Focusing On Prevention And Neuroscience, President Ends Reagan’s War On Drugs | Hacker News Reader

Focusing On Prevention And Neuroscience, President Ends Reagan’s War On Drugs

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Lets hope he sticks by his word on this one...

Sounds great. An evidence-based, religion-free, pragmatic approach to minimizing the direct and indirect harm of drug trafficking and abuse (and use) is what has been proven to work in other countries, and our current policy has been proven to be an idiotic catastrophe of epic proportions.

However, Obama says a lot of things: he's said that his feds won't go after pot in states that have legalized it (nope), that he would gonna close Guantanamo (nope), etc etc.

Still, on balance I think it is better to have a leader who at least knows how to say the right things (as opposed to insane, anti-science things), even if saying them doesn't always mean he will actually get them implemented.

"Still, on balance I think it is better to have a leader who at least knows how to say the right things ... even if saying them doesn't always mean he will actually get them implemented."

I think that could be even worse than saying the wrong things. If he's going to say he's going to change things but not really change them, the people who are actually interested in getting things changed may become complacent and less will get done.

I'll believe that the "war on drugs" is over when federal SWAT teams stop crashing through peoples' doors (sometimes the wrong peoples' doors) looking for pot growers, and when the federal government stops funding similar paramilitary operations and equipment for state and local governments.

And what about the thousands of people who are in prison solely for non-violent drug crimes, or have been released from prison and will find it difficult to get employment for the rest of their lives due to their conviction records? What will be done for these victims of the war on drugs?

You may be right about happy talk actually preventing meaningful action.

You are definitely right that the "war on drugs" cannot really be said to be over until armed violence against nonviolent drug (ab)users by the state is halted, and the prisoners of war, so to speak, are freed.

Perhaps a better title would be, "President States Intention to Make Drug Policy Somewhat Less Illogical and Immoral".

Sounds like how he ended the War on Terror in 2009 (which basically amounted to asking everyone to stop calling it that). Drug court has always been heavy on treatment for addicts arrested for lesser drug charges in lieu of prison time. I don't see anything new here.

Flagged for spelling.

For a less sensationalist view: http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/obama-drug-czar...

Considering that they haven't stopped people from being arrested, this isn't really stopping the war on drugs. Until drug use (and perhaps sale/distribution) is legal, the war continues.

So basically its worse now because drug possession is still illegal yet the administration gets it's sound bite which gets morphed into "President Ends Reagan’s War On Drugs" by the media.

"The Obama administration continues to say that drug use should be treated as a health issue, but at the same time they continue to treat drug use through the criminal justice system," he said. "So their actions don't match their rhetoric."

Can anyone find a second source for this?

Yes here's the post from the official White House website:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/04/24/drug-policy-reform...

Thanks! Very little coverage of this story, appreciate the other links, slightly easier to read when the text isn't swimming in ads!

Thanks. The OP's article sounded speculative and presumptive. Nice to hear it from the source.

Here's the actual policy document: http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/drugpolicyreform

(It uses that horrid layout with broken scrolling that the NYT popularized with its Snowfall story.)

How is the scrolling broken?

There's a fixed background image that fades as you scroll, fully disappearing approximately when the body text gets to the top. It's pretty annoying.

That's not broken scrolling. Broken scrolling is when you can't scroll the page correctly. That's shitty graphics :P

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