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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

I get decriminalization, let people be responsible for their own choices that don’t affect others. But I don’t see why we are also expected to pony up billions, probably more like trillions of dollars to fix the consequences of those decisions. This isn’t cheap at all, supporting an unhoused neighbor with a fent problem runs around $100k/year just to shelter (before treatment can even start, usually they just keep doing drugs because no incentive to stop), sucking the air, empathy, and resources out for the rest of our homelessness problem. And…fent is cheap, taxing it via legalization is a non-starter (the illicit questionable stuff would still exist because the users don’t want to and cannot pay high prices).

If we just decriminalize and let people reap the consequences of their actions, the problem also goes away. I can really admire countries like China that don’t coddle their addicts and instead apply pure tough love.

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If you're going to make this argument, I really wish you'd make it more explicit. I think what you're suggesting makes cities unlivable. The homeless drug users have to exist in space somewhere. What do you propose to do with these people? There's nowhere to ship them to that's not owned by someone who objects to their presence.

It is just really expensive, it would be better if they didn't do drugs rather than just letting them do it and having society responsible for picking up the pieces. If society has to be responsible for paying for these problems, then its no longer a personal decision with personal effect. We as a society have to decide whether we are going to allow hard drug abuse and "pay the bill for that decision" or not.

You need to think of it as a system of feedback loops. If you don't stem the input of the cycle of drug abuse by investing a little, your problem gets worse.

It seems people take a moral or 'fairness' based attitude to these social phenomena and that's what causes things like the war on drugs as a form of justice. The idea that everyone is self determined, which in a small way is true of the individual. But if you look at people in aggregate things are more clear, the universe doesn't play by those rules...

We've tried to stop them from doing drugs through years of state action and penalties. It hasn't worked.

Turns out, drugs are both fun AND addictive and it's hard to combat that with threats of jail time.

The point others are making is that it appears to be a zero-sum game, i.e., we're paying one way or the other, so the more compassionate option with better outcomes should win out. As I have seen it stated, the options appear to be to pay for: (i) criminalization and its effects/expenses, e.g., court system burden, incarceration, etc.; (ii) de-criminalization (potentially with legalization/taxation) to offset the cost of keeping cities livable by mitigating its effects/expenses, e.g., treatment and housing for addicts that may become homeless; or (iii) de-criminalization without paying for mitigations, leading to unlivable cities. Your comment reads like you see some way of simply not paying to deal with addicts, while also not having the consequences of a bunch of (potentially homeless) addicts living in society. If that's an accurate description of your point, how does that work? If it's not, then what do you mean?

You can't get addicted to a substance that you don't have the ability to obtain in the first place, or that you could obtain but choose not to because you're afraid of punishment. That's the whole theory behind criminalization: that it's not a zero sum game!

I think you're probably right that the criminal justice system isn't the most effective way of dealing with people who are already addicted, but how do you propose we stop people from getting addicted in the first place if hard drugs are perfectly legal, and the government is actively working to minimize the personal downsides of being addicted to them? Why not become an addict if the only consequence is that it means you get free food and housing for the rest of your life?

> how do you propose we stop people from getting addicted in the first place if hard drugs are perfectly legal

There are shades of legal and illegal. There's "We're going to lock you up for years for simple possession" and there's "We're giving it away free to kids at the corner store!", and in between those extremes lies a whole multidimensional landscape we could explore.

With harder drugs like opiates, most people are not talking about them being available at the liquor store, but solutions like removing criminal penalties for possession while providing support services, maintenance doses and counselling for those who are addicted.

> Why not become an addict

Is that a life you want? Queuing up outside the medical centre every morning for a shot that keeps the pain at bay?

It's not a life I want.

> You can't get addicted to a substance that you don't have the ability to obtain in the first place

If you're saying you can't acquire heroine, given 24 hours, I'm afraid I've lost faith in everything else you've said because it's just based on a flawed perception of what world we live in.

Honestly you're making my point. We (as in civilization) tried criminalization, and it is more expensive (and has other added downsides) compared with decriminalization/legalization + taxation and treatment. How do I propose to get people not to think drugs are their best option? Ha. Okay sure, in response to that straw man here's my stab at fixing human society to help reduce the number of people that go that route (since that's what it would take). UBI + free healthcare (including all procedures that may be used to either assisting with a miscarriage or causing an abortion) + free contraceptives + free childcare + additional assistance for parents + free school lunches + free higher ed + strong labor protections / unions (+ -- US specific -- constitutional amendments to allow for regulation of firearms, getting monied interests out of politics, lessening the influence of extremists in politics including ranked choice voting or similar, making public money available to third-parties, I'm sure there's more). I'm sure what I've missed could fill an encyclopedia. My point is that the problem isn't simple, so if you're going to try to "solve" it, you're wasting time debating whether incarceration is better than legalization.

> My point is that the problem isn't simple, so if you're going to try to "solve" it, you're wasting time debating whether incarceration is better than legalization.

Okay, but that debate is what this entire thread is about. I don't think it's a waste of time. We don't have to fix all the world's problems at once.

> We (as in civilization) tried criminalization, and it is more expensive (and has other added downsides) compared with decriminalization/legalization + taxation and treatment

Personally I think the jury's still out on that one, particularly once you ask yourself whether legalization is likely to result in less drug addiction overall, or more. But time will tell.

So is your theory is that the drug war was a success, and nobody could get drugs when they were illegal? How do you propose to make them go away? That way was tried, and failed.

A success relative to what? Criminalization of homicide hasn't eliminated homicide either; that's not an argument for legalizing it.

I wonder how the societal costs of tobacco, alcohol, and gambling compare to those of "hard" drugs in this regard.

You seem to be pretending that the "pure tough love" option is somehow NOT billions of dollars?

How much do you think we have spent on the DEA, ATF, and 2 million prisoners?

Have the overall societal costs of dealing with the consequences of drug use gone up due to decriminalization?

Furthermore, you could use the same argument about the effects of a whole lot of other mental health and healthcare issues. It'd be cheaper to let a whole lot of people suffer or die. It'd also be grossly inhumane. Like China.

> But I don’t see why we are also expected to pony up billions

You already are ponying up billions. What's more, what you're ponying up for is making things worse. Doing nothing at all is hardly likely to be an economically optimal strategy either, but at least we wouldn't be sinking billions in actually making it worse, as we are now.

The argument that we should take some or all of the enforcement money and spend it on services can be a utilitarian one. Think about why we educate children whose parents couldn't afford to pay for it otherwise, why we have social security programs. It benefits us all to have a functional, productive population.

> usually they just keep doing drugs because no incentive to stop

Firstly, no, oddly enough a most people don't want to spend their entire lives addicted to opioids. When given access to things like a stable supply and clean places to satisfy their addiction, many are able to hold down jobs, take steps to get clean and become productive members of society. The constant need for money and the insecurity of the supply seem to ensure that addicts are in a state of perpetual turmoil and instability, which makes their situation worse and their chances of recovery slimmer.

Second - you'd rather that addicts still commit petty crime to support their habits, when we know better and cheaper ways for both them and us?

> If we just decriminalize and let people reap the consequences of their actions, the problem also goes away.

No, it really doesn't. You'll end up with a different set of social problems. Not as bad without the legal consequences attached, but not simply "gone away" either.

> I can really admire countries like China...

That don't value human life? That dictate what people can do, how many kids they can have, that sort of thing? By all means, go live in an authoritarian paradise.

And from your other comment -

> it would be better if they didn't do drugs

Yes, and it would be better if people didn't drink, or smoke, or hurt each other, or steal stuff, or crash cars, or rape each other, or...

But we don't live in that world, and we never will. We have to deal with the world we live in and the human race as it is, and try to figure out how to get the best outcomes.

And that includes messy things like addiction and the fallout of that. You know what really cuts down on the number of young people getting addicted to opioids? Seeing a load of middle-aged addicts queuing up for their morning hit at the local clinic. Knocks the glamour right out of it, and has worked very well in Switzerland.

oddly enough a most people don't want to spend their entire lives addicted to opioids. When given access to things like a stable supply and clean places to satisfy their addiction, many are able to hold down jobs, take steps to get clean and become productive members of society.

There are plenty of people who really do want to spend their entire lives addicted to opioids. LA's homeless "crisis" is proof of that; there are literally thousands of shelter beds that go unused each night because almost all of LA's homeless shelters are sober facilities which do not allow alcohol, drugs, or related contraband, and the addicts would rather be on the streets using drugs than have shelter, food, and stability.

You are leaving a few things out of your discussion. Shelters won’t allow you to bring your pets either. And they separate families. And the statistics I’ve seen show about a third of homeless are addicts, and a third have untreated mental health issues. There are lots of reasons people don’t go to shelters.

'rather'

Yeah, that doesn't mean what you think it means when you're talking about people in the throes of addiction.

Addiction is also a symptom of other social issues.

The problem isn't that some people are weak willed. It's more that there are many cultural elements that covertly value antagonism and hostility, and the poor bear the brunt of that.

The rich bear the brunt in other ways. No one much cares if $billionaire is clearly off his head on coke, because he/she has the protective support system that makes prosecution unlikely - even though their decision-making can be ridiculous, self-harming, and catastrophic for millions.

That aside - wealth really doesn't mean they're models of mental and emotional health.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/poverty-homelessness-and...

It's important to point out that the framing of drug addiction as a weakness of will has an important function - to unburden people from guilt and a responsibility to others.

To be in the position of recognizing a problem and then being relatively powerless to enact change is a powerful motivator in disavowing the problem or responsibility to fix it. It's an adaptive response to avoiding mental discomfort.

And it works - people who don't feel responsibility to others avoid an entire class of mental discomforts. Taking away that adaptive mechanism exposes folks to a level of pain they likely aren't equipped to handle - a reason they developed it in the first place.

people have to pony up to mitigate the consequences of alcohol being legal and many other things...

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