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Had anybody actually talked to anti-drug folks (productively) about these issues? There's a lack of conservatives in my life, so I can't really get their views

by kiba 8y ago

Had anybody actually talked to anti-drug folks (productively) about these issues? There's a lack of conservatives in my life, so I can't really get their views on topics like immigration and drugs. So I feel like I am living in a bubble.

fhbdukfrh 8y ago
Socially I'm pretty liberal but the idea of providing free hard drugs to addicts is really hard to accept intuitively, despite a lot of evidence that it works best at a macro level. It's also not a clean win. Open a safe injection site and crime and public disobedience goes up in the immediate community. So maybe society is better off, but your neighborhood is substantially worse off. Or you visit the emergency room with a serious but deemed non-life threatening condition and wait 6 hours because all the EMTs are coming in with fentanyl overdoses. These are hard problems that are charged with emotion. You can strongly disagree with prohibitionists, but it's not fair to entirely discount their viewpoint
- P_I_Staker 8y ago
  Eh, some of these problems can be written off as happening no matter what you do. The big question is the effect of lax policy on use and/or crime; does it increase, decrease, or stay the same; and by how much? Even this question isn't a simple number, as types of drugs and mode of use can be different. I have gotten into it with people that feel full legalization is a "quick and easy" fix. So you really feel it would be a great idea for anyone to be able to walk into a store and buy fentanyl or crystal meth? You don't see any issues with this? Even in this case we have to talk things like price controls. Do you keep prices low to prevent people turning to crime to fund their habit? Or higher to discourage heavy use? There's no quick and easy answer to the Drugs issue, and I'm sick of people on both sides that like to pretend there is, for ideological reasons.
steve76 8y ago
Have you ever took care of people who did drugs? I have trouble being with people who sold alcohol. The greatest mind nature has ever produced, and that's what you do with it. We help them as best as they can, hope they change, but really not hard to take one person out when everyone else despises them. Decisions at the top are a lot more callous than you think, and they're not going away anytime soon, and it isn't some popularity contest.
GuB-42 8y ago
About drugs: harsh penalties against drug use mean less drug abuse. And drug abuse is a problem. I've seen a few conferences at Boom festival and even though it may be the most drug-friendly place imaginable, even they acknowledge the need for control and the potential for abuse. Doing nothing about is it not a reasonable option. Where opinions differ is on how to address the problem. Harm prevention vs harm reduction. Harm prevention is the "conservative" view: drug is bad, do everything we can to prevent people from using it. Harm reduction is the idea that people will try to get high no matter what, and focus on making sure people don't kill themselves or others while doing so. These approaches are mutually exclusive: you can't prevent substance abuse while at the same time helping people doing it "the right way". That's why there is a debate. About immigration: do you want some stranger to live into your home. Opinion on immigration is just a large scale version of that. One view is "Do not want, he is loud and doesn't pay the rent", the other is "Cool, he is interesting and he cooks really well". Both are true, choose your side, or be somewhere in the middle.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- boomboomsubban 8y ago
  >harsh penalties against drug use mean less drug abuse. Do you have a source for that? As drug abuse has been on the rise in the US for a while, and in general harsher sentences don't reduce crime. >Where opinions differ is on how to address the problem. Harm prevention vs harm reduction. Harm prevention is the "conservative" view: drug is bad, do everything we can to prevent people from using it. Harm reduction is the idea that people will try to get high no matter what, and focus on making sure people don't kill themselves or others while doing so. It's more, "let's do things we think will prevent people from using drugs, accept the negative side effects those things cause, and lock up those that still end up doing drugs" vs "encourage people not to do drugs, and keep those that end up using safe while they hopefully recover." Harm prevention and reduction are not mutually exclusive, you prevent as many people as you can from ending up in a bad situation and still help those that need it.

by kiba 8y ago

fhbdukfrh 8y ago

Socially I'm pretty liberal but the idea of providing free hard drugs to addicts is really hard to accept intuitively, despite a lot of evidence that it works best at a macro level. It's also not a clean win. Open a safe injection site and crime and public disobedience goes up in the immediate community. So maybe society is better off, but your neighborhood is substantially worse off. Or you visit the emergency room with a serious but deemed non-life threatening condition and wait 6 hours because all the EMTs are coming in with fentanyl overdoses. These are hard problems that are charged with emotion. You can strongly disagree with prohibitionists, but it's not fair to entirely discount their viewpoint

P_I_Staker 8y ago
Eh, some of these problems can be written off as happening no matter what you do. The big question is the effect of lax policy on use and/or crime; does it increase, decrease, or stay the same; and by how much? Even this question isn't a simple number, as types of drugs and mode of use can be different. I have gotten into it with people that feel full legalization is a "quick and easy" fix. So you really feel it would be a great idea for anyone to be able to walk into a store and buy fentanyl or crystal meth? You don't see any issues with this? Even in this case we have to talk things like price controls. Do you keep prices low to prevent people turning to crime to fund their habit? Or higher to discourage heavy use? There's no quick and easy answer to the Drugs issue, and I'm sick of people on both sides that like to pretend there is, for ideological reasons.

steve76 8y ago

Have you ever took care of people who did drugs? I have trouble being with people who sold alcohol. The greatest mind nature has ever produced, and that's what you do with it. We help them as best as they can, hope they change, but really not hard to take one person out when everyone else despises them. Decisions at the top are a lot more callous than you think, and they're not going away anytime soon, and it isn't some popularity contest.

GuB-42 8y ago

About drugs: harsh penalties against drug use mean less drug abuse. And drug abuse is a problem. I've seen a few conferences at Boom festival and even though it may be the most drug-friendly place imaginable, even they acknowledge the need for control and the potential for abuse. Doing nothing about is it not a reasonable option. Where opinions differ is on how to address the problem. Harm prevention vs harm reduction. Harm prevention is the "conservative" view: drug is bad, do everything we can to prevent people from using it. Harm reduction is the idea that people will try to get high no matter what, and focus on making sure people don't kill themselves or others while doing so. These approaches are mutually exclusive: you can't prevent substance abuse while at the same time helping people doing it "the right way". That's why there is a debate. About immigration: do you want some stranger to live into your home. Opinion on immigration is just a large scale version of that. One view is "Do not want, he is loud and doesn't pay the rent", the other is "Cool, he is interesting and he cooks really well". Both are true, choose your side, or be somewhere in the middle.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
boomboomsubban 8y ago
>harsh penalties against drug use mean less drug abuse. Do you have a source for that? As drug abuse has been on the rise in the US for a while, and in general harsher sentences don't reduce crime. >Where opinions differ is on how to address the problem. Harm prevention vs harm reduction. Harm prevention is the "conservative" view: drug is bad, do everything we can to prevent people from using it. Harm reduction is the idea that people will try to get high no matter what, and focus on making sure people don't kill themselves or others while doing so. It's more, "let's do things we think will prevent people from using drugs, accept the negative side effects those things cause, and lock up those that still end up doing drugs" vs "encourage people not to do drugs, and keep those that end up using safe while they hopefully recover." Harm prevention and reduction are not mutually exclusive, you prevent as many people as you can from ending up in a bad situation and still help those that need it.