Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

spiegel.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 376 posts

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#221

Post by Zigurd »

rayiner wrote: post #158
Synaesthesia wrote: post #41

The drug problem was studied years ago by the RAND corporation and the US Military - a pure cost-benefit analysis. They found that treatment and education are the most cost effective way to deal with the drug problem, and that prohibition was the most costly and ineffective means of dealing with it. Therefore the government understands that the war on drugs is likely to be unsuccessful, and we have to ask ourselves,…

The government persists with the drug war because Americans have a moral opposition to drug use: http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2014/study-public-fe... . When I was a kid in the 1990's, 70-80% of polled adults wanted to make even marijuana illegal. For drugs aside from marijuana, that's still the case. Your alternate theories about money and control directly contradict the history of prohibition. Did you kno…

You have the moral panic thing backwards. Alcohol is by far the greatest cause of addiction, addiction-related violence, and economic misery due to substance abuse. So much so that hard drug use and addiction is a drop in the bucket. Alcohol prohibition was relatively well-supported in social reform theories compared to the Drug War. There is no functional basis to support legal bans on psychedelics and soft drugs.

The results of the Drug War are so racially biased as to make it effectively a New Jim Crow, and it makes one suspect that a lot of support for the Drug War, especially the part not based in drug-scare propaganda, is based in racism.

And that's not even getting to the employment of police, prison guards, parole officers, court officials, etc. that are highly dependent on the Drug War. And before you claim the prison population are not mostly drug offenders, take a look as the "customers" of the CJ system: a million and a half arrests per year, hundreds of thousands of prison sentences, and 20% of black people having served time for drug arrests, etc. It's highly racist and highly remunerative to the employees and vendors of the CJ system.

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#222

Post by mc32 »

jfmfhhdkdkd wrote: post #96
jdietrich wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portugal decriminalised personal possession of drugs 15 years ago, which has given us some useful evidence. HIV infection rates and drug-related deaths have reduced significantly, and the prison population has reduced by over 50%. The proportion of people who have ever used drugs has increased slightly, but there has been a reduction in the number of regular drug users. We don't really know what would happen in a lai…

But Japan and Hong Kong and many others still have far lower drug use and crime rates despite their very tough laws on drug use, when compared to Portugal.

Very good point; however one thing to keep in mind that in Japan, Singapore, HK etc., drugs use is seen by the great majority as a huge moral failure and a failure to the family. Social pressure and stigma of drugs use is much more severe. It's not glamorized as "stupid things teenagers do". It's vilified as "the depraved things failed human beings do". Interestingly this tack isn't one western societies have used in their toolbox to counter drugs abuse.

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#223

Post by Zigurd »

drumdance wrote: post #157
jfmfhhdkdkd wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Japan and Hong Kong and many others still have far lower drug use and crime rates despite their very tough laws on drug use, when compared to Portugal.

They also have very homogenous populations with a strong, shared sense of cultural identity.

LMTTFY: "We have black people, so we can't be like $RACIALLY_HOMOGENOUS_PLACE"

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#224

Post by dragonwriter »

gohrt wrote: post #220

nitpick but important: it's time to decriminalize , not legalize . The distinction is that we need to maintain a government force to compel the non-use of drugs that cause public harm. We need to make drug-use punishable, on the level of littering, trespass, vandalism, and disturbing the peace. We need to be able to confine people who lose control of themselves and cause public harm when they are high, or in service…

> The distinction is that we need to maintain a government force to compel the non-use of drugs that cause public harm. We need to make drug-use punishable, on the level of littering, trespass, vandalism, and disturbing the peace.

All of those except littering are generally nontrivial crimes (misdemeanors or felonies, not infractions), so making drug use punishable "on the level of" those is not only not legalization, its also not decriminalization.

(Actually, since drug use isn't generally criminal now -- possession, which is usually a prerequisite to use, is -- it would just be plain criminalization of drug use.)

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#225

Post by gohrt »

rayiner wrote: post #158
Synaesthesia wrote: post #41

The drug problem was studied years ago by the RAND corporation and the US Military - a pure cost-benefit analysis. They found that treatment and education are the most cost effective way to deal with the drug problem, and that prohibition was the most costly and ineffective means of dealing with it. Therefore the government understands that the war on drugs is likely to be unsuccessful, and we have to ask ourselves,…

The government persists with the drug war because Americans have a moral opposition to drug use: http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2014/study-public-fe... . When I was a kid in the 1990's, 70-80% of polled adults wanted to make even marijuana illegal. For drugs aside from marijuana, that's still the case. Your alternate theories about money and control directly contradict the history of prohibition. Did you kno…

Is it true that > The government persists with the drug war because Americans have a moral opposition to drug use:

or

> Americans have a moral opposition to drug use, because the government persists with the drug war ?

Impressionable children are indoctrinated against drug use, by US law enforcement, in US public schools.

> 70-80% of polled adults wanted to make even marijuana illegal.

That's impossible, because marijuana already was illegal. If that number is correct, is measures keeping marijuana illegal (maintaining status quo), not making marijuana illegal. You can't extrapolate that to a choice people would make when not constrained by history, and when not constrained by the persuasive force of current law.

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#226

Post by gohrt »

rayiner wrote: post #205
wfo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drug prohibition is a direct effect of the lift of alcohol prohibition: officials and LE officers needed something to do after there was no more alcohol smuggling to go after, so a new target was invented. Public opinion does not drive policy in this case, it is driven by policy. The public has been whipped up into a frenzy about drugs for years using various fear tactics, primarily racism to scare them into havi…

> The drug prohibition is a direct effect of the lift of alcohol prohibition: officials and LE officers needed something to do after there was no more alcohol smuggling to go after, so a new target was invented. That's a ridiculous proposition. There was a 40+ year gap between the two. > The public has been whipped up into a frenzy about drugs for years using various fear tactics Nixon coined the term "drug war" in 1…

What I see in that graph is that Americans get more pro-marijuana as they see the oppressive effects of the out-of-control drug war, overcoming their deference to authority

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#227

Post by mikeash »

magicGLASSman wrote: post #189
zanny wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is you cannot test economic policy in the states. Social policy, absolutely. But if you try socialism in one state and its neighbor is a tax haven, business interests will just jump over the border and you will see wealth flight. It is too easy to move between states when you have money. It is much, much more complicated to move between countries.

this fact is what makes the experiment perfect. If people all move from one place because of poor policy it will give that state the incentive to adjust their policy. People should have the freedom to chose the goverment that is most inline with their values. Forcing someone to stay somewhere and pay taxes to a say unjust war or something they are morally opposed to seem to be a terrible existence.

The problem is that there may be policies which work well if the population participates in them consistently, but which fall apart if everybody gets to pick and choose. The whole point of government is to do these things.

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#228

Post by akiselev »

rayiner wrote: post #210
soneca wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The history said, in this case, that money and power did not win the dispute, not that their influence does not exist or should be considered negligible. So, if in the case of drugs, society moral standards, money and power are all at the same side; what's the chance of grassroot movement changing the laws? That question was not rethorical, but giving my own answer, I think the path is changing the perceptio…

You're ignoring a morally significant dimension to the problem. Nobody becomes a drug addict by accident. They choose to do drugs and take the risk not just of bodily harm, but of becoming unable to support their families and becoming a burden on society. And your suggestion is that society should spend money to treat them of an illness that was their fault to begin with. I happen to agree with you that treatment, no…

> But there's legitimate moral reasons to oppose the idea.

Are those the same "moral reasons" that people opposed the idea of suffrage and civil rights?

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#229

Post by mikeash »

cubano wrote: post #87

I've always thought that, in the US, that States could provide a perfect market testing platform for various social ideas. You don't want abortion? Make Kansas, say, a no abortion state. Legalized drugs? Head your head to Colorado. Socialism? Sure New Hampshire is almost there already anyway. Well, you get the point. It's been proven that actual markets almost always work as well if not better than diktat, so these "…

The problem is that a lot of these things are a human rights issue, and large segments of the population aren't sufficiently mobile to move to different states. So if you just allow the states to do whatever, then you're denying a bunch of people, mostly poor, human rights.

Jim Crow laws are an obvious example of that sort of problem. Abortion fits pretty well too. I'd argue that drug laws are another example, although in this case we have the human rights abuses imposed from above, and some individual states trying to break out of it.

Re: Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

#230

Post by mc32 »

gohrt wrote: post #226
rayiner wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The drug prohibition is a direct effect of the lift of alcohol prohibition: officials and LE officers needed something to do after there was no more alcohol smuggling to go after, so a new target was invented. That's a ridiculous proposition. There was a 40+ year gap between the two. > The public has been whipped up into a frenzy about drugs for years using various fear tactics Nixon coined the term "drug war" in 1…

What I see in that graph is that Americans get more pro-marijuana as they see the oppressive effects of the out-of-control drug war, overcoming their deference to authority

Also as people learn about the benefits versus the negative aspects through studies showing that there can be benefits under certain circumstances and that its use can be good for some people and that even abuse, compared to other controlled substances, is not that bad.

In other words people have better understanding of the narcotic, its effect and how it can benefit some people.

Post reply on HN