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Comment by chucksta | Hacker News Reader

Meth was legal until the 70s, society functioned. The current problem is another side effect of the war on drugs

https://www.history.com/topics/crime/history-of-meth

According to period newspapers, it very much was a problem almost immediately after public introduction in the late 40s and early 50s. Here's an example from Australia, which banned it by 1955:

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/71874426?searchTe...

Reading today's newspapers, you'd think Southern California just survived the apocalypse after the half inch of rain last weekend.

This is very much false, and completely contrary to the actual history. War on drugs only happened because of greatly increased social dysfunction due to drugs, not the other way around. It enjoyed wide social support at the time it was started, precisely because people saw how damaging the drugs are to their communities. The idea that drug-related social dysfunction is an effect of war on drugs is yet another of those "wet streets cause rain" ideas.

No. The war on drugs was an acknowledged political act to disenfranchise black people and the anti (Vietnam) war movement. Lopez, German (March 22, 2016). "Nixon official: real reason for the drug war was to criminalize black people and hippies". Vox. Archived from the original on May 30, 2017. Retrieved June 13, 2017.

Which is why when the War on Drugs started, the Congressional Black Caucus met with Nixon to urge him to stop it.

…no, they didnt, in fact they urged him to do the opposite: to ramp it up as fast as possible, precisely to stop the damage the drugs were causing to black communities.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/16/212620886...

The linked material came out on NPR in 2013, before it was decided that the history needs to be revised. I recommend taking a look at it before it is also revised, to remove all references to what had actually happened, to how black leaders were main force behind the War on Drugs.

Did you finish reading it? >The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a longtime pastor in New York, once was addicted to heroin and served time. He's convinced that black leaders who embraced the drug war did serious harm to the community, but says a lot of African-Americans were desperate for ways to make their neighborhoods safe again. "If you're the victim, then you don't want to hear anything about treatment, just, 'Get this guy off the street.' "

Makes sense to me

Yes, I did. The quote you gave supports what I said: that the black leaders pushed for War on Drugs, precisely to counteract the destructive effects of drugs on their communities. Rev. Herbert Daughtry might believe today that they were wrong to do so, and he might well be correct. This is not what I’m arguing against. I’m arguing against a blatant falsehood, that War on Drugs was purely a mean to disenfranchise black Americans, and that social decay related to drug use was an effect, not a cause of the War on Drugs. These claims are very much false, and this is obvious to anyone who lived through these times, or who spends even minimal amount of effort to look at primary sources.

Ah I misunderstood your point, I agree with you

How do you explain this quote then, surely the war would cause a decrease no? Odd usage spiked decades _after_ they banned it

>Use of crystal meth in the United States exploded in the early 1990s. Between 1994 and 2004, methamphetamine use rose from just under two percent of the U.S. adult population to approximately five percent.

Society functions while people have access to guns too, yet there are still consequences to that choice. I am pro legalization of most drugs, but meth does give me pause. No one smoking a joint or tripped out on opioids has ever attacked me while screaming at ghosts in the street, I don't know enough about the role of meth in those kinds of instabilities but anecdotally meth, and alcohol too, sure seem to cause a whole lot of trouble in my city.

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