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> It's the most serious issue facing the country, and we have 0 idea what to do https://substanceabusepolicy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13011-021-0039

> It's the most serious issue facing the country, and we have 0 idea what to do https://substanceabusepolicy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13011-021-00394-7 https://substanceabusepolicy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1...

pclmulqdq 4y ago
We know what to do, but we don't want to do it because it would be deeply unpopular with people. Thailand, Singapore, and other nearby countries have demonstrated how to stop the flow of highly addictive drugs - by using a culture of shame and highly punitive measures around possession and distribution. China learned this lesson during the opium wars, too. They couldn't stop the flow of opium because it would have been terribly unpopular with the people. The script has been flipped with Fentanyl (and to a lesser extent, TikTok). It remains to be seen whether we actually care about the drugs, though. Simply ignoring their presence may be a legitimate strategy.
- runnerup 4y ago
  You say Thailand has figured it out but 4% of Thais have used illegal drugs in the past year. Which is pretty close to the 5-6% of Asians in the USA who have used illegal drugs in the past year. Interesting that two very different national legal policies have such similar outcomes among Asians. Phillipines has experimented with allowing anyone to murder anyone else they suspect of using drugs. That hasn’t significantly decreased the rate of illegal drug use in the country. This is despite making payments to people to summarily execute drug addicts. Thousands have been executed across the Phillipines. I can’t find any evidence that drug use in the Philippines has decreased in the past 5 years.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    > 4% of Thais have used illegal drugs in the past year. Care to wager on the fraction of US users of illegal drugs? https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/202302/t20230209_11022554.html https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/202302/t20230209_1102... > In 2021, findings by NCDAS show about 19.4 percent of Americans have used illegal substances at least once. Out of the 280 million aged 12 and older, 31.9 million are drug users, with 11.7 percent on illegal substances and 19.4 percent either having consumed illicit drugs or misused prescription drugs in 2020. If alcohol and tobacco users are included, the number of people in the United States who are abusing substances totals 165 million. > During the past 12 months, 48.2 million Americans over the age of 18 consumed cannabis at least once. > During the past 12 months, 10.1 million Americans have consumed opium at least once.
    - runnerup 4y ago
      US statistics are very skewed because marijuana is an “illegal drug” sold legally in most states. I did provide numbers for Asians in USA though, which was similar to Thais in Thailand. Opium is at 3.3% by your number, which is comparable to the numbers I showed on Thailand. We can both cherry pick data but USA has tried prohibition of various substances for over 100 years. Prohibition by itself caused more problems than it solved.
- incone123 4y ago
  Philippines ended up with a lot of end users getting killed while doing little to stop suppliers. Which was all the more ironic as a lot of poor philippinos use cheap stimulants to work long hours in low wage jobs.
  - bobsuruncle24 4y ago
    Who says it failed in the Philippines? I have a lot of anecdotes from talking with locals around Bohol and family in Mindanao that it has been very successful.
    - incone123 4y ago
      A lot of average Joes getting killed is a high price for success. But I can understand people wanting strong government action, especially in Mindanao which has two different insurgencies (Islamic and Communist) to contend with besides drug gangs. One of my relatives had a work trip (she worked for the national government) to rural Mindanao and they sent her by military helicopter with a squad of soldiers for protection.
- piva00 4y ago
  Thailand still suffers from hard drugs abuse, including opiates. Singapore is a very tiny city-state with a massively repressive government. Not really good benchmarks/role models. Even in Singapore you can find drugs, it's just absolutely stupid to do it if you are a tourist given how draconian drug laws are there. On the other hand, countries like the Netherlands and Portugal figured out a way for drug users to not die. That's probably the first thing you should fix: how to help people to not die when using drugs. Educate your population about it, most Dutch people I know are very aware of drugs; their effects, risks, etc. The cat's out of the box, there's only one level of repression that could have a chance to work on stopping the flow of drugs: maximum repression by the government, maximum shame by the population, is that really what you want? I don't believe that's a solution if you are already in a free society...
bnralt 4y ago
We should study it seriously, but it's worth noting even the article you linked to (which seems to be pretty biased, it should be noted) suggests the Portuguese model is far from a simple silver bullet: > Despite encouraging results, conclusions indicate that these policies are marked by contradictions and ambiguities that have permeated its history since the very beginning, and modest ambitions, particularly regarding the implementation of harm reduction measures. Moreover, the polemical Supreme Court judgment that reestablished, in 2008, drug use as a crime when the quantities at play exceeded those required for an average individual’s use for 10 days, might have impacted the landscape of drug use penalization. The last decade saw an increase of punitiveness targeted at drug users, including criminal sentences of jail terms. But it's hard to take the article entirely seriously when it acts as if the goal is, in their words, "emancipate drug use from the stigma that associates it either with crime or pathology," and it opposes acting as if drugs are a problem: > Finally, casting drugs as malevolent agents that allow classifying users as bad or sick (or both) became a fabrication that eases the stigmatization of users and human rights violations.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

We know what to do, but we don't want to do it because it would be deeply unpopular with people. Thailand, Singapore, and other nearby countries have demonstrated how to stop the flow of highly addictive drugs - by using a culture of shame and highly punitive measures around possession and distribution. China learned this lesson during the opium wars, too. They couldn't stop the flow of opium because it would have been terribly unpopular with the people. The script has been flipped with Fentanyl (and to a lesser extent, TikTok). It remains to be seen whether we actually care about the drugs, though. Simply ignoring their presence may be a legitimate strategy.

runnerup 4y ago
You say Thailand has figured it out but 4% of Thais have used illegal drugs in the past year. Which is pretty close to the 5-6% of Asians in the USA who have used illegal drugs in the past year. Interesting that two very different national legal policies have such similar outcomes among Asians. Phillipines has experimented with allowing anyone to murder anyone else they suspect of using drugs. That hasn’t significantly decreased the rate of illegal drug use in the country. This is despite making payments to people to summarily execute drug addicts. Thousands have been executed across the Phillipines. I can’t find any evidence that drug use in the Philippines has decreased in the past 5 years.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  > 4% of Thais have used illegal drugs in the past year. Care to wager on the fraction of US users of illegal drugs? https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/202302/t20230209_11022554.html https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/202302/t20230209_1102... > In 2021, findings by NCDAS show about 19.4 percent of Americans have used illegal substances at least once. Out of the 280 million aged 12 and older, 31.9 million are drug users, with 11.7 percent on illegal substances and 19.4 percent either having consumed illicit drugs or misused prescription drugs in 2020. If alcohol and tobacco users are included, the number of people in the United States who are abusing substances totals 165 million. > During the past 12 months, 48.2 million Americans over the age of 18 consumed cannabis at least once. > During the past 12 months, 10.1 million Americans have consumed opium at least once.
  - runnerup 4y ago
    US statistics are very skewed because marijuana is an “illegal drug” sold legally in most states. I did provide numbers for Asians in USA though, which was similar to Thais in Thailand. Opium is at 3.3% by your number, which is comparable to the numbers I showed on Thailand. We can both cherry pick data but USA has tried prohibition of various substances for over 100 years. Prohibition by itself caused more problems than it solved.
incone123 4y ago
Philippines ended up with a lot of end users getting killed while doing little to stop suppliers. Which was all the more ironic as a lot of poor philippinos use cheap stimulants to work long hours in low wage jobs.
- bobsuruncle24 4y ago
  Who says it failed in the Philippines? I have a lot of anecdotes from talking with locals around Bohol and family in Mindanao that it has been very successful.
  - incone123 4y ago
    A lot of average Joes getting killed is a high price for success. But I can understand people wanting strong government action, especially in Mindanao which has two different insurgencies (Islamic and Communist) to contend with besides drug gangs. One of my relatives had a work trip (she worked for the national government) to rural Mindanao and they sent her by military helicopter with a squad of soldiers for protection.
piva00 4y ago
Thailand still suffers from hard drugs abuse, including opiates. Singapore is a very tiny city-state with a massively repressive government. Not really good benchmarks/role models. Even in Singapore you can find drugs, it's just absolutely stupid to do it if you are a tourist given how draconian drug laws are there. On the other hand, countries like the Netherlands and Portugal figured out a way for drug users to not die. That's probably the first thing you should fix: how to help people to not die when using drugs. Educate your population about it, most Dutch people I know are very aware of drugs; their effects, risks, etc. The cat's out of the box, there's only one level of repression that could have a chance to work on stopping the flow of drugs: maximum repression by the government, maximum shame by the population, is that really what you want? I don't believe that's a solution if you are already in a free society...

bnralt 4y ago

We should study it seriously, but it's worth noting even the article you linked to (which seems to be pretty biased, it should be noted) suggests the Portuguese model is far from a simple silver bullet: > Despite encouraging results, conclusions indicate that these policies are marked by contradictions and ambiguities that have permeated its history since the very beginning, and modest ambitions, particularly regarding the implementation of harm reduction measures. Moreover, the polemical Supreme Court judgment that reestablished, in 2008, drug use as a crime when the quantities at play exceeded those required for an average individual’s use for 10 days, might have impacted the landscape of drug use penalization. The last decade saw an increase of punitiveness targeted at drug users, including criminal sentences of jail terms. But it's hard to take the article entirely seriously when it acts as if the goal is, in their words, "emancipate drug use from the stigma that associates it either with crime or pathology," and it opposes acting as if drugs are a problem: > Finally, casting drugs as malevolent agents that allow classifying users as bad or sick (or both) became a fabrication that eases the stigmatization of users and human rights violations.