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> Drug prohibition has been a categorical failure in every outcome it was intended to achieve. The following flavor of comment has been made many times on HN,

> Drug prohibition has been a categorical failure in every outcome it was intended to achieve. The following flavor of comment has been made many times on HN, but since I’m halfway through Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow I’m in the mood for making it again here: The drug war has been “successful”, because its goal was to incarcerate, disenfranchise, extort, terrorize, and break apart the families of minorities so that America could retain a racial hierarchy after the civil rights movement. This hierarchy is advantageous to the ruling class because they can continue to exploit poor whites economically, keep them off the bottom of the hierarchy, and retain their political support. When Reagan declared a War on Drugs in 1982, less than 2% of Americans viewed drug use as the most important issue facing the nation. In 1989 that number was at 64%, all without a significant increase in drug usage. (Rates for drug crimes did increase, because criminality was the effect of the War on Drugs, not its cause.)

flukus 8y ago
This is a very US centric view but the war on drugs is very international. Cannabis is illegal in most of the world where Americas race relations simply aren't issues, so I really don't buy into this reasoning. This is good old moral superiority at work.
- superflyguy 8y ago
  You're both right. The origins are racial ("Chasing the scream" by Hari is another good resource here) and the brainwashing was successful so for a while now we're stuck with the consequences. When the old stupid racists (who voted for Brexit) finally die (not so long hopefully) younger people (more likely to use or know someone who uses) will legalise it. Politicians just reflect society; it's not true that a clear majority of UK voters want cannabis legal so it's not worth May going against the old farts and the media etc.
  - wsc981 8y ago
    ... When the old stupid racists (who voted for Brexit) finally die (not so long hopefully) ... Over 50% of Great-Britain is stupid and racist? You have a source for this claim?
    - isostatic 8y ago
      Old stupid racists most likely voted for brexit. Other people also voted for brexit, including young stupid racists, middle aged opportunistic millionaires, people who wanted to vote against Cameron, and other groups. Overall only 26% voted for brexit, and many of those "old stupid racists" have since died, so no, it's nowhere near 50% of the United Kingdom and Gibraltar that are "old stupid racists".
    - flukus 8y ago
      Anyone without a college education is stupid and racist now. The left has not learned the lessons of brexit and Trump and continue to drive away the working class that they have utter contempt for.
      - rorykoehler 8y ago
        I know plenty of working class brits who are pro EU.
    - lumisota 8y ago
      Regardless of the epithets used to describe them, it's worth remembering that, accounting for turn-out, it was around 37% of the British electorate that voted to leave the EU.
      - rusk 8y ago
        There's no reason to believe that the result as it stands couldn't have been extrapolated across the rest of the population.
        lumisota 8y ago
  - rusk 8y ago
    I would add to this, that there's probably a lot of lobbying at work as well. In my country at least, the lobby groups for that "other recreational drug", alcohol, and the pharmaceutical industry are both very powerful. There are vested interests in not seeing (a) popular recreational use and (b) promising medical applications take hold, precisely because it's something that can just be grown and is difficult to control and profiteer upon. I'll be accused by many people of spouting conspiracy theories but it doesn't require any mental backflips at all to render it plausible so I'm claiming Ogham's.
  - mito88 8y ago
    http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/ http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/
- maaark 8y ago
  America started the war, and pushed it on all its allies.
  - nickik 8y ago
    But if it was all about domestic politics then there would have been no reason to to that.
    - fsloth 8y ago
      Except fighting drugs requires international co-operation. Once the officials are legally bound to do something, they will start doing their business as effectively as possible, including, perhaps, feeding back the message to the higher ups that they need international co-operation. The higher ups cannot say "we don't care" because that would immediately politically de-legitimize the drugwar effort. Hence, all policies, despite their true intent, have all sorts of unnecessary appendices unrelated to the original goal.
      - flukus 8y ago
        > Except fighting drugs requires international co-operation. You're not wrong (well you arebecause even that doesn't work), but things like cannabis are entirely domestic so no international cooperation required. The harder stuff typically originated from places that weren't close American allies so our cooperation wasn't particularly important.
        3131s 8y ago
        > things like cannabis are entirely domestic Not true at all.
      - nickik 8y ago
        I was responding to the idea that it is not about fighting drugs. > because its goal was to incarcerate, disenfranchise, extort, terrorize, and break apart the families of minorities so that America could retain a racial hierarchy after the civil rights movement IF you believe this then trying to solve the problem at its roots you are undermining your own strategy.
- fsloth 8y ago
  "This is a very US centric view but the war on drugs is very international." US basically dictates global policies in the block of countries not part of the soviet sphere of influence during the cold war. US defends it's position in the global community using every trick and leverage available. If something is illegal in the US you can be quite assured they will try to apply leverage to make it illegal everywhere else, especially if it's an issue that requires international co-operation - like the war on drugs, for example. For example, the international banking system is basically controlled by US policies. Parties, that do not co-operate and obey US authorities can and will be shut out of the large pool of global financial services that is critical to running businesses effectively. Another effect is the pure cultural force US practices have on the "western block" of countries. Lots of ideas (good or bad) are taken into use in other countries after they become fashionable in the US. You are quite right prudish moral superiority is of course a facet, but that is not the key here, I think.
  - koyote 8y ago
    Although the US has a lot of influence on international culture and laws the above is simply not really true. Drug laws in Europe vary wildly between countries, with places like Portgual decriminalising even hard drugs and places like the Netherlands having an open culture when it comes to buying and consuming cannabis and other 'less hard' drugs. Then of course there's the big difference in laws when it comes to drinking; a 16-year old drinking on the street is perfectly legal in quite a few European countries whereas in the US it would get you arrested on multiple charges. Banking laws are very different as well: I think the recent introduction of MiFID II shows quite clearly that Europe has very different views on regulation. Hell, the new rules on investment research are pretty much opposite to the US ones. GDPR is forcing numerous US companies into complying with European views on privacy. OP is quite right in saying that it's a very US-centric view to think drug policy around the world is mainly caused by race relations in the US.
    - r3bl 8y ago
      Another point of view is recently-introduced SESTA. It was a law intended to stop sex trafficing in the US. Seems like a nice bill, right? Well, as a direct consequence of it, sites like Backpage got shut down and reddit banned loads and loads of communities that were used by sex workers in countries across Europe where sex work is as legal as it can get. Sex workers were simply cut off of their usual ways of communicating between each other and attracting customers because of a law in the US. And the reason that the Netherlands always gets mentioned when talking about soft drugs is because it decriminalized marihuana decades ago. In reality, the way they did that was very impractical and open to loopholes that were commonly abused by the coffee shops. Dutch laws on drugs, at their current state, are way worse then the laws in places where marihuana was decriminalized recently. The reason for that is the pressure from the neighbors, because the ability to buy and grow larger quantities + open borders = more work for Belgium and Germany. Let's compare Canada and the Netherlands. Canada: you can grow 4 plants and have up to 30 grams with you for recreational use. The Netherlands: you can grow 2 plants and have up to 5 grams with you at all times. In the Netherlands, these restrictions also apply to the supply side, so coffee shops operate mostly in a shady gray area. In Canada, they're introducing licensed supply chain.
- Arnt 8y ago
  The war on drugs is "very international" if you describe any and every kind of law enforcement as "war". Cannabis is illegal in many countries, including one where a past minister of justice told a story about how he'd been offered cannabis by another parent at his children's school. The parent who offered was a senior policeman. That isn't war.
  - flukus 8y ago
    As opposed to the country leading the charge with a president that "didn't enhale": https://www.google.com.au/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4711887/bill-clinton-didnt-inhale-marijuana-anniversary https://www.google.com.au/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4711887/b...
- doktrin 8y ago
  The US has unquestionably played an outsized role in shaping international drug policy over the last 100 years. I'm also pretty sure that the 'war on drugs' is a uniquely American phrase, and if it isn't it was certainly coined and popularised there.
  - justaguyhere 8y ago
    "war on <<insert something here that isn't actual war>>" is uniquely American, examples include drugs, obesity, poverty etc. I've never heard this phrase used elsewhere. Why everything needs to be a "war", I don't understand
- ada1981 8y ago
  The parent comment is correct. It’s not even a controversial position, as it’s been stated publically by the people who crafted and implemented the legislation that this was the stated aim. And the US demanded that other countries adopt our drug policy laws and they followed our lead. This cognitive censorship is something to be outraged about - flies directly in the face of the Establishment Clause of the first Amemdment and is deeply detrimental to our democracy. Even William F. Buckley was against the War On Drugs. What we ought to pour those resources into is a “War on Trauma” (if we still require branding things as a ‘war’ to garner political support.) Trauma is what underpins the majority of mental health issues including depression, suicide, and addiction. Drugs without trauma isn’t a problem, it’s when the drugs become a proxy for self regulation that we run into issues.
  - yodsanklai 8y ago
    > And the US demanded that other countries adopt our drug policy laws and they followed our lead. I know it's a common meme on HN but I find it hard to believe that the whole world decided to ban cannabis just because the US wanted to. It may have been a contributing/deciding factor in some places but there must be more to it.
    - ada1981 8y ago
      I don’t think policy happens in a vacuum. And I imagine the same forces were are work in other counties as well — drug laws are a great way to keep young people and minorities disempowered and to preserve institutional power. >> A top Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, later admitted: “You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. <<
    - workinthehead 8y ago
- wavefunction 8y ago
  The term you're using (war on drugs) is an American notion. No one is claiming that all drug prohibition is due to American efforts but we've been 'successful' in exporting and reinforcing the insane attitude for decades around the world.
rayiner 8y ago
The last point is unsupportable. The increase in crime rate started in the 1960s: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/2016/07/Violent-Crime-Rate-Chart1.png https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/2016/07/Violent-Crim.... By 1982, when Reagan declared the war on drugs, violent crime had nearly quadrupled since 1960, and was near the eventual 1992 peak. It had already more than doubled by 1972 when Nixon first used the phrase “war on drugs” (though it wasn’t Reagan that actually waged that war). An explanation that fits the data better is that drugs were a scapegoat for a distingegrating society and an explosion in crime.
- pimlottc 8y ago
  Your link shows violent crime. Parent comment addressed drug crimes. It’s not clear to me how related those two things are.
  - dmix 8y ago
    It's popularily known the rise in violence and gun related homicides in the 1980s-1990s coincided with the explosion of crack cocaine (and a lesser extent heroin) and the proliferation of modern street gangs as we know them today (ie. bloods, crips, bd, gd, etc) in urban ghettos. It's not difficult to find stats showing the vast majority of victims of violent crime happen in the same neighborhoods where drugs and drug sales coexist. Whether or not it's directly related it's at least a significant driving factor financing violent criminals and intertwined into related cultures as 'respected' professions.
- ynniv 8y ago
  An explanation that fits the data better Only if you ignore the overwhelming racial bias in enforcement.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    How did racial bias in enforcement cause violent crime rates to skyrocket starting in the 1960s when the drug war was initiated in the 1980s?
FidelCashflow 8y ago
It seems less than coincidental that your second poll was in the late 80's when the crack epidemic was in full swing. Parallel that to the opiate of now, and I think the dramatic swing can be normalized quite a lot.
dalbasal 8y ago
This is (imo) a terrible failing in our political thinking. We narrate our stories using abstractions & personifications, mixing symbolic and regular language. What we end up is more poetry than anything. It sounds good when it expresses our feelings. This is (to quote Monty python) no basis for a system of government (or thought). What/who's intention was it, that you mention above? Are we talking about actual individuals collaborating knowingly to achieve these goals or is this a "nation weeps" sort of abstraction. What, in less poetic terms does "the real goal" really mean? How does this explain drug policies in Japan or Azerbaijan? I mean, I definitely agree that Machiavellian dynamics were involved. Electoral feedback loops. Racism. All these played a role. But.. when someone insists about the "real reason" without demystifying the abstractions... I think we've left the realm or rational discussion. We're in religion territory.
- zajd 8y ago
  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281296850_Drug_abuse_and_anti-drug_policy_in_Japan_Past_history_and_future_directions https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281296850_Drug_abus... > The paper argues that Japan's 'war on drugs' in the 1980s was a direct result of pressure from the United States to adopt harsher sanctions and from a punitive Japanese public that associates drug use with poor self-control. I think you'll find a similar story elsewhere
  - dalbasal 8y ago
    I suspect you will, if you're goal is to find a "connect the dots" narrative eminating from some centre. We can argue about which dots and which lines are more important, but before all that... What is that centre, in nonsymbolic language? Actual people who consciously designed a plan to terrorise and marginalize minorities? I don't think that's what the op (or the writers he cites) are claiming. I suspect what they mean is more abstract. Something like: The biases, concious or otherwise permeating society influenced the decision making in such a way as to... IE a personification.
- zachrose 8y ago
  Forgive me for not having more details on hand right now. So far in my reading of her book, Alexander’s thesis has three main prongs of support. The first is historical. When we look back at Jim Crow, do we say that grandfather clauses and literacy tests were about improving the quality of citizen engagement at the polls? Of course not. Jim Crow was designed to reaffirm a racial hierarchy within the constraints of the new constitutional amendments. Is it inconceivable that we would get policies designed to reaffirm racial hierarchy in the colorblind constraints of the civil rights movement? The second is rhetorical. What specific appeals did politicians make to support the War on Drugs? What images did they use? And the third, as a comment below points out, are the results of the drug war. Was it carried out in a racially evenhanded manner? The War on Drugs is large enough that there can be no smoking gun tape of politicians conspiring to pull one over on society and do the racism again.
andrepd 8y ago
This documentary opened my eyes to a lot of issues I didn't know existed. A good starting point that led me to read more about this. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5895028/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5895028/
refurb 8y ago
I know HN likes to simplify complex issues so that they can tie a nice bow on it, but claiming the driver of drug prohibition is incarceration of minorities is a massive and inaccurate simplification. Were there people who had racist views about drug use? Sure. Is that the main reason why we have drug prohibition? No.

flukus 8y ago

This is a very US centric view but the war on drugs is very international. Cannabis is illegal in most of the world where Americas race relations simply aren't issues, so I really don't buy into this reasoning. This is good old moral superiority at work.

superflyguy 8y ago
You're both right. The origins are racial ("Chasing the scream" by Hari is another good resource here) and the brainwashing was successful so for a while now we're stuck with the consequences. When the old stupid racists (who voted for Brexit) finally die (not so long hopefully) younger people (more likely to use or know someone who uses) will legalise it. Politicians just reflect society; it's not true that a clear majority of UK voters want cannabis legal so it's not worth May going against the old farts and the media etc.
- wsc981 8y ago
  ... When the old stupid racists (who voted for Brexit) finally die (not so long hopefully) ... Over 50% of Great-Britain is stupid and racist? You have a source for this claim?
  - isostatic 8y ago
    Old stupid racists most likely voted for brexit. Other people also voted for brexit, including young stupid racists, middle aged opportunistic millionaires, people who wanted to vote against Cameron, and other groups. Overall only 26% voted for brexit, and many of those "old stupid racists" have since died, so no, it's nowhere near 50% of the United Kingdom and Gibraltar that are "old stupid racists".
  - flukus 8y ago
    Anyone without a college education is stupid and racist now. The left has not learned the lessons of brexit and Trump and continue to drive away the working class that they have utter contempt for.
    - rorykoehler 8y ago
      I know plenty of working class brits who are pro EU.
  - lumisota 8y ago
    Regardless of the epithets used to describe them, it's worth remembering that, accounting for turn-out, it was around 37% of the British electorate that voted to leave the EU.
    - rusk 8y ago
      There's no reason to believe that the result as it stands couldn't have been extrapolated across the rest of the population.
      - lumisota 8y ago
- rusk 8y ago
  I would add to this, that there's probably a lot of lobbying at work as well. In my country at least, the lobby groups for that "other recreational drug", alcohol, and the pharmaceutical industry are both very powerful. There are vested interests in not seeing (a) popular recreational use and (b) promising medical applications take hold, precisely because it's something that can just be grown and is difficult to control and profiteer upon. I'll be accused by many people of spouting conspiracy theories but it doesn't require any mental backflips at all to render it plausible so I'm claiming Ogham's.
- mito88 8y ago
  http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/ http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/
maaark 8y ago
America started the war, and pushed it on all its allies.
- nickik 8y ago
  But if it was all about domestic politics then there would have been no reason to to that.
  - fsloth 8y ago
    Except fighting drugs requires international co-operation. Once the officials are legally bound to do something, they will start doing their business as effectively as possible, including, perhaps, feeding back the message to the higher ups that they need international co-operation. The higher ups cannot say "we don't care" because that would immediately politically de-legitimize the drugwar effort. Hence, all policies, despite their true intent, have all sorts of unnecessary appendices unrelated to the original goal.
    - flukus 8y ago
      > Except fighting drugs requires international co-operation. You're not wrong (well you arebecause even that doesn't work), but things like cannabis are entirely domestic so no international cooperation required. The harder stuff typically originated from places that weren't close American allies so our cooperation wasn't particularly important.
      - 3131s 8y ago
        > things like cannabis are entirely domestic Not true at all.
    - nickik 8y ago
      I was responding to the idea that it is not about fighting drugs. > because its goal was to incarcerate, disenfranchise, extort, terrorize, and break apart the families of minorities so that America could retain a racial hierarchy after the civil rights movement IF you believe this then trying to solve the problem at its roots you are undermining your own strategy.
fsloth 8y ago
"This is a very US centric view but the war on drugs is very international." US basically dictates global policies in the block of countries not part of the soviet sphere of influence during the cold war. US defends it's position in the global community using every trick and leverage available. If something is illegal in the US you can be quite assured they will try to apply leverage to make it illegal everywhere else, especially if it's an issue that requires international co-operation - like the war on drugs, for example. For example, the international banking system is basically controlled by US policies. Parties, that do not co-operate and obey US authorities can and will be shut out of the large pool of global financial services that is critical to running businesses effectively. Another effect is the pure cultural force US practices have on the "western block" of countries. Lots of ideas (good or bad) are taken into use in other countries after they become fashionable in the US. You are quite right prudish moral superiority is of course a facet, but that is not the key here, I think.
- koyote 8y ago
  Although the US has a lot of influence on international culture and laws the above is simply not really true. Drug laws in Europe vary wildly between countries, with places like Portgual decriminalising even hard drugs and places like the Netherlands having an open culture when it comes to buying and consuming cannabis and other 'less hard' drugs. Then of course there's the big difference in laws when it comes to drinking; a 16-year old drinking on the street is perfectly legal in quite a few European countries whereas in the US it would get you arrested on multiple charges. Banking laws are very different as well: I think the recent introduction of MiFID II shows quite clearly that Europe has very different views on regulation. Hell, the new rules on investment research are pretty much opposite to the US ones. GDPR is forcing numerous US companies into complying with European views on privacy. OP is quite right in saying that it's a very US-centric view to think drug policy around the world is mainly caused by race relations in the US.
  - r3bl 8y ago
    Another point of view is recently-introduced SESTA. It was a law intended to stop sex trafficing in the US. Seems like a nice bill, right? Well, as a direct consequence of it, sites like Backpage got shut down and reddit banned loads and loads of communities that were used by sex workers in countries across Europe where sex work is as legal as it can get. Sex workers were simply cut off of their usual ways of communicating between each other and attracting customers because of a law in the US. And the reason that the Netherlands always gets mentioned when talking about soft drugs is because it decriminalized marihuana decades ago. In reality, the way they did that was very impractical and open to loopholes that were commonly abused by the coffee shops. Dutch laws on drugs, at their current state, are way worse then the laws in places where marihuana was decriminalized recently. The reason for that is the pressure from the neighbors, because the ability to buy and grow larger quantities + open borders = more work for Belgium and Germany. Let's compare Canada and the Netherlands. Canada: you can grow 4 plants and have up to 30 grams with you for recreational use. The Netherlands: you can grow 2 plants and have up to 5 grams with you at all times. In the Netherlands, these restrictions also apply to the supply side, so coffee shops operate mostly in a shady gray area. In Canada, they're introducing licensed supply chain.
Arnt 8y ago
The war on drugs is "very international" if you describe any and every kind of law enforcement as "war". Cannabis is illegal in many countries, including one where a past minister of justice told a story about how he'd been offered cannabis by another parent at his children's school. The parent who offered was a senior policeman. That isn't war.
- flukus 8y ago
  As opposed to the country leading the charge with a president that "didn't enhale": https://www.google.com.au/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4711887/bill-clinton-didnt-inhale-marijuana-anniversary https://www.google.com.au/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4711887/b...
doktrin 8y ago
The US has unquestionably played an outsized role in shaping international drug policy over the last 100 years. I'm also pretty sure that the 'war on drugs' is a uniquely American phrase, and if it isn't it was certainly coined and popularised there.
- justaguyhere 8y ago
  "war on <<insert something here that isn't actual war>>" is uniquely American, examples include drugs, obesity, poverty etc. I've never heard this phrase used elsewhere. Why everything needs to be a "war", I don't understand
ada1981 8y ago
The parent comment is correct. It’s not even a controversial position, as it’s been stated publically by the people who crafted and implemented the legislation that this was the stated aim. And the US demanded that other countries adopt our drug policy laws and they followed our lead. This cognitive censorship is something to be outraged about - flies directly in the face of the Establishment Clause of the first Amemdment and is deeply detrimental to our democracy. Even William F. Buckley was against the War On Drugs. What we ought to pour those resources into is a “War on Trauma” (if we still require branding things as a ‘war’ to garner political support.) Trauma is what underpins the majority of mental health issues including depression, suicide, and addiction. Drugs without trauma isn’t a problem, it’s when the drugs become a proxy for self regulation that we run into issues.
- yodsanklai 8y ago
  > And the US demanded that other countries adopt our drug policy laws and they followed our lead. I know it's a common meme on HN but I find it hard to believe that the whole world decided to ban cannabis just because the US wanted to. It may have been a contributing/deciding factor in some places but there must be more to it.
  - ada1981 8y ago
    I don’t think policy happens in a vacuum. And I imagine the same forces were are work in other counties as well — drug laws are a great way to keep young people and minorities disempowered and to preserve institutional power. >> A top Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, later admitted: “You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. <<
  - workinthehead 8y ago
wavefunction 8y ago
The term you're using (war on drugs) is an American notion. No one is claiming that all drug prohibition is due to American efforts but we've been 'successful' in exporting and reinforcing the insane attitude for decades around the world.

rayiner 8y ago

The last point is unsupportable. The increase in crime rate started in the 1960s: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/2016/07/Violent-Crime-Rate-Chart1.png https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/2016/07/Violent-Crim.... By 1982, when Reagan declared the war on drugs, violent crime had nearly quadrupled since 1960, and was near the eventual 1992 peak. It had already more than doubled by 1972 when Nixon first used the phrase “war on drugs” (though it wasn’t Reagan that actually waged that war). An explanation that fits the data better is that drugs were a scapegoat for a distingegrating society and an explosion in crime.

pimlottc 8y ago
Your link shows violent crime. Parent comment addressed drug crimes. It’s not clear to me how related those two things are.
- dmix 8y ago
  It's popularily known the rise in violence and gun related homicides in the 1980s-1990s coincided with the explosion of crack cocaine (and a lesser extent heroin) and the proliferation of modern street gangs as we know them today (ie. bloods, crips, bd, gd, etc) in urban ghettos. It's not difficult to find stats showing the vast majority of victims of violent crime happen in the same neighborhoods where drugs and drug sales coexist. Whether or not it's directly related it's at least a significant driving factor financing violent criminals and intertwined into related cultures as 'respected' professions.
ynniv 8y ago
An explanation that fits the data better Only if you ignore the overwhelming racial bias in enforcement.
- rayiner 8y ago
  How did racial bias in enforcement cause violent crime rates to skyrocket starting in the 1960s when the drug war was initiated in the 1980s?

FidelCashflow 8y ago

It seems less than coincidental that your second poll was in the late 80's when the crack epidemic was in full swing. Parallel that to the opiate of now, and I think the dramatic swing can be normalized quite a lot.

dalbasal 8y ago

This is (imo) a terrible failing in our political thinking. We narrate our stories using abstractions & personifications, mixing symbolic and regular language. What we end up is more poetry than anything. It sounds good when it expresses our feelings. This is (to quote Monty python) no basis for a system of government (or thought). What/who's intention was it, that you mention above? Are we talking about actual individuals collaborating knowingly to achieve these goals or is this a "nation weeps" sort of abstraction. What, in less poetic terms does "the real goal" really mean? How does this explain drug policies in Japan or Azerbaijan? I mean, I definitely agree that Machiavellian dynamics were involved. Electoral feedback loops. Racism. All these played a role. But.. when someone insists about the "real reason" without demystifying the abstractions... I think we've left the realm or rational discussion. We're in religion territory.

zajd 8y ago
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281296850_Drug_abuse_and_anti-drug_policy_in_Japan_Past_history_and_future_directions https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281296850_Drug_abus... > The paper argues that Japan's 'war on drugs' in the 1980s was a direct result of pressure from the United States to adopt harsher sanctions and from a punitive Japanese public that associates drug use with poor self-control. I think you'll find a similar story elsewhere
- dalbasal 8y ago
  I suspect you will, if you're goal is to find a "connect the dots" narrative eminating from some centre. We can argue about which dots and which lines are more important, but before all that... What is that centre, in nonsymbolic language? Actual people who consciously designed a plan to terrorise and marginalize minorities? I don't think that's what the op (or the writers he cites) are claiming. I suspect what they mean is more abstract. Something like: The biases, concious or otherwise permeating society influenced the decision making in such a way as to... IE a personification.
zachrose 8y ago
Forgive me for not having more details on hand right now. So far in my reading of her book, Alexander’s thesis has three main prongs of support. The first is historical. When we look back at Jim Crow, do we say that grandfather clauses and literacy tests were about improving the quality of citizen engagement at the polls? Of course not. Jim Crow was designed to reaffirm a racial hierarchy within the constraints of the new constitutional amendments. Is it inconceivable that we would get policies designed to reaffirm racial hierarchy in the colorblind constraints of the civil rights movement? The second is rhetorical. What specific appeals did politicians make to support the War on Drugs? What images did they use? And the third, as a comment below points out, are the results of the drug war. Was it carried out in a racially evenhanded manner? The War on Drugs is large enough that there can be no smoking gun tape of politicians conspiring to pull one over on society and do the racism again.

andrepd 8y ago

This documentary opened my eyes to a lot of issues I didn't know existed. A good starting point that led me to read more about this. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5895028/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5895028/

refurb 8y ago

I know HN likes to simplify complex issues so that they can tie a nice bow on it, but claiming the driver of drug prohibition is incarceration of minorities is a massive and inaccurate simplification. Were there people who had racist views about drug use? Sure. Is that the main reason why we have drug prohibition? No.