Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health • Hacker News Board

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#81

Post by admax88q » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

__s wrote: post #15

gotoeleven wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried cocaine??? It's great!

Exhilaration and lasting euphoria, which in no way differs from the normal euphoria of the healthy person. You perceive an increase of self-control and possess more vitality and capacity for work. In other words, you are simply normal, and it is soon hard to believe you are under the influence of any drug. Long intensive physical work is performed without any fatigue. This result is enjoyed without any of the unpleas…

> No craving for the further use of cocaine appears after the first, or even after repeated taking of the drug.

lol

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#82

Post by pstuart » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #33

downrightmike wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon. Before then, MJ was around and used, it is a plant and good pain killer that you can grow yourself. And Nixon stated that is why he was doing it in the White House tapes. For 50 years the WoD was used to justify invading other countries and setting up coups and all that has lead to our current issue with powerful militarized Narco gangs and all…

> The war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon So was Planned Parenthood. Instead of endlessly prosecuting the past, which can never change, let's look at today and tomorrow instead. Or, if you prefer, we could look at the exact opposite approach- the Opium wars were fought to force China to allow the sale and consumption of opium, the extensive use of which was practically epidemic. As su…

> So was Planned Parenthood.

No it wasn't:

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/43208...

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#83

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

ggggtez wrote: post #58

gravypod wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure if that's the only thing people voted for when they wanted to be hard on drugs. As you can see in this comment thread (on an extremely left-leaning site) we have some people who think drug use is immoral. One of the sister comments says "I believe it's wrong". Definitely some section of the population wanted to use this as a way to bully minorities but another section of the population was convinced "…

The war on drugs was tied specifically to anti-communist and anti-hippie movements. You can argue that black community was only one type of minority being policed. Still, marijuana was given such disproportionate higher punishments largely because of it's adoption in black communities. No one thinks of alcohol as a narcotic or drug. The same was true before. But by lumping MJ in with heroin, they were able to convinc…

This. The fact that the public was able to eventually push some of this idiocy aside ( there are still vestiges of really strong resistance ) is more of an indication of that somewhat hopeful message that will of the people eventually wills out. Granted, it took white teenagers doing what all teenagers do ( try everything ) to make it happen, but it happened.

I don't have a firm grasp on the history of prohibition, but my understanding is that at least there, at the time there was a real, clear drinking problem among the US population.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#84

Post by dantheman » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #62

zdragnar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon So was Planned Parenthood. Instead of endlessly prosecuting the past, which can never change, let's look at today and tomorrow instead. Or, if you prefer, we could look at the exact opposite approach- the Opium wars were fought to force China to allow the sale and consumption of opium, the extensive use of which was practically epidemic. As su…

> could also be argued that legalizing drugs is an attack in minorities who are disproportionately poor and thus prone to consumption Legalising the production and sale - yes, that would be possible. But legalising use and possession is very far from that. It opens the doors for better social approach to the problems and helps keep families together.

If you legalize consumption but not production and sale - you make the black market thrive and basically sponsor organized crime. Full legalization is the only moral and practical approach.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#85

Post by heavyset_go » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #4

Could this be a situation where politicians have faulty data and use that to guide how they act? I would have assumed that a majority of these states - and my home state of NJ - would be very anti-drug but these votes with >60% in favor of legalization show that significant portions of America think drug-related activities are not "immoral" or "wrong" and should not be criminalized. If you had asked me a few years ag…

> Maybe now that politicians see that people are very against drug laws we'll see some of them renege on their hard anti-drug stances.

I'd love to see this, but I doubt it. I've sat in on court sessions, and towns and cities pull in a lot of revenue through low-level drug offenses, and cops spend a significant amount of their time investigating and arresting kids for drug offenses.

The criminalization of drugs, especially low-level offenses, are revenue generators for municipalities, and jobs programs for law enforcement.

There is a lot of money, and plenty of high-paying jobs with full pensions, that are kept afloat by the criminalization of drugs.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#86

Post by alexashka » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #48

stickfigure wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If alcohol was as restricted as MDMA, we just might start calling alcohol a therapy tool. But right now anyone (of legal age) who wants it can order a glass of wine or two, so the people that benefit from it have it. Nobody thinks twice. You sound incredulous that psilocybin or mdma could be therapy tools. Are you a psychologist? Do you have any firsthand experience with these chemicals? Why are you skeptical?

The point being made is that alcohol is legal, and massively harmful, and the public health measures around alcohol aren't great, and so maybe we need to be cautious when decriminalising and legalising other drugs to ensure that we have some health protections in place. At the moment we don't have those. We have strong denial in lots of people that cannabis might cause harm in some people. All the stuff currently bei…

> The point being made is that alcohol is legal, and massively harmful

Harmful relative to what? An ideal world where nobody drinks?

We've tried idealism via a prohibition and last I checked, that caused so much harm we went back to letting people have a drink.

A comparison of drugs vs no drugs ignores reality - we are not lab rats, we live within a society and a little vice lubricates the cogs of society. To deny that this is how it is, was and always will be is not helpful.

Your point regarding for-profit companies is valid - the likely solution to that is to control advertising so that it doesn't advertise drugs, as we have already successfully done with cigarettes.

The larger point is that there needs to be a balance of individual good vs collective. When society tips too heavily in the direction of collective, drugs/corruption/disobedience/crime will always be a 'problem' because there'll always be people who aren't interested in living to enable arbitrary collective goals somebody has decided everyone else ought to follow.

Long story short, it's a balancing act, maaan :)

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#87

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

zests wrote: post #34

ericmay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but you can also say criminalization has worked extremely well. Singapore for example. What I worry about here is another instance of treating symptoms instead of causes. Why do people feel like they need to use drugs like heroin? > The law provides a lot of additional funding to mental health and substance abuse programs, which could actually help people in those situations. So if I want healthcare I should get…

How has criminalization worked in the United States?

The question seems simple, but the answer is complex depending on who you ask. There are populations that benefited greatly from criminalization of various substances ( say, for profit prison stocks treated as reit stocks ).

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#88

Post by johnisgood » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #16

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #6

> Cannabis has been rebranded as a wellness panacea. Mushrooms and MDMA are making headlines as therapy tools, not party fuel. Man, these guys are late to the party. Alcohol works great for treating symptoms of stress, too! Can't be stressed, anxious, or depressed if I'm blitzed out of my mind!

Amphetamines were originally marketed as diet pills. Valium (diazepam) was marketed as a stress reducer.

I know someone who has fried GABA receptors or God knows what (he actually has brain lesions), and in its natural state he is the same as if someone took lots of amphetamines. It is not good. He uses opiates to balance it off, and works for him, he is productive and so forth. Opiates do not make him nauseated nor euphoric. We do have an antidepressant named tianeptine that is used as a nootropic in the US, and it is an antidepressant here that affects the same receptors as opioids. I do not know if tianeptine would work for him, but opioids do, and who am I to judge? People have all sorts of reasons for drugs, some are more harmful (the reasons, I mean... the drugs too, but that is a different story) than others. If it makes him functional and "normal", without any side-effects (apart from some constipation he can fix if necessary with magnesium), then why not? I just typically live and let live. I never judged him for it. You cannot even tell. You can tell when he is in his "normal state" though, that is horrible, and I am not talking about the opioid withdrawal. He is anxious as heck, shaky, very reserved, cannot focus, and so on. He occasionally goes through voluntary withdrawals so he has to take less doses. He has no cravings through withdrawal (probably because he is not taking it recreationally or for escapism), and the only withdrawal symptoms were sweating and diarrhea that disappeared after like 4 days or something like that. I do not keep a tab on him, we just talk. Fascinating stuff.

I guess the moral of the story is that there are many and legit reasons to take drugs that can affect people very differently, and who are we to judge? I will repeat this because I really found it to be nice to live by: live and let live, and whatever you do (context), do it responsibly and safely.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#89

Post by viraptor » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

dantheman wrote: post #84

viraptor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> could also be argued that legalizing drugs is an attack in minorities who are disproportionately poor and thus prone to consumption Legalising the production and sale - yes, that would be possible. But legalising use and possession is very far from that. It opens the doors for better social approach to the problems and helps keep families together.

If you legalize consumption but not production and sale - you make the black market thrive and basically sponsor organized crime. Full legalization is the only moral and practical approach.

There's some threshold you probably don't want to legalise. With less addictive alternatives being available, do you really think that heroin production should ever be legalised?

Otherwise what's to stop someone from creating a custom highly addictive drug purely for maximising profit? There are labs ready to do that. In Poland the drug laws targeted specific listed substances for a while which created a market for completely untested substances which were technically-not-drugs and the stock changed immediately after the drug list was updated.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#90

Post by pjc50 » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #33

downrightmike wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon. Before then, MJ was around and used, it is a plant and good pain killer that you can grow yourself. And Nixon stated that is why he was doing it in the White House tapes. For 50 years the WoD was used to justify invading other countries and setting up coups and all that has lead to our current issue with powerful militarized Narco gangs and all…

> The war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon So was Planned Parenthood. Instead of endlessly prosecuting the past, which can never change, let's look at today and tomorrow instead. Or, if you prefer, we could look at the exact opposite approach- the Opium wars were fought to force China to allow the sale and consumption of opium, the extensive use of which was practically epidemic. As su…

Planned Parenthood was the work of Margaret Sanger, who was a feminist who believed in reproductive choice and free speech; she was repeatedly arrested because distributing knowledge of contraception violated the Comstock Act.