8 ms·

Make no mistake, drug suppression benefits many parties: governments to have a tight control over the people (their consciousness), and entities that profit fro

• _fat_santa 6y ago
  I can't help but imagine in 20-30 years the wold is going to on an "Apology Tour" over cannabis. The dam has broken on cannabis legalization, and the laws in some of these countries I feel is hanging on by a thread at this point. At some point in the future everyone will come to their senses and were going to have days of remembrance for people that we harmed in the drug war, I hope.
  • Chris2048 6y ago
    It's easy to say "you are on the wrong side of history.". When will the world come to its senses on abortion/meat-eating/capitalism etc?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • nitrogen 6y ago
      It's easy to say "you are on the wrong side of history." Indeed. No matter how convinced I am that I'm right in a discussion with friends/family, if I used a phrase like "right/wrong side of history," I would immediately lose their attention if not their friendship. It's vital to remember why people still disagree with whatever you believe in, rather than just steamroll and ignore them.
    • wcarron 6y ago
      Exactly. When will the world come to its senses on abortion and realize it's the basic human right of a pregnant person to abort a pregnancy they don't want?
      • BrandoElFollito 6y ago
        This, and euthanasia. I fail to understand how a government can dictate whether I choose to live or not. In France there was a law that punished successful suicides, which is the extreme of such ridicule (disclaimer: I am French)
        • petre 6y ago
          How does a law punish one for succesful suicide? Orthodox priests refuse to do funeral service and refuse to burry suicide victims in the cemeteries that they control, as if the deceased even cares.
      • Chris2048 6y ago
        The context didn't require any opinion either way - just a list of contentious issues. There are already plenty threads here and on the net discussing abortion - you are just stating your own beliefs without any justification, or attempt to address the crux of the topic.
  • dillondoyle 6y ago
    I hope it's not going to be so long we have to remember - we need to actively release non-violent, smaller offenders and clear their records.
  • Darmody 6y ago
    I am afraid in 20-30 years we will see the real consequences of smoking cannabis non-stop. I've never seen so many people smoking it as if it was part of their diet. And it's not even legal here.
    • Hallucinaut 6y ago
      Why wait 20 years? Look at Portugal or the Netherlands today.
      • Darmody 6y ago
        The culture surrounding weed was no the same back then. Now they almost want to sell it as a healthy snack.
        • Apocryphon 6y ago
          What about the hippies from the 60s? Surely there are more sample populations.
          • Darmody 6y ago
            Maybe I have a wrong perception but I think weed is more widespread today and more acceptable than it was back then.
            • Tagbert 6y ago
              More widespread and acceptable but that doesn’t mean that individuals are smoking more, just that more people are indulging. Even that may not be a large, overall increase from the studies I’ve seen. The main effect of legalization in our area was that it was no longer hidden.
              • Darmody 6y ago
                More widespread means more people are smoking. And culturally now it's seen as normal as alcohol. Kids here smoke as soon as they start high school, that's around 12-13 years. After a couple years they gather before school starts to smoke, then go to class, then smoke again.
• vixen99 6y ago
  >People die from over-doses because of mis-information and not knowing what they get (from the random guy on the street). Certainly, 81,000 dead in the US during 2020 is a lot of misinformation and ignorance. Presumably these are mostly young lives each with family members having to live with the tragedy. Not all who oppose legalization are from the 'unthinking masses'. Here's an argument from someone who's spent his working life as a psychiatrist working with prisoners and their drug habits. https://www.city-journal.org/html/don%E2%80%99t-legalize-drugs-11758.html https://www.city-journal.org/html/don%E2%80%99t-legalize-dru... "If the war against drugs is lost, then so are the wars against theft, speeding, incest, fraud, rape, murder, arson, and illegal parking."
  • standardUser 6y ago
    I wish this country would wage a war on rape instead of a war on drugs. But it seems to have no interest in that. Obviously the big, glaring, unmissable difference between drug use and the other crimes you've mentioned is that doing drugs is a personal choice that primary impacts the individual whereas every other item on your list is only a crime because it has a victim.
    • pjc50 6y ago
      Merely mentioning rape - the #metoo campaign - and revealing how widespread it was caused meltdowns.
  • ramblerman 6y ago
    81000 is almost a factor 50 higher per capita than portugal which has decriminalized most drugs and treats addicts as people with a health issue, like one might alcoholics. The quote you pulled from the article from 1997 is also pretty pathetic. If the author can't distinguish between a crime where there is a very clear perpetrator and victim (rape/incest/murder) and one where at essence we are talking about self harm (drugs/suicide) the premise leaves a lot to be desired.
  • nvilcins 6y ago
    > Not all who oppose legalization are from the 'unthinking masses'. Not all are, but which of the two do you think really steer the general perception of drugs more?
• nashashmi 6y ago
  > And they will hold the regulation tight as long as they can, regardless of what's actually best for people all things considered. I get dismayed when people think of drugs in terms of social freedom and opposing government. This is quite frankly a highly liberal view. And not one at all in line with the true definition of drugs. Drugs are an intoxicant. They destroy minds. They destroy health. And they can make addicts lose control. Not to mention destroy communities. There are laws on the books specifically for this reason. It affects society. It does not just stop at the individual. There is a reason why neighborhoods around bars fall in value. While those around coffee shops rise in value. Drug users WHO ARE IN CONTROL OF THEMSELVES see rules against drugs as oppressive. But the rules were never made for them! Using drugs is like balancing the tight rope, not something everyone can do. And advocates need to understand this. Lastly comparing illegal intoxicants as similar to legal intoxicants is a poor justification. You try to stretch people’s benign feelings to one form of drugs onto another.
  • sneak 6y ago
    > Drugs are an intoxicant. They destroy minds. They destroy health. And they can make addicts lose control. Not to mention destroy communities. There are laws on the books specifically for this reason. That's simply not true, or there would be laws on the books banning alcohol, too. It's just arbitrary culture bias against certain drugs, weaponized against minorities.
    • awillen 6y ago
      Anyone who opposes the legalization of drugs (especially weed, but lots of others) but drinks/thinks alcohol should remain legal is just an absolute hypocrite.
      • Taylor_OD 6y ago
        Yup. 100%. If you are pro alcohol but anti weed you are either willfully ignorant or a hypocrite. I've partaken in both heavily in the past and now partake in neither but if I was going to casually pick one up again for social reasons weed would have a far lessor impact negatively on my life.
• passtheglass 6y ago
  I agree with your point, but many Asian countrys' pouplaces' attitudes to drugs are deeply influenced by the damage caused by British opium trade. It is more deeply rooted than a problem of education I think, unlike in the West.
  • nvilcins 6y ago
    > I agree with your point, but many Asian countrys' pouplaces' attitudes to drugs are deeply influenced by the damage caused by British opium trade. It is more deeply rooted than a problem of education I think, unlike in the West. Deep emotional pain is simultaneously (a) completely understandable and needs compassion, and (b) not the best tool base decisions on. I think the real question is how can we shape the conversation to, well, be a conversation. P.S. (At least to my experience with people from some Asian countries) the newer generation does not have that emotional connection, but they do repeat those same old (false) arguments, almost religiously.
    • bobthepanda 6y ago
      I’m not familiar with Malaysia, but as far as I know Singapore, Japan, Korea, China certainly have educational systems that push conformity towards group values. (And high rates of bullying for those who stick out.) The other thing is that unfamiliarity breeds resentment. It is, and was, a lot easier to get weed in the US than it is in a lot of Asian countries, and so most people don’t have a nice person they know who smokes weed. Whereas even if you don’t smoke in the US, it really isn’t that hard to find someone who smokes weed, and a fair amount, if not most, are just average people.
• eternalban 6y ago
  Drugs affect behavior. Drugs that historically were assimilated via elaborate cultural mechanisms -- such as alcohol, beer, harvest, festival, +folk remedies for overdose -- are part of the societal matrix and accounted for. No one really (really, outside of comical personalities) ultimately cares about "tight control [over others'] consciousness". People who care about societal order care about 'understood' phenomena and pervasive cultural mechanisms to sublimate its effects. Even assimilated drugs (again alcohol) still cause societal ills, even with literally thousands of years of usage experience. A drug that makes you bliss out is perfectly fine for you, but a society of blissed out slackers could be looking for future trouble. That is really the legitimate basis for minimally thinking about the wide spread use of drug X (that affects behavior). That should not be controversial. Our modern additional factor is that there are for profit entities that also produce "medicinal" synthetic formulations that offer individuals some form of chemical psychological relief and pleasure, and thus present the possibility of distortion of facts around other, natural, drugs. Whether the effect of a drug is primary or incidental is irrelevant. That the 'effect' occurs is the only thing that matters. I remember this previously famous electronic music artist who lived in the basement of the building where I lived as a student in W [109]th in Manhattan where he could score Heroin on the sidewalk. He was a Heroin adddict. He was intelligent and articulate. The Columbia English major girls kept him company. We had interesting conversations regarding addiction. His two main points were, that Heroin finally gave him relief from the un-ending pain/sensory-input of the body. He had an elaborate theory regarding that benefit. His second point was regarding the harm of Heroin. His take was that all negative effects of heroin were secondary and related to maintaining the usage, not the drug itself. I.e. if you were rich it was not a problem drug. You raided mother's purse only if you were poor so let's not blame Heroin. :)
  • rjbwork 6y ago
    Regarding your final anecdote - heroin is actually dirt cheap to produce. It's the illegal nature and all the externalities involved that seem to make it so expensive for users. We should probably just allow people to buy pure doses of known quantity at drug stores. We'd largely solve overdoses and addict poverty/petty crime that way, I think.
  • nvilcins 6y ago
• rhacker 6y ago
  There's a portion of the population that will never be able to consume any of the mentioned substances responsibly. That same portion is responsible for killing people on the roads every day. Maybe we can hand-wave that away with SDV in 15 years. I don't know, but I don't think it's a clear-cut witch hunt. However I'm all for trying to focus in on solutions to stop drunk/buzzed/drugged out driving (and other activities that take lives of families and children). Even if that includes 100% vehicle breathalyzers (as in mandatory even without prior drunk driving records).
  • leighfuu 6y ago
    All for vehicle breathalysers. Less for laws to govern the 90% to allow the driving population an easier time of it. if someone wants to drive that metal death machine, then you need to prove you are capable. Or risk it and take the automatic jail time - like knife carrying.
    • nitrogen 6y ago
      like knife carrying Growing up in a mixed semi-rural area, it was kind of weird and maybe a little dangerous not to have a pocket knife. Are there places where carrying a pocket knife without using it is automatically illegal?
      • harimau777 6y ago
        Same here. Not carrying a knife seems pretty irresponsible.
      • pjc50 6y ago
        I used to carry one until the TSA era. Urban knife crime has resulted in certain areas having "stop and search" for knives, usually targeted on the suspicions or prejudices of the officers doing the search.
      • pvaldes 6y ago
        > Are there places where carrying a pocket knife without using it is automatically illegal? Yes, of course. Lots of them. In Spain carrying with you any pocket knife with blade > 11 cm (or any automatic pocket knife <11 cm) is illegal unless you have a special permit for that. You can have it at your home as a collection, but not in public spaces. Having one can be reasonable in some activities (ej police will not care normally if you scuba dive with a knife but will frown if you carry it in the front seat of your car when returning home)