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Everything went wrong when lawmakers criminalized possession of drugs. All of this nonsense follows from a system where ordinary people are treated with suspici

Everything went wrong when lawmakers criminalized possession of drugs. All of this nonsense follows from a system where ordinary people are treated with suspicion and criminals are given exclusive access to a highly profitable market. Al Capone and his ilk taught us the disastrous consequences of prohibition a century. Yet we continue making the same mistake with different substances.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Strongly agree. How would you word an anti-Prohibition Constitutional amendment?
- jurynulifcation 3y ago
  This is an interesting challenge. I guess the best way I can put it would be: "That no law shall be made preventing an informed and consenting adult from consuming whatever substance they so please." As a side tangent: Tennessee prevents the sale of raw milk. I can not go to a dairy farmer in TN, watch him produce a pail of milk, and pay him for the pleasure of considering that pail of milk to be mine. Why? This is probably the stupidest prohibition I have yet to see. If you want to prevent the general public from unwittingly consuming raw dairy, that makes sense. But why can I not purchase raw dairy that I know to be raw and produced in good condition? There is a work-around to this, where you are legally entitled to consume the dairy of any cow you own... and so some dairy farmers sell "shares" of their cow, which entitles you to its milk. I'm not wholly against such an arrangement but it does seem rather farcical in its mandatory character.
  - chongli 3y ago
    It is pretty silly. They could solve the problem by imposing strict liability on dairy sales. If the farmer sells you a pail of raw milk and you get sick from drinking it, that farmer is liable for it, no waivers. This is often how other dangerous products such as fireworks are regulated. The liability is a cost of doing business.
    - KingMachiavelli 3y ago
      Strict liability would always apply in that case, if you sell product X for the intent of purpose Y and doing Y with X causes injury then the seller of X is strictly liable. Strangely enough since raw milk is sold for "dog/animal use" that limits any liability for human consumption since it's explicitly sold for not human consumption.
      - michaelt 3y ago
        If I sell motorcycles for the purpose of motorcycling, and motorcycling carries a substantial risk of injury, am I strictly liable?
  - immibis 3y ago
    Wish granted, but I just discovered a substance people can drink that sends them into a blind rage where they shoot everyone they can see for the next five hours, because it feels very good to them. People are getting addicted to the good feeling of shooting people while on stuff. Don't you think we should ban it?
    - KAMSPioneer 3y ago
      Why? Shooting people is already super illegal. You could also easily just slap liability to the seller of known harmful substances (see the sibling to your comment) or enforce warning labels as on tobacco products (eg "this product makes you shoot people and shooting people will get your thrown in jail").
      - immibis 3y ago
        > Why? Shooting people is already super illegal. Wouldn't it be good to prevent the shootings before they happen?
        KAMSPioneer 3y ago
        Sure it would. Ohhh, ya got me. But this thread is about how the cure is often worse than the disease with prohibition. See: 18th Amendment, War on Drugs. Concocting a hypothetical scenario where the drug is Disney-villian evil and enforcement is not an unmitigated disaster is hardly a decisive rhetorical victory, wouldn't you say?
        immibis 3y ago
        It's a rhetorical victory against outright banning all prohibition of substances.
        lucianbr 3y ago
        The proposed constitutional amendment would fail hard in the given hypothetical situation. There was no "often" or any other nuance in it. It _is_ a decisive rhetorical victory, even if you don't like it.
  - Jochim 3y ago
    > But why can I not purchase raw dairy that I know to be raw and produced in good condition? Because the people selling it routinely lie about it's safety and health benefits as compared to pasteurised milk. I don't support that risk being put onto consumers who are intentionally misled by snake oil salesmen looking to benefit financially. https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/rawmilk-outbreaks.html https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/rawmilk-outbreaks.htm...
    - ajmurmann 3y ago
      Could those consumers just go for pasteurized milk and let others have the choice they want?
      - Jochim 3y ago
        > Could those consumers just go for pasteurized milk and let others have the choice they want? People can have the choice they want. It requires that you shoulder the risk yourself, rather than having it pushed on you by someone who is financially benefitting from it. No, through painful experience we have arrived at a system where people can go to a store and purchase food without needing to develop the expertise and expend enough time to be reasonably confident that it won't kill them. For the same reasons we also restrict the sale of expired meat or adulterated baby formula.
    - georgeplusplus 3y ago
      You didn't answer them. Why isn't the consumer allowed to make the decision for themselves. Yes there are liars and cheats out there as in everything. Why can't the consumer decide who is lying and who isn't and what is safe and what isnt
      - uoaei 3y ago
        What makes you think consumers have the bandwidth to do that for every single product they consume? What makes you think that requiring every single person does this contributes to a healthy economy? As a simple counterargument, how many children are you willing to let die due to contaminated raw milk in order for this absolute "freedom" to be honored, and what makes you think those values make sense at societal scales?
  - saghm 3y ago
    Treating raw milk like a drug was the basis of a Portlandia sketch that was pretty amusing, but unfortunately I'm having trouble finding the entirety of it on youtube at the moment to link
  - pif 3y ago
    > no law shall be made preventing an informed and consenting adult from consuming whatever substance they so please Which is as stupid as it can get, unless you add the prescription that said adult must be the only one to bear the consequences of its consumption. You want to binge-drink every night? Sure, why not? Just make sure in advance that you won't come in contact with civilised people while intoxicated, and sign a statement releasing the society from any duty to assist you when your liver shuts down. Similar for lighter or heavier drugs. You want to smoke as a chimney? Damn, I'll fight with you to protect your right to fill your lungs with tar! Just don't go to the E.R. every time a small cold turns into a serious respiratory issue, and especially make sure you collect all the ashes and all the smoke, before they poison unwilling people.
    - indigo945 3y ago
      But in the US, which does not have public healthcare, the burden "to bear the consequences of consumption" does already fall on the individual in those cases. This pro-prohibition argument is more impressive when made in countries that do have public healthcare, although it still falls short when trying to explain why doctors should mend bones that people break while engaging in some high-risk activities (like skiing or mountainbiking), but should not heal ailments that people incur while engaging in other high-risk activities (such as smoking). Banning drug consumption in public spaces, where they might harm others, is a different issue, and the drug that is most problematic here - tobacco - is in any case one of the least restricted ones.
      - pif 3y ago
        It's not only a matter of medical insurance: it's also, and most important, a matter of driving while intoxicated, or putting yourself into such miserable conditions that you will forget any human decency and commit petty and/or dangerous crimes to get your next dose.
        knewter 3y ago
        What about putting yourself in such miserable conditions that you will forget human decency and commit the non-petty crime of violating everyone's constitutional rights?
  - smcin 3y ago
    > "That no law shall be made preventing an informed and consenting adult from consuming whatever substance they so please." That seems reckless, it includes medicines and pharmaceuticals, creatine, steroids, HGH, lip-fillers, stimulants... So either you effectively abolish the FDA and pharmacies, or downgrade them to mere advisories which people can ignore.
    - throwawayadvsec 3y ago
      Cigarettes are killing more people than all the substances you mentioned. Also the fact that you include "creatine" among those substances is extremely ridiculous, creatine is available OTC and present in many foods, it's obvious that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. Lip-fillers are not substances that you ingest or inject in your bloodstream, they're part of surgeries. The FDA should be here to say this is recommended for this and that purpose. Here are the recommended dosages. Not to forbid you from using something. Every dangerous substances should have warnings on them like "this could kill you/give you cancer/mental illnesses" or even "not meant for human consumption".
      - smcin 3y ago
        You're sidestepping grandparent's point about abolishing any legal limits on pharmaceuticals. How would such a world work? Prescriptions would be pointless since consenting adults could just sell/trade them.
        Amasuriel 3y ago
        The tone of your comment seems to indicate you think this is obviously a bad thing? Prescriptions would just be doctors recommendations in this case. There could still be mechanisms to softly encourage only this usage, like insurance only covering doctor prescribed drugs. Is your concern about painkiller addiction and abuse or about people hurting themselves by taking drugs without good understanding of them or something else?
        throwawayadvsec 3y ago
        Prescriptions wouldn't be pointless. I can get access to any drugs on earth, I'm still not going to try any random unprescribed med for the fun of it. A prescription means your doctor said I think you need this, at this dosage, for this long. You can even get prescriptions for OTC stuff. A prescription isn't a way to allow you to take something, it's a way to tell you what your doctor thinks you need.
  - detourdog 3y ago
    The raw milk debate is odd to me because we have factory food recalled all the time due to deaths. The factory food outbreaks cover a wider area than a raw milk dairy farm.
- harshreality 3y ago
  This is difficult for people to stomach because so much of post-FDR, post- Wickard v Filburn U.S. law has no validity under the Constitution, even though the idea of breaking the last 80 years of jurisprudence is unpalatable... The constitution doesn't allow the feds to ban substances. That's why we needed a constitutional amendment for the failed experiment to ban alcohol in the first place. (And, arguably, through the 14th amendment, the States, although that's not a strong case because it's not an enumerated right, but there are 1A issues with religions including Christianity using various drugs, and 4A issues with enforcement... same as most "let's ban X" ideas have.)
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    Hence the SC should throw-out constitutional interpretation which places unenumerated rights above enumerated ones --- that would be a genuinely libertarian act. Of course, the SC is only libertarian when it wishes. It's rather mad that the SC seems to have collective attentional blindness to the 9th Amd. It's probably the most important amendement for interpreting, at least, the bill of rights -- since it says the duty of the SC is to do moral philosophy not to be lawyers, or historians, or politicians, or legislators. Their job is to actually outline a (denotological) moral philosophy for the US which is sufficiently minimal that it precludes few laws, but sufficiently maximal that it prevents tyranny. That's the entire point of the 9th Am., and it completely demolishes most of the legal philosophies of the current SC. In this light, it becomes obvious why originalism is self-contradictory: the framers did not want an originalist interpretation, since it confines the future to be against only the forms of tyranny of that day. (consider, eg., whether laws banning abortion were tyranny then, vs., now).
    - StrictDabbler 3y ago
      Abortion was not illegal in the US when the constitution was written... not even until the AMA formed in 1847 and shortly thereafter started pushing for criminalization. The process was slow at first. After the civil war many people became concerned that white women would get abortions and be outbred by the blacks. By 1910 it was illegal in every state. I think it's interesting that this history has been forgotten.
- patrickmay 3y ago
  We already have the 9th and 10th amendments. The Federal government is acting outside Constitutional limits with these laws. Add more amendments won't make them follow the Constitution, we need courts more willing to strike down this kind of overreach.
  - dunmalg 3y ago
    Problem is, both sides of the ideological spectrum have spent 100+ years studiously ignoring the actual basis for rights in the US--- Natural Rights theory--- in favor of more "malleable" approaches that can be twisted to their desired ends. Both the crazy strict textualists, who think that the constitution as-written is the end-all be-all of human rights, and at the opposite end of the spectrum, the crazy extreme "living document" theorists with their "anything goes" approach; neither of them want to acknowledge that there's an underlying philosophical framework that potentially flips the table on their shenanigans.
    - hellojesus 3y ago
      What is the philosophical framework, and how does it prevent reinterpretation of law such that its "spirit" remains constant?
vander_elst 3y ago
Portugal tried this approach and in practice it did not work very well ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru... ). The Netherlands are also going back on this.
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  Which approach? I hadn't noticed the comment you're responding to mention any approach.
- loufe 3y ago
  The prevailing sentiment when this was brought up on HN a couple weeks ago was that the failure in Portugal is heavily impacted by severe budget cuts with respect to treatment. I would not say that proves, in and of itself, that this approach does not work very well.
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    Cuts in absolute terms, or failure to keep up with a surge in demand? (genuinely asking as I don't know, the latter situation is the case with the UK's NHS)
- consp 3y ago
  The main reason the Netherlands is going "back on this" is that due to cuts in law enforcement over the past decade the gangs running the trade and manufacture have had free reign. This is mostly meant for foreign markets and less of a drugs-at-home issue. The Netherlands is mostly a throughout country with respect to trade, and drugs are no exception (with mdma production being the exception, but this is also mostly meant for export).
- Out_of_Characte 3y ago
  The Netherlands arent changing their drug policy. We just have the problem of being an import/export country for not just goods but also drugs for the entirety of europe. Drug consumption by citizens is not changing.
bruce511 3y ago
They've also been good with the messaging on drugs. Colombian Drug Cartels right? If only we can go to war in South America we can fix it. But the majority of drug use are home-grown. [1]. Take marijuana out the picture (home grown) and Oxy, Prescriptions and other (home grown) drugs prevail. Criminalising weed is a failed policy, which thankfully is being slowly dropped. Less impressive is that the drug machine that created the oxy crisis is more or less ignored. [1] https://drugabusestatistics.org/ https://drugabusestatistics.org/
- fatfingerd 3y ago
  The DEA is the same social problem as the cold war agencies. The US can't actually get rid of jobs of the correct prestige for these people and as long as they are kept they will continue to commit the US to a criminal path.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > But the majority of drug use are home-grown. The thing is, there are three categories of illicit drugs: - relatively harmless / have established use: a lot of the "home grown" drugs fall under this category, they are usually low-price as they are mass products. Marijuana and diverted pharma pills, mostly. - stuff that is extremely fucking dangerous, like fentanyl, its even more strong cousin carfentanyl, meth or self-made stuff like krokodil (gained from boiling codein cough medicine). Extremely simple to make in general, extremely potent, extremely hard to wean off. - stuff that fuels organized crime, aka cocaine (almost exclusively grown/refined in Southern America) and heroin (which comes to an overwhelming degree from Afghanistan's poppy farms). The large cartels almost exclusively focus on the latter, as there's a ton of money to be made smuggling that, which is a very real problem as the cartels can offer sums to corrupt officials even in Western countries that pay good money to border control staff. A boat full of cocaine can make hundreds of millions of dollars, while no one cares about a boat full of weed - not worth the effort.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Cocaine is not expensive... it's the black market effect that makes its street price high.
pif 3y ago
[flagged]
- isaacremuant 3y ago
  So it's about the cartels now, huh? And you're really concerned by wellbeing and "life satisfaction" that you want to put people in jail because they consume a substance you don't. Prohibition style thinking. Arguably, The most dangerous criminal organizations in the world are probably the security agencies and forces which cause untold damage around the world and, incidentally, have ties with druglords like in Afghanistan. But I'm sure you'd support those over the individual's choice of what to do with their body regardless of what your Religious like belief that's you should get to decide what fulfills someone's life. Maybe reading certain books is something we don't need, right? The insult at the end just exposes you further. Drug cartels exist due to those things being illegal, not the other way around, but stay classy.
  - pif 3y ago
    > Drug cartels exist due to those things being illegal Drug cartels exist due to those things being illegal AND people keeping giving money to them.
    - isaacremuant 3y ago
      Because you force their hand to not have another choice. You removed the choice. I love how authortiarians think that they'll get exactly their way. Suddenly laws of supply and demand disappear and they can shape the world at their pleasure.
      - pif 3y ago
        > I love how authortiarians Authoritarians? I'm talking about democracies! Where most people want marijuana, it gets legal. Where it doesn't, it's because people at large don't want it. That's it! People can protest, and we can and must discuss, but pouring money in organized crime for a non-need is not justifiable.
swayvil 3y ago
Step 1 : find something everybody wants. Step 2 : prevent them from getting it Step 3 : create an exclusive access channel Step 4 : profit I can think of a few instances where this model has been implemented in our society.
- intelVISA 3y ago
  World Wide Web vs Cloudflare
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  This reads like the history of the US involvement in central and south America.
karmajunkie 3y ago
yes, crime was definitely invented because of 1920’s Prohibition. But for that dark episode of history, there would be no one trying to hide illicit doings behind the curtain of encryption, and the NSA/FBI/DEA/ATF/etc would definitely not be interested in reading encrypted traffic. Because, no crime, you see, so those agencies probably wouldn’t exist.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

Strongly agree. How would you word an anti-Prohibition Constitutional amendment?

jurynulifcation 3y ago
This is an interesting challenge. I guess the best way I can put it would be: "That no law shall be made preventing an informed and consenting adult from consuming whatever substance they so please." As a side tangent: Tennessee prevents the sale of raw milk. I can not go to a dairy farmer in TN, watch him produce a pail of milk, and pay him for the pleasure of considering that pail of milk to be mine. Why? This is probably the stupidest prohibition I have yet to see. If you want to prevent the general public from unwittingly consuming raw dairy, that makes sense. But why can I not purchase raw dairy that I know to be raw and produced in good condition? There is a work-around to this, where you are legally entitled to consume the dairy of any cow you own... and so some dairy farmers sell "shares" of their cow, which entitles you to its milk. I'm not wholly against such an arrangement but it does seem rather farcical in its mandatory character.
- chongli 3y ago
  It is pretty silly. They could solve the problem by imposing strict liability on dairy sales. If the farmer sells you a pail of raw milk and you get sick from drinking it, that farmer is liable for it, no waivers. This is often how other dangerous products such as fireworks are regulated. The liability is a cost of doing business.
  - KingMachiavelli 3y ago
    Strict liability would always apply in that case, if you sell product X for the intent of purpose Y and doing Y with X causes injury then the seller of X is strictly liable. Strangely enough since raw milk is sold for "dog/animal use" that limits any liability for human consumption since it's explicitly sold for not human consumption.
    - michaelt 3y ago
      If I sell motorcycles for the purpose of motorcycling, and motorcycling carries a substantial risk of injury, am I strictly liable?
- immibis 3y ago
  Wish granted, but I just discovered a substance people can drink that sends them into a blind rage where they shoot everyone they can see for the next five hours, because it feels very good to them. People are getting addicted to the good feeling of shooting people while on stuff. Don't you think we should ban it?
  - KAMSPioneer 3y ago
    Why? Shooting people is already super illegal. You could also easily just slap liability to the seller of known harmful substances (see the sibling to your comment) or enforce warning labels as on tobacco products (eg "this product makes you shoot people and shooting people will get your thrown in jail").
    - immibis 3y ago
      > Why? Shooting people is already super illegal. Wouldn't it be good to prevent the shootings before they happen?
      - KAMSPioneer 3y ago
        Sure it would. Ohhh, ya got me. But this thread is about how the cure is often worse than the disease with prohibition. See: 18th Amendment, War on Drugs. Concocting a hypothetical scenario where the drug is Disney-villian evil and enforcement is not an unmitigated disaster is hardly a decisive rhetorical victory, wouldn't you say?
        immibis 3y ago
        It's a rhetorical victory against outright banning all prohibition of substances.
        lucianbr 3y ago
        The proposed constitutional amendment would fail hard in the given hypothetical situation. There was no "often" or any other nuance in it. It _is_ a decisive rhetorical victory, even if you don't like it.
- Jochim 3y ago
  > But why can I not purchase raw dairy that I know to be raw and produced in good condition? Because the people selling it routinely lie about it's safety and health benefits as compared to pasteurised milk. I don't support that risk being put onto consumers who are intentionally misled by snake oil salesmen looking to benefit financially. https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/rawmilk-outbreaks.html https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/rawmilk-outbreaks.htm...
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    Could those consumers just go for pasteurized milk and let others have the choice they want?
    - Jochim 3y ago
      > Could those consumers just go for pasteurized milk and let others have the choice they want? People can have the choice they want. It requires that you shoulder the risk yourself, rather than having it pushed on you by someone who is financially benefitting from it. No, through painful experience we have arrived at a system where people can go to a store and purchase food without needing to develop the expertise and expend enough time to be reasonably confident that it won't kill them. For the same reasons we also restrict the sale of expired meat or adulterated baby formula.
  - georgeplusplus 3y ago
    You didn't answer them. Why isn't the consumer allowed to make the decision for themselves. Yes there are liars and cheats out there as in everything. Why can't the consumer decide who is lying and who isn't and what is safe and what isnt
    - uoaei 3y ago
      What makes you think consumers have the bandwidth to do that for every single product they consume? What makes you think that requiring every single person does this contributes to a healthy economy? As a simple counterargument, how many children are you willing to let die due to contaminated raw milk in order for this absolute "freedom" to be honored, and what makes you think those values make sense at societal scales?
- saghm 3y ago
  Treating raw milk like a drug was the basis of a Portlandia sketch that was pretty amusing, but unfortunately I'm having trouble finding the entirety of it on youtube at the moment to link
- pif 3y ago
  > no law shall be made preventing an informed and consenting adult from consuming whatever substance they so please Which is as stupid as it can get, unless you add the prescription that said adult must be the only one to bear the consequences of its consumption. You want to binge-drink every night? Sure, why not? Just make sure in advance that you won't come in contact with civilised people while intoxicated, and sign a statement releasing the society from any duty to assist you when your liver shuts down. Similar for lighter or heavier drugs. You want to smoke as a chimney? Damn, I'll fight with you to protect your right to fill your lungs with tar! Just don't go to the E.R. every time a small cold turns into a serious respiratory issue, and especially make sure you collect all the ashes and all the smoke, before they poison unwilling people.
  - indigo945 3y ago
    But in the US, which does not have public healthcare, the burden "to bear the consequences of consumption" does already fall on the individual in those cases. This pro-prohibition argument is more impressive when made in countries that do have public healthcare, although it still falls short when trying to explain why doctors should mend bones that people break while engaging in some high-risk activities (like skiing or mountainbiking), but should not heal ailments that people incur while engaging in other high-risk activities (such as smoking). Banning drug consumption in public spaces, where they might harm others, is a different issue, and the drug that is most problematic here - tobacco - is in any case one of the least restricted ones.
    - pif 3y ago
      It's not only a matter of medical insurance: it's also, and most important, a matter of driving while intoxicated, or putting yourself into such miserable conditions that you will forget any human decency and commit petty and/or dangerous crimes to get your next dose.
      - knewter 3y ago
        What about putting yourself in such miserable conditions that you will forget human decency and commit the non-petty crime of violating everyone's constitutional rights?
- smcin 3y ago
  > "That no law shall be made preventing an informed and consenting adult from consuming whatever substance they so please." That seems reckless, it includes medicines and pharmaceuticals, creatine, steroids, HGH, lip-fillers, stimulants... So either you effectively abolish the FDA and pharmacies, or downgrade them to mere advisories which people can ignore.
  - throwawayadvsec 3y ago
    Cigarettes are killing more people than all the substances you mentioned. Also the fact that you include "creatine" among those substances is extremely ridiculous, creatine is available OTC and present in many foods, it's obvious that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. Lip-fillers are not substances that you ingest or inject in your bloodstream, they're part of surgeries. The FDA should be here to say this is recommended for this and that purpose. Here are the recommended dosages. Not to forbid you from using something. Every dangerous substances should have warnings on them like "this could kill you/give you cancer/mental illnesses" or even "not meant for human consumption".
    - smcin 3y ago
      You're sidestepping grandparent's point about abolishing any legal limits on pharmaceuticals. How would such a world work? Prescriptions would be pointless since consenting adults could just sell/trade them.
      - Amasuriel 3y ago
        The tone of your comment seems to indicate you think this is obviously a bad thing? Prescriptions would just be doctors recommendations in this case. There could still be mechanisms to softly encourage only this usage, like insurance only covering doctor prescribed drugs. Is your concern about painkiller addiction and abuse or about people hurting themselves by taking drugs without good understanding of them or something else?
      - throwawayadvsec 3y ago
        Prescriptions wouldn't be pointless. I can get access to any drugs on earth, I'm still not going to try any random unprescribed med for the fun of it. A prescription means your doctor said I think you need this, at this dosage, for this long. You can even get prescriptions for OTC stuff. A prescription isn't a way to allow you to take something, it's a way to tell you what your doctor thinks you need.
- detourdog 3y ago
  The raw milk debate is odd to me because we have factory food recalled all the time due to deaths. The factory food outbreaks cover a wider area than a raw milk dairy farm.
harshreality 3y ago
This is difficult for people to stomach because so much of post-FDR, post- Wickard v Filburn U.S. law has no validity under the Constitution, even though the idea of breaking the last 80 years of jurisprudence is unpalatable... The constitution doesn't allow the feds to ban substances. That's why we needed a constitutional amendment for the failed experiment to ban alcohol in the first place. (And, arguably, through the 14th amendment, the States, although that's not a strong case because it's not an enumerated right, but there are 1A issues with religions including Christianity using various drugs, and 4A issues with enforcement... same as most "let's ban X" ideas have.)
- mjburgess 3y ago
  Hence the SC should throw-out constitutional interpretation which places unenumerated rights above enumerated ones --- that would be a genuinely libertarian act. Of course, the SC is only libertarian when it wishes. It's rather mad that the SC seems to have collective attentional blindness to the 9th Amd. It's probably the most important amendement for interpreting, at least, the bill of rights -- since it says the duty of the SC is to do moral philosophy not to be lawyers, or historians, or politicians, or legislators. Their job is to actually outline a (denotological) moral philosophy for the US which is sufficiently minimal that it precludes few laws, but sufficiently maximal that it prevents tyranny. That's the entire point of the 9th Am., and it completely demolishes most of the legal philosophies of the current SC. In this light, it becomes obvious why originalism is self-contradictory: the framers did not want an originalist interpretation, since it confines the future to be against only the forms of tyranny of that day. (consider, eg., whether laws banning abortion were tyranny then, vs., now).
  - StrictDabbler 3y ago
    Abortion was not illegal in the US when the constitution was written... not even until the AMA formed in 1847 and shortly thereafter started pushing for criminalization. The process was slow at first. After the civil war many people became concerned that white women would get abortions and be outbred by the blacks. By 1910 it was illegal in every state. I think it's interesting that this history has been forgotten.
patrickmay 3y ago
We already have the 9th and 10th amendments. The Federal government is acting outside Constitutional limits with these laws. Add more amendments won't make them follow the Constitution, we need courts more willing to strike down this kind of overreach.
- dunmalg 3y ago
  Problem is, both sides of the ideological spectrum have spent 100+ years studiously ignoring the actual basis for rights in the US--- Natural Rights theory--- in favor of more "malleable" approaches that can be twisted to their desired ends. Both the crazy strict textualists, who think that the constitution as-written is the end-all be-all of human rights, and at the opposite end of the spectrum, the crazy extreme "living document" theorists with their "anything goes" approach; neither of them want to acknowledge that there's an underlying philosophical framework that potentially flips the table on their shenanigans.
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    What is the philosophical framework, and how does it prevent reinterpretation of law such that its "spirit" remains constant?

vander_elst 3y ago

Portugal tried this approach and in practice it did not work very well ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru... ). The Netherlands are also going back on this.

friend_and_foe 3y ago
Which approach? I hadn't noticed the comment you're responding to mention any approach.
loufe 3y ago
The prevailing sentiment when this was brought up on HN a couple weeks ago was that the failure in Portugal is heavily impacted by severe budget cuts with respect to treatment. I would not say that proves, in and of itself, that this approach does not work very well.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Cuts in absolute terms, or failure to keep up with a surge in demand? (genuinely asking as I don't know, the latter situation is the case with the UK's NHS)
consp 3y ago
The main reason the Netherlands is going "back on this" is that due to cuts in law enforcement over the past decade the gangs running the trade and manufacture have had free reign. This is mostly meant for foreign markets and less of a drugs-at-home issue. The Netherlands is mostly a throughout country with respect to trade, and drugs are no exception (with mdma production being the exception, but this is also mostly meant for export).
Out_of_Characte 3y ago
The Netherlands arent changing their drug policy. We just have the problem of being an import/export country for not just goods but also drugs for the entirety of europe. Drug consumption by citizens is not changing.

bruce511 3y ago

They've also been good with the messaging on drugs. Colombian Drug Cartels right? If only we can go to war in South America we can fix it. But the majority of drug use are home-grown. [1]. Take marijuana out the picture (home grown) and Oxy, Prescriptions and other (home grown) drugs prevail. Criminalising weed is a failed policy, which thankfully is being slowly dropped. Less impressive is that the drug machine that created the oxy crisis is more or less ignored. [1] https://drugabusestatistics.org/ https://drugabusestatistics.org/

fatfingerd 3y ago
The DEA is the same social problem as the cold war agencies. The US can't actually get rid of jobs of the correct prestige for these people and as long as they are kept they will continue to commit the US to a criminal path.
mschuster91 3y ago
> But the majority of drug use are home-grown. The thing is, there are three categories of illicit drugs: - relatively harmless / have established use: a lot of the "home grown" drugs fall under this category, they are usually low-price as they are mass products. Marijuana and diverted pharma pills, mostly. - stuff that is extremely fucking dangerous, like fentanyl, its even more strong cousin carfentanyl, meth or self-made stuff like krokodil (gained from boiling codein cough medicine). Extremely simple to make in general, extremely potent, extremely hard to wean off. - stuff that fuels organized crime, aka cocaine (almost exclusively grown/refined in Southern America) and heroin (which comes to an overwhelming degree from Afghanistan's poppy farms). The large cartels almost exclusively focus on the latter, as there's a ton of money to be made smuggling that, which is a very real problem as the cartels can offer sums to corrupt officials even in Western countries that pay good money to border control staff. A boat full of cocaine can make hundreds of millions of dollars, while no one cares about a boat full of weed - not worth the effort.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Cocaine is not expensive... it's the black market effect that makes its street price high.

pif 3y ago

[flagged]

isaacremuant 3y ago
So it's about the cartels now, huh? And you're really concerned by wellbeing and "life satisfaction" that you want to put people in jail because they consume a substance you don't. Prohibition style thinking. Arguably, The most dangerous criminal organizations in the world are probably the security agencies and forces which cause untold damage around the world and, incidentally, have ties with druglords like in Afghanistan. But I'm sure you'd support those over the individual's choice of what to do with their body regardless of what your Religious like belief that's you should get to decide what fulfills someone's life. Maybe reading certain books is something we don't need, right? The insult at the end just exposes you further. Drug cartels exist due to those things being illegal, not the other way around, but stay classy.
- pif 3y ago
  > Drug cartels exist due to those things being illegal Drug cartels exist due to those things being illegal AND people keeping giving money to them.
  - isaacremuant 3y ago
    Because you force their hand to not have another choice. You removed the choice. I love how authortiarians think that they'll get exactly their way. Suddenly laws of supply and demand disappear and they can shape the world at their pleasure.
    - pif 3y ago
      > I love how authortiarians Authoritarians? I'm talking about democracies! Where most people want marijuana, it gets legal. Where it doesn't, it's because people at large don't want it. That's it! People can protest, and we can and must discuss, but pouring money in organized crime for a non-need is not justifiable.

swayvil 3y ago

Step 1 : find something everybody wants. Step 2 : prevent them from getting it Step 3 : create an exclusive access channel Step 4 : profit I can think of a few instances where this model has been implemented in our society.

intelVISA 3y ago
World Wide Web vs Cloudflare
kjkjadksj 3y ago
This reads like the history of the US involvement in central and south America.

karmajunkie 3y ago

yes, crime was definitely invented because of 1920’s Prohibition. But for that dark episode of history, there would be no one trying to hide illicit doings behind the curtain of encryption, and the NSA/FBI/DEA/ATF/etc would definitely not be interested in reading encrypted traffic. Because, no crime, you see, so those agencies probably wouldn’t exist.