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I've never taken an illegal drug in my life. I've smoked a cigarette about 5 times. I drank in college but lately I've cut that out of my life as well. I had a

I've never taken an illegal drug in my life. I've smoked a cigarette about 5 times. I drank in college but lately I've cut that out of my life as well. I had a security clearance with drug testing requirements for a while and now I just don't like the feeling of a hangover from alcohol or the risk of ingesting random plants/chemicals made by shady people. In short: I'm the most vanilla, square, anti-drug person you can find. I don't want to use them, and I think other people would be better off if they reduced their usage as well. Yet I can not for the life of me understand why drugs are illegal. Not just pot, all drugs. I'm totally onboard with making it our public policy that we want to reduce the use of drugs. That makes perfect sense to me. It does not make sense to me why anyone still believes that using the criminal justice system as the mechanism for getting to that goal is the right path. We are spending insane amounts of money on a failed approach while also generating huge negative side effects by creating an enormous group of people with criminal records. It's probably the worst thing this country has done to our own people since segregation and it seems like all of the policy people understand this. Why can't we get political will to do something different?

beamatronic 11y ago
>> insane amounts of money I think you said it yourself - not to be snarky or anything. But someone has found a way to get rich, and they use their funds to lobby to keep the current system in place.
- unusximmortalis 11y ago
  exactly. for as long as you can pour money into lobbying and thus influence (mild term) laws, those laws governing people, lives, don't expect anything good to happen. of course the current system allows ways to fight against this but those ways are so hard implement compared to the way of lobbying (pour insane amount of money cause you have it and they generate even more money) that has no sense practically. am I skeptical? no. we have everything we deserve. and we will continue to have exactly what we deserve, not a single bit more or less.
- mathattack 11y ago
  It boggles my mind that it's somehow acceptable for the folks running prisons to be able to lobby for the 3 strikes laws. http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/09/16/117661/sb1070-prison-lobby/ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/09/16/117661/sb1070-p...
  - GauntletWizard 11y ago
    It is built into the assumptions of the country that some people will argue in their own self interest over that of the general public. In fact, it is expected that the majority will prefer their interest over the good of the whole. It is thenjob of Congress to mediate and ignore self-serving interests, but you can't even blame them for not doing their jobs, because it's the responsibility of the people to call out their bullshit and elect individuals who will act with principles. Ultimately, the rules are pretty clear; power comes from the people, and silence is consent. Ask for better people overall, don't try to blame individuals for the lack-of-will of the masses.
    - bjelkeman-again 11y ago
      But the federal system in the US seems to quite successfully have been coopted by politicians who spend most of their time raising funds, to stay where they are, in collaboration with companies who supply them with funds to get laws written to suite them. I know this is a bit of a caricature, but it seems to me that it now is really hard to change this system to something which takes the money out of the politics.
      - Grishnakh 11y ago
        No, that's not a caricature at all, that's an extremely accurate description of our political process.
    - mathattack 11y ago
      My impression is that in this case it's a state issue. The 3 strikes law is a local decision. That doesn't change the game theory aspect of everyone chasing their own interest, and a small minority who cares a ton about an issue over-riding a majority who only cares a little. (Prison owners know 100% they'll benefit, while most of the rest of us assume we won't have 3 strikes against us)
evincarofautumn 11y ago
I’m an alcoholic. I’ve cut back on my use significantly, and I’m currently in a period of abstinence. Because alcohol is legal and socially accepted, it’s entirely my responsibility to manage my behaviour and keep my use to non-problematic levels. Not everyone has the social support to make that happen. I think legalisation would be beneficial, as you say, because the criminal justice system does not serve addicts. However, while proceeding with legalisation, we must also establish better social support systems so that people can safely enjoy drugs in moderation.
- twblalock 11y ago
  Why should your drug use, or anyone else's, create obligations for other people to support you, treat you, and help you overcome addiction? The libertarian case for legalizing drugs falls apart if society has to take responsibility for providing support systems as a reaction to the actions of individual drug users. Frankly, most people would rather continue to ban drugs than pay for treatment for people who abuse them. Yes, I know this is shortsighted because we already pay for the costs of incarceration and law enforcement. But that's the status quo, and changing it is going to require convincing people that the alternative is better.
  - justsaysmthng 11y ago
    Because your addiction is also your wife's problem, your parent's problem, your company's problem. Addiction affects more than just the addict. And addicts are in need of help - while it is easy to think that "they like being high, it's their choice", in fact the addicts hate their habit more than anything, yet they can't stop using without external help. Would you help a person with a broken leg ? Why ? Well, that's your answer right there. Edit: Just a couple of days ago I've watched this documentary and I guess that's how I came to these conclusions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k01VM1f1Akk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k01VM1f1Akk
    - oxide 11y ago
      illegal drugs encourage abuse and addiction, not the other way around.
hardcandy 11y ago
If you want to understand the impact that the 'war on drugs' has had on inner cities check out Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon (http://fave.co/1p8kUh6 http://fave.co/1p8kUh6) - an amazing read, and it's the book that the TV series The Wire is based on as well. I agree that these prohibitionist policies have done more harm to the people of the United States than just about anything else over the last few decades. There are also serious externalities, like Mexico becoming a failed state in part due to the narco cartels fueled by black market drug sales into the US.
deleted 11y ago
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fweespee_ch 11y ago
> It does not make sense to me why anyone still believes that using the criminal justice system as the mechanism for getting to that goal is the right path. http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/08/money-not-morals-drives-marijuana-prohibition-movement/ http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/08/money-not-morals-dri... > Alcohol and Beer Companies. > Pharmaceutical Corporations > Police Unions > Private Prison Corporations > Prison Guard Unions http://www.businessinsider.com/police-unions-and-pharmaceutical-companies-fund-anti-marijuana-fight-2014-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/police-unions-and-pharmaceuti... > Pharmaceutical companies that make billions off painkillers and police unions are two big heavy hitters in the fight against marijuana legalization. They throw their monetary support behind groups that fight legislation that would legalize pot — even medical marijuana — and lobby Congress. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/presumed-guilty-how-prisons-profit-the http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/presumed-guilty-how-prisons-profi... > Yet in documents the company is required to file under securities law, Corrections Corporation of America has told investors that its business may be hurt if new policies advance “leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices.” And in a 2010 report, CCA declared that “any changes” to harsh drug sentences could stem the flow of new prisoners in the U.S., reducing “demand for correctional facilities to house them.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/... > The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. … Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower minimum sentences for some non-violent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release based on good behavior.
hawkice 11y ago
> In short: I'm the most vanilla, square, anti-drug person you can find. I don't want to use them, and I think other people would be better off if they reduced their usage as well. You say you don't understand why drugs are illegal. I think this is your core misunderstanding. You are not the most anti-drug person I can find. I've never used alcohol or cigarettes (I didn't even use painkillers when my four wisdom teeth were taken out), and spent the majority of my life admonishing the use of caffeine. I am not even anti-drug compared to most Americans. A substantial portion of America believes that using drugs (illegal drugs only, of course) is _morally wrong_. That is why they have favored sending people to prison instead of rehab. Because it is a violation of the social contract they favor to be under the influence of such substances, and that by using them you are no longer able to execute your duties as a citizen. And you aren't. I don't want you high on meth when you vote. I don't want you high on pot when you drive. I don't want you coming down from heroin when you serve on a jury. Those actions have consequences, all actions as a citizen do, because we cannot isolate from each other. Breaking those commitments _could be_ considered morally wrong, and not just from puritans or fundamentalists.
- md224 11y ago
  Interesting view. What I find problematic is equating drug use with being "high." Sure, you can use enough of a drug that it impairs you, but you can also use less than that. Some may refer to this as "microdosing" but I think this gets it backwards. If anything, drugs are useful tools that can also be "macrodosed" by those wishing to experience extreme effects. I would like to live in a world where all drugs are legal and people can use them to enrich their lives, not just escape from them.
  - pc86 11y ago
    I'm curious what life-enriching experience you can have with "a little bit" of heroin or meth.
    - rwmj 11y ago
      A "little bit" of heroin is good for pain control. It is prescribed as such to pregnant women giving birth in the UK (it's called "diamorphine" but it's chemically the same). Amphetamines are prescribed in the army to keep soldiers and pilots awake.
drug3737 11y ago
Singapore, Indonesia and many other Asian countries have more draconian drug laws than the USA. Their drug usage and crime and rates are far lower than the US, Portugal, Netherlands, Canada and other countries with more lenient drug laws.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  Caveat to your statement: Reported usage and crime rates. How many of the Asian countries you mentioned have a free and robust press industry that investigates government claims without fear of retribution? I'm of the opinion none, none you mentioned. Therefore I question the validity of your statement at the core, before moving on to other issues which might be a factor of comparison, notably homogenous versus highly heterogenous societies.
  - drug3737 11y ago
    Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, to name a few, are seen as less corrupt than countries like Portugal, France and Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index All the Asian countries I mentioned have more draconian drug laws, less crime and less drug usage rates than the European ones I mentioned (along with the United States). It's easy to dismiss my argument by calling them corrupt and their statistics misleading. It's another thing to actually refute my argument with facts and figures, which you haven't done.
    - 6stringmerc 11y ago
      Yes, it is easy because frankly I don't believe in taking a lot of time proving a negative, as in I can't walk out my door and disprove the statistics I believe to be false and you claim to be true.
    - rwmj 11y ago
      China has a big ketamine problem now, with whole villages producing the drug and many addicts. Singapore has a middle-class "ice" (meth) problem. In addition, there was a recent study showing that harsh penalties and rates of drug use are not correlated. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/30/punitive-drug-laws-are-failing-study http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/30/punitive-drug... If you think that particular countries have unusually low rates of use, then you may be just wrong because of misreporting, or it could be to do with other societal factors (eg. children having to live at home longer with parents because of social norms or housing issues).
nkrisc 11y ago
Agreed. Right now we make drugs illegal and spend loads of money to prosecute and jail people who use drugs. Instead, we could make drugs legal and spend a fraction of that money helping people reduce dependence on drugs and heal.
EC1 11y ago
That's really sad that you won't explore psychedelics because of personal idealism. You only get one life.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  My personal idealism runs strongly in the opposite direction, but I would argue that the previous commenter's choice is not at all sad, for the same reason you use here! You only get one life, and it would be really sad to waste your limited, irreplaceable hours of consciousness pursuing activities you aren't interested in just because other people think you ought to.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    Let's just say once the acid kicks in you'll realize why people said to try it ;)
    - marssaxman 11y ago
      Ah, sorry, my phrasing was too indirect: I'm usually one of the people suggesting that others should try it! I have had a great variety of fascinating, entertaining, sometimes difficult, generally beneficial experiences involving LSD and other psychedelics. I think many people who have never had such experiences would probably enjoy them and benefit from them, and I look forward to the day that the drug war ends and sanity returns so that more people will have that opportunity. And yet - there are a vast array of things to do with one's time that many people would probably enjoy and/or benefit from, but we simply don't have enough hours in our lives to investigate them all. If someone believes that my kind of fun is not for them, my inclination is to respect that choice, regardless of the reasons behind it, because we have to decide not to do most of the possible things in life and thus the reasons for rejecting many of them will necessarily be somewhat arbitrary.
  - EC1 11y ago
    I agree, and acid is not in that category.
rayiner 11y ago
> Yet I can not for the life of me understand why drugs are illegal. Criminal laws create self-enforcing social norms to discourage undesirable behavior. Making something illegal is one way of society condemning that activity. Ideally, the social norm itself drives compliance, not enforcement. E.g. it's the social norm that keeps people from stealing, not the threat of getting caught. If people started ignoring the social norm at a large scale, law enforcement would have no hope of stopping them. As a general principle this is sound. E.g. making eating and drinking on the metro illegal has worked pretty well in creating a self-enforcing social norm. Hasn't worked that way for drugs really.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  Restricting eating and drinking on the Metro is a conditional prohibition, with a condition of place that's very narrow, and of time that's very short. That's very different from making something illegal in general, in private, at all times and all circumstances. The first is easy to accept because the limitation is easy to escape. The second is much harder to accept because the law is reaching far into private spaces and private aspects of our lives, all day, every day. And with that comes the purported justification for monstrosities like dynamic entry raids. That purported justification is very circular: Because you could have drugs only in your private space, you might be able to destroy them before they can be seized. And that drives malign legal philosophies that claim that supposedly valid warrants can reach anywhere. Without a Drug War we would not have 90%+ of the SWAT teams, routine dynamic entry raids, police militarization, and super-aggressive plea-bargain driven "justice." Nor might we have questions about whether we should have reliably private communication and data storage. You are not counting the extent to which drugs have rotted the law from the inside. Never mind the anti-freedom thing, the Hobbesians ought to try and hang the narcs for poisoning Leviathan herself.
soundwave106 11y ago
Historically, drug prohibition was often seen as an issue of morality, not a medical problem that needs treatment. Certainly when drug prohibition began (eg the early laws outlawing cocaine, opium, and alcohol), the driving force was almost always either religious groups reacting to social ills, or moral panics of some sort. Recreational substances have been a favorite moral panic for decades. Even in the 1980s (crack cocaine moral panic) and to a lesser degree the 1990s over MDMA. And this goes back a long way: think reefer madness in the 1930s, the racially tinged moral panic surrounding the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, etc. I know some people in the comments below are pinning more blame on the bad laws on lobbyists and entrenched interests, that's certainly partially the case (it's certainly open for debate how much they contributed to creating the moral panic even). But I would tend to put more blame on the moral drive behind many of the laws themselves. Moral panics have a nasty tendency to create harsh legislation that often creates more problems than they solve. And while there are entrenched interests defending the War on Drugs, at one point they were popular entrenched interests. No one is going to overturn legislation when 79% oppose even marijuana legalization, as is the case for this poll in the US in 1988: http://www.people-press.org/question-search/?qid=195853&pid=51&ccid=51#top http://www.people-press.org/question-search/?qid=195853&pid=... To get the "political will", I feel that you have to counter the moral panic that has led to these bad laws (as well as the perception in the public mind) with "just the facts" on these compounds (most aren't as bad as the demonization would have it)... combined with demonstrations of the harsh consequences of these laws. That's already happened to some extent... in 2016, a majority support marijuana legalization. There are more articles then ever on the high cost of our incarceration policy, and there's even greater awareness of how our drug policy has contributed to international violence. I'm not sure that all Schedule Is will ever be legalized fully (personally I'm on the fence with many of them on to what degree they should, since some might indeed pose more of a risk to public health than it's worth). But if only the incarceration policy was adjusted to more of a treatment based one, that would do a heck of a lot.
leeleelee 11y ago
Another interesting thing about the war on drugs is that during prohibition, the constitution was amended for the government to legally be able stop the sale of alcohol. On the other hand, for other "hard" drugs, there is nothing in the constitution that supports the criminalization of drugs. Unless I am missing something. Completely aside from that fact, I do agree that it should be treated as a public health issue. Not a criminal matter.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  That doesn't really change much. The constitution is the law of the land, so if it says nothing about drug use while a federal law bans a set of drugs from sale and use, then that's the law, unless it contradicts the constitution, and in that case, it's up to the Supreme Court to decide.
  - antognini 11y ago
    Well, not quite. The Constitution is set up to delimit the powers of the federal government. As the 10th amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." So if a particular law exceeds the power granted to Congress by the Constitution, it is unconstitutional. It's not that the Constitution prohibits Congress from doing certain things and everything else is by default allowed. The Constitution allows Congress to do certain things and everything else is by default not allowed.
- herge 11y ago
  There's nothing in the U.S. constitution about airplanes either, and yet the FAA still exists. However, the U.S. constitution does talk at length about both congress who can write laws (like the laws banning hard drugs), and the judicial branch who can overturn laws that contravene the constitution. The 18th amendment was added to the constitution not by some legislative need, but to make a politicized statement where another amendment to the constitution would be required to overturn it (the 21st in this case).
btbuildem 11y ago
> Yet I can not for the life of me understand why drugs are illegal Because there's a hugely profitable industry in the policing, prosecution and incarceration of people
- jcromartie 11y ago
  And until the people employed by the systems that police, prosecute, and incarcerate other people have a sufficient safety net, they will be motivated to prop up those systems. Universal basic income just makes too much sense.
- ewzimm 11y ago
  Also you could add racism. Most of these drugs caused social scares when they became popular with minority communities and so people pushed to make them illegal as a roundabout way to target people they were afraid of.
the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
> Yet I can not for the life of me understand why drugs are illegal. Not just pot, all drugs. I'm totally onboard with making it our public policy that we want to reduce the use of drugs. That makes perfect sense to me. It does not make sense to me why anyone still believes that using the criminal justice system as the mechanism for getting to that goal is the right path. Look at other countries and you can see that decriminalising it has no positive impact on the actual addicts. Austria for instance will just slap you for drug usage and put you into a rehabilitation program. But there are just way too many people who want to be hooked to them and will continue taking them under doctor's supervision and not succeed in stopping their addiction. This has a terrible impact on the healthcare system and the costs to the country. Not helping them however would not be any better because too many would end up on the streets. Recently they tried to make "dealing to a friend" possible where the first offence of dealing drugs will not give you a strong punishment and record. The end result was that dealing went up in Vienna and people are now very unhappy with the end result. I know many Americans like the idea of decriminalising it because the war on drugs is failing, but there is quite a bit of evidence from other countries that there is good reason drugs are not legal.
- mattmanser 11y ago
  Portugal, has a drop in HIV and deaths in addicts. Also, your last sentence is unsupported. What evidence? What good reasons?
- adrusi 11y ago
  Look at other countries and you can see that decriminalising it has no positive impact on the actual addicts. That's not true though, they're not in prison. Though I've heard prison in Austria isn't as draconian as American prison. But decriminalization is a half-assed solution. I think it is better than prohibition, because it doesn't result in treating the ill like criminals and doesn't criminalize responsible experimentation, but it only addresses a few of the deficiencies of prohibition. We need legalization. This will help to combat the illegal distribution chains, which is where most of the real malice is found. It will also give the public a direct means toward helping addicts by regulating the drugs themselves. Regulation can combat overdose by having standard dose sizes so that users know exactly how much they are consuming. It can also guarantee purity — most of the damage to health that a lot of drugs cause, especially meth, are due to toxic impurities. And instead of shoving addicts into rehab, we should accept that not everyone wants sobriety and you simply can't force it on them because they'll go right back to doing what they want. If you want to address the drug problem you have to accept that. Don't make people do things they don't want, instead, offer them the opportunity to do something they do want. Addicts want to have jobs, or at least some of them do, in order to pay for their drugs. So offer a program to help addicts manage their addiction so that they can be effective employees, and then just give them a job, without the pretense of helping them stop their usage. If you can get addicts back into society, and put them in a healthy environment where they have stability and a purpose, eventually some of them will want to expand on that positive part of their life and might even decide to go to quit completely. Even the ones who don't choose to quit, at least they're being productive, and they're in the care of experts on drug addiction. And the addicts who have no interest in a job will be affected indirectly as well, because addicts associate with other addicts, and if you can get a lot of addicts off the street, it will change the dynamics on the street as well. You can curtail the camaraderie between addicts, who's reciprocity enables them to have a stable source of dope without a stable source of income. These programs would be expensive, but they can be funded by the money not going into enforcement of ridiculous laws and the taxes from selling drugs.
jgrowl 11y ago
I truly believe that history will judge us for the current state of prohibition nearly the same way it has judged us for slavery.
- vidarh 11y ago
  I'm personally at the stage where I judge any politician that actually spends time on drug policy and still comes out against legalization as being no better than murderers. The information is there. If they're talking drug policy and still support criminalization, they are intentionally or out of an inexcusable level of ignorance helping to perpetrate a system that causes a massive number of deaths. If I had the choice of releasing a murderer from prison and putting one of those politicians there, I would take it: The chance of a murderer carrying out another murder is extremely low, but such a politician have a history of continuing to cause massive harm to others with these policies.
WalterBright 11y ago
Drugs, gambling, and prostitution are all illegal, yet they are things that otherwise law-abiding people are going to do anyway. Hence, no matter how punitive the punishments, people do it anyway, and it spawns massive criminal industries to supply those desires. Heck, you can get drugs even in prison. If the government can't stop that, how can they possibly stop it in the rest of society?
rudolf0 11y ago
"So brave." Sorry for my dickish attitude. I mean, I completely agree with you, but this is the sentiment held by most HN and Reddit users, and isn't even that directly related to the article. We know the War on Drugs isn't good. We know it'll take a while to eventually cut back on it and adopt harm reduction over zero tolerance. No need to bring it up every time.
bronz 11y ago
Some drugs must be outlawed. Asking why heroin or cocaine need to be illegal is like asking why gambling has to be illegal. If you allow people to use addictive drugs or gamble freely then they will destroy themselves. Or huge numbers of people will, anyway.
- adrianN 11y ago
  But gambling is not illegal? What about casinos and those coin operated machines you see in every bar?
  - bronz 11y ago
    Gambling is illegal in many, many places and in the places where gambling is legal many people get sucked in and lose tons of money, sometimes pushing themselves into poverty and ruin. These are all pretty well known things. I don't know what else to say.
- robryan 11y ago
  Making them illegal hasn't stopped anyone.
  - bronz 11y ago
    I think that there are two kinds of drug users, basically. People use drugs because of hardship and people who use drugs because of boredom. When it comes to the hardship camp, I think the best solution is to alleviate the hardship. This means making sure that everyone has a well paying, respectable job and making sure public infrastructure is healthy and so on. When it comes to boredom users though, it's hard to come up with a solution besides punishment. Look at the current heroin epidemic. Yes, it is illegal to use drugs, but affluent white kids don't have to worry about police, so they just don't care. I grew up in an affluent, white neighborhood so I have seen this first hand. In these places, there might as well be no laws regarding drugs. And I think the results are not very surprising. Dumb teenage kids try heroin and then get hooked and then suffer some horrible consequence which can oftentimes be death. I personally knew two people who died that way. Your argument is like saying that we should make insider trading legal because people still do insider trading. Or that we should abandon financial laws and regulations because the great recession happened in spite of them. This is incorrect. Regulations prevent financial collapses. If harsh punishment were distributed to everyone who engaged in corporate crime then corporate crime would plummet. And I truly believe that if affluent white kids had a real, tangible threat to their short term well-being in response to drug use then we would see a massive decline in their drug use. I know that HN hates this opinion but I'm just being honest. Go ahead and hate me. Downvote away.
deleted 11y ago
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random_upvoter 11y ago
I'm a bit disappointed that the top comment is a plea to legalize all drugs. I don't see what this has got to do with the topic, namely that a legal drug is killing 19,000 Americans each year while making many more addicted. I was expecting to read some suggestions on how to address this problem.
- enneff 11y ago
  It's on topic because if efforts were focused on harm reduction instead of persecution then those resources would help users of these legal drugs too.
at-fates-hands 11y ago
The only problem is a short-term fix. The government legalizing drugs and taxes them heavily. AT some point the cost of the "good stuff" is going to go up and eventually cost more than the street stuff. It's already happening in California and Washington. Street dealers have seen little if any dent in their customer base. Legalizing drugs is not the answer, it just makes them more readily available. The same people who wonder why pot is illegal and alcohol is illegal because alcohol kills more people every year - are arguing the same thing for legalizing drugs. At some point, there is no long term benefit unless you count the millions in tax money collected. So then you have to ask yourself, do the tax revenues outweigh the benefits of legalizing all drugs? Surely more people will die if their legalized, just as people argue is the case with alcohol today.
jksmith 11y ago
Missing the point. Not an issue of illegal drugs, instead an issue of government job programs built up around making drugs illegal.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Why? 1) Racism. In the early part of the 20th Century, various drugs were made-to-be-correlated with "undesirable minorities". This very much in sync with the impulse from William Randolph Hearst ( who owned a huge ranch in the Mexican state of Chihuahua and was partially responsible for an invasion of Mexico to go after Pancho Villa ). 2) Out-of-control heroin use in Vietnam inspired Nixon to first "golden flow" test returning service(wo)men and then declare the War on Drugs. 2a) Doctors in the '60s and '70s prescribed many, many, many pills. See also Betty Ford ( the person, not the clinic ). 3) Drug users are the perfect out group. It's possible to construct all sort a narratives out of this, so it's far too politically useful to do anything pragmatic. And people who don't know anything about drugs are then entitled to feel superior to those who do them.
andrepd 11y ago
>Why can't we get political will to do something different? Who wants to be the demon that wants to make drugs legal? The opposition would eat him alive! It would be tantamount to suicide.
gohrt 11y ago
Drugs should be illegal (or at least highly controlled) because they are extremely dangerous. Drug users should not be criminalized. It's as simple as that.
- ImTalking 11y ago
  Any discussion around 'harm' must include alcohol, nicotine, and pharma-opiates.
arc_of_descent 11y ago
Drugs are harmful. Especially in excess. Are you willing to make all illegal drugs available without moderation? Let it be. We are good as it is. I personally have suffered from an excess of Marijuana and Alcohol and its not pleasant. I've since totally given up smoking for a year (but the Alcohol continues). Why? Because Alcohol is freely available.
benjaminmhaley 11y ago
The major problem with legalization is the incentive that companies have to promote addiction in our society. Tobacco use is much higher than it would be if it weren't for marketing that promotes tobacco (this is why those companies spend so much on marketing). The same is true for alcohol, prescription medication, illegal drugs, and many non-drug products like food and materials goods. Businesses, legal and illegal, have an incentive to promote addiction that caters to customers short term desires but not their long term happiness and satisfaction. The ultimate manifestation of this is the horrors inflicted on China from opium sales. So we are stuck with a balancing act. Black markets create violence. Free markets create addiction. Planned markets create poverty. We need laws that try to balance these problems against each other and find the best mix of incentives to minimize violence, addiction, and poverty.
- drumdance 11y ago
  Eh, smoking has declined in the US despite marketing. But even if you accept that addiction will go up, the deadweight loss of putting people in jail is enormous compared to spending that money on treatment and education. Rates of alcoholism went up after prohibition but alcohol-related crime went way down. Also, I've always thought this comic about Milton Friedman's predictions about drug prohibition explains the issue very well: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/war-on-drugs/ http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/war-on-drugs/
- rapind 11y ago
  Make the substances and use of them legal to sell and use on one's self. However, make it illegal to market / advertise the substance since that is much easier to control just using fines instead of incarceration. Attach stigma to it, like we have done with cigarettes (though not e-cigs...). The art / film / literary world will still try to make it sexy (rebellious) on occasion, but without full on marketing it's unlikely you'd see widespread use. Possibly tax it, although I'm not 100% onboard with that, since it would eventually motivate government to lift the marketing restrictions. For anything that's instantly addictive after one or two uses, perhaps it would be possible and worthwhile to try and create a diluted version that's safe for people to try it out without completely destroying their life.
agentgt 11y ago
Legalization of almost any sort of dangerous substance is very complicated (complete free use). Its not black or white. In fact I would say most drugs are legal. They are just heavily restricted. For example if you say legalize X can companies now put X in soft drinks as an ingredient? Can children be served X? X was probably not even illegal in the first place but just restricted. Restrictions can be good (guns are clear example of what happens with out restrictions).

beamatronic 11y ago

>> insane amounts of money I think you said it yourself - not to be snarky or anything. But someone has found a way to get rich, and they use their funds to lobby to keep the current system in place.

unusximmortalis 11y ago
exactly. for as long as you can pour money into lobbying and thus influence (mild term) laws, those laws governing people, lives, don't expect anything good to happen. of course the current system allows ways to fight against this but those ways are so hard implement compared to the way of lobbying (pour insane amount of money cause you have it and they generate even more money) that has no sense practically. am I skeptical? no. we have everything we deserve. and we will continue to have exactly what we deserve, not a single bit more or less.
mathattack 11y ago
It boggles my mind that it's somehow acceptable for the folks running prisons to be able to lobby for the 3 strikes laws. http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/09/16/117661/sb1070-prison-lobby/ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/09/16/117661/sb1070-p...
- GauntletWizard 11y ago
  It is built into the assumptions of the country that some people will argue in their own self interest over that of the general public. In fact, it is expected that the majority will prefer their interest over the good of the whole. It is thenjob of Congress to mediate and ignore self-serving interests, but you can't even blame them for not doing their jobs, because it's the responsibility of the people to call out their bullshit and elect individuals who will act with principles. Ultimately, the rules are pretty clear; power comes from the people, and silence is consent. Ask for better people overall, don't try to blame individuals for the lack-of-will of the masses.
  - bjelkeman-again 11y ago
    But the federal system in the US seems to quite successfully have been coopted by politicians who spend most of their time raising funds, to stay where they are, in collaboration with companies who supply them with funds to get laws written to suite them. I know this is a bit of a caricature, but it seems to me that it now is really hard to change this system to something which takes the money out of the politics.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      No, that's not a caricature at all, that's an extremely accurate description of our political process.
  - mathattack 11y ago
    My impression is that in this case it's a state issue. The 3 strikes law is a local decision. That doesn't change the game theory aspect of everyone chasing their own interest, and a small minority who cares a ton about an issue over-riding a majority who only cares a little. (Prison owners know 100% they'll benefit, while most of the rest of us assume we won't have 3 strikes against us)

evincarofautumn 11y ago

I’m an alcoholic. I’ve cut back on my use significantly, and I’m currently in a period of abstinence. Because alcohol is legal and socially accepted, it’s entirely my responsibility to manage my behaviour and keep my use to non-problematic levels. Not everyone has the social support to make that happen. I think legalisation would be beneficial, as you say, because the criminal justice system does not serve addicts. However, while proceeding with legalisation, we must also establish better social support systems so that people can safely enjoy drugs in moderation.

twblalock 11y ago
Why should your drug use, or anyone else's, create obligations for other people to support you, treat you, and help you overcome addiction? The libertarian case for legalizing drugs falls apart if society has to take responsibility for providing support systems as a reaction to the actions of individual drug users. Frankly, most people would rather continue to ban drugs than pay for treatment for people who abuse them. Yes, I know this is shortsighted because we already pay for the costs of incarceration and law enforcement. But that's the status quo, and changing it is going to require convincing people that the alternative is better.
- justsaysmthng 11y ago
  Because your addiction is also your wife's problem, your parent's problem, your company's problem. Addiction affects more than just the addict. And addicts are in need of help - while it is easy to think that "they like being high, it's their choice", in fact the addicts hate their habit more than anything, yet they can't stop using without external help. Would you help a person with a broken leg ? Why ? Well, that's your answer right there. Edit: Just a couple of days ago I've watched this documentary and I guess that's how I came to these conclusions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k01VM1f1Akk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k01VM1f1Akk
  - oxide 11y ago
    illegal drugs encourage abuse and addiction, not the other way around.

hardcandy 11y ago

If you want to understand the impact that the 'war on drugs' has had on inner cities check out Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon (http://fave.co/1p8kUh6 http://fave.co/1p8kUh6) - an amazing read, and it's the book that the TV series The Wire is based on as well. I agree that these prohibitionist policies have done more harm to the people of the United States than just about anything else over the last few decades. There are also serious externalities, like Mexico becoming a failed state in part due to the narco cartels fueled by black market drug sales into the US.

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fweespee_ch 11y ago

> It does not make sense to me why anyone still believes that using the criminal justice system as the mechanism for getting to that goal is the right path. http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/08/money-not-morals-drives-marijuana-prohibition-movement/ http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/08/money-not-morals-dri... > Alcohol and Beer Companies. > Pharmaceutical Corporations > Police Unions > Private Prison Corporations > Prison Guard Unions http://www.businessinsider.com/police-unions-and-pharmaceutical-companies-fund-anti-marijuana-fight-2014-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/police-unions-and-pharmaceuti... > Pharmaceutical companies that make billions off painkillers and police unions are two big heavy hitters in the fight against marijuana legalization. They throw their monetary support behind groups that fight legislation that would legalize pot — even medical marijuana — and lobby Congress. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/presumed-guilty-how-prisons-profit-the http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/presumed-guilty-how-prisons-profi... > Yet in documents the company is required to file under securities law, Corrections Corporation of America has told investors that its business may be hurt if new policies advance “leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices.” And in a 2010 report, CCA declared that “any changes” to harsh drug sentences could stem the flow of new prisoners in the U.S., reducing “demand for correctional facilities to house them.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/... > The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. … Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower minimum sentences for some non-violent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release based on good behavior.

hawkice 11y ago

> In short: I'm the most vanilla, square, anti-drug person you can find. I don't want to use them, and I think other people would be better off if they reduced their usage as well. You say you don't understand why drugs are illegal. I think this is your core misunderstanding. You are not the most anti-drug person I can find. I've never used alcohol or cigarettes (I didn't even use painkillers when my four wisdom teeth were taken out), and spent the majority of my life admonishing the use of caffeine. I am not even anti-drug compared to most Americans. A substantial portion of America believes that using drugs (illegal drugs only, of course) is _morally wrong_. That is why they have favored sending people to prison instead of rehab. Because it is a violation of the social contract they favor to be under the influence of such substances, and that by using them you are no longer able to execute your duties as a citizen. And you aren't. I don't want you high on meth when you vote. I don't want you high on pot when you drive. I don't want you coming down from heroin when you serve on a jury. Those actions have consequences, all actions as a citizen do, because we cannot isolate from each other. Breaking those commitments _could be_ considered morally wrong, and not just from puritans or fundamentalists.

md224 11y ago
Interesting view. What I find problematic is equating drug use with being "high." Sure, you can use enough of a drug that it impairs you, but you can also use less than that. Some may refer to this as "microdosing" but I think this gets it backwards. If anything, drugs are useful tools that can also be "macrodosed" by those wishing to experience extreme effects. I would like to live in a world where all drugs are legal and people can use them to enrich their lives, not just escape from them.
- pc86 11y ago
  I'm curious what life-enriching experience you can have with "a little bit" of heroin or meth.
  - rwmj 11y ago
    A "little bit" of heroin is good for pain control. It is prescribed as such to pregnant women giving birth in the UK (it's called "diamorphine" but it's chemically the same). Amphetamines are prescribed in the army to keep soldiers and pilots awake.

drug3737 11y ago

Singapore, Indonesia and many other Asian countries have more draconian drug laws than the USA. Their drug usage and crime and rates are far lower than the US, Portugal, Netherlands, Canada and other countries with more lenient drug laws.

6stringmerc 11y ago
Caveat to your statement: Reported usage and crime rates. How many of the Asian countries you mentioned have a free and robust press industry that investigates government claims without fear of retribution? I'm of the opinion none, none you mentioned. Therefore I question the validity of your statement at the core, before moving on to other issues which might be a factor of comparison, notably homogenous versus highly heterogenous societies.
- drug3737 11y ago
  Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, to name a few, are seen as less corrupt than countries like Portugal, France and Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index All the Asian countries I mentioned have more draconian drug laws, less crime and less drug usage rates than the European ones I mentioned (along with the United States). It's easy to dismiss my argument by calling them corrupt and their statistics misleading. It's another thing to actually refute my argument with facts and figures, which you haven't done.
  - 6stringmerc 11y ago
    Yes, it is easy because frankly I don't believe in taking a lot of time proving a negative, as in I can't walk out my door and disprove the statistics I believe to be false and you claim to be true.
  - rwmj 11y ago
    China has a big ketamine problem now, with whole villages producing the drug and many addicts. Singapore has a middle-class "ice" (meth) problem. In addition, there was a recent study showing that harsh penalties and rates of drug use are not correlated. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/30/punitive-drug-laws-are-failing-study http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/30/punitive-drug... If you think that particular countries have unusually low rates of use, then you may be just wrong because of misreporting, or it could be to do with other societal factors (eg. children having to live at home longer with parents because of social norms or housing issues).

nkrisc 11y ago

Agreed. Right now we make drugs illegal and spend loads of money to prosecute and jail people who use drugs. Instead, we could make drugs legal and spend a fraction of that money helping people reduce dependence on drugs and heal.

EC1 11y ago

That's really sad that you won't explore psychedelics because of personal idealism. You only get one life.

marssaxman 11y ago
My personal idealism runs strongly in the opposite direction, but I would argue that the previous commenter's choice is not at all sad, for the same reason you use here! You only get one life, and it would be really sad to waste your limited, irreplaceable hours of consciousness pursuing activities you aren't interested in just because other people think you ought to.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Let's just say once the acid kicks in you'll realize why people said to try it ;)
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    Ah, sorry, my phrasing was too indirect: I'm usually one of the people suggesting that others should try it! I have had a great variety of fascinating, entertaining, sometimes difficult, generally beneficial experiences involving LSD and other psychedelics. I think many people who have never had such experiences would probably enjoy them and benefit from them, and I look forward to the day that the drug war ends and sanity returns so that more people will have that opportunity. And yet - there are a vast array of things to do with one's time that many people would probably enjoy and/or benefit from, but we simply don't have enough hours in our lives to investigate them all. If someone believes that my kind of fun is not for them, my inclination is to respect that choice, regardless of the reasons behind it, because we have to decide not to do most of the possible things in life and thus the reasons for rejecting many of them will necessarily be somewhat arbitrary.
- EC1 11y ago
  I agree, and acid is not in that category.

rayiner 11y ago

> Yet I can not for the life of me understand why drugs are illegal. Criminal laws create self-enforcing social norms to discourage undesirable behavior. Making something illegal is one way of society condemning that activity. Ideally, the social norm itself drives compliance, not enforcement. E.g. it's the social norm that keeps people from stealing, not the threat of getting caught. If people started ignoring the social norm at a large scale, law enforcement would have no hope of stopping them. As a general principle this is sound. E.g. making eating and drinking on the metro illegal has worked pretty well in creating a self-enforcing social norm. Hasn't worked that way for drugs really.

Zigurd 11y ago
Restricting eating and drinking on the Metro is a conditional prohibition, with a condition of place that's very narrow, and of time that's very short. That's very different from making something illegal in general, in private, at all times and all circumstances. The first is easy to accept because the limitation is easy to escape. The second is much harder to accept because the law is reaching far into private spaces and private aspects of our lives, all day, every day. And with that comes the purported justification for monstrosities like dynamic entry raids. That purported justification is very circular: Because you could have drugs only in your private space, you might be able to destroy them before they can be seized. And that drives malign legal philosophies that claim that supposedly valid warrants can reach anywhere. Without a Drug War we would not have 90%+ of the SWAT teams, routine dynamic entry raids, police militarization, and super-aggressive plea-bargain driven "justice." Nor might we have questions about whether we should have reliably private communication and data storage. You are not counting the extent to which drugs have rotted the law from the inside. Never mind the anti-freedom thing, the Hobbesians ought to try and hang the narcs for poisoning Leviathan herself.

soundwave106 11y ago

Historically, drug prohibition was often seen as an issue of morality, not a medical problem that needs treatment. Certainly when drug prohibition began (eg the early laws outlawing cocaine, opium, and alcohol), the driving force was almost always either religious groups reacting to social ills, or moral panics of some sort. Recreational substances have been a favorite moral panic for decades. Even in the 1980s (crack cocaine moral panic) and to a lesser degree the 1990s over MDMA. And this goes back a long way: think reefer madness in the 1930s, the racially tinged moral panic surrounding the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, etc. I know some people in the comments below are pinning more blame on the bad laws on lobbyists and entrenched interests, that's certainly partially the case (it's certainly open for debate how much they contributed to creating the moral panic even). But I would tend to put more blame on the moral drive behind many of the laws themselves. Moral panics have a nasty tendency to create harsh legislation that often creates more problems than they solve. And while there are entrenched interests defending the War on Drugs, at one point they were popular entrenched interests. No one is going to overturn legislation when 79% oppose even marijuana legalization, as is the case for this poll in the US in 1988: http://www.people-press.org/question-search/?qid=195853&pid=51&ccid=51#top http://www.people-press.org/question-search/?qid=195853&pid=... To get the "political will", I feel that you have to counter the moral panic that has led to these bad laws (as well as the perception in the public mind) with "just the facts" on these compounds (most aren't as bad as the demonization would have it)... combined with demonstrations of the harsh consequences of these laws. That's already happened to some extent... in 2016, a majority support marijuana legalization. There are more articles then ever on the high cost of our incarceration policy, and there's even greater awareness of how our drug policy has contributed to international violence. I'm not sure that all Schedule Is will ever be legalized fully (personally I'm on the fence with many of them on to what degree they should, since some might indeed pose more of a risk to public health than it's worth). But if only the incarceration policy was adjusted to more of a treatment based one, that would do a heck of a lot.

leeleelee 11y ago

Another interesting thing about the war on drugs is that during prohibition, the constitution was amended for the government to legally be able stop the sale of alcohol. On the other hand, for other "hard" drugs, there is nothing in the constitution that supports the criminalization of drugs. Unless I am missing something. Completely aside from that fact, I do agree that it should be treated as a public health issue. Not a criminal matter.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
That doesn't really change much. The constitution is the law of the land, so if it says nothing about drug use while a federal law bans a set of drugs from sale and use, then that's the law, unless it contradicts the constitution, and in that case, it's up to the Supreme Court to decide.
- antognini 11y ago
  Well, not quite. The Constitution is set up to delimit the powers of the federal government. As the 10th amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." So if a particular law exceeds the power granted to Congress by the Constitution, it is unconstitutional. It's not that the Constitution prohibits Congress from doing certain things and everything else is by default allowed. The Constitution allows Congress to do certain things and everything else is by default not allowed.
herge 11y ago
There's nothing in the U.S. constitution about airplanes either, and yet the FAA still exists. However, the U.S. constitution does talk at length about both congress who can write laws (like the laws banning hard drugs), and the judicial branch who can overturn laws that contravene the constitution. The 18th amendment was added to the constitution not by some legislative need, but to make a politicized statement where another amendment to the constitution would be required to overturn it (the 21st in this case).

btbuildem 11y ago

> Yet I can not for the life of me understand why drugs are illegal Because there's a hugely profitable industry in the policing, prosecution and incarceration of people

jcromartie 11y ago
And until the people employed by the systems that police, prosecute, and incarcerate other people have a sufficient safety net, they will be motivated to prop up those systems. Universal basic income just makes too much sense.
ewzimm 11y ago
Also you could add racism. Most of these drugs caused social scares when they became popular with minority communities and so people pushed to make them illegal as a roundabout way to target people they were afraid of.

the_mitsuhiko 11y ago

> Yet I can not for the life of me understand why drugs are illegal. Not just pot, all drugs. I'm totally onboard with making it our public policy that we want to reduce the use of drugs. That makes perfect sense to me. It does not make sense to me why anyone still believes that using the criminal justice system as the mechanism for getting to that goal is the right path. Look at other countries and you can see that decriminalising it has no positive impact on the actual addicts. Austria for instance will just slap you for drug usage and put you into a rehabilitation program. But there are just way too many people who want to be hooked to them and will continue taking them under doctor's supervision and not succeed in stopping their addiction. This has a terrible impact on the healthcare system and the costs to the country. Not helping them however would not be any better because too many would end up on the streets. Recently they tried to make "dealing to a friend" possible where the first offence of dealing drugs will not give you a strong punishment and record. The end result was that dealing went up in Vienna and people are now very unhappy with the end result. I know many Americans like the idea of decriminalising it because the war on drugs is failing, but there is quite a bit of evidence from other countries that there is good reason drugs are not legal.

mattmanser 11y ago
Portugal, has a drop in HIV and deaths in addicts. Also, your last sentence is unsupported. What evidence? What good reasons?
adrusi 11y ago
Look at other countries and you can see that decriminalising it has no positive impact on the actual addicts. That's not true though, they're not in prison. Though I've heard prison in Austria isn't as draconian as American prison. But decriminalization is a half-assed solution. I think it is better than prohibition, because it doesn't result in treating the ill like criminals and doesn't criminalize responsible experimentation, but it only addresses a few of the deficiencies of prohibition. We need legalization. This will help to combat the illegal distribution chains, which is where most of the real malice is found. It will also give the public a direct means toward helping addicts by regulating the drugs themselves. Regulation can combat overdose by having standard dose sizes so that users know exactly how much they are consuming. It can also guarantee purity — most of the damage to health that a lot of drugs cause, especially meth, are due to toxic impurities. And instead of shoving addicts into rehab, we should accept that not everyone wants sobriety and you simply can't force it on them because they'll go right back to doing what they want. If you want to address the drug problem you have to accept that. Don't make people do things they don't want, instead, offer them the opportunity to do something they do want. Addicts want to have jobs, or at least some of them do, in order to pay for their drugs. So offer a program to help addicts manage their addiction so that they can be effective employees, and then just give them a job, without the pretense of helping them stop their usage. If you can get addicts back into society, and put them in a healthy environment where they have stability and a purpose, eventually some of them will want to expand on that positive part of their life and might even decide to go to quit completely. Even the ones who don't choose to quit, at least they're being productive, and they're in the care of experts on drug addiction. And the addicts who have no interest in a job will be affected indirectly as well, because addicts associate with other addicts, and if you can get a lot of addicts off the street, it will change the dynamics on the street as well. You can curtail the camaraderie between addicts, who's reciprocity enables them to have a stable source of dope without a stable source of income. These programs would be expensive, but they can be funded by the money not going into enforcement of ridiculous laws and the taxes from selling drugs.

jgrowl 11y ago

I truly believe that history will judge us for the current state of prohibition nearly the same way it has judged us for slavery.

vidarh 11y ago
I'm personally at the stage where I judge any politician that actually spends time on drug policy and still comes out against legalization as being no better than murderers. The information is there. If they're talking drug policy and still support criminalization, they are intentionally or out of an inexcusable level of ignorance helping to perpetrate a system that causes a massive number of deaths. If I had the choice of releasing a murderer from prison and putting one of those politicians there, I would take it: The chance of a murderer carrying out another murder is extremely low, but such a politician have a history of continuing to cause massive harm to others with these policies.

WalterBright 11y ago

Drugs, gambling, and prostitution are all illegal, yet they are things that otherwise law-abiding people are going to do anyway. Hence, no matter how punitive the punishments, people do it anyway, and it spawns massive criminal industries to supply those desires. Heck, you can get drugs even in prison. If the government can't stop that, how can they possibly stop it in the rest of society?

rudolf0 11y ago

"So brave." Sorry for my dickish attitude. I mean, I completely agree with you, but this is the sentiment held by most HN and Reddit users, and isn't even that directly related to the article. We know the War on Drugs isn't good. We know it'll take a while to eventually cut back on it and adopt harm reduction over zero tolerance. No need to bring it up every time.

bronz 11y ago

Some drugs must be outlawed. Asking why heroin or cocaine need to be illegal is like asking why gambling has to be illegal. If you allow people to use addictive drugs or gamble freely then they will destroy themselves. Or huge numbers of people will, anyway.

adrianN 11y ago
But gambling is not illegal? What about casinos and those coin operated machines you see in every bar?
- bronz 11y ago
  Gambling is illegal in many, many places and in the places where gambling is legal many people get sucked in and lose tons of money, sometimes pushing themselves into poverty and ruin. These are all pretty well known things. I don't know what else to say.
robryan 11y ago
Making them illegal hasn't stopped anyone.
- bronz 11y ago
  I think that there are two kinds of drug users, basically. People use drugs because of hardship and people who use drugs because of boredom. When it comes to the hardship camp, I think the best solution is to alleviate the hardship. This means making sure that everyone has a well paying, respectable job and making sure public infrastructure is healthy and so on. When it comes to boredom users though, it's hard to come up with a solution besides punishment. Look at the current heroin epidemic. Yes, it is illegal to use drugs, but affluent white kids don't have to worry about police, so they just don't care. I grew up in an affluent, white neighborhood so I have seen this first hand. In these places, there might as well be no laws regarding drugs. And I think the results are not very surprising. Dumb teenage kids try heroin and then get hooked and then suffer some horrible consequence which can oftentimes be death. I personally knew two people who died that way. Your argument is like saying that we should make insider trading legal because people still do insider trading. Or that we should abandon financial laws and regulations because the great recession happened in spite of them. This is incorrect. Regulations prevent financial collapses. If harsh punishment were distributed to everyone who engaged in corporate crime then corporate crime would plummet. And I truly believe that if affluent white kids had a real, tangible threat to their short term well-being in response to drug use then we would see a massive decline in their drug use. I know that HN hates this opinion but I'm just being honest. Go ahead and hate me. Downvote away.

deleted 11y ago

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random_upvoter 11y ago

I'm a bit disappointed that the top comment is a plea to legalize all drugs. I don't see what this has got to do with the topic, namely that a legal drug is killing 19,000 Americans each year while making many more addicted. I was expecting to read some suggestions on how to address this problem.

enneff 11y ago
It's on topic because if efforts were focused on harm reduction instead of persecution then those resources would help users of these legal drugs too.

at-fates-hands 11y ago

The only problem is a short-term fix. The government legalizing drugs and taxes them heavily. AT some point the cost of the "good stuff" is going to go up and eventually cost more than the street stuff. It's already happening in California and Washington. Street dealers have seen little if any dent in their customer base. Legalizing drugs is not the answer, it just makes them more readily available. The same people who wonder why pot is illegal and alcohol is illegal because alcohol kills more people every year - are arguing the same thing for legalizing drugs. At some point, there is no long term benefit unless you count the millions in tax money collected. So then you have to ask yourself, do the tax revenues outweigh the benefits of legalizing all drugs? Surely more people will die if their legalized, just as people argue is the case with alcohol today.

jksmith 11y ago

Missing the point. Not an issue of illegal drugs, instead an issue of government job programs built up around making drugs illegal.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

Why? 1) Racism. In the early part of the 20th Century, various drugs were made-to-be-correlated with "undesirable minorities". This very much in sync with the impulse from William Randolph Hearst ( who owned a huge ranch in the Mexican state of Chihuahua and was partially responsible for an invasion of Mexico to go after Pancho Villa ). 2) Out-of-control heroin use in Vietnam inspired Nixon to first "golden flow" test returning service(wo)men and then declare the War on Drugs. 2a) Doctors in the '60s and '70s prescribed many, many, many pills. See also Betty Ford ( the person, not the clinic ). 3) Drug users are the perfect out group. It's possible to construct all sort a narratives out of this, so it's far too politically useful to do anything pragmatic. And people who don't know anything about drugs are then entitled to feel superior to those who do them.

andrepd 11y ago

>Why can't we get political will to do something different? Who wants to be the demon that wants to make drugs legal? The opposition would eat him alive! It would be tantamount to suicide.

gohrt 11y ago

Drugs should be illegal (or at least highly controlled) because they are extremely dangerous. Drug users should not be criminalized. It's as simple as that.

ImTalking 11y ago
Any discussion around 'harm' must include alcohol, nicotine, and pharma-opiates.

arc_of_descent 11y ago

Drugs are harmful. Especially in excess. Are you willing to make all illegal drugs available without moderation? Let it be. We are good as it is. I personally have suffered from an excess of Marijuana and Alcohol and its not pleasant. I've since totally given up smoking for a year (but the Alcohol continues). Why? Because Alcohol is freely available.

benjaminmhaley 11y ago

The major problem with legalization is the incentive that companies have to promote addiction in our society. Tobacco use is much higher than it would be if it weren't for marketing that promotes tobacco (this is why those companies spend so much on marketing). The same is true for alcohol, prescription medication, illegal drugs, and many non-drug products like food and materials goods. Businesses, legal and illegal, have an incentive to promote addiction that caters to customers short term desires but not their long term happiness and satisfaction. The ultimate manifestation of this is the horrors inflicted on China from opium sales. So we are stuck with a balancing act. Black markets create violence. Free markets create addiction. Planned markets create poverty. We need laws that try to balance these problems against each other and find the best mix of incentives to minimize violence, addiction, and poverty.

drumdance 11y ago
Eh, smoking has declined in the US despite marketing. But even if you accept that addiction will go up, the deadweight loss of putting people in jail is enormous compared to spending that money on treatment and education. Rates of alcoholism went up after prohibition but alcohol-related crime went way down. Also, I've always thought this comic about Milton Friedman's predictions about drug prohibition explains the issue very well: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/war-on-drugs/ http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/war-on-drugs/
rapind 11y ago
Make the substances and use of them legal to sell and use on one's self. However, make it illegal to market / advertise the substance since that is much easier to control just using fines instead of incarceration. Attach stigma to it, like we have done with cigarettes (though not e-cigs...). The art / film / literary world will still try to make it sexy (rebellious) on occasion, but without full on marketing it's unlikely you'd see widespread use. Possibly tax it, although I'm not 100% onboard with that, since it would eventually motivate government to lift the marketing restrictions. For anything that's instantly addictive after one or two uses, perhaps it would be possible and worthwhile to try and create a diluted version that's safe for people to try it out without completely destroying their life.

agentgt 11y ago

Legalization of almost any sort of dangerous substance is very complicated (complete free use). Its not black or white. In fact I would say most drugs are legal. They are just heavily restricted. For example if you say legalize X can companies now put X in soft drinks as an ingredient? Can children be served X? X was probably not even illegal in the first place but just restricted. Restrictions can be good (guns are clear example of what happens with out restrictions).