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Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

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Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#191
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe now that politicians see that people are very against drug laws we'll see some of them renege on their hard anti-drug stances. The purpose of existing drug laws, especially marijuana, is to give police a reason to harass and discriminate against certain populations.

> The purpose of existing drug laws, especially marijuana, is to give police a reason to harass and discriminate against certain populations. Japan is largely homogenous and has very harsh drug penalties: Japan drug law among world’s toughest, personal possession attracts five-year jail https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-b... Why Japan Is So Strict About Drugs https://kotaku.com/why-japan-is-s…

> Japan is largely homogenous While that's true I always like to remind people of the Ainu people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people). They are an example of a suppressed (largely extinct) ethnic group in Japan. Basically Japan's native Americans.

Aside from that, drug prohibition has always been used to h arras people on a basis of their class background. The working and caring classes always take the main toll in prohibition.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#192

The problem we have on the Left is that even though 65% of the American population prefers our ideas (when stripped of D/R labels) they don't really like us. We're not very good at branding, and we've let Capital convince half the country that it's actually a "liberal elite" that is holding them down. We need to get better at getting our actual message out there. The recent victory is a start, but if it were down to…

The Democratic Party (its representatives and organization, not its voters) is not pro-drug legalization, and when in power has prosecuted the war on drugs aggressively. It's very odd to refer to drug legalization as "our ideas," yet still 1) associate them with the Democratic Party, which does not agree with them, and 2) refer to the election of a Democratic POTUS who has said that he doesn't support drug legalization as a "victory."

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What business is it of yours if your neighbor is doing heroin? We could get people off the streets if we gave them treatment. A drug addicts are sick; Locking them in jail shouldn’t be the answer

Homeless are the symptoms, not the disease

The disease is kleptocracy, not drug addiction.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#194

Sigh. Going to be years before that happens in the UK, the Tories are still stuck in the past and listen to the Daily Mail.

Same here in Germany. But everything eventually get handed down from the US to everywhere else due to cultural imperialism. A good thing in this case...

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#195
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you had asked me a few years ago if I thought this was what the general American populous thought I'd have said no because, of all of the politicians who advocated for legalization of drugs, very very few got elected. Compare this with the legalization of gay marriage. As late as the mid-2000s it was considered (national-level) political suicide to publicly support gay marriage. Even plenty of politicians that m…

This is a very interesting comparison that I had never thought of. When I started paying attention to politics in high school gay marriage was legalized (if still stigmatized) and I haven't heard many politicians (outside of old recordings) arguing against it.

From the GOP party platform for 2016 & 2020:

> Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman and actively promote married family life as the basis of a stable and prosperous society. For that reason, as explained elsewhere in this platform, we do not accept the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal, whether through judicial reconsideration or a constitutional amendment returning control over marriage to the states. We oppose government discrimination against businesses or entities which decline to sell items or services to individuals for activities that go against their religious views about such activities.

https://gop.com/platform/renewing-american-values/#Item2

> Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values. We condemn the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to define marriage policy in federal law. We also condemn the Supreme Court’s lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was a “judicial Putsch” — full of “silly extravagances” — that reduced “the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Storey to the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie.” In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Court twisted the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond recognition. To echo Scalia, we dissent. We, therefore, support the appointment of justices and judges who respect the constitutional limits on their power and respect the authority of the states to decide such fundamental social questions.

https://gop.com/platform/we-the-people/#Item4

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#196
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your opinion of Alcohol, lower grade stimulates (Caffeine), and pre-processed unnatural addictive substances (pure sugar)? If you are on welfare should you be prohibited from drinking alcohol? What about eating low nutritional value fast foods? Obesity and alcoholism is far more rampant than most drugs used in the war on drugs. In America ~40% of our population was obese in 2016 [0], ~25% of people drank >5 d…

Not OP but how do you normalise this statement: > Obesity and alcoholism is far more rampant than most drugs used in the war on drugs. since ... of course alcoholism is more rampant when i can just buy it legally in the supermarket. that is a nobrainer conclusion. same for nicotine. caffeine has so little impact in a drug-related conversation that i won't even bother going there. i dont think you do yourself any favo…

> because of the above i don't think those two things are comparable at all.

I'm not attempting to compare to them, I'd like to know how the person I was responding to feels about these things. I originally asked "What is your opinion of Alcohol, lower grade stimulates (Caffeine), and pre-processed unnatural addictive substances (pure sugar)?"

I'm not saying to do one thing or another, I'm attempting to ask what that specific person feels about other chemical substances that are in high demand which are also addictive and disproportionately consumed by lower income individuals.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very interesting comparison that I had never thought of. When I started paying attention to politics in high school gay marriage was legalized (if still stigmatized) and I haven't heard many politicians (outside of old recordings) arguing against it.

From the GOP party platform for 2016 & 2020: > Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman and actively promote married family life as the basis of a stable and prosperous society. For that reason, as explained elsewhere in this platform, we do not accept the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal, whether through judicial recons…

Wow, that's unbelievable. Had no idea people still parroted this BS. Thanks for pointing it out.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon. Before then, MJ was around and used, it is a plant and good pain killer that you can grow yourself. And Nixon stated that is why he was doing it in the White House tapes. For 50 years the WoD was used to justify invading other countries and setting up coups and all that has lead to our current issue with powerful militarized Narco gangs and all…

And it was stepped up by Clinton/Biden in the 1990s with the crime bill. There is plenty of blame to pass around for the situation we are in today. Arguing about who started it decades ago is not very helpful.

Politics always exists in a context and one can't make rational decisions in politics without that context. I think our society suffers greatly because people don't know history.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the GOP party platform for 2016 & 2020: > Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman and actively promote married family life as the basis of a stable and prosperous society. For that reason, as explained elsewhere in this platform, we do not accept the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal, whether through judicial recons…

Wow, that's unbelievable. Had no idea people still parroted this BS. Thanks for pointing it out.

They act upon it, too[1][2][3].

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/trump-admin-s-adopti...

[2] https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/4/24/21234532/trump-admi...

[3] https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/14/texas-social-workers...

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon. Before then, MJ was around and used, it is a plant and good pain killer that you can grow yourself. And Nixon stated that is why he was doing it in the White House tapes. For 50 years the WoD was used to justify invading other countries and setting up coups and all that has lead to our current issue with powerful militarized Narco gangs and all…

I completely agree with you. But, some advice, if you want to have a chance at changing somebody's mind, leave out the attack on the GOP. You trigger emotional thinking and defensiveness when you do that.

Yeah. Worth noting that the Democrats helped make things significantly worse with the crime bill as well. Nixon and Regan got the ball rolling, but the Clinton admin doubled down on all of it.
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