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

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211–220 of 353 posts

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

#211
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…

Firstly, that would get them into a lot of jurisdiction fights with the local cops.

Secondly, it would also get into a lot of fights with the locals; every "bust a group of people standing on the corner" runs the risk of false positives, the gradual loss of trust of the population, and an increased rate of violent incidents.

Thirdly, in order to avoid just displacing it, it requires cops (or at least cameras) everywhere. America has a lot of corners.

As with Prohibition, this would probably accelerate the collapse of the policy.

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

#212
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still find it abhorrent that incarcerated people can't vote in the US. That seems so obviously exploitable.

Not only this, but in many cases felons permanently lose their right to vote, even after they serve their sentence. Edit: I stand corrected, this is true in some states but not others.

[deleted]

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

#213

> 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…

> I don't know what your political ideology has to be to think the War on Drugs is a good thing

This is quite a straw man, not wanting to decriminalize all drugs is not the same as thinking the War on Drugs is a good thing. (And it's not like there is one particular policy that on its own constitutes the "War on Drugs", so this is a very vague statement anyway).

It's also interesting to me that in many other arguments, the liberal/progressive side likes to (rightly) highlight other countries that have done a better job and present an example to follow. Not so with drug laws, because there are no such clear examples of success. There are countries with much less of a drug problem than the US which have much harsher drug penalties (like Japan and Singapore). Then there is the most popular example on the other extreme, Portugal, where it is not at all clear whether their decriminalization policy worked or not [0].

US society clearly seems to be moving in the direction of legalizing less harmful substances like weed and relaxing criminal penalties for small scale possession, which I believe are good things. But I don't see any reason to believe that decriminalizing everything would make things better. At the local level, US cities where opiates are effectively decriminalized like SF have horrible outcomes when it comes to drug abuse and overdoses.

[0] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ondcp/ondcp-fact-sheets...

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

#214

> 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, 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 wasted, all the lives lost, all the people pointlessly locked up for things half the country can now do openly and legally. Well it does sound like you're equating the War on Drugs to the War on Marijuana. There are…

A better question might be is there more net harm to society from prohibition of those drugs or treating the issue as a medical one?

Whether you like it or not the substances are available to everyone either way, as the better part of a century of the war on drugs has taught us.

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

#215

Counterpoint: The war on drugs has been progressively ramped down since the late 90s. NYTimes wrote a long story about how during the feds quit using tactics such as convicted drug dealers to flip on their bosses, etc. We aren't putting as many drug dealers in jail and we aren't putting many drug users in jail. What you get is an epic rise in opioid deaths over the past 30 years and chaos on the streets of our cities…

Aren't current issues with LA/SF/Portland due to homelessness, which is exacerbated by housing supply issues? AFAIK opioid deaths were also mostly caused by 100% legal means of getting drugs--via prescriptions.

Even if housing issues has led to homelessness, the rampant drug usage is sort of orthogonal. Have you been on streets in SF compared to say Singapore or Tokyo? "Soft" approach towards hard drugs isn't clearly working. The idea is not criminalize people that are already addicted. The idea is to not get the public addicted in the first place with strict enforcement of hard drugs such as heroine, meth, etc.

Try doing drugs even as a homeless person in Singapore and see what happens. They're sort of orthogonal issues.

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

#216
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You almost certainly occupy a bubble in this. I hate the War on Drugs with every fiber in my being, but it’s broadly popular. Cannabis legalization may recently be popular. But I’d be shocked if more than 5% of Americans supported the legalization hard drugs, and if more than 20% supported by Portuguese style decriminalization. Even soft drug prohibition, like MDMA and LSD, are supported by sizable majorities of vote…

I think we'll eventually find a balance point, but these boundaries are being moved in the opposite direction. Psilocybin decriminalization then recreational use seems like the next leg of the race after federal/all-state legalization of marijuana. Then the next thing to be pushed is only a little more controversial than psilocybin. I doubt we'll ever reach that point with cocaine or heroin though and they'll never b…

"I doubt we'll ever reach that point with cocaine or heroin though and they'll never be up for medical/recreational consideration."

Never say never.

I'm frankly shocked that virtually legal medical and recreational use of cannabis has become so widespread in the US in my lifetime.

For decades, other countries have had programs where heroin addicts could either use heroin with a prescription or are allowed to go shoot up in clinics where they're provided clean needles, and heroin use is effectively decriminalized.

I could see the same happening in the US, particularly in states which have taken the lead in cannabis legalization.. and after they do it and some decades pass without the sky falling and there is clear evidence that this is a much more effective way of dealing with addiction, we'll likely see other states follow suit.

The way will be smoothed by the mainstream culture's realization that they've been lied to by their government about drugs for many decades, as is becoming clear by the fact that the states which have legalized cannabis haven't turned in to real-life versions of Reefer Madness and also by the widening familiarity of members of mainstream society with drug users who are otherwise upstanding members of their societies, and by the relatively positive press about cannabis and psychedelics.

There's always a chance that the press will shift towards negative coverage, as they do love sensationalist stories and there's still psychedelic abuse which leads people to go on power trips, have delusions of grandeur, or massive paranoia, but I am cautiously optimistic that the medical use of psychedelics will win out this time around.

Finally, there's the potential for constructive psychedelic use to help the society in many positive ways, and that could lead to greater tolerance and understanding of users of other drugs, along with (eventually) there maybe less reason for people to self-medicate and try to escape their miserable lives.

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

#217

> 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, 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 wasted, all the lives lost, all the people pointlessly locked up for things half the country can now do openly and legally. Well it does sound like you're equating the War on Drugs to the War on Marijuana. There are…

>>There are other substances that most people really don't think should be accessible to everyone. Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF-RQLP530M

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

#218
post #159

> "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 historical goals of the "War on Drugs" have not been to make the USA safer (though proponents often claim that). The goal has been white supremacy, which is served by giving cops laws that they can enforce based on racial prejudice. Cannabis was made illegal because it was mostly used by Mexican immigrants. https://www.history.com/news/why-the-u-s-made-marijuana-ille... Crack was sentenced at a 10x higher rate th…

The crack vs. cocaine comparison is no good, we should stop using it. Free base is a very different drug than cocaine. An equivalent "white" version of crack would be crystal meth, which has had similar sentencing guidelines to crack.

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

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, what about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:John_Ehrlichman#San_Franc... . > NIXON: [...] Let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn, they root 'em out. They don't let 'em around at all. I don't know what they do with them. Look at this country. You think the Russians allow dope? Homosexuality, dope, immorality, are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and left-wingers…

That quote doesn't really support the idea that "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." Instead, it supports the idea that Nixon thought drugs undermined society and stamping out drug use was valuable for its own sake.

Yes. It's roughly as indefensible, though.

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

#220
post #142
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

This is false. Arrest drug dealers day after day for a generation, and the demand will lower because new generations won't even know what drugs are, or when the effect of heroin is, therefore they won't chase it.

Demand for a good (or drug in this case) it is not inevitable. It can be disrupted too, it's not a given.

But the demand for any good cannot be disrupted without first and foremost removing the supply. So we must start disrupting the supply, which shows up every day at 6am on our street corners.

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