Hacker News Reader

Comment by BirAdam | Hacker News Reader

All drugs should be decriminalized. Shooting people in drug raids is far worse for those people than are the drugs. Likewise, locking people in cages with other misfits, criminals, malcontents, and addicts isn’t smart (especially considering that drugs are in the prisons too). If the goal is truly harm reduction, people need to simply work to convince drug users to not use drugs (whether those are opioids, alcohol, tobacco, meth, whatever).

View on HN

I'm not refuting and generally agree with your sentiment here in harm reduction but I tried to see the collateral damage of drug raids vs drugs.

In the US the CDC reported 100,000 overdoses from drugs in the 12 months preceding April 2021[1]. I can't find how many people die from drug raids specifically but this Al-Jazeera article shows 1,068 people being killed by the police a year after George Floyd died[2].

And for a little more context Statista[3] shows 21,750 people being murdered in 2020.

Police kill at ~1% the rate of drug deaths. Citizens kill at ~20% the rate of drug deaths.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/... 2. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/25/how-many-people-hav... 3. https://www.statista.com/statistics/191134/reported-murder-a...

An addict can become not an addict. A person killed by police cannot become anything other than a corpse. The severity of the harm has a temporal component due to time preference.

EDIT: Also, dying of overdose is both a symptom of illegality and of the addiction. If a thing is outlawed the production isn’t exactly regular and therefore strength/purity of the substance varies.

Agreed. I'm in no way advocating people dying from any source. Drugs laws are ridiculous in so many ways. I was just trying to wrap my head around what the true numbers are as it helps put things into context.

Now count how many people are sitting in jail for marijuana possession and the impact that arrest has over the course of their lives.

Oh absolutely. Something like marijuana should not have ever been a crime. It's absurd and horrifying to think of people spending their lives behind bars for that and many other drug offenses.

I am not sure where I fall on the all drugs should be legal argument but I do know that because I spent ~$400 to get a medical marijuana card I can legally buy pot at the local dispensary in my state and smoke it with zero repercussions. In the mean time the jails are absolutely full of people who are there because they did not spend the $400. It is morally insane for that to continue. People are getting rich off selling marijuana in a dispensary while others are serving life sentences for selling it out of their home.

I take a lot of Non-FDA approved gray market and black market medicine. If all drugs are legal then such medical drugs should be legal as well. At least the ones I take are health promoting, non-addictive and non-habit forming.

I think a big part of the resistance to legalization is the medical establishment maintaining their monopoly supplier status on medicine.

Slippery slope.

What happens when a drug addict looking his next fix attacks someone? This is why we have drug laws to start with, was to protect people.

There are no simple answers here.

Arrest them for assault...? Basically every study or reasonable implementation of decriminalization has shown both fewer negative effects of drug use, and in many cases decreased drug use itself.

So there is in fact a simple answer, and I think you'll find that drug laws were likely conceived much more cynically than for the protection of the common person.

We have already (as a society) decided we will no longer forcibly help people, so what do you do with someone that hurts others to feed their addiction?

Put them all in jail for every little offense? Fine them? (they have no money) Force them into rehab? (another form of jail) Let the roam the streets attacking people? (recycle through jail or rehab)

No, it's not simple.

Assault is not a "little offense". Anyone convicted of criminal assault should spend a significant amount of time in prison (regardless of whether they're a drug addict or not) in order to protect the rest of society.

It is in San Francisco

We just elected a district attorney in Manhattan who has adopted a policy that he will not seek imprisonment for charges of simple assault.

Assaulting people for drug money is an artifact of the drug war, not the drug. Alcohol addicts don't typically assault people for alcohol money. Alcohol gangs do not shoot each other up on the streets over alcohol territory. Or they haven't since 1933.

Assault is already a crime.

What happens when a person robs someone so he can buy a new car? You don’t outlaw cars.

Cars don't cause impaired judgment and withdraw.

I don't believe the poster above is saying that there should be no intervention, they're saying they shouldn't be criminally prosecuted.

There should be a non-criminal route for helping drug addicts that doesn't result in prison.

I can agree with that, but what is it? It can't be forced rehab, that is just jail but different. And addicts by definition _won't_ seek help or a solution.

I don't agree with your definition, often people affected by addiction will desperately seek help. Unfortunately, many fall into relapse cycles and it's a long and hard process to recovery.

I think a good solution would be making quality non-forced resources available for free. For example, rehab, therapy, or jobs specifically created for those seeking to overcome their addiction. Ideally these programs could pay for themselves in net returns for society as a whole.

There is help right now for addicts. What change are you suggesting?

Sorry for the late reply. I think much of the help available is cost prohibitive, I think addiction treatment programs should be free. A much better use of money than locking people up in cages which is both inhumane and more expensive.

What you are thinking of as the side effects of drug addiction are mainly the side effects of prohibition. Alcohol addiction is a serious problem, with serious negative consequences. So we made it illegal. And then we had two problems instead of one. Drug laws do not decrease addiction rates. They do make drugs unnecessarily expensive, and force addicts to interact with violent criminal gangs to get them. The negative unintended consequences of drug prohibition are worse than the problem they purport, but fail to solve.

Which drug will do more harm if freely available to all children? Alcohol, meth, heroin or crack?

I will pick alcohol every time over the others.

Which vehicle will do more harm if freely available to all children? Car, tank or crane with wrecking ball?

I would suggest that children shouldn't be driving at all.

Why am I forced to choose any or just one? Why do you think alcohol does less harm then any of the others?

Currently far, far more children die due to alcohol than the others, and while that's definitely due to availability it's not obvious that wouldn't still be the case if all were legal.

> Why do you think alcohol does less harm then any of the others?

A simple test, give each to a baby/small child and see what happens... I lived in a time where babies were given tiny amounts of alcohol for pain relief and it did no harm that I ever heard. I doubt you can say the same for meth.

I believe that the consensus is that it did cause a small amount of harm and there likely are horror stories you never heard, that's why the practice stopped, but giving children meth is called adderal.

Children also had regular access to small amounts of coke and heroin probably in your grandparents or great grandparents life, remember Coca Cola and laudanum was used for teething. You've never heard of harm from that. Your test says all of them pass.

Babies are not given adderal.

Are pregnant mothers?

No babies are given alcohol either anymore so you'll accept that heroin and cocaine should be legal based on your bullshit test?

You are mistaken. Vast numbers of American teens are prescribed amphetamines every day. The main difference between elicit recreational methamphetamine use and medical/psychological amphetamine use is circumstances and dosing. Kids on Ritalin are generally in safe situations where they have consulted a psychologist with the involvement of their parents, and are given a pure, unadulterated, small, carefully dosed amount of amphetamines. Meth addicts are typically people with more serious mental issues and in precarious situations, given massive and uncertain doses of unpure, perhaps adulterated amphetamines.

The disparate outcomes of those groups are much more about the dosage and the personal/social situation.

Pharmacologically, they are pretty much the same drug.

No babies are prescribed amphetamines.

This conversation is like telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.

> What happens when a drug addict looking his next fix attacks someone?

You arrest and charge them for attacking someone?

But if the person they attacked dies, arresting the attacker after the fact doesn't bring them back to life. Do you also think DUI should be legal until you get in a crash?

> Do you also think DUI should be legal until you get in a crash?

No clearly we should charge anyone found in possession of alcohol with a felony to lower the possibility.

Drinking is not a crime, being drunk alone is not a crime, driving is not a crime. Being drunk, while driving is. On the other hand, assault is a crime regardless.

Have assaults gone up in the states where marijuana has been legalized?

I would argue that any drug that are depressants would have a different effect when high vs when the user is in withdrawl. Marijuana is considerably different than narcotics from my first hand experience/witness of it's effect on people.

Dope heads don't jones for their next hit. But I have seen a sweet young naive young teen turn into a mugger from meth.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com