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Comment by lee | Hacker News Reader

One thing that I am disappointed in is that I wish the Liberal government first decriminalized marijuana.

For one thing, decriminalization is easy to do. Simply revoke the current criminal laws. The bill would be passed quite quickly. Which would then buy time to figure out a bill for legalization.

Why is this important? Despite popular belief, simple possession laws ARE upheld in Canada, but the people charged are disproportionately minorities and poor/homeless people. IIRC, there were 40 000+ criminal charges for simple possession last year in Canada. That means thousands of citizens who are now burdened with a criminal record, making job searches difficult and border crossings into the US.

So while laws for legalizing pot are getting figured out in Parliament, more people keep getting locked up for simple possession.

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  >For one thing, decriminalization is easy to do.

Decriminalization is a bad idea. It increases demand, which gives gangs and mafia types more money. If you're going to do it, legalize it.

The Portuguese case study says that it's really not a bad idea (though not referring specifically the increasing or diminishing illegal business, just less "street value") [1][2]. But I agree with your corollary.

[1] https://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA_Fact_Shee...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal#Observ...

Well, even if it doesn't change much, you're still stuck with the absolute worst part of drug prohibition – unregulated and unclean drugs, turf wars and violence, and hundreds of thousands of murders in less fortunate countries.

I find decriminalisation to be a pretty egoistic way around the problem. Sure, it makes lives better for people at home, but it completely ignores the massive amount of suffering countries (including Canada) has brought on supply and transit countries.

I can't see that being an option in the case of heroin or meth.

It makes sense to decriminalize users/addicts because they are the victims whom drug legislation is supposed to protect in the first place.

But to me it makes no sense to allow anyone to profit from a substance that causes this much harm.

How did they manage it in the 30s (or whenever depending on your nationality)? Are you absolutely certain that criminalization wasn't an overreaction to a problem that after all wasn't all that big?

Short answer: They didn't.

Back then lives were being ruined as well. And the availability and affordability of dangerous drugs has only increased since then.

People just didn't make such a "fuss" of addiction, and especially in the case of poorer people, nobody really cared.

>People just didn't make such a "fuss" of addiction

So why should we make a fuss out of it today?

>and especially in the case of poorer people, nobody really cared.

Whereas now they do?

Is a case of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"

In fact it still isn't that big.

>An estimated 13.5 million people in the world take opioids (opium-like substances), including 9.2 million who use heroin.

That's an insignificant number compared to the global population and all the harm the BS cat/mouse game with mafia and police has caused.

If you've got a free hour-or-so sometime this BBC documentary is pretty engaging and describes the opiate timeline regarding use and legal status: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3M1QPoeNMU

> But to me it makes no sense to allow anyone to profit from a substance that causes this much harm.

It's possible to use heroin daily for the remainder of your life and have a better health outcome than a cigarette smoker.

The drug war makes heroin use more dangerous. Now you have dirty needles, cut drugs, highly inconsistent doses, lack of free treatment/therapy, fear of police and the legal system that leads to reluctance to seek medical attention, etc. And of course black market violence still exists here and abroad.

"Like most opioids, unadulterated heroin does not cause many long-term complications other than dependence and constipation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin#Adverse_effects

Switzerland had success with the heroin problem. They've made it legal and free, but to get it free, you need to visit a hospital for your daily injection, where they also can give you psychological help.

The program seems to have been a success, destroying the market for illegal heroin, and also reducing demand because it gives the drug a perception of being for losers.

Despite popular belief, simple possession laws ARE upheld in Canada, but the people charged are disproportionately minorities and poor/homeless people.

It's quite likely that those are compound charges, meaning possession is not the only charge, i.e. they are arrested for something else, then found to be in possession.

So they are charged disproportionately because they commit crimes disproportionately,[0] and some of them happen to have a bag in their pocket while doing so.

[0]Aboriginal and black Canadians are grossly overrepresented in Canada’s correctional institutions

http://www.academia.edu/5110524/Race_Crime_and_Criminal_Just...

This paper is itself biased against Ockham's Razor, they hit on some truth here, We cannot discount, however, the probability that increased rates of offending among certain racialized groups contributes to their overrepresentation in correctional statistics. but then spend the whole paper trying to hand wave it away.

Not sure about Canada, but the whole story usually is that people with lower social class/backgrounds commit crimes more often, and that aboriginals/black people/foreigners/... etc are overrepresented in that group. Once you control for social status, there is no difference between white or non-white populations.

Can I get a link to something that confirms this? I'd like to be able to use this point in conversation.

In the US there are groups of poor whites and poor blacks, the crime rates are not the same, they exhibit stark differences.

What if you account for rural/urban populations? Population density always has an effect on crime rate

I'm sure somebody's tried it. But the differences are so large that no amount of statistical trickery is going to be able to make them go away.

http://www.infowars.com/black-crime-facts-that-the-white-lib...

One must also consider that it isn't the density per se, but the populations. For example, you could compare two equally dense areas but made up of different population groups. You would find a difference.

isn't infowars a crackpot site?

It's not a site I frequent, I think it may have a bit of that brand image, but not like ufo bigfoot or whatever crackpot levels.

That article is just a simple and clear telling of sourced facts that came up when I was searching for some facts.

What crackpot level is wearing an alien lizard mask while ranting about Obamacare?

level 9

Yes.

Everyone's entitled to their own crackpots, but not their own facts.

What is often missed in these statistics is that 90% of the homicides committed by black citizens are committed against black citizens, so it's not surprising that blacks are overrepresented in homicide statistics since they are overrepresented in poor income neighborhoods where all the problems inherent to poverty exacerbate the cycle of violence.

So poor blacks kill each other in huge numbers, and poor whites don't. What's your point exactly?

Also, maybe you missed the black on white numbers which are off the charts compared to the inverse.

> So poor blacks kill each other in huge numbers, and poor whites don't. What's your point exactly?

90% of black murder victims are killed by black perpetrators, 84% of white murder victims are killed by white perpetrators, so I'm not sure why you suggested that poor white people don't kill each other. My point is that the higher black on black homicide rate is what we'd expect to see for a population that is disproportionately concentrated into densely populated low income regions, which will push up their representation in overall homicide stats.

> Also, maybe you missed the black on white numbers which are off the charts compared to the inverse

What exactly does off the charts mean?

13.6% of white murders are committed by black people, 7.6% of black murders are committed by white people, so yes, blacks murder whites at a higher rate, that is clear, but what is your point?

Controlling for poverty does not remove the effect where blacks commit more crime than whites.

> As a means to assess these possibilities, I estimate separate regression equations for the black and white block groups in Atlanta. [...] Consistent with previous research, percent black retains a strong, significant effect on violent crime net of the effects of other controls. [...] Although this finding appears to provide partial support for the racial invariance assumption, the fact remains that for a large proportion of the black neighborhoods, the effect of disadvantage on violence is weaker than is the effect evident among all of the white neighborhoods in the analysis

http://www.udel.edu/soc/faculty/parker/SOCI836_S08_files/McN...

More white people than black live in poverty, yet blacks commit crime at far higher rates. For statistics see FBI and DOJ crime data:

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/...

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/...

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

This topic could use more good science and research.

> More white people than black live in poverty, yet blacks commit crime at far higher rates. For statistics see FBI and DOJ crime data:

1 in 10 whites live in poverty compared to 1 in 4 blacks so it's not true that more whites live in poverty (unless you're talking about absolute numbers, which doesn't tell us anything meaningful in a comparison to the black crime rate).

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3226952/Sampson_...

> Discrimination appears to be indirect, stemming from the amplification of initial disadvantages over time, along with the social construction of "moral panics" and associated political responses. The "drug war" of the 1980s and 1990s exacerbated the disproportionate representation of blacks in state and federal prisons

> Blacks, and to a lesser extent Hispanics, suffer much higher rates of robbery and homicide victimization than do whites. Homicide is the leading cause of death among young black males and females. These differences result in part from social forces that ecologically concentrate race with poverty and other social dislocations.

I agree that the topic could use more good science and research.

The problem here is knowing what really is the cause and what is the effect.

It is well known that, in the United States, drug usage between all races tends to trend roughly the same. However, the arrest rate for blacks is much, much higher. See these charts for marijuana.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/04/the-b...

One possible explanation, of course, is indeed that blacks are more likely to be arrested while committing another serious crime. Hence the gap.

An alternate explanation reverses the argument: blacks may be more prone to commit serious crimes because they are more likely to be arrested for trivial crimes like marijuana usage. Prison does have social consequences after all (eg, people are less willing to hire someone with an arrest record; prison can establish contacts with underground economies that are more likely to utilize violence to settle disputes; prison can tear apart families; etc. -- http://www.economist.com/node/708550 ) and since America is not keen on reintegrating criminals into society (a very high rate of recidivism compared to most countries -- http://www.salve.edu/sites/default/files/filesfield/document... and http://www.businessinsider.com/why-norways-prison-system-is-... ), it is very possible that early arrests for modest crimes lead to later arrests for worse crimes later.

A little "politically incorrect" related video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm_Vv3Q24uQ

Yah, but if you decriminalize possession it's a boon for the (still) illegal dealers and distributors. Is there any credible data to discredit my take on this?

Do you think decriminalizing for possessing a small amount in the interim would still fuel crime?

Well, 10 grams isn't that small (though certainly not large), and retails for about 100 CAD. So, if people become more likely to smoke up once it's decriminalized, then it would seem to me that it would provide a windfall for the sellers, distributors, and producers. I have no hard evidence to support this belief - it's just a supposition that seems to me to be reasonable and logical.

If we have to keep putting civilians in jail so that criminals don't benefit for a brief time, I think that thought should be rethunk.

Well, as I mention in another comment [0], I'm uncertain as to whether the prospective bill will actually pass, and thus the "interim" situation could become the ongoing status quo. Additionally, such a situation would also include all the geopolitical risks I mention in that other comment, too, and could thus put the Canadian economy in peril.

I'm a supporter of legalization, but I think half-measures can lead to avoidable, unforeseen negative consequences.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11538708

That is why I favor legalization over decriminalization. It looks like the Canadian PM has thought this through, though, so I don't expect problems like that.

In the article he specifically said he wants to keep criminals from profiting from sales.

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