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>Yes I never understood this tactic. If you really want citizen support (which is required), you need to show that all citizens are subject to this type of inju

>Yes I never understood this tactic. If you really want citizen support (which is required), you need to show that all citizens are subject to this type of injustice. If leaders just say one group is affected and don't show that all citizens are affected, you won't get change as fast, if at all. It all makes sense if you start from a cynical assumption that the real point of most political activism is exclusively to acquire political capital, then spend it on acquiring power, rather than fixing the issue. In fact fixing the issue would be counterproductive, as that stops power accumulation and requires finding some new issue. Of course, you have to plausibly pretend to actually care about fixing the issue. What's the solution? Demand unworkable and absurd fixes, like 'defund the police'. The social engineering in it was remarkable - its planned ineffectiveness relied on extremist demanding complete abolition of the police to make it unworkable and scare people away, while at the same gaslighting opponents of the absurd extreme it's _really_ only about small redirection of funds to health services and similar. What would a real solution look like? It would try to solve the root of the issue rather than symptoms. One major current cause is that new meth is significantly neurotoxic due to unknown impurities from currently dominating synthesis methods. Good article about the issue: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new-meth/620174/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new... The most effective solution would be to legalize meth and ensure only pure, pharmaceutical grade is being sold. Pure meth isn't especially neurotoxic - and in small doses it's actually neuroprotective due to hormesis. Amount of people with damaged brains would plummet, fewer people would be homeless, fewer people would be violent. Which is exactly the reason it's never going to happen - nobody would gain politically. Same logic for fentanyl and heroin deaths - cheap, pure (consistent purity = much lower risk of accidental overdoses) heroin would reduce fentanyl deaths to near zero, virtually eliminate health damage (pure heroin is relatively safe and can be used for decades) and reduce crimes committed by addicts to near zero (by virtue of being cheap).

Clubber 5y ago
I agree with your assessment of "defund the police," but that was an unfortunate slogan that got converted from "reappropriate funds from police to other services like mental health, counseling, etc." I think that was also politicized. I believe many police departments are entities that also fall into the category of self service and self preservation. Our medium town spends $500 million on police and barely a fraction of that on drug rehab, mental health, etc. It certainly seems misappropriated. I don't know much about meth, but concerning the opioid crisis, our solution was to "crack down," on prescriptions, which sounds good to someone who doesn't give it much thought. The actual outcome was people went from using a drug with a dosage printed on the side to stuff made in people's bathrooms and kitchens including god knows what which resulted in many, many more deaths.
whatshisface 5y ago
Your drug legalization proposals might have the side effects of increasing the number of people who start taking those drugs. People respond to incentives and you can't both say that restrictions aren't making drugs harder to find and that they're driving addicts to dangerous substitutes.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Who knows? (Really, does anybody know?) If you decriminalize, you do make drugs more approachable. You also make treatments more approachable, and health research actually possible. Besides, there are other ways to fight the use of something than sending the police to lock people down with other addicts. And well, all that police involvement does put money on the drug sellers hands, to use on their marketing. Overall, it seems that the highest damage (by orders of magnitude) those substances cause is due to the police involvement. So I'm quite for taking that involvement away. But there are other damages, and I have never seen anybody with a believable enough model of what will happen to those after drugs are legalized. (And, of course, it will certainly depend on all the details, so any "yes or no" answer is guaranteed to be bullshit.)
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    >Overall, it seems that the highest damage (by orders of magnitude) those substances cause is due to the police involvement. Most of the damage done to a cancer survivor was done by chemo, but that's not an argument against the treatment. The right level to stop at is where adding one more unit of police damage would stop less than one unit of drug damage but like you say nobody knows where that is.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      We've had a 50 year case study on what harsh criminal penalties for drug use results in. End result? Sky-rocking drug use with increased potency, cheaper prices, and a skyrocketing prison population. I'm not sure you could find a worse outcome. Not only did we worsen the problem we were trying to solve (drug use), but we created two new ones with increased potency of the drugs leading to more deaths, and booming prison population, the largest in the world. It boggles the mind that any rational person would think that to continue going down this path will lead to some sort of improvement. I suspect it's just poor justification for the institution to preserve themselves. Cops gotta have their pensions. What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.
Clubber 5y ago
>It all makes sense if you start from a cynical assumption that the real point of most political activism is exclusively to acquire political capital, then spend it on acquiring power, rather than fixing the issue. I suspect that's the case. I mean at least Huey Long got things done for his constituents while lining his pockets. It seems today's political class just want to line their pockets and ignore their constituents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long

Clubber 5y ago

I agree with your assessment of "defund the police," but that was an unfortunate slogan that got converted from "reappropriate funds from police to other services like mental health, counseling, etc." I think that was also politicized. I believe many police departments are entities that also fall into the category of self service and self preservation. Our medium town spends $500 million on police and barely a fraction of that on drug rehab, mental health, etc. It certainly seems misappropriated. I don't know much about meth, but concerning the opioid crisis, our solution was to "crack down," on prescriptions, which sounds good to someone who doesn't give it much thought. The actual outcome was people went from using a drug with a dosage printed on the side to stuff made in people's bathrooms and kitchens including god knows what which resulted in many, many more deaths.

whatshisface 5y ago

Your drug legalization proposals might have the side effects of increasing the number of people who start taking those drugs. People respond to incentives and you can't both say that restrictions aren't making drugs harder to find and that they're driving addicts to dangerous substitutes.

marcosdumay 5y ago
Who knows? (Really, does anybody know?) If you decriminalize, you do make drugs more approachable. You also make treatments more approachable, and health research actually possible. Besides, there are other ways to fight the use of something than sending the police to lock people down with other addicts. And well, all that police involvement does put money on the drug sellers hands, to use on their marketing. Overall, it seems that the highest damage (by orders of magnitude) those substances cause is due to the police involvement. So I'm quite for taking that involvement away. But there are other damages, and I have never seen anybody with a believable enough model of what will happen to those after drugs are legalized. (And, of course, it will certainly depend on all the details, so any "yes or no" answer is guaranteed to be bullshit.)
- whatshisface 5y ago
  >Overall, it seems that the highest damage (by orders of magnitude) those substances cause is due to the police involvement. Most of the damage done to a cancer survivor was done by chemo, but that's not an argument against the treatment. The right level to stop at is where adding one more unit of police damage would stop less than one unit of drug damage but like you say nobody knows where that is.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    We've had a 50 year case study on what harsh criminal penalties for drug use results in. End result? Sky-rocking drug use with increased potency, cheaper prices, and a skyrocketing prison population. I'm not sure you could find a worse outcome. Not only did we worsen the problem we were trying to solve (drug use), but we created two new ones with increased potency of the drugs leading to more deaths, and booming prison population, the largest in the world. It boggles the mind that any rational person would think that to continue going down this path will lead to some sort of improvement. I suspect it's just poor justification for the institution to preserve themselves. Cops gotta have their pensions. What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

Clubber 5y ago

>It all makes sense if you start from a cynical assumption that the real point of most political activism is exclusively to acquire political capital, then spend it on acquiring power, rather than fixing the issue. I suspect that's the case. I mean at least Huey Long got things done for his constituents while lining his pockets. It seems today's political class just want to line their pockets and ignore their constituents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long