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American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged

justice.gov

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Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged

#111

Post by bobthepanda »

throw443259 wrote: post #87
bobthepanda wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already starting to happen. A bunch of countries suspended extradition to Hong Kong after all the recent power consolidation by China because while they trusted an independent Hong Kong to have reasonable limits on its judiciary they do not trust China to do the same; after all this is a country that dismisses "rule of law". And in fact the whole protest situation was caused by Hong Kong's Government introduc…

And the reason for the initial bill was due to a Hong Kong citizen murdering his girlfriend in Taiwan. Taiwan and Hong Kong do not have extradition treaties. The murderer is still free in Hong Kong.

I mean this was never going to happen anyways because cross-strait relations are fickle and perilous at the best of times, and Taiwan has specifically said that it does not really want to participate in extradition with HK after the whole fiasco. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/world/asia/hong-kong-murd...

The rational response to "hey the country who originally requested the extradition doesn't want to do it anymore" would be to shelve the bill, but at that point the Government and CCP wanted to save face and dug in their heels. Which makes the whole situation an extremely stupid case study of how not to de-escalate a situation.

Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged

#112

Post by cik2e »

KerrickStaley wrote: post #18
CameronNemo wrote: post #2

Justice is such a poor way to describe what is happening here. I have full empathy with those who have struggled with opioid addiction or lost loved ones to the disease. But the fact is that opioid prescriptions are still being written with too little oversight, too few safeguards, and not enough support for patients. Withstanding such contradiction in treatment of opioid suppliers, the federal government cannot keep…

> even moderate use can be balanced with a healthy lifestyle Genuinely curious: this doesn't really mesh with my understanding. I think opioids are extremely addictive (more so than tobacco or even cocaine or amphetamine) and as a result it's nearly impossible to be a "casual" user (and therefore I don't ever intend to try any opioids). Is there evidence that opioids can be "moderately" used?

Moderate opioid use is possible if you take long enough breaks to avoid physical dependence. That of course requires the self-discipline to say no to the psychological pull. As far as I recall, I felt some mild withdrawals after about 3 consecutive days of poppy tea use, so the physical dependence does set in pretty quickly. But if you know your boundaries, it’s easy to avoid. I would wager a guess that you could do strong opioids once a week indefinitely without any negative repercussions.

Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged

#113

Post by arcticbull »

remarkEon wrote: post #59
arcticbull wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is your regular reminder that Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and usage did not go up but the health effects and negative societal effects of drug use all but vanished [1]. They went from worst in the EU to among the best in the EU in the decade that followed on pretty much every metric. Addiction has a huge situational component. 20% of US GIs in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. When they returned hom…

This is your regular reminder that extrapolating an outcome from a country like Portugal (an outcome we should all be happy about, by the way) to a country like the United States is unwise. I've never been to Portugal, but have friends that live in both Spain and Portugal and I'm pretty envious of the kind of community and shared identity they describe. I image that probably has something to do with the outcome seen…

I think the reason people are reacting negatively to your comment is that:

(1) We have data from 1971 onward, just shy of 50 years, that shows that the "war on drugs" approach used in most of the world has been an abject and total failure. Drug usage remains pervasive, social harms are clear, and we keep throwing people in jail. No progress is made.

(2) A country was doing terribly on every metric, then they made a bold decision that was the opposite of the failed approach everyone else is using.

(3) The results were spectacular.

(4) Your response is "well that'll never work here." This is an implicit endorsement of the failed status quo, and an explicit rejection of evidence in support of an alternative.

> This seems to contradict your previous point, no?

No, it doesn't. It's not at all related to availability or legality of drugs -- drugs are equally available literally everywhere. Nobody in the US who wants to do heroin has any trouble getting heroin, or any other opioids. Accessibility is not the issue. And nobody addicted to heroin goes "oh, well, it's illegal in America, guess I'll stop."

It's evidence to support that we need to end the abject failure of an approach we've squandered 50 years on, and start a new, public health and community support approach to managing addiction. As evidenced by a place it's been overwhelmingly successful.

We literally can't do worse than what we have now, unless you wanted to make drugs mandatory.

Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged

#114

Post by arcticbull »

Fjolsvith wrote: post #103
ethanbond wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think anyone is disputing that some variation of this idea is true. What’s not being stated explicitly is that if it’s true that social connectedness (ambiguously including identity, purpose, etc.) matters, then it’s also true that our current enforcement mechanisms are probably incredibly counterproductive. Everyone gets the point you’re making, you’re just not following it through to something meaningful an…

And... that ties nicely in with the defund the police narrative.

This has nothing to do with the "defund the police" narrative, Portugal did this 20 years ago.

Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged

#115

Post by m0zg »

popeathlete wrote: post #99
m0zg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legalization of what though? Opioids? The drug that kills tens of thousands of people in the US each year, which is almost immediately and very strongly addictive, and with which it is extremely easy to overdose? No thanks. That'd be extremely damaging to society, and it'd inevitably kill a bunch of people and affect an order of magnitude more through network effects.

The drug that kills tens of thousands of people who don't know any better and choke on their vomit because nobody told them to lay on their side. People who overdose because they got dope laced with fent. People who overdosed because they didn't know how much h they got. People who got addicted, because the safest option was to shoot. Surely controlled selling of the substance wouldn't fix any of these problems.

This is the same level of magical thinking as "abolishing police", in that it completely ignores the deadly realities on the ground and the people who suffer the consequences do not intersect in the venn diagram with those proposing the thing. In fact those who suffer the consequences tend to be overwhelmingly against the proposal.

Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged

#116

Post by jimkleiber »

Donthatme wrote: post #95
jimkleiber wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this, as scientists need hypotheses to test and often those can come from non-scientists. I wonder how many of our scientific discoveries have come from suggestions (or bold statements) from people in other fields. Sure, many may prove to be false, but I like how you've framed it as a novel opinion that could spur further research into a topic. What is science, if not a never-ending quest to learn more about t…

> I like this, as scientists need hypotheses to test and often those can come from non-scientists. Bold claim, or tortured use of often. > I wonder how many of our scientific discoveries have come from suggestions (or bold statements) from people in other fields. A lot of academic fields are fairly siloed from others. One example is presentations at a conference from a subfield that is just slightly oblique from your…

> Bold claim, or tortured use of often.

Fair point, it may not be that often.

> A lot of academic fields are fairly siloed from others. One example is presentations at a conference from a subfield that is just slightly oblique from yours is hard to follow because they use different jargon than you. It is getting a little better with some emphasis on interdisciplinary research.

True, jargon and other aspects can draw divisions really fast. I left the electrical and computer engineering department at my university to pursue international studies because it was interdisciplinary and I could basically build my own major from economics, intl business, anthropology, political science, and other areas. So I'm probably biased towards interdisciplinary stuff and maybe see more of it than there may be.

> From my experience with being blasted by spam ideas just because my contact information is in a university's physics directory, a lot of/most 'novel opinion' is noise.

I can only imagine how many novel theories of the universe you receive and how few have relevance. I still think sometimes we can see patterns in the odd/wrong suggestions they provide and come to hypotheses about things, but maybe more so in some fields than others, and maybe much less directly than I had postulated.

Anyway, really appreciate the back and forth dialogue :-)

Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged

#117

Post by jimkleiber »

moneywoes wrote: post #52
peteretep wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Johann Hari A man whose professional experience is journalist and has no science, medical, public health, or psychotherapy background... and he’s trying to sell a book. Is this too harsh a take? Is there a reason I should be taking his opinion seriously?

Thank you for bringing that up. I often forget to validate sources prior to looking at their viewpoint.

I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic (or ironic?), as I think about HN being a platform where we present our viewpoints with few of our identities able to be validated. However, I can see value in both.

Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged

#118

Post by jimkleiber »

peteretep wrote: post #47
ghthor wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a novel opinion, and novel opinions are what a good scientist needs to make major breakthroughs. I sure people were saying the same things about Galileo as there were of the women from Alexandria before him, etc.

> novel opinions are what a good scientist needs to make major breakthroughs I wonder how frequently those opinions come from journalists trying to hawk books on fairly facile premisses tho

Hard to know...partially because I feel a bit embarrassed to admit, but I don't feel 100% confident I understand what "facile premises" means.

What do you mean by it?

Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged

#119

Post by jimkleiber »

nonissue wrote: post #58
jimkleiber wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you don't have to take his opinion seriously, or more importantly, as a final answer to the issue of addiction. I personally don't think that just because he's a journalist without those backgrounds, that he's not capable of learning and presenting truth in those spaces—I see a lot of value in journalistic skills of investigation and interdisciplinary exploration. That being said, it doesn't necessarily mean…

I don't know anything about him, but based on his wikipedia article, I wouldn't put any stock at all in his journalistic skills. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari

That's OK. Admittedly, if I had read that before, I may have seen his work more skeptically but I would still probably have engaged. With a lot of journalists reporting on science, if I can, I try to dig deeper into the studies they quote and go to the primary sources. Other times I probably just judge what they're saying based on my gut and intuition, trying to take shortcuts and hoping it's right :-)

Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged

#120

Post by akadruid1 »

nkrisc wrote: post #105
fiblye wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what internal prejudices or twisted reasoning I have about my own country. I certainly don't know what it has to do with Trump. My concern is that countries will ship people to a country they've never been to for things like drug crimes. The standard for what's wrong is going to change in coming decades, and countries that thought it's normal to extradite people for things like drugs are going to find themse…

Most countries will not extradite their citizens to other countries for act that aren't crimes in their own country. This was a crime in both Costa Rica and the United States.

The US attempted to extradite a British citizen for copyright infringement that wasn't an offence in the UK. The British government approved the extradition, although he finally reached an agreement that allowed the US to fine him and remotely monitor him. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Dwyer
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