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The year Mexico legalised drugs
- njn 8y agothe same old story: the US ruins everything. Why was I born here again? fml
- dfee 8y ago> Just five days after the introduction of the law, the US state department invoked the 1935 amendments to the Law of Importation and Exportation of Narcotic Drugs. The amendments allowed the US to establish an export embargo on narcotics like morphine and cocaine when it deemed the objectives of a country to be neither medical nor scientific. A state has no right to manage its narcotics exports? > Early 1930s Japan is the world’s leading cocaine producer (23.3%) followed by the United States (21.3%), Germany (15%), U.K. (9.9%), France (8.3%). [1] [1] https://www.narconon.org/drug-information/cocaine-timeline.html https://www.narconon.org/drug-information/cocaine-timeline.h...
- jessaustin 8y agoA state has no right... What state was this? Was a vote held? A law passed? No. This was one asshole LEO, Anslinger, just like lots of other asshole LEOs before and since. The reason that religion invented hell, was so we could savor the idea of this banal excrescence burning there as the decades pass and the death toll of his evil manipulation rises.
- everdev 8y agoThe US certainly isn't perfect, but many other global powers throughout history have made their fair share of catastrophic mistakes that changed history.
- stretchwithme 8y agoI can't think of another great power I'd rather had won World War 2. Even those countries it defeated were prosperous in a couple of decades. Contrast that with how France treated Germany after World War 1 or how the Russians subjugated eastern Europe. Not to mention what would have happened if Germany had won. Still, the drug war has been a huge waste of energy. It enriches some very evil people. And actually makes these drugs much more dangerous, as potency is all over the map as a result of it being illegal.
- gardnr 8y agoAre you specifically excluding the last few decades from your evaluation of the negative impact that the USA foreign policy has had on humanity?
- dang 8y agoWould you please not post nationalistic flamebait here? That's definitely not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- partycoder 8y agoThe British East India Company, the largest drug trading organization of the 19th century, is to be blamed for most of modern drug trade. It is very likely that the opium poppies in modern Mexico are direct descendants of the ones planted by the British. After the British lost their colonies in the Americas, they tried to fix their economy by selling opium to China. A few decades later, many Chinese workers moved to the Americas, among them, opium poppy planters. Few decades later, the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act and many of them moved to Mexico. Total death toll? millions of people. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgQahGsYokU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgQahGsYokU (animated explanation)
- matthewwiese 8y agoFascinating. I've always had an amateur historian bent when it comes to drug history, especially that of Papaver somniferum. From writing about laudanum label designs in my design history class to reading Steven Martin's Opium Fiend novel detailing his addiction to smoking opium like they did in the 19th century, I've had a peculiar fascination with this substance's history despite my only actual experience being with morphine before an appendectomy surgery. You seem knowledgeable about the history in this case. Any suggestions for further reading?
- partycoder 8y agoI just casually history-related articles online. In this case, deep historic knowledge is not required to arrive to this conclusion. In my case, questions such as: "what happened to the British empire after losing the American revolutionary war?" eventually led me to learn about that.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoDon't forget to mention that the independent USA tried to compete in the Opium Wars selling middle eastern opium to China.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoI get that the trade imbalance meant that BEIC/Britain looked for something other than silver to trade. But wasn't Qing (?) China closed? AIUI they traded with Chinese merchants at designated ports, trading opium to get tea. The Chinese then traded the drugs on. Three things that don't make sense to me in the "traditional" telling of "Britain purposefully created opium _addiction_ across China". * One, that opium addiction was a new idea, opium was widely used in Britain. * Two, how did merchants at the ports create demand in the interior, surely they met demand outcompeting local sources on cost and so widening the market. * Three, after Britain was shut out of the trade China seemingly already had a massive local supply. These things tend to make me think that in some measure the Chinese closed the ports in order to prevent cheaper product from supplying an already established and widespread market. And yet, I've read, once that BEIC supply was stopped the Chinese maintained the market with local supply. Are their letters/papers where controllers of BEIC talk about addiction? Did they 'just' look for a large market that they could undercut? It seems more like a tale of amoral merchants (of many nationalities), rather than evil Britain. But I'm from the UK (which does and has done plenty of evil things, selling weapons to the Saudis when we know they're using then to kill civilians, for example). [banter] Of course the British are still addicted to tea, but we diversified our supply somewhat. Having comestibles disposed of in the sea seems like a repeating theme - perhaps the Dutch will sink our potato shipments after Brexit.[/banter]
- stretchwithme 8y agoI think the right approach to drugs is to regulate use by neighborhood. And with monetary fines only. Outright bans cause too many problems. Illegal production makes drugs more dangerous. And allowing everything has some social costs too. Each approach eventually leads to many people wanting the opposite policy, so it will just go back and forth. Regulating it by neighborhood will allow people to keep drug abuse away from their kids, while still allowing those who want to use drugs to access it without too much trouble. They can just travel to a neighborhood where it's allowed. Avoiding fines will give them an incentive. Neighborhoods that do allow drug use will pick which drugs to allow and be able to tax the activity and have rules to handle the activity. There are red light districts for prostitution. Why not handle drug use the same way?
- skol 8y agoHamsterdam?
- tomc1985 8y agoCity governments may very likely choose to have no (as in zero) districts, effectively banning the activity. It's happening much like this with cannabis legalization in California.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 8y ago> I think the right approach to drugs is to regulate use by neighborhood. And with monetary fines only. So, if you have the money to pay the fine without breaking a sweat, you just ignore the rule. > Regulating it by neighborhood will allow people to keep drug abuse away from their kids No, it won't. For much the same reason local fireworks bans don't, except drug use is a lot easier to conceal. > Neighborhoods that do allow drug use will pick which drugs to allow and be able to tax the activity No, they won't, for the same reason neighborhood bans don't work. It's impossible to police effectively. Maybe areas that allow drug sales will be able to tax (some of) it (but any tax in the “legal” area directly reduces the impact of fines in the “illegal” area, and even people who go wholly legal will shift activity to the lowest tax areas available; you might also look into what a big business cigarette smuggling to avoid taxes is.)
- jath2 8y ago…there was no intrinsic link between drug addiction and criminality. In fact, it was only the high price of drugs, generated by prohibition, that led users to commit crimes, he said. This statement is a real eye opener for me.
- craftyguy 8y agoThe US government learned this with the prohibition of alchohol in the early 20th century, then promptly forgot it.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoOr used it to incarcerate a portion of the population and use it as an excuse to violate people's rights. Although it's unnecessary now that we can use terrorism as an even better excuse.
- chupasaurus 8y agoDon't forget Cocaine Importing Agency!
- api 8y agoCriminal drug prohibition belongs to a whole category of policy ideas that don't work and cause tremendous harm and yet are tried over and over and over again for ideological reasons. Others include things like (to be equal opportunity and criticize both left-wing and right-wing ones) abstinence based sexual education, rent control and price controls generally, extreme trade protectionism, military driven attempts to re-make foreign societies, full scale command economies, legislating religious and social customs, etc.
- tomohawk 8y agoGiven the choice between not being able to get adequate pain relief due to DEA intervention, and legalizing drugs, I would choose legalizing them, provided legalizing them would not limit dosage to insufficient levels for pain relief. It is incomprehensible to me that it is somehow acceptable to solve the "opioid crisis" by making people with serious pain suffer and by persecuting their doctors for trying to help them. However, it would be totally appropriate to allow limits on employment, insurance, and government benefits due to drug use. While I support their right to choose, I shouldn't be required to subsidize someone else's destructive choices.
- soVeryTired 8y agoIf you limit an addict's ability to get medical insurance, you'll end up subsidizing them anyway. Hospitals are prohibited from turning patients away in the US (and I wouldn't want to live in a world where they could do so). So addicts show up, get treated, and default on any bills they incur. The expense from this treatment gets passed on to everyone else. Try visiting an emergency room at 1am on a Saturday night and you'll see what I mean. Incidentally, do you have the same views on employment, insurance, and government benefits as they pertain to alcohol consumption?
- JudasGoat 8y agoAlthough "Hospitals are prohibited from turning patients away in the US (and I wouldn't want to live in a world where they could do so)." is technically true. For instance if you have aquired Hepatitis C and went to a hospital in the US with no insurance, they will not consider treatment to cure the disease. They will help make you comfortable with your chronic disease until it kills you.
- maxerickson 8y agoMedicaid is one of the largest buyers of the Hep C cure.
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- stuaxo 8y agoAnd they had to stop because of the US... no surprise there.
- xtracto 8y agoIndeed... Here is hoping that our next president (AMLO) who is kind of leftist and admires Cárdenas, will finally legalize drugs.