5 ms·

Sending people off to jail to lose their families and jobs because the drug they like is different than the one the state likes does absolutely nothing to impro

Sending people off to jail to lose their families and jobs because the drug they like is different than the one the state likes does absolutely nothing to improve social stability. Very much so the opposite.

bumby 3y ago
Very much agreed. But to the original point, it's about finding a balance. Just like imprisoning people for long periods isn't always conducive to stability, neither is a society full of addicts who struggle to hold down a job or take care of their family. It shouldn't be characterized as an either/or but as finding a reasonable balance.
- standardUser 3y ago
  I think the "balance" argument is a diversion because when you examine the actual policies and their outcomes, at no point does it appear that stability is the actual goal. Yes, the idea that we need a balanced approach to individual vs collective rights is valid and should be a guiding star for us. My argument is that it is not - that our policies instead cause greater instability - and the balance argument is nothing more than a rhetorically nice-sounding cover story for these destructive policies.
  - bumby 3y ago
    This might be confusing my point. The initial goal of drug laws may be in the vein of stabilizing society, while poor implementation strays from that goal. Both can be true at the same time. Poor implementation begs for better implementation, not the nullification of the goal. I am not defending current drug policies, I'm guarding against the notion that the "solution" is just to make consensual crime legal. This side-steps a relevant discussion about how you measure societal stability, but that would be a long digression to itself.
    - vlovich123 3y ago
      AFAIK the drug laws the US deals with today primarily stem from the “Drug War” which was politically motivated to target Nixon’s “enemies” (blacks and anti-war activists): > Americans have been criminalizing psychoactive substances since San Francisco’s anti-opium law of 1875, but it was Ehrlichman’s boss, Richard Nixon, who declared the first “War on Drugs” in 1971 and set the country on the wildly punitive and counterproductive path it still pursues. > [Ehrlichman, Nixon’s advisor for domestic affairs] “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-shocking-and-sickening-story-behind-nixons-war-on-drugs-that-targeted-blacks-and-anti-war-activists/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-shocking-and-sickening-st...
      - blq10 3y ago
        Ehh, sort of. The congressional black caucus were ardent supporters of the war on drugs https://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-championed-strict-drug-laws-they-now-seek-dismantle/ https://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-champio... So I'm pretty sure that whatever motivation Nixon had, the Black community in the United States wasn't a big fan of drugs and wanted them gone.
        yterdy 3y ago
        There's a difference between not being a big fan of drugs and wanting the onerous law enforcement and incarceratorial regime which was eventually implemented. Without much meaningful input from the CBC, I imagine. Your "Ehh, sort of," is quite weak. Going back to marijuana, opiate, and even alcohol prohibition policies, drug laws have always been more about controlling the conjured threat of minority populations than anything else.
  - hyeonwho22 3y ago
    I would argue that rather than stability a lot of the puritan instinct comes from a desire to see one's children thrive. The relevant analytical unit at the small scale is the family: I don't want my kids to be temperant because of stability, I want them to abstain from drugs/games/$VICE because that's the path which maximizes the chance of their living a fulfilling life, or (more cynically) which maximizes their chance of bearing me successful grandkids and great grandkids. This is why puritainism is selected for evolutionarily (at least in environments where resources are limited). To return to the large scale policy questions, I also don't want to see the continent of my children fall to a mercantilist China (using China as an example because Chinese law cracks down hard on drug sales and limits students to one hour of video games per night). Accordingly, I support policies to limit access to addictive substances and stimuli, despite the inevitable conflict between those laws and individual rights. The inequitable enforcement of those laws is another problem entirely, and one which I think would be well solved by starting with the prosecution of celebrities and thought leaders who openly partake in $ADDICTIVE_STIMULUS, and their suppliers.
    - bumby 3y ago
      This is a pretty reasonable hypothesis, but to add a counterpoint: the nuclear family is relatively recent phenomenon from an evolutionary perspective.
      - eastof 3y ago
        Not sure how that is a counterpoint, GP doesn't even specify they are talking about a nuclear family. Presumably other family structures have a similar dynamic where they want the youth to succeed.
        bumby 3y ago
        Fair enough. From an evolutionary perspective, there is a much smaller distinction between “family” and “society as a whole”. Prior to the nation-state, most of “society” were people known on a personal level. So I’m not sure that there is a strong distinction between “ensuring my family has a good outcome” and “ensuring a stable society” because a stable society is meant to be a means and not an end. Regardless, this feels a bit like an untestable hypothesis.
- bedobi 3y ago
  do you also think the state should criminalize religion? given the ubiquitous problems caused by religion in the public sphere, the domestic lives of countless millions families etc etc?
  - bumby 3y ago
    Not unless the mechanism includes repealing the 1st amendment. Part of finding a good balance recognizes there is a hierarchy of principles.
rexpop 3y ago
Au contraire! Persecution of the lower classes can do wonders for the preservation of a certain order. Aldus Huxley imagined an imposition of fetal alcohol syndrome to keep the trades in their place, but we do it more cheeply by destroying families and carting men off to work slave labor. Overzealous policing synergizes nicely with the myth of meritocry by helping the middle class (MLK's "white moderate") attribute socioeconomic divisions to heritable "merit." And thus is the pyramid scheme maintained.
shuckles 3y ago
Very few people are in prison for simple possession. The American justice system, contrary to most popular sentiment, is quite diversionary. As a percentage, Sweden probably has more people in prison for drug possession than America. Most prisoners have been convicted of a violent crime.
- bumby 3y ago
  I was originally skeptical of this. Based on what I found it seems like incarceration levels are about 1.27x higher for violent crimes. State data: Total violent crimes (2020): 651,800 Non violent crimes (property/drug/public order/other) (2020): 141,100/131,600/109,100/6,800. Total=388,600 Federal data: Total violent crimes (2020): 10,547 Non violent crimes: (property/drug/public order/other) (2020): 5,950/66,474/58,894/433, Total = 131,751 Combined: Violent crime (2020): 662,347 Non-violent crime (2020): 520,351 With that said, there is massive disparity in federal crimes, where there are almost 7x the sentences for drug crimes compared to violent crimes. But that includes trafficking etc. and can't be characterized as 'simple possession' https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population-by-type-of-crime-committed/ https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population...
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  as a general rule when one makes statements that go against the common wisdom one should also make some sort of effort at showing the cause for ones arguments, but at any rate here is a stat that says 1 in 5 prisoners are in prison for a drug offense https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2023_drugs.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2023_drugs.html yes I know a drug offense is not just simple possession but I mean, you didn't try to provide anything for your astounding claims, so I figure I could get the ball rolling here. as far as Sweden https://www.statista.com/statistics/534214/sweden-persons-sentenced-to-imprisonment-by-type-of-crime/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/534214/sweden-persons-se... 3237 people in Swedish Prison for drug offenses Sweden has a population of over 10 million so less than 0.03% going by this https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/01/16/percent-incarcerated/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/01/16/percent-incarce... I figure the American rate must be 0.2% It is not close. Which is what I think most people would predict - that it was not even close. on edit: I see Bumby went and got some stats too, to clarify I don't doubt that violent offenses outweigh other offenses, what I doubt is that America does not have a large number of people incarcerated for drug possession.
blq10 3y ago
The state does not like those drugs because society does not like those drugs, and in the case of certain drugs, like heroin and other harder drugs we have decided that it is rational to attempt to keep them off the streets rather than agree to legal use. It's fun to declare it "things the state doesn't like", but I legitimately don't see anyone legalizing meth or heroin anytime soon.
- cwkoss 3y ago
  Meth is already legal. It's called desoxyn
  - bumby 3y ago
    I believe they meant recreationally legal. There are lots of medications that are also used as recreational drugs (cocaine, opiates, etc.) but their use shouldn't be conflated.
- alasdair_ 3y ago
  >It's fun to declare it "things the state doesn't like", but I legitimately don't see anyone legalizing meth or heroin anytime soon. Portugal did exactly this (or decriminalized them for personal use anyway).
  - whats_a_quasar 3y ago
    There are signs that policy is not going 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 state has a legitimate interest in limiting the number of people taking opioids in public. It's self-defeating to do that through mass incarceration. To be determined how well decriminalization works. But it's definitely not that the government just doesn't like drugs - hard drugs really do have societal costs.
    - a_bonobo 3y ago
      I think the article makes a point that is overlooked: >After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs. The country is now moving to create a new institute aimed at reinvigorating its drug prevention programs. Can't decriminalize drugs if you stop funding drug treatment programs and chuck it all onto underfunded NGOs who have their own motivations.

bumby 3y ago

Very much agreed. But to the original point, it's about finding a balance. Just like imprisoning people for long periods isn't always conducive to stability, neither is a society full of addicts who struggle to hold down a job or take care of their family. It shouldn't be characterized as an either/or but as finding a reasonable balance.

standardUser 3y ago
I think the "balance" argument is a diversion because when you examine the actual policies and their outcomes, at no point does it appear that stability is the actual goal. Yes, the idea that we need a balanced approach to individual vs collective rights is valid and should be a guiding star for us. My argument is that it is not - that our policies instead cause greater instability - and the balance argument is nothing more than a rhetorically nice-sounding cover story for these destructive policies.
- bumby 3y ago
  This might be confusing my point. The initial goal of drug laws may be in the vein of stabilizing society, while poor implementation strays from that goal. Both can be true at the same time. Poor implementation begs for better implementation, not the nullification of the goal. I am not defending current drug policies, I'm guarding against the notion that the "solution" is just to make consensual crime legal. This side-steps a relevant discussion about how you measure societal stability, but that would be a long digression to itself.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    AFAIK the drug laws the US deals with today primarily stem from the “Drug War” which was politically motivated to target Nixon’s “enemies” (blacks and anti-war activists): > Americans have been criminalizing psychoactive substances since San Francisco’s anti-opium law of 1875, but it was Ehrlichman’s boss, Richard Nixon, who declared the first “War on Drugs” in 1971 and set the country on the wildly punitive and counterproductive path it still pursues. > [Ehrlichman, Nixon’s advisor for domestic affairs] “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-shocking-and-sickening-story-behind-nixons-war-on-drugs-that-targeted-blacks-and-anti-war-activists/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-shocking-and-sickening-st...
    - blq10 3y ago
      Ehh, sort of. The congressional black caucus were ardent supporters of the war on drugs https://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-championed-strict-drug-laws-they-now-seek-dismantle/ https://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-champio... So I'm pretty sure that whatever motivation Nixon had, the Black community in the United States wasn't a big fan of drugs and wanted them gone.
      - yterdy 3y ago
        There's a difference between not being a big fan of drugs and wanting the onerous law enforcement and incarceratorial regime which was eventually implemented. Without much meaningful input from the CBC, I imagine. Your "Ehh, sort of," is quite weak. Going back to marijuana, opiate, and even alcohol prohibition policies, drug laws have always been more about controlling the conjured threat of minority populations than anything else.
- hyeonwho22 3y ago
  I would argue that rather than stability a lot of the puritan instinct comes from a desire to see one's children thrive. The relevant analytical unit at the small scale is the family: I don't want my kids to be temperant because of stability, I want them to abstain from drugs/games/$VICE because that's the path which maximizes the chance of their living a fulfilling life, or (more cynically) which maximizes their chance of bearing me successful grandkids and great grandkids. This is why puritainism is selected for evolutionarily (at least in environments where resources are limited). To return to the large scale policy questions, I also don't want to see the continent of my children fall to a mercantilist China (using China as an example because Chinese law cracks down hard on drug sales and limits students to one hour of video games per night). Accordingly, I support policies to limit access to addictive substances and stimuli, despite the inevitable conflict between those laws and individual rights. The inequitable enforcement of those laws is another problem entirely, and one which I think would be well solved by starting with the prosecution of celebrities and thought leaders who openly partake in $ADDICTIVE_STIMULUS, and their suppliers.
  - bumby 3y ago
    This is a pretty reasonable hypothesis, but to add a counterpoint: the nuclear family is relatively recent phenomenon from an evolutionary perspective.
    - eastof 3y ago
      Not sure how that is a counterpoint, GP doesn't even specify they are talking about a nuclear family. Presumably other family structures have a similar dynamic where they want the youth to succeed.
      - bumby 3y ago
        Fair enough. From an evolutionary perspective, there is a much smaller distinction between “family” and “society as a whole”. Prior to the nation-state, most of “society” were people known on a personal level. So I’m not sure that there is a strong distinction between “ensuring my family has a good outcome” and “ensuring a stable society” because a stable society is meant to be a means and not an end. Regardless, this feels a bit like an untestable hypothesis.
bedobi 3y ago
do you also think the state should criminalize religion? given the ubiquitous problems caused by religion in the public sphere, the domestic lives of countless millions families etc etc?
- bumby 3y ago
  Not unless the mechanism includes repealing the 1st amendment. Part of finding a good balance recognizes there is a hierarchy of principles.

rexpop 3y ago

Au contraire! Persecution of the lower classes can do wonders for the preservation of a certain order. Aldus Huxley imagined an imposition of fetal alcohol syndrome to keep the trades in their place, but we do it more cheeply by destroying families and carting men off to work slave labor. Overzealous policing synergizes nicely with the myth of meritocry by helping the middle class (MLK's "white moderate") attribute socioeconomic divisions to heritable "merit." And thus is the pyramid scheme maintained.

shuckles 3y ago

Very few people are in prison for simple possession. The American justice system, contrary to most popular sentiment, is quite diversionary. As a percentage, Sweden probably has more people in prison for drug possession than America. Most prisoners have been convicted of a violent crime.

bumby 3y ago
I was originally skeptical of this. Based on what I found it seems like incarceration levels are about 1.27x higher for violent crimes. State data: Total violent crimes (2020): 651,800 Non violent crimes (property/drug/public order/other) (2020): 141,100/131,600/109,100/6,800. Total=388,600 Federal data: Total violent crimes (2020): 10,547 Non violent crimes: (property/drug/public order/other) (2020): 5,950/66,474/58,894/433, Total = 131,751 Combined: Violent crime (2020): 662,347 Non-violent crime (2020): 520,351 With that said, there is massive disparity in federal crimes, where there are almost 7x the sentences for drug crimes compared to violent crimes. But that includes trafficking etc. and can't be characterized as 'simple possession' https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population-by-type-of-crime-committed/ https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population...
bryanrasmussen 3y ago
as a general rule when one makes statements that go against the common wisdom one should also make some sort of effort at showing the cause for ones arguments, but at any rate here is a stat that says 1 in 5 prisoners are in prison for a drug offense https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2023_drugs.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2023_drugs.html yes I know a drug offense is not just simple possession but I mean, you didn't try to provide anything for your astounding claims, so I figure I could get the ball rolling here. as far as Sweden https://www.statista.com/statistics/534214/sweden-persons-sentenced-to-imprisonment-by-type-of-crime/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/534214/sweden-persons-se... 3237 people in Swedish Prison for drug offenses Sweden has a population of over 10 million so less than 0.03% going by this https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/01/16/percent-incarcerated/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/01/16/percent-incarce... I figure the American rate must be 0.2% It is not close. Which is what I think most people would predict - that it was not even close. on edit: I see Bumby went and got some stats too, to clarify I don't doubt that violent offenses outweigh other offenses, what I doubt is that America does not have a large number of people incarcerated for drug possession.

blq10 3y ago

The state does not like those drugs because society does not like those drugs, and in the case of certain drugs, like heroin and other harder drugs we have decided that it is rational to attempt to keep them off the streets rather than agree to legal use. It's fun to declare it "things the state doesn't like", but I legitimately don't see anyone legalizing meth or heroin anytime soon.

cwkoss 3y ago
Meth is already legal. It's called desoxyn
- bumby 3y ago
  I believe they meant recreationally legal. There are lots of medications that are also used as recreational drugs (cocaine, opiates, etc.) but their use shouldn't be conflated.
alasdair_ 3y ago
>It's fun to declare it "things the state doesn't like", but I legitimately don't see anyone legalizing meth or heroin anytime soon. Portugal did exactly this (or decriminalized them for personal use anyway).
- whats_a_quasar 3y ago
  There are signs that policy is not going 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 state has a legitimate interest in limiting the number of people taking opioids in public. It's self-defeating to do that through mass incarceration. To be determined how well decriminalization works. But it's definitely not that the government just doesn't like drugs - hard drugs really do have societal costs.
  - a_bonobo 3y ago
    I think the article makes a point that is overlooked: >After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs. The country is now moving to create a new institute aimed at reinvigorating its drug prevention programs. Can't decriminalize drugs if you stop funding drug treatment programs and chuck it all onto underfunded NGOs who have their own motivations.