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

arstechnica.com

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

#221

Post by bosie »

gravypod wrote: post #196
bosie wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for the clarification.

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

#222

Post by [deleted] »

Judgmentality wrote: post #171
throwaway201103 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the draconian laws and mandatory sentences trace back to the late 1980s/early 1990s when crack cocaine hit. If you were too young to remember or not born yet, it was absolutely devastating. At least the equivalent of today's opioid crisis if not worse. Entire neighborhoods just fell apart. Politicians and voters freaked out and demanded harsh new drug laws and penalties. Lobbiest support from those who benef…

I really hate to sidetrack this discussion with an obvious political rant, but it's important to remember the CIA was intimately involved in creating the crack epidemic in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...

[deleted]

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

#223

Post by [deleted] »

Judgmentality wrote: post #171
throwaway201103 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the draconian laws and mandatory sentences trace back to the late 1980s/early 1990s when crack cocaine hit. If you were too young to remember or not born yet, it was absolutely devastating. At least the equivalent of today's opioid crisis if not worse. Entire neighborhoods just fell apart. Politicians and voters freaked out and demanded harsh new drug laws and penalties. Lobbiest support from those who benef…

I really hate to sidetrack this discussion with an obvious political rant, but it's important to remember the CIA was intimately involved in creating the crack epidemic in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...

[deleted]

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

#224

Post by tha0xd »

Judgmentality wrote: post #171
throwaway201103 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the draconian laws and mandatory sentences trace back to the late 1980s/early 1990s when crack cocaine hit. If you were too young to remember or not born yet, it was absolutely devastating. At least the equivalent of today's opioid crisis if not worse. Entire neighborhoods just fell apart. Politicians and voters freaked out and demanded harsh new drug laws and penalties. Lobbiest support from those who benef…

I really hate to sidetrack this discussion with an obvious political rant, but it's important to remember the CIA was intimately involved in creating the crack epidemic in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...

From your source:

"These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA's Office of the Inspector General which ultimately concluded the allegations were unsupported."

It's an uncorroborated conspiracy theory.

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

#225

Post by eznzt »

cptnapalm wrote: post #109
pjc50 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planned Parenthood was the work of Margaret Sanger, who was a feminist who believed in reproductive choice and free speech; she was repeatedly arrested because distributing knowledge of contraception violated the Comstock Act.

Margret Sanger was a eugenicist.

Eugenics may currently be immoral, but they are scientifically sound. (I know this comment is off-topic, but so was his)

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

#226

Post by imtringued »

cbozeman wrote: post #77
intricatedetail wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you write more about Singapore? My view is that when drug laws are very harsh, then people will less likely admit to use and dealers will use more precautions. Since drug use is mostly estimated based on surveys and police report you may see the policy effective on paper, but the reality may be far different. It is a natural instinct to use drugs akin to listening to music or having sex for pleasure. If you ban m…

Singapore is largely homogeneous, is wealthy (for the area) with an average income of $9200 USD, has excellent health care that covers all citizens, is a geographically small nation state, has extremely low unemployment (even now, at 4.38%) and has a small population (5.7 million). You don't need to do drugs if everything in your life is going well. I saw this with my best friend during his divorce. We spent a lot of…

I don't understand. Are you really saying your friend would have been better off if the police had arrested him? Isn't your entire comment an argument in favor of legalization?

People use drugs when they have to which means criminalization does nothing or makes things worse.

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

#227

Post by novia »

heavyset_go wrote: post #85
gravypod wrote: post #4

Could this be a situation where politicians have faulty data and use that to guide how they act? I would have assumed that a majority of these states - and my home state of NJ - would be very anti-drug but these votes with >60% in favor of legalization show that significant portions of America think drug-related activities are not "immoral" or "wrong" and should not be criminalized. If you had asked me a few years ag…

> 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. I'd love to see this, but I doubt it. I've sat in on court sessions, and towns and cities pull in a lot of revenue through low-level drug offenses, and cops spend a significant amount of their time investigating and arresting kids for drug offenses. The criminalization of drugs, espec…

So change the incentives. Don't get rid of the war on drugs rewards, redirect them to things like catching serial killers or rapists or whatever.

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

#228

Post by kombucha111 »

wombatmobile wrote: post #215
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much a question of law enforcement budgets as it is municipality budgets. Many of these smaller pass-through towns make significant money harassing travelers (speed traps) and through seizures of property. If MJ is legal, they can no longer use things such as "I smell marijuana" as a pretext for exacerbating a traffic stop or stacking more charges.

How do you quantify the revenue derived from that?

You can literally look it up or file a FOIA request.

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

#229

Post by yeetman21 »

gravypod wrote: post #4

Could this be a situation where politicians have faulty data and use that to guide how they act? I would have assumed that a majority of these states - and my home state of NJ - would be very anti-drug but these votes with >60% in favor of legalization show that significant portions of America think drug-related activities are not "immoral" or "wrong" and should not be criminalized. If you had asked me a few years ag…

being immoral and wrong does not mean it should or should not be criminalized

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

#230

Post by Supermancho »

ip26 wrote: post #157
kibwen wrote: 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…

Both cases are well explained by the Overton Window.

> Both cases are well explained by the Overton Window.

It was un/acceptable by politicians because it was un/acceptable by the voting public. That's a tautilogical categorization, not an explanation.

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