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After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us?'

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Re: After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us?'

#141

Post by handmodel »

alamortsubite wrote: post #41

I feel like Ehrlichman admitting the war on drugs was just a pretext for marginalizing Blacks and progressives should have been the end of it. But no, and that's already 25 years ago: In a 1994 interview published in Harper's Magazine, Nixon adviser John Ehrlichman suggested racial animus was among the motives shaping the drug war. "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the [Vietnam] War or Black,"…

It seems weird to say that is the reason

In most states (including CA) the percent of minorities in jail for weapons offenses is as disproportionate to the population as drug offenses. And today in states like CA - 50% more people are in jail for weapons charges than drug charges.

Is the reason that drug laws/weapons laws exist to disenfranchise people? Or is a true problem in society that in theory would be good to address - and powerful people are indifferent to people who end up in jail.

Re: After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us?'

#142

Post by soperj »

fosk wrote: post #98

Besides the controversial political agenda behind the "War on Drugs", I guess we all agree that drugs are obviously bad for society as a whole. But it's kinda hard to do a war on drugs without - you know - arresting the drug dealers on known corners. Looking at you San Francisco. Drugs enable misery, poverty, overdoses and homicides. Especially the ones that create physical addiction (opioids, meth, fentanyl, etc). B…

>Perhaps the simplest thing to do in order to disrupt the supply.

When you're removing supply, but not disrupting demand, a way will be found. The real answer is to legalize & sell it, no more drug dealers, remove the overdoses because it was cut with fentanyl, no longer fund gangs = less homicides

Re: After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us?'

#143

Post by vidarh »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #108
dcolkitt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal and purity regulated heroin would have by far the biggest impact, because of the scourge of fentanyl deaths. If I had to choose between legal cannabis and legal heroin, I’d choose the latter on utilitarian grounds. (Although obviously I support both wholeheartedly.)

I definitely wouldn't support the legalization of heroin. We already have alternatives(kratom, suboxone) that are legal and have far less abuse potential. Not all drugs are the same, we shouldn't act like they are.

And yet the ongoing use of heroin demonstrates that this does not work well enough and condemns people to suffering or death.

Re: After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us?'

#144

Post by whydoibother »

jimbob45 wrote: post #71
ElViajero wrote: post #8

> "The war on drugs was an absolute miscalculation of human behavior," said Kassandra Frederique, who heads the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that advocates for total drug decriminalization. For me it would be incredibly interesting to know how much it was a miscalculation or actually it was very well calculated. The "War on Drugs" have failed to make USA safer, healthier or any other positive metric. But, i…

>The "War on Drugs" have failed to make USA safer, healthier or any other positive metric. Speak for yourself. My methhead sister-in-law is in prison and I certainly feel safer. Addicts cannot be trusted and bring families down. People raised away from addicts (read: white liberals) don’t understand how destructive they can be to a community.

The fact you are happy your sister is in prison and not in a treatment facility says a lot about you.

Re: After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us?'

#145

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

dasv wrote: post #133
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely wouldn't support the legalization of heroin. We already have alternatives(kratom, suboxone) that are legal and have far less abuse potential. Not all drugs are the same, we shouldn't act like they are.

Well, we have already tried that with methadone clinics. To compete with the black market it needs to be the same product.

Yeah, and lots of people used methadone successfully.

I don't want there to be stiff market competition in the addictive substances market. We already did that with tobacco and still haven't fully phased that out.

Re: After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us?'

#146

Post by fedreserved »

bgroins wrote: post #19
ElViajero wrote: post #8

> "The war on drugs was an absolute miscalculation of human behavior," said Kassandra Frederique, who heads the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that advocates for total drug decriminalization. For me it would be incredibly interesting to know how much it was a miscalculation or actually it was very well calculated. The "War on Drugs" have failed to make USA safer, healthier or any other positive metric. But, i…

The reasoning is well established at this point. It was started by the Nixon administration to reduce the amount of left and left-leaning voters, particularly black Americans. "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the…

With the proliferation of the cias involvement in the logistics and selling of cocaine, crack, heroin, I'd say part of "their" decision making was how useful drugs could be to fund black book operations. If you have a jail out of free card for your assets and the competition (majority of drug dealers don't) then the party with a get out of jail free card will be able to take advantage of the artificially high price points due to high criminal penalties.

Also let's not forget about civil asset forfeiture. The gift that keeps on giving to the government.

At this point there is more civil asset forfeiture then property theft in the USA year over year. It's a massive motivation. Illegal drugs is the fuel to the civil asset forfeiture dumpster fire

Re: After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us?'

#147

Post by MuffinFlavored »

a2tech wrote: post #54
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> large groups of people that the government wants to marginalize Who does the government want to marginalize? I thought the government (and the rest of the world, really) was all about equality and inclusion as of late.

To borrow the quote from another post on this thread (which is still very valid): "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? 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…

I'm not trying to stir the pot when I ask this:

How is a quote about how the Nixon administration having "black people as the enemy" around 1968-1971 still relevant in 2021 when the current administration's messaging is one of inclusion and equality?

Re: After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us?'

#148

Post by everdrive »

alamortsubite wrote: post #41

I feel like Ehrlichman admitting the war on drugs was just a pretext for marginalizing Blacks and progressives should have been the end of it. But no, and that's already 25 years ago: In a 1994 interview published in Harper's Magazine, Nixon adviser John Ehrlichman suggested racial animus was among the motives shaping the drug war. "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the [Vietnam] War or Black,"…

So many people have cried wolf about the evils of either the government, or previous generations that this quote genuinely shocked me. I too would think that something like this would and should have more weight.

Re: After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us?'

#149

Post by cmendel »

vkou wrote: post #107
tetranomiga wrote: post #23

> On Tuesday, two House Democrats introduced legislation that would decriminalize all drugs in the U.S., shifting the national response to a public health model. The measure appears to have zero chance of passage. If that isn't just the perfect description of politics in the US, I don't know what is. I don't know what your political ideology has to be to think the War on Drugs is a good thing, after all the money was…

> If that isn't just the perfect description of politics in the US Yes, but not in the way that you say. Political change happens step by tiny step. You have to hammer the same point for decades to get somewhere. You hammer it by winning elections, by having better candidates win your primaries, by getting the news media, large corporations, and celebrities to virtue signal, by rallies, by protests, by sabotaging the…

The problem is that our system is broken. Wildly popular policies can't pass because of republican obstructionism in the senate.

Worse, the senate is hugely anti-democratic. It's not 1/3-1/2 of the population; its the reps of 4/25.

""The 25 most populous states contain nearly 84 percent of the 50 states’ total population. So 16 percent of the country controls half of the seats in the United States Senate (and that’s not accounting for the fact that DC, Puerto Rico, and several other US territories have no representation at all in Congress).""[1]

Source to [1]: https://www.vox.com/2021/1/6/22215728/senate-anti-democratic...

I actually highly recommend reading the above. I found it insightful.

Re: After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us?'

#150

Post by klyrs »

jimbob45 wrote: post #71
ElViajero wrote: post #8

> "The war on drugs was an absolute miscalculation of human behavior," said Kassandra Frederique, who heads the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that advocates for total drug decriminalization. For me it would be incredibly interesting to know how much it was a miscalculation or actually it was very well calculated. The "War on Drugs" have failed to make USA safer, healthier or any other positive metric. But, i…

>The "War on Drugs" have failed to make USA safer, healthier or any other positive metric. Speak for yourself. My methhead sister-in-law is in prison and I certainly feel safer. Addicts cannot be trusted and bring families down. People raised away from addicts (read: white liberals) don’t understand how destructive they can be to a community.

Hi, white liberal raised by an addict here. I've known quite a few meth addicts over the years. The ones who get sent to prison are uniformly worse off than those who get sent to rehab. A notable distinction, white addicts I know have been mostly sent to rehab; everybody else winds up in jail/prison where there's a booming drug trade and surprise surprise, they don't get clean.
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