Could this be a situation where politicians have faulty data and use that to guide how they act? I would have assumed that a majority of these states - and my home state of NJ - would be very anti-drug but these votes with >60% in favor of legalization show that significant portions of America think drug-related activities are not "immoral" or "wrong" and should not be criminalized.
If you had asked me a few years ago if I thought this was what the general American populous thought I'd have said no because, of all of the politicians who advocated for legalization of drugs, very very few got elected.
Maybe now that politicians see that people are very against drug laws we'll see some of them renege on their hard anti-drug stances.
The only data Politicians use is campaign donation data.
When you have several different industries that rely on a steady flow of meat into the grinder (Prison, Police Unions, Lawyers, Probation Officers/Administrative, etc) and they give generous support and campaign donations , well you know why it has taken so long to end this useless "War on Drugs". Millions of Tax dollars were spent incarcerating people for having a $20 of drugs on them. It is beyond fucking insane destroying the life of a 18 year old over a joint or sending someone away for life (3 strikes and your out) for a few dollars of weed.
I don't use but I don't want to see a single penny of my tax dollars spent on destroying the lives of users. Unfortunately in my State (TX), the Industries I mentioned above are the ones making decisions for the Politicians and not the voters.
The only way to fix this is to legalize it all and treat the folks who require help.
A lot of the draconian laws and mandatory sentences trace back to the late 1980s/early 1990s when crack cocaine hit. If you were too young to remember or not born yet, it was absolutely devastating. At least the equivalent of today's opioid crisis if not worse. Entire neighborhoods just fell apart. Politicians and voters freaked out and demanded harsh new drug laws and penalties. Lobbiest support from those who benefited helped perpetuate this, but it got started at the time with widespread public support.
I really hate to sidetrack this discussion with an obvious political rant, but it's important to remember the CIA was intimately involved in creating the crack epidemic in the United States.
"the CIA's Office of the Inspector General which ultimately concluded the allegations were unsupported."
"Webb's series led to three federal investigations, all of which concluded there was no evidence of conspiracy by the CIA or its employees to bring drugs into the United States.
.. sounds to me like it was investigated and nothing turned up?
If one was to read this very carefully, they're not saying it didn't happen, they're just saying the evidence to support the allegations no longer exists. For a top secret program, that sounds about right.
I was a black teenager living on the South Side of Chicago during that time, and the media crack obsession was largely hysterics, and sometimes outright fiction (as with "crack babies.")
Yea, I think experts agree that journalists are almost as much to blame for the war on drugs as politicians. If I remember correctly Johan Hari also writes about this in "Chasing the Scream".
It looks like drug laws are bound to become a cycle.
1- Drugs are cool, and not really an issue, people take them mostly reasonably.
2- Hey, drugs can be addictive, that's when people stop being reasonable
3- Too many drug addicts, it is a real society problem
4- People demand strict laws, drugs are not cool anymore
5- Parents, who have seen the damage done by drugs support these drastic laws, and tell their kids how bad drugs are
6- Kids, who didn't experience a real drug epidemic, start questioning what their parents told them, and realize that taken reasonably, drugs are not that bad
7- These kids, now adults, seeing how harsh anti-drug laws do more harm than drugs, demand more tolerance
Legalization is more about judiciary reform, public health and allocation of resources. We've already been through this before with alcohol, where prohibition was prohibitively expensive, and basically created a completely unregulated market full of products so dangerous they regularly killed people. You can see a parallel with black-market cannabis, where there are basically no health and safety regulations or transparency. So black-market growers are free to use as much carcinogenic pesticide as they wish. On the production side, there is nothing stopping a manufacturer from distributing vape cartridges containing unsafe levels of ethanol, lead contaminated materials, bacterial and fungal contamination. So imagine we set up a system for licensing, independent inspections, regular testing, and Boom, suddenly the drug dealers are paying the state, instead of the state paying to hunt the drug dealers down and keep them alive incarcerated.
I am pretty much convinced that Reagan's war on drugs was mostly about destroying south american economies and exterminating or enslaving non-whites, rather than public health and safety. Because of that, I don't believe de-criminalization will lead to criminalization.
Exactly! Many people don't realise that decriminalisation/legalisation is meant to reduce the drug problem, not "make it legal to be a junkie". The three main points I usually give to people are:
- regulating production and distribution will make drugs safer for existing users,
- the money from that regulation (taxes, fines...) will go towards education and rehabilitation,
- the money and time cops save from not chasing after stoners will go towards catching actual criminals.
Add to that the potential medicinal benefits that will be better-studied and available to more people and there's really nothing to lose. DUI is still illegal, as is showing up to work high. Children will of course not be allowed anywhere near drugs and what grown adults do in their free time is really none of anyone else's business.
The real issue isn't the drugs -- it's mental health. Most drug users who become addicts started using drugs to cope and escape from problems they have in life: depression, anxiety, bipolar, PTSD, etc.
If we started treating the real source of the problem -- mental health -- then there would be far less appeal for these types of people to turn to drugs to begin with.
They rely on polls. Very long and specific polls. This cycle a lot of us are looking at some seriously wrong polling. But that's how larger campaigns and politicians make decisions.
Marijuana legalization probably isn't polled unless it's on the ballot.
But politicians have rational incentive to move towards what is clearly popular. 60% is a landslide. There are definitely 'Mavericks' who hold strong to their beliefs or independence, but for the most part those who win follow their constituents rather than lead.
The war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon. Before then, MJ was around and used, it is a plant and good pain killer that you can grow yourself. And Nixon stated that is why he was doing it in the White House tapes. For 50 years the WoD was used to justify invading other countries and setting up coups and all that has lead to our current issue with powerful militarized Narco gangs and all the people trying to get asylum in the US. So the GOP created a war to go after people of color and now are using terrible results of their actions to further justify why the GOP should stay in power. And the ignorant voters who don't study any history eat that up. What has happened is that enough people have seen through the rhetoric and failed policies and see that the laws have to change to support the evidence.
> The war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon
So was Planned Parenthood.
Instead of endlessly prosecuting the past, which can never change, let's look at today and tomorrow instead.
Or, if you prefer, we could look at the exact opposite approach- the Opium wars were fought to force China to allow the sale and consumption of opium, the extensive use of which was practically epidemic.
As such, it could also be argued that legalizing drugs is an attack in minorities who are disproportionately poor and thus prone to consumption- a return to the days when inner cities were ravaged by crack.
Things are way more complex than just pointing at simplified versions of history and banging on the race drum.
Planned Parenthood was the work of Margaret Sanger, who was a feminist who believed in reproductive choice and free speech; she was repeatedly arrested because distributing knowledge of contraception violated the Comstock Act.
Eugenics is a broad term. There are many aspects of eugenics that make horrific government policy, but are still pretty sensible ideas. Being a "eugenicist" isn't a black spot on her record.
Looking at her wiki page [0] she supported people thinking about how large a family they could support and then making decisions to stay within that. That is a commendable philosophy.
I'm going to guess you didn't read that before you posted a link to it. She's using "race" as in "human race". The argument in that essay is pretty reasonable, she's saying women should have access to birth control. Which they should.
"But such attainment is unthinkable if we continue to breed from the present race stock that yields us our largest amount of progeny. Some method must be devised to eliminate the degenerate and the defective; for these act constantly to impede progress and ever increasingly drag down the human race."
"When we consider that the mentally deficient reproduce more rapidly than those of normal intelligence, we may well look into the future with dismay. Unless a halt is called, and that speedily, our race is doomed to inevitable deterioration."
My alternative is you didn't understanding it. Throwing out block quotes does suggest you read the first two paragraphs. If you made your point using your own words instead of throwing titles and quotes out I'd have a better chance of understanding it, whatever it is.
Again, when she says race she means "human race". And she's arguing for perfectly reasonable outcomes. Adjust for the fact that the language is 100 years old and context changes over time.
Her argument is that people should have access to birth control. People, in the current era, now have access to birth control. The world is a better place for it. That is one of the best parts of eugenics - people should be able to plan their families.
> and it's basically a dog whistle for certain races.
You think, in 1923, someone would feel a need to dance around the bush if they wanted to say nasty things about other races? The civil rights movement didn't even start until the 50s. Political correctness wasn't even a phrase before the 70s. If she meant black/Italian/Scottish/whoever she'd have said it.
She is probably talking about things like Down syndrome and people who are stupid. You don't have to like it, she may indeed be badly wrong on some points, but the problem with that is when governments start implementing forceful eugenics policies (a la the Nazis) and not the ideas themselves (and note she specifically argues against eugenics by statute). It seems likely that people will be choosing to genetically engineer their kids regardless if the option is available - how many parents would purposefully let their children have congenital issues if it could be avoided?
She is arguing for birth control - an issue which most people are very glad she and people like her won on. She makes a number of good points, and a couple of questionable but reasonable ones.
Mother of god. Stop defending her. Even planned parenthood dumped her over her racist views.
I want to see you defend this.
In a letter to Clarence Gable in 1939, Sanger wrote: "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members" (Margaret Sanger commenting on the 'Negro Project' in a letter to Gamble, Dec. 10, 1939).
You don't need to work to persuade me that people in the 1920s were racist. But that quote, in context, might easily be read as "we don't want them to think this [because it isn't true]".
I wouldn't be surprised if Sanger didn't like black people, but based on the evidence you're throwing out in dribs and drabs she expected them to stop having children because that would make them better off.
Let me ask you straight up: are you arguing that black people shouldn't have access to contraception and abortion? Because Sanger is basically arguing that black people (and indeed, all people) should have voluntary access to contraception and abortion, and that black doctors should be trained to provide them as services. Even if you doubt her motives, it is a struggle for me to see what the complaint is. Would that my enemies were so dedicated to giving me options.
Also, note that she is very direct and willing to use phrases like 'colored people' and 'negro population' when she is talking about black people. No dog whistles.
You are doing everything in your power, including a vigorous waving of hands - "maybe she meant something else" - to defend a known racist eugenicist. What game are you playing here?
Planned Parenthood is doing it's best to create as much distance between itself and Sanger, yet you're here defending her. Why?
> Planned Parenthood is doing it's best to create as much distance between itself and Sanger, yet you're here defending her. Why?
You're out-of-context quoting someone who has been dead for no less than the better part of a century, and based on the evidence that you've drawn my attention to she was a tireless advocate of sensible family planning. I think that deserves some defence.
You said PP distanced from her because of her racist views. Ok, fair enough, everyone in history was basically a racist so that seems like a fair call. But her work as a 'eugenicist' seems to be commendable and most of what you have been bringing up today has ranged from commendable to reasonable in context. From what I've seen here it seems to me that this woman lived a life well spent. I'm not seeing anything that doesn't look like a reasonable option in the modern era - it is still the case that educated and wealthy families generally go with fewer children and are more likely to plan out their family for example. I support free and easy access to abortions.
> "maybe she meant something else"
I'm happy to be a bit stronger than that. She obviously meant something else. Voluntary access to family planning tools and training black ministers has to be one of the worst schemes to eradicate out the black community that I've ever encountered. It strains credulity, in fact.
A woman claims we need to eliminate “undesirable races” through “selective breeding” but apparently in your mind that’s something as you put it “commendable”.
Congrats, I guess?
Apparently you see nothing wrong with a woman Planned Parenthood is trying desperately to distance themselves from.
Thank you for that link. I wasn't aware of that before.
I will note that while the language is far from politically correct by today's standards, it's actually an incredibly common idea that "People shouldn't have kids if they can't afford them." This isn't as simple as eugenics.
People who can access birth control -- in part because people like Sanger fought for the right to such access -- have hope of escaping poverty. Teen moms tend to have bleak financial futures. If they can put off pregnancy until they are older and better educated, they can stop being poor and do better by their kids.
I have a genetic disorder. When I used to participate on email support lists for it, the morality around the question of whether or not you should have more kids once you have a child with the condition was a huge hot button topic in such communities.
It's a condition that most people "wouldn't wish on their worst enemy," much less their own child. It's homozygous recessive, so it's pretty common for people learn they are carriers by being told their child has the condition.
If two carriers have a child together with this condition, the odds are one in two that the child will also be a carrier, one in four that the child will not carry the defective gene and one in four that the child will have the condition. It's a terrible psychological burden to contemplate playing that kind of Russian Roulette with the health and welfare of your own child.
I was diagnosed in my mid thirties and this led to the diagnosis of one of my two sons. I ended up filing for divorce not hugely long after.
It's a predominantly Caucasian condition. My romantic involvements tended to be non-white during my divorce because it was a quick and dirty genetics test that was completely free.
The idea of having another child with the condition gave me the heebie jeebies. The idea of having a really hard conversation with some white man I barely knew and explaining the whole thing seemed like too much to bear while I was very ill, getting divorced, etc.
I could sweep all that under the rug if I so chose. I'm now post-menopausal and no longer care what ethnicity a man is because I don't expect to be able to get pregnant.
I am reluctant to condemn the woman. I am much more inclined to apply a phrase to here that one of my favorite professor's taught me: "I am the primitive of my way."
We can sit in judgment of her and count ourselves superior because she succeeded in her goals to make birth control more available. But there is a saying: "You need to be middle class to afford middle class morality" and having more kids than you can support because you have no access to birth control is a known means to guarantee that the "peasants" are prisoners of their station and have zero hope of escaping it.
I can't know what was actually in her mind or heart. Sometimes people with political ambition say what they know will sell the idea. Sometimes their actual internal framing is one they know that other people will never believe.
If she had believed that giving access to birth control to poor people would empower them to further education and rise from poverty, it may have been political suicide to try to sell people on that idea. They may have found it either unbelievable or unpalatable.
It is true to this day that the Catholic Church is against birth control (or was the last time I read up on such things -- I'm not Catholic). That was a much more widespread idea in Sanger's time -- that use of birth control was sinful and immoral.
Semmelweis was a physician who was locked up in an insane asylum and died two weeks later as the consequence of a beating by the guards. He was locked up basically because of his "crazy" idea that doctors needed to sterilize their hands. He died in 1865.
Lister was introduced to Pasteur's Germ Theory in 1864, but it was the 1890s before it achieved widespread acceptance.
Today, Germ Theory is common knowledge. No one gets treated like they are crazy for saying that washing hands can prevent serious health issues, especially in medical situations (Semmelweis was in charge of two obstetrics clinics -- he was advocating sterilizing hands before delivering babies to bring down mortality rates).
We don't know what ideas would be deemed acceptable today if Sanger had not succeeded. I think it's dangerous to be too judgey of people in a way that ignores the context of their lives.
She was taking a dangerous stand on a controversial subject. She was repeatedly arrested for her work.
I leave you with the following two excerpts from her Wikipedia page:
1.
During her work among working-class immigrant women, Sanger met women who underwent frequent childbirth, miscarriages and self-induced abortions for lack of information on how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Access to contraceptive information was prohibited on grounds of obscenity by the 1873 federal Comstock law and a host of state laws. Seeking to help these women, Sanger visited public libraries, but was unable to find information on contraception.[21] These problems were epitomized in a story that Sanger would later recount in her speeches: while Sanger was working as a nurse, she was called to the apartment of a woman, "Sadie Sachs", who had become extremely ill due to a self-induced abortion. Afterward, Sadie begged the attending doctor to tell her how she could prevent this from happening again, to which the doctor simply advised her to remain abstinent. His exact words and actions, apparently, were to laugh and say "You want your cake while you eat it too, do you? Well it can't be done. I'll tell you the only sure thing to do .... Tell Jake to sleep on the roof."[22] A few months later, Sanger was called back to Sadie's apartment—only this time, Sadie died shortly after Sanger arrived. She had attempted yet another self-induced abortion.[23][24][25] Sanger would sometimes end the story by saying, "I threw my nursing bag in the corner and announced ... that I would never take another case until I had made it possible for working women in America to have the knowledge to control birth"; biographer Ellen Chesler attempted unsuccessfully to find corroboration of this story. There is the strong possibility Sanger might have deliberately fabricated the whole story as a propaganda technique.[19]:63
This story—along with Sanger's 1904 rescue of her unwanted niece Olive Byrne from the snowbank in which she had been left—marks the beginning of Sanger's commitment to spare women from the pursuit of dangerous and illegal abortions.[25][26][27] Sanger opposed abortion, but primarily as a societal ill and public health danger which would disappear if women were able to prevent unwanted pregnancy.[28]
Given the connection between contraception and working-class empowerment, Sanger came to believe that only by liberating women from the risk of unwanted pregnancy would fundamental social change take place. She launched a campaign to challenge governmental censorship of contraceptive information through confrontational actions.
2.
Sanger was convicted; the trial judge held that women did not have "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception." Sanger was offered a more lenient sentence if she promised to not break the law again, but she replied: "I cannot respect the law as it exists today." For this, she was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse.
That was entirely my original point- that the war on drugs may have been started with ill intent 50 years ago should not have bearing on today's policy decisions.
Whether we legalize or not, whether that helps minorities or not, i think we agree that constantly recriminating the past isn't helping.
> i think we agree that constantly recriminating the past isn't helping.
We don't. You're advocating for both actively ignoring the reasons that we did things, and for the assumption that things that we do are done for a reason.
I don't understand your point. The war on drugs started for a single function, and operated to accomplish that function consistently during its entire history, and currently accomplishes that function.
Planned Parenthood also helps poor people have access to family planning. Sanger started it with exactly that purpose in mind. That now it helps educated people have access to family planning also is a nice expansion of its original purpose. That Sanger's purpose in encouraging family planning in the poor was to eradicate them is as relevant as Nixon's love for Notre Dame football.
> Things are way more complex than just pointing at simplified versions of history and banging on the race drum.
You haven't given any evidence of that. You're encouraging to ignore our lying eyes and our entire history and replace them with your bitterness about the discussion of race.
This may be US-centric but when people talk about The War on Drugs™ they mean specifically the US campaign against drugs and the ensuing police-state. Yes, other countries at other times have also made drugs illegal, but the war on drugs refers to the US policy specifically.
Right I got that. My point is many nations ban drugs. In fact they pretty much all do at some level.
Meaning there are other reasons besides racism and thus that is likely not the primary reason like this silly "Nixon" comment I see on every post about drugs.
"War on drugs" does not refers merely at making drugs illegal. It literally refers to Nixon specific set of priorities and policies and rhetorics around them.
Anyway, China did not had the same punishment disparity between crack and cocaine US had.
> could also be argued that legalizing drugs is an attack in minorities who are disproportionately poor and thus prone to consumption
Legalising the production and sale - yes, that would be possible. But legalising use and possession is very far from that. It opens the doors for better social approach to the problems and helps keep families together.
If you legalize consumption but not production and sale - you make the black market thrive and basically sponsor organized crime. Full legalization is the only moral and practical approach.
There's some threshold you probably don't want to legalise. With less addictive alternatives being available, do you really think that heroin production should ever be legalised?
Otherwise what's to stop someone from creating a custom highly addictive drug purely for maximising profit? There are labs ready to do that. In Poland the drug laws targeted specific listed substances for a while which created a market for completely untested substances which were technically-not-drugs and the stock changed immediately after the drug list was updated.
> do you really think that heroin production should ever be legalised?
Yes. The actual cost of producing heroin is about a nickel a dose. Junkies who get their heroin are productive members of society, and aside from the criminal element they're forced to associate with, the crime they commit to get the cash to not get sick, the inconsistency of product, and the aggression of the state, we have no reason to think they wouldn't live long happy lives other than ideological ones.
You're a lot less likely to relapse and commit crime when you're already on a stable dose of your drug of choice. Considering how many people in america are on legitimate opiod prescriptions I find it insane how people instantly jump to 'well you wouldn't legalise heroin would you?!', there's no meaningful difference between opiods whether they're prescribed or not.
One argument would be that taxes from the sale could be used to fund better addiction treatment than is currently available. State sanctioned supply would then be taking money out of the hands of organised crime and using it to help the people who need it.
> you make the black market thrive and basically sponsor organized crime
You aren't "Making" a market, it exists already. The difference is we are no longer severely punishing the people who are getting victimized.
> Full legalization is the only moral and practical approach.
Full legalization for most drugs, I agree (weed, LSD, shrooms, plus a few others). But I'm not sure I'd agree that all drugs should be legalized. A measured approach as we have done with MJ is a good idea.
I think understanding the past, especially the truer version that tends to become available years later, is extremely important.
Personally I appreciate when people point out what really happened (based on evidence) as a counterpoint to the cover narratives of the time, which so many still believe. We need cynicism where politics and public institutions are concerned.
No it didn't... the War on Drugs started with Harry J. Anslinger. He was going after drugs as early as 1917. He was a raging racist, but Nixon did not the start the "War on Drugs".
Do you have a source for your claims that "[t]he war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon", and especially that Nixon admitted it on the WH tapes? As far as I'm aware the latter is completely false, and the former is generally thought to be mostly false as well (though Nixon was certainly racist). This myth seems to have started with the alleged John Ehrlichman quote from '94 - it's not generally given much credence.
I completely agree with you. But, some advice, if you want to have a chance at changing somebody's mind, leave out the attack on the GOP. You trigger emotional thinking and defensiveness when you do that.
Yeah. Worth noting that the Democrats helped make things significantly worse with the crime bill as well. Nixon and Regan got the ball rolling, but the Clinton admin doubled down on all of it.
And it was stepped up by Clinton/Biden in the 1990s with the crime bill. There is plenty of blame to pass around for the situation we are in today. Arguing about who started it decades ago is not very helpful.
Similar to the Chesterton Fence example, knowing the history of something helps me understand if there was any good thinking behind it. For marijuana prohibition, it doesn't seem like there was.
Politics always exists in a context and one can't make rational decisions in politics without that context. I think our society suffers greatly because people don't know history.
> Politics always exists in a context and one can't make rational decisions in politics without that context.
You can act outside of political historical context and I would go so far as to recommend it wholly. This kind of "context" (which is human ascribed) has no bearing on acting rationally. Pay attention to consequence borne by data, not past intent.
> I think our society suffers greatly because people don't know history.
I'm not sure how that applies to something that has circumstantial relevance, like past political conditions.
>...The war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color by Nixon. Before then, MJ was around and used, it is a plant and good pain killer that you can grow yourself. And Nixon stated that is why he was doing it in the White House tapes.
Where in the tapes does Nixon say the war on drugs was started as a way to target people of color?
Usually when I've seen people make the claim that Nixon used the rhetoric of a 'war on drugs' to target people of color, it is the Baum quote where he is allegedly quoting Ehrlichman. That quote is brought up often but it should be taken with some skepticism. As user GatorD42 pointed out when this was brought up before:
>...Baum claims Ehrlichman said that to him in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, but instead published it in 2012 and again in 2016, after Ehrlichman had died (in 1999).
This is a very explosive quote - if Baum had included it in his book in 1996 I am sure it would have garnered a huge amount of attention for the book. Instead Baum did not include it in his book, but instead would wait for decades later when Ehrlichman was no longer around to dispute the quote. The surviving members of his family also don't believe he made the quote:
>...Multiple family members of Ehrlichman (who died in 1999) challenge the veracity of the quote:
The 1994 alleged 'quote' we saw repeated in social media for the first time today does not square with what we know of our father...We do not subscribe to the alleged racist point of view that this writer now implies 22 years following the so-called interview of John and 16 years following our father's death, when dad can no longer respond.[22]
At any rate, if the quote was actually said by Ehrlichman, it isn't a very accurate description of the overall drug polices of the Nixon administration. While Nixon is remembered for "war on drugs" rhetoric, the actual substance of his policies seem to be different than what people think it was:
>...I have been fortunate over the years to discuss the distorted memory of Nixon's drug policies with almost all of his key advisors as well as with historians. Their consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right wing that he hadn’t gone soft. So he laid on some of the toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a White House speech declaring a “war on drugs” and calling drugs “public enemy number one”. It worked so well as cover that many people remember that “tough” press event and forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief but…a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him).
>..."Enforcement must be coupled with a rational approach to the reclamation of the drug user himself," Nixon told Congress in 1971. "We must rehabilitate the drug user if we are to eliminate drug abuse and all the antisocial activities that flow from drug abuse."
>The numbers back this up. According to the federal government's budget numbers for anti-drug programs, the "demand" side of the war on drugs (treatment, education, and prevention) consistently got more funding during Nixon's time in office (1969 to 1974) than the "supply" side (law enforcement and interdiction).
> Maybe now that politicians see that people are very against drug laws we'll see some of them renege on their hard anti-drug stances.
I'd love to see this, but I doubt it. I've sat in on court sessions, and towns and cities pull in a lot of revenue through low-level drug offenses, and cops spend a significant amount of their time investigating and arresting kids for drug offenses.
The criminalization of drugs, especially low-level offenses, are revenue generators for municipalities, and jobs programs for law enforcement.
There is a lot of money, and plenty of high-paying jobs with full pensions, that are kept afloat by the criminalization of drugs.
There's a reason that my local PBA is losing their minds over the potential for drugs like marijuana becoming legal, and it isn't because marijuana is harmful. It's because 60% of the town's budget goes to funding law enforcement salaries, benefits and pensions, and the majority of arrests in this area are for marijuana possession.
> Ideally, how might the budget be reconfigured constructively with the same dollar amount to make a better community?
Attrition of police officers with those remaining for only when force is required, while bolstering social worker and community outreach services and funding. Non violent emergency calls go to social response.
St Petersburg, Florida is making a go of this. Budgeting details in the link below.
It's not so much a question of law enforcement budgets as it is municipality budgets. Many of these smaller pass-through towns make significant money harassing travelers (speed traps) and through seizures of property. If MJ is legal, they can no longer use things such as "I smell marijuana" as a pretext for exacerbating a traffic stop or stacking more charges.
The vast majority of arrests are from small drug offences. Unfortunately there just aren't enough actual criminals to justify the amount of money they want.
The threat of ruining people's lives is part of the racket. Kids are arrested and charged for low-level drug offenses for doing something innocuous like smoking a joint. Then, prosecutors in municipalities will offer them plea deals and offers to expunge their records in return for paying exorbitant fees and participating in a jobs program for probation officers.
Why would someone take a plea deal and agree to pay municipalities what often amounts to thousands of dollars in fees? Because students with drug offenses on their records can have their eligibility for student loans stripped, potentially ruining their chances at bettering their lives through education. A drug conviction will pop up on every background check if their records aren't expunged.
Got caught smoking a joint in a park with friends. All of us white. They told us to throw out the material and move on. I wonder if the same scenario would occur if we were brown?
> If you had asked me a few years ago if I thought this was what the general American populous thought I'd have said no because, of all of the politicians who advocated for legalization of drugs, very very few got elected.
Compare this with the legalization of gay marriage. As late as the mid-2000s it was considered (national-level) political suicide to publicly support gay marriage. Even plenty of politicians that might otherwise have supported gay marriage refused to comment on it for fear of their seats (this happens all the time for plenty of other issues as well; e.g. how many obviously-fake churchgoers there are among politicians who hope to avoid the ire of religious voters). Once a few politicians put their necks on the line and demonstrated that it wasn't impossible to seek election while sympathizing with homosexuality, that served as the activation energy for a lot of pent-up endorsements. So it's been with the decriminalization of marijuana.
One is getting overturned the correct political way via legislation, one was legislation from the bench.
Completely different, in that public perception & approval must lead for changes in political branches. It largely follows when from court cases, if it changes much at all.
This is a very interesting comparison that I had never thought of. When I started paying attention to politics in high school gay marriage was legalized (if still stigmatized) and I haven't heard many politicians (outside of old recordings) arguing against it.
> Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman and actively promote married family life as the basis of a stable and prosperous society. For that reason, as explained elsewhere in this platform, we do not accept the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal, whether through judicial reconsideration or a constitutional amendment returning control over marriage to the states. We oppose government discrimination against businesses or entities which decline to sell items or services to individuals for activities that go against their religious views about such activities.
> Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values. We condemn the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to define marriage policy in federal law. We also condemn the Supreme Court’s lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was a “judicial Putsch” — full of “silly extravagances” — that reduced “the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Storey to the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie.” In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Court twisted the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond recognition. To echo Scalia, we dissent. We, therefore, support the appointment of justices and judges who respect the constitutional limits on their power and respect the authority of the states to decide such fundamental social questions.
Most of them were instated after the US occupation of Japan post-world war 2. At the time they served the purpose of asserting America's control over Japan. What purpose they serve there now, who knows?
Japan is a different country, with different cultures, values and history. Answering ‘whataboutism’ type of questions almost always leads to an endless loop of accomplishing nothing.
What about Russia? What about China? Etc... There is no value in these questions when they have no relation to the original statement being made.
Sweden has harsh drug laws too. So does China. The point is that there are other reasons people favor drug laws, since many homogenous countries have them too.
And yet the literal tons of fentanyl and fentanyl derivatives that are swamping black markets in the US and killing thousands are almost exclusively manufactured in China and shipped to the US.
"Harsh" is very relative. I would be very surprised to see anyone caught using drugs for the first time, or even the 3rd time, not just getting a fine unless they're in possession of a larger quantity. The maximum sentence is 3 years, which I would assume would require a substantial criminal record.
Lots of European countries (and probably the rest of the world) also copy US laws for no apparent reason.
More or less everyone I know has tried drugs (MJ, magic mushrooms, LSD) or does them on a regular basis, but I don't know anyone who's ever been arrested over it. What I'm saying is there doesn't seem to be (much) of a stigma against drugs, neither with the population, nor with the cops. Nevertheless, MJ is illegal, and the protests for legalization started soon after the ones in the US.
> Japan is largely homogenous
While that's true I always like to remind people of the Ainu people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people). They are an example of a suppressed (largely extinct) ethnic group in Japan. Basically Japan's native Americans.
Aside from that, drug prohibition has always been used to h arras people on a basis of their class background. The working and caring classes always take the main toll in prohibition.
I'm not so sure if that's the only thing people voted for when they wanted to be hard on drugs. As you can see in this comment thread (on an extremely left-leaning site) we have some people who think drug use is immoral. One of the sister comments says "I believe it's wrong".
Definitely some section of the population wanted to use this as a way to bully minorities but another section of the population was convinced "drugs are bad".
Either way if "hard on drugs" was a dog whistle to signal "hard on minorities" then politicians may realize saying "hard on drugs" will actually hurt their voter base far more than they realized. Maybe that will put an end to this kind of signalling/abuse.
> we have some people who think drug use is immoral
Sure. But that's a big aspect of the argument, at least for me - lots of things are immoral, many of which are legal.
It is entirely possible to concede the point and still, for either public health or cost reasons, want to stop doing destructive, expensive things that don't actually reduce drug use, decrease property crime or violence, or dampen business for the cartels. (My views are different, just saying these are logical views people hold.)
Politicians will never have this 'realization'. Either a pro-drug-war politician is already using this as a dog whistle and does not want it exposed (else why not be open about your stance on minorities), or he isn't using it as a dog whistle but still does not want this connection made.
Voters are the ones who need to make the connection. The politicians will follow.
Many on the left, particularly on social media, are quick to claim that supporting a particular policy is racist if the policy itself is racist, regardless of the reason an individual supports the policy.
My own personal view is that the intent of this definition and behavior is not to 'solve racism' but to stifle discussion and influence voters. The fact that this definition is seldom, if ever, applied to the war on drugs is confirmation of my view.
What I see instead, and is present in some of these threads, are offers of solutions that are ill-defined, untried, and even if effective do not have clear timelines for actually helping people; and very clearly will do nothing to help in the short term. In contrast, solutions that have worked in other places, have immediate effects, and are generally accepted as good ideas are vilified as harmful to minorities with no evidence provided.
The war on drugs was tied specifically to anti-communist and anti-hippie movements. You can argue that black community was only one type of minority being policed.
Still, marijuana was given such disproportionate higher punishments largely because of it's adoption in black communities. No one thinks of alcohol as a narcotic or drug. The same was true before. But by lumping MJ in with heroin, they were able to convince people to think about them similarly. I recommend the propaganda film "Reefer Madness" for an example taken to the extreme, where science was discarded in favor of learning on people's existing moral apprehensions in order to get the desired ban.
This. The fact that the public was able to eventually push some of this idiocy aside ( there are still vestiges of really strong resistance ) is more of an indication of that somewhat hopeful message that will of the people eventually wills out. Granted, it took white teenagers doing what all teenagers do ( try everything ) to make it happen, but it happened.
I don't have a firm grasp on the history of prohibition, but my understanding is that at least there, at the time there was a real, clear drinking problem among the US population.
> I think drug use is immoral, especially in a society with a welfare system.
I mean, park systems could be immoral in a society with a welfare system.
People might end up spending time they could use being productive at a job instead having picnics in the park, and they could spend more of their money on entrance and parking fees, and on unhealthy things like hot dogs, soda and funnel cakes.
Same thing with fields and stadiums. People could end up spending all their time and money on tickets, hot dogs, beer and gambling.
> That’s the basis for anti-drug attitudes in places like Sweden.
Sweden also has a notoriously abstinence-based and zero-tolerance drug policy that encourages the denial of real addiction problems and epidemics, and causes harm reduction efforts to be ineffectual[1].
What is your opinion of Alcohol, lower grade stimulates (Caffeine), and pre-processed unnatural addictive substances (pure sugar)?
If you are on welfare should you be prohibited from drinking alcohol? What about eating low nutritional value fast foods?
Obesity and alcoholism is far more rampant than most drugs used in the war on drugs. In America ~40% of our population was obese in 2016 [0], ~25% of people drank >5 drinks in 1 day over the past year [1], >50% of America drinks coffee daily and of that group 50% report "severe head aches" that last 2 to 5 days when attempting to stop. Meanwhile cannabis usage is around ~12% of the population [3] and I've not been able to find unrefuted studies of it's negative effects while for obesity, alcoholism, and caffeine there's some compelling work out there linking these to interesting population statics.
It's medicine so it's not actually science or iron clad but from a risk & pervasiveness perspective do you think introducing legislation on these substances is warranted?
> Obesity and alcoholism is far more rampant than most drugs used in the war on drugs.
since ... of course alcoholism is more rampant when i can just buy it legally in the supermarket. that is a nobrainer conclusion. same for nicotine.
caffeine has so little impact in a drug-related conversation that i won't even bother going there. i dont think you do yourself any favour dragging it into this discussion.
problem with 'low nutritional value fast foods' is that eating is a necessity. you need your X calories a day. drugs (nicotine, alcohol, heroine, prescription drugs,...) on the other hand are purely optional (genuine medical reasons aside). so the process of consuming food can't be dropped similar to how you could just not drink alcohol. that leads to a complicated question as you need to substitute the low nutritional value fast foods with something more substantive. this leads you to evaluate the entire process of food consumption, from agriculture to purchasing decisions to prep work to marketing to food labelling etc.
> If you are on welfare should you be prohibited from drinking alcohol? What about eating low nutritional value fast foods?
because of the above i don't think those two things are comparable at all.
Drugs are already highly available. The availability of legal drugs would result in reduced medical complications due to increased regulation on supply side. Caffeine, etc has some small statistical probability of triggering a heart issues which is the most common cause of death - from a nationalized health cost perspective this is not negligible. If you consider quality of life as the metric rather than death then low nutrition food is probably worse than caffeine, etc.
not sure i follow, what is your definition of highly available? if cocaine is highly available, how do you classify nicotine and/or alcohol?
> some small statistical probability of triggering a heart issues which is the most common cause of death - from a nationalized health cost perspective this is not negligible.
do you have a link to a writeup of sorts showing the damage on the national cost perspective (don't even care if it is health or any other associated cost). it just seems 'some small statistical probability' and 'not negligible' is borderline orthogonal. would be interesting if that is already non-negligible how much worse the real offenders are.
> because of the above i don't think those two things are comparable at all.
I'm not attempting to compare to them, I'd like to know how the person I was responding to feels about these things. I originally asked "What is your opinion of Alcohol, lower grade stimulates (Caffeine), and pre-processed unnatural addictive substances (pure sugar)?"
I'm not saying to do one thing or another, I'm attempting to ask what that specific person feels about other chemical substances that are in high demand which are also addictive and disproportionately consumed by lower income individuals.
> alcoholism is far more rampant than most drugs used in the war on drugs
Unfair comparison. Alcohol is legalized and freely available. Let's compare alcohol and drugs at times, when drugs were free to use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars .
That very much depends on the drug. Two years into cannabis legalization in Canada, and alcohol continues to claim the lion's share of the harm from legal drug use. I suspect this won't ever change.
I’m curious why you think that is so, and why is for example alcohol and cigarettes (or even sugar) included as drugs? Certainly many medical drugs should be included.
There is a reason people use all of these and for example marijuana is not really more dangerous.
Well, and taxes, too, as has been the case with distilling alcohol since before marijuana became an issue. The government gets pissed if they don't get their cut. Way more fires would be caused by illicit stills blowing up if it was actually about safety.
Just because the USA uses the war on drugs to harass people by skin color doesn't mean you need to assume that is the only reason possible. The USA tends to think of all white people at the same, but europeans don't.
In europe, remember that the "lower class" could still be visually "white", but just from a different ethnic background. (Turks, for example).
The purpose is to provide a source of labor for for-profit prisons, to legally extort money from an activity or activities that largely harm no one, and to provide something for the police to actively do.
If police were to enforce what most people consider the "important" laws, their death rate would go through the roof, because they'd be actively chasing after large criminal gangs.
They want the low-hanging fruit of an 18 year old who's dealing a little pot, they don't want to have to go after the crime syndicate that will kill them and their family.
Even people who think that MJ is immoral or wrong may be against outright ban. It is not purpose of criminal justice to enforce virtue or morality per se, unless one believes in very strict interpretation of their religion (even religious police powers in Saudi Arabia were recently watered down). Victimless crimes will always wake some kind of unease in free-minded people.
P.S.: Politicians may not always act on wishes of silent majority. If the minority is strong and aggressive enough, they will be tempted to yield. Same dynamics as on Twitter, in principle; that is why ballot initiatives, where individual voters cannot be intimidated into voting in a certain way, are so important to democracy.
Agree. I'm a fan of decriminalizing all of it, even though I believe things like meth and heroin to be highly destructive. Negative legal consequences do very little to stop it. I'd rather the money go to something more productive.
Portugal is one of the hallmarks here where decriminalizing the drugs, and then spending the money on outreach, safe needle programs, and recovery centers have helped them not just with drug addiction problems they had, but also in lowering the knock-on effects of not having these things (like HIV and Hep C from dirty needles).
Like a lot of areas of life, a softer more compassionate touch yields far better results than putting people into prison and throwing away the key.
> these votes with >60% in favor of legalization show that significant portions of America think drug-related activities are not "immoral" or "wrong" and should not be criminalized.
It's worth remembering that these aren't the same. People can vote for legalization while believing that recreational drug use is immoral. I believe it's wrong but support all drug legalization because I believe it's the job of the state to stop aggression, not to enforce morality.
Voters opinions are not a black and white thing. People might be in favor of something but still vote for you even if you aren’t. Especially in a two party system politicians have to optimize for not losing your voters. If 80% of your voters are for legalization and 20% against it but you would loose 15% of your voters if you would take it into your political platform, the you simply won’t do it.
Certain stances also carry more political risk than others. For example, if you openly want to make small changes to social welfare programs that make them more sustainable -- the kind of changes that would be a part of negotiations on any social welfare reform bill anyway -- you'll get crushed by ads saying you want to destroy social welfare.
It's the same with drug policy. On an individual level, most voters would probably understand drug policy liberalization if you sat down with them and showed them data around how it affects use, recidivism, et cetera. But if you vocalize support for it, you'll be risking your opponent taking a soundbyte and turning it into an ad for how you're soft on crime and you want to let dangerous criminals out of prison. So unless you have a lot of politicians in safe seats, or voters have had a lot of time to learn the nuance around these issues, it's a risky undertaking.
Looking at political decisions as being as simple as just going with yea/nay opinion polls is overly simplistic. Those polls don't distinguish between voters who really care about an issue and hardly care about an issue. They don't distinguish between undecided voters and card carrying party members. Plus you also have to account for the almost obligatory attack by the opposition that somebody legalizing drugs is involved with them and/or obsessed with trivial matters.
I suspect it’s not just about what people think, it’s also about how strongly they feel about it, for it to override other factors when voting.
I suspect that a lot of people who on balance support legalisation, don’t feel so strongly about it that they won’t vote for someone that opposes it. Conversely I think a lot of people who oppose legalisation feel about it strongly enough that they just won’t vote for someone who supports it. Politicians are probably well aware of this.
> Could this be a situation where politicians have faulty data and use that to guide how they act?
I'm not aware of any data on this specifically with regard to drug control policy, but there is research from 2013 which reveals that American politicians vastly overestimate how conservative American voters are on multiple key issues.
> Maybe now that politicians see that people are very against drug laws we'll see some of them renege on their hard anti-drug stances.
Lots to unpack here.
As a general rule, politicians will say or do whatever furthers their agenda (i.e., reelection). Hard stance on X are generally a reflection of appeal in the market. Moral of the story: Few politicians have the wherewithal to lead, most reflect (in a focus group driven sort of way).
I'm not so sure it's that most ppl are against drug laws. It's that the laws aren't working. They're not delivering on what was promised. It's yet another case - consciously or not - where the public is realizing that you can't cure a problem by attacking a symptom.
If there's a hope it's that more politicians step up, lean in, and lead. "Wait a minute, that's not a solving a problem, that's only a symptom." When we hear that often then we'll know the paradigm has changed. As it is, one change (e.g., drug laws) is not a trend.
> As a general rule, politicians will say or do whatever furthers their agenda ... Few politicians have the wherewithal to lead, most reflect (in a focus group driven sort of way).
We just saw a focus group questionnaire given to the entire population and, from my position, there was a significant difference from the data being used to drive the political candidate's general propaganda and the reality of what our population (in NJ) want.
Will elected officials ignore this information (sticking to data from internally run focus groups) or will they change their behavior because of this wide spread pattern in voting?
> I'm not so sure it's that most ppl are against drug laws. It's that the laws aren't working. They're not delivering on what was promised.
I've spoken to some people around where I live (coworkers, at stores, etc) in NJ and brought up the ballot. More than half of the people I've spoken to were excited to be able to get good weed legally and on Tinder in my age range a majority of the profiles are "420 friendly".
This is obviously all anecdotal but it would be really cool to see some sentiment analysis by region because I think a lot of people just want access to pot. Someone on the research side of Tinder could probably make a heat map and predict (from 420 friendly profiles) where the next vote to legalize pot will be. Might be a great way to preemptively buy up farm land, set it up for growers, and sell land/equipment to people after votes when people want to buy in.
The reasoning behind Reagan era war on drugs is incredibly complicated but mostly horse shit.
The appearance of doing something actionable/hard lining, voter suppression, shady money, international politics, religion, misguided beliefs, big pharma, etc.
No doubt there are some real debatable concerns under all the B.S. but they aren’t the “real” why behind it.
What it tells us is the people are leaning one way and politicians on both sides aren't. Mainly because for the most part with the war on drugs the politicians are listening to the police and sheriff unions which in some states have incredible political power.
For what its worth, the voters of the US also rejected giving politicians more tax powers, prevented the reinstatement of preferential college admissions, and of course clamped down on politicians selectively deciding who is a contractor and who is not.
A big win all around for the voters and a rebuff to politicians - where they were allowed to vote. Some states either don't allow it or make it too hard to get anything out there.
I would argue no politician ever made it legal in the beginning. Afaik, all the states that legalized it did so through initiatives(ca, ak, or, wa, co), and then forced the changes on the state by voting for them.
I think the other states are getting on board because of the incredible new found tax revenue, and the stats showing crime didn't go up in those states. More states would certainly have legal pot by now, if they could decide who gets to get rich from it (ie: who gets the golden tickets to grow and sell). NY is a great example of how the politics of where the wealth will go has turned the process into a quagmire.
I'm from NJ and most people Ive spoken to about it over the last 25 years have shared the general sentiment that weed should legal, and that drug addicts are ill and are already punishing themselves enough. Including people from different backgrounds that agreed nothing else. Though as someone else commented, it was very different in the 80s and early 90s, but that could also just be how i remember it because I was a child and noone had the internet.
> of all of the politicians who advocated for legalization of drugs, very very few got elected.
It has long been my opinion that if people voted on individual issues instead of representatives, this would be a very different country because no politician's views match the majority of the populace. So people have to pick best-of-the-worst, a politician whose views match a handful of the issues they care about, which creates a mess overall.
Yes. This is the way that the public choice theory of government explains the success of special interest groups - an issue may have a majority of voters against it but if a small minority care enough about it to change their votes over it (whereas the majority who disagree are unlikely to do so because they don’t care enough about it), it can make sense for politicians to offer strong support to unpopular special interest positions.
I suppose there’s a sort of deranged case where every issue a politician supports falls into this category though it’s probably not the norm.
I don't think many vote based on issues. A lot of the time, people seem to choose the candidate/community around the candidate first, then support whatever issues go with it. Even when people say they're really excited about particular policies, if you talk with them for a bit there's usually very little depth or understanding there.
It's a lot harder for law enforcement and DAs to claim they are "Tough on Crime" when arrests are down significantly because they can only issue a citation for possession. Likewise, it's difficult to justify increasing prison/ jail budgets when they aren't packed with minor drug offenders.
A referendum, sortition or representative process elected by one method or another... they'll often yield pretty different vote counts. Democratically, we think of these mechanisms as ways of discovering the "will of the people." Really, they are decision making mechanisms.
The difference is primaries vs general election. Politicians take their political positions based on primaries, since that’s the gating, and often, the deciding event for their election.
" legalization show that significant portions of America think drug-related activities are not "immoral" or "wrong" and should not be criminalized."
Weed is not crack.
Conscientious voters are not on the front lines of seeing the problems that drugs cause, just the opposite, are probably more likely to know people who go to Burning Man occasionally and who don't have a problem with a little bit of this or that now and again.
I live in a neighbourhood with homeless people and can indeed assure you that 'drugs' are a massive social, health and criminal problem, it's really a pain to have to remind people of that.
Crack, Meth and Opioids/Fentanyl in particular are fairly corrosive, the legalization of them would result immediately in a non-significant chunk of the population becoming adversely affecting, causing a health crises somewhere on par with a pandemic.
Opioids are already a massive problem, huge source of addiction and they are quite a controlled substance.
In Canada, they don't prescribe 10 or 15 or a small bottle - often they will give you literally only two or three pills max - because they are so excessively addictive.
It's shocking to have to get people to look beyond their own safe neighbourhood to remind them of out ugly it really is and can be out there.
Weed is not a problem and possibly not Mushrooms (although it will take some weird regulation because it's literally poison) - but almost everything else is off the table.
America is literally in an opioid crisis, and it's disturbing the same people in the 'pro mask' camp seem to want to discount actual science of addiction, overdose etc. when it comes to a 'problem' that interferes with their 'recreation'.
So we 'like' the CDC, right? Scientists? Public health? Esp. during a pandemic? I do! Have a look at their data. [1]
Also, from the Lancet [2]
We wear masks partly to 'not propagate' an actual disease - some forms of drug addiction are the same thing a social disease that is communicated by the actions we take. It's not a big deal to 'wear a mask' and it's not a big deal to 'not do crack'.
I think the argument to that is, these things exist despite the ban on them, therefore the only people benefiting from the existing system are the supply side catels. If you disagree, to me, it's eseentially say that it's good that people are forced into treatment when they cant afford the drugs anymore, but that doesn't feel like a good way to push positive change.
I very much hope that this experiment has a positive outcome.
I don't pretend to know what the best way to handle this issue is, but it certainly seems to me that increasing incarceration has not had a desirable outcome for American society. After all, in many cases it's possible to procure heroin or methamphetamine in jail or prison. So the carceral system could in theory be seen as simply moving people around without addressing the issue of drug use, using public funds.
Whenever you see the phrase "War on ...", remember that there is often an entire industry built upon it which is only interested in self-preservation. The industry doesn't want X to go away, but rather perceive it as being a large looming threat worth all the spending.
> Cannabis has been rebranded as a wellness panacea. Mushrooms and MDMA are making headlines as therapy tools, not party fuel.
Man, these guys are late to the party. Alcohol works great for treating symptoms of stress, too! Can't be stressed, anxious, or depressed if I'm blitzed out of my mind!
If alcohol was as restricted as MDMA, we just might start calling alcohol a therapy tool. But right now anyone (of legal age) who wants it can order a glass of wine or two, so the people that benefit from it have it. Nobody thinks twice.
You sound incredulous that psilocybin or mdma could be therapy tools. Are you a psychologist? Do you have any firsthand experience with these chemicals? Why are you skeptical?
The point being made is that alcohol is legal, and massively harmful, and the public health measures around alcohol aren't great, and so maybe we need to be cautious when decriminalising and legalising other drugs to ensure that we have some health protections in place.
At the moment we don't have those.
We have strong denial in lots of people that cannabis might cause harm in some people.
All the stuff currently being said about LSD, MDMA, ketamine, etc was also said when prozac was introduced. We need to watch out for pharma companies who'll take something that's probably effective in some people (ketamine infusion for people with severe and treatment resistant depression) and rejig it to make it patentable (eskatamine) and repackage it so it can be used much more widely (nasal spray instead of infusion) and marketed much more widely.
> The point being made is that alcohol is legal, and massively harmful
Harmful relative to what? An ideal world where nobody drinks?
We've tried idealism via a prohibition and last I checked, that caused so much harm we went back to letting people have a drink.
A comparison of drugs vs no drugs ignores reality - we are not lab rats, we live within a society and a little vice lubricates the cogs of society. To deny that this is how it is, was and always will be is not helpful.
Your point regarding for-profit companies is valid - the likely solution to that is to control advertising so that it doesn't advertise drugs, as we have already successfully done with cigarettes.
The larger point is that there needs to be a balance of individual good vs collective. When society tips too heavily in the direction of collective, drugs/corruption/disobedience/crime will always be a 'problem' because there'll always be people who aren't interested in living to enable arbitrary collective goals somebody has decided everyone else ought to follow.
The real distinction here is mechanism of action. Psilocybin helps fix psychoemotional problems in an enduring sense. You take one, or three, doses and your personality and self-understanding are permanently altered.
Alcohol works acutely. So I totally agree the term therapeutic is an arbitrary label; all drugs have effects and thus can be therapeutic for condition X and deleterious for condition Y. But worth noting that psilocybin and MDMA produce enduring benefits whereas alcohol appears not to.
Rebranding? Mdma always was a medicine. It was rebranded as a narcotic because people were having too much fun with it and found they would rather take a $10 pill for the whole evening with no hangover than spend $40 on alcohol.
I know someone who has fried GABA receptors or God knows what (he actually has brain lesions), and in its natural state he is the same as if someone took lots of amphetamines. It is not good. He uses opiates to balance it off, and works for him, he is productive and so forth. Opiates do not make him nauseated nor euphoric. We do have an antidepressant named tianeptine that is used as a nootropic in the US, and it is an antidepressant here that affects the same receptors as opioids. I do not know if tianeptine would work for him, but opioids do, and who am I to judge? People have all sorts of reasons for drugs, some are more harmful (the reasons, I mean... the drugs too, but that is a different story) than others. If it makes him functional and "normal", without any side-effects (apart from some constipation he can fix if necessary with magnesium), then why not? I just typically live and let live. I never judged him for it. You cannot even tell. You can tell when he is in his "normal state" though, that is horrible, and I am not talking about the opioid withdrawal. He is anxious as heck, shaky, very reserved, cannot focus, and so on. He occasionally goes through voluntary withdrawals so he has to take less doses. He has no cravings through withdrawal (probably because he is not taking it recreationally or for escapism), and the only withdrawal symptoms were sweating and diarrhea that disappeared after like 4 days or something like that. I do not keep a tab on him, we just talk. Fascinating stuff.
I guess the moral of the story is that there are many and legit reasons to take drugs that can affect people very differently, and who are we to judge? I will repeat this because I really found it to be nice to live by: live and let live, and whatever you do (context), do it responsibly and safely.
And for people with dopamine deficiency (ADHD), it can present as both anxiety and depression besides the typically understood ADHD symptoms. Stimulants can certainly treat such cases of anxiety and depression (that was my primary reason for finally seeking a diagnosis).
Thanks for this. I was wondering if other people felt their anxiety pass with adderall and heard reports people get more anxious. Good to know less anxiety is a common response for some.
I missed this response earlier, but want to make sure I don’t let it pass by. Stimulants can make you more anxious. If you’re not actually treating a dopamine deficiency, it can be like way too much coffee. If you are treating a dopamine deficiency, in some cases it can cause anxiety regardless but in most cases heightened anxiety is a sign the dosage is too high. Generally it helps relax the brain chaos and it should be settling enough to be able to get to sleep.
Some of the heightened anxiety is sympathetic nervous system stimulation related too. If you've got good body awareness noticing your pulse rate just went up by 10-20 BPM could make you worry all by itself.
Which shows that your point about drug titration is spot on. And in a way that's in the pro column for stimulants. It's really easy to tell when the dose is too high. Both the sympathetic nervous response and the euphoric feelings get obviously counterproductive. On the other hand doctors have learned to be wary of self-reporting there on account of drug abusers wanting that artificial euphoria. Just goes to show that both the physician and the patient have to be honest partners working together to get the best results for well-being.
Alcohol is serotonergic. Yeah, it has other negative side effects, but actual FDA approved antidepressants are also convincingly shown to increase suicide ideation in some cases, and it's actively monitored by psychiatrists. The point I think is that the therapy rebranding is not a license for recreational excess, and shouldn't be invoked as a trojan horse to that end.
I think we should stop licensing for recreational excess. If people are free to do what they like for recreation (without breaking non-drug laws), the research can proceed separately without the moralizing.
Ignorant comment. Alcohol has no known long term benefits. It might reduce stress with continued use, but that's not generally the point of using drugs for therapy. There is a lot of evidence that shows a single dosage of mushrooms or mdma has significant long term effects. In addition, mdma use in particular leads very quickly to tolerance and doesn't support continued use. Most users report that their first use was the most profound with subsequent uses not really adding much.
Anecdotal, but alcohol is one of the more harmful drugs. I can't even drink a little bit now that I run semi-seriously. One or two glasses of wine completely throws off my body for the next 24 hours, and increases the risk for injuries. It's just not worth it.
Exhilaration and lasting euphoria, which in no way differs from the normal euphoria of the healthy person. You perceive an increase of self-control and possess more vitality and capacity for work. In other words, you are simply normal, and it is soon hard to believe you are under the influence of any drug. Long intensive physical work is performed without any fatigue. This result is enjoyed without any of the unpleasant after-effects that follow exhilaration brought about by alcoholic beverages. No craving for the further use of cocaine appears after the first, or even after repeated taking of the drug.
I just wish currently illicit/scheduled drugs simply had the same list of disclaimers that FDA-approved drugs had. The side effects aren't different enough to be rebuttals to support their prohibition.
A lot of it is a quality control issue. The cocaine your ophthalmologist might use is just as safe as any other FDA-approved drug, because it is one. On the other hand the stuff you might get third-hand from the cartels was possibly of questionable quality to begin with and has been adulterated several times by various intermediaries.
All drugs except schedule I are approved for some therapy, so have the same list of disclaimers and side effect notations (with a smaller sample size than normal). Amphetamine, cocaine, and ketamine are schedule II and III; Cannabis is schedule I.
This is really good news. I'm so glad to see it. I'm really impressed with how this article not only cites Portugal's success but emphasizes that their success grows out of more than mere decriminalization of drugs. It's a necessary but insufficient step towards doing what Portugal has done.
This is one of the most hopeful things I have read in a long time.
I still think it's important that more is done to combat the drug epidemic - imprisoning everybody is clearly not the answer, but allowing the epidemic to get worse isn't either.
> And as the overdose crisis continues, it is ever more
> apparent to a growing swath of the country that
> threatening to jail drug users doesn’t reduce drug-related
> death rates or help families struggling to save their
> loved ones. Instead, it disproportionately hurts Black
> communities.
These drug infected communities still have serious problems, the Black community for example is far from out of the woods. Drug addiction needs to be recognized as a disease.
Given how much the US has been willing to spend on their war on drugs, I think they could better spend this money giving free help. (Hell, it could even be the start to a free healthcare program.)
Same here in Germany. But everything eventually get handed down from the US to everywhere else due to cultural imperialism. A good thing in this case...
I think all drugs legal or not currently (including Alcohol, even beer etc. And Cigarettes) should only be sold in pharmacies and all should require a proof of IQ test as kind of a driving license.
The problem we have on the Left is that even though 65% of the American population prefers our ideas (when stripped of D/R labels) they don't really like us. We're not very good at branding, and we've let Capital convince half the country that it's actually a "liberal elite" that is holding them down.
We need to get better at getting our actual message out there. The recent victory is a start, but if it were down to ideas rather than personality politics (and, you know, other stuff the other side uses) we'd be up by 20 points in every state.
The Democratic Party (its representatives and organization, not its voters) is not pro-drug legalization, and when in power has prosecuted the war on drugs aggressively. It's very odd to refer to drug legalization as "our ideas," yet still 1) associate them with the Democratic Party, which does not agree with them, and 2) refer to the election of a Democratic POTUS who has said that he doesn't support drug legalization as a "victory."
This is clearly the democrats biggest problem. Biden just lost Florida largely because Trump falsely called him a socialist. Democrats are absolute losers when it comes to successfully getting people to understand their message.
"Socialism" may be a word we need to retire, not because it's an invalid concept, but because it means different things to different people.
Democratic socialists largely want a saner version of a market economy, where power resides with labor and government aggressively combats capital's worst tendencies, but they aren't calling for old-style command economies like the USSR, Communist China, or Castro's Cuba.
AOC is a fantastically talented politician with a lot of good ideas, but I think she needs to replace the word socialism with something that has less baggage.
This is the general disadvantage socialism has relative to capitalism in terms of appealing to others. Socialism and communism have more than a hundred years of history, including a lot of mistakes we've had to learn from. Capitalism has no memory and therefore on its own terms has no history.
I'm not sure why people aren't being just a little more cautious about ballot measures like in Oregon where even heroin and such hard drugs are now decriminalized.
This deserves a little more consideration about the unintended side effects of this policy, don't you think?
I look at the massive illegal drug manufacturing interests (countries, cartels) who spend vast sums on getting illegal drugs to our shores. It cannot just be a pure good thing that we make this ok now, can it?
I think we will be finding out the negative unintended consequences of these policies in the years to come.
edit: yeah, real courteous and open-minded, to be downvoting an otherwise legitimate opinion for discussion, isn't it?
> It cannot just be a pure good thing that we make this ok now, can it?
This is not what this law does. It doesn't allow for drug dealing and production. The part about manufacturing and importing did not change and nobody said it's ok.
What changed is that once you're found in possession of a tiny amount you won't go to jail, but instead will have access to more health/addiction services.
So, is your belief, or the belief of this measure, that completely decriminalizing possession and use will cause no change in demand? More people will not be tempted or trapped into using or trying drugs?
Downvoting is also about disagreeing with opinion in discussion. You are wondering about ill effect of decriminalization of drug users - most people including me cannot fathom why the heck should users be criminalized. This policy is pure evil, didn't make any real measurable benefit to society, just filled US prisons with normal citizens who like to smoke weed or maybe do some psychedelics from time to time (clue, in country like Switzerland, around 10% of population smokes regularly and nobody really cares, its not causing any harm to society). Its great if you run a private prison or have shares of it though.
I go one step beyond and argue that soft drugs should be legal and limits should be same as for alcohol - if cigarettes and alcohol are legal, so should be weed and its variants. Or ban them all if you want to be properly fair and scientific and brace yourself for mass riots. Of course no politician would do that, thats suicide.
What do you want to discuss? People have natural urge to use drugs and there is nothing you can do about it apart from trying to educate and ensure drugs are as safe as possible. Banning drugs is an idea of the same sort like banning music or sex for pleasure. Cartels make money on drug supply, because there is mostly no one else people can buy drugs from.
But is your position that whatever people want to do, you should not try to prevent it? What are your positions on applying that logic to carbon emissions, letting people work for less than minimum wage, companies putting out products that people buy willingly but are non-repairable?
Should government step out of those areas too? People want to do all those things.
> But is your position that whatever people want to do, you should not try to prevent it?
?? This does not resemble the way anyone has been talking about these issues. You're being downvoted because you're projecting an extreme binary that does not resemble reality.
Programs like DARE are not on the ballot and are presumably still well-supported. People aren't convincing each other that drugs have no negative impact. Alcohol being legal doesn't mean nobody tries to prevent its use or abuse. Alcohol and tobacco are still legal despite both causing more deaths and harm than all other drugs combined: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sh...
Many things in life and in politics are not a case of “good” vs “bad” but of “bad” vs “worse”. I think it’s quite acceptable to think that legalisation might be the least worst policy there is even for hard drugs. Yes it will have negative effects but they may be less bad on aggregate than the alternative.
The same may well be true for the other examples you cite (I tend to personally believe not but it doesn’t mean it’s not a balancing act or that I’m right) - but I suspect that a lot of these things are also all likely to have quite a lot of local situational differences in determining which is worse.
Some drugs do cause problems like alcohol, but for other drugs issues come from legal status rather than drugs themselves. I know plenty of people who take cannabis multiple times a day and they have great lives.
Your example is wrong. I am talking about natural instincts. Any intelligent specie seeks for ways to alter their consciousness (or whatever close they have). Google about dolphins getting high...
What about discussing the unintended consequences of the War on Drugs so far? It is undeniable that as an experiment it was a complete failure and a money pit, but it's also an enabler of police brutality, cause of massive disfranchisement, contributor to public health issues, and a war on freedom in general. This is just an alternative, which is being tried in other countries and with other drugs, and so far it seems to be a better solution.
Those cartels you mention profit billions from the existence of a War on Drugs, and I'm pretty sure the last thing they want is the government meddling in their business.
You're right, it should have been full legalization so that only regulated producers make the drugs which makes them much safer for the populace and hurts and possibly shuts down the violent cartels. The problem is that it needs to be done in steps or some people who are afraid of change will get too worried that society is going to crumble and so they fight to keep the violence in place.
I've mentioned this elsewhere, and I say this believing that substance abuse is a public health problem and not a criminal one, but:
I'm not sure it's the best idea to give a bunch of people stuck living a lonely life in the suburbs, addicted to social media, and have to pay for their own healthcare, an easier path to hard drugs like heroin. There is no doubt in my mind that decriminalization will make these types of drugs easier to obtain.
Most heroin deaths come from using illegal heroin with unknown strength and unknown contaminants.
The typical death is from getting a new supply that's more concentrated than the old one, and accidentally dying from an overdose.
The other two disasters that happen is that (1) the drug costs huge amounts of money, so you have to become a prostitute and/or burglar or (2) the legal system puts you in jail for 20 years.
I'm not going to pretend that being heroin addict is a good life, but if you can get a clean drug with known strength from CVS for $2/day, it's a vastly better shitty life.
Yea but you can also say criminalization has worked extremely well. Singapore for example.
What I worry about here is another instance of treating symptoms instead of causes. Why do people feel like they need to use drugs like heroin?
> The law provides a lot of additional funding to mental health and substance abuse programs, which could actually help people in those situations.
So if I want healthcare I should get addicted to meth? I'm being flippant here but this goes back to the earlier point about paying for your own healthcare here in this equation.
Can you write more about Singapore? My view is that when drug laws are very harsh, then people will less likely admit to use and dealers will use more precautions. Since drug use is mostly estimated based on surveys and police report you may see the policy effective on paper, but the reality may be far different. It is a natural instinct to use drugs akin to listening to music or having sex for pleasure. If you ban music people will still listen to it, just you wouldn't know.
Singapore is largely homogeneous, is wealthy (for the area) with an average income of $9200 USD, has excellent health care that covers all citizens, is a geographically small nation state, has extremely low unemployment (even now, at 4.38%) and has a small population (5.7 million).
You don't need to do drugs if everything in your life is going well.
I saw this with my best friend during his divorce. We spent a lot of time together, often I'd go see him everyday after he got off work. Some days he'd drink two bottles of wine and a six pack.
Now his divorce has been finalized for several months, he rarely drinks.
Turns out when your life isn't in shambles, you don't need a chemical means to cope.
I don't understand. Are you really saying your friend would have been better off if the police had arrested him? Isn't your entire comment an argument in favor of legalization?
People use drugs when they have to which means criminalization does nothing or makes things worse.
It mostly comes to individual needs, maybe you don't fancy some heroin but you likely have experienced some alcohol, coffee or your body own drug anandamide
The question seems simple, but the answer is complex depending on who you ask. There are populations that benefited greatly from criminalization of various substances ( say, for profit prison stocks treated as reit stocks ).
Alcohol is a hard drug and trivially available. And judging by relatives and medical articles, alcoholism is worse than heroin addiction. The worst part of alcohol is that it disproportionately affects people around alcoholic through various forms of abuse. That is a direct result of destruction of brain cells responsible for empathy. The effects of heroin are much more localized to the drug user.
Problems associated with heroin mostly come from the fact that users cannot have steady supply of medical grade heroin. They suffer from contaminants and need to scramble to pay which is not easy when you are not feeling well. Clean heroin is relatively safe, it won't damage your health like alcohol would.
There are quite a few things at play here. Let's start by admitting we're not comparing apples to apples. Alcohol is a widely available mostly non-addictive substance that hundreds of millions of people use on any given day without any real side effects aside from whatever the alcohol does. Obviously drunk driving, fatty liver disease, etc., are health problems caused by alcohol.
Heroin (if we're going to keep on this drug in particular) is currently not widely available, however the effects of the drug are far more severe and it is without a doubt more addictive than alcohol. I find it quite strange that you make the statement that: "alcohol disproportionately affects people around alcoholic through various forms of abuse". First, these are rare occurrences given the amount of alcohol sold and used on a daily bases across the planet. Aside from specific genetic mutations, it's not exactly easy to get addicted to alcohol. Casual drinking =/= addiction. Second, you're not considering how heroin affects those around the addict. People who are addicted to heroin will do nearly anything to get a fix. It's a completely different level compared to alcoholism that I've seen. You don't see a lot of functioning heroin users. There's a reason people are talking about the streets of San Francisco being littered with used needles. Why aren't they talking about the streets being littered with bottles of Jack Daniels? It's certainly worth investigating since if you compare alcohol consumption to heroin consumption, heroin is a rounding error (at the moment).
Finally, your statement that the effects of heroin being more localized to the drug user are... frankly, laughable. Do you think people are just sitting around quietly shooting up and then going about their merry day? Maybe taking a nice bike ride to Golden Gate Park or picking their kids up from school?
I honestly do not believe you have had any experience around any actual hard drugs based on what you're writing here. Obviously experience is just one data point, but when you're saying "Alcohol is a hard drug too" when we're talking about actual hard drugs like heroin or cocaine I have a hard time really trying to figure out what to make of your statement here.
> There is no doubt in my mind that decriminalization will make these types of drugs easier to obtain.
I think you're vastly under estimating how easy they are to obtain now. You're probably only a few degrees away and know someone that knows someone already, if you don't then I bet you've got an idea on the sorts of people to ask. Once you've got contacts there's a massively redundant and decentralized supply chain that can deliver to your door quicker than amazon. This is especially true for more common (which varies by location) drugs.
People in my family have used heroin (among other drugs). It was not pretty.
I understand and appreciate the decriminalization aspect, but I’m worried about how things will change in the future. If it is easy to obtain now, the removal of the potential of “getting in trouble” is likely to make it even easier. I wish HN had a remind me feature so in 5 years I could come back and see this comment and find out how things have turned out. I think we are likely to see increases in usage and a public health crises in Oregon, not the Switzerland success.
Isn’t Seattle in shambles because they no longer arrest drug users? I know that this stuff seems like a good idea when it’s theoretical and it doesn’t happen near you but when it’s your neighbor doing heroin and the police won’t do anything about it, you start to wish that drug use wasn’t so normalized.
I used to live in Salem. Used to be extremely crime-free with very few homeless. Now, they line the streets of downtown and no one goes there anymore. If we’re leaving drug users on the street too now, the only consequence of this policy will be more white flight. Shame, too, because Salem used to be a hidden gem of the Pacific NW.
What business is it of yours if your neighbor is doing heroin? We could get people off the streets if we gave them treatment. A drug addicts are sick; Locking them in jail shouldn’t be the answer
If junkies get their fix, it's literally the only thing they care about. It's them not being able to support their habit with a day job what makes them reckless and dangerous.
If junkies receive their fix from medical authorities, along with a treatment helping them to quit, they even have a hope to become in-addicted again.
Of course, arresting or maybe outright killing a junkie would instantly remove any threat to the neighbors. It just requires stopping to see the junkie as a human in need of help and start seeing the junkie as a violent criminal or even non-human. I wonder if such an approach is sort of dangerous for the society's mental health.
A city in the US having a large homeless population is actually an indicator of a (relatively) stronger economy. Booming Economy --> Housing Inflation --> Large Homeless Population. I've seen far fewer homeless in Baltimore than in SF but average income in the latter is 2x.
If you had asked me a few years ago if I thought this was what the general American populous thought I'd have said no because, of all of the politicians who advocated for legalization of drugs, very very few got elected.
Maybe now that politicians see that people are very against drug laws we'll see some of them renege on their hard anti-drug stances.