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anon48293

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Please don't post like this on HN. Multiple guidelines ask us to avoid this kind of thing, in particular:

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Eschew flamebait.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

So anyone who has LSD on them gets life in prison? Sounds expensive. Is that how other countries have avoided having this many visible homeless?

Any concerns about police placing drugs on someone if punishment is this harsh?

It is pretty much how China has handled it. It seems like it does actually work if your goal is to fully eliminate drug issues, but it's unacceptably harsh for most countries to palate.

A quick check suggests the penalty for possession is 3 years in prison, not life. No idea if that is a maximum sentence.

From what I can find, it looks like China does a lot of what the US does, including DARE style education, and that there is still (by Chinese accounts) quite a lot of illegal drug use.

I would think that since China is very nationalist and still fairly collectivist/anti-individualist, and has a grim history of drugs being used as a tool of foreign imperialism (the opium wars), drug use is much further out of the social "Overton window". I think that's a better explanation for apparently lower drug use than harsh punishments, because other states also have those (notably the US!)

Why is it expensive? Forced labor and for profit prisons exist.

And if there is a life sentence on hard drugs who would possibly have them on them?

You could also make it the 3rd offense or something, not that difficult.

So essentially a return to the failed drug policies of the last 50 years.

Dealers can deal with that easily, this is often how they operate now, they don't carry big bags of stuff in their pockets usually they have nothing if police will do quick search. With that approach you will mostly catch users.

If I would be getting these naive suggestions of yours in this thread from my 6 year old son, I could respect them. But adults in 2026 should definitely know better and know a bit of history to reflect on.

>>And if there is a life sentence on hard drugs who would possibly have them on them?

Well by that logic there's no thieves in countries that cut your arm off for stealing. It doesn't work this way.

Yeah, that is actually how a lot of countries in Asia have handled the problem

So how come incarceration in Asia is orders of magnitude lower than in the US?

The laws are enforced harshly and consistently, so people follow them. As a result, you have low crime and low total incarceration.

Take auto theft. In California, we have 1 auto theft arrest per 15 stolen cars. Incarceration rate is 1 in 5 of those arrested, so 1 per 75 stolen cars.

Japan has 1 arrest for every 2 stolen cars - A much higher rate of getting caught.

Japan has about 5,000 stolen vehicles nationally per year. California has about 200,000 per year.

As a result, there are very few in prison for it, despite the 10 year sentence.

Could it be because Japan is populated mostly (98%) by people who have lived there for multiple generations under strict rules? Also, it's probably a cultural thing where crime is shamed.

Be careful comparing such statistics between countries as the defintions of what counts at every step will be different and there are always contributing factors that skew the statistics.

I think I took appropriate caution. Do you have a specific concern?

They haven't "handled" the problem. Drugs are still as plentiful and cheap as ever there

Prison isn't the right idea. But getting them into some sort of treatment would make sense. And that could be court mandated for repeat offenders for some crimes.

That was what was supposed to happen in Oregon when they decriminalized drugs. However, building the treatment centers, shelters, etc took forever, in part due to communities pushing back against these facilities being built in their neighborhoods, and you still need a well-staffed justice system with sufficient judges and public defenders to actually process offenders in a timely fashion or at all. Lack of public defenders, judges and jail capacity is why Portland has so much catch and release, not due to unwillingness to enforce the law.

I kind of read the suggestion as a deterrent for dealers and people engaged in drug trafficking, which could lead to less addicts... Not as "jail the junkies!"

Ah, the age old 'if we jail all the dealers drugs will go away' fantasy. If we ban all the alcohol all the issues stemming from it will go away. If...

Fools that don't learn from their own mistakes are bound to never-ending cycle of repetition. Individuals or whole societies, doesn't matter.

The biggest drug dealers are legitimate doctors. You can't solve the problem without first adressing the pipeline to addiction.

Want to get rid of drug addicts? Start by banning all pharma ads and stopping over-prescription.

> Want to get rid of drug addicts? Start by banning all pharma ads and stopping over-prescription.

People don't go to their doctor and complain about pain for no reason.

And? Doctors are not supposed to be a pharma dispensary. Depending on motivational factors a doctor may either tell someone to suck it up, quickly fill out a standard subscription to cover up the symptoms or spends some time to diagnose and fix the root cause and then prescribe medication by taking into account but the patients immediate needs and the long-term health impacts.

okay, so byebye elon?

Can we start with the drug-using tech billionaires?

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