
Legalize It All - apo
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/?single=1
======
krylon
_We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black,
but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks
with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those
communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their
meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know
we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did._

That sums it up pretty well. It never was about fighting drug use or
preventing the harm it can do. Can we now, please, get that behind us and move
on? If we only spent 10% of what we now spent on prosecuting drug use on
prevention and rehabilitation, that would be a much greater service to society
than fourty years of "war" have been. Not to mention the benefits for privacy,
the decrease in violence and so on...

~~~
md224
Does anyone else get almost irrationally angry about this? I _HATE_ that the
freedom to modulate our own minds was taken away from us by these awful
politicians for such terrible reasons. Not only has the War on Drugs ruined
countless lives through incarceration and overdosing, but so many potentially
helpful chemicals have been hidden away from society. It isn't just about
getting "high"... it's about unleashing our full pharmacological potential in
a safe and productive manner.

The War on Drugs is so fucking stupid and so many people are paying the price.
I don't know if anything makes me as angry as this.

~~~
rayiner
The ability to "modulate [your] . . . mind" is why so many people (80-90% when
it comes to drugs besides marijuana), oppose drug legalization. Human society
has barely learned to cope with the range of neurological behavior naturally
present in the population. It's not unreasonable to be afraid of what might
happen when you throw new chemicals into the mix.

It's important to remember that most people think the opposite way as those on
HN. They do not assume that new things will automatically make society better.
They have a strong "don't fix what isn't broken" tendency. And as long as we
live in a democracy, they're entitled to structure their society as they see
fit.

~~~
qbit
> And as long as we live in a democracy, they're entitled to structure their
> society as they see fit.

I strongly disagree. There are certain human rights that should not be able to
be voted away in a democracy. I believe that the right to modulate our own
minds as we see fit belongs in this category.

~~~
rayiner
People aren't "modulating their minds" in isolation. Drug use has an external
impact on the families, friends, employers, and coworkers of those using
drugs. Drug use affects the ability of drug users to abide by social norms
imposed upon everyone. In a developed nation with a safety net, drug use might
even implicate society's need to rescue those who can't work or fall ill from
drug use.

~~~
bobwaycott
Your argument easily applies to alcohol, prescription medications, and hell,
even obesity. There's nothing here unique to drugs that are causing the
problems you're decrying.

~~~
newjersey
If we ban drugs, I think it should also apply to jackasse or daredevils.
People (including children) should not climb tall trees or scale the Brooklyn
Bridge with no reason. Why should anyone get subsidized medical care (and it
is subsidized even if they pay for it) for falling off a tree that they had no
business climbing? In the same train of thought, maybe we ought to close down
all amusement parks and only allow people to drive to work or to go buy
groceries. People driving or riding the bus puts them at risk of accidents and
society suffers from these accidents.

~~~
taneq
Not to mention healthy diets should be strictly enforced, along with mandatory
exercise regimes to reduce the public burden of obesity and poor health.

------
jessaustin
_After telling the BBC in December that “if you fight a war for forty years
and don’t win, you have to sit down and think about other things to do that
might be more effective,” Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos legalized
medical marijuana by decree. In November, the Mexican Supreme Court elevated
the debate to a new plane by ruling that the prohibition of marijuana
consumption violated the Mexican Constitution by interfering with “the
personal sphere,” the “right to dignity,” and the right to “personal
autonomy.”_

This is great news. Only the sort of political situation that existed in Latin
America over these past decades could have permitted us in USA to export all
this violence and suffering. The corruption in their state was a mirror of
that in ours. We were happy to destroy their societies for profit, and
unfortunately their rulers were too.

The Drug War is a big reason I'm an anarchist. People living their own lives,
in their own communities, can get up to some awful shit, now and then. No way
in hell can they come up with the durable, sustained, all-consuming all-
perverting horror that is the Drug War, or any of the other travesties the
State produces without breaking a sweat.

~~~
charonn0
As a counterpoint, compulsory free education for all children is a public good
that couldn't be accomplished or sustained for decades without the state
intruding upon the personal autonomy of the child and the parent (and
childless taxpayers.)

~~~
cooper12
Is it really as much of a necessity? In my opinion most people learn the bare
minimum required for exams, and then regurgitate it. I only remember tidbits
of history and a little Shakespeare from my school days. Even in college most
of my professors just read off powerpoints and I was forced to learn anything
useful at all for my career on my own time. Schools force people to learn
things they aren't interested in like STEM over useful life skills like
personal finance or cooking. I think homeschooling or self-directed education
[0] could be much more effective at stimulating learners and equipping them
with necessary knowledge. In my opinion the only benefit of school was the
social aspect, but thats to be expected since thats where everyone else is,
not to mention the drawbacks such as bullying.

Education really isn't as much of a virtue as people think; do I really need a
degree to talk to people, to appreciate literature or art, to vote? (And even
with the prevalence of education, people still end up misinformed or lead by
personal bias) Most people are capable of learning what they need, especially
when all the resources are out there and not just in schools. All the
different levels of education that are established just serve as poor markers
for employers to differentiate people and time-and-time again I've read about
educations being ill-suited in preparing people for careers.

Like the parent commenter, I think people are quite capable of organizing and
preparing themselves just as well without a state, and many communities and
generations have been doing this for centuries.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling)
(just one interesting example)

~~~
charonn0
I have to disagree in the most strenuous possible terms.

> do I really need a degree to talk to people, to appreciate literature or
> art, to vote?

No, you don't need a college degree, but you do need an elementary education,
which is what I'm talking about since that's what's compulsory and free.

There is no technology industry without an educated workforce. There is no
effective democracy where the electorate is ignorant of history, math, and
science. We can argue the relative merits of specific authors that could be
covered in English/literature class, but only because we both were taught how
to read.

~~~
cooper12
Yeah but my argument is that you don't need a state for that. There are tons
of self-taught people in IT and many people on HN can testify to that. And
people can be ignorant in spite of education, just look at America itself
which has groups that believe vaccines cause autism or that the moon landings
were faked, among other strange beliefs perpetuated by the media. (which is
really where people get their political education) And as to your last point,
again, people can learn to read at home too. Maybe we just had different
experiences with education, but I honestly don't believe any of it couldn't be
done with different methods or groups.

~~~
charonn0
> There are tons of self-taught people in IT

What I'm getting at is that they still needed to be taught reading, math, etc.
just to get to the point where they could teach themselves how to use
technology. I don't think that piecemeal homeschooling can prepare most people
to do that sort of thing. A quick glance at historic literacy rates in the
US[1], particularly the meteoric rise in all demographics starting in the late
1800s, speaks volumes about the effectiveness of formal schooling. Illiteracy
dropped from 20% to 7.7% in one generation (and even more dramatically within
unprivileged demographics.)

This doesn't imply that only state-run systems _can_ work, but I think it's
clear that state-run systems _do_ work (which is my original point:
contrasting state-operated free schools to the war on drugs.)

> I honestly don't believe any of it couldn't be done with different methods
> or groups.

Absolutely it could, no argument there. The Prussian-style classroom is not
the only one, even if it's the only one in widespread use, and there are some
legitimate problems with it. That being said I don't see how 90%+ literacy
could be accomplished without state involvement. It certainly hadn't happened
before, and writing has been around for a long time.

Sorry if I took us way off-topic (war on drugs). My point isn't really about
what sorts of schooling we should have, but rather to point out that the
schooling we do have provides an interesting counterpoint to the harm caused
by the state in pursuing the war on drugs, and is something for anarchists to
chew on when railing against the depredations of the state.

[1]:
[https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#illiteracy](https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#illiteracy)

~~~
mbrock
Anarchism is about questioning the legitimacy of any system based on power,
with a tendency to be critical of authority. It is also a constructive
tradition of discussing alternative ways based on voluntary association and
freedom.

I doubt many anarchists see it as strategically useful to dismantle systems of
public education—but those systems certainly deserve critique, and anarchist
perspectives are well-suited.

~~~
nutball
Every kid knows that school sucks. A prison for their minds and bodies.

[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-toward-
the...](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-toward-the-
destruction-of-schooling)

------
stegosaurus
The idea that the Western world (at least, my country, the UK) uses laws to
criminalize groups of people seems about as old as time itself to me.

We don't punish drug use because we care about people taking drugs. We punish
drug use because we want to eliminate the influence of 'junkies' on society.

We don't punish radical views because we disagree with them. We punish radical
views because we want to eliminate their influence on society.

Let's talk about child abuse. A terrible crime.

As a UK resident - it feels to me, that people don't actually care about the
actual act of child abuse as much as they care about the... 'othering' of the
perpetrator.

It's the idea of a child abuser as being an animal, a strange alien, a
completely non-understandable beast, that really riles us up.

That's why 'think of the children' works. We're not thinking about the
children, really. We're thinking about the threat from human actors who don't
have world-views that quite fit - we can't grok them, they can't be trusted.

That's what I think these sorts of laws are fundamentally about. They are
about trying to remove 'scary' individuals.

I don't care about terrorism because I think it's vanishingly unlikely to
occur. But people, as a mass, fear the unknown - they fear the humans who
don't have the same limits that they do. The humans that can, and will, do
anything.

'Terrorist' is just the new 'criminal', because 'criminal' doesn't hold the
same cachet when everyone is a criminal.

~~~
kagamine
> that people don't actually care about the actual act of child abuse as much
> as they care about the... 'othering' of the perpetrator. It's the idea of a
> child abuser as being an animal, a strange alien, a completely non-
> understandable beast, that really riles us up.

I disagree, that is how the media sells papers and gets page clicks, but is
that what the man-in-the-street thinks? I'm also from the UK, and to me the
vilest part of it is that children have little understanding of these adult
things; sex, relationships, normality, an inability to protect themselves from
adults. They have a _right_ to be a child during childhood (it is a
humanitarian right in many countries 1). It isn't about demonizing a person,
it is about being saddened by the loss of a child (within a child's body) and
the loss of faith in humanity within myself.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child)

------
joantune
I'm not sure about legalizing it all, but me and the world is pretty sure
about decriminalizing it, just watch what happened here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbWpXYOg4OQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbWpXYOg4OQ)

TL;DR: Highly successful strategy of not marginalizing (both socially and
legally) and actually helping addicts: cuts costs, cuts problems, decreases
addicts.

~~~
seizethecheese
The problem with decriminalization without legalization is that it addresses
demand but not supply. Black market supply is where a lot of the harm from
prohibition materializes.

~~~
ericlee4
I agree, and in fact the author - Dan Baum - made the same point in an
interview on NPR a few days ago.

[http://www.wnyc.org/story/legalization-best-way-win-war-
drug...](http://www.wnyc.org/story/legalization-best-way-win-war-drugs/)

------
tomphoolery
This doesn't work for me...Cache link:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-tEQXR...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-tEQXRbBQvUJ:https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-
it-all/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
mbubb
Why stop with drugs? I would include pointless war on sex workers.

~~~
kagamine
The key difference is that drugs are something one does to oneself, whereas
prostitution includes at least one other person. How to ensure that person is
willingly participating and profiting is the question. Although I suppose
legalization and licensing would help with that too.

------
sreya
This is unrelated but it would be nice if this site offered the ability to
minimize sub-threads. I was genuinely curious about people's opinions as to
how best legalize drugs in a responsible fashion. Instead I have to scroll
through an obnoxious amount of comments bemoaning the short falls of the
government long enough to lose interest.

~~~
omegaham
HN Utility Suite for Firefox: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/hn-utility-su...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/hn-utility-suite/) HN Enhancement for Chrome:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm?hl=en)

------
jonalmeida
Surprised no one has yet posted the Kurzgesagt video on the failed war on
drugs: [https://youtu.be/wJUXLqNHCaI](https://youtu.be/wJUXLqNHCaI)

~~~
ijhnv
Yeah, and also their excellent video on addiction:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg)

------
tryitnow
What I like most about this article is that it's most definitely not a
libertarian take on the issue. The author describes several benefits of a
government involvement in legal drug commerce.

A non-libertarian perspective on drug legalization is important because
everyone knows libertarians want to legalize everything. And most informed
people know the libertarian arguments as well. And they've been known for many
decades now. Clearly, the libertarian approach isn't swaying a whole lot of
people.

However, when people who are not ideologically committed to small government
start supporting drug legalization it becomes a more serious possibility
because it means a broader coalition can be built to support legalization.

tldr: libertarians alone will never make legalization a reality, but
libertarians united with progressives can be a force for change.

------
AmandaShebang
The link seems to be broken for me, ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED.

~~~
r721
Archived: [http://archive.is/Fr9kP](http://archive.is/Fr9kP)

------
dools
Further reading [http://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Scream-First-Last-
Drugs/dp/162...](http://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Scream-First-Last-
Drugs/dp/1620408902)

------
Ericson2314
I'm curious what HN thinks about the author's point that drug-distribution is
state-controlled. I agree---capitalism only works in arenas where the actors
act (decently) rationally, and would-be markets where a significant portion of
consumption is by addicts doesn't meet that test.

I'm also curious if anyone thinks such a end-game is politically possible in
the US. Or is the profit motive + mistrust of government the only coalition
capable of out-hustling our puritan tendencies politically?

------
mirimir
> The risks are tremendous. Deaths from heroin overdose in the United States
> rose 500 percent from 2001 to 2014, a staggering increase, and deaths from
> prescription drugs — which are already legal and regulated — shot up almost
> 300 percent, proving that where opioids are concerned, we seem to be inept
> not only when we prohibit but also when we regulate.

For heroin, the major risk is variation in potency. Heroin is highly cut at
consumer level, for the most part. But occasionally, some relatively pure shit
hits the street. And then there's the risk of boosting by Fentanyl and other
high-potency opiates.

Also, it's pretty clear that the increasing popularity of heroin has been
driven by decreasing availability of prescription opiates. New heroin users
tend to be clueless about risk management. So they tend to overdose.

I'm curious about increasing deaths from prescription drugs. I wonder how much
of that is driven by acetaminophen toxicity, as oxycodone etc have become
harder to get than mixtures of acetaminophen with codeine and hydrocodone. I'm
also wondering whether these figures include deaths for prescription drugs
obtained informally.

~~~
neverknowsbest
A lot of overdoses also stem from folks who were forced or coerced into rehab
before being fully prepared, then relapse, taking their old dose without
realizing that their tolerance has already gone down during treatment.
Hopefully those cases would decrease with legalization and the removal of the
"hard drug" stigma.

Regarding the increase in RX deaths, I'd like to see those stats too-- though
it's probably too hairy to really break down, I'd also like to see that
expanded which prescription opiate, as well as circumstance (fully
recreational/no clear injury, minor injury, during hospitalization, or
continuing/long term care).

------
obfk
Anyone looking for an additional read should check Chasing the Scream by
Johann Hari.

~~~
bennesvig
A very powerful book that changed my opinion.

------
gdubs
After reading The Rise and Fall of American Growth -- a brilliant work that
most here on HN would find relevant -- I came away more convinced than ever
before that legalizing drugs would reduce a great deal of drag on our long
term economic growth.

------
omegaham
I think that one of the biggest things that policymakers should keep in mind
is that frequently, there is _no good solution_. There are only _less bad
solutions_.

Take payday loans as an example. The entire industry is extremely exploitative
and preys on uneducated poor people who are desperate due to bad circumstances
and / or poor financial planning. Well-meaning activists have campaigned to
"reform" the business and make it less scummy.

The result? Legitimate payday loan companies go out of business, as it's no
longer economical to invest money in loaning to poor people, and the mob fills
the void. Instead of getting a loan from Usury Inc, whose backers have pulled
out and invested in something else, you're getting a loan from Cousin Vinnie.
Now, the poor get exploited _even more nastily_ by organized crime, which has
absolutely no compunctions about getting its money back by any means possible,
including threatening families, breaking kneecaps, killing people to get the
rest of the debtors in line, etc.

The only answer is an optimization - you curb the worst of the abuses, and
then accept the fact that the exploitation is a side effect of underlying
causes and impossible to remove without making things worse. It's as good as
we're going to get.

Same exact thing with the drug trade. Drugs destroy lives. It's a fact -
heroin and other opiates are a scourge on poor communities, and it's not just
due to the fact that they're illegal. After all, people overdose on
prescription medication all the time, too[1]. But a lot of the enforcement
that has been done makes things _even worse_ \- we still have addicts, and
then we get all of the violence that comes from the enormous markup that's
inherent in the black market. There is no _good solution_ that makes
everything better, but it's very easy to make things worse.

More nastily, it breeds what I like to call "contempt of the law" \- if
everyone in a community is breaking the law somehow, (smoking weed, buying
black-market cigarettes, buying prescription painkillers, etc) then _even
worse_ crimes don't get prosecuted because everyone is preoccupied with the
fact that the police are going after the people they perceive to be average
Joes. As soon as people perceive the police as an occupying force that
arbitrarily goes after average citizens for gits and shiggles, the people will
stop seeing the police as guardians against the truly evil and dangerous
people among them.

I think that the biggest issue that blocks action on this is that people are
confusing legalization with _approval_. You can make something legal and still
think it's horrible. It's legal to cheat on your spouse, even though most
people consider it immoral, but the cost on society that would come from
making adultery illegal (and enforcing it) would be far greater than keeping
the government out of it. Similarly, you can make prostitution legal and still
consider it horrible. You can make casino gambling illegal and still consider
it exploitative of people who suck at math. And you can make drugs legal and
still consider it exploitative of human weakness. The only criteria that we
should be using is "Would government intervention actually make the situation
better? If not, _keep the government out of it_." And at this point, I'm
pretty doubtful that dispatching thousands of officers to go after heroin
dealers will keep people from using heroin. I'm pretty confident that doing so
will increase the money that's in heroin, increase violence, and breed
contempt of the law.

<asshole> Oh. Also, if we make drugs legal, I'm investing like a motherfucker
in Soma, Inc. Drugs sell themselves, and I'm sure that corporations will make
a bundle if they can sell them to The Public. My retirement fund will thank
the wonderful residents of Appalachia for their generous contributions.
Whichever company is the first to make an oxycodone version of Joe Camel is
the one I'm investing in.</asshole>

[1][http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html](http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html)

------
stillsut
The stalemate of the current horrid system seems only to be held in place by
the (perhaps misguided) sense that being high enough middle class has a better
chance to insulate your family against the ravages of drug addiction more than
the total legalization ever could. And so every police crackdown in your
neighborhood makes sense for protection, but it results in a tragedy of the
commons type situation that everyone becomes more policed without truly
cutting down drug abuse.

------
md224
This seems like a good time to mention that I own the domain name
TheTruthAboutPot.com and have no idea what to do with it. Suggestions / buyers
welcome!

------
stretchwithme
We should be deciding such questions at the neighborhood level. There are
always going to be those who don't want to be arounds drugs and those who do.
We should be making it possible to have either kind of community and access
either without having to travel to another city or state.

And penalties should be civil not criminal.

------
mwsherman
It will be a very interesting study for future generations, should we
substantially legalize recreational drugs, on all of the follow-on effects.

For example, many categories of police activity (raids, traffic stops) will
become harder to justify; the dollar cost of drugs going down by an order of
magnitude; immigration enforcement.

------
arca_vorago
"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed
to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to
the people."

While I enjoy the recent surge in popularity of such a movement, my primary
issue with drug policy is that it is unconstitutional, or at leasty arguably
so. I fail to see a properly explained distinction between drug X and
$ANYOBJECT Y when it comes to any governments ability to restrict a person
from it. Whats the difference between caffiene and mj and alcohol? What about
mj and harder drugs? What about harder drugs and two cans of coke a day? A
person can be addicted to anything, (not to ignore the chemical/biological
addictive properties) so what is to prevent any object from becoming a danger
to the person or those around theme? To me this seems to be the core
foundation upon which anti-drug persons base their argument. ie. "Once a
person is addicted, they are likely to become a criminal and violate other
peoples rights, so it's the governments duty to prevent that!".

To me though, it's not the governments duty to essentially engage in pre-crime
criminalization. We all know about the private prison industry, but what gets
me the most is that people in prison for non-violent drug charges are almost
there, not because the drug itself was a crime, but because the underlying,
implied logic is that they were about to become criminals anyway.

All of this flies in the face of the constitution, for once it is admitted
that it's the duty of government to protect a person against their own
actions, very few serious objections can be advanced against further
encroachments.

In essence the drug war is a huge slippery slope which only opens up our
system for further degradation of fundamental rights.

Also, I would to point out, beyond and before what is proposed as a mostly
racist basis for the drug laws, that the larger purpose for the original drug
wars (Opium Wars I and II, misc smaller conflicts), were largely about two
other factors that are far too often overlooked:

1\. Black-markets = free flowing, unaccountable money. Even in the modern
times, this is a favorite of the three letters, to get black budget money
thats outside the oversight of congress. If there isn't a blackmarket, you
simply create one by buying off the politicians to make something illegal.

2\. Similar to the racists vein, but more as a tool of control of the masses.
while I have no problem constitutionally with legalization, the national
security implications of "opiating the masses" are not to be ignored. The
state of the Chinese population after introduction of mass quantities of opium
as a good example of this done as a deliberate strategy.

As an aside, at one time I bought into the Dupont/Hemp conspiracy, but have
since been able to find very little to no evidence to support this claim, so
just a word of warning to any others who have fallen for it, that you should
try to find some sources (and don't forget to share them if you do!)

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Interstate commerce is the justification - that's why it's illegal to possess
certain substances, but not to be under their influence. It's very difficult
to make the banning of heroin unconstitutional without also making the FDA's
food-safety measures much more difficult.

~~~
arca_vorago
It seems the interstate commerce clause is abused far too often in attempted
overreach then.

------
fiatjaf
Legalize free trade!

------
x5n1
Legalize it all and replace the DEA with a for-profit drug distribution
business.

~~~
zzz157
The Drug Enjoyment Administration

------
merpnderp
I'm completely against the war on drugs for most of the reasons stated in this
article, but I find it's blaming of Nixon and racial/ideological politics as
the worst most unproductive form of cynicism. As if there are no well meaning,
well founded reasons to outlaw drugs. People often forget that poor, minority
neighborhoods were often instrumental in getting tough drug laws passed.
Because they often faced the brunt of the criminal effect of large numbers of
drug users. When a working class mom gets her kid's bike stolen by a junkie,
she's not too interested in contemplating rehabilitation, she's just mad and
wants her bike back and the asshole punished.

~~~
laughinghan
_People often forget that poor, minority neighborhoods were often instrumental
in getting tough drug laws passed. Because they often faced the brunt of the
criminal effect of large numbers of drug users. When a working class mom gets
her kid 's bike stolen by a junkie, she's not too interested in contemplating
rehabilitation, she's just mad and wants her bike back and the asshole
punished._

This completely contradicts my understanding of how civics works in the real
world. Poor, minority, working-class moms do not trust the government, police,
or laws to work in their best interests, and do not push to get "tough drug
laws passed". They believe such laws would be used as weapons against their
families and communities. Even if you debate the accuracy of this belief, the
impact that #BlackLivesMatter is having on the current election means there is
no debating the widespread nature of this belief.

However, politically influential interest groups using "working class mom gets
her kid's bike stolen by a junkie" as _justification_ for tough drug laws—that
sure is consistent with my understanding. So is duping us into thinking the
poor minority neighborhoods are in favor of such laws.

------
GreaterFool
The problem with law is that it is easy to write, hard to get rid of. We
refactor old code all the time (hopefully!) but law, once written, lingers on
for hundreds of years...

------
known
"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving,
subsidize it." \--Reagan

------
justlsice
Legalize it and let natural selection do its job. Junkies will just kill
themselves.

------
miguelrochefort
Oh the hypocrisy.

Drugs legalization being trendy, you play the libertarian card. Yet, when it
comes to guns or privacy, the same arguments don't hold true anymore.

Cherry picking at its best. Gotta love the HN crowd.

~~~
tomp
Drugs kill their users. Guns often kill others as well.

~~~
harshreality
Alcohol often kills people other than the drinkers.

------
miguelrochefort
Legalize all drugs and weapons!

Release all patents and copyrights!

Freedom!

