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Comment by louwrentius | Hacker News Reader

It boggles my mind how people use drugs and not realise that for the drugs they bought, a poor mexican person will have their face cut off while still alive.

Buy drugs, fund the cartels. Have mexican people killed.

It makes me wonder why life is so bad for so many that they need to use 'the hard stuff'.

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It boggles my mind that a poor Mexican person will have their face cut off because someone decided it should be illegal to grow a plant and consume it.

I agree

The poor Mexican person isn't getting their face cut off because of some person doing drugs. They're getting their face cut off because of the government's failure to accept that it can't win the war on drugs, and it's too proud to sue for peace in the form of legalization.

I'm all for that.

Can't both be true at the same time? Just because there are ill-advised legislations in effect doesn't mean that your responsibility as a consumer goes out the window.

That individual consumer stopping won't actually fix the problem though, it'll just remove from them any moral obligation to do anything to actually fix things under your framework.

You mean the same way that vegans never act against animal cruelty?

If you want to work against drug trafficking empires (by decriminalizing or otherwise) I'd say it makes perfect sense to also not give them your money.

Hmm, I think there's some confusion about my comment here. I'll use your reference to veganism as an example. Individual vegans can choose a diet which, for themselves, minimizes the harm caused by their choices. But at a larger-than-individual scale there are those who recognize that reducing meat consumption means addressing the reasons people eat meat, and that in turn means things like (but not limited to) developing meat alternative products that satiate people's cravings for meat. So, while veganism may be a good enough choice for yourself, it's unrealistic to not recognize the reasons why people don't choose it and to not keep those reasons in consideration when coming up with a strategy.

I'm not saying that the end user is blameless BUT responsibility comes with agency/power:

- the end user has no way to measure the exact impact of his/her actions. The government does.

- the end user does not have advice from PhD in chemistry, neurology, psychology, law, economy. The government does.

- the end user has no choice to buy from an ethical and legal source. The government can.

- the end user cannot publicly ask for help (or forgiveness) of any kind. The government would imprison him/her.

- the end user might be living a very harsh life and have little ability to stop using or not to start. The government does not help.

And how is life without an iPhone treating you?

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