
The Failed War on Drugs - mhb
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/31/opinion/failed-war-on-drugs.html
======
rabboRubble
Oregon resident here... My parents are Baby Boomers. About 2 years ago, I sat
down with them and had the "talk" with them about opiates. My talking points
were:

* I'm a Gen Xer, I did drugs for fun back in the day so I fundamentally don't care if you are taking opioids for whatever reason.

* If you get an initial opioid script from a doctor for more than 10 days, you have a 20% chance of being on opioids a year after. Again not a moral failing. [0]

* If you do find yourself taking opioids and finding yourself uncomfortable about your use, you can talk to me about it because I don't consider drug use a character failure. Been there, done that.

* When my parents visited from a red state, I took them to a cannabis shop and we tried non-pyschoactive CBDs together. They found the shop like visiting a dentist's office with an herby smell. Dad went back to his home state of Montana (fortunately legalized years ago) and got himself hooked up with various relieving CBD and THC compounds. He does not like MJ very much but it's better than tramadol for him as it has fewer side effects for him.

This is my contribution to the failed drug war. Screw big pharma...

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/with-a-10-day-
supply...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/with-a-10-day-supply-of-
opioids-1-in-5-become-long-term-users/)

~~~
katastic
>* If you get an initial opioid script from a doctor for more than 10 days,
you have a 20% chance of being on opioids a year after. Again not a moral
failing. [0]

It should be noted that people who are bad enough off to need opiods, may
continue to be bad off for a long time. Not because of the opiods, but because
of having a condition so bad that doctors are willing to give you opiods.

A script for more than a few days of opiods is very rare. I had a complete
back fusion with 21 vertebrae drilled into and only had ~7 days prescribed.

~~~
Clubber
Yes, with all this drama about the opioid crisis (sequel to the meth crisis,
sequel to the crack epidemic, sequel to LSD crisis (Charles Manson), sequel to
the reefer madness, sequel to the original Prohibition), people miss the point
that they have very valuable uses.

What youngsters and middle aged folks like me don't really grasp (I'm starting
to) is that getting old fucking hurts, sometimes a lot. Having a managed
opioid addiction is a hell of a lot better than being bedridden, both
physically and mentally.

~~~
fragmede
The most frustrating part of the failed War on Drugs is that pain management
doesn't have to be Sophie's choice between being in pain or being addicted to
opiates, but thanks to a chilling effect on research due to the DEA's
classification of cannabis as Schedule I, the mainstream medical establishment
sees long-term opiate use to manage chronic pain as acceptable practice.

29 states plus Puerto Rico, Guam, and DC all recognize the medical benefits of
cannabis including pain management. Presumably there's something when smoking
the plant (whether THC or CBD, or some other as-of-yet undiscovered chemical)
that's proven to be beneficial. In the face of the opioid epidemic, isn't it
time for the DEA and the Federal government to think that there might be
something to this stuff?

Instead, the current classification is that cannabis has a higher abuse
potential than cocaine, Vicodin and methamphetamines!

~~~
Clubber
I suspect it's like laughing gas. It has more to do with making the patient
not care as much about the pain (distraction) rather than direct pain
management though numbing / blocking receptors.

~~~
superdug
You'd suspect wrong. It has anti-inflammatory elements along with interacting
with receptors in nearly every facet of the body. It has a psychoactive
element that makes it popular for recreational use, but there truly are
medicinal uses for it.

~~~
Clubber
Does it actually block pain receptors?

------
md224
Over the last few years, due to personal events in my life, I've been thinking
a lot about the relationship between drug addiction and emotional pain. Self-
medication is a huge factor in drug use, and I hope everyone understands that.

From the perspective of self-medication, drug addiction itself isn't the
disease: drugs are just a coping mechanism to protect the user from a deeper
agony. So when we talk about "reducing demand", we're not going to get
anywhere unless we're able to provide people with better ways of dealing with
their pain. A stint in detox isn't going to do shit for someone with
depression or PTSD besides making them feel guilty and pathetic when they
inevitably relapse. And if you actually succeed in making it impossible for
this person to get their hands on illegal drugs -- while doing nothing to
address their underlying pain -- then you might just end up with a suicide. As
strange as it sounds, "drugs of abuse" may actually be the only thing keeping
some people alive.

In a way, our current drug epidemic is partially a failure of psychiatry. We
need to do better in terms of addressing these root causes of psychic anguish.
Drug addicts aren't lazy hedonists; they're just people who want relief from
their demons. They deserve better options.

~~~
mythrwy
Why do people think pain is evil though?

Perhaps the pain doesn't need to go away. Perhaps it's there for a reason.
Perhaps attitudes need to change. Perhaps embracing and examining pain (within
reason) should be a more common reaction.

Just throwing out ideas. Slap 'em if you want to.

But I will note not every society has needed to use so many pain relievers.

~~~
md224
I'm actually glad you posted this response, because it's a topic that needs to
be addressed.

I recently watched a video of a Columbine survivor giving a TED talk about
emotional pain and addiction, and he said something along the lines of: "If
you want to heal it, you have to feel it." Basically this commonsense idea
that the best way to heal from trauma is to face it.

It sounds right... but is it? The guy giving the talk had been addicted to
opioids for 10 years before getting sober and confronting his emotional pain.
The implication is that he could've saved himself 10 years of drug addiction
if he had just confronted his pain after the shooting instead of medicating
it. However, he doesn't seem to consider the possibility that he might've been
_unable_ to process his pain immediately after the shooting, and that he was
only able to overcome his trauma after a certain amount of distance (time-
wise) from the incident.

So this is the question: is it _always_ the right move to confront one's
emotional pain in full? Is there ever a circumstance where numbing pain via
medication (at least temporarily) could lead to better outcomes?

I don't know the answers. I'd love to know if there have been scientific
studies done on this issue... I actually asked this question on /r/AskScience
a month or two ago but it didn't get much attention. Curious to see what the
research says.

~~~
55555
This is only partially relevant, but I know from personal experience that
sometimes facing the pain is the wrong choice, at least in regards to anxiety
attacks and CBT. It's simply not necessary at all and can be very counter-
productive.

~~~
bonesss
Yeah. Generalizing, naturally, but "exposure therapy" is an approach of
getting people past phobias and trauma that involves lots of small steps in
controlled environments, and it's not recommended in all cases or for all
conditions.

I think it's also a bit simplistic when we frame avoidance solely as a product
of being unwilling to face pain. In some cases (certain forms of PTSD),
substance abuse is used to numb because you've exceeded your local tolerance
for the pain you've been facing, or because the only thing you've been
experiencing/facing _is_ pain and its exhausted your coping mechanisms.
Learning at mid-life that you're no longer the person you knew, while also
dealing with the traumatic source, compounds the process of processing the
events.

Particularly when getting into how life altering traumas work, coping and
accepting are processes that require different treatments/approaches at
different times.

------
jdblair
I'm disappointed by the half measure in this proposal. Shulz and Aspe suggest
possession for personal use should be decriminalized while drugs should remain
illegal in large quantities. This leaves prohibition intact and supply
remaining in the black market.

This proposal would give street users a break (a step in the right direction)
but would leave the supply chain intact. Cartels would continue to destabilize
regions of Mexico.

~~~
zkms
> possession for personal use should be decriminalized while drugs should
> remain illegal in large quantities

Your objection is correct, a fundamental issue with "decriminalisation of
personal use" is that it's still quite trivial for officers to charge
"possession with intent to distribute" for people who don't make a business
out of dealing drugs. Talking about giving drugs to a friend / having a scale
(to measure your own doses) / whatever else -- the police still have plenty of
ways to threaten people with hard time to get you to plea guilty to a lesser
offence. Hell, people who share drugs have been prosecuted for _homicide_
after someone OD'd. It's still prohibition, just with better PR.

Such a state of affairs still cranks the iron law of prohibition
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition),
the reason so many people die of fent overdoses), this still leads to police
having legal authority to stop and search your car if they claim to smell
weed, it still leads to people involved in the drug trade having no options
for dispute-settlement outside of violence
([https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-war-on-
drugs...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-war-on-drugs-
creates-violence/2015/10/16/6de57a76-72b7-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html)),
it still leads to police focusing on the impossible task of ending the drug
trade to the point of trashing the homicide clearance rate
([https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/02/why-are-
americ...](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/02/why-are-american-
cops-so-bad-at-catching-killers)).

~~~
viridian
Thanks for this comment. I wasn't aware of the iron law of prohibition but it
makes a ton of sense. The higher the risk, the more you optimize your supply
chain to minimize physical contraband in travel, which means optimizing for
product value per weight.

~~~
zkms
The other effect is that drug prohibition can (and currently does) function as
a _subsidy_ for violent transnational criminal organisations: the difficulty
in transporting contraband inflates its price at the destination, and if
Alice's drug-trafficking operation can obtain a competitive advantage over
Bob's by killing Bob's personnel; she just might. Without the doorkickers of
the DEA and friends, there'd be no hyperviolent drug lords.

Without prohibition, drug trafficking operations have to compete with fully
licit container ships and will get annihilated; because the illicit drug
trade's transport methods are optimised to evade detection and without that
selection pressure, there's no point for all the violence and the concealment
tactics.

------
nimbius
its a rather poignant article considering California began legal recreational
marijuana sales today. 7 other states have legalized marijuana for medical and
recreational use as well.

throughout most of the 80s the policy was 'do as i say, not as i do' as far as
I can tell. with the government simultaneously financing the contras and
fueling a drug epidemic. in the 90s we saw 3 strikes and a nearly terminal
myopic perspective that branded drug abuse victims the same as Hillary
Clintons "superpredators" and other violent felons. Today the US has become
the nation with the greatest number of citizens incarcerated, thanks in part
to this endless drug war. Conversely, the opioid crisis in the US has been
recognized but almost no convictions of drug executives have taken place for
their role in fueling it. It feels similar to the housing crisis.

Its also difficult to see the drug war as anything but a proxy for placating
voter bases after the 1964 Civil Rights amendment. Michelle Alexanders 'the
new jim crow' goes into detail regarding this.

I hope 2018 continues the sobering trend of abolishing mandatory minimums and
decriminalizing marijuana, a recreational narcotic less dangerous than Alcohol
yet one which has managed to become more regulated than methamphetamine.

~~~
QAPereo
_“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the
bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison,
had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White
House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You
understand what I’m saying? 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.”_

John Erlichman, via Dam Baum

~~~
cmurf
This was a part of the Nixon southern strategy, Lee Atwater discussed it with
some detail. [https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-
inf...](https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-
infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/)

And in my view the current Attorney General is carrying out the same old ideas
and policy effects, which is why he's so neurotically anti-weed, conflating it
at every turn with opioid addiction.

~~~
dragonwriter
> And in my view the current Attorney General is carrying out the same old
> ideas and policy effects, which is why he's so neurotically anti-weed,
> conflating it at every turn with opioid addiction

Sessions has made statements in line with that description, but as yet they
don't seem to have manifested in substantive DoJ action.

Of course, part of it may be that while posturing is supported by the
administration, a major new FBI law enforcement initiative would be
incompatible with the Administration’s propaganda war on the FBI, making it
hard for it to get the green light.

~~~
cmurf
They can't manifest into substantive action, Rohrabacher-Farr prohibits it.
That's why Sessions keeps harassing Congress to withdraw the prohibition, so
he can use DoJ funds to prosecute both recreational and medical marijuana
possession, distribution, production.

~~~
dragonwriter
> They can't manifest into substantive action, Rohrabacher-Farr prohibits it.

Rohrabacher-Farr only applies on its face to state _medical_ cannabis laws,
and in any case Trump's signing statement on the spending bill containing the
first renewal during his administration implied that the administration views
the provision as unconstitutional. So, there's certainly action that the DoJ
could take consistent with the administration rhetoric, from a couple
different angles. It would hardly be the only example of this administration
aggressively probing the limits of its power until and unless explicitly
constrained by the courts.

------
danieltillett
The thing about the “War on Drugs” is it has never been a real war, more a
minor skirmish fought with the equivalent of paintball guns.

Not that I am suggesting any of these are good ideas (sometimes the cure is
worse than the disease), but if you really wanted to go to war on drugs and
win you could do any of the following:

1\. Spike the drug supply with a slow acting poison. Lots of poisons to choose
from to make this work.

2\. Conduct continuous drug testing of the entire population (say once a week)
with harsh penalties for failing.

3\. Apply a mandatory death penalty for any drug use (especially if combined
with 2).

4\. Immunise the population to induce anaphylaxis if drugs are consumed (this
one is technically possible, but it would need further research).

I am not advocating for any of these (far from it), just pointing out that it
is meaningless to say you have failed at something that has never been tried.

Edit. Rather than clicking the inverted arrow, how about engaging in a
discussion.

~~~
askafriend
This is a very interesting comment. I had not considered this perspective
before and I haven't really heard anyone else use this line of thinking before
either - so I appreciate what you wrote.

But if you look at a bit of the historical context of the war on drugs, you
see that a significant part of it was originally racially motivated. Having a
pseudo-war instead of a real war gave the people in control more leverage to
selectively target the consequences of banning certain substances like
Marijuana or Cocaine.

~~~
danieltillett
Yes the “war on drugs” has been a sideshow of the forever war on the
underclass.

~~~
askafriend
Ugh, I wish that weren't the truth.

------
wasx
At this point articles like this are stale. They don't convince anyone not
already convinced, and are really just echo chambers. The thing is, making
posts and articles isn't going to change a damn thing, there's such a
disconnect between the people in power and your average person that it's hard
to see how any real change will come about from writing, airing your
criticisms and petitioning. Especially since 21st century activism seems to be
more focused on retweets than praxis, which ultimately means that unless
people take to the streets and force change, all that's ever going to happen
is more articles and more silence from the top.

Do something if you believe in change.

~~~
projektfu
These articles really do change the conversation in Washington, when the
byline is someone like George Schultz. We don't expect to hear this sort of
thing from a member of the Nixon and Reagan administrations. In fact, it's not
common to hear it from the Clinton and Obama administrations. But if it were
from a Green or a Libertarian, it wouldn't reach the NYT op-ed page because
it'd be uninteresting, and nobody in Washington would talk about it.

~~~
angel_j
So you're saying the NYT, in all it's democracy-loving care and self-
importance, can't (or editorially won't) push this issue on it's own, for
instance by hammering the point home with continued, determined, journalistic
reporting of actual events that the War on Drugs foments, because it's not
"fit to print", or not "fit to sway Washington D.C."?

But when some washed up D.C. insider millenials never heard of finally wants
to admit what we all know, they run the article, as an opinion piece.

But the nation can't focus on fixing the problem b/c of all the celebrity
"news" and other garbage they did print in place of dogged coverage of
decades-spanning, life-taking, community ruining, racist practices led by the
federal government...

That's exactly why we don't read the NYT. It's part of the oligarchy.

~~~
forgottenpass
The parent poster already explained why this position would be seen as run-of-
the-mill and ineffectual if comes from the NYT's editorial voice.

The NYT choosing to run this is exactly what you want them to do, using their
position to push this issue by choosing to run this Op-Ed. Yes, It's a bland
position only catching up to the status quo of many statehouses, but what's
significant is the byline.

In this case, The Times is showing Shutlz and Aspe approve of the steps taken
in states to an audience that's not ready to make any baby steps at a federal
level.

------
Yaa101
Something what is almost never told in this discussion about drugs in the US
is the root cause of drug use and it's epdemics is simply this: Live for a lot
of people in the US is shitty, that is why they use drugs. The circomstances
that cause these shitty lives is of course debatable but never addressed by
the rulers of the US.

~~~
wavefunction
What about all the people in other countries that use drugs?

What about all the people throughout history that have used drugs over at
least tens of thousands of years before the US was around?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Of course it doesn't stop all drug use and abuse. I simply enjoy some like
folks would enjoy alcohol. But surely you can understand that having a shitty
life makes drugs look more appealing.

For example, if you can't get proper time off work to heal an injury - which
really is an indicator of a shitty life - you go to pain meds to get through.
Or maybe your doctor said you couldn't keep working your current job, but you
don't qualify for disability or any assistance to find or train for a
different one. So you take pain meds in between. Keep doing this and you might
find an addiction. Sure, it is better to go to a therapist to get over trauma,
but that's more expensive than weed or vodka in the short term - plus either
drug is more immediate.

------
manicdee
The war on drugs was a highly successful campaign to entrench racism so deep
in the American psyche that you will never be rid of it.

The “War on Drugs” was never about drugs.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Race plays a huge part, but absolute statements like this are not true. You're
underestimating just how strong views against drug abuse of any kind are in
this country due to religion or whatever.

The prohibitionist movement had a strong female component and the argument was
based around various forms of domestic abuse that were related to workmen
being drunk all day. This had overlap with the abolitionist movement. It was
not racist in its origin and it was the strongest legal "war on drugs" we ever
had.

[https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/abolition-
wome...](https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/abolition-womens-
rights-and-temperance-movements.htm)

~~~
joeax
The War on Drugs and the Prohibition are two very separate things. While what
you say is true about the Prohibition bringing disparate groups together
(Church groups, women's' groups, big tobacco), the War on Drugs was an
inherently racist tool invented by the Nixon administration to target hippies
and blacks.

[http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-
richa...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-
nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html)

~~~
gozur88
Yeah, except that Nixon just gave it that name. Drug prohibition in the US
started when Nixon was learning to walk.

This "drug prohibition is about racism" is all _post hoc ergo propter hoc_
stuff.

~~~
manicdee
The War on Drugs is a specific program of racist vilification. I did not make
any claim about prohibition.

~~~
gozur88
No it wasn't. The War on Drugs was an attempt to take disparate anti-drug
efforts and combine them into a more coherent whole. It was no different from
the War on Poverty.

Were there people attempting to use drug policy to attack other people they
didn't like? I've no doubt. But that wasn't the purpose of the War on Drugs
and it would never have come into existence if it were.

------
acd
It would be good if we reflect on why people take drugs. Maybe US need more
holidays so people will feel happier. If people are happy they will probably
consume less drugs.

In my view drugs are a way to escape pain.

Maybe smart phones are making people isolated from each other? We used to
watch movies with friends now we watch personal streams. People not feeling a
belonging are seeking escape in substances?

~~~
noobiemcfoob
You're focusing on the mental/psychological reasons someone pursues drugs over
more mundane things like literal, physical pain relief.

------
joe_the_user
It seems like future may locate the point where America began it's decline
with Nixon's war on drugs (though that definitely first of America's wars on
substances).

~~~
maxxxxx
It definitely triggered very negative developments like mass incarceration.

~~~
joeax
What's worse, mass incarceration has become the status quo with the American
public. Writing new laws and jail seems to be the standard response for every
problem in America. This is evident in the current opioid epidemic, where
politicians just write up new laws and hope to just legislate the problem
away, instead of examining the root cause and legalizing alternative medicines
or funding treatment.

------
mrarjen
In my opinion it's best to legalize drugs to the point where people are
educated about it's use.
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvRQKXtIGcK1yEnQ4Te8hWQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvRQKXtIGcK1yEnQ4Te8hWQ)

And when they feel they need help getting off the drugs they can go to any
clinic or government point to help them get clean and back on their feet. This
has proven quite successful in any country that has done this so far.

------
ggm
I would ask myself what the cash liberated from the war on drugs could be more
usefully applied to, except I suspect it wouldn't get spent on health, mental
or otherwise, or on short-circuiting or avoiding paths to jail in the justice
system. A shame, because both relate strongly to side effects or direct
outcomes of .. the war on drugs.

------
Clubber
>The high black-market price for illegal drugs has generated huge profits for
the groups that produce and sell them, income that is invested in buying
state-of-the-art weapons, hiring gangs to defend their trade, paying off
public officials and making drugs easily available to children, to get them
addicted.

Drugs are cheaper now than they every have been. I'd argue it's the lack of
regulated competition, leading to a handful of cartels that take the lion's
share of the market (and money) that gives them such power.

[https://www.alternet.org/drugs/price-illegal-drugs-
dropping-...](https://www.alternet.org/drugs/price-illegal-drugs-dropping-
purity-increasing-and-global-war-drugs-failing)

~~~
pitaj
It's not that the competition is unregulated really. It's more that to enter
the market as a supplier you need the resources to fight the government's
involved and the other cartels which will happily just murder you instead.

------
thomastjeffery
"Drugs" is not a belligerent.

So who is this war "on"?

Distributors? Users? Creators?

Even these are vague groupings.

How can you fight a war if you can't even specify who the enemy is?

The short answer: You can't.

We have the same issue with "Terror".

------
cobbzilla
From a memetic/selection perspective, the war has been phenomenally successful
in perpetuating its own existence.

------
kingmanaz
"Not prone to ill, nor strange to foreign guest, They eat, they drink, and
nature gives the feast The trees around them all their food produce: Lotus the
name: divine, nectareous juice! (Thence call'd Lo'ophagi); which whose tastes,
Insatiate riots in the sweet repasts, Nor other home, nor other care intends,
But quits his house, his country, and his friends. The three we sent, from off
the enchanting ground We dragg'd reluctant, and by force we bound. The rest in
haste forsook the pleasing shore, Or, the charm tasted, had return'd no more.
Now placed in order on their banks, they sweep The sea's smooth face, and
cleave the hoary deep: With heavy hearts we labour through the tide, To coasts
unknown, and oceans yet untried."

Life's a journey. More should face it sober.

------
skydv
> What, then, can we do? .... Only then can we engage in rigorous and
> countrywide education campaigns to persuade people not to use drugs.... We
> still have time to persuade our young people not to ruin their lives.

Yeah you should've persuaded Steve Jobs not to use drugs and especially LSD.
Then you could also invent iPhone yourself

