> On Tuesday, two House Democrats introduced legislation that would decriminalize all drugs in the U.S., shifting the national response to a public health model. The measure appears to have zero chance of passage.
If that isn't just the perfect description of politics in the US, I don't know what is. I don't know what your political ideology has to be to think the War on Drugs is a good thing, after all the money wasted, all the lives lost, all the people pointlessly locked up for things half the country can now do openly and legally.
The most common-sense things don't even have a chance at passing because our government is barely hiding that they're all either corporate stooges or obstructionist trolls anymore.
> I don't know what your political ideology has to be to think the War on Drugs is a good thing
This is quite a straw man, not wanting to decriminalize all drugs is not the same as thinking the War on Drugs is a good thing. (And it's not like there is one particular policy that on its own constitutes the "War on Drugs", so this is a very vague statement anyway).
It's also interesting to me that in many other arguments, the liberal/progressive side likes to (rightly) highlight other countries that have done a better job and present an example to follow. Not so with drug laws, because there are no such clear examples of success. There are countries with much less of a drug problem than the US which have much harsher drug penalties (like Japan and Singapore). Then there is the most popular example on the other extreme, Portugal, where it is not at all clear whether their decriminalization policy worked or not [0].
US society clearly seems to be moving in the direction of legalizing less harmful substances like weed and relaxing criminal penalties for small scale possession, which I believe are good things. But I don't see any reason to believe that decriminalizing everything would make things better. At the local level, US cities where opiates are effectively decriminalized like SF have horrible outcomes when it comes to drug abuse and overdoses.
"At the local level, US cities where opiates are effectively decriminalized like SF have horrible outcomes when it comes to drug abuse and overdoses."
The obvious question to ask is if the rampant drug abuse and overdoses in SF is due to decriminalization or something else? And has decriminalization made the situation better or worse?
I would argue that to prevent unintentional overdoses the best thing to do (other than improve people's lives so they don't feel a need for substances that could be harming them) is to legalize these drugs, make them pure, clearly label them, and educate people on how much of a dose in what circumstances would be an overdose.
That alone would greatly reduce the harm, and be much more effective than making/keeping these drugs illegal and forcing their users to play the lottery with a mystery drug of unknown purity and dosage every time they snort or inject.
That's not to mention the harm of being shot or assaulted by the police during an arrest for drug use, your life being ruined by a felony conviction, possibly getting raped, tortured or murdered in prison, being kept out of the legal economy afterward you get out (if you get out) because of a felony conviction, etc..
TBH, SF has so many reasons for "horrible outcomes" that I don't think putting it on the opiates' supposed legality is fair. I mean, that's the place where it's legal to rob Walgreens, I don't think opiates did that.
I’m actually not sure how anyone knows this for sure, I haven’t seen the evidence first hand. But according to our board of supervisors 80% of the Walgreens robberies are tied to organized crime. The gangs get money and power from selling drugs that are decriminalized, and then find new ways to make more money like robbing stores.
Also, the same line of thinking that doesn’t think you should penalize the addict for doing something wrong like taking drugs in the first place, is easily extended to also saying we that robbing a store is a minor offense and we shouldn’t penalize anybody for that either.
Well, on some level they are related, as you noted, by the ideological background that drives the belief system of the people managing SF. But, if we range their decisions by the amount of harm they are doing to the city, I don't think not jailing addicts would come on top. There were other places, where this strategy worked successfully - when combined with suitable addiction management programs and proper law enforcement in other areas. SF management, obviously, is unwilling to do that, but I would blame the whole complex of delusionary beliefs they hold rather than specific decriminalization decision.
That's also a hard sell right now based on the catastrophic failure of US public health policies during the pandemic.
Public health systems have shown they can do a pretty good job given a miracle vaccine to work with. Short of that, not so much. And unfortunately we don't yet have a shot that cures drug abuse.
A little more specifically, I don't think the lack of availability of rehab programs is what is the problem here, and that's about all public health could offer.
What do you mean? There are free treatment resources available for homeless/poor drug addicts to get clean. But many people are never going to make the choice to do so.
Defeatism is so exhausting. Every one already knows that every thing sucks. Trying is better than not trying. Unless you have some better ideas. Please tell.
Norway doesn't sendt addicts to jail for addiction as far as I know. (But will sometimes send addicts to jail for dealing drugs or for stealing to finance their drug use.)
Originally there was a much better proposal by Høgre ( literally "Right", probably best translated as "Conservatives") but it was shot down by Arbeiderpartiet ("Worker's Party" / "Labour" depending on how literally you want to translate it.)
If anyone find it more than a bit ironic then we agree.
I don't think the laws are the way they are because people don't have common sense. Think of all the lawyers, drug testing lab techs, court clerks, judges, and probation officers that would lose their jobs if the war on drugs was lifted.
If you ever watched police shows like "cops" they seem to spend 2/3 of their time arresting people for drugs. It's hard solve home burglaries, it's easy to bust people with petty amounts of drugs in their cars.
This. Exactly this. People seem to forget that whole industries and careers in the tens if not hundreds of thousands would be overturned at the stroke of a pen, even if it is a good idea for lots of reasons. And the people with a vested stake in the status quo are going to fight like hell to keep it. Ending the war on drugs needs to be practically unwound in a manner that doesn't trigger a huge special interest outcry that will thwart any and all progress.
Just because those jobs exist is not a reason for them to continue existing. They can find work in fields such as helping addicts instead of oppressing them.
> If that isn't just the perfect description of politics in the US
Yes, but not in the way that you say.
Political change happens step by tiny step. You have to hammer the same point for decades to get somewhere. You hammer it by winning elections, by having better candidates win your primaries, by getting the news media, large corporations, and celebrities to virtue signal, by rallies, by protests, by sabotaging the system from within.
No single one of these things moves the needle on its own, but push on all of them, and your grandchildren may have a chance to live in a better world.
And yes, anywhere between a third to half the country will dig their heels in, and fight you on it, every step on the way on it.
No it doesn't, political change is simply impossible without massive financial backing, which is why policies that benefit the classes that don't have a lot of money have to jump through all those hoops you mentioned to eventually get the money behind it.
If political change is impossible without major financial backing, you should be able to tell me which billionaires sponsored the de-stigmatization, normalization, and legalization of homosexuality in the United States over the past 30-50 years.
> sponsored the de-stigmatization, normalization, and legalization of homosexuality in the United States over the past 30-50 years
Well, I wonder how to quantify all the "normalization" of homosexuality in tv shows/movies over the last 20 years or so (guesstimate) for example. Surely tv shows like Six feet under and culminating in Modern Family had a role to play though I wouldn't know how to put a dollar figure to it.
The problem is that our system is broken. Wildly popular policies can't pass because of republican obstructionism in the senate.
Worse, the senate is hugely anti-democratic. It's not 1/3-1/2 of the population; its the reps of 4/25.
""The 25 most populous states contain nearly 84 percent of the 50 states’ total population. So 16 percent of the country controls half of the seats in the United States Senate (and that’s not accounting for the fact that DC, Puerto Rico, and several other US territories have no representation at all in Congress).""[1]
>25 most populous states contain nearly 84 percent of the 50 states’ total population. So 16 percent of the country controls half of the seats in the United States Senate
Not really, the flaw here is seeing each "blue state" as 100% blue and each "red state" as 100% red. A blue state can be simply a matter of a single blue city surrounded by red counties. The holdout states give a voice to the people in holdout counties whose lifestyles are at the whim of a super-majority in the city.
I prefer a government that does as little as possible and leave it up to each local population to do what's best for themselves. This thread, after all, is about the federal government abusing its people with the war on drugs. Changing the faction in charge and making things even easier for them doesn't solve that problem as that faction is then subject to corruption too.
Whether government corruption is inevitable is frankly irrelevant to the broader question of political representation. I understand very well the (R) v (D) distinction is predominantly Rural v Urban. I believe in democracy and, as such, believe that people, not land should vote. Any system that is as so incredibly unrepresentative is unjust.
If 1% of CA moved to Wyoming; Wyoming would be majority Californian. Them having equal representation in a co-equal political body is insanity. Wyoming has a population half the size of the city of San Jose.
> The holdout states give a voice to the people in holdout counties whose lifestyles are at the whim of a super-majority in the city.
Every non-geographic minority group in this country somehow manages to deal with this problem. What makes rural conservatives require such a truly exceptional level of representation?
Unfortunately, a lot of people oppose legalization of drugs. Even marijuana - a drug with zero addictive potential and being massively recreationally used for generations, including by prominent public figures, without any serious ill effects - only slowly gains ground to be allowed to be used medically (that's while much more dangerous substances are actively used medically and nobody has a problem with that). 36 states allow medical use of marijuana, and only 17 states decriminalize it completely. And the federal ban remains, with laughably false classification of marijuana as a substance with "high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use". What to say about other drugs, with less established patterns of safe use?
I don't think it's "corporate stooges or obstructionist trolls" - people are just profoundly ignorant in the matter and are unwilling to change their minds about it, however large tall the most idiotic war of all wars takes. It'd be easy if it were just a bunch of corporate lobbyist trolls. Widespread ignorance is much harder to overcome.
> I don't think it's "corporate stooges or obstructionist trolls" - people are just profoundly ignorant in the matter and are unwilling to change their minds about it
People are kept profoundly ignorant in the matter. That's what I hate the most about the War on Drugs, people are kept from being educated on them, learning about the real dangers, instead it's just FUD and when young people discover they were lied to and experiment with drugs they have very little knowledge of the risks.
I guess it is a good description of politics, in that didn't people have different ideas on how to solve our problems. I think drugs, for the most part, should be decriminalized. I think prohibition taught us that.
In the other hand drugs can be bad, and people are what stuff abuse can do. This is one reason we try to criminalize it. So, it isn't exactly cut and dry.
> I don't know what your political ideology has to be to think the War on Drugs is a good thing, after all the money wasted, all the lives lost, all the people pointlessly locked up for things half the country can now do openly and legally.
A lot of people continue see locking up addicts as keeping dangerous people off the streets, so basically a good thing. They tend not to think significant rates of rehabilitation are possible, and that attempting it would be a waste of money that would also lead to higher crime rates.
> The most common-sense things don't even have a chance at passing
These same people would find it laughable—literally—that you think decriminalizing all drugs is common sense. They would see this as plainly, and wildly, out-of-touch with reality. Typical pie-in-the-sky and/or ivory-tower liberalism.
>If that isn't just the perfect description of politics in the US, I don't know what is. I don't know what your political ideology has to be to think the War on Drugs is a good thing, after all the money wasted, all the lives lost, all the people pointlessly locked up for things half the country can now do openly and legally.
Well it does sound like you're equating the War on Drugs to the War on Marijuana.
There are other substances that most people really don't think should be accessible to everyone. Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth?
>There are other substances that most people really don't think should be accessible to everyone
This is not how a free society operates. I choose what I put into my body and not you or anyone else. If doing so causes me to commit a crime, then punish that crime, but banning drugs because "most people" don't like them is not freedom. If you don't like them, then don't do them.
>Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user?
A free person should be given the opportunity to demonstrate their responsibility instead of it being assumed such responsibility is not possible simply because a majority of the populace finds a substance distasteful.
> I choose what I put into my body and not you or anyone else.
Unfortunately, the US public and the US government never accepted this principle. Practically everything you put in your body - at least in the US - has to be approved by the government. Sometimes by several branches of it. Food, drink, medicine, whether you swallow it, inject it, smoke it or rub it in - the government has its say in it. In 20 states you can't even legally drink raw milk, and in those that allow it in principle, require you to jump through a lot of hoops to achieve it. Such is the reality of the nanny state, and unfortunately the US public - the Land of the Free - is largely completely OK with it and would never vote to remove it.
As a society we've already concluded that it's okay to prioritize safety over freedom, as long as the tradeoff is sufficiently profitable: we have seatbelt laws, we did lockdowns during the pandemic, and you can be involuntarily committed for mental health.
I think a much better argument is to point at countries that decriminalized drugs and didn't see an increase in crime. If legalizing marijuana resulted in a 10x rise in crime I'd 100% for keeping it illegal
(This is all from someone who is very much AGAINST the war on drugs)
> I think a much better argument is to point at countries that decriminalized drugs and didn't see an increase in crime.
I agree.
> we've already concluded that it's okay to prioritize safety over freedom
Who is "we"? A majority telling a minority "we" know what's best for you at the expense of your freedom is very dangerous rhetoric.
> we have seatbelt laws
In this analogy, I would argue drugs = cars and seatbelts would be some safety measure on where drugs could be used (like no heroin injecting within 100 ft of a school, etc...) which seems like a reasonable restriction. But banning cars because a majority of the population thinks they are dangerous and people cannot drive them responsibly would be absurd.
There are other cases where society punish people before they commit a crime. We punish people from driving under the influence, even if the drug has yet to cause an accident. Society and the majority of the populace has generally decided that the risk to society is bad enough to make it illegal.
Under the process of law making, a lot of things has been made illegal because it adds a risk to society. From a simplistic perspective it is just risk management, with risk on one side and the cost of the mitigation on the other side. It is not necessary any ideology behind it, and thus the removal of one costly mitigation strategy can have little impact on other strategies that are less costly.
All drug use has health costs. If healthcare is public or heavily subsidized then the taxpayer has to foot the bill for every unhealthy decision that others make.
We can have a free society where people are free to put whatever they want in their bodies, and to suffer the health outcomes and poverty and combination of those things freely as well, if they make bad decisions.
What we can't afford as a society is to give free health care and UBI to people who choose to destroy their bodies, at the expense of everyone who chooses against their own interests to be productive members of society, assuming there are enough people who wouldn't choose to live on the dole and do drugs if they were legal.
I don't care about the airlines, they're increasing medical costs for the whole system. Obese people have a greater incidence of injury and illness than the non obese population. When the percentage of obese people increases, it furthers the strain on the medical system. This ends up increasing costs and wait times while decreasing quality of service.
You're not wrong, but causality is REALLY hard. What about the obese person who got that way from taking prescribed corticosteroids for a malady that was not his fault?
What about people who got that way before they turned 18 because their parents fed them junk every day, and the window of puberty had closed?
What about alcoholics who are compulsively drinking their calories?
I know there are a lot of people who are just lazy and stupid, but good luck proving that to legal satisfaction.
I don't agree with criminalizing obesity, but I wanted to point out the serious strain it puts our system under. Far more than drug use. Perhaps we shod consider regulating foods and/or having harm reduction education around food and eating habits.
You really want the intrusion of a government bureaucracy in your life telling you how much and which foodstuffs, that are perfectly safe when eaten in moderation, you can buy? Think for a while about how this can go wrong, and about what kind of agency you want over your body.
We already have that when it comes to drugs. I'm saying the industry should be regulated better, instead of a free for all. Regulation is not all or nothing.
>Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth?
Yes! And this is what is so fascinating is how well the "drug war" has helped shape societal opinion to think it's not possible to be a functional user. Yet, you may be surprised to learn we have millions of people prescribed Adderall, an amphetamine mixture that is functionally equivalent to methamphetamine. They go about their daily lives on this drug.
Likewise, we have beyond millions of people on oxycotin and other functionally equivalent drugs to Heroin going about their daily lives as well.
Does this mean they live great lives? Not necessarily, but just as we have millions of functional alcoholics we also have many functional drug users in our country.
"The average crystal meth addict uses about 500 mg a day. And they snort it, which probably produces about double the peak plasma level as taking it orally. So they're getting the equivalent of 1000 mg oral amphetamine daily. The average Adderall patient takes 20 mg."
The fact that it's safe to have licensed people prescribe a tightly-controlled substance at 2% of recreational doses is... not at all a good argument for fully unrestricted 100% recreational doses.
(I'm still against the war on drugs, for what it's worth)
Perhaps educating recreational users about safe dosing is important when it comes to harm reduction? 500mg dose in a non tolerant individual would cause serious issues, they didn't get there overnight.
Alcohol is the one that really throws me off. IT's often a malevolent substance yet has none of the stigma of "hard" drugs. Societal acceptance of alcohol, hell even encouragement, has led to countless deaths in this country. Yet it's readily accessible.
> Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth?
Of course it is. The issues that you equate with the image of meth and heroin users are not as a result of the drugs; they’re nearly always a symptom of the problem, often mental health related.
Addiction is always a public health issue, no matter what form, whether it’s gambling, food, alcohol, drugs, …
"Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user?"
Many years ago I read of a long-term study which followed heroin addicted doctors for 20 years, in a society which guaranteed them a supply of clean heroin, and found that as long as their supply was clean and uninterrupted these heroin addicted doctors actually performed slightly better than their non-addicted colleagues, and there were minimal if any negative health consequences.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the study since[1], so take that with a grain of salt.. and heroin is not really my subject of interest so take the following with another grain of salt, but my impression has been that pure heroin is actually not that harmful, especially compared to something like alcohol or cigarettes.
The main problem is the potential for unintentional overdose, which really shouldn't be much of a problem with pure heroin (or not much more than many other prescription drugs, whose use doesn't have any negative moral stigma attached to them). If people know the purity and dosage of the drug they're taking they tend not to take so much that it would kill them... not accidentally anyway. It happens, but it also happens plenty of other prescription drugs.
There's also addiction, but if you can get a pure, cheap supply (which should be the case where heroin is legal) and it doesn't cause any serious health consequences, then what's the problem?
[1] - If anyone else can find this study, I'd be eternally grateful.
If you could get an uninterruptible supply of pure, safe heroin (safety is relative to street drugs containing fentanyl) for $5-10/day, it would be possible to be a responsible heroin user — employed taxpayer or however you want to define ‘responsible’.
I used to be a heroin addict, price and availability were the two main obstacles to functioning normally. I’m glad I don’t do heroin any longer (suboxone was a huge help, also stopped that), but if the conditions in the first paragraph were true, it would easily be possible.
>>There are other substances that most people really don't think should be accessible to everyone. Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth?
it probably isn't, but bans don't work either or are simply not effective compared to education. the only places where it works are basically dictatorships where people are obedient and don't make waves about anything. if you're a democracy and have "freedom" as a high priority it simply doesn't work to order people what they have a right to smoke, drink or inject. but what you can do is educate people and it's not even expensive compared to the ludicrous amounts of money spent on the war on drugs. countries like Portugal have demonstrated that quite well.
Its still doing the most important things--lining the pockets of some, criminalizing large groups of people that the government wants to marginalize, and acting as a cornerstone of restrictive laws that are imposed upon the citizenry.
> large groups of people that the government wants to marginalize
Who does the government want to marginalize? I thought the government (and the rest of the world, really) was all about equality and inclusion as of late.
To borrow the quote from another post on this thread (which is still very valid): "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 Ehrlichman, to Dan Baum for Harper's Magazine in 1994, about President Richard Nixon's war on drugs, declared in 1971.
How is a quote about how the Nixon administration having "black people as the enemy" around 1968-1971 still relevant in 2021 when the current administration's messaging is one of inclusion and equality?
Its not like every time there's a new president every single person in the government is fired and new people are rehired. Its also not like every policy/law gets shredded and entirely new policies get created overnight.
Having a new president is like a new captain giving orders on an incredibly massive ship. There's a ton of inertia going on, there's a lot of people below the captain that are still the people with the hands on the controls operating the boat. Plus, usually when you're in the middle of trying to steer the boat to port the captain gets replaced and starts commanding the boat turn to starboard.
Coupled this with the idea that its not really just a single ship, its a fleet of 50+ ships each with that same concept of a ton of inertia at play and not really a strict chain of command between the captains of each ship and the admiral of the fleet (imperium in imperio).
There are multiple jurisdictions in the United States. Many of those are still directly attacking inclusion and equality, for instance by tightening voting laws without also funding efforts for voting access.
Additionally, many people do not agree with the current administration. Politics is not just about the big guy in charge, it's about how everyone approaches the matter at hand.
> They don't really take a lot of actions to back it up.
Is this why more groups have been added to the list of protected classes? Is this why our current administration is one of the most diverse to ever exist?
I get the twitter outrage is fun, but when you look at data, our government has become more and more about equality and inclusion in meaningful ways. The US government isn't perfect, but it can't be perfect, there will always be room to grow. It does take time, but looking at data and trends shows equity ticking up over time. Lets have more nuanced views.
Diversity of skin color is not meaningful change in the slightest if all the policies stay the same. They're just hiring different faces to say the same things.
Diversity of skin color is meaningful in many ways, but that's not the greatest example. Policies that have changed in recent years include giving transgender individuals protected class status, as well as gay marriage being legal, federally.
There are also the states legalizing marijuana to consider. If the war on drugs is in fact a racist policy, then turning back the pages on that, wrt the most common, least harmful drug, then real policy changes are being made. Furthermore, the current congress has introduced legislation to legalize marijuana federally. So yeah, we are seeing policies change.
To put a finer point on the electoral college, it was to appease slaveholding states so they would ratify the constitution. They wanted their enslaved to increase their voting power at the polls without actually giving Black people the right to vote. So the three fifths compromise let them count their enslaved as three fifths of a person. Now it obviously wasn't enough that a Black vote would only count as 3/5ths. The electoral college was needed so they could accomplish this while still having only white people as representatives elected by white voters.
There were other reasons for the electoral college, but appeasing the slave states in this way is one of the big reasons that was specifically written about and reasoned openly between the founding fathers at the time.
So when someone tells you, oh, the electoral college allows smaller states to have a say, think that through a bit. That old apocryphal explanation makes no sense really.
> Who does the government want to marginalize? I thought the government (and the rest of the world, really) was all about equality and inclusion as of late.
Only the moral & good parts of the government. There's plenty of politicians & forces out there whose campaign message & activities are rather the opposite.
I think the problem with this statement is that, if not read generously, it can be an easy way to demonize any opposition. “If you don’t agree with X govt policy intended to combat inequality, you are immoral.”
It’s possible to agree with the moral intent but also disagree with the policy. (Not saying this was your frame of argument, just thought it an important distinction).
Edit: downvotes are fine but please add to the discussion. Maybe you’ll change someone’s mind.
> "The war on drugs was an absolute miscalculation of human behavior," said Kassandra Frederique, who heads the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that advocates for total drug decriminalization.
For me it would be incredibly interesting to know how much it was a miscalculation or actually it was very well calculated.
The "War on Drugs" have failed to make USA safer, healthier or any other positive metric.
But, it has provided many with an excuse to pass restrictive laws, to win elections, to gain contracts with the government.
I am sure that many believed, even believe today in the "War on Drugs". But, it would be very interesting to know the reasoning to start it. And how much the people that started it failed to understand human behavior, or it is just that their goals had nothing to do fight drugs problems.
The reasoning is well established at this point. It was started by the Nixon administration to reduce the amount of left and left-leaning voters, particularly black Americans.
"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 Ehrlichman, to Dan Baum for Harper's Magazine in 1994, about President Richard Nixon's war on drugs, declared in 1971.
I'm about as anti War on Drugs as it's possible to get, but agree with those who consider that quote to be highly suspect.
Ehrlichman supposedly said it in a private interview with Baum, and there was no public record of it for 22 years after it was said, and 17 years after Ehrlichman died.
It's very rare to hear such mea culpas from powerful, politically adept figures that cast their subjects in such a negative light. When they speak of their actions at all they tend to talk of them with plenty of room for interpretation and plausible deniability -- especially if they're lawyers, as Ehrlichman was.
So as much as I believe that the War on Drugs was in fact in great part a racist war and one greatly based on suppression of dissent and the 60's and 70's counterculture, I very much doubt that Ehrlichman ever confessed.
> NIXON: [...] Let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn, they root 'em out. They don't let 'em around at all. I don't know what they do with them. Look at this country. You think the Russians allow dope? Homosexuality, dope, immorality, are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and left-wingers are clinging to one another. They're trying to destroy us. I know Moynihan will disagree with this, [Attorney General John] Mitchell will, and Garment will. But, goddamn, we have to stand up to this.
That quote doesn't really support the idea that "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." Instead, it supports the idea that Nixon thought drugs undermined society and stamping out drug use was valuable for its own sake.
>"Homosexuality, dope, immorality, are the enemies of strong societies."
Is it really though? It seems like it would be the enemy of an uptight conservative society that only speaks of freedoms from the side of their mouth while limiting the freedoms to only those things which they agree.
There is literally no proof that John Ehrlichman said this to Dan Baum in 1994 and when Dan Baum made this statement John Ehrlichman was already dead and could not refute it. Note that his estate has denied this statement.
It also is not accurate that the Nixon administration increased incarceration of drug use. That occurred under Reagan and Clinton.
However, Nixon was the first president to coin the term "war on drugs" but this was a rhetorical flourish. The Nixon Administration repealed the federal 2–10-year mandatory minimum sentences for possession of marijuana and started federal demand reduction programs and drug-treatment programs.
> It was started by the Nixon administration to reduce the amount of left and left-leaning voters, particularly black Americans.
That is interesting information, thank you for commenting.
It shows that there was not a misinterpretation, as the article suggests, at least, not the initiators of the "War", but more of a well-calculated hidden agenda that had nothing to do with "drugs".
Perhaps some instigators had ulterior motives, but many who jumped on were part of the grand miscalculation. Though perhaps they should have looked at Prohibition for guidance too.
As with so many generalizations about the U.S., it's more complicated than that, and varies on a state-by-state basis.
Most people in jail retain the right to vote, regardless of state.
People currently in prison on felony charges CANNOT vote in most states, but this is up to each state. In many states, you get your enfranchisement restored after completing your sentence.
I used to think the same thing, until I read an article that made me look into it. The article I read was a local affair that pointed out that inmates are encouraged (in my state, Maine) to file absentee ballots in the town they lived in prior to incarceration.
There are just a couple of states that allow that, but I learned that quite a few jurisdictions restore rights after incarceration, after probation, etc...
That particular quote always makes the rounds in these kinds of discussions, but the veracity of it is challenged and suspect[1]. I'm inclined to disbelieve it on those grounds and also that it is so politically self-serving that is crosses into the "too good to be true" category.
Nixon is actually quite removed from the beginning of the War on Drugs. That quote is also of questionable authenticity, so doesn't illustrate the point very well. Reefer Madness, for example, was released in 1936 when Nixon was only 23.
Harry Anslinger was actually one of the most influential figures in the beginning of the modern big-government war on drugs. The anti-marijuana movement was a marriage of convenience between sensationalist yellow journalism from the Hearst empire, and good old-fashioned racism.
"By the tons it is coming into this country — the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms. ... Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him."
"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."
Whether or not it was Nixon and friends acting like racists is secondary. Tons of individuals and institutions piled on because there was power and money in it for them.
My read is that your statement is incorrect, in that they were not simply 'acting like racists'. Instead, they were instituting racially motivated policies to combat the advances of the civil rights movement through the '60s. Plus ca change.
The difference is that racism is not a secondary motivator. Racism would be baked into the desire for power, as it would then be a desire to instill white supremacy.
You can say it’s secondary, but it’s a good answer to the question raised by the parent: “it would be very interesting to know the reasoning to start it.”
Its not an uncommon thing in history either. One of the incarnations of the KKK supported prohibition because it gave them an excuse to persecute catholic irish immigrants.
This seems oversimplified. Lots of politically very diverse countries around the world have harsh penalties for possession of heroin.
I don't doubt that the Nixon administration exploited the war on drugs for nefarious ends. However, I think the idea that the entire impetuous behind it was to target particular social groups is bordering on a conspiracy theory.
It is a bit like suggesting that Democrats are pro immigration only because immigrants tend to vote Democrat. I'm sure it hasn't escaped the notice of Democratic electoral strategists that the party could stand to benefit from immigration. But it would be implausible to suggest that this is the only reason that Democrats tend to favor a more liberal immigration policy than Republicans.
So having rules and laws designed to leverage the justice system against Black Americans is conspiratorial? That's literally the history of this country, from The Black Codes, to Jim Crow, to the War On Drugs this has been standard operating procedure.
Steady on – that's not what I said. I'm sure the Nixon administration exploited the war on drugs for racist ends (just as they exploited many other things for racist ends). That doesn't mean that the sole explanation for the war on drugs is a Nixonian plot.
I don't buy it. That's one administration's decision to capitalize on anti-drug sentiment, but it really is a world-wide phenomenon with many powerful countries not controlled by the US choosing to continue outlawing drugs, like middle eastern countries and China. Most Asian countries still have very harsh penalties for drug possession. If you use an earthquake or a hurricane to engage in some crony capitalism, it doesn't mean you started the earthquake. Likewise, something about drug control means most governments have a stake in perpetuating it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis
China and Middle Eastern countries are one-party states, not peer countries with comparable independent systems of criminal justice. Yes, many drugs are illegal in other peer countries (the UK, France, Canada, etc.). But the percentage of the United States' population incarcerated on drug-related charges alone is higher than the percentage of peer countries' population incarcerated on all charges. So the United States isn't simply outlawing drugs, it is choosing to crack down in a way that peers aren't. As far as the racial element goes, it's hard to separate racism from drug enforcement: the vast majority of those serving prison time on drug related charges are people of color (the percentage is greater in federal prisons than state prisons), even though substance abuse rates are similar across groups.
I buy it. It was forced on the world by the UN with the convention of psychotropic substances 1971. Only a handful of nations, now including the US are seeing this as a horrible mistake.
It is, was and always will be a horrible mistake, maybe the worst sociopolitical action in the 20th century. The brutality we have seen as a result of these policies leaves little moral ambiguity.
The argument is that Richard Nixon, a disgraced and impeached president, is conveniently responsible for all of the world's drug control "because racism." That sounds a little too comic book villainy to me. Nixon was such a failure that his successor could've immediately reversed that decision. To say that China is still to this day executing drug dealers because Richard Nixon was racist(which is true, I don't dispute that) is missing the forest for the trees.
Nixon was a comic book villain. China executes political prisoners and sells their organs. What China does has no baring on sensible drug policy; quite the opposite.
Isn't it a convenient excuse for other countries, too? In the same way that 'think of the children' is an argument for more censorship and Big Brother-style laws.
Personally I think it had more to do with corruption than anything. The CIA was happy to profit off it. The anti-drug people loved it, particularly those who were against cannabis. anyone who hated hippies. Anyone working against the antiwar movements. Those against hemp were happy. That's a lot of money just there. Politicians could use it to demonstrate a hard line stance against crime. Or just use it to target particular groups.
Then theres the people lobbying for anti-drug laws to expand the prison population. Lawyers and respective district attorneys that were happy as well.
The drug war was basically a felony printer as well. This made all sorts of social problems including unemployment / housing even more problematic. It tore apart families and still does. Meanwhile other legal drugs (opioids in general) flourished.
Then there's the overdoses / poisonings because the source and distribution networks are utterly motivated to mess with the supply.
The truly stupid aspect is that drug use has not significantly decreased. The whole "war" aspect was a complete failure. So it wasn't a good investment anyway.
So many parallels with prohibition. Government poisoned that supply as well and killed thousands.
The historical goals of the "War on Drugs" have not been to make the USA safer (though proponents often claim that). The goal has been white supremacy, which is served by giving cops laws that they can enforce based on racial prejudice.
Crack was sentenced at a 10x higher rate than cocaine because black citizens disproportionately used crack, while white users disproportionally used cocaine.
The crack vs. cocaine comparison is no good, we should stop using it. Free base is a very different drug than cocaine. An equivalent "white" version of crack would be crystal meth, which has had similar sentencing guidelines to crack.
I was under the impression that they are pharmacologically identical and main distinction is that crack can be smoked/vaporized and while cocaine is predominantly snorted.
I would be surprised if the harms of smoked crack were worse than the harms of IV cocaine.
Based on studies: Under 7% of cocaine abuse is IV. Self reported ratings of high, liking and stimulated are greater after smoking than after IV with similar plasma concentrations.
I am all for decriminalizing drug use but let’s not throw around false narratives. Here are the actual reasons for the “war on drugs” straight from the horses mouth:
NIXON: [...] Let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn, they root 'em out. They don't let 'em around at all. I don't know what they do with them. Look at this country. You think the Russians allow dope? Homosexuality, dope, immorality, are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and left-wingers are clinging to one another. They're trying to destroy us. I know Moynihan will disagree with this, [Attorney General John] Mitchell will, and Garment will. But, goddamn, we have to stand up to this.
With regards to the differing penalties for crack and cocaine, there are logical (though fundamentally misguided) reasons for it that have nothing to do with race as well. Crack cocaine is designed to be smokable, which makes it far more potent and addictive than regular cocaine . In addition, due to these properties, crack is significantly more correlated to other criminal behaviors than cocaine.
Crack has harsher penalties because black leaders asked for them because it was destroying black communities. An example of such a leader is Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), who is black and was one of the strongest anti-drug representatives. From his wiki page:
>In 1983, Rangel became chair of the Select Committee on Narcotics, which solidified his position as a leading strategist on this perennially important issue to him Rangel kept the committee going, in the face of the usual pressure to disband special committees. He battled against proposed cutbacks in the federal anti-drug budget, and advocated increased grants to states and cities for better shelters for the homeless. Rangel's amendments providing increased funding for state and local law enforcement were included in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. He traveled to countries in Central and South America and elsewhere to inspect the sources of drugs and the law enforcement efforts against them; Ebony magazine termed Rangel "a front-line general in the war against drugs." Rangel said "We need outrage!", making reference to the slow reaction by both government and religious leaders to the epidemics of crack cocaine, heroin, PCP, and other drugs that hit American streets during the 1980s. He believed that legalizing drugs would represent "moral and political suicide". Nor did he refrain from criticizing those most affected by drugs, saying that Hispanic and black teenagers had no sense of self-preservation, and that drug dealers were so stupid that they had to eat in fast-food places because they could not read a menu. By 1988, Rangel was saying that President Ronald Reagan had not done enough in the war on drugs, but that First Lady Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign had been quite valuable. The narcotics committee itself was termed possibly the most important select committee of its time. The Washington Post said Rangel was "in a powerful position to shape policy on an issue at the top of the nation's agenda". He would remain as chair of the committee through 1993, when it was abolished along with other House select committees.
Rangel is far from the only black leader at the time who wanted harsh penalties for drugs. So while it is true that crack has harsher penalties that other drugs because black people use it, it isn't true that those penalties are because of racist white people. It was destroying black communities, and black leaders wanted a fix, and they thought harsh penalties would work.
If you haven't heard of him before, you may want to read up on Harry J. Anslinger[0]. Joe Rogan also has a really in depth episode on him. He was deputy commissioner of the federal department that oversaw prohibition. when that ended, he went on to narcotics enforcement.
OTOH, the war on drugs has made an incredibly powerful covert foreign policy tool, in terms of being able to arbitrarily restrict or provide funding, as well as using martial force to control the right to manufacture and distribute illicit substances. None of this would work unless drugs were incredibly profitable… and they aren’t incredibly profitable without strongly enforced artificial scarcity.
Simply by turning a blind eye to one group and continuing aggressive enforcement against another the USA can tilt the political balance of power in many smaller nations.
When you create a default state of War against most of the world, selective peace becomes your most powerful weapon. Destruction is so much cheaper than building value, it creates a wildly disproportionate incentive to cooperate.
A great deal of the credit/blame for the modern drug war goes to Harry Anslinger[0]. Imagine being the nation's top enforcer of Prohibition - what do you do when it's repealed? Just close up shop, fire everyone, and turn the lights off before you lock the door?
This is a somewhat partisan issue and I'm far from unbiased, but reading his wiki page will convey most of the story better than a screed.
"Drug Warriors and Their Prey" takes a look at the WoSD from another angle [0]
Basically, the WoSD 'was' (still is?) a mechanism by which authoritarians could impose control on society by oppressing society's undesirables. Echos of the Nazis, engender a police state, control Black people, etc etc.
But the WoSD hasn't gone so well, so it (as the main phenomena) was been supplanted by the War On Terrorism (cue the Patriot Act...) That has gotten a bit stale (but is still in effect?), so now it's ... Russians? Covid-19 and all the relevant restrictions?
Or the GOP has decided to stop being indirect and now is going blatantly full out towards overt authoritarianism using The Big Lie as the mechanism? In some parallel universe, liberals are now being rounded up and put into FEMA re-education camps on President-For-Life Trump's orders because they tried to steal the election (and every future one as well).
There is no one Single True Motivation to this sort of social phenomena - they are all different expressions of the sociopaths in charge's drives for power.
I tend to expect a federal decriminalization of marijuana in the next 10 years. I doubt we'll see a decriminalization of crystal meth in the next 50 years.
Crystal meth was discovered in 01893; it has been legally available by prescription in the US since at least the 01950s. I don't think it's ever been entirely illegal like marijuana. Nowadays its main legal use is for obesity treatment under the name Desoxyn.
Personally, I think a great amount of harm reduction could be achieved by legalizing at least one recreational drug in every class, determined by which has least relative harm to the user. If there was a clean, legal and affordable option, I believe demand for the more-harmful drugs in the class would be significantly reduced. i.e. "stimulant" demand is somewhat elastic, and by making the least harmful stimulant (not sure if that is Khat or not) easily available, demand for Meth would be significantly reduced and market effects would make its availability much less widespread
I don't know enough to judge and I would hope that we'd look to the science, medicine, and what other countries have done with success to make that determination.
Psilocybin is the first possible candidate that comes to my mind, but I'd rather have us use a sound framework of harm-minimization than to favor/disfavor any particular drug.
Hi, white liberal raised by an addict here. I've known quite a few meth addicts over the years. The ones who get sent to prison are uniformly worse off than those who get sent to rehab. A notable distinction, white addicts I know have been mostly sent to rehab; everybody else winds up in jail/prison where there's a booming drug trade and surprise surprise, they don't get clean.
> I've known quite a few meth addicts over the years. The ones who get sent to prison are uniformly worse off than those who get sent to rehab.
But your parent comment said "my methhead sister-in-law is in prison and I certainly feel safer", not "my methhead sister-in-law is in prison and she certainly feels safer."
Rehab is more expensive than jail and convincing citizens to spend tax money on drug addicts who chose to screw their own lives up instead of putting that tax money into schools is a tough sell for politicians. Drug addicts are typically a terrible investment with near zero return. Better to spend money on people who choose to live their lives in ways that better their communities.
"War on drugs" was actually genius marketing because it conceals the fact that the government is actually doing as little as possible as cheaply as possible by just chucking people in prison instead of sending them to rehab.
Inpatient treatment is more expensive per day than jail, sure. But not all treatment is inpatient, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense to compare per day, anyway. There’s plenty of studies showing that treatments saves money compared to (and especially in) criminal justice.
Only, it's pennywise, pound foolish. One day in jail is cheaper than one day in rehab, but a month in rehab is cheaper than a lifetime of recidivism. So it's not genius marketing for people who genuinely want to keeps costs down, it's genius marketing for authoritarianisn.
Unless you're locking these people up forever, giving them a timeout solves absolutely nothing. Evidence-based prevention and treatment are the clear answers. No one is claiming addiction isn't a problem. We just simple want to actually address the problem instead of enacting feel good measures that either fail to address the problem or actively make it worse.
I would argue that we (assuming you're US, like me) largely already have with the liquor ban until 21.
However, no, I don't agree that alcohol is "just the same". People rarely commit robbery and murder to get another hit of alcohol. Conversely, many drug addicts are unable to stop themselves from taking desperate measures to get their next hit when it is not easily accessible.
People commit robbery to get more money for alcohol all the time. The fact that it’s cheap and available everywhere is why there’s not much murder—but there was plenty during Prohibition in the U.S[0].
Go hang out in a liquor store in a less-advantaged area of any U.S. city and tell me the sad sacks coming in for singles of rotgut are fine, upstanding citizens who’ve never broken a car window or traded an EBT card for cash and let their kids go hungry.
I don’t propose a solution for this—I’m a programmer, not a social policy maker. But if you could buy clean amphetamines cheaply and OTC, the way you can with booze, the problems of meth use would look quite different.
"People rarely commit robbery and murder to get another hit of alcohol."
This is mostly because shoplifting is a thing, and possibly because you can do things like steal from family and your food budget can generally keep you drunk enough that you don't care if you eat. Vodka can be really, really cheap.
Addicts with enough money to afford their addiction rarely commit robbery or murder, by the way, as evidenced by the politicians, entertainers, and sports players that wind up having addiction issues. Small towns still generally have low murder rates, and have addiction.
I'd argue that folks rarely commit robbery and murder for their other addictions, too - we just hear about them on the news, the same one that draws attention to things that hook into your fear and sensationalizes it. In any case, I'd need sources to see if it is really a cause in anything but a tiny number of addicts. I'm guessing more get caught for public intox or possession.
> Almost like making it legal, relatively cheap, and easily accessible makes it so you don't have to resort to desperate means.
I think the question of legality muddles the argument. Its illegal to drive under the influence yet many do and some end up in horrific accidents.
We're stewards of the next generation. We're their parents, teachers, role models. Our aim should be to reduce the use of crystal meth, and other drugs that cause self-harm. No different than promoting exercise, knowledge, healthy lifestyles, etc.
Making something illegal is a powerful disincentive - but we don't expect it to work 100% perfectly. Its important to recognize when something isn't working - but lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Government policies are like supertankers and once they're operating at speed, they're hard to stop/steer.
Created a lot of jobs in the industry of arresting and detaining humans.
Being number 1 per capita in prison population isn't a lean operation, a lot of people's lives depend on the system continuing.
I think the solution is to rent bulldozers, armor them, and just level a bunch of them. Too many prison beds, too many laws, it's all gotten very dumb.
It's pretty hard to get info on the industry as well.
Jpay, for example, is a subsidiary of a private company, and does the "fund a prisoners commissary account" as well as "send a prisoner a email" type services.
Here's their fees for money transfers for the Texas Prisoners:
$ 0.00 - 9.99 $2.45
$ 10.00 - 19.99 $3.45
$ 20.00 - 49.99 $6.45
$ 50.00 - 99.99 $8.45
$ 100.00 - 199.99 $10.45
$ 200.00 - 300.00 $12.45
They also charge it as a cash advance, which
can result in additional charges from your bank.
Let's start with the prisons about to be built, of which there are still many. A campaign to convince the Travis County (Austin) commissioners not to fund a new $80M women's prison succeeded this week. Next step is to get them to instead fund diversion and mental health programs.
You may find similar movements that you can join in pressuring local officials. The fun thing is that at this level of government, commissioners will often respond themselves, so you know even relatively few emails are making an impact.
While a good thing, a losing battle in my opinion. You can perhaps convince your local authorities to not build another prison here this year, but somewhere else another prison still got built. There isn't enough people who give a shit, and an alarming amount of people who are rock hard for cruel punishment as a good thing.
Unbuild the existing prisons.
John Brown didn't write letters, he burned down plantations.
I think destroying something like water treatment plants, or gas pipelines could be constituted as violence, but not prisons, not in a country with the highest prison population per capita in the world. i refuse to believe that the people here are inherently more criminal and dangerous than anywhere else in the world, and if that belief is correct then our over-packed prisons are a sign of a legal system that got way out of control, but due to the size of the system and it's inertia, it will continue to self perpetuate unless challenged. Due to just how many peoples lives are intertwined with this machine, i don't see a civil path forward to a solution. It was the same case with slavery in this nation, we all knew it was a problem, but because too much money was tied in the economy supporting it...nothing changed until people took to civil disobedience.
if you don't want bulldozers, perhaps write to your representatives, and urge them to do something before the modern day John Browns start doing it for them.
Part of the reason why jails are overrun in recent years is that we've closed a large number of asylums who would have housed and treated these people. Sure, that sort of thing leaves a bad taste in the mouth, but psychological care has certainly advanced leaps and bounds past 1950s standards for mental illness and addiction treatment. There's no reason why we couldn't have effective asylums today like they have in Europe for their mentally ill and addicted.
Yes, and soon before all the heavy machinery has kill switches mandated in them. xD I suspect that weakness will be shored up as we internet of things every car truck and pogo stick.
>What portion of those arrested + detained are the type of people we want in society/civilization?
Check a list of countries by rate of incarceration[1]. Then ask yourself if it's likely that the US, El Salvador, Turkmenistan, Palau and Rwanda are the grouping that have it right. That's the top 5, in order, all at 511+ per 100k.
For comparison, Australia is 160, England is 130, Canada is 104, France is at 93, etc.
Part of that is a side effect of poor public health policy in the U.S., where mentally ill and addicted either end up in jail or in a tent on the street instead of in a treatment center or an asylum like these other first world countries.
Probably a sizable number of them. Because the people in prison are still people, and there's no good reason to keep most of them locked in a cage if they're not posing a risk to other people.
A huge portion of them, considering just how much of our prison system is filled with first-time non-violent offenders. Also considering the socioeconomic effects of even a misdemeanor drug conviction at a young age, a lot more career criminals could've been prevented by not sending them to prison in the first place.
What portion of those who benefit from this system and who run our country’s legal system do we want in civilization? Betting the portion in the slammer is higher.
Quite a lot of them are young people whose ""type"" is not yet fixed. To believe that America's high prison population all deserve to be there is to believe that America is a place full of uniquely bad people, which is quite the .. unpatriotic? take.
This is one of those weird things about American Democracy where everyone I speak to thinks the Drug War was a terrible thing and should be stopped. And yet, our politicians never substantially do anything to change the status quo.
You almost certainly occupy a bubble in this. I hate the War on Drugs with every fiber in my being, but it’s broadly popular.
Cannabis legalization may recently be popular. But I’d be shocked if more than 5% of Americans supported the legalization hard drugs, and if more than 20% supported by Portuguese style decriminalization. Even soft drug prohibition, like MDMA and LSD, are supported by sizable majorities of voters.
Where I live cannabis legalization seems to be a huge win. Cities that were against it are now looking for ways to bring it in for the tax revenue. We had illegal but ever present cannabis, then we had medical cannabis, we had whatever problems there may be from cannabis my whole life. Now we have fewer criminals and more tax revenue - help alleviate the problems.
> You almost certainly I occupy a bubble in this. I hate the War on Drugs with every fiber in my being, but it’s broadly popular.
Question: to what degree does this influence your overall satisfaction level with government in general (both at the object level, and abstractly) in the United States?
I think we'll eventually find a balance point, but these boundaries are being moved in the opposite direction. Psilocybin decriminalization then recreational use seems like the next leg of the race after federal/all-state legalization of marijuana. Then the next thing to be pushed is only a little more controversial than psilocybin. I doubt we'll ever reach that point with cocaine or heroin though and they'll never be up for medical/recreational consideration.
If it seems unbelievable that there could be significant support for the War on Drugs, remember how many voted for Trump the second time around.
"I doubt we'll ever reach that point with cocaine or heroin though and they'll never be up for medical/recreational consideration."
Never say never.
I'm frankly shocked that virtually legal medical and recreational use of cannabis has become so widespread in the US in my lifetime.
For decades, other countries have had programs where heroin addicts could either use heroin with a prescription or are allowed to go shoot up in clinics where they're provided clean needles, and heroin use is effectively decriminalized.
I could see the same happening in the US, particularly in states which have taken the lead in cannabis legalization.. and after they do it and some decades pass without the sky falling and there is clear evidence that this is a much more effective way of dealing with addiction, we'll likely see other states follow suit.
The way will be smoothed by the mainstream culture's realization that they've been lied to by their government about drugs for many decades, as is becoming clear by the fact that the states which have legalized cannabis haven't turned in to real-life versions of Reefer Madness and also by the widening familiarity of members of mainstream society with drug users who are otherwise upstanding members of their societies, and by the relatively positive press about cannabis and psychedelics.
There's always a chance that the press will shift towards negative coverage, as they do love sensationalist stories and there's still psychedelic abuse which leads people to go on power trips, have delusions of grandeur, or massive paranoia, but I am cautiously optimistic that the medical use of psychedelics will win out this time around.
Finally, there's the potential for constructive psychedelic use to help the society in many positive ways, and that could lead to greater tolerance and understanding of users of other drugs, along with (eventually) there maybe less reason for people to self-medicate and try to escape their miserable lives.
The median American voter is a 50 year old suburban home owner (and the median midterm voter is even older and wealthier). These people still support the war on drugs, although probably not at the same levels as before.
Seriously, the changes we've gone through in some states are massive.
In college, a guy I worked with lost his job because someone he was with possessed marijuana. The guy I knew didn't have anything and wasn't charged with anything, but he lost his job with the university just the same.
As of July 1, none of them would have gotten in any trouble; as of next year, they'd be able to legally buy the substance. This is a massive change.
Legal and purity regulated heroin would have by far the biggest impact, because of the scourge of fentanyl deaths.
If I had to choose between legal cannabis and legal heroin, I’d choose the latter on utilitarian grounds. (Although obviously I support both wholeheartedly.)
Given how addictive heroin is how do people supporting decriminalization suggest dealing with hard core addicts that can’t afford the drug? Giving it away for free in a clinic, hospitalizing hardcore users, letting legal dealers take on the risks directly?
A one-sentence summary of my policy goal is "make sure all addicts get heroin, from a place where they have access to help in quitting if they can".
So any dispensary would have addiction specialists on hand, anyone getting heroin would have a card and a database. "Casual" and light users would pay, a known hard-case addict with limited means would get it subsidized or free.
The goal is primarily to kick the bottom out of the black market, with a close second being keeping addicts healthy and alive, where quitting heroin is the best case scenario.
Legalize it and let "hardcore" heroin addicts get a prescription. It is expensive due to it being illegal and the willingness of addicts to pay damn near anything, not due to any intrinsic difficulty in manufacturing.
I don't know the solution to this, but I'm open to trying anything other than the failed police policies we've been repeating for what seems like forever.
One of my nieces died from heart failure last year. She had been living on the street and been a hard core drug user. I can't say that it was heroin that killed her, because like most street users, she took anything she could get her hands on. But her heroin addiction was what kept her on the street. She had been through treatment more times than I can count. None helped for very long. In the end, she's dead at 29, a life completely wasted.
Would legalized heroin with clean needles have saved her? Don't know. But our current system sure didn't.
Another option is to legalize buprenorphine so it can be distributed cheaply over the counter without prescription. It outcompetes receptors to exclude heroin and is often prescribed for heroin cessation.
If heroin addicts had an easy option to not feel sick without that was cheaper and more available than heroin, I believe many would take it, and the heroin market would shrink - leading to lesser availability and fewer future addicts.
I definitely wouldn't support the legalization of heroin. We already have alternatives(kratom, suboxone) that are legal and have far less abuse potential.
Not all drugs are the same, we shouldn't act like they are.
Yeah, and lots of people used methadone successfully.
I don't want there to be stiff market competition in the addictive substances market. We already did that with tobacco and still haven't fully phased that out.
Finish decriminalizing weed. Repeal the federal possession prohibition, repeal the remaining possession/"open container" laws, exclude it from drug testing programs, release people currently in prison for cannabis offenses.
People's opinions on things are fickle and it takes time for things to happen sometimes especially for issues that don't really effect how people vote.
At a federal level, perhaps not much is changing. But in the past decade, many states have been decriminalizing or legalizing recreational sale of certain drugs.
The sway voters have on the policies politicians promote is nil. The people they do pay attention too either have no personal vested interest in stopping the drug war. Or have a vested interest in keeping it going.
The war on drugs is the single government program that has created far more damage to individual rights than any other. In law school it seems like every case that whittles away the fourth amendment just a little bit more is a drug case.
I'd say the income tax is in second place in terms of destruction of individual rights.
Can we talk for a second how absurdly good a user experience the text site is? It's 9kb over the wire, the whole thing is one request, it does everything it needs to do to get me the article and it happens instantly and without waste.
The full site is 88 requests, takes 5 seconds to complete, transfers over 300x more data and brings me no additional value. The article doesn't even begin on the first screen, I have to scroll to start reading! The text version gives me the first 7 paragraphs without any user input.
yes, it is really nice. personally, i hope "the web" will experience a renaissance over the next couple of years - with sites becoming as minimal as possible - like this text-only NPR page, where the only thing that matters is 'the content', without any distractions (social media buttons, "5 min. read", etc). All client-side SPA javascript libraries will be abandoned in favor of serving pure raw HTML (preferably with zero javascript and as little, if any, css as possible). my dream is to find people that have 'bloated' websites and to be hired to convert their pages into pages that look like they were made by hand in notepad.
I feel like Ehrlichman admitting the war on drugs was just a pretext for marginalizing Blacks and progressives should have been the end of it. But no, and that's already 25 years ago:
In a 1994 interview published in Harper's Magazine, Nixon adviser John Ehrlichman suggested racial animus was among the motives shaping the drug war.
"We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the [Vietnam] War or Black," Ehrlichman said. "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."
I think the obvious answer often overlooked is that a lot of people are simply still totally fine marginalizing Blacks, Latinos, progressives, and other minorities.
And a lot more people are fine with "Law and Order" without really thinking about what that means - among other things it means 'I don't want to see or deal with other people's problems'. It's a really easy position to have until other people's problems become your problems, or your family's problems and they can't get out of a bad situation.
I think you're possibly ascribing more awareness to a lot of people than they actually have. I'm not sure the thought goes much past wanting to feel safe against something that they were taught was evil early on and never questioned.
I do believe the War on Drugs has been a terrible policy, doing disproportionate harm to Blacks and other marginalized people. I'm not convinced that was the intent by most of those who supported its creation and sustained it.
So many people have cried wolf about the evils of either the government, or previous generations that this quote genuinely shocked me. I too would think that something like this would and should have more weight.
In most states (including CA) the percent of minorities in jail for weapons offenses is as disproportionate to the population as drug offenses. And today in states like CA - 50% more people are in jail for weapons charges than drug charges.
Is the reason that drug laws/weapons laws exist to disenfranchise people? Or is a true problem in society that in theory would be good to address - and powerful people are indifferent to people who end up in jail.
Drugs can literally rewire your brain so that you feel an overriding urge to go out and find them. So a lot of low level drug offenders(mere possession) I feel sorry for.
What's the argument for weapons violations? If weapons laws are designed to disenfranchise people, then shouldn't Europe have way more disenfranchisement than Americans?
I'm not saying weapons charges were meant to disenfranchise people.
I am saying the conclusion that drug charges were put in place to disenfranchise people is a bit silly. There were other reasons (even if they were panic reasons) to ban drugs.
For me, the slogan in the 90s that I remember was 'think of the children'[1]. People are so often swayed on emotion and the thinking of 'well if we just save one child, it would have been worth it', ignoring all the opportunity costs.
It's helping law enforcement maintain high budgets.
The drug war fuels the violence of the drug trade and that violence requires the police be well equipped to handle it.
> It's helping law enforcement maintain high budgets.
And not just in the obvious, direct ways of pointing out drug crime and asking for funding. E.g., I recall studies of DARE’s impacts showing that it had no measurable impacts on drug use, drug abuse, or drug-related crime among students directly participating or communities, but did have a measurable positive impact on participating students attitudes toward law enforcement.
Besides the controversial political agenda behind the "War on Drugs", I guess we all agree that drugs are obviously bad for society as a whole.
But it's kinda hard to do a war on drugs without - you know - arresting the drug dealers on known corners. Looking at you San Francisco.
Drugs enable misery, poverty, overdoses and homicides. Especially the ones that create physical addiction (opioids, meth, fentanyl, etc). But most importantly, they enable lower social economical classes into thinking that selling drugs is a viable and alternative way to level up in life (wealth), instead of allowing them to focus on real career paths. It's a false shortcut that distracts people from being able to focus on their real future. It also encourages illegal immigration.
Why aren't the Feds arresting drug dealers on every corner in a large scale operation first and foremost? Perhaps the simplest thing to do in order to disrupt the supply.
>Why aren't the Feds arresting drug dealers on every corner in a large scale operation first and foremost?
Because they did, and it was a large reason our prison population boomed. And...it didn't work. Read the article.
>Drugs enable misery, poverty, overdoses and homicides
No, drugs use is a respite for people in misery and poverty. It is a symptom not the underlying wound. I highly suggest taking a read of "Dignity" by Chris Arnande for a personal and expansive look at this. Though if you prefer academic articles the NIH has more papers on it then you can read in a lifetime and happy to link you to them.
>I guess we all agree that drugs are obviously bad for society as a whole
>Perhaps the simplest thing to do in order to disrupt the supply.
When you're removing supply, but not disrupting demand, a way will be found. The real answer is to legalize & sell it, no more drug dealers, remove the overdoses because it was cut with fentanyl, no longer fund gangs = less homicides
This is false. Arrest drug dealers day after day for a generation, and the demand will lower because new generations won't even know what drugs are, or when the effect of heroin is, therefore they won't chase it.
Demand for a good (or drug in this case) it is not inevitable. It can be disrupted too, it's not a given.
But the demand for any good cannot be disrupted without first and foremost removing the supply. So we must start disrupting the supply, which shows up every day at 6am on our street corners.
Economics would tell us that if you decrease the supply of something that has a high demand, then the price will rise. That means it's more valuable for criminals to distribute, and they will also use more violence to protect this trade.
So while we're cracking skulls to achieve your drug-free nirvana, we've basically consigned a generation to hell. Constant police patrolling and intervention in their communities, extremely violent narco-traffickers, and yet somehow no treatment for addicts.
I think drugs are great for society as a whole. I think criminalizing a handful of addictive drugs so that there is no economically viable way to be an addict and live an even minimally productive life or keep from poisoning yourself is terrible for society as a whole.
> I guess we all agree that drugs are obviously bad for society as a whole
That seems to require defining “drugs” very deliberately to only count substances and use cases such that by definition you’ve only included stuff that’s bad for society as a whole.
Firstly, that would get them into a lot of jurisdiction fights with the local cops.
Secondly, it would also get into a lot of fights with the locals; every "bust a group of people standing on the corner" runs the risk of false positives, the gradual loss of trust of the population, and an increased rate of violent incidents.
Thirdly, in order to avoid just displacing it, it requires cops (or at least cameras) everywhere. America has a lot of corners.
As with Prohibition, this would probably accelerate the collapse of the policy.
Almost all of the dudes I've know who sell drugs never thought of it as a way to "level" up. It was a way of making money where there were absolutely no jobs. And most of them didn't make much above minimum wage. Several of them had minimum wage jobs on the side.
If you haven't already, you should watch The Wire (HBO) about how futile street busts are in either combatting the drug trade or improving the lives of people living in the city.
1. " I guess we all agree that drugs are obviously bad for society as a whole."
I don't think drugs are good or bad for society. There are positives and negatives.
I do think that our drug policy is bad for society, though.
2. "Drugs enable misery, poverty, overdoses and homicides"
a. ... "enable misery": or they reduce pain and misery (medical applications of many things (pot, cocaine derivations, opiate derivations, mdma/shroom derivations for depression/ptsd/etc).
b. ... "poverty" I don't think they enable poverty. i would say that addiction does so, which can be a result of drug use. but not all users are addicts, and not all of the 'drug' class substances are addicting. Addition to legal substances have the same issues of emptying wallets (tabbacco, alcohol, pills).
c. ... "overdoses". this is almost totally a result of the world's drug policies and the requirement of using a black market to get the drugs. If the purity and dosing information were provided with the drugs, the number would likely go in line with overdose numbers for legal substances. We also wouldn't have people taking spiked/doctored/cut/etc drugs in the same numbers -- remove the black market and you remove black market problems
d. ... "homicides". again this is 100% a black market/drug policy issue. The numbers will go in line with normal legal substances once the black market is removed. New issues may pop up (mainly because the existing market is so heavily managed by crime organizations), but those new issues will be better than the current issues, and they will be solvable, unlike the current black market issues (there is demand, so a black market will exist).
3. " they enable lower social economical classes into thinking that selling drugs is a viable and alternative" -- entirely due to the black market (created by the current drug policy).
4. "It also encourages illegal immigration."
- what? how? why? maybe a few migrants agree (or are forced) to transport drugs when they cross, but that's not why the people are migrating illegally.
5. "arresting drug dealers on every corner ... disrupt the supply" -- how is arresting a dealer going to damage the supply. The supply is already done when it gets to the dealer (at least the supply into the country, perhaps not the supply to the consumer, but lack of supply does not produce lack of demand). And because there is demand, they will just find new dealers. ... this is basically the entire war on drugs. The fact that you are complaining about this as not having been done or been effective 50 years in is more proof that it has failed.
Often being for and against things creates a logic of its own, especially when things are contentious and doubly so when they're political.
Military spending is popular. Civil aid aimed at similar causes is extremely unpopular, even when the sums are far smaller.
I'm reminded of French classes, in my education. We learned French for four years. None of us spoke French at the end of these years. I brought up this fact to teachers, parents. When I grew up I spoke about it to friends, who were language teachers.
The idea of giving up, canceling French classes, simply because it was failing to teach kids French is mostly seen as appalling. OTOH, a priori, I'm quite certain that "teaching French even though kids won't be able to speak French after four years' would not be a popular idea. "Learning a foreign language is important."
I agree that the war on drugs is bad. But, I also use illicit drugs myself sometimes.. and it is considered normal in my social circle. That makes it easy for me.
For someone that considers drug use immoral, or terrible in other ways... "I am against drug use" will usually translate into support for whatever anti-drug policy is going. Efficacy is just rhetoric fodder.
We're just not that rational, even less so at the political level. "It works" or "it doesn't work" aren't anywhere near as important as "I am for/against..."
We lost the war on drugs. Addiction is not a criminal problem. It is a medical problem that should be dealt with by the health care sector, not the justice system.
I was seriously addicted to video games for years. Thank god I wasn't thrown in jail for it. That's an extra source of misery that neither me nor my family needed.
Imagine if they threw fat people in jail for being addicted to food. This is basically the same thing they're doing to drug addicts. It's insane.
Yes, there is a mix of denial and misunderstanding about the nature and weaknesses of the human mind.
Controlling addictive behaviors requires the full cooperation of the subconscious part of ourselves, this is easier said than done, and I have not seen anyone succeeding while being miserable.
It's no more a war on drugs than "gun control" is about controlling guns. "gun control" is actually citizen disarmament, because every law they pass exempts the police, military, and retired police. So its' not about guns, but who can have them.
When people think of it as "gun control" it presupposes the notion that guns are out of control when that isn't the issue.
Same with "the war on drugs" drugs are an inanimate set of chemicals. It's not a war on drugs, but a war on personal freedom to do them. But when you frame it that way, it's obviously reprehensible. Especially in the "land of the free".
No one thinks gun control needs to apply to the government, except sovereign citizen nuts. The reason many people want gun control is to keep civilians from buying military grade weapons and mowing down other civilians. And not all who want some restrictions on firearm possession want "citizen disarmament."
>Are you saying guns are not out of control, or guns being out of control is not an issue?
Guns are inanimate objects and thus are not capable of being out of control.
>Also, if you were to substitute "nukes" or "ebola vials" for "guns" in your argument, would it still stand?
Yes, no, and yes. Ebola is a living thing that can act independently once released. Even a nuke either explodes or doesn't.
The issue I'm trying to raise is not so much about guns, but the propaganda phrase used to promote citizen disarmament. The subject is accurately described as citizen disarmament, because of the exceptions included in every second amendment infringing law. They invariably exempt authority from the restrictions when the second amendment explicitly prohibits exactly this.
If every law they passed an tried to pass applied also to the military, police, and retired police then it would actually be "gun regulation". But it never does, so it is is not firearms regulation, but citizen (and only citizen) disarmament.
To start with, the fact that those other nation's drug laws in many cases were directly influenced into being by the United States. More importantly, the money for resources for enforcing those laws often comes from specifically earmarked U.S. funds.
To put it another way, how many other countries in the world have active agents in the field in multiple other countries to interdict and disrupt drug supply chains?
The War on Drugs is a powerful tool the US uses across the globe to pressure unfriendly nations and to keep tons of cash off the Pentagon’s official books. No reform of American drug policy will be possible as long as the CIA and other agencies actively benefits from drug trafficking.
- Virtual signaling ("tough on crime") of the worst kind as it capriciously incarcerated minorities to the tune of millions of man-years;
- Fear-mongering for political power;
- Suppression of minorities, hippies and the anti-war movement; and
- Yet another form of voter suppression that has plagued the US for a long time.
It's like we learned nothing form Prohibition.
But the damage this has done goes well beyond the mass incarceration of minorities. It led to the enrichment of drug cartels and thanks to the ready supply of firearms in the US, the US armed the drug cartels and enabled the massive bloodshed that caused.
It's quite literally drugs into the US, money and guns out of the US.
People keep repeating this, but when citizens see behavior that has serious negative consequences, they may--in perfectly good faith--want to suppress it through law. Not everything is a devious ploy.
Also, the received wisdom that alcohol prohibition was a mistake is debatable. The many ills of alcoholism (health problems, violence, drunk driving) declined enough to possibly justify the experiment. But the experiment never changed human nature, of course. So it ended.
I was wondering if China and Singapore's wars on drugs have been effective. On one hand, Chinese online communities boast how drug-free their countries are. On the other hand, numerous researches show that harsh punishment does not necessarily reduce a crime. And of course, some also retorted that China had less drug problems only because there was no trustworthy stats.
Nonetheless, it's astounding that 2% of American adults are on cocaine and more than 10% of American population misuse opioid prescription while Americans wrote more than 190 million opioid prescriptions.
I remember growing up in South Carolina, being handcuffed in my residence for small amounts of marijuana, coming home to find the cops in my residence because my roommate dealt small amounts of marijuana (less than a pound). We lived in a trailer and mostly smoked pot, we didn't bother anybody.
My guess is the questionable-to-doubtful justice of the War on Drugs is one of the main culprits of the issues we see with law enforcement. Personally I believe we would be better off if all drugs were legalized.
The War On Drugs delivers a lucrative criminal justice system with great latitude including broad search and seizure privileges, an enormous regulatory appendage and high volumes of convictions which employ a vast number of people with professional incomes across numerous professions.
The War On Drugs also provides excellent fodder for entertainment, creating subject matter for countless serials and movies. Criminal drug dramas have served well in supplanting the classic Western in contemporary entertainment.
The simple slogan of "defund the police" in fact leads to vociferous disagreement among individual activists and organizations about what that means, i.e. whether simply refusing the police military hardware and funding levels, or ending the existence of police outright and replacing them with an unarmed, locally organized neighborhood patrol.
"The war on drugs has been a failure and should end" seems like a similar can of worms. Should the state take the approach of decriminalizing drugs but still aiming to reduce their use by allowing addicts only recourse to medical treatment in special centers? Or should things take a libertarian path and allow citizens to put whatever they want into their own bodies whenever they want?
I'm hazy on where I heard this justification, but I recall some argument that the rate of violent criminals who recreationally use drugs is very high. That is, if a violent criminal is caught walking down the street and is searched then there is a high probability that they will have some kind of illegal drug on them.
The opposite isn't necessarily the case. That is, a drug user is not high probability to be a violent criminal. But by having available such a large net and by removing a large number of recreational drug users from the streets - the end result is a high proportion of violent offenders are also removed from the streets.
So a combination of "stop and search" policing with "three strikes" policies has the effect of significantly reducing violent crime. However, there is a good argument to be made that the benefit is far outweighed by the damage such policies have caused.
> "three strikes" policies has the effect of significantly reducing violent crime.
That's not quite true. The three strikes policy had the effect of increasing violent crime. After all, if it's going to be their third strike, why would anyone go small?
That article and the effect they are suggesting aren't in contradiction to the initial justification. There are two different arguments.
1. Individuals are more likely to act more violently if they already have two strikes against them. This leads to a measurable statistical increase in the violence perpetrated by individuals who have two strikes against them in jurisdictions where three strikes policies exist compared to individuals who have two comparable crimes on their records in jurisdictions where there are no such policies.
2. The overall amount of violent crime in jurisdictions with three strike policies is lower than comparable jurisdictions where there are no such policies.
I see no incompatibility with these premises. That is, both can be true simultaneously. In fact, the evidence provided in the article you linked seems to suggest just that.
Or violently resist arrest if a three strike indictment is a possibility. No need to violently resist a shoplifting bust, but if it might carry a life sentence, the calculus is very different.
Stop and search had this nasty side affect of largely targeting minorities. I'm sure that if the same effort was applied to patrolling white neighborhoods and searching non-minorities, it would be really popular with voters...
Just think of the the savings if they just removed Cannabis from the war and legalized it? I'm guessing a trillion $$ over the last few decades. Just think of how many peoples lives have been utterly destroyed by the system over low level Cannabis possession/use? Even now the Biden Administration and the Democrats in Congress are dragging their feet and not fulling an election promise to the American people by legalizing Cannabis. I predict it won't happen because of lobbying from some of the industries below and the 100's of millions given to to these same representatives over the years to keep the status quo.
Drugs and crime are inexorably wedded in many people's minds, so to them drug users are criminals so moving towards legalizing drugs is being soft on crime, which is a non-starter for a lot of politicians who want to seem tough on crime.
The media also loves to whip up a sensationalistic frenzy when they publish lurid drug stories... and the public, including many politicians, buy this.
I see the failure of the War on Drugs and the resultant human toll as an indictment of the big government idea. Its an attempt to central micro-manage an issue that should be addressed at the state or even community level. The federal gov often involves itself in much more than it should.
Big government here meaning the intersection between Big Business, Big Lobby and Big "Government". The War on Drugs wouldn't have near the legs it does if it wasn't aggressively lobbied for by private prisons, alcohol distributors, and pharmaceutical companies.
I wonder if his sons struggle with addiction changed Biden’s views on the topic.
——
"What we need is another D-Day, not another Vietnam, not another limited war fought on the cheap," declared then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., in 1989.
Biden, who chaired the influential Senate Judiciary Committee, later co-authored the controversial 1994 crime bill that helped fund a vast new complex of state and federal prisons, which remains the largest in the world.
It’s odd to hear so much focus on America and American politics. We have more liberal drug laws than other non-western countries but the discussion always has a lot of American exceptionalism in reverse.
That's not reasonable at all. Forensic science and surveillance technology has made gigantic bounds in the past 50 years, as has almost every other aspect of crime fighting. We've busted mafias, dispersed organized crime syndicates (you know, the REAL bad guys) and made education more widespread than ever. It's gotten a lot harder to do serious IRL crime undetected (cyber crime is a whole other story). Giving a bunch of young latinos and african americans horrible mandatory minimums in lieu of addiction treatment has very arguably contributed to slowing down the decrease in violent crimes.
"It’s possible decriminalizing could lead to a huge wave in crimes as people try to pay for their fix."
The only reason that drugs cost enormous amounts of money is that they're illegal.
Once they're legal they could be produced for virtually nothing, and no one would have to turn to crime to afford them.
In an enlightened-enough state, the government could even subsidize drugs for those that couldn't afford them. For therapeutic drugs like psilocybin and MDMA it's probably going to happen before long, though I'm not holding my breath for it happening in the US for cocaine or heroin within my lifetime. But they still don't have to be expensive, once they're legal.
Carfentanil which has a lethal dose that's so small it's hard to notice or see?
I understand legalizing somethings we don't necessarily even like to put up with, but if something is as lethal as a gun I'm pretty comfortable infringing a bit on some freedoms.
A few drugs that are essentially largely used as alternatives to safer drugs could possibly reasonably remain illegal.
The question to me books down to what addicts do if the drug remains illegal. Getting all drug users over onto a legal supply matters. Doesn't need to be easy - prescriptions etc. for the worst ones would be reasonable.
But getting them onto a legal, regulated supply from providers that can nudge them towards treatment or safer alternatives is even more important for the highest risk drugs.
For someone who hasn't followed closely, what exactly is meant by "War on Drugs" in the article? Is it a specific policy they are referring to or do they mean combatting illegal drugs in general?
I think we can all agree that illicit drugs can cause damage to societies. Even the article mentions it in regards to the opioid crisis, which continues to decimate Americans across the nation. Maybe it would be wiser to call out the failure of the strategy and execution by the US government and not the original premise.
"War on Drugs" refers specifically to the series of laws and actions and attitudes that began with the Nixon administration, the publicly stated intent of which was to combat illegal drug use. The actual intent was to demonize the perceived political enemies of the Nixon administration. Despite that, this is still the core of America's drug policy today.
> I think we can all agree that illicit drugs can cause damage to societies
Can we? So what's the root cause of illicit drug use? We have one major suspect with correlation but not causation established:
> Research shows almost two-thirds of all patients in treatment for substance abuse report physical, sexual or emotional abuse during childhood.
“The sheer weight of the many reports over the years certainly implicates child abuse as a possible factor in drug abuse for many people,” said Dr. Cora Lee Wetherington, NIDA’s Women’s Health Coordinator.
“But we lack hard data that clearly establish and describe the role of child ‘abuse in the subsequent development of drug abuse. Is child abuse indeed a cause of drug abuse, or is child abuse a marker for other unidentified factors?”
"I think we can all agree that illicit drugs can cause damage to societies."
Abuse of drugs (whether legal or not -- remember, plenty of opioid abuse was perfectly legal) can be harmful, but that doesn't mean the aim should be trying to stop the use of the specific drugs that are currently illegal, or even of any drugs.
That aim is misguided, from a cognitive liberty standpoint [1].
The aim is also misguided for other reasons, but those are hard to disentangle from the implementation. For example, the reason of injustice when the drugs that are targeted for prohibition being associated with minorities, dissidents and the counterculture, while drugs associated with the wealthy and powerful being given a free pass.
It's also tied up with the injustice of the legal system, where the wealthy and powerful can often get off with a slap on the wrist in the rare cases they are charged, while the poor and marginalized are often forced to accept plea deals because they can't afford good legal representation even if they're innocent, etc.. which leads to a disproportionate number of minorities and marginalized groups in jail.
Not sure how you can divorce the reality of the implementation of the War on Drugs from its aims here.
[1] - By cognitive liberty I mean the right of people to decide what they put in to their body and what states of mind they can achieve.
You will need to exit the internet if you want a civil conversation that goes beyond punishing buzz word narratives and could possibly lead to useful changes in policy.
But to answer your question, by "war on drugs" they mean the heavy handed nature of police enforcement of drug related laws. Petty drug crimes become life ruining felonies and leave poor families struggling even more than they already were.
There is some very legitimate police activity stopping major drug dealers though, and there are many criminals whom can't be convicted of the crime they committed because of lack of evidence, but can be nailed to the wall for possession of drugs. Overall, the landscape of how to treat drug offenders becomes very muddled.
Counterpoint: The war on drugs has been progressively ramped down since the late 90s. NYTimes wrote a long story about how during the feds quit using tactics such as convicted drug dealers to flip on their bosses, etc. We aren't putting as many drug dealers in jail and we aren't putting many drug users in jail. What you get is an epic rise in opioid deaths over the past 30 years and chaos on the streets of our cities.
Given what LA/SF/Portland streets look like with this eased-back war on drugs, it is possible the war was doing a lot.
Stats would certainly suggest the police focused on putting the wrong drug dealers in jail:
"In 2019, an estimated 10.1 million people aged 12 or older misused opioids in the past year. Specifically, 9.7 million people misused prescription pain relievers and 745,000 people used heroin."[0]
"From 1999–2019, nearly 500,000 people died from an overdose involving any opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids. This rise in opioid overdose deaths can be outlined in three distinct waves.
The first wave began with increased prescribing of opioids in the 1990s, with overdose deaths involving prescription opioids (natural and semi-synthetic opioids and methadone) increasing since at least 1999"[1]
So anyone who believes jail is a deterrent and wants to improve public health should probably be advocating for locking up more doctors, pharmaceutical company reps, shareholders and owners.
Doctors are professionals. Part of the reason they're allowed to prescribe is that they have supposedly taken courses and proven themselves to be of such sound judgement and knowledge that we can trust them to gatekeep extremely technical poisons.
If you're telling me they can be so easily swayed by corporate messaging, and have been this way for a decade or longer, then we should scrap the apparently worthless MD degree and just let any old fart practice medicine because most people excel at internalizing the corporate branding that is supposedly the driving force behind modern medicine.
I mean that honestly. If the marketing dept of these companies are really running the shows and medical degrees count for nothing, then the sheer number of successfully treated patients shows that anyone who can listen to a pharma corp can prescribe drugs.
We can still have degrees for surgery and other hard skills.
Sure I get that with the DEA. But this started because of pharma companies according to the comment I responded to. Are you saying they can jail you? I mean I'm sure corruption runs deep, but do you have any sample of doctors jailed for not prescribing opioids
>Given what LA/SF/Portland streets look like with this eased-back war on drugs, it is possible the war was doing a lot.
You don't need to run a war on drugs to enforce existing laws about petty property crime and laws that criminalize the most abrasive of homeless behavior.
When I was younger drugs (meth) ruined a lot of friends and some family. While I believe in personal responsibility, availability was a big factor and drug pushers are a thing. I don't mind if they were incarcerated to stop or slow the damage they caused/exacerbated
Even if housing issues has led to homelessness, the rampant drug usage is sort of orthogonal. Have you been on streets in SF compared to say Singapore or Tokyo? "Soft" approach towards hard drugs isn't clearly working. The idea is not criminalize people that are already addicted. The idea is to not get the public addicted in the first place with strict enforcement of hard drugs such as heroine, meth, etc.
Try doing drugs even as a homeless person in Singapore and see what happens. They're sort of orthogonal issues.
Adding to the counterpoint: Bill Clinton once said "If cocaine were legal, my brother would be dead."
Drugs ruin lives. Drugs end lives. And the War on Drugs ruins lives, and ends lives. The question is, if we change, will the total damage go up or down?
30 years? The 90s still had police going hard on drug dealers and users.
And I didn't realize the Sackler family was skating by cause the DEA stopped arresting marijuana users.
Also, on the more conspiratorial side, it is curious how opioid supply and use flourished as soon as we were in Afghanistan. Kind of like it did when we were in Vietnam. Two areas known for poppies and heroin. Given what we know about the FBI encouraging terrorism so they can then claim they stopped it, I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA/JSOC was funneling in the drugs for cash and the DEA was mopping that up for cash/reason to exist.
People say it failed without recognizing how bad the crack epidemic was, and is currently only a shadow of what it could be had it been left unchecked.
Yes, there are still drug problems - but not to the common extent you saw in the 80's.
I think the issue is that people hear the word "war" and think that only the cops and military are the sole soldiers. There is only so much they can be expected to capture without some massive invasion of citizen rights.
The truth is that more must be done by the communities themselves. Whether you call it a "war", or by any other name, you will need more than just cops and TLA's to solve the problem.
And yes, we should spend more on education as part of all of these efforts. The concerned citizens of this country have been asking for that balance to change for a large number of reasons. Unfortunately the status quo remains.
Drug epidemics follow a natural ebb and flow and tend to be generational. As younger family members take note of the effect that life ruining drugs like crack have on elder members of their families, they have a much lower propensity to experiment with those drugs. As communities collectively recognize the impact of drugs like crack, social outreach and grassroots efforts to educate and improve the situation are much more effective than the fear of whatever legal repercussions might come from outside. Crack literally "ran its course" and that's why the epidemic stopped.
I can't believe you're unironically using the crack epidemic (that ravaged poor minority communities and was caused by the US government) to justify the War on Drugs (that ravaged poor minority communities and was caused by the US government).
The REAL SOLUTION is boosting the lower classes and making life better for everybody, but that's too expensive to try, so wasting trillions and ruining minority and poor lives is better. /s
"People say it failed without recognizing how bad the crack epidemic was, and is currently only a shadow of what it could be had it been left unchecked."
How exactly was it checked?
It's never been hard to buy crack if you wanted it, and for every dealer busted 2 more would move in to take their place.
I've yet to see evidence that the drug war did anything except for ruining a whole lot of lives and make some people very rich.
It's also due to the fact that at least for a while, the DEA made ether unavailable. So the drug labs turned to benzene as a substitute. The problem is benzene is gasoline and no one is putting powder that smells like gasoline up their nose. The solution? Cook crack. The smell disappears when you boil the powder with baking soda. Had it not been for the DEA, crack never would have been an option.
It would be suicidal to challenge marijuana, since it is going against the current mob mentality on HN and elsewhere, but I am going to do just that. In my personal experience:
- I think Marijuana should be legalized but it needs to be made uncool to consume just like Tobacco. Currently, it is the opposite. Social media loves weed.
- Marijuana destroys personal ambition, productivity and self-esteem.
- Marijuana is addicting even though people say its not. It is much easier to quit than Tobacco, but denying that its not addicting is not true in my experience.
- Marijuana is a nuisance on streets, apartments, etc. It has such a potent smell, it is impossible to get rid of. I would say it has 100x power of smell than perfumes, probably even more. You can smell Marijuana in your car if someone on the road is smoking it.
- Lung damage, it's undeniable.
- Marijuana is a gateway drug, I strongly believe this but open for changing my mind if there is data supporting otherwise.
It's time we make Marijuana uncool. Sure, we should stop incarcerating people for possession but I strongly oppose the current Marijuana culture. It's toxic to the society. I welcome counterpoints and discussion, just being honest about how I see the Marijuana culture. I've been there and done that for 2 years straight in college. Roommate was a weed dealer.
It would be suicidal to challenge driving, since it is going against the current mob mentality on HN and elsewhere, but I am going to do just that. In my personal experience:
- I think driving should be legal, but only allowed when you really need to get somewhere.
- Driving takes away precious exercise that you otherwise would have gotten walking.
- Driving is addicting, even though people say it's not. I can no longer resist the urge to visit Tesco on a regular basis.
- Driving is a nuisance on streets, apartments, etc. Gas and smog has such a potent smell, it is impossible to get rid of. I would say that it has 100x power of smell than perfumes, probably even more. You can even smell exhaust in your car if you're parked somewhere.
- The risk of crashing, it's undeniable.
- Driving is irresponsible since it also may inspire people to want to fly a plane, which is more dangerous and therefore bad.
It's time we make driving uncool. It's toxic to the society. I welcome counterpoints and discussion, just being honest about how I see the driving culture. I've been there and done that for 2 years straight in college. Roommate had a big van.
"Marijuana destroys personal ambition, productivity and self-esteem."
It would be very eye opening if you could build a case for this being so, apart from saying that's been the case in your experience and that of your friends/acquaintances.
Have there been any research showing this is the case? If so, how large/good are those studies? What's the scientific consensus on this issue?
As far as I know there's very little research in this area, so most of what we have to go on are anecdotes.
"Marijuana is addicting even though people say its not. It is much easier to quit than Tobacco, but denying that its not addicting is not true in my experience."
But many other things are addictive in the same way -- like food, sex, sports, video games, etc... and addiction to any of those could lead to very severe consequences. Would you say it's time to make food, sex, sports, or video games uncool?
I'm also wondering why we should be focusing on cannabis when alcohol is way, way worse, and whose use is far more widespread.
"Marijuana is a nuisance on streets, apartments, etc. It has such a potent smell, it is impossible to get rid of. I would say it has 100x power of smell than perfumes, probably even more. You can smell Marijuana in your car if someone on the road is smoking it."
I like the smell of most cannabis strains, though some are unpleasant. Tobacco smell is way worse for me. Also, when vaping there's almost no smell at all. In any case, I hope there is social pressure not to smoke indoors where people who don't like the smell might be present, like on subways. That's pretty rude.
"Lung damage, it's undeniable."
You can eat it, and when smoking it you could run it through water to take out some of the impurities and/or vape it, which helps too.
"Marijuana is a gateway drug"
Not sure what to say to this. Some people are going to experiment with drugs. If they don't start with cannabis they'll start with something else, whether alcohol (which is way worse), some "bath salts" (which are usually some random novel designer drugs of unknown toxicity or known to be more toxic) or whatever. You're not going to keep these people from experimenting by making pot "uncool".
The "gateway drug" assertion isn't an "all or nothing" issue. There's nuance to it.
Ask a bunch of drug addicts if they used weed before [heroin|coke|speed|lsd|<insert-drug-of-choice>|aota], most of them will say yes. At least the ones I've been hanging out with in NA for the past 25+ years.
Does that mean, smoke weed and you'll automatically end up using other drugs? No.
>Ask a bunch of drug addicts if they used weed before [heroin|coke|speed|lsd|<insert-drug-of-choice>|aota], most of them will say yes.
Correlation != causation. The idea of a 'gateway' drug is absurd.
The simplest explanation is that people with mental illness or trauma will self medicate. So given that, it makes sense that the easiest to acquire/least scary drugs would be the first used. I bet even more people got started on alcohol as their first 'treatment'. That doesn't make it a gateway drug.
Here is one study that shows the discrepancy of how "outsiders" think about Marijuana as a gateway drug vs. "insiders":
> Marijuana is often referred to as a gateway drug due to its placement in the stage-like progression of drug use (Kandel, 2002; Zimmer & Morgan, 1997). This study examines the gateway drug concept from an insiders' perspective. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 51 current and former users of marijuana. Data were collected between 2000 and 2002. Data on drug histories and perceptions about marijuana as a gateway drug were analyzed. While 80.3% (n = 41) of participants initiated their drug use experiences with alcohol or tobacco, one-third (n = 15) used an illicit drug other than marijuana prior to initiating marijuana. The adults in this study varied with regard to their perceptions about whether or not they thought marijuana was a gateway drug. Forty-five percent (n = 23) expressed viewpoints characterized as mixed or conflicting, 35% (n = 18) did not support the idea that marijuana was a gateway drug, and 19.6% (n = 10) strongly supported the notion.
If that isn't just the perfect description of politics in the US, I don't know what is. I don't know what your political ideology has to be to think the War on Drugs is a good thing, after all the money wasted, all the lives lost, all the people pointlessly locked up for things half the country can now do openly and legally.
The most common-sense things don't even have a chance at passing because our government is barely hiding that they're all either corporate stooges or obstructionist trolls anymore.