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Doctors in general are generally cautious. The problem can be traced to a small number of corrupt doctors who decided to abandon their medical scruples so they

by alexqgb 11y ago

Doctors in general are generally cautious. The problem can be traced to a small number of corrupt doctors who decided to abandon their medical scruples so they could make very lucrative livings as semi-legal dealers of high-grade narcotics. The Feds eventually cracked down on this racket, but not before it had spawned a tremendous number of white, middle-class addicts who found themselves turning to the black market in heroin for their fixes. These people, in turn, are running headlong into the insanely punitive legal structures developed to terrorize, brutalize, and demonize black users when crack became a thing in the 80s. Given a choice between accepting the punishments they were happy to dole out to others or abandoning this particular vector for racism, bigoted white people are deciding they can find other ways to keep the spirit of Jim Crow alive and well. For them, the Drug War has failed not because it failed to get rid of drugs (that was never the point) but because it's no longer as discriminatory as it used to be.

mc32 11y ago
I think it's more complicated than that simplistic take. Just imagine the numbers of people behind bars if that tactic were followed thru. It was pretty much untenable as it was but we'd be looking at what, locking up 5 per cent of the population? If you look at who supported the drugs policies, blacks supported them almost as much as whites did. Drugs were ravaging neighborhoods, and back then, this is how societies had treated drugs addicts. Russia, China, Singapore, African countries, etc. It wasn't till the Swiss experimented with alternative back in the nineties that others began looking at alternative policies in treating drugs addicts. Then we had a number of countries in Europe begin to try alternative methods to treat their addicts and people began to see these alternatives were more effective than jailing addicts and now we're seeing similar approaches in the US.
- alexqgb 11y ago
  That's a simplification, to be sure. And yes, there was support for the idea of drug enforcement in the places where the drug trade spawned the most violence. But the enterprise went badly sideways from there, quickly degenerating into an excuse for detaining and harassing black people en masse, long after the violence that triggered the crackdown has abated.

by alexqgb 11y ago

mc32 11y ago

I think it's more complicated than that simplistic take. Just imagine the numbers of people behind bars if that tactic were followed thru. It was pretty much untenable as it was but we'd be looking at what, locking up 5 per cent of the population? If you look at who supported the drugs policies, blacks supported them almost as much as whites did. Drugs were ravaging neighborhoods, and back then, this is how societies had treated drugs addicts. Russia, China, Singapore, African countries, etc. It wasn't till the Swiss experimented with alternative back in the nineties that others began looking at alternative policies in treating drugs addicts. Then we had a number of countries in Europe begin to try alternative methods to treat their addicts and people began to see these alternatives were more effective than jailing addicts and now we're seeing similar approaches in the US.

alexqgb 11y ago
That's a simplification, to be sure. And yes, there was support for the idea of drug enforcement in the places where the drug trade spawned the most violence. But the enterprise went badly sideways from there, quickly degenerating into an excuse for detaining and harassing black people en masse, long after the violence that triggered the crackdown has abated.