they would have to lay off massive amounts of their police forces, which have over the past couple decades come to rely on federal drug war funding for significant portions of their payroll.
i'm ok with that, but are the rest of you?
What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?
71–80 of 145 posts
Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just ask yourself one question: what did all the bootleggers do after alcohol prohibition was dropped? Exactly. There's a sort of twinge of classism (or even racism) in your comment, by the way. The assumption that people who participate in a normal capitalist marketplace are inherently criminals is just silly. They do what they do because it's a bustling marketplace. Period.
> Just ask yourself one question: what did all the bootleggers do after alcohol prohibition was dropped? "Bootlegging helped lead to the establishment of American organized crime, which persisted long after the repeal of Prohibition. The distribution of liquor was necessarily more complex than other types of criminal activity, and organized gangs eventually arose that could control an entire local chain of bootleggin…
Well, so some of them moved on to other activities that also shouldn't be criminalized, then. I speak about gambling. Which is de-facto legal now, because of how many Indian casinos there are in so many states. Prostitution? We have a long way to go in decriminalizing this. But slight progress is being made. Just another stupid moralizing law that achieves nothing.
Now as to protection rackets, extortion, etc. These would remain unaffected, most likely.
But can we agree that at least some (perhaps most) of the enterprises they moved into, most of the total crime these criminals are responsible for, are just also yet more normal human activities that should never have been illegal?
Can we also agree that decriminalizing normal human behaviors, while it won't eliminate all crime (that was never a claim I made), it will reduce the total overall amount of crime? How could it not?
When everything is illegal, we are all criminals.
Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?
#73One problem with this is the number of thugs in city and town police forces. They aren't going to give up their bully franchises easily.
Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Just ask yourself one question: what did all the bootleggers do after alcohol prohibition was dropped? "Bootlegging helped lead to the establishment of American organized crime, which persisted long after the repeal of Prohibition. The distribution of liquor was necessarily more complex than other types of criminal activity, and organized gangs eventually arose that could control an entire local chain of bootleggin…
Well, so some of them moved on to other activities that also shouldn't be criminalized, then. I speak about gambling. Which is de-facto legal now, because of how many Indian casinos there are in so many states. Prostitution? We have a long way to go in decriminalizing this. But slight progress is being made. Just another stupid moralizing law that achieves nothing. Now as to protection rackets, extortion, etc. These…
It's tautological to say that decriminalizing things reduces crime. It would be more productive to do a cost benefit analysis. Most of the advocacy I've seen is starry-eyed and simply ignores or rejects the idea that the social costs--for example marginally or completely unemployable addicts. There's a fair point that this is true of legal drugs (alcohol) but it's not something we should want to expand (c.f. drunk driving), so it should be advocated according to a reasonable analysis of the trade-offs.
Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So, there's nothing about not liking the addicts who hassle people on the street? What does that have to do with the War on Drugs? There is no evidence that it lowers drug use; quite the contrary.
I always take issue with the idea that enforcement does not lower usage, and especially the insinuation that it raises it. Each drug has its own usage dynamics. So if we're talking about say OxyContin or Methamphetamine, I think we can be certain that enforcement suppresses a significant portion of usage. The perfect case in point is Florida, where there are loopholes to circumvent enforcement on OxyContin. Predictab…
Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs in amounts for personal use. 10 years later drug abuse has gone down, not up. [1]
I think the natural path for anything that is suppressed is to increase after the suppression is lifted, and then slowly decline. I wouldn't be surprised if drug legalization would increase drug use right at the beginning, but it certainly didn't have such a long term effect in Portugal -- quite the opposite.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-af...
Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?
#76The Economist wrote a near perfect editorial about the war on drugs a few years back: http://www.economist.com/node/13237193 (you might need to Google "The economist failed states and failed policies" to read the article) Regarding drug policy, the biggest misstep of the past 40 years has been taking a public heath issue and turning it into a crime and punishment issue. I highly recommend anyone curious about the his…
Other features of the last 40 years, besides the drug war, include the virtual disappearance of urban rioting and the erasure of youth/minority political militancy. I believe this is not a coincidence. Arbitrary search and seizure, checkpoints, mass detention are common features of military counterinsurgency. They are also features of the drug war. I'm not saying the drug war is consciously aimed at youth and minorit…
Love this perspective.
Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?
#77The Economist wrote a near perfect editorial about the war on drugs a few years back: http://www.economist.com/node/13237193 (you might need to Google "The economist failed states and failed policies" to read the article) Regarding drug policy, the biggest misstep of the past 40 years has been taking a public heath issue and turning it into a crime and punishment issue. I highly recommend anyone curious about the his…
Regarding drug policy, the biggest misstep of the past 40 years has been taking a public heath issue It's never been a public health issue for its major proponents. The war on drugs has always been about racism, corruption, the militarization of police forces, civil forfeiture and the prison-industrial complex.
Or people who have seen family or friends suffer in ways that are easily attributed to heavy drug use and would genuinely like to reduce the occurrence of that. And to fight what they see as a force that damages the social fabric.
The point here isn't to argue whether drugs have this affect, or are a symptom rather than a cause, or to argue if the War On Drugs has much success in fighting it.
The point is that this genuinely is the motivation for a lot of people supporting it. Even if you believe they're wrong to do so, you'd be wrong to say that's not why they do.
Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Well INSERT_NAME_HERE, by hard drugs, you mean three substances which all are regularly administered as prescription drugs? Cocaine as cocaine hydrochloride, meth as desoxyn, and heroin as diamorphine? So to call them hard drugs is a bit of a misnomer used to unfairly elicit a negative connotation. While decriminalizing all drugs is a controversial issue, a conversation on shifting the focus from drugs as a criminal…
It is kind of high schoolish to say "Oh ya, those 'hard drugs' are used by doctors so haha they are not hard drugs." I mean, really that's just kind of ridiculous. It's sort outrageous, people already refer to pain killers as being part of the "hard drug" addiction. It refers to chemically addictive drugs that are also more dangerous than things like marijuana. This is just playing coy to pretend that in hard drugs d…
I'd say "it is kind of high schoolish" to change the phrasing of my statement by adding the "Oh ya" and "so haha" making the statement sound silly by word choice, and not actually countering the argument whatsoever.
As a fact, those drugs are used by doctors commonly. And the idea of a drug being considered a "hard drug" is entirely based in opinion and semantics. So your outrage is entirely your opinion, which you have every right in the world to, but it does not make me wrong; it means we view something differently.
If you don't think opioid painkillers should be considered hard drugs, nothing I say can change that, so here is a challenge to you. Get a prescription for oxycontin. Take it everyday for two months then stop. Come back 2 days later and tell me if you still feel that way.
Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, so some of them moved on to other activities that also shouldn't be criminalized, then. I speak about gambling. Which is de-facto legal now, because of how many Indian casinos there are in so many states. Prostitution? We have a long way to go in decriminalizing this. But slight progress is being made. Just another stupid moralizing law that achieves nothing. Now as to protection rackets, extortion, etc. These…
It's tautological to say that decriminalizing things reduces crime. It would be more productive to do a cost benefit analysis. Most of the advocacy I've seen is starry-eyed and simply ignores or rejects the idea that the social costs--for example marginally or completely unemployable addicts. There's a fair point that this is true of legal drugs (alcohol) but it's not something we should want to expand (c.f. drunk dr…
Yes. I am very simply saying that if certain vices (not sure how I even feel about employing that word, actually) were made legal, then by definition many of us would cease being criminals. Sure. It's pretty simple. Seems almost stupidly simple. But I argue that the actual situation we face really is just this simple. These should never have been illegal.
The analysis is being performed in my state right now. Re: legal pot. And the results, although only about 5 months' worth, are overwhelmingly clear: legalizing has zero negative consequences, while also having huge benefits; the benefits being both financial and of course, the big win is for the people, who are no longer being oppressed by counter-productive, society-damaging law.
What if it's not as complicated as we've been led to believe, in other words? Could that be? Could it actually be as simple as legalization? I argue yes, it is.
Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Well INSERT_NAME_HERE, by hard drugs, you mean three substances which all are regularly administered as prescription drugs? Cocaine as cocaine hydrochloride, meth as desoxyn, and heroin as diamorphine? So to call them hard drugs is a bit of a misnomer used to unfairly elicit a negative connotation. While decriminalizing all drugs is a controversial issue, a conversation on shifting the focus from drugs as a criminal…
It is kind of high schoolish to say "Oh ya, those 'hard drugs' are used by doctors so haha they are not hard drugs." I mean, really that's just kind of ridiculous. It's sort outrageous, people already refer to pain killers as being part of the "hard drug" addiction. It refers to chemically addictive drugs that are also more dangerous than things like marijuana. This is just playing coy to pretend that in hard drugs d…
Pointing out that what are usually stigmatized as 'hard drugs' are used in medical situations is meaningful, because it puts into question the categorization of a substance as 'hard' versus 'soft' drugs, which is reasonable.
Your characterization of all 'hard drugs' as 'chemically addictive drugs that are more dangerous than things like marijuana' also is at odds with the governmental classification system and the public debate: many people would put things like LSD (no known LD-50 in humans and in no way chemically addictive) in the realm of 'hard drugs', and nobody talks of tobacco as a hard drug (despite it being one of the most addictive drugs available, with a lot of dangers to one's health; certainly 'more dangerous than marijuana' and 'chemically addictive' by every study/classification I've seen), or alcohol as a hard drug (again, chemically addictive and quite bad for your body). People would probably also not classify Adderall (amphetamine salts) as a 'hard drug', despite it having similar effects as meth (methamphetamine salts) and similar symptoms for overdose, addiction, and withdrawal. (I don't know amounts or the like, so I'm not going to claim adderall is 'the same as meth', or 'as safe as meth', but it is in many ways a similar substance. As a side note, the way you take in a drug has a large effect on its half life, and to my understanding, therefore its addictiveness; if I remember the drugs class I sat in on in college, drugs with short half lives tend to be much more addictive than drugs with long half lives. Your classification system becomes even weaker if my memory is correct, as the uptake + half life of /the same or almost the same drug/ will differ depending on if you're snorting it, injecting it, smoking it, etc. When, then, is a drug 'hard' or 'soft'? What sort of addictiveness do you use if you can snort or orally take a drug?)
Classification systems like 'hard' and 'soft' for drugs are not rationally constructed, they exist because of public debate and because of what is and isn't legal. I don't think anyone could argue with your assertion that there are many drugs that are chemically addictive and more dangerous than marijuana: every study I've seen basically puts marijuana as 'not chemically addictive' and 'less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco', for instance. But the "hard drug"/"soft drug" classification is in many ways a red herring and socially constructed, it isn't really based on scientific facts.
(As a side note, alcohol withdrawal is one of the /most dangerous/ drug withdrawals to go through. It can /kill/ you, unlike the withdrawal from many 'hard drugs'.)