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Comment by miles | Hacker News Reader

> 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/

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The purpose of existing drug laws in America is to give police the means to harass minorities though. See:

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).

So what’s the purpose of them in Japan?

Japan is a different country, with different cultures, values and history. Answering ‘whataboutism’ type of questions almost always leads to an endless loop of accomplishing nothing.

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.

It's unclear what purpose they serve in Japan. That doesn't make it less clear in the US.

Most of them were instated after the US occupation of Japan post-world war 2. At the time they served the purpose of asserting America's control over Japan. What purpose they serve there now, who knows?

We don't have to explain the purpose of the laws in Japan to prove their purpose in the United States.

Has an actual proof been provided of their purpose in the United states? I see only a theory.

Japan offers an alternative explanation.

GP's comment can of course be read more correctly as "the purpose of existing drug laws (in the US), ..."

Sweden has harsh drug laws too. So does China. The point is that there are other reasons people favor drug laws, since many homogenous countries have them too.

China also has concentration camps. Just saying...

And yet the literal tons of fentanyl and fentanyl derivatives that are swamping black markets in the US and killing thousands are almost exclusively manufactured in China and shipped to the US.

I'd take 10 years in a swedish prison over 3 months in a US prison...

"Harsh" is very relative. I would be very surprised to see anyone caught using drugs for the first time, or even the 3rd time, not just getting a fine unless they're in possession of a larger quantity. The maximum sentence is 3 years, which I would assume would require a substantial criminal record.

Canada had very harsh drug laws too (at least for hard drugs). And so did much of Europe.

Did all those countries also create those laws to harass certain populations?

How many did basically at the behest of the US? The US very much lead the crusade on drugs criminalisation after WWII.

All of them, it's part of the founding UN treaties, as far as I know.

The People's Republic of China has maintained its draconian anti-drug stance since before the international drug conventions of the 60s and 70s.

I would concur much of the puritanism and authoritarianism around the world about drugs originates from the US, but hardly all of it.

They were actually agreed upon by the UN. It didn’t take the US to convince other countries to make drugs illegal.

In many cases yes: European attitudes towards the lower classes are often similar to (though not as extreme as) racist attitudes in the US.

Lots of European countries (and probably the rest of the world) also copy US laws for no apparent reason.

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.

> Japan is largely homogenous While that's true I always like to remind people of the Ainu people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people). They are an example of a suppressed (largely extinct) ethnic group in Japan. Basically Japan's native Americans.

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.

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