Crime in the pursuit of drug addiction exists, meth- and cocaine-induced paranoia exists. There is a public health problem mixed in there. Anyone who thinks they can disregard the public health issue really needs an alcoholic in the family.
Does that outweigh the whirlpool of violence that the War on Drugs has stirred up by its very existence? All the money funneled in to organized crime by the War on Drugs, enabling and incentivizing them to kill their rivals and corrupt the judicial and political system? All the people killed by police during drug raids? The decades of life wasted in prison by hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders where they are tortured, raped, killed, or groomed in to far more serious criminals? All the families broken up, devastating them emotionally and financially? All the children left to be raised by just one of the parents or made parentless when their parents are imprisoned or killed?
Crimes committed due to drug addiction are often committed in order to get money for the next fix. It's the illegality of drugs that keeps the prices so incredibly high that they're unaffordable to poor people. That need not be the case if they are made legal.
Cocaine paranoia is a medical issue, and it and other health issues related to drug use should be treated medically, not by throwing people in jail -- which doesn't work anyway. Drug use is rife in prison.
The War on Drugs is an abject failure that makes the failure of Prohibition pale in comparison.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-caravan/b...
We can still jail people actively distributing/producing highly addictive drugs, while at the same time giving mostly free choice and helping rather than harming (potential) users. Monitoring actual results in the society can affect the thresholds of what's done.
But that doesn't work, and leads to all the abuses and downsides of the War on Drugs, like encouraging and enabling organized crime, etc.
Alcohol and nicotine are some of the most addictive drugs out there, and yet we don't jail people for distributing or producing those.
Food is also highly addictive and there's a huge obesity epidemic in the US, and yet no one is suggesting imposing jail terms on the companies that make food or entice people to eat it.
Skydiving and other extreme sports are often described as highly addictive and are obviously dangerous, yet no one is trying to prohibit them. It's widely recognized that if people want to engage in those risky activities and other people want to provide them, it's a matter best left to the consenting adults engaging in those activities -- with perhaps some regulation to help make them as safe as possible.
They are regulated to an extent. You will get fined for selling to minors, for example. Same for smuggling cigarettes and alcohol. And for misleading advertisements and fake medical research. I don't think those fines go far enough.
> Skydiving and other extreme sports are often described as highly addictive and are obviously dangerous, yet no one is trying to prohibit them.
I'm not sure "highly addictive" works here. Do you have withdrawal symptoms if you stop? Does it make you unable to function and think clearly for a while? Is your judgement affected enough that you'd harm yourself or someone else to participate in the sport again? This is a "fun hobby" that will make you sad if you don't do it again, not addiction.
Legalization does not mean lack of any regulation. Alcohol and nicotine, which are legal, are regulated, as you point out. So are prescription (and even non-prescription) drugs. I am not opposed to forbidding sale of legal drugs to minors, though it's not perfectly clear cut (the age limit is particularly tricky to set, and often minors manage to get their hands on alcohol, nicotine, and other drugs anyway).
"Do you have withdrawal symptoms if you stop [skydiving]?"
Actually, I have read of people who did feel like their depression was alleviated through participation in extreme sports like skydiving,[1] and who feel depressed if they don't go again for extended periods of time. So I think a psychological addiction (much like addiction to food where similar effects are seen) can apply.
"Does it make you unable to function and think clearly for a while? Is your judgement affected enough that you'd harm yourself or someone else to participate in the sport again?"
Depression can affect your thought process, and can lead to harm of self or others, so yes, I think those are real risks of quitting for some people who get relief from depression through participation in extreme sports (or other perfectly legal activities which either help them to cope or alleviate their depression).
[1] - "Skydiving Cured My Depression" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837748
Heavy addiction: you have X problems, you escape via addiction, now you have X+addiction problems, you stop, you still have X+addiction+withdrawal.
Hobby: you have X problems, you find something that helps you with depression, you have X-1 problems, you stop, you have X problems again.
Most people would not even seriously consider making extreme sports illegal, despite their danger and potential addictiveness, but it's those very same properties of some illegal drugs that are most frequently cited as the primary reasons for making them illegal.
If those are honestly the main reasons that so many drugs are illegal, then why not make extreme sports illegal as well, for those very same reasons?
Nicotine alone is not actually that addictive. I use it as a nootropic and have not seen any signs of getting addicted. Yet years ago I struggled to give up smoking.
With pure nicotine I simply forget to use it for weeks at a time in spite of the large benefits I personally get from using it to aid hard thinking.
Some more here https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine
There are many other substances in tobacco smoke other than nicotine that seem to be far more addictive. Add on the reinforcement from the smell/taste and handling the cigarette and it is a different beast.
Did anyone imply in the slightest that it does? No one defended the War on Drugs. They suggested that some drug use poses a public health problem, and thus that zero regulation is inappropriate. To equate that with support for the War on Drugs is plainly dishonest.
As for the public health implications, there's probably way more effective ways of mitigating that than making them criminals. It's a range though, those that cause significant harm to others should certainly be taken out of the system. Alcoholics are frigging annoying, and highly disruptive, but many aren't actually violent criminals.
I don't think it's the drugs that are the problem, but the way people use (or rather abuse) them, and the conditions that drive people to abuse drugs.
Lots of social conditions are bound up in problems for which drugs alone are blamed. Too many people are poor, desperate, lonely, outcast, downtrodden, hopeless.
These and other social ills are what encourage drug addiction (and other types of addiction and destructive behavior), and they are the things that society will have to squarely face and overcome before they can effectively treat addiction.
Merely making drugs illegal hasn't and isn't going to work. Locking people up for seeking a way out of their misery hasn't and isn't going to work. Merely making drugs legal isn't going to work either, but at least it isn't making the problem worse or adding all sorts of other problems to it.
One day you're an addict, the next day you're an addict and shot by the police or in jail and your life is ruined and it's likely to get even worse once you're out. That doesn't help anyone.
Trump being the best example in the US, and other oligarchical systems in all other countr.
Money is the root.
Or as George Carlin puts it best:
Since we think certain people are up to no good anyway, drug laws let us put them away, without actually having to prove the bad things they've probably done. It's essentially an end run around "proof beyond a reasonable doubt."
Laws criminalizing concealed weapons follow a similar logic.
It’s completely backwards. You should be free to alter your cognition, but also held responsible for your actions.
Orthogonally, there are also many other mental health and non-mental health related public health issues we should continue to pursue, regardless of the current state of substance legalization.
Why set up the system to amortize the public cost of addiction over long periods in the form of hospital visits, lost productivity (both directly due to addiction and indirectly as a result of former criminals' difficulty rejoining the job market), public assistance, court costs, jail costs, and prison costs, rather than focus on rehab and breaking the addiction itself?
If you look at history, drugs were almost never criminalized because they posed a public health crisis - and when they arguably did (as in alcohol prohibition), criminalization created more problems than it solved. Usually the motivations had something to do with xenophobia, moral panic, or politics. Alcohol prohibition was fueled by general animosity towards immigrants (Irish) and a growing Catholic population, with a smattering of both moralism and public health concerns spearheaded by women's rights groups. Marijuana was criminalized largely due to xenophobia toward mexicans and black people. Crack carried harsher penalties than regular cocaine because black people used it. LSD was cracked down on to quell anti-war sentiment in the Vietnam era.
Talking like this frames the narrative and too many of us let these anti-american rhetorical tricks pass without calling it out.
The government has no right to tell me what I can and can't put in my body, whether that's lettuce, Devils lettuce, a cigar, or a soda... doesn't matter.
It's a matter of individual freedom.
Unless you were a child, woman, native, or a slave, right? It also helped to own land.
Come on, we can be against prohibition for practical reasons without resorting to pining for a history which never existed,
First of all, lets just state the fact that the principles of a government can be different from the reality of it. The two aren't mutually exclusive. It's as if by mentioning the worst affected groups you think you magically negate the foundational principles just because the implementation wasn't (and isn't) perfect. It's also not to say the system is theoretically perfect, because it's not, but to use such a logically weak strawman ("pining for a history which never existed") and not even expanding whatsoever is intellectually lazy at best.
"Come on, we can be against prohibition for practical reasons"
The foundational principles of American individualism is the greatest practical reason to be against prohibition. What the hell do you think enabled us to finally get rid of the shackles around those disaffected groups in the first place? It was the hard work that mostly Madison put into researching all the various forms of government, and the greatest political thinkers from around the world, that established a structure that although imperfect would be able to improve over time.
Before we continue this, my main question is whether you are American or not. I find that my approach to this subject needs variation for my friends across the pond. If you are, you need to brush up on your civics.
Other countries have banned slavery, and have enfranchised women, the poor, and people of colour many years before the United States did.
Those countries were not founded on any such principles, nor have they ever claimed that they were. How could they possibly achieve such progressive feats of emancipation?
It's possible to imagine that perhaps, the founding principles weren't of much help in this endeavor. In fact, there's a strong case to be made that none of these achievements had anything to do with the constitution, or the bill of rights, or anything else that the founding fathers wrote about, but did not actually implement - and everything to do with the zeitgeist of the times.
Yet there isn't the same moral stigma attached to overeating as there is to drug or alcohol addiction, and no one is suggesting throwing obese people in jail or raising the price of food so high that food addicts have to commit crimes in order to feed their addiction.
Obesity and alcoholism are seen as health issues, and treated accordingly. The same should be the case with drug addiction.
This results in a quasi-prohibition which has many of the same downsides as full-on prohibition, such as the enabling and funding of organized crime, people getting killed or thrown in jail, and other types of violence.
Though the profit margin for smuggled soft drinks is likely to remain too low for organized crime to bother getting involved, I'm not convinced it's the right way forward compared to voluntary, education- and health-based approaches.
On the other hand, I am in favor of the $0.10 charge for plastic and paper bags in California, where lots of people often bring their own reusable bags rather than pay the fee for a disposable bag. Perhaps a reasonable surcharge on soft drinks could make a difference to overall public health.
There have been plenty of studies showing poor and minorities get treated much harsher by the "justice" system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement#In_t...
A lot of states do restrict the vote for those on parole or probation, but once the supervision ends the vote is restored.
It is widely believed, and I think established by White House recordings, that Nixon established the War on Drugs to attack people he didn't like: Hippies and blacks.
I believe that in public affairs and politics, the way to evaluate and act is to look at the (expected) outcomes and to ignore all the rhetoric. First, the outcomes are what matters and there's not a high correlation with the claims made ahead of time. Second, politicians are sophisticated enough to know what the outcomes will be; I think it's reasonable to assume that they know what is going to happen.
It may be true, but it’s worth considering who the source is, their motivations, and why it took so long for the quote to come out.
Drugs are artificially highly priced due to their illegality. Legalizing drugs would drive down the price, removing a major motive for crime. People will still be addicts, but in my experience bums who have alcohol as a drug of choice manage to get by without engaging in muggings/robberies to feed their habit.
This view is supported by science. Research has shown that rats housed in isolation, or with stimulus deprived environments compulsively use cocaine when given the option, while rats housed with other rats in enriched environments use it sporadically.
We need to take a long hard look at our society.
We have the means to do all of these things and get much better value for society per dollar than we do now.