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I'll quote Michael Douglas from Traffic, "If there is a war on drugs, then many of our family members are the enemy. And I don’t know how you wage war on your o
by bloomingkales 2y ago
I'll quote Michael Douglas from Traffic, "If there is a war on drugs, then many of our family members are the enemy. And I don’t know how you wage war on your own family". His daughter was knee deep in heroin addiction as he was tasked to criminalize everyone. By the end of the movie he was changed imo.
We have no way of giving such an experience to those in power. The best we can do going forward is pick more well rounded people, and no, that doesn't mean great schools and great wealth. You must be experienced in life.
- boringg 2y agoI mean not to fan the flames of war on drugs - but its supposed to be targeting supply chain and large distributors
- bloomingkales 2y agoIt's a 24 year old movie. Around that time the history of the drug war involved a lot more petty criminalization (look how far we've come). This discussion can veer.
- staplers 2y agoLaw enforcement doesn't typically target itself and the ruling class.
- derektank 2y agoFormer Senator Bob Menendez would be very surprised to learn that
- potato3732842 2y agoIgnoring the fact that the word "typically" was highly operative, he's a great example of the point you're trying to undermine. The government never would have gone away empty handed with no conviction of any sort like they did the first time they went after Menendez in the late 2010s. A normal peasant would have had their life ruined and been just barely scraping by in the 2020s when he was doing the things that ultimately got him put away.
- ForTheKidz 2y ago"Typically" being the key word here. Morons exist in every economic class. See: Eric Adams. Anyway, Menendez has gotten off extremely lightly and everyone can see this.
- derektank 2y agoI just find it odd to describe something that happens at the federal level on average once a year[1] as atypical. (And I'm sure even more frequently at the state level). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_politicians_convicted_of_crimes?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_polit...
- ForTheKidz 2y agoConvictions seem like a distraction from the narrative here: Menendez fucked over his constituents. Obviously every politician that does so should be equally castigated. The court is irrelevant in this context and should be considered a trailing symptom.
- anigbrowl 2y agoOnce a year at more than 500 lawmakers and some number of senior executive branch appointees is <0.2%.
- parineum 2y agoEven if it were just doing that (and I don't believe that's either the objective or the practical application, minor possession offenses targeting users are the vast majority of convictions), your street level dealer is so far down the chain to have no effect on supply and is a member of the community that you're hoping to help by imprisoning.
- bloomingkales 2y agoGPT is floating out nearly 8 million arrests for drug possession in America between 1990 and 2010.
- icameron 2y agoNo, that seems far too low. I'm getting disillusioned with GPT answering everything. I don't find exact numbers for 1990-2010 but the number from 1996-2015 was over 32 million according to drugpolicyfacts.org [1] https://www.drugpolicyfacts.org/table/total_arrests https://www.drugpolicyfacts.org/table/total_arrests
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoA simple policy could easily end those supply chains and large distributors. Just legalize it. Coke, meth, heroin. Legalize it, only allow it to be sold retail (no more street drugs), only allow licensed manufacturers to produce it, only allow them some very modest (capped at 2% over cost, maybe) profits. You get to choose where it's sold (out of liquor stores, most likely, instead of crack houses). You get to starve the cartels to death (they're cut out completely). No cops dying in shootouts, no dealers dying in shootouts, no bystanders dying in shootouts. And if you want tweekers to stop stealing copper wiring for scrap, just get rid of piss tests too... if drugs are so awful that people who give suck dick for it, then they're also so awful that people will get a minimum wage job scrubbing toilets for them. It's just that they can't because of piss tests. Instead, we'll get another 100 years of half-assed decriminalization, where it's still illegal to sell, dealers are still motivated to kill cops, deadbeats, and rivals, where 100,000 people die because it's laced with fentanyl and even decriminalized illegal street drugs can't be regulated. I eagerly await all the downvotes this opinion will get.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago100%. Decriminalizing possession only solves part of the problem: not ruining users lives even more than they have already done. Cracking down on dealers just incentives them to substitute stronger and more dangerous drugs in the pipeline. One more change I would like to see: get rid of advertising this stuff. Giant billboards pushing alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis, are bad for all of us.
- marcosdumay 2y agoI don't think there was any moment of history where that was true. Besides, on a practical note, the war on drugs is what created large distributors. There weren't any when it started.
- dragonwriter 2y agoYeah, but that "supposed to" is propaganda more than policy, and is quite far from a description of the consequences on the ground.
- meyum33 2y agoThat was a good film. I always remembered del Toro’s recommendation about bulling more lighted fields for kids. Chinese society could learn a lot about how gaming is actually not that addictive when you look deeper into the problem.
- tombert 2y agoGetting off the rails here but I never get to talk about this movie! When first watching that movie, I really didn't like it right until the last scene, with Michael Douglas and his daughter in rehab, with the line "My name is Robert. And my wife, Barbara and I are here to support our daughter Caroline. And we're here to listen." It was such a simple yet clever way to end the movie and highlight a central theme in the movie, which is that the way to solve our problems isn't to demonize the people that caused them, but instead to listen to them. It was weird, because it sort of retroactively made me really like the rest of the movie. I feel like I'm willing to put up with a lot of the more slow-paced stuff if I know it's going somewhere. If I know that this is building up to an interesting theme, then I don't get bored. It's now become one of my favorite films.
- ferguess_k 2y agoWar on drugs != War on drug users. Shouldn't it be War on dug dealers?
- op00to 2y agoThat hasn’t been the implementation applied in almost all cases.
- relistan 2y agoIt’s shouldn’t be a war at all. That framing is unhelpful to solving the actual policy and societal problems.
- rexpop 2y agoThe point of the "war" framing is to manufacture consent for the chronic inflammation that is patriarchal domination via semi-martial law.
- SteveNuts 2y ago> the chronic inflammation that is patriarchal domination via semi-martial law What does this mean?
- ferguess_k 2y agoIt can be some legal actions, for sure? If it's illegal polices should move forward to clean them up?
- davkan 2y agoNo, patrolling your streets like you would a warzone is bad for everyone. It’s not a war. Any allusion to it being a war is bad. It is policing.
- ferguess_k 2y ago[flagged]