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Comment by lfjmfkekdk | Hacker News Reader

"In a hundred years from now people are going to look back at things like the war on drugs as one of the most barbaric, absurd and useless pieces of legislation ever to have been implemented."

How do you explain the rampant crack cocaine drug wars in New York and Miami in the 1980s that killed far more Americans than they do today? You're probably too young to realize how bad New York and Miami were before the war on drugs. How do you explain how Asia has even more "draconian" drug laws than the USA and yet crime is a fraction of ours?

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How do you explain the rampant cocaine drug wars in New York and Miami in the 1980s that killed far more Americans than they do today?

Easy, the War on Drugs began in the early 70s.

The murders and general lawlessness that you reference from the 80s are a direct result of the War on Drugs.

The crack epidemic had its origins in the 1970s and became widespread in the 1980s[1]. Crack was finally targeted in 1986 with laws that heavily punished crack dealers. This happened after crack became widespread throughout major American cities.[2]

"The murders and general lawlessness that you reference from the 80s are a direct result of the War on Drugs."

Where were the "murders and general lawlessness" in other countries that had even more expansive Wars on Drugs, like Singapore or Taiwan? America's War on Drugs is relatively mild compared to these countries that sentence drug traffickers to death.

[1] http://www.crack-facts.org/historyofcrack.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic#History

Those countries didn't have their own government propping up the drug trade in order to generate illicit funding for illegal wars and to criminalize and imprison poor black people. USA did.

> these countries that sentence drug traffickers to death.

USA put small-time addicted drug users, in long jail terms. But only if they use crack, the "poor/black people" variant of cocaine, not the (expensive) white-powder variant of cocaine that rich/white people used.

Executing people for nonviolent drug offences is barbaric. Under no circumstances should atrocities like that be held up as an example for others.

Only nominally. Funding for the actual execution of the drug war didn't ramp up until the 1980's, and imprisonment for drug offenses was flat until the early 1980's.[1] Conversely, the surge in crime started in the late 1960's, and was already much higher than before by the time the drug war got rolling.

[1] https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/michaela/pages/70/atta...

    > How do you explain how Asia has even more "draconian"
    > drug laws than the USA and yet crime is a fraction of
    > ours?

Comments like this are why people should travel.

In most of asia (by population or by state), low crime rates can be easily attributed to being able to settle the matter privately with the policeman for a small amount of money.

That's not true in Japan, where organized crime registers with the police, or Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan which are hugely wealthy microstates.

The "microstate" of Taiwan is larger, in surface area and population, than Belgium.

Have you ever seen a population density map of Taiwan?

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Population_density_o...

Edit: Spoiler: the inhabitable area is about the size of Puerto Rico, a country it has 8x the population of, and something someone who had been there would know...

Sure, Taiwan is funny that way. But I'm trying to figure out what it is that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have in common that causes you to label all 3 of them "microstates", but that causes you to exclude, say, Belgium or Denmark. I'll await your reply as I watch the sun set over Taipei.

Edit: HN won't let me reply to your reply below, which I'll take as a hint that I should stop arguing. As your first post was limited to Asian microstates, I agree that I shouldn't have thrown European countries into the mix. I still question the "micro-ness" of Taiwan, which is more populous than Hong Kong or Singapore by a factor of 3 or 4 (and not quite as wealthy), but sure, whatever.

    > what it is that Singapore,
    > Hong Kong, and Taiwan have
    > in common ... exclude, say,
    > Belgium or Denmark

To clarify, you're seriously asking why I left Belgium and Denmark out of a list of small and rich Asian countries?

Update: but ya know, even if it wasn't about continent(!) the main difference is that Belgium and Denmark sit in the middle of large areas with border-free travel, largely homogenous policing, largely homogenous drug laws and share the same Supreme Court with their neighbours. Seeing them as micro-states, rather than constituent states of the EU for this purpose surely misses the point.

Belgium could be considered a microstate.

People didn't learn anything from Prohibition and we're getting a far more expensive lesson this time around.

Sad to go all conspiracy theory here, but...

The crack epidemic was a supply and demand issue. During the 1980s, the CIA enabled the flow of cocaine to help fund the Contras and other right-wing revolutionary groups in Central America. The new routes led to new manufacturing practices, and supply skyrocketed. This in turn dropped the price drastically, making cocaine suddenly available and affordable for a lot of people who couldn't get it before. Crack was another technical/marketing innovation, taking the old practice of freebasing and industrializing it. A quick, intense high got down into the $10-20 range, something even the desperately poor could afford. And since mainstream society doesn't usually care much about the troubles of the desperately poor, the cocaine industry had a relatively untroubled new market.

The end of this era wasn't so much due to draconian laws as to the end of the cheap supply.

I am 42.

The reason it was bad was because it was illegal.

Tens of thousands of innocent people die in Mexico almost every year because of drugs being illegal.

Make it legal and you remove the very foundation these drug cartels are based on.

The New York and Miami drug wars were early consequences of the War on Drugs, not things that existed before or outside of it.

Crack wasn't even targeted in the War on Drug policies until the 80s. The drug was relatively unknown to the general public compared to the other drugs that were targeted. Even Newsweek reported in 1977 that cocaine was safer than cigarettes and liquor "when used discriminately"[1].

[1] http://www.crack-facts.org/historyofcrack.html

Crack was targeted, because crack is cocaine.

It doesn't matter whether it was unknown. What matters was that it wasn't sold legally. This is what makes the whole difference here.

Yes, and the New York and Miami drug wars of the 1980s were consequences of the escalation of the law enforcement War on Drugs in the 1980s, including the targeting of cocaine in that war in the 1980s.

On what factual basis are you judging the parent poster's age? It comes off as ad hominem and detracts from your argument IMO.

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