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Comment by jasonhansel | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that making a behavior more visible tends to normalize it.

I wouldn't say it's a "learn by example". If anything, it makes me doesn't want to try heroine

It's like if we presented corpses of dead drivers on the main streets – I bet it'd greatly lower overspeeding and drunk driving

This is probably not true.for example: People know smoking kills. The tabacco industry even popularized stories about sad COPD patients that were dying in the hospital and still wouldnt quit smoking.

"Its that good!" "It's so nice! Even when you know it kills you, you still dont want to stop! Not to mention! Quiting is hard! Real hard! Dont try to quit. You will only suffer."

That is the narrative that they push.

The human mind is Strange sometimes.

Smoking tobacco was subject to well over a century of well-funded marketing, anti-science efforts to hide adverse effects, and even claims of being good for your health. I don't think there's a Joe Camel for heroin, and if there is, some poor homeless bastard shooting up isn't it.

Tobacco use - despite its visibility and despite being extremely addictive - went down a lot. Legal and normal are NOT the same thing. The biggest problems arise when normal is illegal as it undermines the law and maintains delusions about what is going on in reality.

In the EU 1 in 4 adults smoke tobacco daily[1]. It sounds pretty normal to me. In practice when I commute daily, I always need to hold my breath several times each way, just to avoid the stench.

[1]: <https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-who-smoke>

In the United States, it's as visible as anywhere in Portugal. The visibility just isn't distributed evenly. When you hear people complain about such things, it's usually the upper class whining about how distasteful it all is.

Whether or not visibility normalizes drug use behaviors, I couldn't say. They were normalized before I was born and I'll be 50 next year.

Oh well? When the alternative being supported is, "Return to an expensive and inhumane model of frequent and revolving incarceration" I can't say that bothers me much. I'm also fairly sure that seeing a homeless junkie skin up isn't exactly an advertisement for the lifestyle.

There are options between "an inhumane system of frequent and revolving incarceration" and "never punishing public drug use under any circumstances."

And what is that option that doesn’t involve the Justice system targeting minorities and the police not killing people for trying to sell a single cigarette.

Maybe a system of law enforcement that doesn't kill people for trying to sell a single cigarette? That seems achievable.

It actually isn’t. Since the Justice system is mostly targeting minorities, the majority doesn’t care.

It should be telling that during protests, white people were helping protestors by forming a “shield” because they knew the optics of police beating white people would be distasteful.

https://www.blackenterprise.com/white-protesters-form-human-...

Well in France we provide methadone and subutex for free to anyone who needs it, but we also chase drug dealers, jail large consumers, do heavy prevention in schools etc.

Our goal was never to stop drug use, we know it's impossible, but to both make it survivable by victims, stop the violence on the citizens who did nothing wrong but walk past a drug victim, and also stop the spread of the victimization (that's why we hesitate so strongly about Marijuana: there's a 100% chance in increases its victims rather than reduce them).

Minorities are not the only drug victims, a lot of the victims are also in people of the mainstream cultural segment of the population. I'd even argue these victims make it all the more important to help control the problem since they have richer parents who hold more power and vote etc.

Don't lose sight of the point, the evil is the drug, not the police, in the drug fight. The victims of the drug trades are killed by the drug in 99% of the deaths, and by police abuse for the rest. It is not a police problem first and foremost.

> Minorities are not the only drug victims, a lot of the victims are also in people of the mainstream cultural segment of the population

Minorities are often the victims of the Justice system in the US. When drugs were in an “inner city” problem. It was all about “poor morals” and “absentee fathers”.

When it happened in “rural America” it was the fault of those evil “illegal immigrants” and the drug companies and “let’s treat it like a disease”.

“ It is not a police problem first and foremost.”

It is when you’re targeted because of the color of your skin.

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