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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

#91

Post by Master_Odin »

tyingq wrote: post #56
inglor_cz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even people who think that MJ is immoral or wrong may be against outright ban. It is not purpose of criminal justice to enforce virtue or morality per se, unless one believes in very strict interpretation of their religion (even religious police powers in Saudi Arabia were recently watered down). Victimless crimes will always wake some kind of unease in free-minded people. P.S.: Politicians may not always act on wish…

Agree. I'm a fan of decriminalizing all of it, even though I believe things like meth and heroin to be highly destructive. Negative legal consequences do very little to stop it. I'd rather the money go to something more productive.

Portugal is one of the hallmarks here where decriminalizing the drugs, and then spending the money on outreach, safe needle programs, and recovery centers have helped them not just with drug addiction problems they had, but also in lowering the knock-on effects of not having these things (like HIV and Hep C from dirty needles).

Like a lot of areas of life, a softer more compassionate touch yields far better results than putting people into prison and throwing away the key.

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

#92

Post by _jal »

gravypod wrote: post #25
lotsofpulp wrote: post #5

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.

I'm not so sure if that's the only thing people voted for when they wanted to be hard on drugs. As you can see in this comment thread (on an extremely left-leaning site) we have some people who think drug use is immoral. One of the sister comments says "I believe it's wrong". Definitely some section of the population wanted to use this as a way to bully minorities but another section of the population was convinced "…

> we have some people who think drug use is immoral

Sure. But that's a big aspect of the argument, at least for me - lots of things are immoral, many of which are legal.

It is entirely possible to concede the point and still, for either public health or cost reasons, want to stop doing destructive, expensive things that don't actually reduce drug use, decrease property crime or violence, or dampen business for the cartels. (My views are different, just saying these are logical views people hold.)

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

#93

Post by shmel »

rayiner wrote: post #59
loeg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP's comment can of course be read more correctly as "the purpose of existing drug laws (in the US) , ..."

Sweden has harsh drug laws too. So does China. The point is that there are other reasons people favor drug laws, since many homogenous countries have them too.

China also has concentration camps. Just saying...

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

#94

Post by supernova87a »

viraptor wrote: post #76
supernova87a wrote: post #38

I'm not sure why people aren't being just a little more cautious about ballot measures like in Oregon where even heroin and such hard drugs are now decriminalized. This deserves a little more consideration about the unintended side effects of this policy, don't you think? I look at the massive illegal drug manufacturing interests (countries, cartels) who spend vast sums on getting illegal drugs to our shores. It cann…

> It cannot just be a pure good thing that we make this ok now, can it? This is not what this law does. It doesn't allow for drug dealing and production. The part about manufacturing and importing did not change and nobody said it's ok. What changed is that once you're found in possession of a tiny amount you won't go to jail, but instead will have access to more health/addiction services.

So, is your belief, or the belief of this measure, that completely decriminalizing possession and use will cause no change in demand? More people will not be tempted or trapped into using or trying drugs?

Is that not a legitimate thing to question?

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

#95

Post by kibwen »

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…

> 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 might otherwise have supported gay marriage refused to comment on it for fear of their seats (this happens all the time for plenty of other issues as well; e.g. how many obviously-fake churchgoers there are among politicians who hope to avoid the ire of religious voters). Once a few politicians put their necks on the line and demonstrated that it wasn't impossible to seek election while sympathizing with homosexuality, that served as the activation energy for a lot of pent-up endorsements. So it's been with the decriminalization of marijuana.

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

#96

Post by [deleted] »

cbozeman wrote: post #66
lotsofpulp wrote: post #5

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.

No it isn't. The purpose is to provide a source of labor for for-profit prisons, to legally extort money from an activity or activities that largely harm no one, and to provide something for the police to actively do. If police were to enforce what most people consider the "important" laws, their death rate would go through the roof, because they'd be actively chasing after large criminal gangs. They want the low-han…

[deleted]

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

#97

Post by supernova87a »

intricatedetail wrote: post #57
supernova87a wrote: post #38

I'm not sure why people aren't being just a little more cautious about ballot measures like in Oregon where even heroin and such hard drugs are now decriminalized. This deserves a little more consideration about the unintended side effects of this policy, don't you think? I look at the massive illegal drug manufacturing interests (countries, cartels) who spend vast sums on getting illegal drugs to our shores. It cann…

What do you want to discuss? People have natural urge to use drugs and there is nothing you can do about it apart from trying to educate and ensure drugs are as safe as possible. Banning drugs is an idea of the same sort like banning music or sex for pleasure. Cartels make money on drug supply, because there is mostly no one else people can buy drugs from.

I agree that the war on drugs was a failure.

But is your position that whatever people want to do, you should not try to prevent it? What are your positions on applying that logic to carbon emissions, letting people work for less than minimum wage, companies putting out products that people buy willingly but are non-repairable?

Should government step out of those areas too? People want to do all those things.

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

#98

Post by cgriswald »

gravypod wrote: post #25
lotsofpulp wrote: post #5

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.

I'm not so sure if that's the only thing people voted for when they wanted to be hard on drugs. As you can see in this comment thread (on an extremely left-leaning site) we have some people who think drug use is immoral. One of the sister comments says "I believe it's wrong". Definitely some section of the population wanted to use this as a way to bully minorities but another section of the population was convinced "…

Politicians will never have this 'realization'. Either a pro-drug-war politician is already using this as a dog whistle and does not want it exposed (else why not be open about your stance on minorities), or he isn't using it as a dog whistle but still does not want this connection made.

Voters are the ones who need to make the connection. The politicians will follow.

Many on the left, particularly on social media, are quick to claim that supporting a particular policy is racist if the policy itself is racist, regardless of the reason an individual supports the policy.

My own personal view is that the intent of this definition and behavior is not to 'solve racism' but to stifle discussion and influence voters. The fact that this definition is seldom, if ever, applied to the war on drugs is confirmation of my view.

What I see instead, and is present in some of these threads, are offers of solutions that are ill-defined, untried, and even if effective do not have clear timelines for actually helping people; and very clearly will do nothing to help in the short term. In contrast, solutions that have worked in other places, have immediate effects, and are generally accepted as good ideas are vilified as harmful to minorities with no evidence provided.

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

#99

Post by [deleted] »

bluedino wrote: post #70
devenblake wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of existing drug laws in America is to give police the means to harass minorities though. See: https://archive.attn.com/stories/1503/war-on-drugs-real-reas... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/real-reasons-marijuana-is-ban... http://www.history.com/news/why-the-u-s-made-marijuana-illeg... https://www.salon.com/2015/07/02/the_real_reason_marijuana_i... (though this one pretty much reiterates the attn article)…

So what’s the purpose of them in Japan?

[deleted]
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