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Comment by gydfi | Hacker News Reader

I'm just asking whether the Philippines' policies are sufficient to deter people from taking drugs. You're the one who is inferring anything on top of that.

It seems to me, however, that the overwhelming priority of our heroin policy should be ensuring that people who aren't already taking heroin don't start. Those who have already got hooked are pretty much doomed already, they should be a lower priority than those who can easily be saved. It seems to me that many people advocate a "softly softly" approach to drug users that fucks over the first group to help the second, and thus ensures that our drug problems continue instead of being wiped out.

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> Those who have already got hooked are pretty much doomed already

That is definitely not true (you can recover from an addiction and there are examples all around you) and a really bad policy to follow if you really want to eradicate addiction, since you are basically marginalizing large groups of people. Saying that you need to "save" those who are not addicted implies that everyone is at risk, but the mechanics of addiction vary from person to person and are heavily influenced by socioeconomic background.

Please refer to professionals that work in this field before proposing approaches like this.

Argument from authority? Is that the best you can do? Those "professionals" don't have a great track record, which is why drugs are still a huge problem.

So I repeat my question: how are things working out in the Philippines? Are the harsh policies being pursued doing a good job of decreasing the drug problem? If they are, perhaps we can think about adopting aspects of those solutions while leaving out some of the more problematic aspects such as extrajudicial executions.

In the eyes of most of the rest of the world the policies in the Philippines are doing a good job of slaughtering citizens for morally dubious causes. The drugs are being fronted as a way to usher in dictatorial authority for the state and corrupt criminal elements.

Drug use is no different from any other vice, and the nature of addictive behavior is that most people will find some object to attach themselves to if you removed all drugs from the picture ( perhaps it would be human trafficking or gambling, both of which are widespread ) essentially what the people have done is shown that by being presented with a present danger they will willingly give over the very decency that allows a society to function. So no even if mass slaughter did manage to end the drug problem in the Philippines there is no way it should be accepted anywhere else, because it's an inhumane policy.

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