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As long as the middle and upper middle class give too many shits about how the poor behave we will always have some sort of ongoing societal tragedy as a result

As long as the middle and upper middle class give too many shits about how the poor behave we will always have some sort of ongoing societal tragedy as a result of using state violence to enforce moralizing laws. Even if only a small minority cares about the subject of the laws the rest will turn a blind eye because they want the poors kept down for one reason or another. The war on drugs is winding down, what will the next crusade be?

mc32 5y ago
Singapore, from a Western PoV, is "draconian" (also Malaysia), but unlike the West, they actually have decent success in kerbing drug abuse. Of course, there will always be glue sniffers on the periphery, but the problem isn't wide-spread as in the West.
- graderjs 5y ago
  The idea of the arguments in the article is that the drug war unfairly targeted American blacks and did so deliberately. By criminalizing small amounts of cannabis--the use of which has been deeply part of American black culture since especially the jazz age--and introducing mandatory minimum sentences, the drug was was able to effectively target blacks and latins (and hippies), and basically take them out of social circulation and put them into prison and crime circulation. Probably being incarcerated for a minor drug offense then co-occurred with being more likely to be incarcerated for a violent offense later on. Basically a whole lost generation that became segregated from participating in normal society and could only really participate in prison or in an underground or crime economy. Watching the Netflix documentary Grass is Greener I was shocked how clearly racist these policies were. It seems like Nixon and Reagan (and the original cannabis prohibitionist Alsinger) were deliberately targeting blacks and latins and knew they were doing this. It's pretty sad. I wonder how America can reconcile this karmic ethnic history...
  - xrd 5y ago
    America won't, we will blame civil unrest on antifa and move on.
    - graderjs 5y ago
      Sure they might blame it on some of those groups on either side but I think the thing is you can't move on. There's something real there that happened and it will be impossible for people to actually move on until that gets processed and resolved somehow... That's the scary thing, i think. It's like this big item in the karmic to-do list and I wonder what the end game is or the plan to deal with it is
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

mc32 5y ago

Singapore, from a Western PoV, is "draconian" (also Malaysia), but unlike the West, they actually have decent success in kerbing drug abuse. Of course, there will always be glue sniffers on the periphery, but the problem isn't wide-spread as in the West.

graderjs 5y ago
The idea of the arguments in the article is that the drug war unfairly targeted American blacks and did so deliberately. By criminalizing small amounts of cannabis--the use of which has been deeply part of American black culture since especially the jazz age--and introducing mandatory minimum sentences, the drug was was able to effectively target blacks and latins (and hippies), and basically take them out of social circulation and put them into prison and crime circulation. Probably being incarcerated for a minor drug offense then co-occurred with being more likely to be incarcerated for a violent offense later on. Basically a whole lost generation that became segregated from participating in normal society and could only really participate in prison or in an underground or crime economy. Watching the Netflix documentary Grass is Greener I was shocked how clearly racist these policies were. It seems like Nixon and Reagan (and the original cannabis prohibitionist Alsinger) were deliberately targeting blacks and latins and knew they were doing this. It's pretty sad. I wonder how America can reconcile this karmic ethnic history...
- xrd 5y ago
  America won't, we will blame civil unrest on antifa and move on.
  - graderjs 5y ago
    Sure they might blame it on some of those groups on either side but I think the thing is you can't move on. There's something real there that happened and it will be impossible for people to actually move on until that gets processed and resolved somehow... That's the scary thing, i think. It's like this big item in the karmic to-do list and I wonder what the end game is or the plan to deal with it is
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]