
The year Mexico legalised drugs - monort
https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/1940-the-year-mexico-legalised-drugs/
======
jath2
_…there was no intrinsic link between drug addiction and criminality. In fact,
it was only the high price of drugs, generated by prohibition, that led users
to commit crimes, he said._

This statement is a real eye opener for me.

~~~
craftyguy
The US government learned this with the prohibition of alchohol in the early
20th century, then promptly forgot it.

~~~
om3n
Look at the influence alcohol has in the US today though.

"An estimated 88,000 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women) die
from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the third leading
preventable cause of death in the United States"

I could google statistics for violent crimes committed while under the
influence of alcohol, drunk driving statistics, etc. Whether we like to admit
it or not alcohol has left a giant, negative, impact on our society.

[https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-
co...](https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-
consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics)

~~~
swerner
> Whether we like to admit it or not alcohol has left a giant, negative,
> impact on our society.

I don't think anyone disputes that. The question at hand however is if the
legal status of alcohol has any influence on the impact, and if so, what it
is.

The assumptions of drug or alcohol prohibition are that a) Making a substance
illegal reduces consumption of that substance. b) Reduced consumption results
in reduced harm.

The thing about b) is that not every drinker is a violent drunk and not every
drug user is using drugs in harmful way. Prohibitionists are assuming that it
not only reduces the number of users, but also that it reduces the number of
problematic users.

Now the casual pot smoker or the "one beer after work" drinker is not causing
trouble for society. At the same time, they are the ones most likely stopping
consumption should the substance become illegal. However, the alcohol or
heroin addict may not cease consumption the day his substance of choice (or at
this point, habit) becomes illegal but instead acquire it through the black
market, potentially causing more damage than the substance itself would.

~~~
felix_nagaand
The influence of alcohol, or any drug, should be a kicker during sentencing
for all violent and negligent crimes.

------
tomohawk
Given the choice between not being able to get adequate pain relief due to DEA
intervention, and legalizing drugs, I would choose legalizing them, provided
legalizing them would not limit dosage to insufficient levels for pain relief.

It is incomprehensible to me that it is somehow acceptable to solve the
"opioid crisis" by making people with serious pain suffer and by persecuting
their doctors for trying to help them.

However, it would be totally appropriate to allow limits on employment,
insurance, and government benefits due to drug use. While I support their
right to choose, I shouldn't be required to subsidize someone else's
destructive choices.

~~~
soVeryTired
If you limit an addict's ability to get medical insurance, you'll end up
subsidizing them anyway. Hospitals are prohibited from turning patients away
in the US (and I wouldn't want to live in a world where they could do so). So
addicts show up, get treated, and default on any bills they incur. The expense
from this treatment gets passed on to everyone else. Try visiting an emergency
room at 1am on a Saturday night and you'll see what I mean.

Incidentally, do you have the same views on employment, insurance, and
government benefits as they pertain to alcohol consumption?

~~~
JudasGoat
Although "Hospitals are prohibited from turning patients away in the US (and I
wouldn't want to live in a world where they could do so)." is technically
true. For instance if you have aquired Hepatitis C and went to a hospital in
the US with no insurance, they will not consider treatment to cure the
disease. They will help make you comfortable with your chronic disease until
it kills you.

~~~
maxerickson
Medicaid is one of the largest buyers of the Hep C cure.

~~~
mrrsm
You don't just magically get medicaid though. You have to apply for it and
follow up with things if they send you stuff in the mail. If you don't do that
you go back to being uninsured which leads back to what JudasGoat said where
you will get the minimum amount of care in order to get you out of the
hospital.

------
stretchwithme
I think the right approach to drugs is to regulate use by neighborhood. And
with monetary fines only.

Outright bans cause too many problems. Illegal production makes drugs more
dangerous. And allowing everything has some social costs too. Each approach
eventually leads to many people wanting the opposite policy, so it will just
go back and forth.

Regulating it by neighborhood will allow people to keep drug abuse away from
their kids, while still allowing those who want to use drugs to access it
without too much trouble. They can just travel to a neighborhood where it's
allowed. Avoiding fines will give them an incentive.

Neighborhoods that do allow drug use will pick which drugs to allow and be
able to tax the activity and have rules to handle the activity. There are red
light districts for prostitution. Why not handle drug use the same way?

~~~
dragonwriter
> I think the right approach to drugs is to regulate use by neighborhood. And
> with monetary fines only.

So, if you have the money to pay the fine without breaking a sweat, you just
ignore the rule.

> Regulating it by neighborhood will allow people to keep drug abuse away from
> their kids

No, it won't. For much the same reason local fireworks bans don't, except drug
use is a lot easier to conceal.

> Neighborhoods that do allow drug use will pick which drugs to allow and be
> able to tax the activity

No, they won't, for the same reason neighborhood bans don't work. It's
impossible to police effectively.

Maybe areas that allow drug _sales_ will be able to tax (some of) it (but any
tax in the “legal” area directly reduces the impact of fines in the “illegal”
area, and even people who go wholly legal will shift activity to the lowest
tax areas available; you might also look into what a big business cigarette
smuggling to avoid taxes is.)

~~~
dmurray
> So, if you have the money to pay the fine without breaking a sweat, you just
> ignore the rule.

Not just that, but if you can't or won't pay the fine, what happens? You end
up imprisoned just as if the penalty had been to throw you in jail all along.

~~~
testvox
If you can't pay the fine in most states you aren't supposed to go to jail.

------
stuaxo
And they had to stop because of the US... no surprise there.

~~~
xtracto
Indeed... Here is hoping that our next president (AMLO) who is kind of leftist
and admires Cárdenas, will finally legalize drugs.

------
partycoder
The British East India Company, the largest drug trading organization of the
19th century, is to be blamed for most of modern drug trade.

It is very likely that the opium poppies in modern Mexico are direct
descendants of the ones planted by the British.

After the British lost their colonies in the Americas, they tried to fix their
economy by selling opium to China. A few decades later, many Chinese workers
moved to the Americas, among them, opium poppy planters. Few decades later,
the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act and many of them moved to Mexico.

Total death toll? millions of people.

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgQahGsYokU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgQahGsYokU)
(animated explanation)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I get that the trade imbalance meant that BEIC/Britain looked for something
other than silver to trade. But wasn't Qing (?) China closed?

AIUI they traded with Chinese merchants at designated ports, trading opium to
get tea. The Chinese then traded the drugs on.

Three things that don't make sense to me in the "traditional" telling of
"Britain purposefully created opium _addiction_ across China".

* One, that opium addiction was a new idea, opium was widely used in Britain.

* Two, how did merchants at the ports create demand in the interior, surely they met demand outcompeting local sources on cost and so widening the market.

* Three, after Britain was shut out of the trade China seemingly already had a massive local supply.

These things tend to make me think that in some measure the Chinese closed the
ports in order to prevent cheaper product from supplying an already
established and widespread market. And yet, I've read, once that BEIC supply
was stopped the Chinese maintained the market with local supply.

Are their letters/papers where controllers of BEIC talk about addiction? Did
they 'just' look for a large market that they could undercut?

It seems more like a tale of amoral merchants (of many nationalities), rather
than evil Britain. But I'm from the UK (which does and has done plenty of evil
things, selling weapons to the Saudis when we know they're using then to kill
civilians, for example).

[banter] Of course the British are still addicted to tea, but we diversified
our supply somewhat. Having comestibles disposed of in the sea seems like a
repeating theme - perhaps the Dutch will sink our potato shipments after
Brexit.[/banter]

~~~
stephenhuey
When the emperor banned opium, the British sold it to smugglers. When the
Chinese seized 20,000 chests of trafficked opium to stop it from being sold,
the British attacked China and made them sign an agreement to buy tons of
stuff from the British, including opium.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
india-36781368](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-36781368)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
So Britain stopped trading, and traded legally with Chinese people who
themselves smuggled the opium ... see to me that sounds like the smugglers are
doing the worst thing there?

The Chinese seized and destroyed opium from merchants from several countries,
Britain sent forces to release merchants, ships, goods and was demanding
compensation for the destroyed opium, which compensation they then fought to
acquire.

If the Emperor/Lin Xehu(sp?) at any time ordered that selling tea to
foreigners was illegal(?), then it looks much worse for the outside forces; if
not then it looks like balance of trade was a prime motivation on both sides,
rather than (im)moral considerations.

([https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/opium-
war-1839-1842](https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/opium-war-1839-1842)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6304d1/what_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6304d1/what_caused_the_first_opium_war_ive_read_several/)
based on other tertiary sources I've read seem like good synopses.)

~~~
partycoder
Stop complicating things. This is very simple:

1\. The British planted opium then transported it to China and traded it.

2\. The Chinese told them it was illegal.

3\. They continued trading it.

4\. The Chinese seized all of it.

5\. They declared war so they could continue trading it.

I don't see the confusion or debate here. What the British were doing was very
simple: illegal drug trade for profit.

What others were doing is a separate debate and does not absolve the British
from anything. Don't mix things.

