Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

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There are indeed places where drug dealing or use is punishable with death.

These places still have pervasive drug use -- in fact, greater use than places without such penalties.

How much more severe can you be? Seems like immediate death doesn't deter drug use. Does that idea still make sense to you? Or perhaps in all of those places it just hasn't been done correctly yet?

Prohibition (which took a constitutional amendment, btw) had zero effect on alcohol use -- it actually probably encouraged it and the organized crime that came with it. We're still cleaning that mess up.

Anything you put into your body changes the way your body and brain operate -- including tap water. So everything is a drug. It's just a matter of degree. I remember hearing about kids in the 60s who smoked pot laughing about their parents who were way more hooked on valium. In fact, misuse of legal drugs is much more pervasive than illegal drug use. We live in a society where you pop a pill for everything.

Nope -- shooting folks doesn't make much sense: unless you just don't like people and want to get rid of a few. I'm a libertarian and opposed to constraints on what government tells me I can do with my own body, but I wouldn't want crack being sold out of vending machines either. It's a tough subject, and part of the problem is that people need to acknowledge that it's tough. Only through socialization and education can we have an intelligent discussion about where the limits are -- just like we did with alcohol. Quick fixes aren't going to work.

Jimmy Carter made an excellent quote about the penalties for drug use.

"Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual that the use of the drug itself."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter

The counter argument is that this might be true in expectation. If we caught and executed 1 out of every 50 drug users, maybe the rest would stop using. If being on drugs is half as bad as being dead, then on net you've saved 23.5 lives for every 50 users.

This is, of course, a very flimsy argument, which I would not stand by under any circumstances. But I think a better take on the subject would be "penalties against drug possession should be a net win for society", rather than what Carter said.

"There are indeed places where drug dealing or use is punishable with death.

These places still have pervasive drug use -- in fact, greater use than places without such penalties."

Examples please. I have examples to the contrary: Singapore and China. What are yours?

Sigh. Didn't they teach you in school that name-dropping makes no argument?

About China, includes even a history lesson for you: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=14...

And about Singapore: What are your sources?

Last time I checked there was no data from Singapore because their government is not particularly interested in allowing independent studies to be made. There is data about their execution rate (death penalty), though. Amnesty international considers it to be amongst the highest worldwide.

cf. http://www.hrw.org/legacy/englishwr2k8/docs/2008/01/31/singa...

cf. http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/regions/asia-pacific/singap...

"About China, includes even a history lesson for you: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=14...

Read your source again. Maybe go beyond the title this time. Here is a nice excerpt: "The lifetime prevalence rates of illicit drug use among residents age 15 years or older in high-prevalence Chinese cities increased from 1.1% in 1993 to 1.6% in 1996, and the 1-year prevalence rate increased from 0.9% to 1.2% during this period [10,11]."

Now go read that again and notice that in high-prevalence regions, use is ~1-2%. Wonder what it is in the low-prevalence regions... If the US had that kind of usage statistics, every anti-drug activist in the US and I would be very happy. Even happier if use went lower.

"Last time I checked there was no data from Singapore because their government is not particularly interested in allowing independent studies to be made. There is data about their execution rate (death penalty), though. Amnesty international considers it to be amongst the highest worldwide."

First point: Singapore gives the death penalty for quite a few crimes. By itself, it is not a useful statistic. Furthermore, AI is far from a "neutral observer" on these issues. Lastly, what exactly is the problem with a high execution rate? The lack of crime?

Second point: from the CIA Factbook on Singapore: "drug abuse limited because of aggressive law enforcement efforts"

First Point: My problem with the death penalty - as a libertarian - is that I can't imagine anything more wrong for my government to do to me than to unjustly take my life away. And if you think wrongful execution doesn't happen, you're kidding yourself. It's just a matter-of-fact combination of no system being perfect, and the law of large numbers.

Second Point: That sounds like an opinion about cause and effect, rather than a fact. Which is okay, since the CIA always gets it right, like those WMDs they found right after we conquered Iraq!

Now go read that again and notice that in high-prevalence regions, use is ~1-2%. Wonder what it is in the low-prevalence regions... If the US had that kind of usage statistics, every anti-drug activist in the US and I would be very happy. Even happier if use went lower.

Let me help you with a few quotes:

First:

In Chinese history, drug abuse and prostitution have been considered "social evils." The Chinese government typically takes "crackdown" measures and tries to eradicate these phenomena. China did achieve a success story in the 1950s. Illicit drug abuse and prostitution were eradicated through national anti-drug and anti-prostitution campaigns [3,34]. However, this success has not been repeated in the past two decades.

Second:

Illicit drug abuse and HIV/AIDS have increased rapidly in the past 10 to 20 years in China.

The study was a co-op between the University of Alabama and the Chinese Center for Disease Control. Which of them would you guess provided the absolute figures for citation?

Lastly, what exactly is the problem with a high execution rate? The lack of crime?

Well, the "killing people" part maybe?

from the CIA Factbook on Singapore: "drug abuse limited because of aggressive law enforcement efforts"

Hmm yes. Totally comprehensive. Well, can't argue that, it's from the factbook after all.

newt0311, you can read all the reports you like. Here's what I can tell you about my experiences in Shanghai over 9 years:

Illegal drug use is on the rise and very accessible. Drugs that are _very_ easy to get: marijuana/hashish, cocaine, ecstasy. Drugs you can get if you ask around: opiates/heroine, crystal meth, ketamine.

That list is just what I have seen with my own eyes. And I'm not into the "party scene". I'm a family man that needs to go to work in the mornings. But I have seen all of it and it is very accessible.

China is working hard to fight opiate/heroine use. My info is that they are currently losing the fight as the growth is happening at the bottom of the economic pyramid. China has a clear history of what opiates can do to their country. The other stuff takes a back seat as they fight other problems, like clean water.

As for Singapore. There are lots of things that Singapore does that do not scale well to other societies. Its a city-state, an island!. You may agree with Singapore's tactics and like their results, but that does not mean these tactics can be grafted onto the U.S.

China doesn't really have a reputation for reporting real numbers (remember sars or what percentage is affected by the hiv according to them). When calculating drug use, it's always a guesstimate anyway so don't you think they just give artificially low numbers?

Like jhancock, I've had quite a few people proposing me to get drugs from the xiamen restaurant owner who proposed me to buy marijuana to my ex-girlfriend there that asked me if I want to try some meth when I asked about the people who clearly seemed high in night clubs...

As for singapore, I don't know but malaysia that has the same policies about drugs doesn't really seem to be so successful at not having drugs either.

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