Comment by yznovyak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yznovyak | Hacker News Reader

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> Why do you think this approach hasn't worked so far?

Because you are not actually jailing people, duh. GP has written about 3 stalls being used by drug addicts at the same time! Where the fuck is police watching? Drugs are ridiculously easy to come by, hence why I believe the police isn't doing it's job.

> Do you think if we only arrested more drug users the war on drugs would finally be over?

Yes. Currently USA is doing absolute jack shit and wondering why the war on drugs is being lost. It seems that everyone but the police knows about dozen of celebrities who are doing drugs on an industrial scale. There are people whose identity and fame are revolving around drugs, for example Snoop Dogg, why the fuck he's not in jail already? The guy was smoking lifetime sentence worth weed per week way before it was decriminalized. I'm not going to believe that you guys are actually having war on drugs until you actually start jailing high profile public drug users.

Strict and actual enforcement of drug laws works. Period. Singapore and Japan are effectively drug free. Off top of my head more recent examples are Georgia (the country) and Davao city, which have eradicated rampant drug use in matter of years.

For the record: I have absolutely nothing against the drugs and am 100% for legalizing majority of drugs. But I'm very against saying that US is actually doing something about the drugs -- it's like hearing a fat kid who is eating a cake right fucking now claiming that he's on a diet and has been dieting for a long while and the fact that he is still fat proves that diets don't work.

As someone who lives in Central Asia (with all the corruption in our region, our drug enforcement is very stiff) and someone who visited San Francisco and Seattle several times I certainly agree with you. US government (CIA) in fact was actively spreading drugs in US in 1970s. So you should not expect consistency in enforcement of drug laws in the country. US also has a fair amount of corruption, it is not Europe after all.

> Because you are not actually jailing people, duh.

The United States has 2 million prisoners. 6 million people are under supervision of other phases of the "criminal justice system." This is the largest imprisonment regime in the history of the planet in sheer numbers, and the largest present today in sheer numbers or per capita. How many do you propose jailing?

> Snoop Dogg, why the fuck he's not in jail already

The answer to this is simple: the government does not have the power to do this and yet continue stay in power (this is sometimes called "political capital"). Cannabis prohibition has never enjoyed anywhere near consensus support among Americans, and hasn't even enjoyed majority support for a decade now. Jailing Snoop Dogg for smoking cannabis will result in nothing short of a general strike (or worse) among young people, especially young people of color.

It is not an exaggeration to say that an event of this magnitude, conducted in the public eye against an articulate public figure, effectively turning that person into a political prisoner, is likely to result in the total collapse of the US political system.

As you rightly point out, the government enforces the law with a great deal of "discretion", sometimes carefully choosing to tread in places that won't result in this sort of revolt. The drug war is already on a razor's edge. And I think that the state has already shown a willingness to imprison (in 13th amendment terms, to enslave) a huge mass of Americans.

The reason that more is not done is because it is politically impossible.

> Strict and actual enforcement of drug laws works. Period.

Your use of the sentence "Period" indicates to me that you don't actually take your own position particularly seriously.

And you are unambiguously incorrect on this point, at least if you take every academic expert seriously.

Moreover, you seem to be under- and mis-informed about the facts surrounding drug policy, and this appears to be hampering your argument. If you are interested in gaining knowledge in this area, I suggest Mike Gray's book, Drug Crazy, in which he very convincingly shows the futility of prohibition in a world historical context. [0]

I think that Drug Crazy is a very effective refutation, made by someone who is a deeply compelling author, a lauded drug policy expert, and cannabis consumer, to the assertion that "Strict and actual enforcement of [drug prohibition] works."

> Singapore and Japan are effectively drug free.

I think that it has been reasonable to assume sincerity on your part until this statement. But now I'm not so sure. Do you really mean this? Are you just totally unaware of these reality of these societies?

First of all, declaring a particular political region "effectively drug free" requires that you first adopt a contrived definition of what a "drug" is. Both regions you have chosen have cultures that celebrate intoxication from alcohol, a drug whose toxicity profile is similar to heroin and withdrawal from which is a far more dire medical episode than withdrawal from heroin. Japan in particular embodies this phenomenon as much as any place on the planet.

So before we even talk about the actual prevalence of addiction in these societies - rates of which are extremely difficult to ascertain due in part to drug prohibition - we have to recognize that this ostensible achievement has come only by choosing to allow the vast majority of drugs, again including alcohol, which is perhaps the most intoxicating and debilitating drug among those widely consumed by humans, to remain legal and then handling the consequences of their unhindered consumption.

The fact that Singapore and Japan have purportedly reduced consumption of a tiny few drugs out of the pharmacopeia of thousands is not impressive, nor touted as a success by any serious drug policy expert.

> I'm very against saying that US is actually doing something about the drugs

Fine, I can understand this position. I think that you need to educate yourself on the history of political capital as it is consumed by prohibition, from the opium wars to wrangling over the Southern border of the USA today.

For this, I recommend Jim Gray's (unrelated to the other author I suggested) book [1] or Michelle Alexander's book [2].

If books are not your thing, let me know what kind of media you prefer to consume and I will dig some up for you.

0: http://drugcrazy.com/ 1: http://www.judgejimgray.com/whyourdruglawshavefailed.php 2: http://newjimcrow.com/

> How many do you propose jailing?

How many street shitters do you have? How many people do you have who are shooting heroin publicly on the train station? Starting with those sounds like a nobrainer to me.

> first adopt a contrived definition of what a "drug" is

Sure, my statement would be incorrect if you change the definition of words I'm choosing. But you very well know that in this context I've meant drugs that are defined by the UN as illegal: https://www.unodc.org/documents/scientific/Terminology_and_I...

Sorry, I don't understand how can you claim that drug prohibition doesn't work when you have countries where it in fact it does successfully work. Without resorting to redefining words, how do you explain Japan or Singapore? Is X prohibited in Japan? Yes. Is the prohibition enforced? Yes. How easy would it be to acquire X there? Very very hard. Did the prohibition work in this case? Yes. Substitute X with weed, LSD, or heroin, or your ILLEGAL drug of choice. If the prohibition can't possibly work, how do those academics explain that? Why is that prohibition of alcohol was successful in Kuwait? You'll probably argue with word "successful", but for the sake of argument lets count drunkards on the street or talk about drunk-driving related stats: there are effectively 0 of those. Do I agree with alcohol prohibition? Fuck no. Do I agree with drug prohibition? Fuck no too. Would prohibition always fail? No.

I haven't read the exact books you recommend, but I've read other books on this subject and frankly find their argument lacking. Way too often their authors cherry pick arguments.

One of the books on this topic was David Nutt's "Drugs Without the Hot Air". David Nutt is also proclaimed as world drug expert, but his book is riddled with huge amount of lies by omission. The one egregious example was him citing Kary Mullis (the Nobel laureate for inventing Polymerase Chain Reaction) saying that without LSD he couldn't have invented LSD. What Nutt forgets to mention is that Mullis is fucking lunatic who denies existence of AIDS, denies climate change, believes in astrology, sincerely describes his encounter with glowing green raccoon (The raccoon said: “Good evening, doctor.”). Like yo ... I'm not a doctor, but maybe this has something to do with copious amounts of LSD the guy consumed? If there is even a slight chance that Mullis' mental state was caused by the drugs maybe it was worth mentioning and not just cherry picking praise?

I was able to catch his lie just because I happened to known about Kary Mullis beforehand. So this example shows that David Nutt is, in fact, very biased (duh). What else did he lie about? Why should I trust him with his claims about something else?

I agree that Kuwait is a much better example. Now, look at what Kuwait (or Bahrain, currently considering similar laws) has had to sacrifice to achieve something more closely resembling general prohibition of psychoactive compounds (although it's note-worthy that opioids are legal in both countries with a prescription; I'll wager that they are widely used as a substitute for "recreational" drugs).

Do you want your country (or mine) to be like Kuwait or Bahrain? If you can agree that that's the sacrifice required to make prohibition "work" - is it worth it?

FWIW, this style of governance is probably not possible in the United States partly because armed resistance is trivial. So it might be a moot point for the purposes of considering the ramifications of genuine enforcement.

It sounds like you and I agree on the capricious enforcement paradigm inherent in US drug policy. What I think that you haven't explored is why it is this way. That's really the heart of the matter.

> I've meant drugs that are defined by the UN as illegal: https://www.unodc.org/documents/scientific/Terminology_and_I....

Yes, and those too are chosen for political purposes, to give the appearance of legitimacy to an argument that doesn't make sense in the real world.

> David Nutt is also proclaimed as world drug expert, but his book is riddled with huge amount of lies by omission.

Indeed. David Nutt is not the kind of "expert" I'm talking about. He is perhaps an expert in some of the "hard science" components of drug use and abuse (although even there, his activities have called his expertise into question). He is not an expert in matters of drug policy and the history of drug policy, as was made all too evident during his short stint in government.

If you want to read or hear convincing material from drug policy experts, look to Ethan Nadelmann, Kevin Zeese, Tom Angell, Irina Alexander, Rick Doblin, Jim Gray, Mike Gray (no relation), Michelle Alexander (no relation), etc. These people have committed their lives to researching the specific societal implications of various drug policies, and I think they make deeply convincing arguments rooted in fact and sound theory.

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