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Comment by MarcusBrutus | Hacker News Reader

We should really stop calling it "war on drugs". It's really the "war on what people are allowed to consume, for their own sake" and so is on par with the "war on raw milk" and who knows maybe the "war on fat" or the "war on meat" in a few years. I'm not even a smoker but if somebody wants to consume/ingest all kinds of substances I don't lay any claims to his digestive track or blood stream and it's really his business to destroy himself if he so wishes, at any rate he pleases. In fact it might even be good "for the environment" since drug addicts are unlikely to have many kids and they usually have shorter life spans thus leaving a smaller carbon footprint on our precious Gaia. Clearly the society should not subsidize their medical treatment either and if they kill while hallucinating or steal to pay for their fix, being a drug-addict should not be treated as extenuating circumstances. Personal responsibility cuts both ways.

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The reductionism isn't warranted. There are a group of people who liken drug use to drinking raw milk. I'm sorry, have you ever been to a town devastated by raw milk consumption? Do you see many kids born with birth defects because of raw milk consumption? Do you see raw milk addicts stealing to feed their raw milk habit?

I agree that we should end the drug war, but comments like yours are blindly one sided. Drug use isn't just high functioning professional recreational users. Its also people who poison their kids making meth at home, and people who coerce addicted women into prostitution using the promise of the next hit. Criminalization may be the wrong solution to it, but that doesn't mean its not a real social problem.

"Its also people who poison their kids making meth at home"

This particular problem is immediately solved by legalizing recreational methamphetamine. Pharmaceutical companies make methamphetamine too, and their production processes are well-regulated, produce drugs without hazardous adulterants, and do not put children in danger.

I agree with you otherwise, that the social problems caused by recreational drug abuse will not just go away if drugs are legalized. Quite a few of those problems, however, are unique to black market drugs. People would not be throwing garbage bags full of chemical byproducts onto the side of a highway if they could just produce the drugs legally. Likewise with opiates: you would not see "Krokodil" or any of the other botched attempts to replace heroin if recreational opiates were legal and accessible. Likewise with the numerous "gray area" attempts to replace marijuana. These are artificial problems with an easy solution; the rest of the social problems associated with drug abuse can and should be addressed without prohibition.

>Pharmaceutical companies make methamphetamine too, and their production processes are well-regulated, produce drugs without hazardous adulterants, and do not put children in danger.

Also, one of the reasons that making meth (and several other drugs) illegally is so dangerous and error prone is that all of the easy precursors are carefully regulated and tracked by the government.

It's kind of like how outlawing abortion wouldn't actually stop people from getting abortions; it would just make them way more dangerous.

The efforts big pharma makes to continue selling precursor drugs suggests big pharma actually love the current situation. They block laws which would help make cooking considerably harder. For all the war-on-drugs rhetoric, the laws are actually quite weak when it comes to blocking the availability of precursor compounds. Stopping the trade would lower profits. This is bad as far as the companies are concerned. http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/meth-pseudoephedri...

It's entirely reasonable to discuss the extent to which drugs themselves contribute to social problems, but by this point, I think it's reliably evident that drug prohibition doesn't effectively address any social problems that might be attributed to drug use. Indeed, it's become clear that the social problems caused by prohibition are themselves more pervasive and more destructive than those caused by drugs themselves.

But it's still wrong to assume that drug use is inherently a social problem: there are plenty of people who can and do use drugs moderately, while still remaining peaceful and productive members of society, and these people are victims only of prohibition, not of the drugs themselves.

We should be careful about what we recognize as contributing factors to social problems at the macro level, especially where those influences affect the macro-level society only by way of willful human behavior. Everything might be rightly construed as a potential influence on human behavior, and anything taken to excess might inspire dangerous or irresponsible behavior; but it's very dangerous to treat human beings as fungible stimulus-response machines, and locate the nexus of responsibility for outcomes in the complex of external behavioral influences rather than in human agency itself. People should be held accountable for the actual, quantifiable harm they do to others, with consideration of what external influences contributed to their actions having only a role to play in deciding how to respond to people who actually are harming others.

Wow. How long did it take for you to articulate the gem of a sentence "Everything might.. itself" and what have you majored in, really?

Not sure if you're being sarcastic here - I do have a tendency to sometimes overcomplicate the way I express ideas, but I'm not certain that particular sentence is exceptionally overwrought.

Or, to put it another way:

Leave off, man. It wasn't THAT bad!

Sorry for piling on, but it's my prerogative as an English teacher, and Marcus Brutus has a point. Phrases like:

it's very dangerous to treat human beings as fungible stimulus-response machines, and locate the nexus of responsibility for outcomes in the complex of external behavioral influences rather than in human agency itself

are great for showing your college professor you've mastered the jargon, but they don't get you many Likes on Facebook. Why not just say:

while there can be mitigating circumstances, I believe in personal responsibility

I'm sure that one might find a more concise and elegant way of expressing the thoughts I attempted to convey in that sentence. But I hope you'll agree that reducing

> Everything might be rightly construed as a potential influence on human behavior, and anything taken to excess might inspire dangerous or irresponsible behavior; but it's very dangerous to treat human beings as fungible stimulus-response machines, and locate the nexus of responsibility for outcomes in the complex of external behavioral influences rather than in human agency itself.

> while there can be mitigating circumstances, I believe in personal responsibility

is at best an example of extremely lossy compression. That rewording gives at most a vague impression of what my position would be were the question reduced to a mere binary "are you for or against prohibition?" contest.

I agree that concision is important, and I know that my earlier comment didn't quite achieve it, but I'd still regard concision as efficiency in the use of words: saying as much in fewer words, not using fewer words for its own sake, even if it means actually saying less.

> and Marcus Brutus

MarcusBrutus is mostly a troll.

So I've sided with a troll. Oh dear.

Your point was well made and added to the conversation.

Actually I was not sarcastic at all. I really loved that sentence as I too have a penchant for long-winding sentences that are hard to parse but in closer inspection have no noise and every word in them is essential. Comes from my days of reading Aristotle where it is not uncommon to have a page of only two sentences. Or look at the Declaration of Independence or the Treaty of Paris for more recent examples of page-sized sentences. I think it shows how far downhill we've gone in terms of literacy or perhaps even mental capacity. Yours, while not in the same league, was a sentence I really liked and it never occurred to me that people might construe my comment as sarcastic.

Apologies; my own writing style is influenced by reading a lot of eighteenth-century text, which tends to be very wordy, but which also seems to express a much higher precision of thought than the more terse modern fashions of writing.

I've noticed that Pitarou's advice on rephrasing my original reply would reduce it to something much vaguer than I'd intended, and would simply convey the conclusion of my thought process as a simple yes-or-no response, leaving my actual rationale entirely hidden.

I'm not entirely convinced that we've necessarily gone downhill in terms of literacy or mental capacity, but I agree that the outward expressiveness of language certainly has declined in comparison to the past, and this may be in part an explanation for the coarseness and contentiousness of much modern discourse.

I think that sentence is fine, although, if you look at my comment history, you might see that I'm prone to long ones myself. ;)

Exactly, it is a social problem. The problem is not chemicals, the problem is the society (or, sometimes, personal) failures that drive people to abuse chemicals because they help them avoid dealing with their problems. We have the same problem as drug addict has, only on societal level. Drug addicts feels bad and takes drug to temporarily feel less bad (which get him ever worse later). We feel bad that we have these problems and we take the drug of tougher enforcement and feel-good prohibition and imprisoning people that defy our good intentions - which makes us feel better for a short while with disastrous consequences in the long run. We as a society have to get off regulation and enforcement drugs and learn to deal with the problem as a healthy, responsible adults do. We learned to handle alcohol, we can learn to handle other chemicals too. It would be a long and painful recovery - and we didn't complete the "recognize the problem" step yet! - but we must do it if we want healthy society again.

It's a very real problem for some individuals, no quarrel there. But it's not a "real social problem". As a matter of fact I could so far as to say that I would be hard-pressed to find any "real social problems". They really all boil down to individuals making bad choices but asking society to foot the bill. And of course "social problems" are very much welcomed by the political class and various others busybodies , do-gooders, etc. who earn their livelihoods (and sometimes much more than that) by "fixing" "social problems". And please don't play the "it's about the kids" card. If the effects spill over to non-consenting adults or minors, custody can be removed or charges can be brought just like the case of parents copulating in front of their kids without having to criminalize sex.

Walk around Philly surrounded by strung out junkies and tell me its not a social problem. Step on a used syringe in New York and tell me its not a social problem. Talk to some foster kids who were taken away from parents with heroin or meth addictions and tell me its not a social problem.

Look, you can walk around those places and come back the same conclusion for Alcohol. If you walk around those places, you'll find more uneducated people, more addicts, more violence, more decay, and so on. It's very easy to conclude 'it must be the drugs', or 'these people are more violent', or 'dumber', but those would be very shallow conclusions. Drugs are a very simple way to hide from ones bleak reality. Getting rid of drugs to deal with this problem would be the same as building more houses to eliminate homelessness.

Louis Ck bit, very funny and sad for it's truth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agVmmw2C0Hw

> Getting rid of drugs to deal with this problem would be the same as building more houses to eliminate homelessness.

This is an excellent thought experiment. I think everyone would be basically on board with the idea that if there were suddenly more houses (for free), that would be a good thing. It would be a huge benefit to people renting or buying housing, but I agree with you that the cost of housing is unlikely to drop to zero no matter how much suddenly appears.

So, in the analogy, do we think homeless people are being priced out of the market, or do we think they're homeless for other reasons?

Ok, then. How do you propose we fix this "social problem"? The War on Drugs clearly has not worked and D.A.R.E. has been found to be generally ineffective[1]. Throwing money at the problem is not going to fix it, bigger guns and nicer presentations are not going to change the fact that people use drugs, and will use them regardless of the consequences.

Giving people safe avenues to do what they were going to do anyway is the only sane solution. Obviously rehab clinics are here to stay, I am not arguing that drug use is always positive, because it is not. People will and do abuse legal substances, all you can offer is resources to help them stop; people have to make their own decisions.

Prohibition only exacerbates the problem[2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Abuse_Resistance_Educatio...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat...

I don't disagree with anything you said. But lets not pretend that drug use isn't actually a social problem like some pro legalization folks want to do. It has real social costs and really hurts people and communities, just like other "moral crimes" that should nonetheless probably be legal. You can think prostitution should be legal without pretending that its this totally above-board thing with totally consenting adults that doesn't have a lot of negative costs.

Prostitution is actually a bad argument. The places where it is legal, prostitutes get things like health care, readily preventative measures against the spread of STDs and forgo the need for pimps.

The "war on drugs" is really pre-crime. Its the notion that everyone that does x becomes an addict. That everyone eventually falls down the slippery slope of needing to commit crimes like stealing to get their fix, which I think we can agree just isn't true.

As a Christian, and this sadly should not be but may be hard to believe, I follow the path of free will. You are free to destroy the planet if you so choose. Its not my right to determine which poison you wish to ingest is right or wrong for you. While I do agree that some choices do have societal consequences, a "one size fits all" approach with prohibition is complete bullshit.

I do agree that measures should be taken to protect myself from others, when my actions actually do affect them. Take DUI laws for example. There's clear evidence driving while intoxicated can lead to incredible lapses of judgment. Does it mean every time you're behind the wheel with any blood alcohol count you're gonna kill someone? No but there's a severely increased chance. Yet even then I may be able to handle a higher blood alcohol content than you, so this argument is also brittle.

I guess my main point is other countries have legalized a spectrum of substances at a much less threshold of pain than we have. Its as if they seen what a colossal waste of time, energy, and resources it produces. Yet in America we let our pride get in the way of every fucking thing. We'll continue this "war on drugs" and equally our "war on terror" until we're no longer a nation. Both have pushed us close to oblivion because consistently no one is seeing any positive results. The rest of the world recognizes our folly, repeatedly calls us out on it and what? We continue business as usual? I'm sorry, I don't wish to be labeled as that incredibly dense, stupid, moronic, retarded, juvenile, or whatever other petty words I can come up with. I think we're smarter than that but if you (and by you I mean second person you all) wish to continue this farcical charade, knock yourselves out.

As the example of Germany shows, your optimistic claims in the first paragraph seems to be untrue:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-traffickin...

I'll agree to my optimism and it being a claim. Its untrue in Germany due according to the article but is the problem legalization or the laws trying to promote said legalization?

Criminal organizations seek out areas of gratification like this and once in their clutches it seems next to impossible to remove completely. Prohibition patently isn't working but instead of seeking any possible alternative, we stick our head in the sand and continue business as usual.

My problem is I see inefficiency. The war on drugs or terror are both incredibly, woefully inefficient and nothing is changing for the better, only the worse.

> Drug use isn't just high functioning professional recreational users.

But then why have the same restrictions for those cases where it really is? Why just ban them categorically rather than have a system for ensuring that people who can enjoy it safely can also do it legally?

I know, you can find flaws with any such proposal. But There are about a zillion middle grounds that make more sense than full prohibition (or full legalization).

I agree that prohibition doesn't work. My point is that its naive to pretend that those in favor of drug control are purely interested in regulating peoples bodies. Just like with alcohol. The fact that prohibition is bad policy doesn't meant that alcohol doesn't create social problems beyond just harming individual users. You can disagree with prohibition as a policy while also understanding what motivated people to institute it in the first place.

We should really stop calling it "war on drugs". It's really the "war on the communities of black and brown people" and so is on par with the US legal apparatus since the country's founding

I have a feeling making this problem into a race problem will only make it worse. If there's anything that can make completely insane drug discourse in the US even more insane (it's hard to see how it's possible but it is) - I think it's exactly making it about race. Yes, I know there's racism among law enforcement and establishment - but the source of prohibition problems is not racial. Alcohol prohibition failed, and drug prohibition failed too, for the same reason, having nothing to do with race.

>I have a feeling making this problem into a race problem will only make it worse.

Observing that it's a race problem isn't "making it into a race problem".

It's not an empirical observation, it is a political opinion, which resides on guessing what other people think, and in my opinion getting it terribly wrong. If you approach the problem with wrong premises, you get wrong solution. If you say only problem with drug war is racism, you don't get a solution for it because you're looking in a wrong place.

I don't think anyone has ever claimed that "the war on drugs is based on racism" full stop. The word "racism" has become passe for many academics and writers. i.e.:

"Just as the capitalist system is not a capitalist plot, so racial oppression is not the work of "racists." It is maintained by the principal institutions of society, including the schools (which define "excellence"), the labor market (which defines "employment"), the legal system (which defines "crime"), the welfare system (which defines "poverty"), the medical industry (which defines "health"), and the family (which defines "kinship"). Many of these institutions are administered by people who would be offended if accused of complicity with racial oppression. It is reinforced by reform programs that address problems traditionally of concern to the "left" - for example, federal housing loan guarantees. The simple fact is that the public schools and the welfare departments are doing more harm to black children than all the "racist" groups combined." - Noel Ignatiev, http://racetraitor.org/abolishthepoint.html

I agree with the last phrase, but probably not for the reason the author intends. I admit though I didn't read the article beyond the first page - and your quote, of course - as, frankly, it contained too much wrong from the start that I didn't want to waste any more of my time on it. Reading Ignatiev's profile, he certainly looks like a person way out of the mainstream and with good deal of cookiness in him, so I'm not sure he's a good example of a mainstream academic or writer.

I think also there is confusing equality of possibilities with equality of outcomes. The outcomes are demonstrably unequal. But is this because medical industry or welfare system are racial? From what I see, some systems are now geared to give unfair advantage to minority players willing to game the system (google "Pigford settlement"). However, as I said, the overall outcomes are still very unequal. I think there are institutional causes for it, but I think the causes are not racial now (though historically they were) but viewing it through exclusively racial lens today only makes it worse, as it makes people take wrong decisions (i.e. vote for corrupt and incompetent, but racially suitable politician, instead of honest and competent one of a wrong race). Same with regard to war on drugs - if we decide it's about racism, we should then spend our efforts on ensuring persons of all races are equally punished for equal crimes. Which is exactly wrong thing to do in this situation - instead we should spend our efforts on ensuring nobody is punished for something that should not be a crime in the first place!

I think you should watch Eugene Jarecki's documentary 'the house I live in.' The source is very much racial, and this was also the case for alcohol prohibition to a large extent.

I did actually, some time ago. It is a powerful work, but I do not see how the conclusion that drug war is caused by racism follows from it. Same for alcohol prohibition - while prohibitionists featured plenty of racist propaganda, they weren't just driven by racial hate - even if America were completely racially homogeneous, there still would be prohibitionists.

"Clearly the society should not subsidize their medical treatment..."

That's one big problem - we do subsidize it. Many states even require drug addiction treatment to be rolled into health insurance. Everyone has to pay for it, so everyone has some right, or at least reasonable excuse, to tell you not to do it.

That's part of the rationale behind the Wars on Fat, Sugar, Soda, TransFats, etc etc. When your choices hit my pocketbook, then I have to care about all that stuff. It's one of the lovely side effects of socialized medicine, and socialized programs in general, that people don't like to talk or think about.

One of the benefits of "social medicine" that some people don't like to talk about is that socialized medicine as practiced in Europe is usually way cheaper for society and works a whole lot better...

You as a rich person might survive with everyone around you obese, depending on low-quality food and low-quality health care, but infectious diseases tend to spread without consulting how much you paid for your health care plans.

Bad health care actually lowers the productivity, and most above-average earners depend on productive below-average earners more than they'd like to know...

The Wars on fat, sugar, etc. are also occurring outside of socialized medicine. (I assume that by socialized medicine, you mean, in the U.S.,Medicare, Medicaid, and any other health program explicitly funded and/or provided by a government entity.) These wars are also being fought by private insurance companies, where the healthy subsidize the less-healthy, and the profit motive exists.

Not just in some state but drug treatment coverage is required in policies offered on the new Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) exchanges as well for newly eligible Medicaid recipients.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/healthcare

You're making a very cogent and compelling argument for why health care should not be funded or mediated in any way by the state.

>>I'm not even a smoker but if somebody wants to consume/ingest all kinds of substances I don't lay any claims to his digestive track or blood stream and it's really his business to destroy himself if he so wishes, at any rate he pleases.

Umm, very many people use various drugs occasionally and recreationally without any harm coming to them.

Denying healthcare to users is cruel, especially as the risks involved are comparable to playing sport. Shall we deny healthcare to horse riders and rock climbers too?

Denying healthcare to addicts is especially cruel as they have a problem. Personal responsibility is not a good reason to behave like an arsehole towarda the needy.

> since drug addicts are unlikely to have many kids

This is very wrong. Drug addicts have plenty of children.

Right. So the net outcome of the war on drugs is to help drug addicts breed until they outnumber the rest of us. That is a very clever plan and well worth the investment of our hard earned tax dollars, isn't it? :-(

I'm curious as to your definition of 'being a drug addict'.

>In fact it might even be good "for the environment" since drug addicts are unlikely to have many kids and they usually have shorter life spans thus leaving a smaller carbon footprint on our precious Gaia.

Am I about to pull out a Strawman? Probably.

A drug addict is also less likely to drive a car, fly on a airplane etc...thus not leaving a larger carbon footprint than somebody who decides to travel to the Utopia x times a year they strive; and has a society willing to 'subsidize' their medical treatment as they are not 'addicts'

What people consume has enormous impact on people around them. Ignoring the negative externalities doesn't make them go away, and it certainly won't convince those who have been affected by them.

Let them call it war on drugs. Then I can call what they do war on freedom. ;)

I'd just go with "war on the people".

Easier to fit in a soundbite.

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