Comment by seldo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seldo | Hacker News Reader

Legalizing drugs cuts crime in two ways. Directly, by reclassifying a bunch of formerly criminal drug users as just drug users. But also indirectly: it makes them cheap, which makes them unattractive targets for organized crime. If western politicians could just get over their taboos about drug use and let idiots stuff themselves with whatever drugs they like, not just nicotine and alcohol, we would make the US richer and safer.

And this isn't a hypothetical: more than 12 years ago, Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs -- from marijuana to heroin -- and plowed the money saved by no longer jailing addicts into treating them. The result has been lower rates of addiction and HIV infection, and higher rates of treatment:

http://www.alternet.org/story/151635/ten_years_ago_portugal_...

Now possession is a misdemeanor, like a traffic violation, punishable by a fine or community service, and accompanied by a screening for risk factors of addiction, with encouragement to enter treatment programs:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-d...

It hasn't been a magic bullet, but nor has it been a disaster. And what is a disaster is the current policy: drug money fuels endless violence and murder inside the US and across central and southern America.

The social fabric of my home country (Trinidad & Tobago) is being torn apart by violence from drug trafficking, and there's nothing we can do about it as long as the amount of money to be made by risking the drug trade is so enormous. We can't lower the price, because we are not the market: the US is.

I wish more people in the US were aware that their paying $100/gram for the occasional fun evening is paying for murder on the streets of my home town. And I wish more people realized they don't have to stop taking cocaine; they just have to lower the damn price.

You missed a third way, and possibly the most important. When something goes wrong in an illegal activity, the justice/legal system can't be used to address the situation. For example if someone gets shortchanged, fails to pay, or supplies product of a different quality than expected.

Having to get justice outside of the legal system is a driver behind violence and other additional illegal acts.

I wonder if the "third way" here isn't more "by dropping prices and making drugs more affordable many drug users are less likely to engage in petty crimes to raise money to pay for their habits"

EDIT: Should probably emphasize "addicts" to differentiate from recreational users.

What I wrote about isn't just the end users, or them committing crimes. But even as an end user, if your dealer shortchanges you or gives you counterfeit currency, or even whacks you over the head, you have no real recourse via the legal system. You'd have to take matters into your own hands. Similarly if the dealer has things like that happen to them, or even "contract" violations with their supplier, they too have to take matters into their own hands.

> If western politicians could just get over their taboos about drug use

This is a bit naive. I don't think taboos are responsible for drug prohibition. I think it's the economic interests of industries which benefit from drug prohibition, like police, prisons, alcohol, and pharmaceuticals.

You didn't deserve to be downvoted for this comment. The taboos may keep these things in place, but we have to ask how the taboos got their in the first place. In the case of cannabis it was largely as a result of DuPont being unable to compete with industrial hemp, and leverage a little racist fear-mongering by borrowing the Mexican term marijuana to make it appear extra dangerous. Take a look at the film Reefer Madness from the 30s to see the ridiculous propaganda that they were feeding to the public.

I think you got the original causes right on, but I don't think it's taboos that keep them in place; I think it's a jobs thing (for cops and DEA agents).

That's where the lobbying comes from, taboos are where the political capital comes from.

I suspect the police force would dislike being put in this category. But in general, I can't really agree with you. It's hard to deny that in Western culture there have been moral/religious taboos around drug use for centuries. People act strangely on drugs and that quite frankly scares the heck out of many people. Once laws are in place all sorts of unintended consequences occur around beneficiaries (ie Hippies!) but the root cause is this long running taboo around drug use. That's why this is so powerful to me.

> I suspect the police force would dislike being put in this category.

I suspect you're right, but it seems to be true. Unless this source is unreliable (let me know why if you think it is!):

http://www.republicreport.org/2012/exclusive-why-cant-you-sm...

Better question: why does the US so frequently think the right answer to a problem is the completely unworkable, unwinnable, wasteful one?

Examples include the war on drugs, the war on terror, and domestic "security" theater (TSA).

The cynical answer is corruption. Military–industrial complex, etc.

Military–industrial complex, etc.

this is off-topic, but did you see that article in Businessweek about the bomb detector.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-11/in-iraq-the-...

Ok, that's pretty obviously a fraud. But what it made me start thinking is if you can take an empty plastic handle and a radio antennae and sell millions of dollars of them ... there must be a ton of stuff that doesn't really do what its supposed to but people buy anyway.

> there must be a ton of stuff that doesn't really do what its supposed to but people buy anyway.

This is one of the reasons I make sure I know how everything I own works. That, and the good ol' hacker ethic.

More obvious than cynical.

Why do you think this is unique to the US? There are reactionaries everywhere, and in most* places they hold much greater sway than in the US.

* Edit: well 'most' is highly subjective, but I hope we can agree on 'many.'

While all three are definitely expensive, I'm not entirely sold that you can compare weed legalization/war on drugs with war on terror.

Drug trade has a very tangible economic driver that can be modified with legalization.

For terrorism, or other warfare methods, there isn't a simple economic driver you can attack. People are struggling for power and resources. You simply cannot make everyone happy.

You of course have the choice of simply withdrawing from the struggle, but as soon as you start doing this there really isn't an end in sight. This is not a choice US can take without dire consequences.

In wars between states, you can negotiate, but in wars of ideology/religion, that's not so easy.

> but as soon as you start doing this there really isn't an end in sight.

That's based on the flawed assumption that people just are out to get you.

People are out to get the US to a large extent because of how much the US has been meddling all over the place.

Stop the one sided support for Israel, and stop supporting Middle Eastern dictators, and don't invade any more countries, and a large part of the recruiting-basis for islamic fundamentalists for actions against the US would start falling away pretty quickly.

> In wars between states, you can negotiate, but in wars of ideology/religion, that's not so easy.

It might not be so easy, but it is far more effective than military actions that breed new generations of people who hate you for ever person you kill - whether a legitimate target or "collateral damage".

The legalization argument has strong undertones of free-market, common-sense economics to it. Solutions where government gets out of the way are not typically favored by government.

To modify your point:

Better question: why does $_GOVERNMENT so frequently think the right answer to a problem is $_GOVERNMENT_ACTION?

Examples include: $_HUGE_SPENDING_PROGRAM, $_HUGE_SOCIAL_WELFARE_PROGRAM, taxpayer-funded bailout of $_INDUSTRY, massive new regulations for $_INDUSTRY, price controls on $_PRODUCT, etc.

Maybe it's simply the general distrust of the individual and free markets by those in government, combined with voters who believe what politicians promise regarding that same government.

To the contrary, legalization has the implication of regulation, taxation, and increased government oversight. Politicians fight it because they believe it is politically expedient for them to do so.

Exactly. The reason they fight it is because talking about legalizing drugs is a sure way to lose votes.

Opposite of how we all like to think of the tech industry, politics are slow, clunky, and bureaucratic — for good reason. It takes a long time to go from "random HN/reddit commenters talking about legalizing drugs" to "politicians talking about legalizing drugs."

As it stands, you have the criminal justice system attempting to shut down all behavior using the coercive police power of government. This is the strongest force that government has over the people: depriving citizens of life, liberty, or property.

Legalization means allowing the people to choose to engage in an activity, thus shifting to the permissive oversight role of government. In this case, the citizen has the implicit trust of the government in that he may act as he chooses toward the previously-banned item. If this second route involves more parts of government, so be it, but at least it returns some autonomy / choice / liberty to the individual.

Depending on what politicians do, we may be stuck in a bad in-between state where you have the full police state going strong to prevent non-authorized dealing as well as the oversight / regulation function.

I fully trust that the politicians will continue to pursue power at any cost, including the liberty of the people and the sovereignty of the nation.

True liberty: the right to do things which others consider immoral but are only self-victimizing or victimless has been a long struggle in the "free" world, not just in the US. The porn filtering fiasco in the UK is just another example in the same line. There are always people who think there should be an official moral staandard which applies to personal behavior.

Moreover, the typical political response to problems these days is to throw money, regulations, or laws at it to force it to be fixed. It's hard for politicians to realize that society and culture can't simply be commanded around.

Because a lot of people make a lot of money off of those solutions. No one in Washington gives a rip about what's right, wrong, or most effective.

One possible reason is that indefinite inefficiency "creates jobs in the public sector"

Another way it cuts crime dramatically: it neuters the drug cartels by removing at least half their market (plausibly a lot more, as their infrastructure including manufacturing would be eroded). That didn't seem to fall into your two examples.

At least 60,000 people were murdered by organized crime just in Felipe Calderon's six year term.

One more way: by legalizing and taxing it, there properly should be more money available for treatment, helping to eliminate dangerous lifestyles that often cross over into crime.

There are so many more direct and higher order effects of drug prohibition, just in regards to crime.

1: It gives easy revenue for criminals.

2: It puts many people into the "criminal" category, making them much less willing to interact with law enforcement and making it more likely that they will be willing to consort with true criminals.

3: It takes away resources from the criminal justice system, and further perverts it as well. It breeds the sort of police officer who is unskilled at forming a bond with the community they serve and with basic policework and instead focuses on making drug busts. It also breeds the sort of "assumed guilty" plea bargain dominated prosecutor model.

4: As a consequence of 1 and 2, the cognitive dissonance of the law banning victimless drug use causes many police officers to lose their respect for the law as well. And because of the wealth of criminal drug dealing enterprises there becomes a natural synergy which promotes police corruption.

5: Similarly, due to drug forfeiture laws it becomes possible for the way that police undertake law enforcement activities to dramatically affect their own budgets and resources. Naturally police organizations tend to be drawn to the activities which provide the most revenue, drug busts, to the detriment of other policing.

6: Because of the drug/criminal connection combined with rampant police crack downs due to the above factors drug busts can often be dangerous, which pushes police officers even farther away from a healthy relationship with their communities and increasingly toward a militarized relationship which spills over into every citizen/police interaction and further poisons the relationship.

"If western politicians could just get over their taboos about drug use and let idiots stuff themselves with whatever drugs they like, not just nicotine and alcohol, we would make the US richer and safer."

Seriously? I'm not sure if you're saying to legalize all drugs, but that's how I'm interpreting this....

Legalizing addictive drugs will make us safer & richer? I feel like if we legalized heroin, we'd have junkies all over the place running around stealing whatever isn't bolted down just to get the next high. It affects far more than just the user, it affects the families, the kids, the neighborhood, the town, etc. Even if we taxed it, those taxes would likely go right back into having more security: police officers, hospitals, etc.

Sure pot might be more or less harmless, but letting people stuff themselves with any drug of choice seems very wrong. There are some drugs that I think should absolutely be restricted very tightly.

A dose of heroin costs a nickel. You don't have to steal very much to accumulate a nickel. The reason that junkies are thieves are the prices caused by prohibition.

Legalizing alcohol will make us safer & richer? I feel like if we legalized alcohol, we'd have drunks all over the place abusing their partners and killing people with intoxicated driving.

Right now "legalized heroin" is killing lots of people: http://www.tampabay.com/news/nation/drug-overdose-deaths-up-...

Making it illegal doesn't stop those who will use it. It didn't stop my brother, who ended up dying from a heroin overdose.

But legal alcohol was always available and my mother was able to drink herself to death. Legally. So let me call the cops on you for having beer in your house and kick in your doors and kill your dog and hall your ass off to jail for your protection.

Ugh. Keep your fucking nanny state to yourself.

I am absolutely saying to legalize all drugs, even the incredibly addictive ones. Spend a fraction of the money you spend now on locking up drug users to treatment of addicts.

If drugs were all legal tomorrow, would you run out and try heroin? No. Most people don't want hard drugs, and the people who do can already get them, and those people aren't all becoming drug addicts, otherwise Burning Man would be a city of 50,000 hopeless junkies every year.

Drug addiction -- like alcoholism -- happens only to a fraction of users, and in both cases factors like poverty, genetics and bad home situations are contributing factors.

Drug addiction absolutely does affect more than just the user, but the effect of legalizing drugs (again, not hypothetically, see Portugal) is less addiction, not more, and better treatment for those who do become addicted.

Real data says you're wrong:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

I mean we can argue all day long over the emotional aspect, but real-life data is hard to argue with: Decriminalization (along with rehabilitation for those who want it) reduces crime. Full stop.

"I feel like if we legalized heroin, we'd have junkies all over the place running around stealing whatever isn't bolted down just to get the next high. It affects far more than just the user, it affects the families, the kids, the neighborhood, the town, etc. Even if we taxed it, those taxes would likely go right back into having more security: police officers, hospitals, etc."

While it sounds really appealing, there is no evidence to support this. What there is evidence for however (see Portugal), is that decriminalizing drugs and advocating treatment programs will lead to fewer infections, crimes, and even fewer addicts.

"I feel like if we legalized heroin, we'd have junkies all over the place running around stealing whatever isn't bolted down just to get the next high."

Why? Do you know anyone who doesn't use heroin now, just because it's illegal?

Highly addictive opiods such as percocet, oxycodone, codeine, etc. are legal (although regulated). Many of the risks associated with heroin use derive from its illegality, in the sense that people use heroin which has unknown purity (i.e. can be cut with other drugs), use unsterilized needles, and take unsafe dosages (i.e. there is no physician regulating the amount they consume nor preventing addiction).

My point is not that heroin is a safe drug, or that anyone should take it. But drug laws are applied with incredible inconsistency. Cocaine, which is potentially addictive and dangerous, is a Schedule II drug, while marijuana and even hallucinogens such as LSD are Schedule I drugs (meaning they have strong potential for addiction and no recognized medical use, which is simply untrue). Addictive opiods marketed as prescription drugs, meanwhile, are legal with regulation. Not to mention alcohol and tobacco, two highly addictive and unhealthy drugs which are perfectly legal.

A pet peeve of mine since you mentioned codeine, that neatly shows just how fucked up government regulation in this area can be:

There's good evidence that restrictions on quantity of acetaminophen/paracetamol sold in a single transaction reduces overdose deaths. E.g. in the UK it is estimated that restrictions to 16 (in regular shops) or 32 tablets per sale (in pharmacies) has saved 600+ lives since 1998. There are still 100+ deaths a year from it, though.

Yet the sale of pure codeine is substantially more heavily regulated than the sale of co-codamol and other variations of paracetamol/acetaminophen or ibuprofen mixed with codeine at ratios that means that anyone with a serious codeine addiction finding themselves unable to get a prescription or find a dealer for pure codeine might find the mixed products available over the counter as their only source at times. Yet chances are they will have to take a potentially dangerous dose of other painkillers to get their codeine high.

So, we have evidence that people often intentionally or accidentally die of acetaminophen/paracetamol as well as ibuprofen overdoses. Yet we consider it acceptable to require codeine to be mixed with these (and other) drugs for over the counter sales.

Codeine alone is one of the safest opiates we know, with a substantial safety margin for use, but also highly addictive, and so chances are a subset of users will get sufficiently addicted to be unable to properly control their usage, even in the face of taking substantial risks.

In other words: Fuck off and die a painful death if you get addicted enough to fail to manage to resist (or pay attention to) taking too much of the other drugs it's mixed with. Oh, and when you die, remember it's because we intentionally ensured you had a supply that was effectively mixed with poison.

That codeine addiction is often the result of its extensive use as a prescription painkiller and in hospitals exactly because it is so safe on its own just makes the whole thing more offensive.

Do you think laws deter needle drug addicts? If not, getting rid of the laws isn't going to increase the number of needle drug addicts. And that's on top of studies showing treatment is much more effective and cheaper for harm reduction.

> I feel like if we legalized heroin, we'd have junkies all over the place running around stealing whatever isn't bolted down just to get the next high.

Diacetylmorphine, brand name Heroin, costs about $0.25 a day, or $1 per day for the pharmacy grade injectable version.

Junkies are called that because the original Heroin addicts wandered around trading junk, bits of scrap and garbage that could be sold to junk traders to get the pennies it took to support their habit.

The present high price of Heroin is a deliberate policy decision. It's a transfer payment from your stolen TV to the drug cartels, in much the same way that Social Security is a transfer payment from your employer to your grandma.

It doesn't matter. The real cost of heroin, once supply is up and running in the huge, safe, FDA controlled factories that makes all the other pills we take it will cost less than a bum can get in an hour. It is completely generic. How much does an Aspirin cost?

Why would heroin junkies run all over the place stealing stuff if they could get heroin at for low enough prices that it'd be easy to finance on a normal job?

And yes, a heroin junkie can hold down a normal job especially if they have a steady supply of heroin. Many do. The biggest problem with living a normal life for a heroin junkie is the time and effort spent chasing down heroin supplies and cash.

You might very well know heroin junkies without knowing it - someone with sufficient cash to not have to worry will most of the time appear completely "normal".

That's not to say that heroin doesn't have a lot of problems, but clean heroin, used with clean syringes, is still fairly safe. What isn't safe is the alternative - what we see today: products that have been mixed with all kinds of crap, of varying strengths, dirty syringes, and price levels that drive users to crime because it's the only way they can afford their habit.

And do you really think that lots of people would suddenly decide "oh, cool, heroin is legal now - lets shoot up"? Heroin junkies are hardly top of the totem pole, and being able to go to a pharmacy and buy it would hardly make it cooler.

What affects the families, the kids, the neighbourhoods the most is when we treat users as criminals because of their addiction, and force many of them to carry out crimes to meet needs they have minimal control over, as well as make it risky for them to seek help when they need it without facing legal threats.

Is there any hard proof that marijuana prices have been affected by the availability of medical marijuana? Further north they certainly haven't (medical marijuana sells for more), and the same people end up distributing both kinds to consumers.

Taking a quick look at crowdsourced prices, weed in CA looks to be about $200/oz, which is not very cheap.

edit: $100 a gram.... what?! Are you talking about cocaine?

"$100/gram" was just a random number; I have absolutely no idea what any drugs cost. But yes, I was referring to cocaine, which is the one that causes the most trouble for my country. You guys grow your own weed.

$200/oz is hard proof that medical marijuana(MMJ) has driven down prices. I live in Colorado and used to be friends with the proprietor of an MMJ dispensay and he used to buy it for $4000 a pound or $250 an ounce and that was their per pound wholesale price. It was common when the MMJ businesses were starting up in CO for dispensaries to sell for ~$400 an ounce and grams at $20 which I believe was mostly comparable with street prices. The prices were driven down as more and more dispensaries entered the market and the competition became more fierce as a result of the market saturation to the point where they were advertising sub-$10 grams and sub-$200 ounces.

That $200/oz price may not be cheap to you, but it is half of what it used to cost and less than half of what these hippies can make selling it in New York.

Northern California wholesale prices are more in the $600-1500/pound range now. It used to be...$2500-3500/pound about 10 years ago.

While I agree with your points, I wonder if legalization temporarily boosts other types of crime, as former "criminals" seek other forms of easy money to maintain their lifestyle and social status. Drug dealing is a form of gainful employment for many who have few other skills.

So we should keep these drugs illegal so we can ensure that drug dealers have "jobs"...?

American prohibition covered that ground. There's a short spasm by organized crime as they fight to stay alive, and then the system goes into cardiac arrest. Ideally you have a government that simultaneously hammers organized crime at the same time their funding is drying up.

I have heard this argument a lot and I don't buy it, because if there were some other thing they could do to make more money easier than drugs why not do that now? I mean it is not like they couldn't stop trading drugs today if that is what they wanted.

Oh, I don't think other forms of crime would be easier; just that other forms of crime may be the next easiest thing to try.

Sure but in that case the value of the crime goes down (either because it doesn't make so much money or because it is harder or more dangerous) in which case (law of supply and demand) the supply of criminals goes down too.

And which crimes should they go for? Guns aren't needed when you don't need to defend a territory. Smuggling would be an obvious next step, but what should they smuggle? Diamants? Counterfeit goods? Women?

All those are much more difficult to smuggle than drugs and the price per kilo is much, much less so they would have to invent new ways of smuggling. At present drug prizes it makes sense to build one way semi-submercibles (or even submarines) to get the stuff from Columbia to the US, I doubt the risk is worth it if you are to smuggle counterfeit goods at a few dollars a pound.

I want to know if Portuguese emergency rooms (and hospitals in general) are having to deal with more drug addicts and drug-related acute health problems (overdoses are only one variety) and drug-related complications to existing health problems.

Everyone knows about overdoses. But if you take opioids to the point you become physically dependent and then you need surgery, the anesthesia provider has to work around a body with a different (narrower!) dose-response curve to anesthetics: Normal people have a broad range of doses which provide pain control but don't kill them. A long-term addict has a very narrow range between "Not feeling it" and "Heart just stopped."

That's just one example. I'm sure there are others. How are Portuguese healthcare providers dealing with this?

Better than they were when there were strong legal reasons not to disclose one's status as a junkie, I dare say.

There may be something that the United States can do to help your country in this area, but there are also things that your country can do to help itself. Why have your lawmakers decriminalized or legalized the growth and distribution of these controlled substances?

Supply and demand. Your response only tackles half of the problem - demand - while ignoring the half that hits closer to your home.

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