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The Drug-Violence Myth

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Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#51

Post by mschuster91 »

stinos wrote: post #43
mschuster91 wrote: post #40

I worked for a not-so-short time in a run-down bar... I had drinkers, fighters, junkies and stoners. Guess which group I never had problems with? Yup, the stoners. They were just sitting there, smoking outside and not being aggressive. The drunks would always fight sooner or later.

Feels like your story is incomplete: tell us how did the junkies behave?

Needed emergency services two times and I nearly stung myself on a needle while cleaning out a pissoir because it was stuck with a condom and cigarette butts. Also, two (known, but not to me) heroin junkies smashed gambling machines.

edit: oh, forgot the occurence of a junkie shitting into the pissoir. God, what a smell, it was horrid to clean up that mess. And a suspected mentally ill dude smeared feces over the wall.

The gambling addicts were mostly harmless but I had to kick out a couple of them because they tried to sell stolen gear to other customers for cash to gamble.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#52

Post by devilshaircut »

arbitrage wrote: post #37
bjourne wrote: post #33

I've been assaulted twice by complete strangers in the night time in the city. Both times I managed to avert major violence and get away unscathed. In one case it was someone raging on alcohol and being angry at the world. In the other case it was someone so high on something that he essentially wasn't there. Glazed eyes, a blank stare, mouth foaming and taking off his clothes. He couldn't even talk but for some reas…

This type of anecdata is exactly what the article is trying to convince people not to fall prey to. From the actual article: > Ultimately there is no solid proof that drugs cause violence. Most drug offenders commit nonviolent offenses and at low rates. Though certainly drug addicts commit more crimes, they commit them at low rates, and the connection between drugs and violent crimes is complex and not conclusive. Em…

Actually I believe it is you who misread the article. To pull a quote from the article:

> "Both nicotine and alcohol are strongly linked to violence."

The poster specifically referred to alcohol in his/her post:

> "In one case it was someone raging on alcohol and being angry at the world."

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#53

Post by imgabe »

Yakimoto wrote: post #49
api wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try "socially unacceptable drugs" or "taboo drugs." The classification is completely arbitrary, and is usually related to whether or not the drug is used by a socially marginal or ethnic minority group like blacks or hippies. Alcohol can be as dangerous as heroin if used heavily, but upper class white people drink it so it's okay and is not a "drug."

>Upper class white people Your racism is showing. Upper class people like Cocaine too, care to inject a racial undertone as to why that is illegal?

People with money like cocaine. There is a correlation between class and money, but they are not the same thing.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#54

Post by api »

Yakimoto wrote: post #49
api wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try "socially unacceptable drugs" or "taboo drugs." The classification is completely arbitrary, and is usually related to whether or not the drug is used by a socially marginal or ethnic minority group like blacks or hippies. Alcohol can be as dangerous as heroin if used heavily, but upper class white people drink it so it's okay and is not a "drug."

>Upper class white people Your racism is showing. Upper class people like Cocaine too, care to inject a racial undertone as to why that is illegal?

That's why the penalties for cocaine are historical less than for crack despite them being the same drug.

It's not racial per se -- in the original message I think "dominant mainstream culture" would be better than "white" -- though in the 50s and 60s those were almost the same thing. Back then the dominant culture implied white, English-speaking, and protestant Christian, and other cultures and ethnic groups were second class. That's much less true today but not totally.

I'm speaking to the historical reasons for the war on drugs, which are mostly related to racism as well as a desire to suppress subcultures like the 'hippie' movement. The original propaganda used to make marijuana illegal was all about black men seducing white women. Google it.

If the war on drugs were about health and based on rational health evidence, marijuana would be legal and alcohol would be schedule I.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#55

Post by anigbrowl »

angdis wrote: post #11
happyscrappy wrote: post #7

It is hard to dispute that inner city gun violence is drug related, which is probably why they don't mention it.

Indeed, all you have to do is to read up on who's murdering who. Drugs and violence are intimately tied together at least in the USA. The laws are set-up to punish drug offenders based on the quantity of drugs in one's possession. Beyond a certain quantity, the offender crosses a threshold into "distribution" rather than "use"-- and long histories of violent, organized crime is typical for those folks.

I can't help observing that the major vendors of alcohol, tobacco, and coffee - all three of which I hope you'll agree qualify as recreational drugs in terms of psychactivity - somehow manage to stay in business without shooting each others' employees or attacking each others' distribution operations with violence. You could certainly say they engage in a sort of abstract violence through ruthless profit-driven corporate behavior or through selling products that are likely to damage your health to some degree, but they don't get engaged in shootouts the way some illegal drug dealers do.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#56

Post by bjourne »

arbitrage wrote: post #37
bjourne wrote: post #33

I've been assaulted twice by complete strangers in the night time in the city. Both times I managed to avert major violence and get away unscathed. In one case it was someone raging on alcohol and being angry at the world. In the other case it was someone so high on something that he essentially wasn't there. Glazed eyes, a blank stare, mouth foaming and taking off his clothes. He couldn't even talk but for some reas…

This type of anecdata is exactly what the article is trying to convince people not to fall prey to. From the actual article: > Ultimately there is no solid proof that drugs cause violence. Most drug offenders commit nonviolent offenses and at low rates. Though certainly drug addicts commit more crimes, they commit them at low rates, and the connection between drugs and violent crimes is complex and not conclusive. Em…

To prove a generalization false, "drugs do not cause violence", you just need one counter-example. I've found one example where the drugs did cause the (attempted) violence so the generalization must be false.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#57

Post by bjourne »

beat wrote: post #36
bjourne wrote: post #33

I've been assaulted twice by complete strangers in the night time in the city. Both times I managed to avert major violence and get away unscathed. In one case it was someone raging on alcohol and being angry at the world. In the other case it was someone so high on something that he essentially wasn't there. Glazed eyes, a blank stare, mouth foaming and taking off his clothes. He couldn't even talk but for some reas…

Alcohol contributes to far more intoxication-related violence than any other drug. If the violence of intoxication is to be a factor, there's no reason at all to ban marijuana, and every reason to ban alcohol.

Yes, I believe the link between alcohol and increased levels of violence is very, very obvious and not contested by anyone. The link between drugs and violence is just as obvious.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#58

Post by murbard2 »

This also seems to disprove the often repeated theory that most people incarcerated for non-violent drug crimes are actually known violent criminals who are only being charged with those offenses because they are easier to prove, while mere users are generally left alone.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#59

Post by mikeash »

bjourne wrote: post #56
arbitrage wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type of anecdata is exactly what the article is trying to convince people not to fall prey to. From the actual article: > Ultimately there is no solid proof that drugs cause violence. Most drug offenders commit nonviolent offenses and at low rates. Though certainly drug addicts commit more crimes, they commit them at low rates, and the connection between drugs and violent crimes is complex and not conclusive. Em…

To prove a generalization false, "drugs do not cause violence", you just need one counter-example. I've found one example where the drugs did cause the (attempted) violence so the generalization must be false.

You're confusing a statistical claim for an absolute claim.

You're right that if the claim is "drugs are never, ever the cause of any violence" then you just need one counter-example.

But the claim is actually "statistically, violence caused by drugs does not occur at a rate detectably above the rate of violence in general" which means something like that the number of violent acts with drugs as a cause is extremely low, or that violent acts caused by drugs would still have happened just with a different cause if it were not for the drugs.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#60

Post by mikeash »

qnaal wrote: post #21
verbin217 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tradition isn't the solution.

> There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. T…

Note that this is not an argument for following tradition, merely an argument for understanding traditions before you attempt to change them.
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