The underlying issue seems to be that we confuse the empathy we should have with victims and their families, for reverence. We spend so much time listening to their advice, which is pro tanto going to be the most emotionally charged advice you can get. When policy is formed through pathos, nothing good can come of it except purely by chance.
It's not just drugs. At all levels of our justice system and society, we confuse the need to listen to victims and respect them, with a need to let them control policy. Of course the mother of the girl who is raped and murdered wants nothing more or less than such behavior to end. Of course the person who takes drugs and spends years in hell because of them has a very particular view of them.
We should listen to those views, incorporate them into policy, but they should not be the oracles of policy.
> Of course the person who takes drugs and spends years in hell because of them has a very particular view of them.
Have you talked to many recovered drug addicts? Everyone I know who has been either addicted or seen friends go through addiction advocates for compassion and harm reduction, not stronger prohibition.
I have, and I know mostly those kinds of people too. Unfortunately I also know plenty of the other kind, the "Drugs are literally the devil" types. Having an addiction doesn't confer wisdom, and some people get out of active addiction however they can. For some people it's a journey back to who they always were, but some... are very different.
When I was younger, I thought I had a real problem with marijuana (truthfully I had a problem with being a putz), and I went to some Narcotics Anonymous meetings. I met some great people there, some I still stay in touch with, but I met some broken, broken people too. One guy in particular had a rough life before addiction, and an even rougher one with it. He made it out alive, but that's about it.
I used to call him, "The bag of Jesus man", because he always carried around a bag stuffed with religious pamphlets, papers, books, iconography, etc. This is how he stayed off drugs, and alive, and you have to respect what he did. You don't however, have to form policy based on his recommendations, which were frankly alarming.
It's not just drugs. At all levels of our justice system and society, we confuse the need to listen to victims and respect them, with a need to let them control policy. Of course the mother of the girl who is raped and murdered wants nothing more or less than such behavior to end. Of course the person who takes drugs and spends years in hell because of them has a very particular view of them.
We should listen to those views, incorporate them into policy, but they should not be the oracles of policy.