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Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

Finally. I hope this will signal a turning point on this insane approach to national health in all countries. Drugs are a health problem, not a criminal problem.

Lone experts have been fired in western countries when they have expressed this common sense sentiments alone [0]. I hope this groups fares better.

Nixon started the war on drugs anyway as a mean to attack left and black activists [1]. Any previous legislation for control has been instigated on behalf of race and class warfare.The fact that some drugs have been the staple narcotic in some groups has been used as a control mechanism upon those groups by criminalizing the substance.

Substance distribution should be controlled by law. But that is status quo anyway - governments control the distribution of any number of dangerous substances at any point.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/oct/30/drugs-advis...

[1] https://qz.com/645990/nixon-advisor-we-created-the-war-on-dr...

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>Finally. I hope this will signal a turning point on this insane approach to national health in all countries. Drugs are a health problem, not a criminal problem.

Agreed.

>...Nixon started the war on drugs anyway as a mean to attack left and black activists

This point is a little controversial, in, as far as I know, we have to take Ehrlichman's word on this.

https://www.quora.com/Is-John-Ehrlichman-a-credible-source-w...

While Nixon is remembered for "war on drugs", the actual substance of his policies seems to be different than what people think it was:

>...Their consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right wing that he hadn’t gone soft. So he laid on some of the toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a White House speech declaring a “war on drugs” and calling drugs “public enemy number one”. It worked so well as cover that many people remember that “tough” press event and forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief but…a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him).

http://www.samefacts.com/2011/06/drug-policy/who-started-the...

As a follow-up, even though Nixon expanded treatment shouldn't we still blame him for the rhetorics that aggravated the "war on drugs" for the rest of the planet?

It's after Nixon "war on drugs" stance that we begin to see harsher and harsher penalties for possession, criminalisation of usage (and this still applies here in Sweden, it's not only illegal to buy, sell or possess drugs but also to take them, if it's detected in a urine or blood test [mandatory tests if you are caught by the police] you have committed an offense) and then the Convention on Psychotropic Substances happened in 1971, very influenced by the US and UK stances on drugs.

So as much as he tried to only "look tough", Nixon has fomented one of the worst problems in modern society, I really don't think we as a society should give him any credit, that façade has fucked up a lot some parts of the world and has killed an uncountable number of people.

why does it have to about who we 'blame'? Why not go back to the CIA and how they wanted to undermine the social & political revolutions of the 60s & 70s? why not go back to 'reefer madness' and the how it was based almost solely in fear and racism, or how William Randolph Hearst's paper & publishing 'empire' was threatened by hemp? does any of that matter? Not really.

We have a problem now that we need to fix. We don't need to dwell in the past or blame people. We're more knowledgeable now - so we need to use that knowledge to fix the problems - or at least work with / around them to the betterment of people.

I don't think that any reasonable person at any point thought that blaming is a solution.

It's just important to direct blame so we can understand history and how events unfolded from that point, there are people and policies to blame and a chain reaction of events which culminated in our current situation, not necessarily we're dwelling in the past pointing fingers and then feeling good that something was solved.

The issue with this is that ultimately no individual is ever really personally responsible for a societal level action.

To take a contemporary example, it's very possible that within the not so distant future the first amendment may be overturned. And it's equally possible that 50 years later it comes to be that deciding to allow the government to criminalize speech at their discretion somehow doesn't turn out so well. So people would go back to the past to try to figure out what happened. And perhaps they would decide to blame President McPolitic, who oversaw the overturning of the amendment, as the source of the problem. Surely they just used their powers to make a decision that turned out very bad. But of course it wouldn't be that individual - but rather society that somehow moved in a direction that in hindsight might seem otherwise inexplicable.

The nice thing is that people looking back at today will [hopefully] have access to internet archives and they can see how things evolved. The NSA's surveillance and data collection are, in this regard, doing society a great service. They are effectively creating the greatest global social archive in the history of our species --- a sort of time capsule that encompasses the entire existence of humanity in the developed world.

But we don't have that privilege when we look back at the past today. So all we can do is look at the data. Historic record, such as "the Nixon quote", cannot be taken at face value. Those casting such aspersions (or praises) have their own biases and agendas. What we do from the data is that violent crime in the 50s and 60s was very rare. But then something happened. It started skyrocketing. From the 60s to the 70s the per capita crime rate more than doubled. And drug use and abuse was also skyrocketing. Is it not reasonable to assume that people, somewhat naturally, began to link the two since they did rather often compliment one another?

Now we look at drugs much more tolerably, but that too follows an interesting trend. Violent crime started sharply declining a decline in the 90s. That's a trend that continues to this very day. And our views, as a society, are reflective of this change. Ultimately I think leaders are products of society, rather than society being a product of its leaders. And thus attributing blame (or praise) to any individual is, at best, a misrepresentation of an event.

Blame in itself doesn't have a great deal of use, and is usually not a solvable problem. You'll always face some contributor or condition that came before which, had it been different, feels like it could have changed things. Would Hitler have gotten widely known and ended up elected if Germany had not banned the Nazi newsletter after the Beer Hall Putsch which led most Germans to seek out the newsletters? Probably not, but that can only be a guess. Blame as such is mostly just an emotional thing, something that our brains want to make situations easier to understand due to how our brains process everything as associations.

BUT, blame does have an important side as well. Recognizing the possible or likely contribution of Nixon's actions, for example, informs us of the possible dangerous consequences of authoritarian approaches to drug policy. While it can't definitely establish a causal link, it can serve at least as a basic 'this approach can lead to X' or 'this approach was tried and did not prevent X' lesson. Hopefully, it can enable us to have a better discussion and teach us about the realities of the situations involved. Often things can look great on paper, but when implemented on large numbers of varied people they fall apart. Learning what works on those large groups of varied people can really only be done phenomenologically. You have to try things and observe the result. If the result is bad, but the 'on paper' form looked (or felt) really good, it's always a fight to change things. We see this with drug policy, supply-side economics, anti-sex moralism born with the Industrial Revolution, all kinds of things. Knowing where it started, and how people were convinced of things can be useful to show how people might be convinced differently or at least what to be afraid of when you see similar tactics being used in other arenas.

Some measure of blame and exposing the dark motives is useful if only to counteract lots of Drug War propaganda.

The best way (IMO) to counteract the WoD propaganda is through facts, education, medical studies, etc... and through these issues, the people that pushed the illogical conclusions will be exposed, embarrassed and hopefully come away more enlightened.

> why does it have to about who we 'blame'?

Because if politicians are not held accountable for their actions, it removes the incentive to be genuine and honest on their part.

the vast majority of the politicians responsible for the 'war of drugs' are dead. The ones that continue to perpetuate it are not being held accountable for anything, let alone the WoD. So by continuing to point fingers (at politicians), what is being accomplished?

The only movement that I have seen is at the State level, where the people are literally telling the "authorities" to GTFO and legalizing (or decriminalizing) at the state level. If anything the politicians are reaping the rewards by playing both sides of the issue. Blaming them doesn't work.

>...It's after Nixon "war on drugs" stance that we begin to see harsher and harsher penalties for possession, criminalisation of usage

I don't know about other countries but the real push for harsher penalties in the US came in the 1980s after basketball star Len Bias died of cocaine overdose:

>...It became the sole focus of legislative activity for the remainder of the session on both sides of the aisle. Literally every committee, from the Committee on Agriculture to the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries were somehow getting involved. Suddenly, the Len Bias case was the driving force behind every piece of legislation. Members of Congress were setting up hearings about the drug problem and every subcommittee chairman was looking to get a piece of the action

http://www.salon.com/2011/06/19/len_bias_cocaine_tragedy_sti...

>...(and this still applies here in Sweden, it's not only illegal to buy, sell or possess drugs but also to take them, if it's detected in a urine or blood test [mandatory tests if you are caught by the police] you have committed an offense)

This sounds like an internal issue in Sweden - I am not really sure how much you can blame the US for this. Certainly other countries near Sweden have more reasonable drug policies and the US doesn't try and stop that or punish the countries that I know of.

>...and then the Convention on Psychotropic Substances happened in 1971, very influenced by the US and UK stances on drugs.

The 1971 wasn't the first treaty on drugs. For example, the International Opium Convention that adopted restrictions on the opium poppy's psychoactive derivatives was in 1912.

According to wikipedia:

>...The Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 is a United Nations treaty designed to control psychoactive drugs such as amphetamine-type stimulants, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and psychedelics signed in Vienna, Austria on 21 February 1971. The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 did not ban the many newly-discovered psychotropics,[1] since its scope was limited to drugs with cannabis, coca, and opium-like effects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Psychotropic_Sub...

>...So as much as he tried to only "look tough", Nixon has fomented one of the worst problems in modern society,

I don't think that Nixon was the first politician who tried to look tough on drugs in the US (or in other countries). Anti-drug propaganda has been produced since before "Reefer Madness" and politicians have been ranting about drugs for a long time. A difference really was that Nixon was one of the first to try to greatly expand drug treatment and reform sentencing at least in a small way:

>...the mandatory minimum sentence in a federal prison for marijuana possession was 2-10 years until Nixon slashed it to 1 year with a judicial option to waive even that sentence. No federal mandatory drug sentence would be rolled back again for 40 years (in the Obama Administration).

http://www.samefacts.com/2011/06/drug-policy/who-started-the...

The Ehrlichman quote is controversial for more than the reason you cite. Baum claims Ehrlichman said that in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, but instead published it in 2012 and again in 2016, after Ehrlichman had died (in 1999).

I hate the drug war and I think it's stupid, but I don't think people should use that quote for evidence of anything. I think it was either made up or taken completely out of context, and obviously Ehrlichman isn't around to contest it. It encapsulates liberal conspiracy theories about the drug war far too perfectly, it's as if a Breitbart reporter claimd an Al Gore staffer who had died "admitted" liberals all knew global warming was a hoax and pushed it just to increase taxes and punish Republican leaning businesses with harsh regulations.

I don't know if this is a reputable site but the basic story about timeline of the quote is not disputed as far as I know: http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/720681

> it's as if a Breitbart reporter claimd an Al Gore staffer who had died "admitted" liberals all knew global warming was a hoax and pushed it just to increase taxes and punish Republican leaning businesses with harsh regulations.

It's not nearly the same thing. We know that there are plenty of self-serving scientists that would absolutely love the notoriety of debunking global warming if it was actually false. To believe that scientists made it all up is utterly insane if you actually have worked with real scientists. The number of physicists I've worked with that daydreamed out loud at lunch about having a law or parameter named after them is astounding. If they wanted money they could easily go into a quant job and make double or triple what they've been making and no longer have to drive their shitty 20 year old cars.

The issue you're proposing as a liberal conspiracy is purely an issue of he said, she said nonsense. We have the input and the output. Republicans yet again made life worse for the lower classes. Big surprise. Why doesn't matter and it's naive as an adult to even care about intent.

I think we passed the turning point some years ago when the medical community decided that harm reduction is more important than patient compliance. As long as doctors insist, the rest of society will come around eventually.

Of course, it took 40+ years of people literally dying in the streets before doctors began "washing their hands" (i.e. prescribing opiates to addicts, particularily non-compliant addicts who take additional drugs).

> Finally. I hope this will signal a turning point on this insane approach to national health in all countries.

Honestly, until the people in power start saying this stuff, nothing seems likely to happen.

We've had a parade of experts, medical groups, police commissioners (in the UK), and ex-politicians all calling for change, but the people actually in power are either too set in their ways or too scared to rock the boat and lose their seats by being seen as "pro-drug".

We still have a long, long road ahead of us before much is going to change in the UK. I am heartened that baby-steps are being taken in the USA, but that's all they are, baby-steps.

It's not just the people in power, it's the people themselves. Most of the citizenry have been brainwashed that "drugs are bad, m'kay?".

A majority now think that cannabis should be legal, but harder drugs should still be illegal to "protect us". This is somewhat understandable in that there are serious problems with drug use (it killed my brother), but we need education to show that the cure is worse than the disease.

But is the cure really worse than the disease? If it can be shown that broad, across-the-board legalization of all drugs would triple heroin addiction, would you be okay with that?

>Drugs are a health problem, not a criminal problem.

I fully support legalizing drugs. That being said, if today you buy drugs that are being smuggled by the cartel, then your are contributing to the wrong they do. Buying cartel tainted drugs is a criminal matter because it finances massive violence.

I draw a comparison to other material that is illegal to posses because it supports harmful production and distribution. Today, there are laws that prevent making such material legally (for example, drawings or computer generated images). But the laws, while I think more harmful than good, does not excuse a person from acquiring material that was produced or distributed harmfully. In the same way, I think drug laws are more harmful, but their existence does not justify someone who pays money to the cartel. Now, if you are growing your own pot or buying it from someone who grew it themselves, I don't see a problem.

Here is a crazy thought experiment.

What if the government rationed drugs and gave them out for free? The price for black market drugs would go down, which would change the economics of smuggling drugs and selling drugs in the US. The government could track consumption of drugs and help people who are chronic addicts.

What would happen to the amount of drugs consumed in the US? If consumption would greatly increase, then this policy probably would do more harm than good. We would have many more addicts in the US. If consumption stayed the same, then this policy might make sense. It would greatly disincentivize the distribution of drugs and could be used to move addicts into treatment programs.

This policy is probably not politically viable in the US.

I theorize that the situation is bad enough in the US that the use of drugs /would/ increase, if only as a means for the general populace to find some joy in our crappy lives.

Alcohol and tobacco consumption might go down a bit though; mostly because the drugs would be free in comparison. (/those/ lobbies would be completely against this experiment)

Focusing on the increased use segments of the population and figuring out why they're in to drugs instead of 'healthy' outlets would probably reveal deep social and societal dysfunction caused by a complex and interacting set of self-enforcing patterns.

Maybe changes in zoning, public goods funding, and worker rights would actually start to happen on a scientific basis trying to address the identified issues.

At the very least though, this would be THE MOST EFFECTIVE means of fighting criminal and terrorist organizations; by cutting off their funding at the source.

I'll agree with consumption not being punishable but a medically treatable issue.

Misditribution (illegal distribution) of controlled dugs (not over the counter) should be punishable --whether they be doctors who knowingly over prescribe or black market sellers (drug dealers).

So then make it not illegal?

You cannot avoid the nasty social effects of drug prohibition (crime, violence, contamination, etc) without making distribution legal. If you want to live in a world without homeless junkies breaking into your car, or a world without running gun battles in the street, or a world without your wayward kids accidentally ODing on their next batch, you need drugs like cocaine and heroin to be sold openly and affordably at the corner Walgreens.

"Help the addict but punish the dealer" feels good to say but the world just isn't that simple.

I don't see that borne out by the opioid crisis. Many believe it was lax prescription that allowed opioids to become preferred and prevalent narcotics to abuse. If they are not available it does not matter how many cars or houses you brake into, it does no good if no one is selling.

So you say, well in that case someone will make them dirty and available for a price. Punish the illegal seller and prosecute all suppliers who knowingly sold to someone not registered. Prosecute any and all corruption related to making and distributing the product illegally.

Do people get their coke from Coca-cola imported leaves? No. They know the consequences and take appropriate precautions to ensure they are not subverted by greedy employees.

1. Many, even the ethical, doctors prescribed opioids for pain, and misery.

2. A very small percentage of Doctors set up shop to hook their patients.

3. I just can't put all the blame on doctors.

4. People are miserable across this county. A lot of you are insulated from the misery, but it's there. The anti-drpepressant effects of opioids should not be hidden. They make you feel good.

Plus--I don't think it's a coincidence that heterocyclic/tricyclic anti-depressants have come under extreme scrutiny. Basically--do they even work. Oh yea, that double blind study, in India, proved they work 62% over a huge Placebo response? Meaning 6 patients answered three positive questing, more that the control group, on that poorly worded psychological test.

5. Now the problem is the patient starts to develop a tolerance. The foolish run to the street, and buy bags of whatever. The responsible patient stays on the same dosage. (There are studies, done in nursing homes, that state that patients on opioids can stay on tge same dose of opioids for years, and don't feel the need go up their dose.)

6. O.K. we are blaming the doctors for the opioids crisis. They don't want to get sued, or have the FDA knocking on their door; so they cut off the patient.

7. Now, if the patient can't kick the stuff by themselves, they are labeled addicts. They go on bupenorpine, or methadone. They have to jump through hoops just to get that medication. Many, if in the right areas, just go to the street. I can see why they do. I don't understand anyone who just sticks a needle in their arm, and hopes for the best.

8. We are now stuck with a terrible system, and people in agony. Way to go America!

(Excuse my attitude. My doctor got cold feet prescribing me bupenorpine, after a decade of taking it. It's not been easy getting off of. I am not happy with the system is the slightest. I don't blame the doctors though. Many of them know their patients do just fine on a on most controlled substances. Now--the doctors who are dragging in their patients for unnecessary office visits; those bastards should be exposed, and dealt with. The ethical doctors should be left alone to treat their patients, without any oversight. Yea--try finding a ethics, doctor. I do know they exist.)

US doctors are prescribing far more opioids that doctors in any other country. The US uses 99% of the world supply of hydrocodone, for example.

The opioid crisis is far worse in the US than in any other country.

> I don't think it's a coincidence that heterocyclic/tricyclic anti-depressants have come under extreme scrutiny. Basically--do they even work. Oh yea, that double blind study, in India, proved they work 62% over a huge Placebo response? Meaning 6 patients answered three positive questing, more that the control group, on that poorly worded psychological test.

SSRIs are good at treating depression if you actually have depression. (something like 60% efficacy) If you don't have depression they don't work at all. The lack of efficacy of SSRIs is just US doctors again overdiagnosing and overtreating.

The theme is US healthcare is not very good for very many people..

> There are studies, done in nursing homes, that state that patients on opioids can stay on tge same dose of opioids for years, and don't feel the need go up their dose.)

Do you have a source? Because all the studies I've seen show that long term use of opioids causes tolerance, and doesn't work to treat pain.

Re: over prescribing antidepressants (and various other medications), I think there is a real problem in America with getting an accurate diagnosis in the first place, which contributes to the overprescription problem. Also, most people are limited to a very small slice of office time, and I imagine that makes an accurate diagnosis difficult, too. In addition, American culture reinforces individualism, and tends to be isolating relative to many other cultures, which, I'm sure, contributes to the problem.

This all just reinforces your larger point that US healthcare is not very good for very many people. It's great if you have the money (or insurance) to see whoever you need to, but not so good if you don't.

> The US uses 99% of the world supply of hydrocodone, for example.

That's a very misleading statistic. It's because most everywhere else in the world doesn't prescribe it... they typically give smaller doses of _stronger_ opioids.

> if no one is selling.

That's not a realistic scenario though.

The most recent crisis is due to overprescription, yes, but that didn't mean that e.g. heroin wasn't a problem before.

> So you say, well in that case someone will make them dirty and available for a price. Punish the illegal seller and prosecute all suppliers who knowingly sold to someone not registered. Prosecute any and all corruption related to making and distributing the product illegally.

Which is exactly what we know from experience has never worked. Why do you think you could make it work?

The outcome is to drive up prices until it becomes sufficiently profitable for sufficiently brutal syndicates to take on production and distribution.

How do you think we ended up with the amount of death and misery the drugs trade causes in the first place?

> Punish the illegal seller and prosecute all suppliers who knowingly sold to someone not registered. Prosecute any and all corruption related to making and distributing the product illegally.

So, in other words, keep failing in exactly the same way as we're failing right now?

Nearly everyone dying from legal opiates is because they're mixing them with heroin, which is often cut with a depressant like fentanyl. Heroin is illegal, and fentanyl is illegal for all intents and purposes to the average person. So maybe we should fix our wide spread and nearly half a century problem with heroin by making it illegal. Then no one will ever use it and it won't be available to anyone ever again.

You just can't get around the evidence that making drugs illegal doesn't make them unavailable and doesn't reduce the number of people who use them. It just makes it more dangerous to the addicts and funds cartels and gangs.

But even with legal distribution you're going to want to have limits - no selling to children, for example.

That's easy enough. We do the same thing with tobacco, and look - there are no violent gangs killing people to defend their tiny slice of the black-market tobacco market.

"Help the addict but punish the dealer" is the Portugal drug policy though, and it's proven effective enough.

It's proven a lot better than what went before, certainly.

On the other hand, would we want to see Cocaine and Heroin marketed to young audiences in the same way Cigars are?

I don't understand - why would cheap/free drugs prevent gun battles, car break ins or OD'ing?

As far as I'm aware, junkies still need money to eat/sleep/drink and very few have a reliable source of income. All gun battles aren't over drugs, and would still occur. And not all overdoses are caused by tainted drugs.

Give them free drugs.

It's overall cheaper. It's safer for him and you. Reduces crime, which saves money on police.

And if drugs are cheap to most, and free to some, there's no huge profit to be made by illegally selling them. Thus, no gun fights over distribution spots on the streets.

The US does this now if you meet maximum income requirements.

The problem is the people with free drugs selling them to people that cannot obtain them free.

>> I don't understand - why would cheap/free drugs prevent gun battles

No profit to fight over

>> car break ins

No need to find hundreds of dollars a day to support the habit

>> or OD'ing?

Known quantities of known substances can help people avoid OD from either the wrong thing (fentanyl lately) or unexpected purity.

>> As far as I'm aware, junkies still need money to eat/sleep/drink and very few have a reliable source of income.

You only need a few bucks a day to eat/sleep/drink, you need potentially hundreds for your habit at present. Given an easy, cheap supply many will be able to hold down a regular job.

>> All gun battles aren't over drugs, and would still occur.

But the ones over drug money would stop, drugs are a major source of gang funding.

>> And not all overdoses are caused by tainted drugs.

No, but a hell of a lot are.

people gamble their money away and its plenty legal. The free market won't solve everything.

I also have a bit of a hard time imagining that someone having even easier access to, say, meth will thus be able to hold onto a job more easily. Personally I can't show up drunk to work.

Though I agree with things like gang violence, I do worry about the effects on public health. Cigarettes and alcohol mess up society a lot already

I'm not claiming it's going to be 100% solution, only that it would be much better, and cut out some of the profit motives at the gang level, and need for vast amounts of cash at the addict level.

>> I also have a bit of a hard time imagining that someone having even easier access to, say, meth will thus be able to hold onto a job more easily. Personally I can't show up drunk to work

Me neither. And I honestly don't know how this stuff might apply to a substance like meth.

I know that studies tend to show that when opiate addicts are given easy and cheap/free access to maintenance doses and counselling, they have a much easier time returning to something like a normal life, and many can hold down jobs while either continuing the maintenance indefinitely or slowly tapering. The constant search for money and the insecurity about the next dose both make the effects of the addiction on their lives much, much worse. And it's not like heroin is all that expensive to make.

This isn't, as I said above, necessarily an argument for a totally free market in heroin, but it is to show that a different approach may reduce the harm to the individual and reduce the harm done to society by both those individuals and the black market profit-making organisation above them. Not to mention the hell that gets rained on producer-countries.

>> Cigarettes and alcohol mess up society a lot already

Objectively, scientifically, these are two of the worst and most harmful drugs we know of.

That's a strange argument. Alcohol is a drug sold in the open pretty much everywhere.

You still see plenty alcoholists unable to keep a job, stealing things, fighting and even dying from their habit. It's almost as if easily accessible drugs doesn't fix the underlying problem here.

Alcohol is addictive and toxic. Yes, we do have alcoholics all over the place. Few are dead.or dying because of methanol poisoning, and few need to steal hundreds of dollars a day for a fix.

It's not really a very strange argument, particularly when it comes to opiates - it's a pretty well evidenced argument. Those with access to cheap or free maintenance doses have a better recovery rate, and a better rate of being able to re-enter prodictive society.

But alcohol addiction of itself is not a crime.

Sure: being drunk in various contexts may be, and can be a serious crime (drink driving, certain commercial operators expecially). But being in possession of alcohol, drinking it in your home, sharing it with friends (provided above legal age and not driving): not a crime.

You've got the fundamental problem of addiction, for those who are addicted (many are, many are not). But you aren't layering on the additional crime of criminalisation.

That's great but the original comment implied that all of the above would stop. My comment refuted it, your comment is agreeing - in that it wouldn't stop it but may reduce it.

If you imagine a world where alcohol is illegal and replace every instance of drugs in your comment with alcohol, I think you could begin to understand how legalizing the distribution of drugs - just like alcohol - would solve a lot of problems.

How often do you hear about gun battles over alcohol?

You'd also need to ban drug advertisements.

As someone strongly in favor of complete legalization across the board... I totally agree. And we have an example of this in (most of) the US with tobacco advertising.

Agreed. I hope it is a turning point too.

Now I wish we could have a national dialog about alcohol in this country.

Drugs are not health problem, the life is a health problem. Drug usage not= addiction or toxicomania, as alkohol usage is not necessarily cause health problems. There is a wide range of alcohol users, from sometimes a glass of wine to hardcore alcoholism. The humans are the problems, not the drugs. Drugs could be good or bad, depend on the usage.

Your comment completely misinterprets the subject of this article and the parent comment.

The argument isn't about the differentiation between "life" and "health". It's about how to deal with addiction -- using the medical / mental heath systems or the criminal incarceration systems.

I suspect you aren't a native English speaker, but perhaps you shouldn't be so critical/pedantic of the English of other commenters.

enabling medical issues is a criminal problem, prohibition or not.

Depends on your goal. If it's to reduce mortality, yes, decriminalize is good. But it will increase usage.

>But it will increase usage.

Not necessarily. When people really want something they will eventually find a way to get it anyway, it's not because you criminalize it that its usage drops. Just like IP infringement has not significantly dropped since they can put people in jail for it.

Well, barriers to entry matter. If you're craving a drug and it's sold in a convenient store around the corner, you might purchase it more frequently than if you had to buy it from potentially dangerous people in a seedy part of town. That said, as with any bad habit I'm sure usage would still decrease over time for most individuals as they mature or if healthier alternatives are readily available.

But also, people who have addictions wouldn't be considered criminals so they wouldn't be so reluctant to get help.

Being high is not illegal; Being in possession is

Barrier to exit matters as well.

When you buy it from dangerous people, you have to be in contact with dangerous people. It gives dangerous people leverage against you and people who care about you.

There is no 'danger' from 'not buying stuff from your dealer' anymore.

I see you've never dealt with a dealer before.

I've known many a dealer in my lifetime, and a distant family member who spent some time incarcerated for 'high level' activity, who gives me long tales of how the business works as well.

Dealers don't assault, endanger or attack random customers who just stop buying.

That's totally absurd, and that someone would suggest it - indicates that they are getting their information from Netflix/Hollywood films or something, not reality.

The vast majority of dealers are actually fairly normal people anyhow.

Well exuse me, I didn't know i was talking to a renneissance man. Addicts wheel and deal with each other, rack up debts to eachother, steal from one another. Some of them buy wholesale from larger distributors, usually with credit, to be repaid with interest or else. They rob, assault, rape and kill eachother over this stuff. I wish i was making this up.

Doctors in emergency rooms usually have instructions to confiscate any illegal drugs they discover on OD-patients, but are faced with the very real dilemma of leaving the patient at their creditors mercy. This can cause real harm (as in "First do no harm") to the patient and their prospects of recovery or harm reduction.

If you don't pay your dealer, that will cause pain, and possibly violence.

But nobody is 'going after' someone who just decided to stop smoking something.

Maybe if that someone was just smoking pot and otherwise paid taxes. This particular group of drug users are not the central point of concern of the UN Special Assembly, even though its part of the wider problem. They are not dying in the streets and they are not socially marginalized. Allthough (anecdotally) i've known several fumb pot-smoking ducks who thought they could finance their proclivity through distribution and wound up several thousand dollars in debt to people who take names and chew bubble-gum.

That can be anybody. Your old grandma, to this beautifull lady, or more common that guy in the corner, but not only "dangerous people" otherwise nobody will buy it.

If you tell people they can't skip in a certain lane on the sidewalk they will skip in that certain lane. There will always be people who just want to cross the line because the lines existence makes them curious or "rebellious". It's like a psychological balance for some people. Being told "no" really makes some people want something.

The counter of this is why underage drinking is higher in the US than elsewhere. Society made it a taboo and that attracts people. In countries with lower age limits there's less underage drinking. The culture itself doesn't see it as such a big deal and there's no pent up against.

> If you're craving a drug and it's sold in a convenient store around the corner

But it goes with greater awareness of the risks as well, and once it's in the public, you can expect a lot more discussion about its usage rather than a too simple "it's bad" attitude.

>If you're craving a drug and it's sold in a convenient store around the corner

Decriminalization means it's not illegal to possess, not that it's legal to sell. An important distinction in these sorts of discussions.

Shouldn't it, though? Otherwise you still have the crime and violence associated with drug use. It's certainly better than having possession also criminalized, but is it good enough? I'm not so sure.

I would suggest that maybe it's ok to continue to criminalize the sale of the more dangerous stuff, say of Schedule I drugs, but... well, marijuana is still on the Sched I list, so it's not like that list is particular scientifically rigorous.

I know this is an older article, but the Portuguese found that in practice, lifetime usage rates actually decreased following decriminalisation of most narcotics: http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,0...

"Not necessarily. When people really want something they will eventually find a way to get it anyway,"

No, not true at all.

Supply and Demand.

The 'cost' of doing drugs in society right now is pretty dam high. Social stigma, the possibility of going to jail, various professional licences lost.

The 'free market price' of synthetic heroin and other drugs would be as cheap as sugar. Walk down to the local store and buy 1Kg of meth for $20. Jesus no.

People are really un-pragmatic about this issue.

I've had my exposure to it: a friend OD'd while in SF, another friend drug related suicide, and a third friend just fell in to a 'crack whole' for 20 years and now he lives full time in a clinic. Another - friend of a friend - has a 'weed' addiction (I know it's not common, but it exists) and he lives in a home as well.

These people were ruined long before they ever passed away or went into a home.

Selling crack or opioids in the corner store would instantly yield a massive public health crises.

'Legal' drugs - i.e. prescription drugs are already a major, major driver of the problem.

Here in Canada - doctors are not required to give out the 'absolute minimum' of opioids after operations etc. You don't get 'a bottle' with 'refills' - you get like 3 pills.

Why? Because there was a public healthcare crises developing even with legal substances.

That's how strict they need to be, because that's what's on the line.

If 'legal drugs' did not cause problems, then I suggest the massive amount of 'doctor shopping' and 'fake prescriptions' all over the US would not be resulting in serious problems, but they are.

It's just one of those things - some people can handle their drugs - most people can't and fall down the slippery slide.

Not saying that you are wrong, but I don't think you are right neither, it's a complicated issue.

Addicts will pay, so, the price it's not a big influence in they taking drugs. It's a big influence in what kind of life they have. There are cases of rich functional addicts.

Maybe, cheaper drugs would create more addicts, but we have the example of alcohol and weed in some places to examine. It's not so clear this is the case.

Legal drugs doesn't mean, necessarily, socially accepted drugs. I think that makes a big difference.

> The 'cost' of doing drugs in society right now is pretty dam high. Social stigma, the possibility of going to jail, various professional licences lost.

Is it? I've never heard of anyone who wanted to try drugs and was unable to get them. Maybe it's different in the US, but in Europe, you can always find a supplier.

I know that I could find a supplier of marijuana if I wanted. I'd just need to walk 100m down the street and ask the school kids hanging around in the park. Easy.

But I also know that I would be risking various legal and social consequences. A conviction for possession of drugs would affect my employment options, it would affect my travel options (visa forms often ask about such convictions), it may cause issues in the future if I ever got into a custody battle for my kids.

Given all of that, I have no plans to walk down the street and buy some weed from my friends' kids.

But I do have a collection of cigars in my house which I enjoy on occasion.

If it were possible to buy marijuana in the same way I can buy cigars, with the same legality, for a comparable price, then I might do so.

Now, I don't really see why society should care if I were to substitute some of my tobacco consumption with marijuana consumption, but there's a reasonable probability that this would be one of the outcomes if marijuana were totally legalised.

Cannabis is already completely legal in a number of US States. In Portland, Oregon there is practically an embarrassment of retailers. Further, one can buy a pen-sized vaporizer which contains concentrated cannabis resins in a variety of fruity flavors, and enjoy your habit pretty much anywhere in public. So far, I don't get the impression that legalization has affected the society here much. It doesn't really rise above the background levels of weirdness here, anyhow. I believe that most other instances of cannabis legalization have been similarly non-newsworthy.

And on the subject of drug availability, I'm aware of a few remote Alaskan towns where it's difficult to obtain drugs. I'm sure that there is some more developed and less isolated region of the world where it is also difficult to get such things, but that's probably not the common case. There is a global demand for such things, and there's only so much you can do to restrict the supply. Regardless, people will still find ways to get high. In the Alaskan towns I mention, bored teens will 'huff' paint fumes instead. There's not really a winning situation there; we can only minimize harm.

Legalising drugs != Making them cheap as chips on every high street. We can legalize drugs while applying significant barriers to entry such as high taxes, regulated distribution, user registration, medical oversight, etc and still suck the profits out of the illegal market. This has been done already and it works.

Criminalising everything to do with drugs has utterly failed. That's just a flat out fact, the huge damage done to your friends demonstrates this. The damage to society has been staggering, not just the effects of the drugs themselves but the criminalisation of huge swathes of the population.

It's time to try something different.

"and still suck the profits out of the illegal market. "

Not really.

If you create a big series of regulations and taxes around drugs - then there will still be a huge secondary, black market.

The 'war on drugs' will therefore continue - even as you 'legalize' drugs. Double whammy.

Take cigarettes - a much milder health concern:

"the total U.S. tobacco market represented by illicit sales has grown in recent years and is now between 8.5 percent and 21 percent." [1]

So now you have to 'fight a war on drugs' - and deal with the massive health-care crisis from the considerably more people who well get hooked on opioids, barbiturates etc..

[1] http://sites.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/claj/us_illicit_to...

I am also wary of the mass legalization of illicit drugs, mainly because of the already huge problem my states has with opiates. I think it's a good goal, but should I really believe that the "regulated" decriminalized drug market is going to be that much better than the already heavily regulated prescription drug market? Maybe once the US can get it together with it's painkiller problem I'd be more inclined to believe in total decriminalization. I would like to see how a system like Portugal's works with opiates in US before I'd hop on board for the whole shebang. However, it seems unlikely to happen since it's already hard enough to get tax payers to sport for Narcan let alone the drugs themselves.

Neither legalisation with regulation, or the current system of blanket criminalization is going to solve the problem of dangerous narcotics. These drugs bare here to stay. The failure of the war on drugs, which was supposed to solve the drugs problem, proves that.

So given that eliminating drugs completely has utterly and comprehensively failed, at huge financial and social cost, and given that legalization and regulation has proven to be effective time and time again, the question is which approach is best at managing the damage these drugs do and protecting individuals and society?

>If you create a big series of regulations and taxes around drugs - then there will still be a huge secondary, black market.

The experience in places where this has been tried is that the supply in the black market reduces and prices significantly increase. So yes, the evidence is that legalization does a better job of restricting black market access than blanket criminalization.

Note that having a legal market doesn't suddenly mean the police stop busting drugs gangs. What it means is that drugs gangs not only have to face exactly the same law enforcement crackdown they already have, but also have to compete with legal, medically regulated access to drugs. It's a double-whammy for them.

> If you create a big series of regulations and taxes around drugs - then there will still be a huge secondary, black market.

this point is under appreciated. i see new taxes and regulations spring up on legalized cannabis in California. and, just like with the high taxes on a pack of tobacco cigarettes, some of the market goes underground. (except, with cannabis, it hasn't had time to fully emerge from the underground in the first place!)

Yes, we should make people suffer, cause "Moral Panic" reasons.

I really hope you have to go through the tremendously painful surgery, and get those "3 pills".

It's true that at the margin, increasing supply and making it easier to obtain drugs will lower the price, and cause some number of users to try drugs that didn't before.

Another feasible description of the world is that this marginal effect is very small, and almost everyone who wants to do drugs does already.

We don't need to speculate on how significant these factors are; we can look at places like Portugal that fully decriminalized drugs, and extrapolate from there.

> It's just one of those things - some people can handle their drugs - most people can't and fall down the slippery slide.

I sympathize with your point about losing friends to drugs; however I'd suggest that "most" isn't the right quantifier to describe the proportion of individuals that "fall down the slippery side". Some people are susceptible to mental health issues, and drugs can trigger episodes that might not otherwise happen. But the harms those individuals would experience from a general increase in prevalence of drug use are dwarfed by the harms that are currently inflicted on the drug users who do not abuse or otherwise have problems with drugs.

(And note that if we didn't spend as much money incarcerating drug users, we'd have a lot more money available for helping individuals with mental health/addiction problems.)

While would be nice to wave a wand and do away with all of the harms discussed here, the current drug policy proves that attempting to reduce drug usage through prohibition adds more harm elsewhere in the system than the harms that it attempts to prevent.

The point being when you decriminalize it becomes accessible both to those who "really want" it and those who just would be curious to try it.

When the United States criminalized alcohol, usage went up.

Citation needed. First that seems incredibly hard to measure. Second I doubt many people tried that hard to measure. And third, access to alcohol during prohibition was never reduced by much. It just created a bunch of gangsters and violence.

It is hard to measure, but yes, people did try, both at the time and in more recent eras. To some degree the end of the first World War was a confounding factor, but the bulk of the sources I've seen support the parent's claims. The real effect of Prohibition was to change the quality of the alcohol consumed, for the worse (and even more unfortunately, one of the darker episodes of Prohibition involved the US Government deliberately poisoning alcohol). So, a quick search pulled up this[0] as a reference, but I'm sure that you can follow your interests to other results as you deem meet.

[0] http://www.druglibrary.org/prohibitionresults1.htm

That doesn't seem to be the case per NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibiti...

What's better than reduction of mortality?

OK. Show your work. There are examples of decriminalization in different nations and regions. Where's the evidence?

The most notorious large-scale, well studied example of complete decriminalization, Portugal, shows the opposite to be true[0].

[0] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/portugal-decr...

That's not true. Usage increased[0,1].

- Reported lifetime use of "all illicit drugs" increased from 7.8% to 12%, lifetime use of cannabis increased from 7.6% to 11.7%, cocaine use more than doubled, from 0.9% to 1.9%, ecstasy nearly doubled from 0.7% to 1.3%, and heroin increased from 0.7% to 1.1%

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110725093536/http://www.idt.pt...

Lifetime usage is a different metric than "repeated usage", people can be more curious about it and try but not necessarily stick to using them. Even more when you have policies in place for education and harm reduction.

You're right[0] but it looks like it depends on age group[1,2].

[0] https://kek.gg/i/6vgYNF.png

[1] https://kek.gg/i/7-w6PD.png

[2] https://kek.gg/i/3Jn4G6.png

> people can be more curious about it and try but not necessarily stick to using them

Yeah, it's not like they are addictive or anything.

Addiction isn't binary. Serious addiction takes long periods of sustained use. Source: I have done a lot of drugs.

Addiction isn't that simple either. Some people become addicted rapidly, others not so much. I've known people that quickly fell down the rabbit hole, others that just quit one day and never looked back, and others who have replaced one addiction for another, sometimes for the better, other times for the worst.

That only shows more people trying drugs out, it doesn't show a total drugs consumed amount (by weight/dosage or similar volume metrics) increase.

Does "lifetime use" mean "percentage of people who ever tried it"? If so, I can totally see that. When stuff is legal, more people are going to try it.

However, using it once or a few times is nowhere near being addicted. And all the other bullet points in your source [0] look pretty great:

- Increased uptake of treatment

- Reduction in new HIV diagnoses amongst drug users

- Reduction in drug related deaths

- Drug use among adolescents (13-15 yrs) and "problematic" users declined

- Decreased street value of most illicit drugs, some significantly

'lifetime use' could have also increased due to people not being afraid to admit past use after decriminalization. Was there a control for that?

The percentage of the population using illegal drugs has stayed nearly constant since the war on drugs began. In times of lax enforcement and in times of heavy enforcement.

Why does it matter if usage is increased?

There are often negative consequences for society when someone becomes a drug addict. There are the costs to society at the macro level. And, of course, there's the devastation suffered by families.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intervention_(TV_series)

Most negative consequences are caused by society and how the drug addict is treated, not by the drugs themselves.

Two logical fallacies; First, "use" does not equate to addiction by any means. The vast majority of people who try "addictive" drugs do not proceed to addiction or even regular use. Second, the costs to society are predominantly those imposed by society. The violence of the drug trade, the lives ruined by a drug arrest or conviction, the families broken up by incarceration of young men are all self-inflicted by society. Just having to deal with the ravages of addiction would be a welcome relief from all those things.

> Drugs are a health problem, not a criminal problem.

Well, I would say they are both.

They are a health problem because of the addiction factors. They are a criminal problem because of what people are willing to do to get drugs when they run out of money.

Using that logic, food is a criminal problem.

So you are saying we should treat drug addicts like we treat hunger - by having "drug kitchens" where addicts can come to get a free fix and by building up huge industries to mass produce drugs so they are much more accessible and affordable to addicts? That seems insane.

You just described a methadone clinic.

Yes, they exist. Yes, some communities are using them to combat opiate addiction.

Almost every post about drugs on HN has the obligatory bit about Nixon starting the war on drugs. It's like a Shibboleth or something.

Nixon probably tried to make political hay out of it sure, but the war against intoxicants has been going on probably since people started using intoxicants. No shortage of earlier historical examples. At most Nixon is a chapter in the ongoing saga. So please, for all that is holy, stop with this repetitive "Nixon started" thing. Just because people might think Nixon is a bad guy doesn't give the point about drugs any more validity.

My understanding is that there's the war on drugs and then there's the War on Drugs, and the latter is what is (correctly?) attributed to Nixon, even when it is not bothered to be capitalized.

Another context for the same words:

Vietnam could be considered the war on drugs.

If what I've read is correct, US soldiers were given amphetamine pills "like candy".

They were just following the tradition set by the Germans in WW2: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/pilot...

Good point, don't know how I forgot that.

I'm fairly convinced Hitler was on the gear too.

Most probably yes, and also on cocaine as his fellow Goring. These things were considered not harmful and you could buy it anywhere.

Amphetamines were still used in 60s as enhancers for mountaineering for example. Most of traditional expeditions to 8000m peaks had the top party high on this, somehow balancing the rush and mental strength it presumably gave with existing in total exhaustion for days and pushing further up. One example out of many is Hermann Buhl climbing Nanga Parbat, solo, hallucinating, as a first ever ascent of the killer mountain.

People like Messner refused to use these, championing clean 'alpine' ascents, without support, just men with their skills and mental+physical strength facing mountains.

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Morell

A huge proportion of US soldiers (20% according to some sources) also used heroin while in Vietnam, giving rise to one of the more interesting studies of addiction related to heroin [1] that also taught us a great deal about how to kick addictions and change behaviors (the short of it being that a change of environment makes breaking habits far easier)

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/02/14443179...

It really shouldn't be a surprise that if someone's life is so shitty that they feel they need to do Heroin to escape it, then putting them through a grueling recovery process and then sending them back to their shitty life with no prospects is tremendously counterproductive.

And yet it apparently amazingly is still surprising to a lot of people.

I think the point is that, while yes the naming of the 'War on Drugs' is fairly attributed to Nixon, almost none of the significantly harmful policies we've come to associate with it were actually enacted on his watch - i.e. things like three strike laws or mandatory minimum sentencing or drug raids conducted by SWAT teams. It's really Reagan who should get the "credit" for most of that. And Clinton kept things trending in the same direction, to be fair.

In support of this I'll point out that Prohibition predates Nixon's presidency by 50 years.

The righteous have been lording it over the morally condemned since time immemorial.

The bit about Nixon is obligatory for a good reason. It sidesteps a lot of historical nuances but is factually correct and underpins the key issue which emerges when people discuss drugs: people imagine that drugs are criminalized for good reasons while in fact the heavy handed judicial approach hurts taxpayers and it hurts the people needing help by stigmatizing them.

The criminal process does not help public health outcomes.

There is this fallacy among even smart people that if a thing has legislation controlling it must be well thought out and they can stop analyzing it.

The Nixon bit is a strong reminder that sometimes things are like they are for some obscure political reason rather than common sense. Daylights saving time used in many countries is a similar weird political vestige.

There is a strong moral sentiment about drugs in some segments of population. There are good reasons to fear substance abuse. But, churches also have good political reasons to fear them. If people can get raptured sitting at home with a group of friends what purpose would a conregation serve then?

Therefore, from churches perspective it's politically expedient to stigmatize drug use as morally corrupt.

Confusing drugs as morally corrupt adds to the odd ball mix of criminalization.

Addiction is never good, mmkay. People need help to fight it. Social networks are among the most important bits of this help. That's why shaming and stigmatization of addicts is one of the cruelest and counter productive things a society can do.

My mother perished of alcohol abuse recently. While I don't blame anyone, the stigmatization of society did not help.

Its the war of mom & dads state sponsored sock-puppets waged against chemical induced self-destruction.

It would be really interesting to have a panel where both sides could express there interests, trying to find a compromise.

> Shibboleth

I don't know what that is. Should I?

From https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shibboleth :

1. A word, especially seen as a test, to distinguish someone as belonging to a particular nation, class, profession etc.

2. A common or longstanding belief, custom, or catchphrase associated with a particular group, especially one with little current meaning or truth.

Thanks!

Very clever joke?

Just irony it seems.

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