Hacker News Reader

Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

> The war on drugs has always been about racism, corruption, the militarization of police forces, civil forfeiture and the prison-industrial complex.

So, there's nothing about not liking the addicts who hassle people on the street?

View on HN

I live near Zurich, which in the Nineties had a lot of issues with public drug use. For example, all bathrooms in public places and major department stores had blue lights instead of normal lights because you can't see the veins in your arm so it's hard to shoot up. There was also a serious crime element as addicts were robbing people to get money to buy drugs. Now, you can get them for free at clinics. With their new policies, the addicts are no longer nearly as visible and the related crime seems to be practically gone. The blue lights in the bathrooms are gone, needle park is gone and it's generally a very nice city to live in.

> So, there's nothing about not liking the addicts who hassle people on the street?

What does that have to do with the War on Drugs? There is no evidence that it lowers drug use; quite the contrary.

I always take issue with the idea that enforcement does not lower usage, and especially the insinuation that it raises it. Each drug has its own usage dynamics. So if we're talking about say OxyContin or Methamphetamine, I think we can be certain that enforcement suppresses a significant portion of usage. The perfect case in point is Florida, where there are loopholes to circumvent enforcement on OxyContin. Predictably, there is a very high OxyContin addiction rate there.

Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs in amounts for personal use. 10 years later drug abuse has gone down, not up. [1]

I think the natural path for anything that is suppressed is to increase after the suppression is lifted, and then slowly decline. I wouldn't be surprised if drug legalization would increase drug use right at the beginning, but it certainly didn't have such a long term effect in Portugal -- quite the opposite.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-af...

I wouldn't be surprised if drug legalization would increase drug use right at the beginning, but it certainly didn't have such a long term effect in Portugal

It should be noted that we decriminalized them, not legalized them. The results shouldn't be naively extrapolated to an hypothetical legalization.

People need to understand exactly what Portugal has done. "Decriminalization" of use is very different than ceasing enforcement. They stopped sending users to prison, they did not stop enforcement.

You still need to enforce against the people who deal addictive drugs, and Portugal still does.

Also, if you are caught with personal use quantities in Portugal it is usually confiscated and you are obligated to some interactions with the state aimed at treatment.

Sure, in the abstract (whatever good that does), some amount of enforcement almost necessarily impacts some drug trade, pretty much by definition.

But in the practical sense, for relevant real-world drugs and populations, I don't think there's any evidence that enforcement has ever had one iota of effect. People switch drugs, switch suppliers, switch habits, switch methods of consumption etc. etc. Not to mention that some drugs are legal (mostly, such as alcohol and nicotine, or partly such as various medicines), so even if "drugs" are less-consumed, the legal variant might still be just as nasty which renders the enforcement pointless despite "success". And even if overall consumption were to drop, you still might find that drug harm has not - some methods of consumption are more dangerous than others.

Given the absurd level of long-term investment there's been, you'd expect some evidence of meaningful success. Where is it?

Florida isn't an abstract place, it's located in the southern United States. Contrast it with other states that enforce OxyContin better.

I believe you are confused about enforcement of sale vs use, and the specifics of any policy beyond the buzzword "drug war", which is typical of this debate.

Measured how? Overall harm is what we're interested in, not usage and not necessarily crime related to a specific drug.

In any case, I don't want to suggest that the alternative is some kind of anarchic free-for-all - so enforcement wasn't a well chosen word (sorry!). I mean prohibition specifically, not just any kind of regulation.

If anything, I think existing "legal" drugs like nicotine and especially alcohole could use more regulation, not less.

The saying perfect is the enemy of good pretty much sums up my stance here :-) - don't bother aiming for complete abolition despite the fact that that might be a "perfect" solution if achievable.

>"Predictably, there is a very high OxyContin addiction rate there"

Missing the point. There is a very high addiction rate of alcohol, caffeine, porn, and sugar. Addicts are going to be addicted. Society has not yet collapsed despite these legal addictions running rampant. Closing the oxy loophole would lower oxy use. The same people would move on to different substances. What positive has been accomplished? Some of them would spend decades in jail, despite causing no other harm or threat to society. Think big picture. Are you trying to have a civil society or are you trying to end addiction? The only way to end addiction is the extinction of the human race.

I don't recall ever getting hassled by an addict. Plenty of drunk people though. Why don't we ban alcohol too? (Hint: it doesn't work.)

Maybe we should start a war on homelessness.

perhaps if we (the US) would stop branding all our endeavors with battle phrasing, we'd stop being so apt to do battle.

How about we try to fix homelessness? It's surely a problem, I don't know if it's a battle, adversary, or fight. A struggle, perhaps, but can one call a struggle a war? I don't personally believe so.

I agree. My comment was pure sarcasm.

While drug users are one segment of the homeless, most of the people I see helping out at the shelter have other issues.

That one's already well underway.

If it will be done the same way war on drugs is done, people would be put into jail for mandatory minimum sentences for failing to register their home address with the police and for being on the streets while the curfew is in place. Any "precursor" materials such as warm clothes, tents, hiking boots, survival guides, etc. and hiking would be illegal (a teacher probably would be fired on spot for just suggesting the students to have an outdoors trip). Any outdoors activities which involve staying outside past curfew time will have to be issued a permit from the police, and only people passing special extensive anti-homelessness training would be allowed to possess such permits. Places where homeless people could find shelter would be destroyed by the police or rendered uninhabitable at huge expense and use of toxic and lethal material (inevitable deaths following that would be dismissed as acceptable collateral damage). Anybody seen helping a homeless person with money or food or anything else would be also subject to arrest and felony conviction. Of course, the police would also involve massive amount of undercover agents to trick people into doing exactly that and later bust them for aiding and abetting the homelessness.

In short, if you want war - it would be a war. And war is not pretty. Especially when the government declares the war on its own citizenry.

The US started a war on poverty somewhere in the 50/60s, I think. And it's been increasing ever since.

Then outlaw hassling people on the street.

There are also all the people stealing to get their fix, the people exploiting the people stealing to get their fix, etc.

Also, it's already illegal, but sometimes you have to go after the root causes. In this case, the next root cause would be addiction, and yes, I do think drug use should be seen as a medical issue.

People "stealing to get their fix" ought to essentially disappear once getting a fix drops to 1/10th the price (so much less money is required) and once a reliable source is easily obtained (so you don't have to spend any time searching for the next fix or dealing with roller-coaster withdrawal symptoms because you couldn't find it in time).

When drugs are legal, holding down a regular job will be compatible with drug use; people will work regular hours to pay for their habit, pick up their drug at the corner market on the way home, and take the equivalent of cigarette breaks.

When heroin was a branded product of the Bayer corporation, one of the founders of Johns Hopkins was a heroin addict; he took pills. (The chief long-term problem associated with regular heroin use is constipation.)

So, no: people stealing to get their fix is an argument for legalization.

(How many people are today "stealing to get their fix" of beer or cigarettes?)

This assumes they are employable and thereby able to afford it. And by "employable", I mean able to work, not merely able to pass background checks though the two are interrelated (i.e. there are rational business reasons to consider it a negative factor).

I have worked at a place that did not screen out such (a factory, one of the few places, as I understand it, where you could get employed with a record). We're talking about being unable to show up for work or follow simple directions after a week. I can only imagine how they might've behaved in something customer-facing (i.e. flipping burgers).

Now yes, there is the other side of that. There were also a number of folks struggling to fix up their life. These I commend and I helped where I could along that route.

I worked in an office that did perform background checks and wouldn't hire ex-convicts. Curiously, the drug addicts who worked there tended to be highly functional and even successful.

Crap, our anecdotes paint different pictures. Could it be that neither of our samples is representative of "drug users" as a population?

Someone who hid their illegal activities so well must have been a skilled liar. And skilled liars are often highly successful, but this isn't often argued as a good thing...

I'm not sure whether some drugs have the effect of turning users into skilled liars or not, but that does sound like it would be yet another harmful (though logical) side-effect of prohibition.

Some studies have found that illegal drug users earn more than average and are more productive than average. Though in searching for the relevant studies, the first thing I found was this followup:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7287.1998....

Quote: "Using various measures of current and lifetime drug use and accounting for alcohol-use comorbidity, the authors find predominantly insignificant relationships (both direct and indirect) between drug use and both wages and absenteeism, regardless of gender."

This logic doesn't work. People steal and rob to buy BMWs, nice clothes and big TVs. You wouldn't outlaw luxurious goods because their lust for them is the root cause of illegal behavior in part of the population.

It's already illegal. The problem is getting:

1) police to care about this kind of crime enough to come quickly

2) victims to follow through and testify when an arrest is made

3) the public to be willing to commit resources to arrest and incarcerate perpetrators.

It may (or may not) be the case that targeting the behavior is less costly then banning it. Either way, it's not as simple as just banning the immediately-objectionable behavior.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com