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What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?

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Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?

#131

Post by a3n »

sirdogealot wrote: post #120
dobbsbob wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live a block away from Emery's store. There's a seed store still there that is doing exactly what Emery was doing (selling pot seeds to Americans) yet they haven't been busted. This is probably because it's owner didn't give a million dollars to NORML in the US to fight prohibition of Marijuana. Emery also writes a federal prison blog, interesting insight into how foreign prisoners are treated in the US, like the t…

Very interesting. I was not aware that there are "foreigner only prisons". I wonder why they exist? I haven't kept up on his blog writings much, as it's too depressing to be honest. Which is a shame considering he is such a great writer. Thankfully, he should be out soon and it doesn't sound like they have broken his spirit one bit.

> I was not aware that there are "foreigner only prisons". I wonder why they exist?

Probably to avoid the complaints from foreign embassies over mistreatment of their citizens.

Too bad we don't have a US embassy here in the US to complain about mistreatment of US citizens in US prisons.

Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?

#132

Post by slurry »

glenra wrote: post #93
slurry wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wait, last 40 years? What makes that your metric? Marijuana was outlawed in 1937, heroin in 1925. And the Black Panthers were in part a reaction against hamfisted selective enforcement of dumb laws - including drug laws - by the powers-that-be.

Drug prohibition is old. But the militarized quasi-Schmittian state organs devoted to enforcement them, and their attendant juridical pretexts, are of a more recent vintage.

Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?

#133

Post by neurobro »

Natsu wrote: post #103
glenra wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People "stealing to get their fix" ought to essentially disappear once getting a fix drops to 1/10th the price (so much less money is required) and once a reliable source is easily obtained (so you don't have to spend any time searching for the next fix or dealing with roller-coaster withdrawal symptoms because you couldn't find it in time). When drugs are legal, holding down a regular job will be compatible with dru…

This assumes they are employable and thereby able to afford it. And by "employable", I mean able to work, not merely able to pass background checks though the two are interrelated (i.e. there are rational business reasons to consider it a negative factor). I have worked at a place that did not screen out such (a factory, one of the few places, as I understand it, where you could get employed with a record). We're tal…

I worked in an office that did perform background checks and wouldn't hire ex-convicts. Curiously, the drug addicts who worked there tended to be highly functional and even successful.

Crap, our anecdotes paint different pictures. Could it be that neither of our samples is representative of "drug users" as a population?

Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?

#134

Post by deciplex »

glenra wrote: post #107
deciplex wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC the sort of zealous enforcement of drug laws we see now, didn't really gain traction until the 60s and 70s, which supports slurry's argument.

You don't think drug laws were zealously enforced during Prohibition in the 1920s? Or during the 1950s? I'm just not seeing it. There have been moral panics over drugs leading to ludicrous overreach (at various levels of government) on quite a regular basis since well before "Reefer Madness". It didn't start with "crack babies" and "glue sniffing" - claims that the latest new drug (whatever it is) is different and mo…

No, I don't, not to the extent they are now. We didn't send people to jail for life for simple possession of anything, and we didn't have a fucking "Drug Czar" either.

Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?

#135

Post by c23gooey »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #59
angersock wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'll bet my money on Bayer, Merck, and Pfizer, thank you very much.

One might think it odd that Big Pharma doesn't do more to legalise drugs, then you realise they already have legal sales and distribution channels.

In the case of marijuana legalisation - Big Pharma has spent millions researching and developing drugs for medical conditions that marijuana is able to treat just as effectively.

They make and will continue to make a lot more money keeping things they way they are, rather than letting Ma and Pa Kettle grow their own medicine.

Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?

#136

Post by emn13 »

msane wrote: post #130
emn13 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, in the abstract (whatever good that does), some amount of enforcement almost necessarily impacts some drug trade, pretty much by definition. But in the practical sense, for relevant real-world drugs and populations, I don't think there's any evidence that enforcement has ever had one iota of effect. People switch drugs, switch suppliers, switch habits, switch methods of consumption etc. etc. Not to mention that…

Florida isn't an abstract place, it's located in the southern United States. Contrast it with other states that enforce OxyContin better. I believe you are confused about enforcement of sale vs use, and the specifics of any policy beyond the buzzword "drug war", which is typical of this debate.

Measured how? Overall harm is what we're interested in, not usage and not necessarily crime related to a specific drug.

In any case, I don't want to suggest that the alternative is some kind of anarchic free-for-all - so enforcement wasn't a well chosen word (sorry!). I mean prohibition specifically, not just any kind of regulation.

If anything, I think existing "legal" drugs like nicotine and especially alcohole could use more regulation, not less.

The saying perfect is the enemy of good pretty much sums up my stance here :-) - don't bother aiming for complete abolition despite the fact that that might be a "perfect" solution if achievable.

Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?

#137

Post by snikeris »

Bahamut wrote: post #20
chongli wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I always thought it was more about religion and politics than those.

Some folks feel like the war on drugs infringes upon their freedom of religion. There have been some exceptions made [1], but the general populace is prohibited from using substances that have been used entheogenically for thousands of years[2][3].

It's a shame that our founding fathers didn't explicitly spell out a right to the dictate the contents/state of your own mind. Perhaps it is implicit in the other rights: what good is freedom of speech and religion if I'm not allowed to enter a contemplative state of mind in which I could have significant insights about my life and spirituality?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Freedom_Restoration_A...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peyote#History

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin_mushroom#Early

Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?

#138

Post by smsm42 »

adventured wrote: post #106
smsm42 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the motivation of the people, but alone it could not bring on the wave of atrocities we now are witnessing as the war on drugs. The feelings of these people, while understandable, is just being used to support the worst set of policy decisions in US history since the Prohibition, and are used to expand government, militarize the law enforcement and curtail civil rights. In fact, it's much worse than the origi…

Fortunately the war on drugs situation is getting better, not worse. That momentum shifted several years ago in fact. Incarceration rates are falling now. Legalization has gained a massive amount of momentum, obviously including the first two states, and the Feds are increasingly not willing to step in and interrupt that progress (including Holder recently telling the DEA chief to get in line with the new direction).…

The problem is that while specific substances can be added to the approved list, the effects of the war and policies introduced by it still remain - be it militant police, trained to treat the population as an enemy to be subjugated, not served and protected, or financial controls, or expansion of surveillance, or the whole civil forfeiture scandal. True, some of these are getting press attention, but so far not much has changed there yet.

Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?

#139

Post by smsm42 »

pessimizer wrote: post #115
adventured wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately the war on drugs situation is getting better, not worse. That momentum shifted several years ago in fact. Incarceration rates are falling now. Legalization has gained a massive amount of momentum, obviously including the first two states, and the Feds are increasingly not willing to step in and interrupt that progress (including Holder recently telling the DEA chief to get in line with the new direction).…

You can support mandatory minimum sentencing without supporting drug prohibition. I think that preventing sentencing based on affinity is almost as important for minority groups as ending sending people to jail for drugs.

Taking common sense and judicial discretion out completely is not the best way to achieve equality. It is the socialist way, if I can make the analogy - fighting inequality by making everybody equally poor (or, in this case, equally oppressed by insane sentences for minor crimes). Making policy changes that prevent anybody from getting insane punishments for minor crimes seems much better alternative to me.

Re: What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War on Drugs?

#140

Post by corny »

slurry wrote: post #34
sharkweek wrote: post #4

The 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…

Just want to chime in and recommend two great documentaries I recently saw regarding inner-city housing in the seventies. It's not hard to imagine the war on drugs stemming from the same racism which caused white flight.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

Let the Fire Burn

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