to note that people who sold drugs illegally are hurt by legalization. That's not given, it's possible that people who sold drugs illegally would be the same people who sold drugs legally .. but that doesn't seem to be the case (or more interesting, the profit margin got squashed).
Did it die out, or did it just go mainstream? I see organic food, recycling programs, yoga, and co-ops everywhere. The local Safeway has a cooler full of kombucha bottles on display twenty feet from the front door. People are more likely to frown at you for smoking cigarettes than marijuana. We may not look or dress like hippies from the '70s but many of the the social trends they pioneered seem to be more popular and successful than ever.
As others have pointed out, I think the article is probably somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Additionally, I doubt that the legalization of marijuana would actually eliminate hippies altogether -- it only hurts the subset of them that made their living selling illegal marijuana.
I don't think the article asking for your sympathy. Its showing (rather than telling) how effective legalization is and how many positives have come as a result
Where is the post about people working for an entire year to go on vacation for a few weeks?
Yes, rough life these guys, selling plants for extremely high prices so they can do fun stuff with the money they took.
Almost sounds like capitalists.
I agree, but there's a qualitative difference here, in that the hippies that are the subject of this story don't tend to kill or even beat up people. I've never sold any weed, but I've known enough hippies to recognize that they're basically benign black market traders rather than organized criminals, and the fact that they are sidelined in a new market is a problem for them.
Lots of people (who were not hippies) were interested in buying weed, while hippies were happy to supply the willingness to take a moderate legal risk. However, non-hippies aren't all that interested in other things that hippies like, such as hemp weaving or handicrafts - at least, not to the extent of providing hippies with any sort of livable income. So the choice is to either supply other, more risky markets - in other states, or with 'harder' and potentially more dangerous drugs - or find some other kind of employment. But other kinds of employment aren't really compatible with being a hippie, and while I don't think that's a fantastic thing to aspire to I respect that some people would rather live simpler, non-materialistic lives, or part of their their lives, and this is increasingly hard to do in a society that fetishizes private property.
Except the actual folks around the Golden Gate Park area do beat up, stab, shoot, and often kill people. These people aren't hippies in any sense of the word. They're low-grade gangsters.
War on drugs[1] is a cure far worse than the illness it tries to cure:
It's one thing to idealise the hippie culture of the 60s, it's another to bend the facts of what GGP panhandle neighbourhood is really like to fit that narrative. I am sure there are actual hippies out there, but it's unlikely that they're in SF or even Berkeley.
(Background: spent sometime time in Inner Sunset in ~2009-2010 and walked to Haight; know a lot of folks who also attended USF Law in that neighbourhood).
[1] I'll also note that by drugs I generally don't mean marijuana. I have zero interest in marijuana, but to put it in the same category as heroin, cocaine, or meth seems odd. We do need to decriminalize the "harder" drugs as well for both moral and pragmatic reasons -- bulk of drug war violence (especially in the US border states and south of the US border) is not over marijuana.
Obviously I'm generalizing, and I quite agree that there are 'low level gangsters' as well (though I think you're rather overstating your case). Not trying to one-up you, but I've lived almost 20 years in the Bay Area, most of that time in SF and most of that in the Sunset. I'm intimately familiar with the the Haight, hippie subculture etc.
Actually a depressingly large amount of the drug war or Mexican border violence IS now over marijuana; specifically over smuggling routes, and most of the pot violence in California is Mexican or Mexican Mafia related. The demand is so big that the cartels got into it, and they can capture a lot more of the value than with cocaine.
My gut feeling is that it hasn't happened yet because the total payoff (I'm talking money) is worse than the status quo.
The problem with substance consumption is that it's an asymmetric negotiation. The consumer is the weakest link (for obvious reasons), so the dealers have the upper hand. You don't even need to look at illegal drugs, just look at pharma industry for an example of that.
Legalization only benefits the consumer, who have access to a better product at a lower price and zero risk. Also, creates low wage jobs. To everyone else involved (and that's a lot of people: farmers, cooks, dealers, truck drivers, cops, politicians, even consumers who sell to friends), it's the most interesting that it stays illegal.
The tendency with weed legalization is for dealers to start moving a better high, not go bankrupt. The tendency of consumers is to look for a better high also. In the places where weed is legalized, you now have higher THC breeds and hash oil. It's a forever regulation struggle (are these harmful? can it still be classified as pot?).
Legalizing weed will certainly affect organized crime in Mexico but it won't be significant. There are plenty of other drugs and other criminal activities from which organized crime gets income. Other important thing to consider is that Narco Culture is pretty strong in Mexico. This people will not stop being involved in criminal activities just because their income dropped. Moreover there will always be people willing to become involved in criminal activities, not to become rich but to make a living wage.
Decriminalizing all drugs in the US (with substantial effort spent on education, anti-addiction, treatment, etc.), should go a long way toward cutting off their revenue. Combine that with immigration reforms, and better governance in Mexico (which should be easier when the cartels can't bribe everyone in government), and it seems like things would get better. Not overnight, but over 5-10 years.
I've long felt this way as well, but increasingly I'm becoming convinced that the narcos would just refocus on coke, meth, heroin, slavery, etc. It's not as if startups are the only entities that can 'pivot'...
That is my understanding of what happened after the repeal of alcohol prohibition in the USA. The original prohibition created a significant amount of criminal infrastructure and faced with alcohol no longer being insanely profitable they switched to a variety of other enterprises, like hard drugs, prostitution, etc.
I recall one article put most of the blame for the rise of organized crime in the US on Prohibition and that it wasn't really the dedicated work of the FBI that stamped out the mafia in the US, it was the aging and eventual death of the entire generation that had risen to wealth and power during those times.
It looks live we've really set ourselves up for long-term pain with the drug war, even with total de-criminilization like Portugal has done, it will probably be at least another generation before the worst effects of the criminal organizations fade away. By which time enough people will have forgotten the price of the drug war and be gung ho to start some new socially-destructive campaign.
So far, decriminalization only happened on small countries that are mainly consumers, not producers. In this aspect, de-criminalization is more a commercial policy (fostering a regulated local industry vs. "importing") than a social one, since it doesn't fix the social injustices that allow traffic to happen in the first place, just deflects it.
It's similar to how all manufacturing happens in China because it's a way for countries to export their social issues and environmental impact to another country that is willing to take it.
Suppose that was true, then why wouldn't they just pivot now and make more money?
If you think they would make less money under the new scheme then that would be a good thing because it would lower the benefit of doing the crime and thus fewer people would risk being involved.
And honestly there isn't really a market for slaves (at least in the US), so the organizations would mostly collapse, with the remnants smuggling counterfeit goods, which is an outcome I would be okay with.
Decriminalizing all mainstream drugs (PCP, etc. probably don't matter since there is limited demand, but anything where there's enough demand should be decriminalized, and you may as well do everything) would reduce profits for the narcos, which would make them less potent. They'd probably switch to cigarettes and counterfeit goods and other tax or regulation evasion operations, but those are much less profitable.
Then legalize those as well... Treat addiction. Educate and inform instead of scaring and prohibiting. Instead of the boogey man and crapping bricks of money to build more jails, paying lawyers and DEA, provide safe guidance in drug use.
Pay for the the treatment industry and you will get recovering addicts and fewer cartels.
Pay for the punishment industry and you will get criminals and cartels.
Hahaha. The problem here was that there was no free market in the first place. The Hippies are more akin to your cable company or some other state sanctioned monopoly or oligopoly now being opened up to real market forces. Inflated profits due to protection almost never ends well.
One of the main reasons that cannabis has failed to be fully legalized in California is because greedy dealers want the industry to stay small and contained. I remember seeing tons of "Vote No" signs in Mendocino and Sonoma counties regarding legalization (which are huge cultivation areas,) and have known many growers and distributors who were vehemently against legalizing it.
Huge cultivation areas but very low population areas. According to [1] - those areas had no significant effect on the vote. But lobbying by Prison Guard and Police Unions, and Alcohol companies (!) did.
Actually from what little I know, Sonoma County isn't really part of the main weed growing region:
"The Emerald Triangle refers to a region in Northern California so named because it is the largest cannabis producing region in the United States. Mendocino County, Humboldt County, and Trinity County are the three counties in Northern California that make up this region."
Priceonomics sure seems to have a high regard for its belly-button lint. Their motto is "Priceonomics: The Price Guide for Everything," ...and the value guide for nothing, I presume.
Here in Priceonomics’s home city of San Francisco, however, legalization is also eroding the easy drug profits that have been a lifeline to the remnants of the hippy scene.
Yes, lets all lament the demise of the "Haighth"[1], while ignoring the political, artistic and, well, non-weed legacies of the late-60s San Francisco subcultural landscape.
I don't think you can disentangle them. I used to be close friends (until I moved abroad) with the then-head of the Haight St. merchant's association, who had opened up the first 'head shop' there and had been intimately involved with the cultural scene there since the 60s, often as curator and sponsor, as well as with a lot of political issues (beyond the scope of a HN comment). That guy arrived in SF as a young man during the summer of love and made his seed money selling LSD before setting up a more conventional business, and I presume weed as well. I don't think you can sensibly the political and cultural changes in isolation from the recreational drug use.
Could the reverse of the gateway drug theory be true? If marijuana and "lighter" narcotics were to be legalized, might potential addicts and users flock to those drugs instead of riskier substances like cocaine or heroin?
Perhaps but another key point is that mj is a gateway for dealers more than anything else. Removing it as an entry point into the biz will almost certainly mean fewer players in the biz, I believe.
News at 11. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Since Idaho is so behind the times on the legalization front, hippies are most welcome here. So if any hippies are reading this, there are many markets opening in the gateway states that lie between the cool states. Another way to look at this is, marijuana legalization will lead to the liberalization of the states that are behind the times, which is probably why fogies are fighting against it so vehemently.
For every sad Hippy in the 1st World there's hopefully 100 great stories in ravaged 2nd world countries up to their eyeballs in corruption funded by the distorted profits of an illegal trade. Maybe Marijuana really will be the "gateway drug" The first drug that marches us towards a path of i) legalizing, ii) taxing, iii) treating addicts and iv) reducing prison populations.
If weed is legalized nationally and this phenomenon in SF is observed in other places, it might get people to start thinking about whether the war on drugs is effective in general, in which case other relatively harmless drugs like LSD would be next in line.
Ha! Just kidding, as if people used reason when thinking about political issues! No, the question is really whether tribal forces will drift in the direction of ending prohibition in general. Superficially, it will appear to be reasoned arguments swaying public opinion, but the true nature of the beast is betrayed by its slowness.
In any case, the problems with them switching to selling LSD are that the demand isn't anywhere near as high, and that producing it requires a fair bit more education than reading about gardening on the internet and then growing some plants in your closet.
It is but san fransisco hippies are known for making some of the best LSD like greatfull dead fluff and liquid. Most of the LSD I did in highschool was from California or from Nicholas Sand who fled California to Canada to run a giant lab until 1996. So California/SFO is like ground zero for LSD manufacturing and underground hippie culture that still exists
Dirt cheap here in BC. A pound of kush was 1800-2600 depending on time of year from a middleman wholesaler, now its half that. Even with smart meters (easily bypassed) that were put in to supposedly catch grow ops.
“The hippy kids used to be able to sell their weed real easy at high prices,” he tells us. “There were lots of customers and they made enough in a few days to travel for a few weeks. Now though...”
"Many are homeless by choice: Some are the transient underemployed or unemployed that hop railcars across the country."
Very disappointing to see no data of any kind on the Good Old Days other than the word of some people they met in a park in San Francisco. Needless to say, their word is extremely unreliable.
Two claims specifically are pretty obvious exaggerations/blatant lies:
That a marijuana dealer can make 4-times more selling in New York than in California[1]. And that street kids used to make enough in a few days to travel for weeks[2].
[1] Unless the difference is purely a matter of volume, price alone cannot account for that big of a difference, as the article seems to imply. Marijuana is more expensive in New York but it's nowhere near 4-times more expensive.
[2] I sold marijuana in the bay area in the timeframe referenced in the article, between roughly 1999 and 2001 (in the dorms, to friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends etc). Yes the prices were higher than they are today ($50 an 8th was standard) but wholesale prices were also much higher. In the end I was lucky to clear $100 an ounce, after smoking myself - which the street kids surely do. They'd have to have been selling a half pound or more per day at full retail to make the claim even remotely possible.
And a small piece of anecdotal evidence - I went to Haight Ashbury in search of some weed not long ago. I asked some street kids near the park. I was quoted $60 an 8th and they were unwilling to bargain. The quality was low - probably over 100% markup from what they paid. Those kinds of margins were not possible in the Good Old Days glorified in this piece.
Cliffs: don't take the word of street hippies on how great things were in the past.
That said, people who bum around can go a long time on very little cash. Imagine if you only had to pay for food and sometimes got it free crashing with friends with chickens, etc.. Housing - crashing places, parks outside, tents, etc.. Transportation - hopping trains.
And this isn't a hypothetical: more than 12 years ago, Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs -- from marijuana to heroin -- and plowed the money saved by no longer jailing addicts into treating them. The result has been lower rates of addiction and HIV infection, and higher rates of treatment:
http://www.alternet.org/story/151635/ten_years_ago_portugal_...
Now possession is a misdemeanor, like a traffic violation, punishable by a fine or community service, and accompanied by a screening for risk factors of addiction, with encouragement to enter treatment programs:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-d...
It hasn't been a magic bullet, but nor has it been a disaster. And what is a disaster is the current policy: drug money fuels endless violence and murder inside the US and across central and southern America.
The social fabric of my home country (Trinidad & Tobago) is being torn apart by violence from drug trafficking, and there's nothing we can do about it as long as the amount of money to be made by risking the drug trade is so enormous. We can't lower the price, because we are not the market: the US is.
I wish more people in the US were aware that their paying $100/gram for the occasional fun evening is paying for murder on the streets of my home town. And I wish more people realized they don't have to stop taking cocaine; they just have to lower the damn price.