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Unfortunately, I think for many in America, the conversation need not even advance to discussing efficiency, effectiveness or value. Government propaganda, a g

Unfortunately, I think for many in America, the conversation need not even advance to discussing efficiency, effectiveness or value. Government propaganda, a good deal of it channelled through TV and Hollywood have so thuroughly established unrepentant drug users as villians that many people want it prosecuted on its face for its immorality. Lawmakers find it difficult to let up on drug crimes because they are quickly painted as weak and enablers of other crimes. It's the same tirh the death penalty. The problems with it are plain for all to see. But lawmakers feel the need to signal the virtue of "justice" or "strength" and enough voters still respond to that signal. Even in the supposedly lefty stare of Washington where I reside, progress on criminal justice issues has been glacially slow.

dstick 6y ago
Agreed. Which in my view stems from the perverse need to simplify everything. Some things just aren’t simple. The “solution” of locking someone up and then walking away is easier than it is to help someone, work through relapses and end up with a healthy individual after X years. The latter is obviously better, and cheaper, but it costs patience and empathy. Things that are in short supply these days.
bismuthsalt 6y ago
The conversation in America, on any topic, is between two extreme sides which get further apart and further unreasonable as time passes. Fast forwarding circa 2021, one side wants to throw anyone with 1g of marijuana in a 30ft radius from their car into jail for 10 years, the other wants free heroin dispensing machines in schools. More seriously, the big distinction is between drug users and drug dealers. The former are usually victims and deserve our collective help, the latter are usually predators and deserve to rot in jail. I haven't followed Hollywood in the past decade, but in my recollection Hollywood used to correctly vilify drug dealers.
- severine 6y ago
  > the other wants free heroin dispensing machines in schools. Even followed with a "more seriosly", that's an unfair and misleading representation.
  - bismuthsalt 6y ago
    Less than you'd think. Circa 2020, some mainstream positions in a west coast city that is politically 85% leftwing: * Cannabis already legalized. Driving kids to school past huge "Amazing Cannabis" posters all over the city. * De facto policy to not interfere with the ever growing mass of homeless addicts in the streets. Next steps: * Legalize all drugs. * State sponsored "safe" injection sites. * Abolish the police. The only stretch is "in schools". There is a palpable sense of a loss of any and all moral barriers. Worse, erst shunned behaviors must be promoted, if only to spite the other side. In the wake of sexual liberation we got free condom dispensers in schools. Not much of a stretch to imagine that drug liberation, the next Chesterton fence to tear down, will bring free drug dispensers. Teach abstinence? Pshaw, that'll never work. Addiction therapy? That's evil, man.
    - DubiousPusher 6y ago
      I live on the West Coast in one of those "85% leftwing" cities. None of the power structures are made up of anything like a majority advocating those things: state, county nor city. Our county has attempted to open two whole safe injection sites and it has been extremely contentious. There is absolutely no political will to abolish the police. The single city council member who advocated ir is now in a recall fight. Public users are left to their devices perhaps in part out of some attempt at humanity but there is budgetary pressure for this as well. The county jails are routinely overfull and the police would rather hold more dangerous offenders there. Just because people don't go around clutching their pearls at the sight of people using drugs on the street doesn't mean they are indifferent or in support. When I go to the beach I get sand in my shorts but I don't write my congressman about it. You can agree or disagree with the the policies. You can praise or bemoan the outcome of policy. But you are weaving circumstance and conditions into a tapestry of intent.

dstick 6y ago

Agreed. Which in my view stems from the perverse need to simplify everything. Some things just aren’t simple. The “solution” of locking someone up and then walking away is easier than it is to help someone, work through relapses and end up with a healthy individual after X years. The latter is obviously better, and cheaper, but it costs patience and empathy. Things that are in short supply these days.

bismuthsalt 6y ago

The conversation in America, on any topic, is between two extreme sides which get further apart and further unreasonable as time passes. Fast forwarding circa 2021, one side wants to throw anyone with 1g of marijuana in a 30ft radius from their car into jail for 10 years, the other wants free heroin dispensing machines in schools. More seriously, the big distinction is between drug users and drug dealers. The former are usually victims and deserve our collective help, the latter are usually predators and deserve to rot in jail. I haven't followed Hollywood in the past decade, but in my recollection Hollywood used to correctly vilify drug dealers.

severine 6y ago
> the other wants free heroin dispensing machines in schools. Even followed with a "more seriosly", that's an unfair and misleading representation.
- bismuthsalt 6y ago
  Less than you'd think. Circa 2020, some mainstream positions in a west coast city that is politically 85% leftwing: * Cannabis already legalized. Driving kids to school past huge "Amazing Cannabis" posters all over the city. * De facto policy to not interfere with the ever growing mass of homeless addicts in the streets. Next steps: * Legalize all drugs. * State sponsored "safe" injection sites. * Abolish the police. The only stretch is "in schools". There is a palpable sense of a loss of any and all moral barriers. Worse, erst shunned behaviors must be promoted, if only to spite the other side. In the wake of sexual liberation we got free condom dispensers in schools. Not much of a stretch to imagine that drug liberation, the next Chesterton fence to tear down, will bring free drug dispensers. Teach abstinence? Pshaw, that'll never work. Addiction therapy? That's evil, man.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    I live on the West Coast in one of those "85% leftwing" cities. None of the power structures are made up of anything like a majority advocating those things: state, county nor city. Our county has attempted to open two whole safe injection sites and it has been extremely contentious. There is absolutely no political will to abolish the police. The single city council member who advocated ir is now in a recall fight. Public users are left to their devices perhaps in part out of some attempt at humanity but there is budgetary pressure for this as well. The county jails are routinely overfull and the police would rather hold more dangerous offenders there. Just because people don't go around clutching their pearls at the sight of people using drugs on the street doesn't mean they are indifferent or in support. When I go to the beach I get sand in my shorts but I don't write my congressman about it. You can agree or disagree with the the policies. You can praise or bemoan the outcome of policy. But you are weaving circumstance and conditions into a tapestry of intent.