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Legalize It All

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Re: Legalize It All

#81

Post by crystalmeph »

ellyagg wrote: post #35
jessaustin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's rhetorically effective, in that shallow thinkers have been trained for years to reflexively revile Nixon. If we argued merely on the merits, they might worry about LEO jobs or housewives hooked on patent medicines (i.e., stupid arguments we've seen before). It's best to short-circuit all that detailed disputation with a simple "Drug War = Nixon = Bad". Very few thinking people without a personal economic…

Ouch, such a gross way of thinking. And people wonder why things are getting so divisive. No matter who you are, there are lots of people who disagree with you on public policy who aren't morons. Treating them like morons encourages them to hate you and not listen to anything you say.

I don't know if "shallow thinkers" or "morons" are appropriate terms to define the people that jessaustin is referring to. But I think it is entirely possible that many people simply think differently than we do, and you need to communicate with them differently as well.

Basically, the audience you and I usually interact with, e.g. here on HN, and probably at work, assuming you're in tech also, is comprised largely of logical thinkers. We don't have a lot of experience dealing with people who have more emotional thinking characteristics, so we assume that using an entirely logical argument is the only correct way to change people's minds.

I can't find numbers, and I don't know how much, or if, this has been studied, but I think a large portion of the population thinks more emotionally than we would expect them to. I don't necessarily think that's a negative thing, as emotional thinking helps, e.g. bind us together in cohesive communities even though the individuals in that community might be very different from each other on a personal level, because even though they're different people, they feel an emotional attachment to the same community.

Re: Legalize It All

#82

Post by 13of40 »

narrator wrote: post #61
shmerl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that interesting that dictatorship doesn't hesitate to openly attack dissent? That's actually expected from it.

Stalin was by all accounts a dictator, but he operated differently. When the NKVD secret police would arrest someone who had made a political joke that somebody heard and reported, they weren't sent to freeze to death in a gulag in Siberia for the joke. No, they were forced to confess under torture to all sorts of laundry lists of ridiculous accusations of sabotaging production and acting as a spy for foreign governm…

> in the constitution of the Soviet Union there are all kinds of rights and legal protections and such > They just say that someone belongs to an illegal non-harmonious organization like Falun-Gong or whatever and that's illegal.

It seems like governments are somewhat uniform in the laws they pass, but fundamentally fickle about which laws they choose to enforce. In my state, for example, it's a felony to be a member of a subversive organization...

http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9.81.030

...e.g., the Communist Party...

http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9.81.083

...but it would be unthinkable for them to actually prosecute anyone for it.

Re: Legalize It All

#83

Post by EliRivers »

winter_blue wrote: post #55
EliRivers wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is but a tiny shadow of the profitability of the drug industry. Legalised, the wealthy can own it and funnel money to themselves, and Uncle Sam can have a nice big bite. Here comes the money.

Legalized, this industry will collapse, as drugs would be very cheap. The real production costs of most drugs are minuscule. Their high market prices are entirely due to their illegality.

Yes, of course, just as the alcohol industry did. Nobody makes any money selling alcohol.

Re: Legalize It All

#84

Post by chishaku »

mtgx wrote: post #54
krylon wrote: post #3

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…

Another "problem" with legalization is that then the government will have to accept that it has to treat those people who become addicts instead of just imprisoning them. But it's not willing to cover them under a Medicare-like healthcare system. Do you think the addicts will afford or could be covered under ACA?

> it has to treat those people who become addicts instead of just imprisoning them.

I'm not sure if you're implying that the rate of addiction would increase due to legalization but regarding that claim, the Netherlands and Portugal provide interesting data points.

In Portugal, the rate of addiction decreased after they decriminalized all drugs.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/05/why-h...

In the Netherlands: "In 1985, nearly 100 percent of methadone patients were aged below 40. In 2014, almost all of them were older than 40."

https://news.vice.com/article/only-in-the-netherlands-do-add...

Also, diversion to treatment programs could lead to significant cost savings. Those savings could be invested in treatment programs that are more effective than whatever is available today.

"Research conducted in part by Temple University and published in the online journal “Crime & Delinquency” found that only ten percent of state prisoners who abuse drugs or are drug-dependent receive medically based treatment while incarcerated. If that ten percent had received treatment in community-based programs instead of serving jail time, the prison system would save $4.8 billion - nearly the amount paid out to the Bureau of Prisons. Those savings would nearly triple if just 40 percent of eligible offenders received the same sort of treatment."

https://www.thefix.com/content/treatment-instead-time-look-p...

"Maryland, for example, saw average costs for offenders decrease from approximately $20,000 to $4,000. The same report on JusticePolicy.org mentioned that the costs for treatment generally range from $1,800 to $6,800, far less than the cost of incarceration. California’s Proposition 36 mandated that those entering the justice system on drug-related offenses be given substance abuse treatment rather than a prison sentence. The state initially spent millions on the first few years of the program but estimated that, at a long-term glance, the program could save the state up to $150 million annually."

http://www.dualdiagnosis.org/co-occurring-disorders-treatmen...

Re: Legalize It All

#85

Post by sbov »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #51
dang wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gotta love the HN crowd. Please don't. The "crowd" includes you, and such generalizations are mostly bias.

Am I wrong to assume that most people here: - Want to legalize drugs. - Want to ban guns. - Want a right to privacy.

Why does it even matter? Why people believe what they believe is more nuanced than "freedom". Freedom is certainly is a factor but not the only.

Stereotyping everyone in a community is easy but ultimately lazy and somewhat pointless. Unless you're running for office.

Re: Legalize It All

#86

Post by hawkice »

Terr_ wrote: post #52
narrator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I find interesting (INTERESTING, not necessarily moral or otherwise) about China is that when they want to do something controversial they are open and straight forward about it. They openly attack and arrest groups that they find disruptive to the social order. In America, the leadership has to invent all sorts of crafty subterfuge to accomplish their goals of persecuting and imprisoning groups that they c…

> The thing I find interesting (INTERESTING, not necessarily moral or otherwise) about China is that when they want to do something controversial they are open and straight forward about it. Not necessarily, or they wouldn't need to coerce apologetic confessions: http://www.economist.com/news/china/21689620-what-current-vo...

So, it turns out this is a fairly clever (remember kids: clever doesn't mean good) of discrediting people who want to be seen as either conscientious objectors or principled. Make them go back on their word, often in public. But the videos of apologies and such that get released are really just the tip of the sword.

Their interrogation techniques have been known to be extremely brutal right up until the moment you apologize -- even if it's just two people in a room with cameras off -- because the Chinese government wants it that way. They want the rules to be extremely well known.

Everyone knows you get beat till you go back on your "disruptive" ideals. Sometimes they permanently cripple people or put them in a coma. 99% of the time, though, they release them. That way, everyone knows, when they see that the dissident is basically fine, that they betrayed their own beliefs, even if it was in private, even if no one saw.

Completely irrelevant aside: it's stuff like this that comes to mind when people talk about how dysfunctional the American government is. The Chinese government can have complex policies with parts that a lot of people find uncomfortable or wrong, and still have the whole system the way that will be most effective instead of most comfortable -- their astounding urbanization and rise in not just wealth but advanced skills and it's relation to the hukou system is a good example -- but when you have unchecked power... this is another consequence.

Re: Legalize It All

#87

Post by stvswn »

SwellJoe wrote: post #74
hjhgjtyhgdfi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers unions spent $20 million on the 2012 election alone, no doubt funding candidates who were friendly to their pensions. I can go down the line and list off several more trade unions and their political spending. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=l1300 Why is there seemingly not a peep about this from those who oppose the private prison complex?

I'm curious: Do you believe teachers asking for more funding is ethically comparable to prisons demanding more prisoners?

I think it hinges on whether the private prison industry is lobbying for more funding per prisoner or tougher laws that result in more prisoners (or longer sentences). If they argue for safer prisons, better rehabilitation programs, more security for guards -- the public should be skeptical but open. If they want to just lock more people up and then bill the government -- that would be somehow like teachers' unions lobbying for less birth control to influence the birth rate and therefore create more demand for teaching jobs. It seems perverse.

In other words, we need prisons just like we need schools, even if people like schools more we shouldn't vilify corrections officers just because they work in an industry we don't care to interact with. It's all about their conduct, which has been terrible. Teachers unions are also self-serving, but they at least pretend to have the child's interest at heart.

Re: Legalize It All

#88

Post by baddox »

Delmania wrote: post #10
krylon wrote: post #3

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…

> Can we now, please, get that behind us and move on? What, and disrupt the massively profitable prison industry?

Is that really a big factor compared to police departments?

Re: Legalize It All

#89

Post by JorgeGT »

narrator wrote: post #61
shmerl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that interesting that dictatorship doesn't hesitate to openly attack dissent? That's actually expected from it.

Stalin was by all accounts a dictator, but he operated differently. When the NKVD secret police would arrest someone who had made a political joke that somebody heard and reported, they weren't sent to freeze to death in a gulag in Siberia for the joke. No, they were forced to confess under torture to all sorts of laundry lists of ridiculous accusations of sabotaging production and acting as a spy for foreign governm…

> acting as a spy for foreign governments and being the ringleaders of vast insurgent organizations

Bear in mind that for each of the prominent people made to confess all sorts of crazy things in the Moscow Trials, hundreds of thousands were more or less straightforwardly sent to the Gulag:

- Did you refer to Comrade Stalin as a fool in your letter to A?

- Yes I did but look...

- Art. 58, 25 years.

Re: Legalize It All

#90

Post by itsgreene »

krylon wrote: post #3

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…

I want to disagree a little on this. I won't disagree that the 'war on drugs' is out of control, largely mismanaged, and likely unnecessary. What I do want to say is I think it's a bit unfair to say "It never was about fighting drug use or preventing the harm it can do."

I think it's fair to say the funding and huge catalyst for the war on drugs started in Miami in the 80's. During this time where was a ridiculous amount of violence. Violence that occurred in broad daylight, that had no regard for the public, with weapons police didn't have access too. CENTAC was started and gave law enforcement a more level playing field, and had a huge impact on the violence related to the drug trade in south Florida. It effectively removed lots of violent criminals from the streets. Just look at the crime stats before and after the initiative, it's pretty clear there was a public benefit.

While I agree there are very unfortunate unintended consequences of the war on drugs, I think we also have to give credit where is credit is due. Lets learn from it and do something better moving forward.

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