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Treating it like a criminal problem works extremely well for Singapore. If you sell drugs, you get executed. If you have any amount drugs, you almost certainly

Treating it like a criminal problem works extremely well for Singapore. If you sell drugs, you get executed. If you have any amount drugs, you almost certainly go to prison. Police have extraordinary powers to investigate and prosecute drug crimes, including compelling drug tests of suspected users. As a result, there is effectively no drug use or trafficking in Singapore. So this oft-repeated mantra that the penal code cannot solve drug problems is frankly bs. I'm not suggesting that we should throw drug addicts in prison for a dozen years, but I'd have no problem letting a fentanyl dealer rot in prison for the rest of their lives. Maybe start sending commandos to kidnap cartel leaders from Mexico to bring them to the US to face charges, for trafficking drugs and for murder. Let's run sting operations with cops posing as drug-seeking addicts to catch doctors handing them out like candy.

stickfigure 9y ago
Please tell me, how many marijuana dealers would you have been willing to execute in the 80s? How many brewers would you have been comfortable executing in the 20s? How many homosexuals in the 50s? I for one am very happy not to be living in an all-powerful police state. What's obviously "moral and good" seems to be awfully fluid across history.
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  So I'm not arguing that we should completely emulate Singapore and other Asian countries here. Life-ending punishments for low-level dealing of soft drugs is too harsh and incompatible with our vision for society. Likewise for imprisoning addicts. But I think enforcement can work if we're willing to do what must be done. People exporting and importing large quantities of hard drugs into the United States get no sympathy from me.
  - mythrwy 9y ago
    Maybe when large poppy and coca fields were needed enforcement could have worked had it been pursued vigorously. But we apparently really didn't want to do that and it was mostly all lip service. But now? Super powerful chemicals being continually adjusted. A zillion e-packets zipping around the world. Forget about full enforcement. That is no longer possible if we "just try hard enough". Unless maybe you want to stop the mail and bomb 35 countries into smithereens. And incarcerate even more people than the ridiculous number we already have. We can still "discourage" with occasional busts (and probably should for deadly drugs for now) but maybe it's time to sit down and rethink rather than continuing to playing wack-a-mole. Make better drugs. Less harmful ones. That's the eventual answer I think.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    The US incarcerates more people than any other country. It's clearly not working.
    - marcoperaza 9y ago
      That most prisoners are serving for merely drug offenses is a myth. A huge percent have drugs on the list of crimes they were convicted for, but almost all of them have a violent crime on there as well. Mass incarceration is due to high rates of violent crime and strong punishments for them, not drug enforcement. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/30/15591700/mass-incarceration-john-pfaff-locked-in https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/30/15591700/m...
      - _mhr_ 9y ago
        But perhaps it's all related. Violent crime occurs because it's fueled by an illegal cash cow in the form of drugs. People don't just murder or assault people without being driven to do so. They have an economic incentive.
      - DanBC 9y ago
        I made no mention of drug offences. The US incarcerates more people than any other country, and yet it still has much higher rates of crime, including violent crime, than Europe. If imprisonment worked to reduce violent crime we'd expect Europe to have higher rates of violent crime than the US.
  - Helmet 9y ago
    We already do this. Large level dealers/kingpins are prosecuted to the fullest extend of the law and often receive extremely long sentences. However, as has been proven, it doesn't work. Your point about Singapore is taken though, you raise a strong point. I think the issue though is that there are two effective ways to deal with drugs: 1. Totalitarian-police-state-type of enforcement (lets call it the Singapore model) where even low level offenders are hit were severe sentences. 2. The end of prohibition. This destroys the current economic framework supporting the drug industry; this would severely reduce the violence associated with the illicit drug trade. What doesn't work is this sort of middle-of-the-road approach that we currently have. Obviously, these two are at exact opposite ends of one another. I think we should pick the one that is more fitting with our national character and purported values of life, liberty, and individualism (the 2nd option...)
askvictor 9y ago
There are other countries that have stupidly harsh penalties for drug dealing and use (e.g. Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines). Hasn't really done much there. Only works in Singapore because it's already a police state. So perhaps you can solve the drug problem with police if you're already in a police state, but that doesn't strike me as a sensible approach.
- fentanoel 9y ago
  I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about. I am an American who has lived in Thailand for several years. The US has a huge drug problem and SE Asia doesn't even come close. The local population does not abuse drugs at all. Nearly all of the drug trade caters to American/European tourists. Which is incidentally why the punishment is so harsh, they do not tolerate foreigners poisoning their society. Enforcement works.
  - api 9y ago
    There's another possibility. Is there a cultural difference at work here? Does Asian culture have more respect for authority and less patience for things like drug abuse? I feel like if crazy penalties like that were levied in America we would take it as a challenge. We have a long history of that.
    - true_religion 9y ago
      I have my doubts about culture being something that can effectively fend off chemical dependence. If anything, stigmatizing a situation only drives it underground where it isn't talked about, and essentially flourishes in the darkness.
    - chewz 9y ago
      The difference is historical experience of XIX century. Have you ever heard of Opium Wars? Well British Empire - the largest drug cartel in history forced drugs on China and it's neighbours in the name of Free Trade. The British position was that China cannot forbid and stop "free trade" by British merchants selling drugs produced in Bengal, India (in order to self-finance costs of India occupation and wars) via Canton and Hong-Kong to China . The amount of drugs exported into China by British was circa 20 times the current consumption levels in US, similar in Thailand etc.. And the drug epidemic brought China to it's knees from a large however slightly backward and rigid empire of the beginning of XIX century to impoverished, revolution's torn country of the beginning of XX century. The memory of drug epidemics and the humiliation is still there and that's why Asian countries reject soft approach to drugs. The ruling elites know that over certain threshold drug epidemics could absolutely bring the country down.
jfoutz 9y ago
the law is a piece of the puzzle. I think that would be a tough approach in u.s. culture as you present it. For one, all it takes to get someone executed is a dishonest officer. Also, planting drugs on someone or their property seems like an "easy" way to get rid of them without a conspirator. I see how that can work in some cultures and countries. I just think that approach wouldn't be very effective in the US. Probably not effective in countries larger than a few thousand square miles even with strong cultural support.
mnw21cam 9y ago
> Maybe start sending commandos to kidnap cartel leaders from Mexico to bring them to the US to face charges, for trafficking drugs and for murder. Wow, yeah, let's just invade another country and commit an act of war to get what we want. This is one of the reasons why a lot of the rest of the world hates Americans.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Worse, what happens when your illegal commando raid fails?
  - mnw21cam 9y ago
    I'm sure there was a Clancy book about this. Maybe it even got made into a film!
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  The government south of the border has failed. The cartels have more control over large swaths of Mexico than the Mexican government does. America should not tolerate that situation. The security of our people demands the pacification of the cartels.
  - mnw21cam 9y ago
    So if the Mexican government requests help in maintaining law and order, then fine. Otherwise it's breaking international law.
    - marcoperaza 9y ago
      The Mexican government won't solve the problem because a large chunk of the Mexican populace is in denial about the nature of the problem. For example, every time the Mexican government tries to pass laws to more effectively wage war on the cartels--and war is the truth of the situation--you have mass civil liberties protests in Mexico City. Further, the government is partially controlled by, and even more terrified of, the cartels too. And it certainly doesn't help that the Mexican government is poor, while the cartels are raking in profits from the largest drug market in the world, the United States. "International law" does not exist. In international affairs, there is only power. If the security of our people depends on resolving some situation in another country, then we must do it. Some worthless piece of paper with no realistic enforcement mechanism (i.e. not law) be damned.
ozmbie 9y ago
I lived in Singapore as an expat back in 2012, and from my experience, getting drugs (either online or through friend contacts) was not that hard. The penalties stop most people but the stuff still exists.
Nursie 9y ago
Singapore is an island city, and a police state.
pjc50 9y ago
> penal code cannot solve drug problems is frankly bs This has been tried in the West for decades and not worked so far. > letting a fentanyl dealer rot in prison for the rest of their lives This already happens. > sting operations with cops posing as drug-seeking addicts to catch doctors handing them out like candy This already happens as well, although you then have to draw a line between perfectly legal prescription and illegal dealing. > If you sell drugs, you get executed This policy is currently collapsing the Philippines; 7,000 dead already: https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/03/02/license-kill/philippine-police-killings-dutertes-war-drugs https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/03/02/license-kill/philippin... "Even prior to announcing his candidacy for the May 2016 presidential election, Duterte was already very clear about his intention to eliminate crime by eliminating criminals: “If by chance that God will place me there, watch out because the 1,000 [people allegedly executed while Duterte was mayor of Davao City] will become 100,000. You will see the fish in Manila Bay getting fat. That is where I will dump you.”" The massacre of 100,000 people would put Duerte well into the "crimes against humanity" league.
qazpot 9y ago
The safest place in the world to live is a Police State.
- ada1981 9y ago
  How about a private jail cell?!
- DanBC 9y ago
  They lie about crime stats to justify the expense and human rights abuses, so a police state is not always the safest place. And this is ignoring state violence.
wavefunction 9y ago
Singapore is always held up as an example for larger countries but it's really just a small city that doesn't offer much in the way of example for actual countries. We've already tried police brutality in the war on drugs and all it has gotten us is pain and misery. And epidemic after epidemic of drug abuse over the years. And we'd have to send your commandos into China as well as Mexico if we truly want to stop the opioid epidemic. That's where all this fentanyl and carfentanil is coming from.

stickfigure 9y ago

Please tell me, how many marijuana dealers would you have been willing to execute in the 80s? How many brewers would you have been comfortable executing in the 20s? How many homosexuals in the 50s? I for one am very happy not to be living in an all-powerful police state. What's obviously "moral and good" seems to be awfully fluid across history.

marcoperaza 9y ago
So I'm not arguing that we should completely emulate Singapore and other Asian countries here. Life-ending punishments for low-level dealing of soft drugs is too harsh and incompatible with our vision for society. Likewise for imprisoning addicts. But I think enforcement can work if we're willing to do what must be done. People exporting and importing large quantities of hard drugs into the United States get no sympathy from me.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  Maybe when large poppy and coca fields were needed enforcement could have worked had it been pursued vigorously. But we apparently really didn't want to do that and it was mostly all lip service. But now? Super powerful chemicals being continually adjusted. A zillion e-packets zipping around the world. Forget about full enforcement. That is no longer possible if we "just try hard enough". Unless maybe you want to stop the mail and bomb 35 countries into smithereens. And incarcerate even more people than the ridiculous number we already have. We can still "discourage" with occasional busts (and probably should for deadly drugs for now) but maybe it's time to sit down and rethink rather than continuing to playing wack-a-mole. Make better drugs. Less harmful ones. That's the eventual answer I think.
- DanBC 9y ago
  The US incarcerates more people than any other country. It's clearly not working.
  - marcoperaza 9y ago
    That most prisoners are serving for merely drug offenses is a myth. A huge percent have drugs on the list of crimes they were convicted for, but almost all of them have a violent crime on there as well. Mass incarceration is due to high rates of violent crime and strong punishments for them, not drug enforcement. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/30/15591700/mass-incarceration-john-pfaff-locked-in https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/30/15591700/m...
    - _mhr_ 9y ago
      But perhaps it's all related. Violent crime occurs because it's fueled by an illegal cash cow in the form of drugs. People don't just murder or assault people without being driven to do so. They have an economic incentive.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      I made no mention of drug offences. The US incarcerates more people than any other country, and yet it still has much higher rates of crime, including violent crime, than Europe. If imprisonment worked to reduce violent crime we'd expect Europe to have higher rates of violent crime than the US.
- Helmet 9y ago
  We already do this. Large level dealers/kingpins are prosecuted to the fullest extend of the law and often receive extremely long sentences. However, as has been proven, it doesn't work. Your point about Singapore is taken though, you raise a strong point. I think the issue though is that there are two effective ways to deal with drugs: 1. Totalitarian-police-state-type of enforcement (lets call it the Singapore model) where even low level offenders are hit were severe sentences. 2. The end of prohibition. This destroys the current economic framework supporting the drug industry; this would severely reduce the violence associated with the illicit drug trade. What doesn't work is this sort of middle-of-the-road approach that we currently have. Obviously, these two are at exact opposite ends of one another. I think we should pick the one that is more fitting with our national character and purported values of life, liberty, and individualism (the 2nd option...)

askvictor 9y ago

There are other countries that have stupidly harsh penalties for drug dealing and use (e.g. Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines). Hasn't really done much there. Only works in Singapore because it's already a police state. So perhaps you can solve the drug problem with police if you're already in a police state, but that doesn't strike me as a sensible approach.

fentanoel 9y ago
I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about. I am an American who has lived in Thailand for several years. The US has a huge drug problem and SE Asia doesn't even come close. The local population does not abuse drugs at all. Nearly all of the drug trade caters to American/European tourists. Which is incidentally why the punishment is so harsh, they do not tolerate foreigners poisoning their society. Enforcement works.
- api 9y ago
  There's another possibility. Is there a cultural difference at work here? Does Asian culture have more respect for authority and less patience for things like drug abuse? I feel like if crazy penalties like that were levied in America we would take it as a challenge. We have a long history of that.
  - true_religion 9y ago
    I have my doubts about culture being something that can effectively fend off chemical dependence. If anything, stigmatizing a situation only drives it underground where it isn't talked about, and essentially flourishes in the darkness.
  - chewz 9y ago
    The difference is historical experience of XIX century. Have you ever heard of Opium Wars? Well British Empire - the largest drug cartel in history forced drugs on China and it's neighbours in the name of Free Trade. The British position was that China cannot forbid and stop "free trade" by British merchants selling drugs produced in Bengal, India (in order to self-finance costs of India occupation and wars) via Canton and Hong-Kong to China . The amount of drugs exported into China by British was circa 20 times the current consumption levels in US, similar in Thailand etc.. And the drug epidemic brought China to it's knees from a large however slightly backward and rigid empire of the beginning of XIX century to impoverished, revolution's torn country of the beginning of XX century. The memory of drug epidemics and the humiliation is still there and that's why Asian countries reject soft approach to drugs. The ruling elites know that over certain threshold drug epidemics could absolutely bring the country down.

jfoutz 9y ago

the law is a piece of the puzzle. I think that would be a tough approach in u.s. culture as you present it. For one, all it takes to get someone executed is a dishonest officer. Also, planting drugs on someone or their property seems like an "easy" way to get rid of them without a conspirator. I see how that can work in some cultures and countries. I just think that approach wouldn't be very effective in the US. Probably not effective in countries larger than a few thousand square miles even with strong cultural support.

mnw21cam 9y ago

> Maybe start sending commandos to kidnap cartel leaders from Mexico to bring them to the US to face charges, for trafficking drugs and for murder. Wow, yeah, let's just invade another country and commit an act of war to get what we want. This is one of the reasons why a lot of the rest of the world hates Americans.

pjc50 9y ago
Worse, what happens when your illegal commando raid fails?
- mnw21cam 9y ago
  I'm sure there was a Clancy book about this. Maybe it even got made into a film!
marcoperaza 9y ago
The government south of the border has failed. The cartels have more control over large swaths of Mexico than the Mexican government does. America should not tolerate that situation. The security of our people demands the pacification of the cartels.
- mnw21cam 9y ago
  So if the Mexican government requests help in maintaining law and order, then fine. Otherwise it's breaking international law.
  - marcoperaza 9y ago
    The Mexican government won't solve the problem because a large chunk of the Mexican populace is in denial about the nature of the problem. For example, every time the Mexican government tries to pass laws to more effectively wage war on the cartels--and war is the truth of the situation--you have mass civil liberties protests in Mexico City. Further, the government is partially controlled by, and even more terrified of, the cartels too. And it certainly doesn't help that the Mexican government is poor, while the cartels are raking in profits from the largest drug market in the world, the United States. "International law" does not exist. In international affairs, there is only power. If the security of our people depends on resolving some situation in another country, then we must do it. Some worthless piece of paper with no realistic enforcement mechanism (i.e. not law) be damned.

ozmbie 9y ago

I lived in Singapore as an expat back in 2012, and from my experience, getting drugs (either online or through friend contacts) was not that hard. The penalties stop most people but the stuff still exists.

Nursie 9y ago

Singapore is an island city, and a police state.

pjc50 9y ago

> penal code cannot solve drug problems is frankly bs This has been tried in the West for decades and not worked so far. > letting a fentanyl dealer rot in prison for the rest of their lives This already happens. > sting operations with cops posing as drug-seeking addicts to catch doctors handing them out like candy This already happens as well, although you then have to draw a line between perfectly legal prescription and illegal dealing. > If you sell drugs, you get executed This policy is currently collapsing the Philippines; 7,000 dead already: https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/03/02/license-kill/philippine-police-killings-dutertes-war-drugs https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/03/02/license-kill/philippin... "Even prior to announcing his candidacy for the May 2016 presidential election, Duterte was already very clear about his intention to eliminate crime by eliminating criminals: “If by chance that God will place me there, watch out because the 1,000 [people allegedly executed while Duterte was mayor of Davao City] will become 100,000. You will see the fish in Manila Bay getting fat. That is where I will dump you.”" The massacre of 100,000 people would put Duerte well into the "crimes against humanity" league.

qazpot 9y ago

The safest place in the world to live is a Police State.

ada1981 9y ago
How about a private jail cell?!
DanBC 9y ago
They lie about crime stats to justify the expense and human rights abuses, so a police state is not always the safest place. And this is ignoring state violence.

wavefunction 9y ago

Singapore is always held up as an example for larger countries but it's really just a small city that doesn't offer much in the way of example for actual countries. We've already tried police brutality in the war on drugs and all it has gotten us is pain and misery. And epidemic after epidemic of drug abuse over the years. And we'd have to send your commandos into China as well as Mexico if we truly want to stop the opioid epidemic. That's where all this fentanyl and carfentanil is coming from.