The World Health Organization calls for the decriminalisation of drug use | Hacker News Reader

The World Health Organization calls for the decriminalisation of drug use

tdpf.org.uk

287 pointsoskarth60 comments

As much as I don't want to make the best the enemy of the good, I'm really skeptical of "decriminalization". Yeah, you won't get sent to jail for it, but if you don't make it legal, you are still dealing in a black market commodity. That means that you'll still have criminals with no access to the legal system supplying the stuff, so you won't see the same reduction in drug-related violence and you won't see quality control.

With heroin at least, the "bad batches" that kill people (and have killed a number of my family members and people in my extended social circle) tend to be the ones that are purer - people know that they usually need 1 bag to get high, then suddenly there's twice as much heroin in a given bag because the batch is purer than they expected and it causes a bunch of people to OD. This problem would be solved if it were legal and you could buy it in a store from a person who you could sue if they caused your wrongful death, but decriminalizing heroin wouldn't do anything for that.

Furthermore, this doesn't reduce the incentive that Mexican drug gangs have for killing thousands of people to secure their territory along the border, because you'd still need to produce the drugs somewhere and smuggle them into rich countries like the US.

Certainly it'd be nice if in addition to all these other horrible problems we also didn't spend a ton of money throwing people in jail for using drugs, but honestly I don't see decriminalization as anything more than a stepping stone on the way to full legalization of all drugs.

Decriminalization will (presumably) allow needle exchange programs reducing the spread of many diseases such as HIV and Hep C. Many places already have such programs regardless of criminality. It would be a lot easier for such programs and legislation allowing for access to clean needles to survive in a climate of decriminalization than one where even possession of needles themselves is a crime. I think Portugal more than proves that full legalization is not necessary for benefits, despite being the obvious rational choice.

I agree that it's a step forward, just that I think it doesn't address the biggest problems and it's not a solution. It certainly helps with the health problems, but it's only a good step in the sense that nearly anything is better than the situation we have now.

I think another thing you should take from the Portugal situation is that full legalization would be unlikely to have many costs, because you're already making it so that the average consumer can get drugs anyway, so from their perspective the drugs are already "legal". Going from decriminalized to legal can more or less only have upsides.

If you want to say, "Hey, let's decriminalize it first, see how people react, then legalize it", that's great. If you are trying to say, "Keeping it illegal but not punishing the users as much is a good long-term compromise", that's where I'd push back. It helps, but all the biggest issues are essentially still there.

Full legalization is the optimal solution but this is still a political problem. To pass something like this, you have to pander to a lot of stupid idiots who may be persuaded to accept decriminalization but not full legalization, even in cases where the two are semi-equivalent. I think generally decriminalization is pushed for because of such wider support and the chance that it might and has succeeded in the past. Of course, once drugs are decriminalized, legalization is the next step. The reason for such roundabout tactics is that the opposition is not rational.

> you could buy it in a store from a person who you could sue if they caused your wrongful death

It's vanishingly rare than anyone is capable of suing after they've died.

(I agree with you on everything else).

Your relations still can.

But you're still capable of being sued after you've killed someone.

Legal drugs cause their fair share of trouble. Consider the social ills brought to us by Philip Morris, Budweiser, and 17th century British opium trade. Profit making companies have an incentive to promote addiction as do governments who base too much revenue on drug taxes.

Finding a happy medium between black market and free market is a tricky problem. I suspect it will continue to require a complex set of regulations. I'm quite happy to see states in America experimenting with various policies towards marijuana. Hopefully one of them will land on something not worse than what's happening right now. Hopefully too, the attitudes of the WHO will encourage even more experimentation.

The biggest barrier to legalizing drugs are the millions of jobs that are created for, solely exist for, and are wholly dedicated to: fighting drugs, drug related crimes, and dealing with drug offenders (police, private prisons, etc).

And the 100s of billions (if not several trillion) of dollars that get consumed every year by that industry.

They will fight tooth and nail to prevent any type of drug legalization.

We've already seen how powerful the private prison industry is and how much lobbying power they have.

>And the 100s of billions (if not several trillion) of dollars that get consumed every year by that industry.

Not that it's a good reason against decriminalizing drug use, but you're right. And if they can't send millions of young men away for drugs, they'll find another reason to do so, and maintain that spending. Hacking, spying, piracy, perhaps?

Very much true.

But the same has been said about defense spending and the current administration has cut back on Pentagon budget and has signaled that more cuts are on the way.

Of course those military suppliers - who have vastly outsized lobbying might, compared to anyone outside of energy and pharmaceutical companies - won't go down without a fight.

Case in point:

  One of those companies: Raytheon RTN +0.74%, maker of 
  Tomahawk [1] missiles and other military gadgets. In January, 
  the Navy proposed the company end production of new 
  Tomahawks in 2017 . Its stockpile of about 3,000 of the 
  missiles is more than the 2,300 that have been fired in 
  all combat operations combined.

  Raytheon is warning that if it shuts down production 
  of the Tomahawk and the U.S. finds itself in a situation
  where it needs more of them, it will be complicated and
  expensive to get production going again.

  "Raytheon contends that halting its Tomahawk production
   line in Tucson, Ariz., ahead of the 2019 upgrades 
   would drive some suppliers out of business, and push 
   engineers to other sectors, eroding the military’s 
   ability to field an important weapon. The company 
   sent the Pentagon a list of a dozen companies that 
   Raytheon executives believe could close or be forced
   to leave the defense sector, according to people 
   familiar with the situation."[2]

If defense suppliers can be tamed, so can be prison guard unions and law enforcement unions.

The criminal justice system and the incarceration complex are no longer in the purview of reasonable actors and decision makers.

Watch Bill Maher's monologue on the increased militarization of local law enforcement( I know he can be hyperbolic sometimes, but not here. )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8qBTy0HWWI

NYPD officers just choked dead a Staten Island man who was allegedly selling tax-free contraband cigarettes, for resisting arrest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/nyregion/staten-island-man...

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZEYOSRiQno

[1] Tomahawk component suppliers and sites where the missiles were fired:

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-CN552_TOMAHA_G_...

[2] Defense Companies Warn: Cutting Military Spending Can Be Expensive

http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/07/03/defen...

The military-industrial complex is still alive and well, and still exercises very strong control in crafting agendas. What makes you think otherwise? Plenty of war operations still going on, air support being given, forward bases maintained, weapons purchase agreements from allies.

If that were the case, we wouldn't be on our way to legalizing marijuana. I'm sure it feels really great to rage against the "system" but it doesn't seem right in this case.

It's important to note the in the strictest sense, marijuana is still 100% illegal everywhere in the United States. The federal gov't is currently taking a watch-and-wait stance, but that can change in a single election.

Not exactly. There is a lot of movement in the direction of rescheduling marijuana, which would have some pretty lasting effects.

No, it's not about "raging against the system", that is actually the reason why drugs won't be decriminalized in the US anytime soon. It's a lot of money that no one will let go of easily. And that's without mentioning all the civil liberties that we've lost where the war on drugs was used as the reason.

"that is actually the reason why drugs won't be decriminalized in the US anytime soon" (emphasis mine).

Well, I think you could say that it is a reason, but I don't think you can say it is the reason.

There are still a lot of people in the United States who believe that doing these illegal drugs is morally wrong, and that making them legal would increase, not decrease the damage.

I'd bet that this is driving the resistance to decriminalization/legalization much more than people trying to keep their jobs (and no, I'm not denying that there are people who resist it for that reason).

I would love to see how such people answer the question "beyond legal status, what factors do you consider affect the morality of ingesting a substance?"

> beyond legal status, what factors do you consider affect the morality of ingesting a substance?

Whether ingesting it makes you a danger to others due to intoxication or other loss of reasoning ability and whether ingesting it causes an addition that leads to the loss of ability to support yourself are likely to be two of the biggest concerns. Note in particular that the loss of ability to support oneself, combined with addiction, is known to drive other criminal behavior (muggings, theft, etc.) to support the habit.

This, incidentally, would be why more people are willing to be flexible with pot where there are few such dangers and less flexible with things like meth.

Continuing to play devil's advocate with the moral objectors: While these surely _are_ dangers of someone ingesting some substances, which of these dangers is prevented by making them illegal? On the whole, none are prevented. Those already addicted will use regardless of legal status. Those not yet using illegal drugs are doing fine putting others in harms way by casual use of legal substances like alcohol. The dangers you mention are in fact dangers, but the risk factor to others doesn't change much with legalization.

I do agree there are many who will object on these moral grounds though.

I don't think of "prevented" as a binary status. It's clear that at least some are prevented and the others are simply taken off the streets, making some of the aforementioned issues smaller, with certain other tradeoffs. I do not expect there to be a perfect solution any which way society goes about this. I have not seen much debate well informed enough to give more than opinions about the actual magnitude of many of the costs and tradeoffs, though I am interested in some of the talk about decriminalization (which is sometimes confused with legalization) combined with expanded addiction treatment programs.

I'll bite...

Depending on the drug you can

* Become unpredictable and therefore dangerous to your surroundings

* Become aggressive and/or violent

* Decreased cognitive abilities can make you susceptible to bad decisions

* Slurred speech and thinking can make you unable to help friends, family and others should they need you to.

That's just off the top of my head, please note that some of the above also applies to legal drugs.

You just described alcohol.

That would cause a shift in jobs, not necessarily a loss of jobs. How much of a shift, I wouldn't know.

Banking, auto and pharmaceutical industries I can see lobbying their agendas as they're largely private. Are there significant privatized anti-drug agencies with capital (comparable to the 3 above)?

The US has a large conservative (often Christian) mindset that I think would reflexively fight this without thinking about it. Don't think it's necessary to jump straight into the conspiracy theories yet.

Prisons, law-enforcement. Any conservative lobbies. And what makes you think banks, auto makers, and pharmaceutical companies are going to be in favor of drug legalization? They aren't trying to advance that agenda already and don't have very strong incentives to push for it either. Or did i misunderstand?

For lobbying purposes, large unions (such as law enforcement) are just as effective as capital - both are simply means for obtaining votes.

In the latest news from the United States, "Drug Sentencing Guidelines Reduced For Current Prisoners," we learn that the United States Sentencing Commission, a federal agency, voted on Friday to reduce terms for convicted drug offenders already in prison.[1] The state jurisdiction I live in already very rarely imprisons anyone for a drug offense unless the offense involves a large degree of dealing combined with other criminal offenses. Possession offenses are still in the statute books, but they are mostly dealt with here by diversion to drug treatment programs.

The great majority of persons in the United States who are in prison are in prison for offenses other than drug offenses. States that have sentencing commissions (mine was the first) by state policy mostly only imprison repeat offenders who are convicted of serious (mostly violent) crimes, not mere drug possession.[2]

[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/07/18/332619083/dru...

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-drug-sentences...

[2] http://mn.gov/sentencing-guidelines/images/2013%2520Guidelin...

> The great majority of persons in the United States who are in prison are in prison for offenses other than drug offenses.

I had a quick look for information about this. The first source I found (chosen to avoid introducing bias through cherry-picking) was this one: http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p11.pdf and it says: "Nearly half (48%) of inmates in federal prison were serving time for drug offenses in 2011".

So it turns out that both this and tokenadult's statement are correct -- because the great majority of prisoners in the US are state prisoners rather than federal ones. About 17% of state prisoners are doing time for drug offences.

In Illinois, a plurality of offenders are in prison for domestic violence.

Nobody will listen. A few years ago one of the UK's top advisors on drugs objected to the governments reclassification of cannabis from a class b to a class c drug. He was fired.[0] Governments don't care. They aren't there to do what's best for their citizens. They should be, but they aren't.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#Dismissal

Maybe the UK and US are the worst offenders. Australia and New Zealand are very much more open, I suppose Canada is too. Outside of the west, I think that for instance China will listen. They've been involving foreign groups in their drug rehabilitation process reform for some years now.

The US has legalized marijuana in a few states and decriminalized it in half of the states. I guess you hadn't heard.

The annoying thing is that other governments are pressured by the USA to keep criminalizing drugs, while the USA itself is decriminalizing it state by state.

The states are in direct contravention of Federal laws. This will have to be dealt with eventually but the Feds are in no hurry because it is a losing case for them.

Be very interesting to see what Congress ends up doing with DC, which recently decriminalized marijuana and has full legalization on the ballot for November. I don't think they'll ignore it, so the question is will they simply undo it or prevent the ballots from being counted (which they have the unique ability to do in DC) or whether this will prompt an actual debate on the role of the federal government in drug policy.

> I guess you hadn't heard.

This comment would be strictly better without that jab. Your point would be stronger too.

2 states legalized. Out of 50. Not exactly a tide of legalization.

This is great, and will lend legitimacy to those pushing for legalization efforts. That said, I'm disappointed to read the, predictable, refrain about drug enforcement and for profit prisons. This is a canard. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7851672.

I don't know what other peoples' experience was, but I grew up in the 1990's in an area that was pretty middle of the road politically. Throughout elementary school, doing drugs was portrayed as something on a par with drunk driving, and got even more attention from parent groups and school administrators. In 1991, 78% of the population thought marijuana should be illegal: http://www.people-press.org/2013/04/04/majority-now-supports.... Only last year did the opinion shift in favor of legalization, and even today a substantial minority (45%) of people think marijuana should be illegal, and probably a majority of actual voters, who skew older and more conservative, feel that way.

Obviously police unions and the like will raise barriers to legalization. But let's not shirk the blame here: we created the drug war, or depending on your age, our parents did.

While your conclusion is true, for-profit prison systems are a clear conflict of interest and certainly influence media and lobbying. Law enforcement has spread its fair share of misinformation and unnecessary violence, as well.

I think for profit prisons are very bad. I'm not a fan of public unions of any sort either. But laying the blame on them is just a cop-out. These policies were implemented with overehelming public support at a time when the for-profit prison industry was essentially non-existent. The for profit prison lobby is opportunist: taking advantage of the policy. They didn't create it.

It's not a cop out. There are many parties which share blame: the Public for its fearful ignorance and fear, the prisons for profiteering and massive media and lobbying influence, law enforcement for enforcing the "lex malla" of drug policy with violence, various government organizations of various nationalities (including to a large degree the US) for using hard drugs as a tool to manipulate political, social, and economic situations, assassinations, cartels and gangs that sell drugs to fund human trafficking and murder, the list goes on…

There's a lot of blame to go around. The prisons share a whole lot of it.

Apportioning the blame properly is crucial to understanding the significance of this call from the WHO. The vast majority of responses to this article focus on for profit prisons, police lobbying, and how the government doesn't do what the people want. If these are the driving forces behind the drug war, then a WHO recommendation is going to have little effect. However, the emprical evidence shows that the drug war arose not from for profit prison lobbying, an industry that really didn't exist when the phrase was coined, but on the back of vast public support. Moreover, the evidence also shows decriminalization policies gaining ground as public opinion shifts.

The bottom line is that the thesis underlying most of the comments in this thread is wrong. For profit prisons, police unions, etc, are not the biggest roadblocks to legalization. They're opportunists, but the backbone of the drug war is massive support from soccer moms and dads, the reliable voters that created the drug war in the first place. And if the medical community starts chipping away at them, change will follow, regardless of what the prison lobbey wants.

The manner in which international drug prohibition began and the manners in which it is sustained are not equivalent. To say public opinion is the most important aspect is reductive.

A pretty bold statement that will be used as a reference in the crusade against the war on drugs. The trend indicates this already. Colorado, California et al has already taken a step in this direction with legalization of marijuana. Problem is, there is a generation who grew up with being taught the opposite which will take some time to change their minds.

I doubt most people of that generation will change their mind. Sad as it is, real change will come about as the generation dies off, something that has already started.

To be fair, the generation currently in power saw a lot of people getting "lost" in drugs during the heroine-friendly '70s. In a way, I can see how some of them could react by becoming more rigid in their approach to the issue.

California didn't legalize marijuana (in fact it was voted against in 2010). The 2 US states are Colorado and Washington. Many other states have decriminalized or provide medical access, though: http://norml.org/states

We need to decriminalize almost everything. We have too many criminal laws. Too many laws.

But how are we going to fill the (corporate) prisons then? These wards have families to feed, too!

What if we paid them to guard empty cells? Then the people who would have been in the cells can be working, paying more taxes, and funding more guards with those taxes. Everybody wins.

Actually, that's not completely facetious. What if the payment structure was changed from being based on the number of inmates, to a flat fee, with a cap on how many prisoners a single company could guard (going over that requires housing by the state).

Then the company is incentivized to lower the number of people being put in jail rather than raise it; you start seeing lobbying for decriminalization of non-violent offenses, since that leads to fewer prisoners, less cost, same revenue, thus increased profits.

How many US prisoners are in corporate prisons?

In the US: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison#In_the_United_St...)

"The trend toward privately operated correctional facilities has continued with 85,604 adults (3.7% of the total US prison population) now housed in 107 privately operated prisons as of 2011[13] Companies operating such facilities include the Corrections Corporation of America, the GEO Group, Inc. (formerly known as Wackenhut Securities), and Community Education Centers. In the past two decades CCA has seen its profits increase by more than 500 percent.[14] The prison industry as a whole took in over $5 billion in revenue in 2011.[15]

"According to journalist Matt Taibbi, Wall Street banks took notice of this big influx of cash, and are now some of the prison industry's biggest investors. Wells Fargo has around 100 million invested in GEO Group and 6 million in CCA. Other major investors include Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, General Electric and The Vanguard Group. CCA's share price went from a dollar in 2000 to $34.34 in 2013.[15]"

Distinctions between corporations and government aside (their interests are the same, to a first approximation; and of course corporations are government-created entities)... the "drug war" is an effective pretext for social control, particularly in the top jailer of its own people: the US. Puts certain demographics in a horrific box with no freedom.

ProPublica puts the percentage of inmates in private facilities at around 8% in 2010. The 3.7% figure appears to come from a cited academic work that I can't verify, so I'm not sure how much stock I'd put in that figure. ProPublica tends to put out pretty reliable stats.

More concerning than the total percentage is the rate at which this number is increasing (~40% per year).

Not many (a little under 10%) but expanding rapidly[1] (~40% per year).

1. http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g...

Around 100,000, or 4% of total US prisoners[1]. 90% of them are in the facilities of the Corrections Corporation of America[2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison#In_the_United_St...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrections_Corporation_of_Amer...

edit: so that question was interesting enough for 3 people to look up the answer at the same time ;) Also I had to double check, wtf at the 100,000 prisoners being only 4% of total US prisoners..

Yahoo finance says roughly 10% of prisons are privately operated. One company has capacity for over 120,000 inmates, so I'd estimate the private prison population is in the low to middle 100ks.

A huge segment of policing, courts, and prisons is dependent on the Drug War, and there is enormous public and private sector profiteering in it. But I'd say the other bad effects, like the proliferation of SWAT, no-knock raids, and militarization are worse than the expense and corruption.

Some of the other answers here are low due to counting only federal inmates, or being out of date.

If you choose a job whose necessity will disappear in the future, then it's bad luck for you. Better job choice next time. For me this argument is the same as coachmen complaining about cars taking away their jobs.

You rename the prisons "treatment centers" and treat drug abuse as a medical problem. Then you just have people committed instead of prosecuted.

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