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The Drug-Violence Myth

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Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#61

Post by msandford »

happyscrappy wrote: post #47
msandford wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do gangs even exist, though? There's a school of thought that we inadvertently create terrorists by interfering in the middle east and thus motivating people to want to do us harm. And by 'we' I mean 'The United States'. I suspect that a similar argument can be made that the illegal drug trade and gangs are fairly well correlated and that gangs arise because individuals don't derive any security from the police f…

I detected a hint of "the cop is the perp and the perp is the victim" in your other post but wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. This kind of attitude is quickly disabused of when living in a poor neighborhood. Why are gang members practically suicidal? Drugs play a part, but they are not protecting their neighborhood they are trying to get a larger territory to deal drugs. As for the US going into the Middl…

No, I don't think that the cops are to blame. It's a far bigger problem than that. They don't make policy, they just enforce it. Why blame policy problems on the police?

By your reasoning, though, one might surmise that ending the drug prohibition would then also end gangs, wouldn't one? The gang exists to defend illegal drug territory. Illegal drug territory only exists because drugs are illegal. Ending prohibition would make drugs legal, not illegal, and thus the outsized profits would go away. This would then make operating the gang unprofitable and it would disband or "go out of business".

I'm sure you'll bring something else up like "but drugs are bad!" or some such. But that line of reasoning works, doesn't it? Changing the subject because you don't like the moral implications of legal drugs isn't an argument.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#62

Post by qnaal »

anigbrowl wrote: post #50
qnaal wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good." -Thomas Sowell

Right, because things were so awesome back in the day...not. Sowell has made a great living out of pandering to white conservative nostalgia; his rhetoric relies almost exclusively on emotional arguments, wrapped in a thin veneer of objectivity and disinterested logic. Note, for example, the assertion of a vanished status that 'worked,' sidestepping the question of why there was any impetus to change it in the first…

> because things were so awesome back in the day...not

are you trying to credit technological advance to democratic government?

what are you talking about?

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#63

Post by DanBC »

We know that a drug addiction is a weak predictor of violence.

We know that previous violence is a predictor of violence.

We know that mental illness generally isn't a predictor of violence. Even when you limit mental illness to just personality disorder and psychotic illnesses it's weaker than an addiction or previous episode of violence.

But if you combine any two you get stronger predictors, and if you combine all three that's the strongest predictor.

The article correctly points out that this gets misinterpreted as "drug use predicts violence".

Frustratingly putting people in prison for their drug use exposes them to violence, which this raises their future risk of being the perpetrators of violence.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#64

Post by qnaal »

mikeash wrote: post #60
qnaal wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

the only ones saying otherwise are strawmen

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#65

Post by happyscrappy »

api wrote: post #54
Yakimoto wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 se…

Crack is much more addictive, and most of the people buying crack are white.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#66

Post by devilshaircut »

mikeash wrote: post #59
bjourne wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually the article (in the quote the replier posted) uses statistics to so show, evidently, that drug users commit violence less frequently than a control group; the quote does not discount the causal effect of drugs and violence, much less in such a specific case.

The way to invalidate the poster's original claim is to show evidence that the violent behavior in that specific instance (or at least a comparable instance) was in no way related to the perpetrator's drug-influenced physiological state. I believe that would be difficult to demonstrate.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#67

Post by beat »

bjourne wrote: post #57
beat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So what about drugs that aren't associated with violence? Someone really high on pot not only doesn't want to fight, they're probably not going to be very effective at it. Likewise, those high on heroin are harmless at the time.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#68

Post by happyscrappy »

msandford wrote: post #61
happyscrappy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I detected a hint of "the cop is the perp and the perp is the victim" in your other post but wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. This kind of attitude is quickly disabused of when living in a poor neighborhood. Why are gang members practically suicidal? Drugs play a part, but they are not protecting their neighborhood they are trying to get a larger territory to deal drugs. As for the US going into the Middl…

No, I don't think that the cops are to blame. It's a far bigger problem than that. They don't make policy, they just enforce it. Why blame policy problems on the police? By your reasoning, though, one might surmise that ending the drug prohibition would then also end gangs, wouldn't one? The gang exists to defend illegal drug territory. Illegal drug territory only exists because drugs are illegal. Ending prohibition…

Legalizing drugs would reduce gang violence to almost zero, but whether or not drugs are bad is orthogonal to the argument. I lost a good friend to alcohol and have relatives struggling with heroin. Just for the record I cannot believe the huge comeback heroin is making, I just don't understand. Some kind of affluenza and believing the stupid media telling them that the world is shit. I am in favor of virtually anything that reduces suffering in the aggregate.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#69

Post by msandford »

happyscrappy wrote: post #68
msandford wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think that the cops are to blame. It's a far bigger problem than that. They don't make policy, they just enforce it. Why blame policy problems on the police? By your reasoning, though, one might surmise that ending the drug prohibition would then also end gangs, wouldn't one? The gang exists to defend illegal drug territory. Illegal drug territory only exists because drugs are illegal. Ending prohibition…

Legalizing drugs would reduce gang violence to almost zero, but whether or not drugs are bad is orthogonal to the argument. I lost a good friend to alcohol and have relatives struggling with heroin. Just for the record I cannot believe the huge comeback heroin is making, I just don't understand. Some kind of affluenza and believing the stupid media telling them that the world is shit. I am in favor of virtually anyth…

I think the real question is "would there be a net drop in suffering as a result of legalization?" and I personally suspect that the answer is "yes".

Forgive me for accusing you pre-emptively of moving the goalposts. It happens a lot and I get tired of it. That's usually what happens once it becomes clear that legalization would end gang violence, another objection to stopping legalization for another, never before mentioned reason.

Re: The Drug-Violence Myth

#70

Post by bobdole1234 »

DanBC wrote: post #63

We know that a drug addiction is a weak predictor of violence. We know that previous violence is a predictor of violence. We know that mental illness generally isn't a predictor of violence. Even when you limit mental illness to just personality disorder and psychotic illnesses it's weaker than an addiction or previous episode of violence. But if you combine any two you get stronger predictors, and if you combine all…

Taking more than one ineffective predictor doesn't magically make them better.

The article states there is no demonstrated link. That doesn't mean that it's not strong enough to detect on it's own, that means there is no link demonstrated.

Adding up a bunch of nothing doesn't make something. It just makes it easier to hand wave away the fact it doesn't actually mean anything.

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