We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, 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.
That sums it up pretty well. It never was about fighting drug use or preventing the harm it can do. Can we now, please, get that behind us and move on? If we only spent 10% of what we now spent on prosecuting drug use on prevention and rehabilitation, that would be a much greater service to society than fourty years of "war" have been. Not to mention the benefits for privacy, the decrease in violence and so on...
Does anyone else get almost irrationally angry about this? I HATE that the freedom to modulate our own minds was taken away from us by these awful politicians for such terrible reasons. Not only has the War on Drugs ruined countless lives through incarceration and overdosing, but so many potentially helpful chemicals have been hidden away from society. It isn't just about getting "high"... it's about unleashing our full pharmacological potential in a safe and productive manner.
The War on Drugs is so fucking stupid and so many people are paying the price. I don't know if anything makes me as angry as this.
The thing I find interesting (INTERESTING, not necessarily moral or otherwise) about China is that when they want to do something controversial they are open and straight forward about it. They openly attack and arrest groups that they find disruptive to the social order. In America, the leadership has to invent all sorts of crafty subterfuge to accomplish their goals of persecuting and imprisoning groups that they consider to be disruptive. It's getting to be that the crafty deceptions have become so deeply layered that the official ideology that's supposed to justify policy has become hopelessly confused and contradictory.
According to a recent Frontline, maybe we are moving on:
"A searing, two-hour investigation places America’s heroin crisis in a fresh and provocative light -- telling the stories of individual addicts, but also illuminating the epidemic's years-in-the-making social context, deeply examining shifts in U.S. drug policy, and exploring what happens when addiction is treated like a public health issue, not a crime."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/chasing-heroin/
Another "problem" with legalization is that then the government will have to accept that it has to treat those people who become addicts instead of just imprisoning them. But it's not willing to cover them under a Medicare-like healthcare system. Do you think the addicts will afford or could be covered under ACA?
As it is there is a huge financial incentive for the criminals to get people hooked on drugs. Hard drugs should be freely provided by the government to take that incentive away. This also gives it the opportunity to help addicts who want to kick their addiction. It also dismantles the criminal organisations behind it, reducing crime that way, and it means that drug addicts can somewhat participate in normal society instead of having to steal to pay for their addiction.
The only problem with that version of history is that both drugs were illegal from the 1930s or earlier, and the controlled substances act of 1970 was introduced and passed by Democrat controlled house and senate.
I want to disagree a little on this. I won't disagree that the 'war on drugs' is out of control, largely mismanaged, and likely unnecessary. What I do want to say is I think it's a bit unfair to say "It never was about fighting drug use or preventing the harm it can do."
I think it's fair to say the funding and huge catalyst for the war on drugs started in Miami in the 80's. During this time where was a ridiculous amount of violence. Violence that occurred in broad daylight, that had no regard for the public, with weapons police didn't have access too. CENTAC was started and gave law enforcement a more level playing field, and had a huge impact on the violence related to the drug trade in south Florida. It effectively removed lots of violent criminals from the streets. Just look at the crime stats before and after the initiative, it's pretty clear there was a public benefit.
While I agree there are very unfortunate unintended consequences of the war on drugs, I think we also have to give credit where is credit is due. Lets learn from it and do something better moving forward.
> 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?
> That sums it up pretty well. It never was about fighting drug use or preventing the harm it can do. Can we now, please, get that behind us and move on? If we only spent 10% of what we now spent on prosecuting drug use on prevention and rehabilitation, that would be a much greater service to society than fourty years of "war" have been. Not to mention the benefits for privacy, the decrease in violence and so on...
I think the disturbing part is people, even now, deny this is the reason Nixon pushed for it. I just can't understand it. :/
Nixon basically shat on the results of his own commissions by members of his own party when he didn't like the results. History is littered with evidence this man had an agenda yet people act like the "Drug War" wasn't created as a political tool.
> In June 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. Nixon temporarily placed marijuana in Schedule One, the most restrictive category of drugs, pending review by a commission he appointed led by Republican Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer. In 1972, the commission unanimously recommended decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana for personal use. Nixon ignored the report and rejected its recommendations.
> On December 5, 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed Stephen Hess to the position of National Chairman of the White House Conference for Children and Youth. Hess's task was to "listen well to the voices of young Americans -- in the universities, on the farms, the assembly lines, the street corners," in the hopes of uncovering their opinions on America's domestic and international affairs. After two years of intensive planning, Hess and 1,486 delegates from across the country met in Estes Park, Colorado, and, from April 18 to 22, 1971, discussed ten areas that most concerned the youth of America. These issues included, not surprisingly, the draft and the war in Vietnam, the economy and employment, education, the environment, poverty, and, most notably for Points readers, drugs.
> The task force on drugs, composed of eight youths and four adults, forcefully argued for addressing the root causes of drug abuse, advocating therapy for addicts rather than incarceration or punishment.
> ... even if the Nixon administration distorted the numbers that tied drug addiction to instances of crime. ...
I don't even care what it was about: people should, in any case, own their own bodies.
Most countries are past criminalising suicide, and self-harm is acceptable (as long as you are considered mentally able). Why is there a difference in risking one's health in every single way but by using psychoactive substances?
Especially considering that clearly the war on drugs was never limited to, or expanded to all substances capable of generating physical dependence.
I do think drugs still apply, but not as much. But for things like encryption and private communications, there are others. And like with drugs, the thing they target aren't innocent. Many drugs are bad, some are downright horrendous. Part of the genius of their plan is that they do stick to things that aren't innocent and just make them even more guilty than they already are.
After telling the BBC in December that “if you fight a war for forty years and don’t win, you have to sit down and think about other things to do that might be more effective,” Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos legalized medical marijuana by decree. In November, the Mexican Supreme Court elevated the debate to a new plane by ruling that the prohibition of marijuana consumption violated the Mexican Constitution by interfering with “the personal sphere,” the “right to dignity,” and the right to “personal autonomy.”
This is great news. Only the sort of political situation that existed in Latin America over these past decades could have permitted us in USA to export all this violence and suffering. The corruption in their state was a mirror of that in ours. We were happy to destroy their societies for profit, and unfortunately their rulers were too.
The Drug War is a big reason I'm an anarchist. People living their own lives, in their own communities, can get up to some awful shit, now and then. No way in hell can they come up with the durable, sustained, all-consuming all-perverting horror that is the Drug War, or any of the other travesties the State produces without breaking a sweat.
As a counterpoint, compulsory free education for all children is a public good that couldn't be accomplished or sustained for decades without the state intruding upon the personal autonomy of the child and the parent (and childless taxpayers.)
The idea that the Western world (at least, my country, the UK) uses laws to criminalize groups of people seems about as old as time itself to me.
We don't punish drug use because we care about people taking drugs. We punish drug use because we want to eliminate the influence of 'junkies' on society.
We don't punish radical views because we disagree with them. We punish radical views because we want to eliminate their influence on society.
Let's talk about child abuse. A terrible crime.
As a UK resident - it feels to me, that people don't actually care about the actual act of child abuse as much as they care about the... 'othering' of the perpetrator.
It's the idea of a child abuser as being an animal, a strange alien, a completely non-understandable beast, that really riles us up.
That's why 'think of the children' works. We're not thinking about the children, really. We're thinking about the threat from human actors who don't have world-views that quite fit - we can't grok them, they can't be trusted.
That's what I think these sorts of laws are fundamentally about. They are about trying to remove 'scary' individuals.
I don't care about terrorism because I think it's vanishingly unlikely to occur. But people, as a mass, fear the unknown - they fear the humans who don't have the same limits that they do. The humans that can, and will, do anything.
'Terrorist' is just the new 'criminal', because 'criminal' doesn't hold the same cachet when everyone is a criminal.
I'm not sure about legalizing it all, but me and the world is pretty sure about decriminalizing it, just watch what happened here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbWpXYOg4OQ
TL;DR: Highly successful strategy of not marginalizing (both socially and legally) and actually helping addicts: cuts costs, cuts problems, decreases addicts.
The problem with decriminalization without legalization is that it addresses demand but not supply. Black market supply is where a lot of the harm from prohibition materializes.
The key difference is that drugs are something one does to oneself, whereas prostitution includes at least one other person. How to ensure that person is willingly participating and profiting is the question. Although I suppose legalization and licensing would help with that too.
Exactly. If somebody wants to sell their physical sexual skills, it should be just as easy to find a place of employment as somebody wanting to sell their mental deductive skills.
This is unrelated but it would be nice if this site offered the ability to minimize sub-threads. I was genuinely curious about people's opinions as to how best legalize drugs in a responsible fashion. Instead I have to scroll through an obnoxious amount of comments bemoaning the short falls of the government long enough to lose interest.
What I like most about this article is that it's most definitely not a libertarian take on the issue. The author describes several benefits of a government involvement in legal drug commerce.
A non-libertarian perspective on drug legalization is important because everyone knows libertarians want to legalize everything. And most informed people know the libertarian arguments as well. And they've been known for many decades now. Clearly, the libertarian approach isn't swaying a whole lot of people.
However, when people who are not ideologically committed to small government start supporting drug legalization it becomes a more serious possibility because it means a broader coalition can be built to support legalization.
tldr: libertarians alone will never make legalization a reality, but libertarians united with progressives can be a force for change.
As a paywalled site, perhaps Harper's rarely gets much traffic? Regardless, if they're going to expose such great content for free, they're going to have to get on the level of an HN front page mention.
I'm curious what HN thinks about the author's point that drug-distribution is state-controlled. I agree---capitalism only works in arenas where the actors act (decently) rationally, and would-be markets where a significant portion of consumption is by addicts doesn't meet that test.
I'm also curious if anyone thinks such a end-game is politically possible in the US. Or is the profit motive + mistrust of government the only coalition capable of out-hustling our puritan tendencies politically?
> The risks are tremendous. Deaths from heroin overdose in the United States rose 500 percent from 2001 to 2014, a staggering increase, and deaths from prescription drugs — which are already legal and regulated — shot up almost 300 percent, proving that where opioids are concerned, we seem to be inept not only when we prohibit but also when we regulate.
For heroin, the major risk is variation in potency. Heroin is highly cut at consumer level, for the most part. But occasionally, some relatively pure shit hits the street. And then there's the risk of boosting by Fentanyl and other high-potency opiates.
Also, it's pretty clear that the increasing popularity of heroin has been driven by decreasing availability of prescription opiates. New heroin users tend to be clueless about risk management. So they tend to overdose.
I'm curious about increasing deaths from prescription drugs. I wonder how much of that is driven by acetaminophen toxicity, as oxycodone etc have become harder to get than mixtures of acetaminophen with codeine and hydrocodone. I'm also wondering whether these figures include deaths for prescription drugs obtained informally.
A lot of overdoses also stem from folks who were forced or coerced into rehab before being fully prepared, then relapse, taking their old dose without realizing that their tolerance has already gone down during treatment. Hopefully those cases would decrease with legalization and the removal of the "hard drug" stigma.
Regarding the increase in RX deaths, I'd like to see those stats too-- though it's probably too hairy to really break down, I'd also like to see that expanded which prescription opiate, as well as circumstance (fully recreational/no clear injury, minor injury, during hospitalization, or continuing/long term care).
After reading The Rise and Fall of American Growth -- a brilliant work that most here on HN would find relevant -- I came away more convinced than ever before that legalizing drugs would reduce a great deal of drag on our long term economic growth.
I think that one of the biggest things that policymakers should keep in mind is that frequently, there is no good solution. There are only less bad solutions.
Take payday loans as an example. The entire industry is extremely exploitative and preys on uneducated poor people who are desperate due to bad circumstances and / or poor financial planning. Well-meaning activists have campaigned to "reform" the business and make it less scummy.
The result? Legitimate payday loan companies go out of business, as it's no longer economical to invest money in loaning to poor people, and the mob fills the void. Instead of getting a loan from Usury Inc, whose backers have pulled out and invested in something else, you're getting a loan from Cousin Vinnie. Now, the poor get exploited even more nastily by organized crime, which has absolutely no compunctions about getting its money back by any means possible, including threatening families, breaking kneecaps, killing people to get the rest of the debtors in line, etc.
The only answer is an optimization - you curb the worst of the abuses, and then accept the fact that the exploitation is a side effect of underlying causes and impossible to remove without making things worse. It's as good as we're going to get.
Same exact thing with the drug trade. Drugs destroy lives. It's a fact - heroin and other opiates are a scourge on poor communities, and it's not just due to the fact that they're illegal. After all, people overdose on prescription medication all the time, too[1]. But a lot of the enforcement that has been done makes things even worse - we still have addicts, and then we get all of the violence that comes from the enormous markup that's inherent in the black market. There is no good solution that makes everything better, but it's very easy to make things worse.
More nastily, it breeds what I like to call "contempt of the law" - if everyone in a community is breaking the law somehow, (smoking weed, buying black-market cigarettes, buying prescription painkillers, etc) then even worse crimes don't get prosecuted because everyone is preoccupied with the fact that the police are going after the people they perceive to be average Joes. As soon as people perceive the police as an occupying force that arbitrarily goes after average citizens for gits and shiggles, the people will stop seeing the police as guardians against the truly evil and dangerous people among them.
I think that the biggest issue that blocks action on this is that people are confusing legalization with approval. You can make something legal and still think it's horrible. It's legal to cheat on your spouse, even though most people consider it immoral, but the cost on society that would come from making adultery illegal (and enforcing it) would be far greater than keeping the government out of it. Similarly, you can make prostitution legal and still consider it horrible. You can make casino gambling illegal and still consider it exploitative of people who suck at math. And you can make drugs legal and still consider it exploitative of human weakness. The only criteria that we should be using is "Would government intervention actually make the situation better? If not, keep the government out of it." And at this point, I'm pretty doubtful that dispatching thousands of officers to go after heroin dealers will keep people from using heroin. I'm pretty confident that doing so will increase the money that's in heroin, increase violence, and breed contempt of the law.
<asshole> Oh. Also, if we make drugs legal, I'm investing like a motherfucker in Soma, Inc. Drugs sell themselves, and I'm sure that corporations will make a bundle if they can sell them to The Public. My retirement fund will thank the wonderful residents of Appalachia for their generous contributions. Whichever company is the first to make an oxycodone version of Joe Camel is the one I'm investing in.</asshole>
The stalemate of the current horrid system seems only to be held in place by the (perhaps misguided) sense that being high enough middle class has a better chance to insulate your family against the ravages of drug addiction more than the total legalization ever could. And so every police crackdown in your neighborhood makes sense for protection, but it results in a tragedy of the commons type situation that everyone becomes more policed without truly cutting down drug abuse.
This seems like a good time to mention that I own the domain name TheTruthAboutPot.com and have no idea what to do with it. Suggestions / buyers welcome!
We should be deciding such questions at the neighborhood level. There are always going to be those who don't want to be arounds drugs and those who do. We should be making it possible to have either kind of community and access either without having to travel to another city or state.
[+] [-] krylon|10 years ago|reply
That sums it up pretty well. It never was about fighting drug use or preventing the harm it can do. Can we now, please, get that behind us and move on? If we only spent 10% of what we now spent on prosecuting drug use on prevention and rehabilitation, that would be a much greater service to society than fourty years of "war" have been. Not to mention the benefits for privacy, the decrease in violence and so on...
[+] [-] md224|10 years ago|reply
The War on Drugs is so fucking stupid and so many people are paying the price. I don't know if anything makes me as angry as this.
[+] [-] narrator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickburke|10 years ago|reply
"A searing, two-hour investigation places America’s heroin crisis in a fresh and provocative light -- telling the stories of individual addicts, but also illuminating the epidemic's years-in-the-making social context, deeply examining shifts in U.S. drug policy, and exploring what happens when addiction is treated like a public health issue, not a crime." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/chasing-heroin/
[+] [-] WalterBright|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jules|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guard-of-terra|10 years ago|reply
Well, at least now we know who is guilty. Now we should make sure that this crime is resolved with punishment.
[+] [-] ams6110|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Delmania|10 years ago|reply
What, and disrupt the massively profitable prison industry?
[+] [-] itsgreene|10 years ago|reply
I think it's fair to say the funding and huge catalyst for the war on drugs started in Miami in the 80's. During this time where was a ridiculous amount of violence. Violence that occurred in broad daylight, that had no regard for the public, with weapons police didn't have access too. CENTAC was started and gave law enforcement a more level playing field, and had a huge impact on the violence related to the drug trade in south Florida. It effectively removed lots of violent criminals from the streets. Just look at the crime stats before and after the initiative, it's pretty clear there was a public benefit.
While I agree there are very unfortunate unintended consequences of the war on drugs, I think we also have to give credit where is credit is due. Lets learn from it and do something better moving forward.
[+] [-] fweespee_ch|10 years ago|reply
> That sums it up pretty well. It never was about fighting drug use or preventing the harm it can do. Can we now, please, get that behind us and move on? If we only spent 10% of what we now spent on prosecuting drug use on prevention and rehabilitation, that would be a much greater service to society than fourty years of "war" have been. Not to mention the benefits for privacy, the decrease in violence and so on...
I think the disturbing part is people, even now, deny this is the reason Nixon pushed for it. I just can't understand it. :/
Nixon basically shat on the results of his own commissions by members of his own party when he didn't like the results. History is littered with evidence this man had an agenda yet people act like the "Drug War" wasn't created as a political tool.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/new-solutions-drug-policy/brief-hi...
> In June 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. Nixon temporarily placed marijuana in Schedule One, the most restrictive category of drugs, pending review by a commission he appointed led by Republican Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer. In 1972, the commission unanimously recommended decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana for personal use. Nixon ignored the report and rejected its recommendations.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-war-on...
> On December 5, 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed Stephen Hess to the position of National Chairman of the White House Conference for Children and Youth. Hess's task was to "listen well to the voices of young Americans -- in the universities, on the farms, the assembly lines, the street corners," in the hopes of uncovering their opinions on America's domestic and international affairs. After two years of intensive planning, Hess and 1,486 delegates from across the country met in Estes Park, Colorado, and, from April 18 to 22, 1971, discussed ten areas that most concerned the youth of America. These issues included, not surprisingly, the draft and the war in Vietnam, the economy and employment, education, the environment, poverty, and, most notably for Points readers, drugs.
> The task force on drugs, composed of eight youths and four adults, forcefully argued for addressing the root causes of drug abuse, advocating therapy for addicts rather than incarceration or punishment.
> ... even if the Nixon administration distorted the numbers that tied drug addiction to instances of crime. ...
[+] [-] alanwatts|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exprI|10 years ago|reply
Most countries are past criminalising suicide, and self-harm is acceptable (as long as you are considered mentally able). Why is there a difference in risking one's health in every single way but by using psychoactive substances?
Especially considering that clearly the war on drugs was never limited to, or expanded to all substances capable of generating physical dependence.
[+] [-] Lawtonfogle|10 years ago|reply
I do think drugs still apply, but not as much. But for things like encryption and private communications, there are others. And like with drugs, the thing they target aren't innocent. Many drugs are bad, some are downright horrendous. Part of the genius of their plan is that they do stick to things that aren't innocent and just make them even more guilty than they already are.
[+] [-] jessaustin|10 years ago|reply
This is great news. Only the sort of political situation that existed in Latin America over these past decades could have permitted us in USA to export all this violence and suffering. The corruption in their state was a mirror of that in ours. We were happy to destroy their societies for profit, and unfortunately their rulers were too.
The Drug War is a big reason I'm an anarchist. People living their own lives, in their own communities, can get up to some awful shit, now and then. No way in hell can they come up with the durable, sustained, all-consuming all-perverting horror that is the Drug War, or any of the other travesties the State produces without breaking a sweat.
[+] [-] charonn0|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stegosaurus|10 years ago|reply
We don't punish drug use because we care about people taking drugs. We punish drug use because we want to eliminate the influence of 'junkies' on society.
We don't punish radical views because we disagree with them. We punish radical views because we want to eliminate their influence on society.
Let's talk about child abuse. A terrible crime.
As a UK resident - it feels to me, that people don't actually care about the actual act of child abuse as much as they care about the... 'othering' of the perpetrator.
It's the idea of a child abuser as being an animal, a strange alien, a completely non-understandable beast, that really riles us up.
That's why 'think of the children' works. We're not thinking about the children, really. We're thinking about the threat from human actors who don't have world-views that quite fit - we can't grok them, they can't be trusted.
That's what I think these sorts of laws are fundamentally about. They are about trying to remove 'scary' individuals.
I don't care about terrorism because I think it's vanishingly unlikely to occur. But people, as a mass, fear the unknown - they fear the humans who don't have the same limits that they do. The humans that can, and will, do anything.
'Terrorist' is just the new 'criminal', because 'criminal' doesn't hold the same cachet when everyone is a criminal.
[+] [-] joantune|10 years ago|reply
TL;DR: Highly successful strategy of not marginalizing (both socially and legally) and actually helping addicts: cuts costs, cuts problems, decreases addicts.
[+] [-] seizethecheese|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomphoolery|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbubb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kagamine|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neverknowsbest|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sreya|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omegaham|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] therealdrag0|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonalmeida|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ijhnv|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tryitnow|10 years ago|reply
A non-libertarian perspective on drug legalization is important because everyone knows libertarians want to legalize everything. And most informed people know the libertarian arguments as well. And they've been known for many decades now. Clearly, the libertarian approach isn't swaying a whole lot of people.
However, when people who are not ideologically committed to small government start supporting drug legalization it becomes a more serious possibility because it means a broader coalition can be built to support legalization.
tldr: libertarians alone will never make legalization a reality, but libertarians united with progressives can be a force for change.
[+] [-] AmandaShebang|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r721|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jessaustin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dools|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ericson2314|10 years ago|reply
I'm also curious if anyone thinks such a end-game is politically possible in the US. Or is the profit motive + mistrust of government the only coalition capable of out-hustling our puritan tendencies politically?
[+] [-] mirimir|10 years ago|reply
For heroin, the major risk is variation in potency. Heroin is highly cut at consumer level, for the most part. But occasionally, some relatively pure shit hits the street. And then there's the risk of boosting by Fentanyl and other high-potency opiates.
Also, it's pretty clear that the increasing popularity of heroin has been driven by decreasing availability of prescription opiates. New heroin users tend to be clueless about risk management. So they tend to overdose.
I'm curious about increasing deaths from prescription drugs. I wonder how much of that is driven by acetaminophen toxicity, as oxycodone etc have become harder to get than mixtures of acetaminophen with codeine and hydrocodone. I'm also wondering whether these figures include deaths for prescription drugs obtained informally.
[+] [-] neverknowsbest|10 years ago|reply
Regarding the increase in RX deaths, I'd like to see those stats too-- though it's probably too hairy to really break down, I'd also like to see that expanded which prescription opiate, as well as circumstance (fully recreational/no clear injury, minor injury, during hospitalization, or continuing/long term care).
[+] [-] obfk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennesvig|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gdubs|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omegaham|10 years ago|reply
Take payday loans as an example. The entire industry is extremely exploitative and preys on uneducated poor people who are desperate due to bad circumstances and / or poor financial planning. Well-meaning activists have campaigned to "reform" the business and make it less scummy.
The result? Legitimate payday loan companies go out of business, as it's no longer economical to invest money in loaning to poor people, and the mob fills the void. Instead of getting a loan from Usury Inc, whose backers have pulled out and invested in something else, you're getting a loan from Cousin Vinnie. Now, the poor get exploited even more nastily by organized crime, which has absolutely no compunctions about getting its money back by any means possible, including threatening families, breaking kneecaps, killing people to get the rest of the debtors in line, etc.
The only answer is an optimization - you curb the worst of the abuses, and then accept the fact that the exploitation is a side effect of underlying causes and impossible to remove without making things worse. It's as good as we're going to get.
Same exact thing with the drug trade. Drugs destroy lives. It's a fact - heroin and other opiates are a scourge on poor communities, and it's not just due to the fact that they're illegal. After all, people overdose on prescription medication all the time, too[1]. But a lot of the enforcement that has been done makes things even worse - we still have addicts, and then we get all of the violence that comes from the enormous markup that's inherent in the black market. There is no good solution that makes everything better, but it's very easy to make things worse.
More nastily, it breeds what I like to call "contempt of the law" - if everyone in a community is breaking the law somehow, (smoking weed, buying black-market cigarettes, buying prescription painkillers, etc) then even worse crimes don't get prosecuted because everyone is preoccupied with the fact that the police are going after the people they perceive to be average Joes. As soon as people perceive the police as an occupying force that arbitrarily goes after average citizens for gits and shiggles, the people will stop seeing the police as guardians against the truly evil and dangerous people among them.
I think that the biggest issue that blocks action on this is that people are confusing legalization with approval. You can make something legal and still think it's horrible. It's legal to cheat on your spouse, even though most people consider it immoral, but the cost on society that would come from making adultery illegal (and enforcing it) would be far greater than keeping the government out of it. Similarly, you can make prostitution legal and still consider it horrible. You can make casino gambling illegal and still consider it exploitative of people who suck at math. And you can make drugs legal and still consider it exploitative of human weakness. The only criteria that we should be using is "Would government intervention actually make the situation better? If not, keep the government out of it." And at this point, I'm pretty doubtful that dispatching thousands of officers to go after heroin dealers will keep people from using heroin. I'm pretty confident that doing so will increase the money that's in heroin, increase violence, and breed contempt of the law.
<asshole> Oh. Also, if we make drugs legal, I'm investing like a motherfucker in Soma, Inc. Drugs sell themselves, and I'm sure that corporations will make a bundle if they can sell them to The Public. My retirement fund will thank the wonderful residents of Appalachia for their generous contributions. Whichever company is the first to make an oxycodone version of Joe Camel is the one I'm investing in.</asshole>
[1]http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html
[+] [-] stillsut|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] md224|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stretchwithme|10 years ago|reply
And penalties should be civil not criminal.