After 50 years of the war on drugs, 'what good is it doing for us?'
npr.org
npr.org
If that isn't just the perfect description of politics in the US, I don't know what is. I don't know what your political ideology has to be to think the War on Drugs is a good thing, after all the money wasted, all the lives lost, all the people pointlessly locked up for things half the country can now do openly and legally.
The most common-sense things don't even have a chance at passing because our government is barely hiding that they're all either corporate stooges or obstructionist trolls anymore.
Yes, but not in the way that you say.
Political change happens step by tiny step. You have to hammer the same point for decades to get somewhere. You hammer it by winning elections, by having better candidates win your primaries, by getting the news media, large corporations, and celebrities to virtue signal, by rallies, by protests, by sabotaging the system from within.
No single one of these things moves the needle on its own, but push on all of them, and your grandchildren may have a chance to live in a better world.
And yes, anywhere between a third to half the country will dig their heels in, and fight you on it, every step on the way on it.
Worse, the senate is hugely anti-democratic. It's not 1/3-1/2 of the population; its the reps of 4/25.
""The 25 most populous states contain nearly 84 percent of the 50 states’ total population. So 16 percent of the country controls half of the seats in the United States Senate (and that’s not accounting for the fact that DC, Puerto Rico, and several other US territories have no representation at all in Congress).""[1]
Source to [1]: https://www.vox.com/2021/1/6/22215728/senate-anti-democratic...
I actually highly recommend reading the above. I found it insightful.
Not really, the flaw here is seeing each "blue state" as 100% blue and each "red state" as 100% red. A blue state can be simply a matter of a single blue city surrounded by red counties. The holdout states give a voice to the people in holdout counties whose lifestyles are at the whim of a super-majority in the city.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/upshot/2020-electio...
I prefer a government that does as little as possible and leave it up to each local population to do what's best for themselves. This thread, after all, is about the federal government abusing its people with the war on drugs. Changing the faction in charge and making things even easier for them doesn't solve that problem as that faction is then subject to corruption too.
If 1% of CA moved to Wyoming; Wyoming would be majority Californian. Them having equal representation in a co-equal political body is insanity. Wyoming has a population half the size of the city of San Jose.
As an aside; I find the coding of land to be deeply misleading. https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/hpB3wkTVkPJsrJ6-qjtbU...
Every non-geographic minority group in this country somehow manages to deal with this problem. What makes rural conservatives require such a truly exceptional level of representation?
The so called 'flaw' is exactly how the Senate works. A 51% red state will be represented by 2 100% red senators, and same for blue.
>The holdout states give a voice to the people in holdout counties whose lifestyles are at the whim of a super-majority in the city.
So instead the lifestyles are controlled by a super minority?
No it doesn't, political change is simply impossible without massive financial backing, which is why policies that benefit the classes that don't have a lot of money have to jump through all those hoops you mentioned to eventually get the money behind it.
Well, I wonder how to quantify all the "normalization" of homosexuality in tv shows/movies over the last 20 years or so (guesstimate) for example. Surely tv shows like Six feet under and culminating in Modern Family had a role to play though I wouldn't know how to put a dollar figure to it.
Well it does sound like you're equating the War on Drugs to the War on Marijuana.
There are other substances that most people really don't think should be accessible to everyone. Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth?
Whether you like it or not the substances are available to everyone either way, as the better part of a century of the war on drugs has taught us.
Of course it is. The issues that you equate with the image of meth and heroin users are not as a result of the drugs; they’re nearly always a symptom of the problem, often mental health related.
Addiction is always a public health issue, no matter what form, whether it’s gambling, food, alcohol, drugs, …
Yes! And this is what is so fascinating is how well the "drug war" has helped shape societal opinion to think it's not possible to be a functional user. Yet, you may be surprised to learn we have millions of people prescribed Adderall, an amphetamine mixture that is functionally equivalent to methamphetamine. They go about their daily lives on this drug.
Likewise, we have beyond millions of people on oxycotin and other functionally equivalent drugs to Heroin going about their daily lives as well.
Does this mean they live great lives? Not necessarily, but just as we have millions of functional alcoholics we also have many functional drug users in our country.
"The average crystal meth addict uses about 500 mg a day. And they snort it, which probably produces about double the peak plasma level as taking it orally. So they're getting the equivalent of 1000 mg oral amphetamine daily. The average Adderall patient takes 20 mg."
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/drug-users-use-a-lot-o...
The fact that it's safe to have licensed people prescribe a tightly-controlled substance at 2% of recreational doses is... not at all a good argument for fully unrestricted 100% recreational doses.
(I'm still against the war on drugs, for what it's worth)
Pharmacologically, Adderall is extremely similar to methamphetamine. So, it sure seems like it.
This is not how a free society operates. I choose what I put into my body and not you or anyone else. If doing so causes me to commit a crime, then punish that crime, but banning drugs because "most people" don't like them is not freedom. If you don't like them, then don't do them.
>Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user?
A free person should be given the opportunity to demonstrate their responsibility instead of it being assumed such responsibility is not possible simply because a majority of the populace finds a substance distasteful.
Under the process of law making, a lot of things has been made illegal because it adds a risk to society. From a simplistic perspective it is just risk management, with risk on one side and the cost of the mitigation on the other side. It is not necessary any ideology behind it, and thus the removal of one costly mitigation strategy can have little impact on other strategies that are less costly.
We can have a free society where people are free to put whatever they want in their bodies, and to suffer the health outcomes and poverty and combination of those things freely as well, if they make bad decisions.
What we can't afford as a society is to give free health care and UBI to people who choose to destroy their bodies, at the expense of everyone who chooses against their own interests to be productive members of society, assuming there are enough people who wouldn't choose to live on the dole and do drugs if they were legal.
What about people who got that way before they turned 18 because their parents fed them junk every day, and the window of puberty had closed?
What about alcoholics who are compulsively drinking their calories?
I know there are a lot of people who are just lazy and stupid, but good luck proving that to legal satisfaction.
I think a much better argument is to point at countries that decriminalized drugs and didn't see an increase in crime. If legalizing marijuana resulted in a 10x rise in crime I'd 100% for keeping it illegal
(This is all from someone who is very much AGAINST the war on drugs)
> I think a much better argument is to point at countries that decriminalized drugs and didn't see an increase in crime.
I agree.
> we've already concluded that it's okay to prioritize safety over freedom
Who is "we"? A majority telling a minority "we" know what's best for you at the expense of your freedom is very dangerous rhetoric.
> we have seatbelt laws
In this analogy, I would argue drugs = cars and seatbelts would be some safety measure on where drugs could be used (like no heroin injecting within 100 ft of a school, etc...) which seems like a reasonable restriction. But banning cars because a majority of the population thinks they are dangerous and people cannot drive them responsibly would be absurd.
Unfortunately, the US public and the US government never accepted this principle. Practically everything you put in your body - at least in the US - has to be approved by the government. Sometimes by several branches of it. Food, drink, medicine, whether you swallow it, inject it, smoke it or rub it in - the government has its say in it. In 20 states you can't even legally drink raw milk, and in those that allow it in principle, require you to jump through a lot of hoops to achieve it. Such is the reality of the nanny state, and unfortunately the US public - the Land of the Free - is largely completely OK with it and would never vote to remove it.
Many years ago I read of a long-term study which followed heroin addicted doctors for 20 years, in a society which guaranteed them a supply of clean heroin, and found that as long as their supply was clean and uninterrupted these heroin addicted doctors actually performed slightly better than their non-addicted colleagues, and there were minimal if any negative health consequences.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the study since[1], so take that with a grain of salt.. and heroin is not really my subject of interest so take the following with another grain of salt, but my impression has been that pure heroin is actually not that harmful, especially compared to something like alcohol or cigarettes.
The main problem is the potential for unintentional overdose, which really shouldn't be much of a problem with pure heroin (or not much more than many other prescription drugs, whose use doesn't have any negative moral stigma attached to them). If people know the purity and dosage of the drug they're taking they tend not to take so much that it would kill them... not accidentally anyway. It happens, but it also happens plenty of other prescription drugs.
There's also addiction, but if you can get a pure, cheap supply (which should be the case where heroin is legal) and it doesn't cause any serious health consequences, then what's the problem?
[1] - If anyone else can find this study, I'd be eternally grateful.
I used to be a heroin addict, price and availability were the two main obstacles to functioning normally. I’m glad I don’t do heroin any longer (suboxone was a huge help, also stopped that), but if the conditions in the first paragraph were true, it would easily be possible.
See Switzerland for example: https://transformdrugs.org/blog/heroin-assisted-treatment-in...
This is quite a straw man, not wanting to decriminalize all drugs is not the same as thinking the War on Drugs is a good thing. (And it's not like there is one particular policy that on its own constitutes the "War on Drugs", so this is a very vague statement anyway).
It's also interesting to me that in many other arguments, the liberal/progressive side likes to (rightly) highlight other countries that have done a better job and present an example to follow. Not so with drug laws, because there are no such clear examples of success. There are countries with much less of a drug problem than the US which have much harsher drug penalties (like Japan and Singapore). Then there is the most popular example on the other extreme, Portugal, where it is not at all clear whether their decriminalization policy worked or not [0].
US society clearly seems to be moving in the direction of legalizing less harmful substances like weed and relaxing criminal penalties for small scale possession, which I believe are good things. But I don't see any reason to believe that decriminalizing everything would make things better. At the local level, US cities where opiates are effectively decriminalized like SF have horrible outcomes when it comes to drug abuse and overdoses.
[0] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ondcp/ondcp-fact-sheets...
This has to be a joke, right? Which countries?
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-19/norway-to...
If anyone find it more than a bit ironic then we agree.
The obvious question to ask is if the rampant drug abuse and overdoses in SF is due to decriminalization or something else? And has decriminalization made the situation better or worse?
I would argue that to prevent unintentional overdoses the best thing to do (other than improve people's lives so they don't feel a need for substances that could be harming them) is to legalize these drugs, make them pure, clearly label them, and educate people on how much of a dose in what circumstances would be an overdose.
That alone would greatly reduce the harm, and be much more effective than making/keeping these drugs illegal and forcing their users to play the lottery with a mystery drug of unknown purity and dosage every time they snort or inject.
That's not to mention the harm of being shot or assaulted by the police during an arrest for drug use, your life being ruined by a felony conviction, possibly getting raped, tortured or murdered in prison, being kept out of the legal economy afterward you get out (if you get out) because of a felony conviction, etc..
The stated intent of decriminalization, redirecting resources from enforcement to treatment, switching to a public health strategy, is harm reduction.
We still don't know what will reduce use and abuse. Whatever the merits of the War on Drugs, it manifestly failed to reduce either.
Public health systems have shown they can do a pretty good job given a miracle vaccine to work with. Short of that, not so much. And unfortunately we don't yet have a shot that cures drug abuse.
A little more specifically, I don't think the lack of availability of rehab programs is what is the problem here, and that's about all public health could offer.
I’m actually not sure how anyone knows this for sure, I haven’t seen the evidence first hand. But according to our board of supervisors 80% of the Walgreens robberies are tied to organized crime. The gangs get money and power from selling drugs that are decriminalized, and then find new ways to make more money like robbing stores.
Also, the same line of thinking that doesn’t think you should penalize the addict for doing something wrong like taking drugs in the first place, is easily extended to also saying we that robbing a store is a minor offense and we shouldn’t penalize anybody for that either.
A lot of people continue see locking up addicts as keeping dangerous people off the streets, so basically a good thing. They tend not to think significant rates of rehabilitation are possible, and that attempting it would be a waste of money that would also lead to higher crime rates.
> The most common-sense things don't even have a chance at passing
These same people would find it laughable—literally—that you think decriminalizing all drugs is common sense. They would see this as plainly, and wildly, out-of-touch with reality. Typical pie-in-the-sky and/or ivory-tower liberalism.
(these are not my views, to be clear)
If you ever watched police shows like "cops" they seem to spend 2/3 of their time arresting people for drugs. It's hard solve home burglaries, it's easy to bust people with petty amounts of drugs in their cars.
I don't think it's "corporate stooges or obstructionist trolls" - people are just profoundly ignorant in the matter and are unwilling to change their minds about it, however large tall the most idiotic war of all wars takes. It'd be easy if it were just a bunch of corporate lobbyist trolls. Widespread ignorance is much harder to overcome.
People are kept profoundly ignorant in the matter. That's what I hate the most about the War on Drugs, people are kept from being educated on them, learning about the real dangers, instead it's just FUD and when young people discover they were lied to and experiment with drugs they have very little knowledge of the risks.
Who does the government want to marginalize? I thought the government (and the rest of the world, really) was all about equality and inclusion as of late.
Only the moral & good parts of the government. There's plenty of politicians & forces out there whose campaign message & activities are rather the opposite.
It’s possible to agree with the moral intent but also disagree with the policy. (Not saying this was your frame of argument, just thought it an important distinction).
Edit: downvotes are fine but please add to the discussion. Maybe you’ll change someone’s mind.
How is a quote about how the Nixon administration having "black people as the enemy" around 1968-1971 still relevant in 2021 when the current administration's messaging is one of inclusion and equality?
Additionally, many people do not agree with the current administration. Politics is not just about the big guy in charge, it's about how everyone approaches the matter at hand.
https://mobile.twitter.com/thehill/status/140521998971242496...
Then read website until you get bored of example after example.
Having a new president is like a new captain giving orders on an incredibly massive ship. There's a ton of inertia going on, there's a lot of people below the captain that are still the people with the hands on the controls operating the boat. Plus, usually when you're in the middle of trying to steer the boat to port the captain gets replaced and starts commanding the boat turn to starboard.
Coupled this with the idea that its not really just a single ship, its a fleet of 50+ ships each with that same concept of a ton of inertia at play and not really a strict chain of command between the captains of each ship and the admiral of the fleet (imperium in imperio).
They're certainly all about talking about it. They don't really take a lot of actions to back it up.
Is this why more groups have been added to the list of protected classes? Is this why our current administration is one of the most diverse to ever exist?
I get the twitter outrage is fun, but when you look at data, our government has become more and more about equality and inclusion in meaningful ways. The US government isn't perfect, but it can't be perfect, there will always be room to grow. It does take time, but looking at data and trends shows equity ticking up over time. Lets have more nuanced views.
The gerrymandering of electoral districts to maximize the concentration of white voting power.
There were other reasons for the electoral college, but appeasing the slave states in this way is one of the big reasons that was specifically written about and reasoned openly between the founding fathers at the time.
So when someone tells you, oh, the electoral college allows smaller states to have a say, think that through a bit. That old apocryphal explanation makes no sense really.
There are also the states legalizing marijuana to consider. If the war on drugs is in fact a racist policy, then turning back the pages on that, wrt the most common, least harmful drug, then real policy changes are being made. Furthermore, the current congress has introduced legislation to legalize marijuana federally. So yeah, we are seeing policies change.
For me it would be incredibly interesting to know how much it was a miscalculation or actually it was very well calculated.
The "War on Drugs" have failed to make USA safer, healthier or any other positive metric.
But, it has provided many with an excuse to pass restrictive laws, to win elections, to gain contracts with the government.
I am sure that many believed, even believe today in the "War on Drugs". But, it would be very interesting to know the reasoning to start it. And how much the people that started it failed to understand human behavior, or it is just that their goals had nothing to do fight drugs problems.
Will this ever be achieved in the US in the next... 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? 50 years?
Psilocybin is the first possible candidate that comes to my mind, but I'd rather have us use a sound framework of harm-minimization than to favor/disfavor any particular drug.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/what-does-science-tell-us-abo...
Personally, I think a great amount of harm reduction could be achieved by legalizing at least one recreational drug in every class, determined by which has least relative harm to the user. If there was a clean, legal and affordable option, I believe demand for the more-harmful drugs in the class would be significantly reduced. i.e. "stimulant" demand is somewhat elastic, and by making the least harmful stimulant (not sure if that is Khat or not) easily available, demand for Meth would be significantly reduced and market effects would make its availability much less widespread
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." — John Ehrlichman, to Dan Baum for Harper's Magazine in 1994, about President Richard Nixon's war on drugs, declared in 1971.
That is interesting information, thank you for commenting.
It shows that there was not a misinterpretation, as the article suggests, at least, not the initiators of the "War", but more of a well-calculated hidden agenda that had nothing to do with "drugs".
Edit: I stand corrected, this is true in some states but not others.
https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-rights/voter-restoration/...
There are just a couple of states that allow that, but I learned that quite a few jurisdictions restore rights after incarceration, after probation, etc...
Not the opposite!
Most people in jail retain the right to vote, regardless of state.
People currently in prison on felony charges CANNOT vote in most states, but this is up to each state. In many states, you get your enfranchisement restored after completing your sentence.
https://www.thoughtco.com/where-felons-can-and-cannot-vote-3...
They may have the right to vote. Whether the facility lets it actually happen is another matter.
It is, was and always will be a horrible mistake, maybe the worst sociopolitical action in the 20th century. The brutality we have seen as a result of these policies leaves little moral ambiguity.
I don't doubt that the Nixon administration exploited the war on drugs for nefarious ends. However, I think the idea that the entire impetuous behind it was to target particular social groups is bordering on a conspiracy theory. It is a bit like suggesting that Democrats are pro immigration only because immigrants tend to vote Democrat. I'm sure it hasn't escaped the notice of Democratic electoral strategists that the party could stand to benefit from immigration. But it would be implausible to suggest that this is the only reason that Democrats tend to favor a more liberal immigration policy than Republicans.
Ehrlichman supposedly said it in a private interview with Baum, and there was no public record of it for 22 years after it was said, and 17 years after Ehrlichman died.
It's very rare to hear such mea culpas from powerful, politically adept figures that cast their subjects in such a negative light. When they speak of their actions at all they tend to talk of them with plenty of room for interpretation and plausible deniability -- especially if they're lawyers, as Ehrlichman was.
So as much as I believe that the War on Drugs was in fact in great part a racist war and one greatly based on suppression of dissent and the 60's and 70's counterculture, I very much doubt that Ehrlichman ever confessed.
> NIXON: [...] Let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn, they root 'em out. They don't let 'em around at all. I don't know what they do with them. Look at this country. You think the Russians allow dope? Homosexuality, dope, immorality, are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and left-wingers are clinging to one another. They're trying to destroy us. I know Moynihan will disagree with this, [Attorney General John] Mitchell will, and Garment will. But, goddamn, we have to stand up to this.
Is it really though? It seems like it would be the enemy of an uptight conservative society that only speaks of freedoms from the side of their mouth while limiting the freedoms to only those things which they agree.
It also is not accurate that the Nixon administration increased incarceration of drug use. That occurred under Reagan and Clinton.
However, Nixon was the first president to coin the term "war on drugs" but this was a rhetorical flourish. The Nixon Administration repealed the federal 2–10-year mandatory minimum sentences for possession of marijuana and started federal demand reduction programs and drug-treatment programs.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman#Drug_war_quote
Harry Anslinger was actually one of the most influential figures in the beginning of the modern big-government war on drugs. The anti-marijuana movement was a marriage of convenience between sensationalist yellow journalism from the Hearst empire, and good old-fashioned racism.
"By the tons it is coming into this country — the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms. ... Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him."
"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."
Then theres the people lobbying for anti-drug laws to expand the prison population. Lawyers and respective district attorneys that were happy as well.
The drug war was basically a felony printer as well. This made all sorts of social problems including unemployment / housing even more problematic. It tore apart families and still does. Meanwhile other legal drugs (opioids in general) flourished.
Then there's the overdoses / poisonings because the source and distribution networks are utterly motivated to mess with the supply.
The truly stupid aspect is that drug use has not significantly decreased. The whole "war" aspect was a complete failure. So it wasn't a good investment anyway.
So many parallels with prohibition. Government poisoned that supply as well and killed thousands.
Just say no. Indeed.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists
Speak for yourself. My methhead sister-in-law is in prison and I certainly feel safer. Addicts cannot be trusted and bring families down.
People raised away from addicts (read: white liberals) don’t understand how destructive they can be to a community.
However, no, I don't agree that alcohol is "just the same". People rarely commit robbery and murder to get another hit of alcohol. Conversely, many drug addicts are unable to stop themselves from taking desperate measures to get their next hit when it is not easily accessible.
Weird. Almost like making it legal, relatively cheap, and easily accessible makes it so you don't have to resort to desperate means.
I think the question of legality muddles the argument. Its illegal to drive under the influence yet many do and some end up in horrific accidents.
We're stewards of the next generation. We're their parents, teachers, role models. Our aim should be to reduce the use of crystal meth, and other drugs that cause self-harm. No different than promoting exercise, knowledge, healthy lifestyles, etc.
Making something illegal is a powerful disincentive - but we don't expect it to work 100% perfectly. Its important to recognize when something isn't working - but lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Government policies are like supertankers and once they're operating at speed, they're hard to stop/steer.
Do you you think drug-related robbery and murder would decrease if we simply provided free drugs to anybody who wanted them?
Go hang out in a liquor store in a less-advantaged area of any U.S. city and tell me the sad sacks coming in for singles of rotgut are fine, upstanding citizens who’ve never broken a car window or traded an EBT card for cash and let their kids go hungry.
I don’t propose a solution for this—I’m a programmer, not a social policy maker. But if you could buy clean amphetamines cheaply and OTC, the way you can with booze, the problems of meth use would look quite different.
[0] https://mafiamembershipcharts.blogspot.com/2017/01/chicago-u... (and this is just gangs)
This is mostly because shoplifting is a thing, and possibly because you can do things like steal from family and your food budget can generally keep you drunk enough that you don't care if you eat. Vodka can be really, really cheap.
Addicts with enough money to afford their addiction rarely commit robbery or murder, by the way, as evidenced by the politicians, entertainers, and sports players that wind up having addiction issues. Small towns still generally have low murder rates, and have addiction.
I'd argue that folks rarely commit robbery and murder for their other addictions, too - we just hear about them on the news, the same one that draws attention to things that hook into your fear and sensationalizes it. In any case, I'd need sources to see if it is really a cause in anything but a tiny number of addicts. I'm guessing more get caught for public intox or possession.
"War on drugs" was actually genius marketing because it conceals the fact that the government is actually doing as little as possible as cheaply as possible by just chucking people in prison instead of sending them to rehab.
Inpatient treatment is more expensive per day than jail, sure. But not all treatment is inpatient, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense to compare per day, anyway. There’s plenty of studies showing that treatments saves money compared to (and especially in) criminal justice.
But your parent comment said "my methhead sister-in-law is in prison and I certainly feel safer", not "my methhead sister-in-law is in prison and she certainly feels safer."
Basically, the WoSD 'was' (still is?) a mechanism by which authoritarians could impose control on society by oppressing society's undesirables. Echos of the Nazis, engender a police state, control Black people, etc etc.
But the WoSD hasn't gone so well, so it (as the main phenomena) was been supplanted by the War On Terrorism (cue the Patriot Act...) That has gotten a bit stale (but is still in effect?), so now it's ... Russians? Covid-19 and all the relevant restrictions?
Or the GOP has decided to stop being indirect and now is going blatantly full out towards overt authoritarianism using The Big Lie as the mechanism? In some parallel universe, liberals are now being rounded up and put into FEMA re-education camps on President-For-Life Trump's orders because they tried to steal the election (and every future one as well).
There is no one Single True Motivation to this sort of social phenomena - they are all different expressions of the sociopaths in charge's drives for power.
[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drug-Warriors-Their-Prey-Police/dp/...
(Primarily used by drug legalization advocates, presumably to convey the arbitrary distinction between legal and illegal drugs.)
Cannabis was made illegal because it was mostly used by Mexican immigrants. https://www.history.com/news/why-the-u-s-made-marijuana-ille...
Crack was sentenced at a 10x higher rate than cocaine because black citizens disproportionately used crack, while white users disproportionally used cocaine.
I would be surprised if the harms of smoked crack were worse than the harms of IV cocaine.
With regards to the differing penalties for crack and cocaine, there are logical (though fundamentally misguided) reasons for it that have nothing to do with race as well. Crack cocaine is designed to be smokable, which makes it far more potent and addictive than regular cocaine . In addition, due to these properties, crack is significantly more correlated to other criminal behaviors than cocaine.
>In 1983, Rangel became chair of the Select Committee on Narcotics, which solidified his position as a leading strategist on this perennially important issue to him Rangel kept the committee going, in the face of the usual pressure to disband special committees. He battled against proposed cutbacks in the federal anti-drug budget, and advocated increased grants to states and cities for better shelters for the homeless. Rangel's amendments providing increased funding for state and local law enforcement were included in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. He traveled to countries in Central and South America and elsewhere to inspect the sources of drugs and the law enforcement efforts against them; Ebony magazine termed Rangel "a front-line general in the war against drugs." Rangel said "We need outrage!", making reference to the slow reaction by both government and religious leaders to the epidemics of crack cocaine, heroin, PCP, and other drugs that hit American streets during the 1980s. He believed that legalizing drugs would represent "moral and political suicide". Nor did he refrain from criticizing those most affected by drugs, saying that Hispanic and black teenagers had no sense of self-preservation, and that drug dealers were so stupid that they had to eat in fast-food places because they could not read a menu. By 1988, Rangel was saying that President Ronald Reagan had not done enough in the war on drugs, but that First Lady Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign had been quite valuable. The narcotics committee itself was termed possibly the most important select committee of its time. The Washington Post said Rangel was "in a powerful position to shape policy on an issue at the top of the nation's agenda". He would remain as chair of the committee through 1993, when it was abolished along with other House select committees.
Rangel is far from the only black leader at the time who wanted harsh penalties for drugs. So while it is true that crack has harsher penalties that other drugs because black people use it, it isn't true that those penalties are because of racist white people. It was destroying black communities, and black leaders wanted a fix, and they thought harsh penalties would work.
Don't forget: prevent people from voting (https://www.aclu.org/blog/smart-justice/sentencing-reform/ri...), funnel people into for profit prisons (https://www.axios.com/war-drugs-prison-america-e66ffe61-c876...), steal assets from citizens under the guise of civil asset forfeiture (https://drugpolicy.org/issues/asset-forfeiture-reform), all while targeting minorities (https://drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-war).
It's clear that this is very well calculated and understood.
This is a somewhat partisan issue and I'm far from unbiased, but reading his wiki page will convey most of the story better than a screed.
And militarize the police.
Simply by turning a blind eye to one group and continuing aggressive enforcement against another the USA can tilt the political balance of power in many smaller nations.
When you create a default state of War against most of the world, selective peace becomes your most powerful weapon. Destruction is so much cheaper than building value, it creates a wildly disproportionate incentive to cooperate.
They may not have minded the side benefits, but it's reasonable to believe they had a genuine public health concern.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/03/20/biden-pushes-co...
Being number 1 per capita in prison population isn't a lean operation, a lot of people's lives depend on the system continuing.
I think the solution is to rent bulldozers, armor them, and just level a bunch of them. Too many prison beds, too many laws, it's all gotten very dumb.
Funny they don't seem to shoot unarmed kids in the show at all, wish our cops took inspiration.
What portion of those arrested + detained are the type of people we want in society/civilization?
Check a list of countries by rate of incarceration[1]. Then ask yourself if it's likely that the US, El Salvador, Turkmenistan, Palau and Rwanda are the grouping that have it right. That's the top 5, in order, all at 511+ per 100k.
For comparison, Australia is 160, England is 130, Canada is 104, France is at 93, etc.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
Edit: Generally, I read all that as "probably 3 or 4 of every 5 US prisoners don't need to be in prison".
Jpay, for example, is a subsidiary of a private company, and does the "fund a prisoners commissary account" as well as "send a prisoner a email" type services.
Here's their fees for money transfers for the Texas Prisoners:
$ 0.00 - 9.99 $2.45
$ 10.00 - 19.99 $3.45
$ 20.00 - 49.99 $6.45
$ 50.00 - 99.99 $8.45
$ 100.00 - 199.99 $10.45
$ 200.00 - 300.00 $12.45
They also charge it as a cash advance, which can result in additional charges from your bank.
Ouch.
You may find similar movements that you can join in pressuring local officials. The fun thing is that at this level of government, commissioners will often respond themselves, so you know even relatively few emails are making an impact.
Unbuild the existing prisons.
John Brown didn't write letters, he burned down plantations.
if you don't want bulldozers, perhaps write to your representatives, and urge them to do something before the modern day John Browns start doing it for them.
> John Brown didn't write letters, he burned down plantations.
That's a clear call to violence imo.
For the most obvious example, marijuana is legal to purchase for recreational use in dozens of states, with more coming.
If I had to choose between legal cannabis and legal heroin, I’d choose the latter on utilitarian grounds. (Although obviously I support both wholeheartedly.)
So any dispensary would have addiction specialists on hand, anyone getting heroin would have a card and a database. "Casual" and light users would pay, a known hard-case addict with limited means would get it subsidized or free.
The goal is primarily to kick the bottom out of the black market, with a close second being keeping addicts healthy and alive, where quitting heroin is the best case scenario.
Cigarettes are even more addictive, and yet we aren't freaking out and throwing cigarette smokers in jail.
One of my nieces died from heart failure last year. She had been living on the street and been a hard core drug user. I can't say that it was heroin that killed her, because like most street users, she took anything she could get her hands on. But her heroin addiction was what kept her on the street. She had been through treatment more times than I can count. None helped for very long. In the end, she's dead at 29, a life completely wasted.
Would legalized heroin with clean needles have saved her? Don't know. But our current system sure didn't.
Not all drugs are the same, we shouldn't act like they are.
I don't want there to be stiff market competition in the addictive substances market. We already did that with tobacco and still haven't fully phased that out.
If heroin addicts had an easy option to not feel sick without that was cheaper and more available than heroin, I believe many would take it, and the heroin market would shrink - leading to lesser availability and fewer future addicts.
In college, a guy I worked with lost his job because someone he was with possessed marijuana. The guy I knew didn't have anything and wasn't charged with anything, but he lost his job with the university just the same.
As of July 1, none of them would have gotten in any trouble; as of next year, they'd be able to legally buy the substance. This is a massive change.
Cannabis legalization may recently be popular. But I’d be shocked if more than 5% of Americans supported the legalization hard drugs, and if more than 20% supported by Portuguese style decriminalization. Even soft drug prohibition, like MDMA and LSD, are supported by sizable majorities of voters.
In a "twist words, give people 4 option multiple choice and count 3 of them as support" sort of way.
The illegality of trafficking hard drugs is broadly supported and it goes down from there.
If it seems unbelievable that there could be significant support for the War on Drugs, remember how many voted for Trump the second time around.
Never say never.
I'm frankly shocked that virtually legal medical and recreational use of cannabis has become so widespread in the US in my lifetime.
For decades, other countries have had programs where heroin addicts could either use heroin with a prescription or are allowed to go shoot up in clinics where they're provided clean needles, and heroin use is effectively decriminalized.
I could see the same happening in the US, particularly in states which have taken the lead in cannabis legalization.. and after they do it and some decades pass without the sky falling and there is clear evidence that this is a much more effective way of dealing with addiction, we'll likely see other states follow suit.
The way will be smoothed by the mainstream culture's realization that they've been lied to by their government about drugs for many decades, as is becoming clear by the fact that the states which have legalized cannabis haven't turned in to real-life versions of Reefer Madness and also by the widening familiarity of members of mainstream society with drug users who are otherwise upstanding members of their societies, and by the relatively positive press about cannabis and psychedelics.
There's always a chance that the press will shift towards negative coverage, as they do love sensationalist stories and there's still psychedelic abuse which leads people to go on power trips, have delusions of grandeur, or massive paranoia, but I am cautiously optimistic that the medical use of psychedelics will win out this time around.
Finally, there's the potential for constructive psychedelic use to help the society in many positive ways, and that could lead to greater tolerance and understanding of users of other drugs, along with (eventually) there maybe less reason for people to self-medicate and try to escape their miserable lives.
Question: to what degree does this influence your overall satisfaction level with government in general (both at the object level, and abstractly) in the United States?
I'd say the income tax is in second place in terms of destruction of individual rights.
The full site is 88 requests, takes 5 seconds to complete, transfers over 300x more data and brings me no additional value. The article doesn't even begin on the first screen, I have to scroll to start reading! The text version gives me the first 7 paragraphs without any user input.
In a 1994 interview published in Harper's Magazine, Nixon adviser John Ehrlichman suggested racial animus was among the motives shaping the drug war.
"We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the [Vietnam] War or Black," Ehrlichman said. "But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities."
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMpiL-JU4jM [1999]
In most states (including CA) the percent of minorities in jail for weapons offenses is as disproportionate to the population as drug offenses. And today in states like CA - 50% more people are in jail for weapons charges than drug charges.
Is the reason that drug laws/weapons laws exist to disenfranchise people? Or is a true problem in society that in theory would be good to address - and powerful people are indifferent to people who end up in jail.
What's the argument for weapons violations? If weapons laws are designed to disenfranchise people, then shouldn't Europe have way more disenfranchisement than Americans?
I am saying the conclusion that drug charges were put in place to disenfranchise people is a bit silly. There were other reasons (even if they were panic reasons) to ban drugs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman#Drug_war_quote
I do believe the War on Drugs has been a terrible policy, doing disproportionate harm to Blacks and other marginalized people. I'm not convinced that was the intent by most of those who supported its creation and sustained it.
Our government hasn't listened to us for decades: https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem
They're been no sign of that changing since I've been alive.
That would free up over 80% of the DEA's budget to go after meth and heroin.
And not just in the obvious, direct ways of pointing out drug crime and asking for funding. E.g., I recall studies of DARE’s impacts showing that it had no measurable impacts on drug use, drug abuse, or drug-related crime among students directly participating or communities, but did have a measurable positive impact on participating students attitudes toward law enforcement.
But it's kinda hard to do a war on drugs without - you know - arresting the drug dealers on known corners. Looking at you San Francisco.
Drugs enable misery, poverty, overdoses and homicides. Especially the ones that create physical addiction (opioids, meth, fentanyl, etc). But most importantly, they enable lower social economical classes into thinking that selling drugs is a viable and alternative way to level up in life (wealth), instead of allowing them to focus on real career paths. It's a false shortcut that distracts people from being able to focus on their real future. It also encourages illegal immigration.
Why aren't the Feds arresting drug dealers on every corner in a large scale operation first and foremost? Perhaps the simplest thing to do in order to disrupt the supply.
That seems to require defining “drugs” very deliberately to only count substances and use cases such that by definition you’ve only included stuff that’s bad for society as a whole.
When you're removing supply, but not disrupting demand, a way will be found. The real answer is to legalize & sell it, no more drug dealers, remove the overdoses because it was cut with fentanyl, no longer fund gangs = less homicides
Demand for a good (or drug in this case) it is not inevitable. It can be disrupted too, it's not a given.
But the demand for any good cannot be disrupted without first and foremost removing the supply. So we must start disrupting the supply, which shows up every day at 6am on our street corners.
So while we're cracking skulls to achieve your drug-free nirvana, we've basically consigned a generation to hell. Constant police patrolling and intervention in their communities, extremely violent narco-traffickers, and yet somehow no treatment for addicts.
On the other hand, there are huge profits and motivators for money laundering. Ask HSBC, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Western Union, or Citigroup.
Secondly, it would also get into a lot of fights with the locals; every "bust a group of people standing on the corner" runs the risk of false positives, the gradual loss of trust of the population, and an increased rate of violent incidents.
Thirdly, in order to avoid just displacing it, it requires cops (or at least cameras) everywhere. America has a lot of corners.
As with Prohibition, this would probably accelerate the collapse of the policy.
If you haven't already, you should watch The Wire (HBO) about how futile street busts are in either combatting the drug trade or improving the lives of people living in the city.
Because they did, and it was a large reason our prison population boomed. And...it didn't work. Read the article.
>Drugs enable misery, poverty, overdoses and homicides
No, drugs use is a respite for people in misery and poverty. It is a symptom not the underlying wound. I highly suggest taking a read of "Dignity" by Chris Arnande for a personal and expansive look at this. Though if you prefer academic articles the NIH has more papers on it then you can read in a lifetime and happy to link you to them.
>I guess we all agree that drugs are obviously bad for society as a whole
Hard disagree, and in fact you are actually in a small minority now in this position: https://news.gallup.com/poll/323582/support-legal-marijuana-...
1. " I guess we all agree that drugs are obviously bad for society as a whole."
I don't think drugs are good or bad for society. There are positives and negatives.
I do think that our drug policy is bad for society, though.
2. "Drugs enable misery, poverty, overdoses and homicides"
a. ... "enable misery": or they reduce pain and misery (medical applications of many things (pot, cocaine derivations, opiate derivations, mdma/shroom derivations for depression/ptsd/etc).
b. ... "poverty" I don't think they enable poverty. i would say that addiction does so, which can be a result of drug use. but not all users are addicts, and not all of the 'drug' class substances are addicting. Addition to legal substances have the same issues of emptying wallets (tabbacco, alcohol, pills).
c. ... "overdoses". this is almost totally a result of the world's drug policies and the requirement of using a black market to get the drugs. If the purity and dosing information were provided with the drugs, the number would likely go in line with overdose numbers for legal substances. We also wouldn't have people taking spiked/doctored/cut/etc drugs in the same numbers -- remove the black market and you remove black market problems
d. ... "homicides". again this is 100% a black market/drug policy issue. The numbers will go in line with normal legal substances once the black market is removed. New issues may pop up (mainly because the existing market is so heavily managed by crime organizations), but those new issues will be better than the current issues, and they will be solvable, unlike the current black market issues (there is demand, so a black market will exist).
3. " they enable lower social economical classes into thinking that selling drugs is a viable and alternative" -- entirely due to the black market (created by the current drug policy).
4. "It also encourages illegal immigration."
- what? how? why? maybe a few migrants agree (or are forced) to transport drugs when they cross, but that's not why the people are migrating illegally.
5. "arresting drug dealers on every corner ... disrupt the supply" -- how is arresting a dealer going to damage the supply. The supply is already done when it gets to the dealer (at least the supply into the country, perhaps not the supply to the consumer, but lack of supply does not produce lack of demand). And because there is demand, they will just find new dealers. ... this is basically the entire war on drugs. The fact that you are complaining about this as not having been done or been effective 50 years in is more proof that it has failed.
Military spending is popular. Civil aid aimed at similar causes is extremely unpopular, even when the sums are far smaller.
I'm reminded of French classes, in my education. We learned French for four years. None of us spoke French at the end of these years. I brought up this fact to teachers, parents. When I grew up I spoke about it to friends, who were language teachers.
The idea of giving up, canceling French classes, simply because it was failing to teach kids French is mostly seen as appalling. OTOH, a priori, I'm quite certain that "teaching French even though kids won't be able to speak French after four years' would not be a popular idea. "Learning a foreign language is important."
I agree that the war on drugs is bad. But, I also use illicit drugs myself sometimes.. and it is considered normal in my social circle. That makes it easy for me.
For someone that considers drug use immoral, or terrible in other ways... "I am against drug use" will usually translate into support for whatever anti-drug policy is going. Efficacy is just rhetoric fodder.
We're just not that rational, even less so at the political level. "It works" or "it doesn't work" aren't anywhere near as important as "I am for/against..."
When pushed to the extreme, any addiction can be destructive.
Food, sex, alcohol, tobacco or games are a few perfectly legal examples.
Food addiction is especially interesting because it is at the same time widespread and denied.
Also, the immediate effects and destructive power are less spectacular than crack.
From my completely empirical observations, there is a simple trick to overcome any type of addiction: being happy.
Being wealthy can help.
Imagine if they threw fat people in jail for being addicted to food. This is basically the same thing they're doing to drug addicts. It's insane.
Controlling addictive behaviors requires the full cooperation of the subconscious part of ourselves, this is easier said than done, and I have not seen anyone succeeding while being miserable.
It's no more a war on drugs than "gun control" is about controlling guns. "gun control" is actually citizen disarmament, because every law they pass exempts the police, military, and retired police. So its' not about guns, but who can have them.
Both of these represent a propaganda technique known as 'framing': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)
When people think of it as "gun control" it presupposes the notion that guns are out of control when that isn't the issue.
Same with "the war on drugs" drugs are an inanimate set of chemicals. It's not a war on drugs, but a war on personal freedom to do them. But when you frame it that way, it's obviously reprehensible. Especially in the "land of the free".
To clarify: Are you saying guns are not out of control, or guns being out of control is not an issue?
Also, if you were to substitute "nukes" or "ebola vials" for "guns" in your argument, would it still stand? If not, where do you see the difference?
(To be clear, I'm not convinced that your argument applies equally to drugs and guns, this is why I'm extrapolating it here.)
Guns are inanimate objects and thus are not capable of being out of control.
>Also, if you were to substitute "nukes" or "ebola vials" for "guns" in your argument, would it still stand?
Yes, no, and yes. Ebola is a living thing that can act independently once released. Even a nuke either explodes or doesn't.
The issue I'm trying to raise is not so much about guns, but the propaganda phrase used to promote citizen disarmament. The subject is accurately described as citizen disarmament, because of the exceptions included in every second amendment infringing law. They invariably exempt authority from the restrictions when the second amendment explicitly prohibits exactly this.
If every law they passed an tried to pass applied also to the military, police, and retired police then it would actually be "gun regulation". But it never does, so it is is not firearms regulation, but citizen (and only citizen) disarmament.
To put it another way, how many other countries in the world have active agents in the field in multiple other countries to interdict and disrupt drug supply chains?
- Virtual signaling ("tough on crime") of the worst kind as it capriciously incarcerated minorities to the tune of millions of man-years;
- Fear-mongering for political power;
- Suppression of minorities, hippies and the anti-war movement; and
- Yet another form of voter suppression that has plagued the US for a long time.
It's like we learned nothing form Prohibition.
But the damage this has done goes well beyond the mass incarceration of minorities. It led to the enrichment of drug cartels and thanks to the ready supply of firearms in the US, the US armed the drug cartels and enabled the massive bloodshed that caused.
It's quite literally drugs into the US, money and guns out of the US.
Also, the received wisdom that alcohol prohibition was a mistake is debatable. The many ills of alcoholism (health problems, violence, drunk driving) declined enough to possibly justify the experiment. But the experiment never changed human nature, of course. So it ended.
Nonetheless, it's astounding that 2% of American adults are on cocaine and more than 10% of American population misuse opioid prescription while Americans wrote more than 190 million opioid prescriptions.
My guess is the questionable-to-doubtful justice of the War on Drugs is one of the main culprits of the issues we see with law enforcement. Personally I believe we would be better off if all drugs were legalized.
They or someone also said with legality use goes up but crime goes down.
I have a friend who told me a story about going to prison for trying to sell a few prescription pills. He was homeless at the time.
Taking laws and justice seriously is the foundation of our Western tradition (see Plato and Socrates).
The War On Drugs delivers a lucrative criminal justice system with great latitude including broad search and seizure privileges, an enormous regulatory appendage and high volumes of convictions which employ a vast number of people with professional incomes across numerous professions.
The War On Drugs also provides excellent fodder for entertainment, creating subject matter for countless serials and movies. Criminal drug dramas have served well in supplanting the classic Western in contemporary entertainment.
"The war on drugs has been a failure and should end" seems like a similar can of worms. Should the state take the approach of decriminalizing drugs but still aiming to reduce their use by allowing addicts only recourse to medical treatment in special centers? Or should things take a libertarian path and allow citizens to put whatever they want into their own bodies whenever they want?
The opposite isn't necessarily the case. That is, a drug user is not high probability to be a violent criminal. But by having available such a large net and by removing a large number of recreational drug users from the streets - the end result is a high proportion of violent offenders are also removed from the streets.
So a combination of "stop and search" policing with "three strikes" policies has the effect of significantly reducing violent crime. However, there is a good argument to be made that the benefit is far outweighed by the damage such policies have caused.
That's not quite true. The three strikes policy had the effect of increasing violent crime. After all, if it's going to be their third strike, why would anyone go small?
https://slate.com/business/2008/03/do-three-strikes-laws-mak...
1. Individuals are more likely to act more violently if they already have two strikes against them. This leads to a measurable statistical increase in the violence perpetrated by individuals who have two strikes against them in jurisdictions where three strikes policies exist compared to individuals who have two comparable crimes on their records in jurisdictions where there are no such policies.
2. The overall amount of violent crime in jurisdictions with three strike policies is lower than comparable jurisdictions where there are no such policies.
I see no incompatibility with these premises. That is, both can be true simultaneously. In fact, the evidence provided in the article you linked seems to suggest just that.
Winners 1.Police System/Unions 2.Prison System/Unions 3.Judicial System/Lawyers. 4. Politicians
Losers 1. The American people/tax payer
Disclaimer: I do not use Cannabis or ever have.
Drugs and crime are inexorably wedded in many people's minds, so to them drug users are criminals so moving towards legalizing drugs is being soft on crime, which is a non-starter for a lot of politicians who want to seem tough on crime.
The media also loves to whip up a sensationalistic frenzy when they publish lurid drug stories... and the public, including many politicians, buy this.
—— "What we need is another D-Day, not another Vietnam, not another limited war fought on the cheap," declared then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., in 1989.
Biden, who chaired the influential Senate Judiciary Committee, later co-authored the controversial 1994 crime bill that helped fund a vast new complex of state and federal prisons, which remains the largest in the world.
It’s possible decriminalizing could lead to a huge wave in crimes as people try to pay for their fix.
That being said, I’m pro-liberty. I feel all drugs should be accessible
Carfentanil which has a lethal dose that's so small it's hard to notice or see?
I understand legalizing somethings we don't necessarily even like to put up with, but if something is as lethal as a gun I'm pretty comfortable infringing a bit on some freedoms.
The question to me books down to what addicts do if the drug remains illegal. Getting all drug users over onto a legal supply matters. Doesn't need to be easy - prescriptions etc. for the worst ones would be reasonable.
But getting them onto a legal, regulated supply from providers that can nudge them towards treatment or safer alternatives is even more important for the highest risk drugs.
That's not reasonable at all. Forensic science and surveillance technology has made gigantic bounds in the past 50 years, as has almost every other aspect of crime fighting. We've busted mafias, dispersed organized crime syndicates (you know, the REAL bad guys) and made education more widespread than ever. It's gotten a lot harder to do serious IRL crime undetected (cyber crime is a whole other story). Giving a bunch of young latinos and african americans horrible mandatory minimums in lieu of addiction treatment has very arguably contributed to slowing down the decrease in violent crimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis#....
The only reason that drugs cost enormous amounts of money is that they're illegal.
Once they're legal they could be produced for virtually nothing, and no one would have to turn to crime to afford them.
In an enlightened-enough state, the government could even subsidize drugs for those that couldn't afford them. For therapeutic drugs like psilocybin and MDMA it's probably going to happen before long, though I'm not holding my breath for it happening in the US for cocaine or heroin within my lifetime. But they still don't have to be expensive, once they're legal.
I think we can all agree that illicit drugs can cause damage to societies. Even the article mentions it in regards to the opioid crisis, which continues to decimate Americans across the nation. Maybe it would be wiser to call out the failure of the strategy and execution by the US government and not the original premise.
> I think we can all agree that illicit drugs can cause damage to societies
Can we? So what's the root cause of illicit drug use? We have one major suspect with correlation but not causation established:
https://www.addictionhope.com/blog/child-abuse-substance-abu...
> Research shows almost two-thirds of all patients in treatment for substance abuse report physical, sexual or emotional abuse during childhood.
“The sheer weight of the many reports over the years certainly implicates child abuse as a possible factor in drug abuse for many people,” said Dr. Cora Lee Wetherington, NIDA’s Women’s Health Coordinator.
“But we lack hard data that clearly establish and describe the role of child ‘abuse in the subsequent development of drug abuse. Is child abuse indeed a cause of drug abuse, or is child abuse a marker for other unidentified factors?”
But to answer your question, by "war on drugs" they mean the heavy handed nature of police enforcement of drug related laws. Petty drug crimes become life ruining felonies and leave poor families struggling even more than they already were.
There is some very legitimate police activity stopping major drug dealers though, and there are many criminals whom can't be convicted of the crime they committed because of lack of evidence, but can be nailed to the wall for possession of drugs. Overall, the landscape of how to treat drug offenders becomes very muddled.
Abuse of drugs (whether legal or not -- remember, plenty of opioid abuse was perfectly legal) can be harmful, but that doesn't mean the aim should be trying to stop the use of the specific drugs that are currently illegal, or even of any drugs.
That aim is misguided, from a cognitive liberty standpoint [1].
The aim is also misguided for other reasons, but those are hard to disentangle from the implementation. For example, the reason of injustice when the drugs that are targeted for prohibition being associated with minorities, dissidents and the counterculture, while drugs associated with the wealthy and powerful being given a free pass.
It's also tied up with the injustice of the legal system, where the wealthy and powerful can often get off with a slap on the wrist in the rare cases they are charged, while the poor and marginalized are often forced to accept plea deals because they can't afford good legal representation even if they're innocent, etc.. which leads to a disproportionate number of minorities and marginalized groups in jail.
Not sure how you can divorce the reality of the implementation of the War on Drugs from its aims here.
[1] - By cognitive liberty I mean the right of people to decide what they put in to their body and what states of mind they can achieve.
Given what LA/SF/Portland streets look like with this eased-back war on drugs, it is possible the war was doing a lot.
You don't need to run a war on drugs to enforce existing laws about petty property crime and laws that criminalize the most abrasive of homeless behavior.
Now they've flipped and are underprescribing, leaving a lot of patients turning to the street for their pain control.
If you're telling me they can be so easily swayed by corporate messaging, and have been this way for a decade or longer, then we should scrap the apparently worthless MD degree and just let any old fart practice medicine because most people excel at internalizing the corporate branding that is supposedly the driving force behind modern medicine.
I mean that honestly. If the marketing dept of these companies are really running the shows and medical degrees count for nothing, then the sheer number of successfully treated patients shows that anyone who can listen to a pharma corp can prescribe drugs.
We can still have degrees for surgery and other hard skills.
Now they underprescribe because of the DEA.
And I didn't realize the Sackler family was skating by cause the DEA stopped arresting marijuana users.
Also, on the more conspiratorial side, it is curious how opioid supply and use flourished as soon as we were in Afghanistan. Kind of like it did when we were in Vietnam. Two areas known for poppies and heroin. Given what we know about the FBI encouraging terrorism so they can then claim they stopped it, I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA/JSOC was funneling in the drugs for cash and the DEA was mopping that up for cash/reason to exist.
Drugs ruin lives. Drugs end lives. And the War on Drugs ruins lives, and ends lives. The question is, if we change, will the total damage go up or down?
"In 2019, an estimated 10.1 million people aged 12 or older misused opioids in the past year. Specifically, 9.7 million people misused prescription pain relievers and 745,000 people used heroin."[0]
"From 1999–2019, nearly 500,000 people died from an overdose involving any opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids. This rise in opioid overdose deaths can be outlined in three distinct waves.
The first wave began with increased prescribing of opioids in the 1990s, with overdose deaths involving prescription opioids (natural and semi-synthetic opioids and methadone) increasing since at least 1999"[1]
So anyone who believes jail is a deterrent and wants to improve public health should probably be advocating for locking up more doctors, pharmaceutical company reps, shareholders and owners.
[0]: https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/opioid-crisis... [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html
AFAIK opioid deaths were also mostly caused by 100% legal means of getting drugs--via prescriptions.
Try doing drugs even as a homeless person in Singapore and see what happens. They're sort of orthogonal issues.
Yes, there are still drug problems - but not to the common extent you saw in the 80's.
I think the issue is that people hear the word "war" and think that only the cops and military are the sole soldiers. There is only so much they can be expected to capture without some massive invasion of citizen rights.
The truth is that more must be done by the communities themselves. Whether you call it a "war", or by any other name, you will need more than just cops and TLA's to solve the problem.
And yes, we should spend more on education as part of all of these efforts. The concerned citizens of this country have been asking for that balance to change for a large number of reasons. Unfortunately the status quo remains.
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/19/us/crack-s-legacy-a-speci...
How exactly was it checked?
It's never been hard to buy crack if you wanted it, and for every dealer busted 2 more would move in to take their place.
I've yet to see evidence that the drug war did anything except for ruining a whole lot of lives and make some people very rich.
- I think Marijuana should be legalized but it needs to be made uncool to consume just like Tobacco. Currently, it is the opposite. Social media loves weed.
- Marijuana destroys personal ambition, productivity and self-esteem.
- Marijuana is addicting even though people say its not. It is much easier to quit than Tobacco, but denying that its not addicting is not true in my experience.
- Marijuana is a nuisance on streets, apartments, etc. It has such a potent smell, it is impossible to get rid of. I would say it has 100x power of smell than perfumes, probably even more. You can smell Marijuana in your car if someone on the road is smoking it.
- Lung damage, it's undeniable.
- Marijuana is a gateway drug, I strongly believe this but open for changing my mind if there is data supporting otherwise.
It's time we make Marijuana uncool. Sure, we should stop incarcerating people for possession but I strongly oppose the current Marijuana culture. It's toxic to the society. I welcome counterpoints and discussion, just being honest about how I see the Marijuana culture. I've been there and done that for 2 years straight in college. Roommate was a weed dealer.
>Marijuana is a gateway drug, I strongly believe this but open for changing my mind if there is data supporting otherwise.
The burden of proof is on you to show this. What you strongly feel doesn't matter.
Ask a bunch of drug addicts if they used weed before [heroin|coke|speed|lsd|<insert-drug-of-choice>|aota], most of them will say yes. At least the ones I've been hanging out with in NA for the past 25+ years.
Does that mean, smoke weed and you'll automatically end up using other drugs? No.
Correlation != causation. The idea of a 'gateway' drug is absurd.
The simplest explanation is that people with mental illness or trauma will self medicate. So given that, it makes sense that the easiest to acquire/least scary drugs would be the first used. I bet even more people got started on alcohol as their first 'treatment'. That doesn't make it a gateway drug.
> Marijuana is often referred to as a gateway drug due to its placement in the stage-like progression of drug use (Kandel, 2002; Zimmer & Morgan, 1997). This study examines the gateway drug concept from an insiders' perspective. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 51 current and former users of marijuana. Data were collected between 2000 and 2002. Data on drug histories and perceptions about marijuana as a gateway drug were analyzed. While 80.3% (n = 41) of participants initiated their drug use experiences with alcohol or tobacco, one-third (n = 15) used an illicit drug other than marijuana prior to initiating marijuana. The adults in this study varied with regard to their perceptions about whether or not they thought marijuana was a gateway drug. Forty-five percent (n = 23) expressed viewpoints characterized as mixed or conflicting, 35% (n = 18) did not support the idea that marijuana was a gateway drug, and 19.6% (n = 10) strongly supported the notion.
Fair enough about burden of proof. I found one that supports and one that opposes the argument:
Kind of supporting, it says it is complex to evaluate the gateway hypothesis: https://doi.org/10.1080/09595230500126698
Opposing: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-021-09464-z
- Driving takes away precious exercise that you otherwise would have gotten walking.
- Driving is addicting, even though people say it's not. I can no longer resist the urge to visit Tesco on a regular basis.
- Driving is a nuisance on streets, apartments, etc. Gas and smog has such a potent smell, it is impossible to get rid of. I would say that it has 100x power of smell than perfumes, probably even more. You can even smell exhaust in your car if you're parked somewhere.
- The risk of crashing, it's undeniable.
- Driving is irresponsible since it also may inspire people to want to fly a plane, which is more dangerous and therefore bad.
It's time we make driving uncool. It's toxic to the society. I welcome counterpoints and discussion, just being honest about how I see the driving culture. I've been there and done that for 2 years straight in college. Roommate had a big van.
It would be very eye opening if you could build a case for this being so, apart from saying that's been the case in your experience and that of your friends/acquaintances.
Have there been any research showing this is the case? If so, how large/good are those studies? What's the scientific consensus on this issue?
As far as I know there's very little research in this area, so most of what we have to go on are anecdotes.
"Marijuana is addicting even though people say its not. It is much easier to quit than Tobacco, but denying that its not addicting is not true in my experience."
But many other things are addictive in the same way -- like food, sex, sports, video games, etc... and addiction to any of those could lead to very severe consequences. Would you say it's time to make food, sex, sports, or video games uncool?
I'm also wondering why we should be focusing on cannabis when alcohol is way, way worse, and whose use is far more widespread.
"Marijuana is a nuisance on streets, apartments, etc. It has such a potent smell, it is impossible to get rid of. I would say it has 100x power of smell than perfumes, probably even more. You can smell Marijuana in your car if someone on the road is smoking it."
I like the smell of most cannabis strains, though some are unpleasant. Tobacco smell is way worse for me. Also, when vaping there's almost no smell at all. In any case, I hope there is social pressure not to smoke indoors where people who don't like the smell might be present, like on subways. That's pretty rude.
"Lung damage, it's undeniable."
You can eat it, and when smoking it you could run it through water to take out some of the impurities and/or vape it, which helps too.
"Marijuana is a gateway drug"
Not sure what to say to this. Some people are going to experiment with drugs. If they don't start with cannabis they'll start with something else, whether alcohol (which is way worse), some "bath salts" (which are usually some random novel designer drugs of unknown toxicity or known to be more toxic) or whatever. You're not going to keep these people from experimenting by making pot "uncool".