When I was 19 I got caught selling a bunch of MDMA at a night club. Undercover police caught me, and by God's grace they chose to let me go.
MDMA had just begun to carry a minimum 10 yr prison sentence throughout the state.
I had no idea what I was doing in my life, like I was asleep and not awake, until I got caught that night.
About 15 minutes into the interrogation at the scene, Officer Garcia - I still remember him - knowing my mental state of panic and realization of reality, said to me "You know, when I was your age I did the same thing, and I was forgiven and let go. So what I'm going to do is forgive you and let you go this time. Go home, and don't ever do this again."
I drove home at about half the speed limit that night, trying to process what had happened. First time I had experienced such forgiveness and mercy.
The aim of my life now is to maximize the amount of good I can do for others. I'll never forget. I could still be in prison. Maybe as an open source computer programmer, but prison nonetheless.
It's a big risk to let someone go like that; will they actually repent, or continue causing harm?
The power of stories like this never fails to humble me. There are countless (less dramatic) incidents like this in every life. Your experience brings them back into focus.
Offtopic, but minimum sentences are nuts. What's the point of judges and juries etc if we make the law so aggressive that they hardly have a say anymore?
Kudos to officer Garcia. I don’t know many people who still bring that kind of responsibility to their job. So much easier to just follow the rules. Even among judges I know only very few who have the guts to make an actual judgement, which, after all, requires to say “I” - which seems almost an audacity today.
It's legal or decriminalized in Portugal, The Czech Republic, The Netherlands, and Switzerland, by the way. Surprise: Those are now the countries with the lowest number of drug deaths and drug related crimes in Europe.
Whatever people are incarcerated for, the fact of the matter is that 95% of the people currently incarcerated in the US will one day live next door to one or more of us. Isn't it better to prepare them to live there, self-sufficent and contributing to society? (Disclosure: I am the Cofounder of Unlocked Labs, Preston's current employer and formerly incarcerated myself). I can say without hesitation, Preston is an incredible employee whom I am happy we provided this opportunity for.
There are a lot of historical examples arguing for and against you. But murder and rape is far different than getting popped for heroin or selling weed and our laws already reflect that
It's a little late, so this will get buried, but I had a similar experience.
I caught two felonies (both from the same incident)
Luckily, I had a good job at the time and it was my first offense, so I was able to get house arrest.
After seeing what could have been my life, I completed my BS in CS, online part-time and convinced the state of California to let me move there.
I received five years of probation, so even though I was off house arrest, I had to convince the state of California to take me as a probationer.
I don't think this is usually offered, even though I had gainful employment waiting for me. I feel very fortunate.
Since then, I've worked for various startups and Fortune 50 companies as a software engineer. I was lucky enough that the tech industry valued me more for my skills than punished me for my past.
I will be forever grateful to the state of California and the tech industry for this.
I've looked into, and tried to volunteer for various programs that try to teach inmates or felons technical/engineering skills. All have fallen through.
I'd love to hear what you're working on OP, and if you want to brainstorm a way we can try and help more inmates turn their life around through software development.
Thank you for sharing your story. It's wonderful that you want to pay your fortunes forward.
I don't think they work directly in prisons and jails, but https://www.underdogdevs.org/ is a group that works to train formerly incarcerated people in software and tech. They built mentee/mentor relationships between professional development and those wanting to learn.
As a former software engineer for over a decade and current corrections officer in a max level state facility, this is a very interesting topic. My facility has a large college presence within it. While there are problems with it, I think overall it is probably a net positive for the staff and inmates. At the same time, I don't believe that we have more than maybe a small handful of nonviolent/drug offenders; anybody on the outside advocating for murderers, rapists, and those in for armed robbery to have access to more of the normal comforts of the outside world is going to have a hard time and not much support. Even the medium level prisons have those types of people in them. So what facilities would wider access to remote learning and work become available? There would need to be honor facilities inmates must work towards proving they're responsible enough to be transferred to. Right now budgets are being slashed, we're at 60% staffing as it is, and the whole state is in the shit. And this is a "progressive liberal" state. It would probably take the federal government to start throwing money around for pilot programs, no state is going to increase their prison budget to accommodate this.
As someone actively working in this space, I can tell you they are. Maine is following the so-called Scandinavian Model. It essentially comes down to giving incarcerated people a chance to practice normal daily activities and social interactions. The facilities feel more like highly secure dorms than jails. The way a head of a different DoC said still sticks with me:
We send people away for years, tell them exactly what to do every day and they get to make exacrly one choice every day: do you obey or not? That's the only choice you get to make. Then, after 3, 5, 10 years, we send them out into society and tell them, "Make better choices." But we haven't prepared them for that at all. We have given them almost no chances to make decisions and learn how to make good ones. We just tell them the decision to make and they do it. There's no space for practicing good decisions in traditional prison settings.
Multiple other states are pointing to Maine as proof that the Scandinavian model can work in the US and are incorporating their learnings into their plans and trainings.
None of the places I was housed at had any opportunities, really.
One place had computers to learn typing. You weren't allowed computer books in that facility in case you used them to figure out how to hack out of the jail. So, bless the elderly nuns, they smuggled in "C# in a Weekend" for me, with the CD-ROM, so I could teach programming classes when the guards weren't paying attention.
Seems like a good idea, but from the article it sounds like a lot of the difference between Maine and his earlier prisons was the culture that existed amongst the prisoners themselves. Obviously prison officials can try to influence this (indeed, it sounds like the authors transfer to Maine was an attempt to do that), but it seems like the kind of thing that's hard to do with just, like, correspondence college degree programs and the like.
This is an incredible post, and I encourage everyone to read it.
I wish I knew better how to help incarcerated people. Based on the Norway(?) model, I feel like help would reduce return rates, but I don't know how to go about it.
I just got out after 10 years. I work with a lot of people just coming out (just been helping a guy locked up for 40 years, he's doing great).
The biggest issue is that 95% of them will be returned within a few months. Drugs is the main cause. You get out, you have no ID, no job, no family, no friends. You're stuck in a halfway house that is just like being in prison (lots of rules, line up for meal service etc). All the other guys there have a ton of drugs and you swear you won't touch them, but then you do because you're bored and sad. And then you're addicted again. And now you need money to buy more drugs. So you go do something goofy to get money and you get caught and locked up for another 10 piece. Or your parole officer drug tests you and violates your parole and you go do another 3 piece. Or the halfway house owner gets sick of you coming in after 7pm smelling of alcohol so he calls your parole officer and you go do another 3 piece.
Recidivism rates are astonishingly high in all countries. Norway has the lowest at 20% within 2 years. The real rate is higher because most crimes aren’t solved. So in the best case, rehabilitation makes someone 300x more likely to commit crime than the average Norwegian.
I'm always amazed at this country in which incarcerating someone for 10 years (!!) for non violent drug dealing is economical, but public healthcare and education aren't.
> kicked out of my parents house for being a stupid 17yr old
That's child abuse in my book. If you are a parent, you are responsible for your children. That's it. No age limit. Nothing. They need a place? You are responsible for providing them a place to live. This isn't to say you have to be responsible for their crimes, but you should never be allowed to force your child out of your house. YOU brought them into this world. They are your responsibility. Forcing a child out? You are a terrible parent. Yes, some children thrive, but others don't. I'm sorry, but it's on you.
If you aren't ready to take care of your children or make sure they are taken care of for the remainder of their life, you shouldn't have children. 18 and you force them out? You are in the wrong.
Author here again:
I told myself I was done chiming in, but this is just something I have to clarify.
My parents are absolutely amazing people, and they are the only reason my life has any hope at this point.
They were still figuring things out, and didn't understand why I was such a rebellious asshole. Having 4 kids and two of them teenagers isn't easy, and they have been incredibly supportive to my younger siblings when one went through some troubles, and have been supportive to me the entire time. I know this is something my mother feels terrible for, but I feel like I was going to do what I was going to do, and I put no blame on her for anything.
This was the only thing that was going to get me to comment, because i know it breaks my moms heart.
That's pretty harsh. Children turn into adults, and not all of them turn out great. As a parent my responsibility is to get them to adulthood with as much chance of success as it is possible for me to provide. At some point they do absolutely become responsible for their own decisions. Do I ever want to find out what it would take to throw my own child out of the house? Of course not. Am I going to toss them out when they turn 18? No plans to. But this idea that you should be responsible for another adult for the rest of their life just because you created them...? That's silly.
The apparent lack of opportunities for anyone is easy to solve with Dorm Room Welfare:
Open free dorms next to the campuses of community colleges. Anyone who is physically able to live on their own, but who can not afford to live on their own can move in and live there as long as they are working towards being economically self sufficient.
Working towards being economically self sufficient can mean passing academic classes, passing career and technical education classes, taking remedial classes, completing a high school equivalency degree, passing K-12 classes online, earning certifications, working in internships, working jobs at a training wage, or other things
I suggest we replace all other welfare programs with drom room welfare.
This does not solve the problem that many of us do not want to hire convicted criminals.
I don't at all care for the way in which he mentions his crimes were nonviolent and tells us about being arrested for dealing ecstasy (a drug with little taboo associated with it) while skipping over the fact he's currently in prison for dealing choke-on-your-own-vomit synthetic opiods, not cute party drugs.
That stuff killed a coworker's son a few years ago. Died right in his own recliner.
Indeed. He had an ounce of U-47700, a synthetic opioid equivalent to about half a pound of morphine. With intent to distribute. And this is not his first prison sentence for distribution. I think opioid dealers are a different and worse class of dealers compared to, say, MDMA. That's a personal opinion. At any rate, he's paying for that crime, and when he's done he'll return to a normal life, hopefully, and I'll wish him well. Until then, he should be honest about who he is—or was—before his supposed epiphany.
People do things they're not proud of in desperate situations. Also, everyone was 18-21 once.
Speaking as someone who (barely) survived an unintentional acetyl-fentanyl overdose that hospitalized me with rhabdo and almost killed my then-fiance -- him dealing this stuff is not the end of the world.
I think a lot of people on HN don't know what it's like to be someone below the poverty line who is also entangled with the law. If you're looking for hell in a first-world country, that's about as close as you can get in the USA.
Yeah this guy belongs in jail and clearly doesn’t think what he did was a problem at all. In the midst of an epidemic that kills tens of thousands of Americans a year the dealers of these drugs make the front page and are cheered on as “victims.”
The victims here are the families and children of the people whose abuse he profited greatly off of.
I recently read a book about experiences in the UK prison system: 'A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner' by Chris Atkins (there is an associated podcast, which is also excellent). It is a fascinating, but rather depressing read about his experiences being incarcerated for tax fraud and how broken the UK prison system is. It is no wonder the re-offending rates are so high.
I'm guessing much of the US system (where I understand a lot more for-profit private companies are involved) is at least as broken.
I'd like to make a couple of points to think about:
I'd been addicted to opioids for a couple of years. And I was very happy that I was able to get original non-counterfeit pills on the dark net, from vendors that had thousands of positives reviews. Being a nerd, and successful when it comes to business, risk-free supply had never been an issue. Luckily I bought Bitcoin when they did cost $0.20...
Fighting the dark net has always been a stupid idea. It's the cleanest way for people to get the substances they need, with the lowest amount of risk in every single regard. Lowest risk to get your substance cut with something unhealthy, lowest risk of getting ripped off, lowest risk of getting into criminal circles.
Fighting the dark net means pushing people to street dealers, increasing suffering, violent crime and deaths.
So, why did I get addicted? Depressions, anxiousness, and finally: Being on the autistic spectrum, which now seems absolutely obvious from earliest childhood memories, but my parents never took me to a neurologist to get that diagnosed. I just lived with being "different". Until I could not take it anymore, and tried to help myself with substances.
How did I get off the addiction? Did a search for the best-rated neurologist in the region, made an appointment, got treatment. It took a while, but in the end a combination of substances was found that worked out better than opiates.
But that being said: Those substances are the same that I can get as prescription medication, or as "drugs" on the street. It's just that now I no longer have to spend Bitcoin on it, but get them for free from the health care system. Yay!
Please remind yourself: Nearly everything that is taken and sold as "drugs" on the streets is used to treat some problem, just in a very dangerous way, without proper education, without proper risk management.
Whatever that scary drug that your parents and your school are warning you about to be evil: It's just medication. The poor people die on the street trying to get their supply, the rich guys get a subscription to get it for free.
If your country has a problem with drugs on the street, and with crime due to people trying to get those substances, your country SIMPLY HAS A PROBLEM PROVIDING HEALTH CARE to its citizens!
So please stop demonizing substances, demonizing substance "abuse", demonizing people providing those substances in a clean and safe way via the dark net, and demonizing people who sadly did not have the luck of their health care system helping them.
What blew my mind is that ~667/100000 or ~.67% of Americans are incarcerated according to the numbers in this post and the population according to the German Wiki page for the US.
Wikipedia says it's .531% on the English language website, .629% on the German site. (Don't know which year for either or if juvenile detention is counted on German site.)
That is A LOT! A LOT!
> It was October 2018 and I had just completed a 3-month rehab program at a state addiction clinic in Sweden. I was unemployed, staying with family, and had basically nothing going on.
> With no drugs or other vices to pass the time, the days seemed impossibly long. I struggled to find activities to fill them. I enrolled in school for a while, but it wasn’t for me this time either. Eventually I turned to programming, since it’s always been my big interest in life.
TFA is interesting but I've got a problem with this:
> I was left with the difficult choice of either living there and walking to a temp agency with hopes of making $10.50/hour doing manual labor (without an ID or social security card at this point), or getting on a bus to NYC to see some associates, and coming back in a week or so with $15-25k in my pocket and living in comfy luxury hotels until I could rent an apartment I chose the latter, obviously, and was back in prison after 14mo.
That is not obvious. My father was left with nothing at some point in his life, living like a hobo in an abandoned, broken, leaking RV next to gypsies (heck, he'd even, for free, help the gypsies' kids with "homework").
And he was still proud --and still is-- of never having done anything illegal.
People choose to engage in crime, and there's nothing obvious about it.
Nobody needs the latest iPhone or the latest sneakers. They believe they "flex" with the latest iPhone and sneakers (I've got a whole different idea of flexing btw but that'd be another topic). They choose the easy path.
And that is not obvious at all. Most poor people and by very, very, very far, even most hobos, are not thieves and are not drug dealers. When you deal drugs you have on your conscience how miserable you make the lives of so many others: it's not even about legality here.
I had a friend and roommate at one point (and still friend to this day), we'd split rent and he'd barely make any money. Serving pitas at a tiny kebab/pita place three nights a week for hardly any money. And he was okay with that. He didn't care about clothes or cars or phones or fancy hotel rooms or whatever. He'd just be honest and survive.
What I'd like to know is why people believe it's "obvious" they choose a criminal life for $25 K a week instead of an honest life flipping burgers.
It's not obvious and that mindset of "fancy luxury hotel rooms" and "latest iPhone" should just die. Nobody is impressing anyone with these utterly pointless bullshit.
Asking newly-release prisoners to have the absolute strongest constitution and pain endurance is also not obvious to me. The average person would struggle in this situation, and we expect formerly-incarcerate individuals to be even stronger than them?
It doesn't offend me at all to see it highlighted as "obvious" to the author. For some high proportion of these individuals, it is obvious (and indeed seems like the only choice).
This entire post is based on misunderstanding why the author used the word "obviously" here: You're reading about an incarcerated developer, so you obviously know he chose to commit a crime again at that point in the story. He wasn't saying it was the obvious choice to make.
But OP claims to be committing nonviolent drug crimes. Depending on your philosophy you may feel you’re not doing anything morally wrong by selling drugs. Upholding the law for the laws’ sake isn’t obviously good.
It’s admirable that you’re father did what he did without resorting to becoming a negative influence on society, but I bet most people on HN have broken the law in some small way many times in their life. Breaking the law and hurting others are not always the same.
MDMA either puts me to sleep or makes me talk faster than freaking Busta Rhymes raps, without effort. I recorded it once and it's crystal clear. Fun stuff.
[+] [-] hereme888|2 years ago|reply
When I was 19 I got caught selling a bunch of MDMA at a night club. Undercover police caught me, and by God's grace they chose to let me go.
MDMA had just begun to carry a minimum 10 yr prison sentence throughout the state.
I had no idea what I was doing in my life, like I was asleep and not awake, until I got caught that night.
About 15 minutes into the interrogation at the scene, Officer Garcia - I still remember him - knowing my mental state of panic and realization of reality, said to me "You know, when I was your age I did the same thing, and I was forgiven and let go. So what I'm going to do is forgive you and let you go this time. Go home, and don't ever do this again."
I drove home at about half the speed limit that night, trying to process what had happened. First time I had experienced such forgiveness and mercy.
The aim of my life now is to maximize the amount of good I can do for others. I'll never forget. I could still be in prison. Maybe as an open source computer programmer, but prison nonetheless.
It's a big risk to let someone go like that; will they actually repent, or continue causing harm?
[+] [-] qingcharles|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a5seo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skrebbel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leobg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yayitswei|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fischgericht|2 years ago|reply
MDMA should have been legal.
End of story.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02565-4 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34708874/ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/well/mind/mdma-ecstasy-ri... https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/07/03/australia-just-lega...
It's legal or decriminalized in Portugal, The Czech Republic, The Netherlands, and Switzerland, by the way. Surprise: Those are now the countries with the lowest number of drug deaths and drug related crimes in Europe.
[+] [-] anjel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JessicaHicklin|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qingcharles|2 years ago|reply
Almost 10 years inside here. Going on Monday to have all the charges dismissed.
[+] [-] gavinray|2 years ago|reply
I didn't realize Unlocked was your organization.
[+] [-] ulizzle|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] low_tech_love|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nopmike|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frob|2 years ago|reply
I don't think they work directly in prisons and jails, but https://www.underdogdevs.org/ is a group that works to train formerly incarcerated people in software and tech. They built mentee/mentor relationships between professional development and those wanting to learn.
[+] [-] dvektor|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codingrightnow|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arbuge|2 years ago|reply
Very well said. And I am glad we have a model now, if one was ever needed. I hope other prison systems take note.
[+] [-] frob|2 years ago|reply
We send people away for years, tell them exactly what to do every day and they get to make exacrly one choice every day: do you obey or not? That's the only choice you get to make. Then, after 3, 5, 10 years, we send them out into society and tell them, "Make better choices." But we haven't prepared them for that at all. We have given them almost no chances to make decisions and learn how to make good ones. We just tell them the decision to make and they do it. There's no space for practicing good decisions in traditional prison settings.
Multiple other states are pointing to Maine as proof that the Scandinavian model can work in the US and are incorporating their learnings into their plans and trainings.
[+] [-] qingcharles|2 years ago|reply
One place had computers to learn typing. You weren't allowed computer books in that facility in case you used them to figure out how to hack out of the jail. So, bless the elderly nuns, they smuggled in "C# in a Weekend" for me, with the CD-ROM, so I could teach programming classes when the guards weren't paying attention.
[+] [-] simplicio|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gavinhoward|2 years ago|reply
I wish I knew better how to help incarcerated people. Based on the Norway(?) model, I feel like help would reduce return rates, but I don't know how to go about it.
[+] [-] qingcharles|2 years ago|reply
The biggest issue is that 95% of them will be returned within a few months. Drugs is the main cause. You get out, you have no ID, no job, no family, no friends. You're stuck in a halfway house that is just like being in prison (lots of rules, line up for meal service etc). All the other guys there have a ton of drugs and you swear you won't touch them, but then you do because you're bored and sad. And then you're addicted again. And now you need money to buy more drugs. So you go do something goofy to get money and you get caught and locked up for another 10 piece. Or your parole officer drug tests you and violates your parole and you go do another 3 piece. Or the halfway house owner gets sick of you coming in after 7pm smelling of alcohol so he calls your parole officer and you go do another 3 piece.
Cycle repeats until you die in prison.
[+] [-] chroma|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dleslie|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgu999|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gavinray|2 years ago|reply
If you're lucky, you've got a wife or parents that'll write to you or take your calls.
[+] [-] jasonlotito|2 years ago|reply
That's child abuse in my book. If you are a parent, you are responsible for your children. That's it. No age limit. Nothing. They need a place? You are responsible for providing them a place to live. This isn't to say you have to be responsible for their crimes, but you should never be allowed to force your child out of your house. YOU brought them into this world. They are your responsibility. Forcing a child out? You are a terrible parent. Yes, some children thrive, but others don't. I'm sorry, but it's on you.
If you aren't ready to take care of your children or make sure they are taken care of for the remainder of their life, you shouldn't have children. 18 and you force them out? You are in the wrong.
[+] [-] dvektor|2 years ago|reply
My parents are absolutely amazing people, and they are the only reason my life has any hope at this point. They were still figuring things out, and didn't understand why I was such a rebellious asshole. Having 4 kids and two of them teenagers isn't easy, and they have been incredibly supportive to my younger siblings when one went through some troubles, and have been supportive to me the entire time. I know this is something my mother feels terrible for, but I feel like I was going to do what I was going to do, and I put no blame on her for anything.
This was the only thing that was going to get me to comment, because i know it breaks my moms heart.
[+] [-] rootusrootus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RecycledEle|2 years ago|reply
Open free dorms next to the campuses of community colleges. Anyone who is physically able to live on their own, but who can not afford to live on their own can move in and live there as long as they are working towards being economically self sufficient.
Working towards being economically self sufficient can mean passing academic classes, passing career and technical education classes, taking remedial classes, completing a high school equivalency degree, passing K-12 classes online, earning certifications, working in internships, working jobs at a training wage, or other things
I suggest we replace all other welfare programs with drom room welfare.
This does not solve the problem that many of us do not want to hire convicted criminals.
[+] [-] causality0|2 years ago|reply
That stuff killed a coworker's son a few years ago. Died right in his own recliner.
[+] [-] karaterobot|2 years ago|reply
https://www.doj.nh.gov/news/2017/20171011-preston-thorpe-sen...
[+] [-] gavinray|2 years ago|reply
Speaking as someone who (barely) survived an unintentional acetyl-fentanyl overdose that hospitalized me with rhabdo and almost killed my then-fiance -- him dealing this stuff is not the end of the world.
I think a lot of people on HN don't know what it's like to be someone below the poverty line who is also entangled with the law. If you're looking for hell in a first-world country, that's about as close as you can get in the USA.
[+] [-] edgyquant|2 years ago|reply
The victims here are the families and children of the people whose abuse he profited greatly off of.
[+] [-] oh_sigh|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hermitcrab|2 years ago|reply
I'm guessing much of the US system (where I understand a lot more for-profit private companies are involved) is at least as broken.
[+] [-] Fischgericht|2 years ago|reply
I'd been addicted to opioids for a couple of years. And I was very happy that I was able to get original non-counterfeit pills on the dark net, from vendors that had thousands of positives reviews. Being a nerd, and successful when it comes to business, risk-free supply had never been an issue. Luckily I bought Bitcoin when they did cost $0.20...
Fighting the dark net has always been a stupid idea. It's the cleanest way for people to get the substances they need, with the lowest amount of risk in every single regard. Lowest risk to get your substance cut with something unhealthy, lowest risk of getting ripped off, lowest risk of getting into criminal circles.
Fighting the dark net means pushing people to street dealers, increasing suffering, violent crime and deaths.
So, why did I get addicted? Depressions, anxiousness, and finally: Being on the autistic spectrum, which now seems absolutely obvious from earliest childhood memories, but my parents never took me to a neurologist to get that diagnosed. I just lived with being "different". Until I could not take it anymore, and tried to help myself with substances.
How did I get off the addiction? Did a search for the best-rated neurologist in the region, made an appointment, got treatment. It took a while, but in the end a combination of substances was found that worked out better than opiates.
But that being said: Those substances are the same that I can get as prescription medication, or as "drugs" on the street. It's just that now I no longer have to spend Bitcoin on it, but get them for free from the health care system. Yay!
Please remind yourself: Nearly everything that is taken and sold as "drugs" on the streets is used to treat some problem, just in a very dangerous way, without proper education, without proper risk management.
Whatever that scary drug that your parents and your school are warning you about to be evil: It's just medication. The poor people die on the street trying to get their supply, the rich guys get a subscription to get it for free.
If your country has a problem with drugs on the street, and with crime due to people trying to get those substances, your country SIMPLY HAS A PROBLEM PROVIDING HEALTH CARE to its citizens!
So please stop demonizing substances, demonizing substance "abuse", demonizing people providing those substances in a clean and safe way via the dark net, and demonizing people who sadly did not have the luck of their health care system helping them.
And go fix your health care systems.
[+] [-] th4tg41|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andai|2 years ago|reply
https://pthorpe92.github.io/humor/How-to-get-on-hackernews-f...
[+] [-] andai|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nayuki|2 years ago|reply
> It was October 2018 and I had just completed a 3-month rehab program at a state addiction clinic in Sweden. I was unemployed, staying with family, and had basically nothing going on.
> With no drugs or other vices to pass the time, the days seemed impossibly long. I struggled to find activities to fill them. I enrolled in school for a while, but it wasn’t for me this time either. Eventually I turned to programming, since it’s always been my big interest in life.
[+] [-] j7ake|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghuntley|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TacticalCoder|2 years ago|reply
> I was left with the difficult choice of either living there and walking to a temp agency with hopes of making $10.50/hour doing manual labor (without an ID or social security card at this point), or getting on a bus to NYC to see some associates, and coming back in a week or so with $15-25k in my pocket and living in comfy luxury hotels until I could rent an apartment I chose the latter, obviously, and was back in prison after 14mo.
That is not obvious. My father was left with nothing at some point in his life, living like a hobo in an abandoned, broken, leaking RV next to gypsies (heck, he'd even, for free, help the gypsies' kids with "homework").
And he was still proud --and still is-- of never having done anything illegal.
People choose to engage in crime, and there's nothing obvious about it.
Nobody needs the latest iPhone or the latest sneakers. They believe they "flex" with the latest iPhone and sneakers (I've got a whole different idea of flexing btw but that'd be another topic). They choose the easy path.
And that is not obvious at all. Most poor people and by very, very, very far, even most hobos, are not thieves and are not drug dealers. When you deal drugs you have on your conscience how miserable you make the lives of so many others: it's not even about legality here.
I had a friend and roommate at one point (and still friend to this day), we'd split rent and he'd barely make any money. Serving pitas at a tiny kebab/pita place three nights a week for hardly any money. And he was okay with that. He didn't care about clothes or cars or phones or fancy hotel rooms or whatever. He'd just be honest and survive.
What I'd like to know is why people believe it's "obvious" they choose a criminal life for $25 K a week instead of an honest life flipping burgers.
It's not obvious and that mindset of "fancy luxury hotel rooms" and "latest iPhone" should just die. Nobody is impressing anyone with these utterly pointless bullshit.
[+] [-] _dark_matter_|2 years ago|reply
It doesn't offend me at all to see it highlighted as "obvious" to the author. For some high proportion of these individuals, it is obvious (and indeed seems like the only choice).
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cvdub|2 years ago|reply
It’s admirable that you’re father did what he did without resorting to becoming a negative influence on society, but I bet most people on HN have broken the law in some small way many times in their life. Breaking the law and hurting others are not always the same.
[+] [-] frankyg|2 years ago|reply
Need to get to the science of that mechanism.