Comment by jnicholasp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jnicholasp | Hacker News Reader

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If you wanted to be cute, but also maybe open up a new path for your intuitive response to take, you could simply switch the referent for 'addicted users' in your sentence so that it doesn't mean 'the end users of drugs', but instead now mean 'the DEA and all other government and law enforcement agents whose jobs and budgets are dependent on the War on Drugs'. Your next sentence would then be exactly as valid: "they've made so many stupid decisions, disregarded so many warnings, broken laws, possibly [definitely] harmed other people (theft, robbery, etc.), and now people like me [...] have to pay for them".

I understand your intuitive response - it feels injust for prudent, productive people to have the fruit of their good choices taken from them in order to pay for the imprudence of other people. But you are already having to pay for the stupid choices of other people re: drugs, but you are paying much more - both in money and in the societal costs of corruption, erosion of trust in law enforcement, and the world's largest prison population - to support the corrupt and misguided War on Drugs than you would pay simply to support the relatively small number of hopeless addicts that would exist in a sane, health-focused system. It feels like switching to a sane, health-focused system would be a new cost to you, but it would actually be a price reduction over what we are already paying for, and for a far better outcome.

For a lot of people though, myself included, the choice is more like:

1. Resist evil at all costs. Even if it is expensive and takes a long time.

2. Give up resisting evil. It's too powerful. Just embrace it and go into damage control mode. It's less expensive that way.

When framed that way, #1 is preferable to #2, even if #2 is cheaper in the long run.

I think #1 is better phrased as the following, and is why we have LEAP:

"Resist evil at all costs. Even if it is expensive and takes an infinite amount of time and creates more evil than that which was set out to be destroyed."

In that case resisting any evil that people want is futile and we should just embrace it instead of fighting it. People want abortions? Rationalize and embrace. People want drugs? Rationalize and embrace. People want porn, gambling, prostitution, and more? Rationalize and embrace. Fighting those things "creates" more evil by criminalizing productive members of society and fostering black markets (according to you).

Why is there no middle ground? Why can't I be against abortion (which I consider recklessly irresponsible and evil in most cases), but still make an exception for cases of rape, mother endangerment, etc. Why can't I be against drug usage and availability, but still have compassion for people stuck in a rut? Why are the only sides you can pick so polarizing?

Why should it matter what each of us are for and against? Make all the exceptions you like, in your own life. Clearly other people have other opinions. Public policy is more than forcing individual morals on the public.

You don't have to embrace anything in your private life. But stay the heck out of mine.

> You don't have to embrace anything in your private life. But stay the heck out of mine.

Yes, but unfortunately all individual choices eventually start bleeding into other peoples' lives, no matter how much you like to pretend they are encapsulated. Otherwise alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and more would only affect their users, but as we know they create collateral damage and rippling effects into their respective communities all the time. Your "private life" booze problem could kill my whole family in a DUI.

What if I told you your choice to support "The War on Drugs" has caused rising violence in poor neighbourhoods, contributed to millions of people being stuck in a cycle of poverty, and helped erode the basic constitutional rights of an entire nation.

Oh, sorry, you were talking about collateral damage caused by people you don't like! My bad.

> What if I told you your choice to support "The War on Drugs" has caused ...

I don't necessarily support the current implementation of it. But I am against recreational drug usage and widespread drug availability (i.e. go to CVS and by meth and heroin, if you want).

I think that cigarettes and alcohol, already legal substances that ravage the poor, have caused and continue to cause immeasurable damage to life and property. Yet we do little to address those problems. Once drugs are legal, you'll find something else to blame poverty on ("the government isn't giving out enough free contraceptives and abortion services, that's the real root of the poverty cycle").

>collateral damage and rippling effects into their respective communities all the time.

Study history, and we find that declaring war on those things increases the collateral damage and massively strengthens criminal syndicates.

> Fighting those things "creates" more evil by criminalizing productive members of society and fostering black markets (according to you).

Supply-side vs demand-side. Your approach is fighting these things by restricting the supply. I think the right approach is tacking the mental-health and poverty issues that are present with almost all of these behaviours instead and reduce demand.

The problem with restricting the supply of a vice is that the same people will just find another "high", another way to self-medicate, another outlet for their unhappiness. The root cause remains. Just look at shit like krokodil[1]. Even though it has extreme physical side-effects, a junkie will still use it if they're desperate enough. There are not enough cops in the world to enforce a ban on everything that can get you high. The collateral damage of trying is enormous.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desomorphine

>Why is there no middle ground?

It's odd that you view your position as "the middle group", when its seems very extreme.

The current situation is extreme - anyone who uses drugs gets whisked off to jail for 5-15 years, and then must combat their addiction after having lost so many years of their life. We did this for 20 years, and it clearly doesn't work.

The other extreme would simply be a complete 100% free open market for drugs, a world in which a supplier for recreational heroin could be a public company, - which no one in this thread is reasonably arguing for.

The middle ground is where we are trying to move to - less penalties on actual drug use, and more welfare for drug addicts to reduce to overall cost the "drug problem" has in society.

Lastly, its rather odd you view drugs as "evil". Why are drugs evil? Or do you mean people who use drugs, are they evil? Or do they become evil after having taken the drugs? To me, this is a dehumanizing view on fellow human beings. It's part of the psyche that lets us ignore their the deep rooted problems the drug war has cost us because we can all turn off our brains and just call them evil.

Speaking of middle grounds, exactly what do you mean by "fighting" these things that you call evil? "Fighting" them by having armed cops hunt down anybody remotely involved in them and throw them all in jail for decades doesn't sound like much of a middle ground to me. Even more so when it doesn't work and you try to double down with even harsher laws, like seizing private property without even bringing any charges.

How about we legalize, tax, and lightly regulate all of those things as appropriate, and if you think that they're evil and want to fight them, you can spend as much time and money as you want convincing people to voluntarily stop doing them?

In addition to being a false dichotomy I think this fundamentally misunderstands the nature of evil. I don't think you can attribute evil to a non-sentient object like drugs. Evil is something that people do to other people and drug addicts aren't the ones doing the evil, they are its victims. Criminalization has only fuelled organized crime without helping the addicts themselves.

If you actually want to tackle "evil" you have to help the people in the grips of addiction instead of sending them to jail.

By the way, your comment here is completely at odds with your previous sentiment:

> It's like, they've made so many stupid decisions, disregarded so many warnings, broken laws, possibly harmed other people (theft, robbery, etc.), and now people like me, people who heeded the warnings, avoided the drugs, have to pay for them one way or another to get out of the hole they dug. And addicts are addicts for life - it's not like it's a one time treatment. They will be mental health money sponges for the rest of their lives (esp. ones that relapse), and the people that made good choices have to pay for it all. It just seems unfair. Uncharitable? Maybe. But as long as I'm contributing to a charity, I would like to pick the people my money goes to. I don't like the government forcing me to be charitable and then paying out my money how they see fit to people that make poor choices.

^ that is by definition giving up on curing or treating drug addiction and instead taking the "less expensive" approach of fighting a war with no feasible end.

> Resist evil at all costs. Even if it is expensive and takes a long time.

Oh FFS. Illegal drugs aren't "evil" any more than alcohol or caffeine are "evil". Drug users aren't "evil" any more than those who go to bars or coffee shops are "evil".

Look at marijuana. It's the poster-child for psychoactive substances that were irrationally restricted. It's not chemically addictive. It doesn't cause its users to become dangerous or violent. States are finally beginning to accept this and legalize it, and the sky has somehow refrained from falling.

Marijuana is not the exception. Drug users are everywhere. Your coworkers are drug users. Your neighbors are drug users. Your friends and family are drug users. Not all of them, but many of them. And you probably have no idea who is whom.

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