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Comment by cscurmudgeon | Hacker News Reader

Why should the state spend any money here at all?

If you want the freedom from society to use drugs, then you shouldn't rely on society for that.

You seem to be acting as though addiction and the issues which give rise to it are somehow not part of society, and therefore should be discarded. Even ignoring why that's wrong, ignoring why letting people slip through the cracks still has an impact on your conception of society...

...how about basic human empathy?

> ...how about basic human empathy?

How about empathy from your side? I have lost a friend due to addiction despite "care".

The best solution is not being exposed to some classes of drugs at all and fixing other issues that cause this.

> How about empathy from your side? I have lost a friend due to addiction despite "care". The best solution is not being exposed to some classes of drugs at all.

Maybe that's true, but the genie isn't going back into the bottle as like 50 years of the 'war on drugs' has so clearly demonstrated.

The war on drugs started 18 June 1971 with Richard Nixon's declaration that drug abuse is “public enemy number one.” At this point, drugs seem more available than ever. I strongly suspect we would minimize harm in the reality in which we live (rather than the pretend reality where drugs don't exist) by acknowledging that.

Think of the War on Drugs like a baked good. Just because we have failed attempting it doesn't mean we go around declaring we'll never try again! It just means we try harder.

Joking aside, look at Singapore for a success case.

Well, the whole world did it, and the whole world failed, for fifty years. Just as it failed with alcohol, a much more dangerous drug than most. [0]

I'm not sure how Singapore fares, but Japan is also known for its hard-line drug policy. This just pushes the harm underground. Just because you don't see it, and society turns a blind eye to it, doesn't mean it's not there. tl;dr: the hardline policy towards drug use in Japan created a massive underground meth problem. [1]

[edit] It doesn't take much research to find out something quite similar is happening in Singapore, too.

> “People think drugs are very hard to get in Singapore, but actually before the pandemic they were everywhere, and even now there are people selling them.” [2]

Hardline policies don't reduce the harm. They just stop people from asking for help.

[0] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/25/what-is-...

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/xg8q7k/how-stigma-created-ja...

[2] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/young-an...

> alcohol, a much more dangerous drug than most

The overall impact of alcohol on society is not because it is “much more dangerous than most”, but because it is consumed (and abused) by orders of magnitude more people than almost every other drug.

That's partly the case, but part of the higher ranking of other drugs is due to lack of safe access. There's no perfect model, but I would argue alcohol is a drug like any other - with risk of dependence, with health consequences, and with mortality risk. So my question to the parent is: why would we separate alcohol? Would parent be in favor of returning to prohibition?

I think it's fair to say that alcohol does far more harm to the user than psychedelics.

> I think it's fair to say that alcohol does far more harm to the user than psychedelics

I agree but also think that’s a very different statement from “alcohol is a much more dangerous drug than most”

Back then it was just a euphemism for people of a color.

> The best solution is not being exposed to some classes of drugs at all and fixing other issues that cause this.

Yes we should have a “War on Drugs”? What could possibly go wrong?

Maybe look at Singapore and other places where it went right?

And Singapore is mostly homogenous….

If Singapore is homogeneous, the USA is too. Descendants of Chinese (majority), followed by Malay, and Indian make up most of the citizens. Couple that with the high number of expats from all over the world.

What? The country has four official languages. It is arguably close to the US level of diversity, especially when you consider the implications of how multiracial children are classified and the fact that 70 something percent of the country is put into a vague “Chinese” bucket.

> I have lost a friend due to addiction

So have I. The drug was alcohol. Adults make choices and live with the consequences. shrug

That is ok, but what is not okay is making rest of society support those consequences.

Think of it abstractly like refusing vaccination. You messing up your life has outbound consequences for others (even if no money is spent on you).

The argument for why the government should spend money is because not spending it would be more expensive or yield worse outcomes.

People don’t live isolated from each other. Drug consumption has knock on effect on the rest of the population: traffic props up organised crime, addicts can be violent. Plus there is a direct correlation between social issues and the risk of becoming an addict. All of this is squarely in the remit of the state.

Portugal was previously (1990s) spending money on police, courts, and jails. They had shifted the resources, and it had seemed to be successful until something changed in the past few years.

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