9 ms·

>Finally. I hope this will signal a turning point on this insane approach to national health in all countries. Drugs are a health problem, not a criminal proble

by opo 9y ago

>Finally. I hope this will signal a turning point on this insane approach to national health in all countries. Drugs are a health problem, not a criminal problem. Agreed. >...Nixon started the war on drugs anyway as a mean to attack left and black activists This point is a little controversial, in, as far as I know, we have to take Ehrlichman's word on this. https://www.quora.com/Is-John-Ehrlichman-a-credible-source-when-he-claimed-that-the-war-on-drugs-was-intentionally-aimed-at-the-left-and-racial-minorities https://www.quora.com/Is-John-Ehrlichman-a-credible-source-w... While Nixon is remembered for "war on drugs", the actual substance of his policies seems to be different than what people think it was: >...Their consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right wing that he hadn’t gone soft. So he laid on some of the toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a White House speech declaring a “war on drugs” and calling drugs “public enemy number one”. It worked so well as cover that many people remember that “tough” press event and forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief but…a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him). http://www.samefacts.com/2011/06/drug-policy/who-started-the-war-on-drugs/ http://www.samefacts.com/2011/06/drug-policy/who-started-the...

piva00 9y ago
As a follow-up, even though Nixon expanded treatment shouldn't we still blame him for the rhetorics that aggravated the "war on drugs" for the rest of the planet? It's after Nixon "war on drugs" stance that we begin to see harsher and harsher penalties for possession, criminalisation of usage (and this still applies here in Sweden, it's not only illegal to buy, sell or possess drugs but also to take them, if it's detected in a urine or blood test [mandatory tests if you are caught by the police] you have committed an offense) and then the Convention on Psychotropic Substances happened in 1971, very influenced by the US and UK stances on drugs. So as much as he tried to only "look tough", Nixon has fomented one of the worst problems in modern society, I really don't think we as a society should give him any credit, that façade has fucked up a lot some parts of the world and has killed an uncountable number of people.
- slamdance 9y ago
  why does it have to about who we 'blame'? Why not go back to the CIA and how they wanted to undermine the social & political revolutions of the 60s & 70s? why not go back to 'reefer madness' and the how it was based almost solely in fear and racism, or how William Randolph Hearst's paper & publishing 'empire' was threatened by hemp? does any of that matter? Not really. We have a problem now that we need to fix. We don't need to dwell in the past or blame people. We're more knowledgeable now - so we need to use that knowledge to fix the problems - or at least work with / around them to the betterment of people.
  - piva00 9y ago
    I don't think that any reasonable person at any point thought that blaming is a solution. It's just important to direct blame so we can understand history and how events unfolded from that point, there are people and policies to blame and a chain reaction of events which culminated in our current situation, not necessarily we're dwelling in the past pointing fingers and then feeling good that something was solved.
    - indubitable 9y ago
      The issue with this is that ultimately no individual is ever really personally responsible for a societal level action. To take a contemporary example, it's very possible that within the not so distant future the first amendment may be overturned. And it's equally possible that 50 years later it comes to be that deciding to allow the government to criminalize speech at their discretion somehow doesn't turn out so well. So people would go back to the past to try to figure out what happened. And perhaps they would decide to blame President McPolitic, who oversaw the overturning of the amendment, as the source of the problem. Surely they just used their powers to make a decision that turned out very bad. But of course it wouldn't be that individual - but rather society that somehow moved in a direction that in hindsight might seem otherwise inexplicable. The nice thing is that people looking back at today will [hopefully] have access to internet archives and they can see how things evolved. The NSA's surveillance and data collection are, in this regard, doing society a great service. They are effectively creating the greatest global social archive in the history of our species --- a sort of time capsule that encompasses the entire existence of humanity in the developed world. But we don't have that privilege when we look back at the past today. So all we can do is look at the data. Historic record, such as "the Nixon quote", cannot be taken at face value. Those casting such aspersions (or praises) have their own biases and agendas. What we do from the data is that violent crime in the 50s and 60s was very rare. But then something happened. It started skyrocketing. From the 60s to the 70s the per capita crime rate more than doubled. And drug use and abuse was also skyrocketing. Is it not reasonable to assume that people, somewhat naturally, began to link the two since they did rather often compliment one another? Now we look at drugs much more tolerably, but that too follows an interesting trend. Violent crime started sharply declining a decline in the 90s. That's a trend that continues to this very day. And our views, as a society, are reflective of this change. Ultimately I think leaders are products of society, rather than society being a product of its leaders. And thus attributing blame (or praise) to any individual is, at best, a misrepresentation of an event.
GatorD42 9y ago
The Ehrlichman quote is controversial for more than the reason you cite. Baum claims Ehrlichman said that in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, but instead published it in 2012 and again in 2016, after Ehrlichman had died (in 1999). I hate the drug war and I think it's stupid, but I don't think people should use that quote for evidence of anything. I think it was either made up or taken completely out of context, and obviously Ehrlichman isn't around to contest it. It encapsulates liberal conspiracy theories about the drug war far too perfectly, it's as if a Breitbart reporter claimd an Al Gore staffer who had died "admitted" liberals all knew global warming was a hoax and pushed it just to increase taxes and punish Republican leaning businesses with harsh regulations. I don't know if this is a reputable site but the basic story about timeline of the quote is not disputed as far as I know: http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/720681 http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/720681
- rxhernandez 9y ago
  > it's as if a Breitbart reporter claimd an Al Gore staffer who had died "admitted" liberals all knew global warming was a hoax and pushed it just to increase taxes and punish Republican leaning businesses with harsh regulations. It's not nearly the same thing. We know that there are plenty of self-serving scientists that would absolutely love the notoriety of debunking global warming if it was actually false. To believe that scientists made it all up is utterly insane if you actually have worked with real scientists. The number of physicists I've worked with that daydreamed out loud at lunch about having a law or parameter named after them is astounding. If they wanted money they could easily go into a quant job and make double or triple what they've been making and no longer have to drive their shitty 20 year old cars. The issue you're proposing as a liberal conspiracy is purely an issue of he said, she said nonsense. We have the input and the output. Republicans yet again made life worse for the lower classes. Big surprise. Why doesn't matter and it's naive as an adult to even care about intent.

by opo 9y ago

piva00 9y ago

As a follow-up, even though Nixon expanded treatment shouldn't we still blame him for the rhetorics that aggravated the "war on drugs" for the rest of the planet? It's after Nixon "war on drugs" stance that we begin to see harsher and harsher penalties for possession, criminalisation of usage (and this still applies here in Sweden, it's not only illegal to buy, sell or possess drugs but also to take them, if it's detected in a urine or blood test [mandatory tests if you are caught by the police] you have committed an offense) and then the Convention on Psychotropic Substances happened in 1971, very influenced by the US and UK stances on drugs. So as much as he tried to only "look tough", Nixon has fomented one of the worst problems in modern society, I really don't think we as a society should give him any credit, that façade has fucked up a lot some parts of the world and has killed an uncountable number of people.

slamdance 9y ago
why does it have to about who we 'blame'? Why not go back to the CIA and how they wanted to undermine the social & political revolutions of the 60s & 70s? why not go back to 'reefer madness' and the how it was based almost solely in fear and racism, or how William Randolph Hearst's paper & publishing 'empire' was threatened by hemp? does any of that matter? Not really. We have a problem now that we need to fix. We don't need to dwell in the past or blame people. We're more knowledgeable now - so we need to use that knowledge to fix the problems - or at least work with / around them to the betterment of people.
- piva00 9y ago
  I don't think that any reasonable person at any point thought that blaming is a solution. It's just important to direct blame so we can understand history and how events unfolded from that point, there are people and policies to blame and a chain reaction of events which culminated in our current situation, not necessarily we're dwelling in the past pointing fingers and then feeling good that something was solved.
  - indubitable 9y ago
    The issue with this is that ultimately no individual is ever really personally responsible for a societal level action. To take a contemporary example, it's very possible that within the not so distant future the first amendment may be overturned. And it's equally possible that 50 years later it comes to be that deciding to allow the government to criminalize speech at their discretion somehow doesn't turn out so well. So people would go back to the past to try to figure out what happened. And perhaps they would decide to blame President McPolitic, who oversaw the overturning of the amendment, as the source of the problem. Surely they just used their powers to make a decision that turned out very bad. But of course it wouldn't be that individual - but rather society that somehow moved in a direction that in hindsight might seem otherwise inexplicable. The nice thing is that people looking back at today will [hopefully] have access to internet archives and they can see how things evolved. The NSA's surveillance and data collection are, in this regard, doing society a great service. They are effectively creating the greatest global social archive in the history of our species --- a sort of time capsule that encompasses the entire existence of humanity in the developed world. But we don't have that privilege when we look back at the past today. So all we can do is look at the data. Historic record, such as "the Nixon quote", cannot be taken at face value. Those casting such aspersions (or praises) have their own biases and agendas. What we do from the data is that violent crime in the 50s and 60s was very rare. But then something happened. It started skyrocketing. From the 60s to the 70s the per capita crime rate more than doubled. And drug use and abuse was also skyrocketing. Is it not reasonable to assume that people, somewhat naturally, began to link the two since they did rather often compliment one another? Now we look at drugs much more tolerably, but that too follows an interesting trend. Violent crime started sharply declining a decline in the 90s. That's a trend that continues to this very day. And our views, as a society, are reflective of this change. Ultimately I think leaders are products of society, rather than society being a product of its leaders. And thus attributing blame (or praise) to any individual is, at best, a misrepresentation of an event.

GatorD42 9y ago

The Ehrlichman quote is controversial for more than the reason you cite. Baum claims Ehrlichman said that in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, but instead published it in 2012 and again in 2016, after Ehrlichman had died (in 1999). I hate the drug war and I think it's stupid, but I don't think people should use that quote for evidence of anything. I think it was either made up or taken completely out of context, and obviously Ehrlichman isn't around to contest it. It encapsulates liberal conspiracy theories about the drug war far too perfectly, it's as if a Breitbart reporter claimd an Al Gore staffer who had died "admitted" liberals all knew global warming was a hoax and pushed it just to increase taxes and punish Republican leaning businesses with harsh regulations. I don't know if this is a reputable site but the basic story about timeline of the quote is not disputed as far as I know: http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/720681 http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/720681

rxhernandez 9y ago
> it's as if a Breitbart reporter claimd an Al Gore staffer who had died "admitted" liberals all knew global warming was a hoax and pushed it just to increase taxes and punish Republican leaning businesses with harsh regulations. It's not nearly the same thing. We know that there are plenty of self-serving scientists that would absolutely love the notoriety of debunking global warming if it was actually false. To believe that scientists made it all up is utterly insane if you actually have worked with real scientists. The number of physicists I've worked with that daydreamed out loud at lunch about having a law or parameter named after them is astounding. If they wanted money they could easily go into a quant job and make double or triple what they've been making and no longer have to drive their shitty 20 year old cars. The issue you're proposing as a liberal conspiracy is purely an issue of he said, she said nonsense. We have the input and the output. Republicans yet again made life worse for the lower classes. Big surprise. Why doesn't matter and it's naive as an adult to even care about intent.