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

Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 252 posts

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#51

Post by maccard »

tyho wrote: post #44
peteretep wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I do not condone the use of mind altering > substances Why not? Also, you should try beer, it's AMAZING.

There seems to be some sort of taboo on getting high for whatever reason. I have asked a few people opposed to drugs why they were opposed to drugs and their answers were mostly health related i.e. Cannabis gives you psychosis so you shouldn’t smoke it. I then ask if, hypothetically, there was a drug developed which produces intense happiness for one hour but had no side effects, caused no long term damage and was to…

> There seems to be some sort of taboo on getting high for whatever reason.

My two problems with this is - 1) A number of people who recreationally use the substances keep telling me "You've gotta try this" - Its none of your business what I decide I want to take or not take. (Note this also applies to alcohol)

The second issue is the real reason - There's not a problem with the majority of these drugs in their pure forms, but you don't have any guarantee what you're taking is what you think it is. At least when I walk into a pharmacy for X or Y, there is some accountability - the pharmacy doesn't want to stock bad batches of the drugs as they'll get closed down/imprisoned; The drug companies don't want to ship bad batches - it's a legal nightmare for them if someone experiences bad side effects from the drugs. If I buy from guy X on the street, and it's 50% cocaine and 50% rat poison - what recourse do I (or someone who is dependent on me being financially/personally) have against them?

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#52

Post by baldfat »

ukigumo wrote: post #31

It's not often that I have the opportunity to feel proud of the legislators in my home country, but Portugal has been on the leading edge of drug prevention and rehabilitation since we moved from a "war on drugs" to a program of health risk prevention and removed the weight of criminal charges and proceedings from the equation. Some interesting articles below: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/03/portugal-drug-de…

This is my fear. The "War on Drug" really is a health issue, but most people I know that are against the war basically want to smoke more and more pot and/or Libertarians and the reply to stop the war is not and we can help more people.

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#53

Post by peteretep »

simonh wrote: post #26

I'm surprised they don't also cite the first war against drugs (actualy, a drug) - prohibition. Exactly the same scenario played out then as is, hopefully, coming to it's inevitable conclusion now in the 'western hemisphere'. If the same thing is starting up again in the East, it's going to be a bloody and chaotic few decades to come before the same lesson gets learned the third time over. Fortunately we do have a la…

    > I'm surprised they don't also cite the first war 
    > against drugs
Being a British publication, presumably they'd consider the Opium Wars - where the Brits fought to be allowed to sell the Chinese junk - as the first drug war.

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#54

Post by transfire »

ukigumo wrote: post #31

It's not often that I have the opportunity to feel proud of the legislators in my home country, but Portugal has been on the leading edge of drug prevention and rehabilitation since we moved from a "war on drugs" to a program of health risk prevention and removed the weight of criminal charges and proceedings from the equation. Some interesting articles below: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/03/portugal-drug-de…

I Heart Portugal. It is my understanding that Portugal couldn't go as far as they would have liked due to trade agreements with the U.S. Do you know if that is true?

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#55

Post by Zak »

aquadrop wrote: post #34
Nursie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started writing a sensible reply to this and couldn't It's outrageous. 'Drug use goes hand in hand with theft' Do you know how ignorant that sounds? Caffeine and alcohol are drugs, do they go hand in hand with theft? Is everyone legally smoking weed in Colorado a thief too? 'Once you're addicted to drugs, you have to steal to pay for that habit.' Not all drugs are addictive. Most are less addictive than alcohol, ne…

Reality steps in and it's bad. In Russia drug addicts were (and still are, to lesser extent) responsible for very large if not largest portion of crime, especially burglary and theft. It is a major problem, it is there and you can't go around it. And usage isn't punishable here, only distribution. So, don't dismiss parent comment so easily. 'Caffeine and alcohol are drugs' - yes, alcohol comes hand in hand with theft…

In Russia drug addicts were (and still are, to lesser extent) responsible for very large if not largest portion of crime, especially burglary and theft. And usage isn't punishable here, only distribution. So, don't dismiss parent comment so easily.

This would likely not be the case if cocaine cost about the same, or even ten times as much as sugar. The high price of drugs is a direct result of laws against their production and distribution. I expect addicts stealing to support their habits would be much less of an issue with legal drugs, even if there were moderately high taxes on them to offset the costs of treating addicts.

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#56

Post by Nursie »

_yosefk wrote: post #41
oska wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has often been pointed out that taking prohibited drugs is a victimless crime. Your examples of theft, burglary, robbery and fraud are not.

Speeding is also a victimless crime until an accident happens. I don't have a strong opinion about this, I'm just saying it's more complicated than victimless crime, war that cannot be won, etc. For each such talking point there's a counter-point. What will actually happen once you legalize a given substance I don't know. The article I linked to has a lot of arguments against legalization, which, judging by the comme…

>>The article I linked to has a lot of arguments against legalization, which, judging by the comments, the commenters didn't bother to skim through.

It's a long article, and it contains ungrounded assertions like this -

"Addiction to, or regular use of, most currently prohibited drugs cannot affect only the person who takes them—and not his spouse, children, neighbors, or employers."

This is ... well it's just wrong. Many people regularly use alcohol in moderation, there's no reason to think that regular, moderate use of cannabis and various other currently illegal drugs would be any worse when alcohol has one of the worst harm and addiction profiles of any drug.

So I'm not convinced I want to take the time to answer it, as it's not really honest.

--edit-- I've read more of it now, it's full of preconceptions and assertions like this one, no grounding in facts. It's not a good set of objections.

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#57

Post by peteretep »

simplexion wrote: post #35
simonh wrote: post #26

I'm surprised they don't also cite the first war against drugs (actualy, a drug) - prohibition. Exactly the same scenario played out then as is, hopefully, coming to it's inevitable conclusion now in the 'western hemisphere'. If the same thing is starting up again in the East, it's going to be a bloody and chaotic few decades to come before the same lesson gets learned the third time over. Fortunately we do have a la…

I don't understand why the campaigns against alcohol have been so unsuccessful. It is amazing that so many people have no issue with losing control mentally under the influence of alcohol and those same people think it is scary that I would like to try LSD.

Normal alcohol dosage doesn't lead to massive loss of control

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#59

Post by Nursie »

tyho wrote: post #44
peteretep wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I do not condone the use of mind altering > substances Why not? Also, you should try beer, it's AMAZING.

There seems to be some sort of taboo on getting high for whatever reason. I have asked a few people opposed to drugs why they were opposed to drugs and their answers were mostly health related i.e. Cannabis gives you psychosis so you shouldn’t smoke it. I then ask if, hypothetically, there was a drug developed which produces intense happiness for one hour but had no side effects, caused no long term damage and was to…

I once had a conversation about cannabis with my mother that went along these lines. I told her I'd smoked it a few times, she was shocked, I asked what her concerns were.

Over the next half an hour or so I patiently and factually answered all of them. She had clearly been sold fully on the propaganda and had thought, amongst other things, that one puff of weed smoke could potentially kill you if you were unlucky.

Anyway, at the end of this I said "so what do you think about the law now, seems pretty stupid huh?" and she said that no, she still thought it should be illegal because it was just bad, regardless. Facts just don't work on some people.

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#60

Post by jpatokal »

peteretep wrote: post #57
simplexion wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why the campaigns against alcohol have been so unsuccessful. It is amazing that so many people have no issue with losing control mentally under the influence of alcohol and those same people think it is scary that I would like to try LSD.

Normal alcohol dosage doesn't lead to massive loss of control

Neither does normal drug use. It's the alcoholics (read: alcohol drug abusers) who let things get out of hand.
Post reply on HN