The purpose of existing drug laws, especially marijuana, is to give police a reason to harass and discriminate against certain populations.
Japan is largely homogenous and has very harsh drug penalties:
Japan drug law among world’s toughest, personal possession attracts five-year jail https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-b...
Why Japan Is So Strict About Drugs https://kotaku.com/why-japan-is-so-strict-about-drugs-183328...
Drug Laws in Japan: You'd Better Have a Prescription https://www.tofugu.com/japan/drug-laws-in-japan/
Did all those countries also create those laws to harass certain populations?
I would concur much of the puritanism and authoritarianism around the world about drugs originates from the US, but hardly all of it.
More or less everyone I know has tried drugs (MJ, magic mushrooms, LSD) or does them on a regular basis, but I don't know anyone who's ever been arrested over it. What I'm saying is there doesn't seem to be (much) of a stigma against drugs, neither with the population, nor with the cops. Nevertheless, MJ is illegal, and the protests for legalization started soon after the ones in the US.
https://archive.attn.com/stories/1503/war-on-drugs-real-reas...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/real-reasons-marijuana-is-ban...
http://www.history.com/news/why-the-u-s-made-marijuana-illeg...
https://www.salon.com/2015/07/02/the_real_reason_marijuana_i... (though this one pretty much reiterates the attn article).
What about Russia? What about China? Etc... There is no value in these questions when they have no relation to the original statement being made.
Aside from that, drug prohibition has always been used to h arras people on a basis of their class background. The working and caring classes always take the main toll in prohibition.
Definitely some section of the population wanted to use this as a way to bully minorities but another section of the population was convinced "drugs are bad".
Either way if "hard on drugs" was a dog whistle to signal "hard on minorities" then politicians may realize saying "hard on drugs" will actually hurt their voter base far more than they realized. Maybe that will put an end to this kind of signalling/abuse.
Still, marijuana was given such disproportionate higher punishments largely because of it's adoption in black communities. No one thinks of alcohol as a narcotic or drug. The same was true before. But by lumping MJ in with heroin, they were able to convince people to think about them similarly. I recommend the propaganda film "Reefer Madness" for an example taken to the extreme, where science was discarded in favor of learning on people's existing moral apprehensions in order to get the desired ban.
I don't have a firm grasp on the history of prohibition, but my understanding is that at least there, at the time there was a real, clear drinking problem among the US population.
I’m against harsh drug laws because I think they’re create a lot of problems in criminal justice and are abused against Black communities.
There is a reason people use all of these and for example marijuana is not really more dangerous.
If you are on welfare should you be prohibited from drinking alcohol? What about eating low nutritional value fast foods?
Obesity and alcoholism is far more rampant than most drugs used in the war on drugs. In America ~40% of our population was obese in 2016 [0], ~25% of people drank >5 drinks in 1 day over the past year [1], >50% of America drinks coffee daily and of that group 50% report "severe head aches" that last 2 to 5 days when attempting to stop. Meanwhile cannabis usage is around ~12% of the population [3] and I've not been able to find unrefuted studies of it's negative effects while for obesity, alcoholism, and caffeine there's some compelling work out there linking these to interesting population statics.
It's medicine so it's not actually science or iron clad but from a risk & pervasiveness perspective do you think introducing legislation on these substances is warranted?
[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2018/021.pdf
[1] - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/alcohol.htm
[2] - https://healthresearchfunding.org/shocking-caffeine-addictio...
[3] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/284135/percentage-americans-smo...
> Obesity and alcoholism is far more rampant than most drugs used in the war on drugs.
since ... of course alcoholism is more rampant when i can just buy it legally in the supermarket. that is a nobrainer conclusion. same for nicotine. caffeine has so little impact in a drug-related conversation that i won't even bother going there. i dont think you do yourself any favour dragging it into this discussion.
problem with 'low nutritional value fast foods' is that eating is a necessity. you need your X calories a day. drugs (nicotine, alcohol, heroine, prescription drugs,...) on the other hand are purely optional (genuine medical reasons aside). so the process of consuming food can't be dropped similar to how you could just not drink alcohol. that leads to a complicated question as you need to substitute the low nutritional value fast foods with something more substantive. this leads you to evaluate the entire process of food consumption, from agriculture to purchasing decisions to prep work to marketing to food labelling etc.
> If you are on welfare should you be prohibited from drinking alcohol? What about eating low nutritional value fast foods?
because of the above i don't think those two things are comparable at all.
not sure i follow, what is your definition of highly available? if cocaine is highly available, how do you classify nicotine and/or alcohol?
> some small statistical probability of triggering a heart issues which is the most common cause of death - from a nationalized health cost perspective this is not negligible.
do you have a link to a writeup of sorts showing the damage on the national cost perspective (don't even care if it is health or any other associated cost). it just seems 'some small statistical probability' and 'not negligible' is borderline orthogonal. would be interesting if that is already non-negligible how much worse the real offenders are.
I'm not attempting to compare to them, I'd like to know how the person I was responding to feels about these things. I originally asked "What is your opinion of Alcohol, lower grade stimulates (Caffeine), and pre-processed unnatural addictive substances (pure sugar)?"
I'm not saying to do one thing or another, I'm attempting to ask what that specific person feels about other chemical substances that are in high demand which are also addictive and disproportionately consumed by lower income individuals.
Unfair comparison. Alcohol is legalized and freely available. Let's compare alcohol and drugs at times, when drugs were free to use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars .
I mean, park systems could be immoral in a society with a welfare system.
People might end up spending time they could use being productive at a job instead having picnics in the park, and they could spend more of their money on entrance and parking fees, and on unhealthy things like hot dogs, soda and funnel cakes.
Same thing with fields and stadiums. People could end up spending all their time and money on tickets, hot dogs, beer and gambling.
> That’s the basis for anti-drug attitudes in places like Sweden.
Sweden also has a notoriously abstinence-based and zero-tolerance drug policy that encourages the denial of real addiction problems and epidemics, and causes harm reduction efforts to be ineffectual[1].
[1] https://transformdrugs.org/drug-policy-in-sweden-a-repressiv...
Sure. But that's a big aspect of the argument, at least for me - lots of things are immoral, many of which are legal.
It is entirely possible to concede the point and still, for either public health or cost reasons, want to stop doing destructive, expensive things that don't actually reduce drug use, decrease property crime or violence, or dampen business for the cartels. (My views are different, just saying these are logical views people hold.)
Voters are the ones who need to make the connection. The politicians will follow.
Many on the left, particularly on social media, are quick to claim that supporting a particular policy is racist if the policy itself is racist, regardless of the reason an individual supports the policy.
My own personal view is that the intent of this definition and behavior is not to 'solve racism' but to stifle discussion and influence voters. The fact that this definition is seldom, if ever, applied to the war on drugs is confirmation of my view.
What I see instead, and is present in some of these threads, are offers of solutions that are ill-defined, untried, and even if effective do not have clear timelines for actually helping people; and very clearly will do nothing to help in the short term. In contrast, solutions that have worked in other places, have immediate effects, and are generally accepted as good ideas are vilified as harmful to minorities with no evidence provided.
The purpose is to provide a source of labor for for-profit prisons, to legally extort money from an activity or activities that largely harm no one, and to provide something for the police to actively do.
If police were to enforce what most people consider the "important" laws, their death rate would go through the roof, because they'd be actively chasing after large criminal gangs.
They want the low-hanging fruit of an 18 year old who's dealing a little pot, they don't want to have to go after the crime syndicate that will kill them and their family.
I've heard it argued that this is the purpose of traffic laws as well. A lot of enforcement is based on officer discretion which is IMO a moral trap.