Malaysian Grandfather Is Facing Death for Weed
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However, the biggest offenders in my view are the "unthinking masses" that dictate the overall view on drugs and drug use, hence, block reason and change. For some reason when it comes to drugs it's allowed to have a really strong opinion and say on how _others_ should live based on either absolutely nothing, or fear-mongering fuelled by the aforementioned beneficiaries.
Yes, drugs do harm people, but not intrinsically. People die from over-doses because of mis-information and not knowing what they get (from the random guy on the street). People get hooked but mostly as an expression of underlying problems. Why is alcoholism and gambling more OK? And do we help people by taking their substances but leaving them in the same shitty life situation? That's just patting yourself on the back for actually not doing anything.
At the same time people use responsibly as well, you just don't hear from them because, well, why would they tell you about it if it means getting ostracized, thrown in jail, or killed?
If you don't stay neutral if you haven't at all educated yourself about this fairly complex topic (which it totally fine), you are on the wrong side of history, the witch-hunter of today, and will be frowned upon by the future generations.
At some point in the future everyone will come to their senses and were going to have days of remembrance for people that we harmed in the drug war, I hope.
Kids here smoke as soon as they start high school, that's around 12-13 years. After a couple years they gather before school starts to smoke, then go to class, then smoke again.
Certainly, 81,000 dead in the US during 2020 is a lot of misinformation and ignorance. Presumably these are mostly young lives each with family members having to live with the tragedy.
Not all who oppose legalization are from the 'unthinking masses'. Here's an argument from someone who's spent his working life as a psychiatrist working with prisoners and their drug habits. https://www.city-journal.org/html/don%E2%80%99t-legalize-dru...
"If the war against drugs is lost, then so are the wars against theft, speeding, incest, fraud, rape, murder, arson, and illegal parking."
Obviously the big, glaring, unmissable difference between drug use and the other crimes you've mentioned is that doing drugs is a personal choice that primary impacts the individual whereas every other item on your list is only a crime because it has a victim.
The quote you pulled from the article from 1997 is also pretty pathetic.
If the author can't distinguish between a crime where there is a very clear perpetrator and victim (rape/incest/murder) and one where at essence we are talking about self harm (drugs/suicide) the premise leaves a lot to be desired.
Not all are, but which of the two do you think really steer the general perception of drugs more?
I get dismayed when people think of drugs in terms of social freedom and opposing government. This is quite frankly a highly liberal view. And not one at all in line with the true definition of drugs.
Drugs are an intoxicant. They destroy minds. They destroy health. And they can make addicts lose control. Not to mention destroy communities. There are laws on the books specifically for this reason. It affects society. It does not just stop at the individual. There is a reason why neighborhoods around bars fall in value. While those around coffee shops rise in value.
Drug users WHO ARE IN CONTROL OF THEMSELVES see rules against drugs as oppressive. But the rules were never made for them! Using drugs is like balancing the tight rope, not something everyone can do. And advocates need to understand this.
Lastly comparing illegal intoxicants as similar to legal intoxicants is a poor justification. You try to stretch people’s benign feelings to one form of drugs onto another.
That's simply not true, or there would be laws on the books banning alcohol, too.
It's just arbitrary culture bias against certain drugs, weaponized against minorities.
http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1985-2/anti-alcohol-campaign/
I really like thevRussian humor part. They nicknamed Gorbachev mineral’nyi sekretar’, mineral-water-drinking secretary and the campaign was known as the dry law.
> Drug users WHO ARE IN CONTROL OF THEMSELVES see rules against drugs as oppressive. But the rules were never made for them! [..]
Frankly, most of the rules never really were about solving actual drug problems in the first place. Rather about controlling certain socioeconomic groups of people that happened to be associated with whatever substance.
At least that's the case for the US, however, most of the world has been influenced by their views and still hold them even when US is starting to change. Many parts of the world that lived peacefully (or even synergistically) with certain drugs now have one of the harshest rules regarding them, and that changed during the past ~50-70 years really.
> Using drugs is like balancing the tight rope, not something everyone can do. And advocates need to understand this.
I would say very few people educated on the matter claim drugs are not an issue at all and advocate their use to everyone. In fact, one of the main problems is - knowing the risks associated to drug use, and the fact that it's just gonna happen in the "real world" - how to minimize the harm? (i.e., education and treatment over punishment and rejection)
> Lastly comparing illegal intoxicants as similar to legal intoxicants is a poor justification. You try to stretch people’s benign feelings to one form of drugs onto another.
I'd say the main reason for making comparisons is to draw attention to the inconsistencies of people's judgements. When the statistics show how much more harmful alcohol (or pain pills) is to the mind, health, and society than almost any other substance, both relatively and in terms of prevalence of abuse, I just don't see how one can with a straight face claim it's right to send a kid to a cell for "smoking a joint", but have no desire to have any changes regarding the "normal" drugs.
Inconsistencies is what points you towards flaws in your thinking. Some may ignore it because it's easier to assume you know everything about everything. Some will use the opportunity to investigate.
> Drugs are an intoxicant. They destroy minds. They destroy health. And they can make addicts lose control. Not to mention destroy communities. There are laws on the books specifically for this reason. It affects society. It does not just stop at the individual. There is a reason why neighborhoods around bars fall in value. While those around coffee shops rise in value.
Don't want to be snarky, but these are just talking points. There are a lot of comparisons with other situations that could be drawn here, but as you've pointed out that's not necessarily the best tactic. However, if so, we should also have a "conversational rule" against throwing around three-word claims that are supposed to prove something but are clearly meaningless _without going into more detail_.
P.S. Nothing in life is black or white, it's all about balance and overall well-being.
Deep emotional pain is simultaneously (a) completely understandable and needs compassion, and (b) not the best tool base decisions on.
I think the real question is how can we shape the conversation to, well, be a conversation.
P.S. (At least to my experience with people from some Asian countries) the newer generation does not have that emotional connection, but they do repeat those same old (false) arguments, almost religiously.
The other thing is that unfamiliarity breeds resentment. It is, and was, a lot easier to get weed in the US than it is in a lot of Asian countries, and so most people don’t have a nice person they know who smokes weed. Whereas even if you don’t smoke in the US, it really isn’t that hard to find someone who smokes weed, and a fair amount, if not most, are just average people.
No one really (really, outside of comical personalities) ultimately cares about "tight control [over others'] consciousness". People who care about societal order care about 'understood' phenomena and pervasive cultural mechanisms to sublimate its effects. Even assimilated drugs (again alcohol) still cause societal ills, even with literally thousands of years of usage experience.
A drug that makes you bliss out is perfectly fine for you, but a society of blissed out slackers could be looking for future trouble. That is really the legitimate basis for minimally thinking about the wide spread use of drug X (that affects behavior). That should not be controversial. Our modern additional factor is that there are for profit entities that also produce "medicinal" synthetic formulations that offer individuals some form of chemical psychological relief and pleasure, and thus present the possibility of distortion of facts around other, natural, drugs.
Whether the effect of a drug is primary or incidental is irrelevant. That the 'effect' occurs is the only thing that matters. I remember this previously famous electronic music artist who lived in the basement of the building where I lived as a student in W [109]th in Manhattan where he could score Heroin on the sidewalk. He was a Heroin adddict. He was intelligent and articulate. The Columbia English major girls kept him company. We had interesting conversations regarding addiction. His two main points were, that Heroin finally gave him relief from the un-ending pain/sensory-input of the body. He had an elaborate theory regarding that benefit. His second point was regarding the harm of Heroin. His take was that all negative effects of heroin were secondary and related to maintaining the usage, not the drug itself. I.e. if you were rich it was not a problem drug. You raided mother's purse only if you were poor so let's not blame Heroin. :)
Many governments are participating in different kinds of censorship as well as organized disinformation campaigns. You may agree with certain policies ("drugs are bad" or "citizens are simply better off not knowing certain aspects of reality"), but the "control over consciousness" is a fact.
Many people obey some mass idiocy promoted by some organized entity precisely because of their intelligence, appreciation of the situation, and their take on the equation of benefitial social behavior. It's not heroic but it is not unintelligent. And this social calculus may actually be happening inside the heads of the majority of the population. We simply do not know.
However I'm all for trying to focus in on solutions to stop drunk/buzzed/drugged out driving (and other activities that take lives of families and children). Even if that includes 100% vehicle breathalyzers (as in mandatory even without prior drunk driving records).
In studies of people who say they support the mandatory death penalty, when faced with 'judging' specific cases and given the option of recommending the death penalty or another sentence as most appropriate, they very often shy away from recommending the death penalty as appropriate. It's one thing to give a blanket answer, but quite another to stick to that line when faced with decisions about particular circumstances.
Combine that with a more conservative social view (either Confucian or Islamic) and your end up with a lot of agreement with the use of severe punishments.
The interesting thing is that many parts of these countries where the central government wields less power you see a pretty laissez faire attitude. If problems done arise it’s ignored.
I saw this in Morocco as well. An official policy of marijuana prohibition but small towns had pretty open marijuana use.
And yet alcohol is totally fine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In 1770, colonial Americans drank about 3.5 gallons of alcohol per year - today it’s roughly 2.3.
One thing I learned when visiting an old settlement in Iowa: the settlers of the time made sure to have a constant supply of beer. The rate they consumed beer seemed to mean they’d have a slight buzz throughout many days.
That said, the beer was often weak and watered down so any mention of chronic use should be tempered by the strength of the drink.
Heavy drinking and all its bad effects were more common back then, but I don't think table beer is the culprit.
If you drank a gallon of 1%ABV beer every day, you'd have 3.65 gallons of ethanol per year. That's not exactly what was happening - binges on whiskey and rum were common, but they weren't constantly buzzed, either.
That much alcohol is going to be bad for a liver no matter how you drink it. I don't think this was healthy. My point is just that there was less inebriation than we suppose when we think about drinking beer with breakfast
since this is Malaysia it needs a disclaimer: "except for Muslims"
I would also not drink in certain places like Kelantan and Terengganu[1] even as a non-Muslim otherwise the locals might get really upset :)
One colleague got caught carrying weed into KL int airport from NZ (< 3gramm) in '97 for personal consumption (the idiot). He was supposed to go offshore with us (work on oil-rigs). Instead he spent 5 nights in prison. Our office (a large US diving company) sent their local lawyer to pay a bribe and get him back to work. It was a minor inconvenience that could have ended really badly.
If you ever get yourself arrested in such a country make sure to contact a lawyer. Avoid contacting your embassy as the first step (which often escalates situations in ways the country is supposed to "act tough".) Better yet don't smuggle drugs (even if it's just weed)
[1] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/liquor-control-bill-h... which reads:
> Muslims are barred from drinking alcohol. Non-Muslims do not face any curbs but some local governments discourage the sale of alcohol in neighbourhoods that are predominantly Muslim. In the states of Kelantan and Terengganu, alcohol bans are enforced in places like hotels, but non-Muslim establishments like Chinese restaurants and sundry shops are pretty much left alone.
Kelantan has some crazy rules but you can definitely drink to excess in a tourist hotel or on the islands without any concern. The Perhentians is certainly not a pious place of purity, it gets fairly loose there.
> If you ever get yourself arrested in such a country make sure to contact a lawyer.
Not getting arrested in the first place is what you should really be doing. In basically all of South-East Asia on-the-spot fines are routine and expected. If you don't go that route and it hits the books you are in for a world of trouble and no amount of coffee money will save you. Not endorsing this, simply saying that's how it works.
Except in Singapore. Don't bribe the cops in Singapore — the police and other law enforcement officials are paid a very decent wage here [1], and they'll just report you to save their own skin.
[1] https://www.police.gov.sg/Join-SPF/Police-Officer/Direct-Ent...
SE Asia was hit hard by opium. not so long ago.
The article continues to refer to "hemp seed oil". Is that a mistake from the author? The seed oil has no medicinal properties. The processed oil from the flowers and to some extent that leaves is what contains medicinal value.
It does not stop there. Details of what he did was he didn’t “disclose” the hemp ingredients in the product he sold. That is illegal anywhere.
Further people who bought it did not want to buy hemp. That was deceit.
Death penalty is anger.
Another factor in murders is gun control - America has much bigger prevalence of guns. And most murders are in the moment escalation - impulsive acts, arguments that went out of hand and so on. When gun is present, people are more likely to pick them up and kill someone. If they are not present, the same thing does not end in death.
Violent crime tends to scale more with poverty. The relationship with firearm laws is weak. See: the U.K.
Yet also, Americans are obsessed with idea of punishment. Their first idea of what to do with basically any issue is to punish more.
Issue one, do criminals actually know the penalties for their crimes? Deterrence relies upon criminals knowing facts of the law, when evidence suggests crime is impulsive and done by those who lack education and opportunity. The economy is hurt and crimes are on the rise in the US; I'm surmising criminals are not vastly less aware of laws than a year ago.
Issue two, even if criminals knew the penalties, deterrence would rely upon them to weigh and measure the consequences and not commit crimes. How does deterrence work when criminals believe themselves to be lucky and not susceptible to being caught? How does deterrence work when desperation, poverty, and a culture of crime leads young men to view punishment with a shrug or disdain?
Issue three, the biggest in my view, We've seen rises in violent crime in the US in the past year -- has deterrence gone down? Have laws changed towards less severe punishment? Or, have socioeconomic conditions changed?
Issue four, Japan is a highly insular island nation with an ancient culture and quite a unique cultural attitude. They have extremely low littering and crime, their populace is extremely "tight" in its conformation to laws and regulations such as masking, quaranting, etc. So I wouldn't say they are a good example of an average nation.
They were just the only example, because I can't be arsed to detail all of East Asia that happens to have a comparable inequality and strong enough middle class.
See also Singapore, Taiwan, China, South Korea. Hell, see more than that. Lower crime rate, generally stricter punishment than found in the U.S.
> Deterrence relies upon criminals knowing facts of the law,
It doesn't. This gets transmuted through culture, and would-be assailants have an overall sense of what punishment would entail without knowing specifics. Anyone in the first world regardless of class would expect 1st degree murder to lead to ample time served for example.
> deterrence would rely upon them to weigh and measure the consequences and not commit crimes.
To an extent. It's not entirely conscious.
> How does deterrence work when criminals believe themselves to be lucky and not susceptible to being caught?
Cost-benefit analysis. They gamble.
> How does deterrence work when desperation, poverty, and a culture of crime leads young men to view punishment with a shrug or disdain?
It's viewed with a shrug when incentives to commit crimes are comparatively strong. Not so in the aforementioned countries.
> Issue three, the biggest in my view
Weird thing to say. It's not relevant.
> We've seen rises in violent crime in the US in the past year -- has deterrence gone down?
Nope. Unrest has gone up.
> Issue four, Japan is a highly insular island nation with an ancient culture and quite a unique cultural attitude.
Uhuh, and would this be the same bullshit argument to hand-wave away the circumstances of similar neighboring counties?
Culture is informed, and culture is not immutable. Laws change culture.
Unsolved cases are unacceptable and so suspicious deaths without an obvious suspect are classified as a suicide or natural death with little investigation and no autopsy.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/02/03/national/media-...
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-09-fg-autop...
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Not that when they believe a crime has occurred is much better.
If the police think you have committed a crime, you are guilty, whether you are or not.
If you don't agree that you're guilty, they can just torture you with sleep deprivation and non-stop interrogation for a month without access to a lawyer.
If you cave to the torture at any point and sign a confession (or if someone just...forges your confession) that confession will be considered binding with little chance of overturning it. Good luck withstanding that.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2015/12/05/forced-to-confe...
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/04/10/call-eliminate-japans-ho...
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/10/10/japan-forced-c...
If that is your reality:
They can be solved by aggressive prosecution of those under suspicion - torturing confessions out of people if they are unwilling to confess (maybe because they're innocent).
They can also be solved by selective prosecution - don't look too hard at cases that seem like they'll be difficult, call them a suicide or natural death and close the book. No crime, no problem to make you look bad if you can't solve it.
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I am not alleging that Japan is actually a place with high crime rates.
Just that the deep flaws in their system provide a strong incentive to distort their crime rates. Especially for homicide, being both high profile and being a crime where the victim can't complain about how their case is handled.
You're citing their homicide rates as an example of "strict punishment does appear to have an impact on crime", and I'm suggesting Japan's homicide statistics aren't a great example.
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On a related note (and one I've read far less on), it seems the vast majority of criminal offenders basically get a suspended sentence, at least for their first offense.
So, I'm not sure that you can really say that Japan's criminal justice system is an example of "strict punishment" either.
> So, I'm not sure that you can really say that Japan's criminal justice system is an example of "strict punishment" either.
You can depending on the nature of the crime.
1. Traditional Asian values 2. Legacy of British colonial law. Punishment by hanging and caning were introduced by the British 3. Southeast Asia was a drug trafficking hotspot in the 70s. IIRC at least some of the harsh drug penalties are from recent times as a reaction to that
Just like US drug laws aren’t driven by one thing but rather a combination of moral fears, racism, fear of crime, intent to protect people from themselves, etc.
> The article could have explored that regions' strictness more
quick googling or Wikipedia has you covered[2].
__
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_Ibrahim_sodomy_trials
> Is Malaysia ahead or behind US time? We may know the result soon, or even already.
I think the only places that are "behind US times" is the Aleutian islands (the Russian ones, the US ones well.. are part of the US).
Honestly, I would expect EU to take the lead in liberal drug policies more than anyone else.
Malaysia has some crazy drug laws still, but that’s to be expected from a muslim country. But they’re actually making really good progress when it comes to decriminalized cannabis, comparatively speaking.
Whether it’s better to lock them away to suffer an isolated existence for life or sentence them to die is a matter that can be debated I think, as both paths have elements that are more terrible than the other.
Don't believe the Netherlands does? Try shooting into a crowd of police officers over there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Neth...
There is no capital punishment.
> What an idiot comment.
I'm pretty sure you're the one making comments without understanding, here.
Whether it's officially the "Death Penalty" is semantics.