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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?'

#311

Post by quickthrowman »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #180
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, 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…

If you could get an uninterruptible supply of pure, safe heroin (safety is relative to street drugs containing fentanyl) for $5-10/day, it would be possible to be a responsible heroin user — employed taxpayer or however you want to define ‘responsible’.

I used to be a heroin addict, price and availability were the two main obstacles to functioning normally. I’m glad I don’t do heroin any longer (suboxone was a huge help, also stopped that), but if the conditions in the first paragraph were true, it would easily be possible.

See Switzerland for example: https://transformdrugs.org/blog/heroin-assisted-treatment-in...

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

#312

Post by ttonkytonk »

I remember growing up in South Carolina, being handcuffed in my residence for small amounts of marijuana, coming home to find the cops in my residence because my roommate dealt small amounts of marijuana (less than a pound). We lived in a trailer and mostly smoked pot, we didn't bother anybody.

My guess is the questionable-to-doubtful justice of the War on Drugs is one of the main culprits of the issues we see with law enforcement. Personally I believe we would be better off if all drugs were legalized.

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

#313

Post by ttonkytonk »

ttonkytonk wrote: post #312

I remember growing up in South Carolina, being handcuffed in my residence for small amounts of marijuana, coming home to find the cops in my residence because my roommate dealt small amounts of marijuana (less than a pound). We lived in a trailer and mostly smoked pot, we didn't bother anybody. My guess is the questionable-to-doubtful justice of the War on Drugs is one of the main culprits of the issues we see with l…

I remember hearing a doctor on the radio say that either all drugs should be legal or illegal - otherwise it's rank hypocrisy.

They or someone also said with legality use goes up but crime goes down.

I have a friend who told me a story about going to prison for trying to sell a few prescription pills. He was homeless at the time.

Taking laws and justice seriously is the foundation of our Western tradition (see Plato and Socrates).

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

#314

Post by lr4444lr »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #293
phvunvx wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All drug use has health costs. If healthcare is public or heavily subsidized then the taxpayer has to foot the bill for every unhealthy decision that others make. We can have a free society where people are free to put whatever they want in their bodies, and to suffer the health outcomes and poverty and combination of those things freely as well, if they make bad decisions. What we can't afford as a society is to giv…

So should we criminalize being obese as well before implementing tax-payer funded healthcare? Yuck.

No, but we could start making them pay more for their airline tickets.

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

#315

Post by [deleted] »

vkou wrote: post #302
neither_color wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 Not really, the flaw here is seeing each "blue state" as 100% blue and each "red state" as 100% red. A blue state can be simply a matter of a single blue city surrounded by red counties. The holdout states give a voice to the people in holdout count…

> The holdout states give a voice to the people in holdout counties whose lifestyles are at the whim of a super-majority in the city. Every non-geographic minority group in this country somehow manages to deal with this problem. What makes rural conservatives require such a truly exceptional level of representation?

[deleted]

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

#316

Post by chrismcb »

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…

I guess it is a good description of politics, in that didn't people have different ideas on how to solve our problems. I think drugs, for the most part, should be decriminalized. I think prohibition taught us that. In the other hand drugs can be bad, and people are what stuff abuse can do. This is one reason we try to criminalize it. So, it isn't exactly cut and dry.

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

#317

Post by brokenmachine »

username90 wrote: post #310
thatswrong0 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending those pesky addicts to jail will certainly fix the issue.

That is a strawman. Most countries keeps drugs illegal without sending addicts to jail. There is no reason you have to go with one or the other.

>Most countries keeps drugs illegal without sending addicts to jail.

This has to be a joke, right? Which countries?

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

#318

Post by ttonkytonk »

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…

I don't believe it's helpful to demonize the people behind this (or anybody for that matter.

They may not have minded the side benefits, but it's reasonable to believe they had a genuine public health concern.

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

#319

Post by jjeaff »

slacktide wrote: post #264
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trying to say there are existing racist policies in 2021? Can you list some examples?

The existence of the Electoral College, which was specifically designed to give slaveholding states an advantage when selecting the President. The gerrymandering of electoral districts to maximize the concentration of white voting power.

To put a finer point on the electoral college, it was to appease slaveholding states so they would ratify the constitution. They wanted their enslaved to increase their voting power at the polls without actually giving Black people the right to vote. So the three fifths compromise let them count their enslaved as three fifths of a person. Now it obviously wasn't enough that a Black vote would only count as 3/5ths. The electoral college was needed so they could accomplish this while still having only white people as representatives elected by white voters.

There were other reasons for the electoral college, but appeasing the slave states in this way is one of the big reasons that was specifically written about and reasoned openly between the founding fathers at the time.

So when someone tells you, oh, the electoral college allows smaller states to have a say, think that through a bit. That old apocryphal explanation makes no sense really.

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

#320

Post by specialist »

cactus2093 wrote: post #303
specialist wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't see any reason to believe that decriminalizing everything would make things better. The stated intent of decriminalization, redirecting resources from enforcement to treatment, switching to a public health strategy, is harm reduction. We still don't know what will reduce use and abuse. Whatever the merits of the War on Drugs, it manifestly failed to reduce either.

That's also a hard sell right now based on the catastrophic failure of US public health policies during the pandemic. Public health systems have shown they can do a pretty good job given a miracle vaccine to work with. Short of that, not so much. And unfortunately we don't yet have a shot that cures drug abuse. A little more specifically, I don't think the lack of availability of rehab programs is what is the problem…

What would you do?
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