Solving the War on Drugs

[Carborendum]

I'd ask all my conservative friends to consider that a "War on Drugs" is somewhat like a "War on Guns."  What malicious will do drugs have? Drugs never harm anyone until a human being takes it and uses it.

For the solution, forget for a minute whether or not the government even has a Constitutional right to outlaw or even regulate drugs.  As things are today, unlike guns, drugs are illegal.  As such, it automatically has a tendency to decrease the supply.  As ubiquitous as many drugs are, that's hard to believe.  But it is a pretty hard and fast rule.  Maybe, with all the money available, it doesn't matter.  There is such a high demand that the rarity is a trivial variable in the overall equation.  But that's supply.

Demand is the other side of the equation. 

For addicts, the drug is an elastic good.  So, as we reduce the number of suppliers, the suppliers only get richer.  Addicts still get the drugs and are willing to pay more.  Only through reducing the demand can we reduce the price to where it would be less profitable.  And most pushers would decide to leave the market.  If drug users were arrested at much higher rates and sent to rehab facilities for the duration of an appropriate prison sentence, the demand would drop overnight.

TLDR:  To win the war on drugs, imprison users and forget about dealers.  It may not get rid of drugs altogether. But our current methods only make the dealers richer and more plentiful.

[mikbone]

Wasn’t prohibition wildly successful?

We should declare a war on all sin.  And let Donald J Trump define sin.

[LDSGator]

6 minutes ago, mikbone said:

Wasn’t prohibition wildly successful?

Amazingly so.  

[mirkwood]

Regulate it with licensing, tax the crap out of it, imprison and significantly fine any business that fails to follow the laws.  Imprison the druggies for all the other crimes they are committing to feed their habit.  Be ready for the problems that accompany legalization.  Perhaps @NeuroTypical would like to share his observations as a resident of state that legalized marijuana.  sarcasm/ I'm sure Colorado has improved./

[Phoenix_person]

1 hour ago, mirkwood said:

Regulate it with licensing, tax the crap out of it, imprison and significantly fine any business that fails to follow the laws.  Imprison the druggies for all the other crimes they are committing to feed their habit. 

Let it be known that I agree with Officer Mirkwood. Rounding up users just turns the War on Drugs into the War on Poor People. Legalization puts production and distribution under government oversight.

1 hour ago, mirkwood said:

Be ready for the problems that accompany legalization.  Perhaps @NeuroTypical would like to share his observations as a resident of state that legalized marijuana.  sarcasm/ I'm sure Colorado has improved./

If we're talking about cannabis, a lot of the "problems" are overblown and boil down to people hating the smell. My biggest observation as a medical user who networks with other medical users is that a lot of us used cannabis to quit alcohol (in my case) and opioids. I guess you could say that weed is a "gateway" to recovery of sorts. 😉 It's also an existential threat to the alcohol industry as we know it.

[NeuroTypical]

25 minutes ago, Phoenix_person said:

If we're talking about cannabis, a lot of the "problems" are overblown and boil down to people hating the smell. 

If you'd like to replace those scare quotes with some information, here you go.

To be fair, it has been 4 years since my friend had his rental property destroyed by a cartel marijuana grow operation.  It's entirely possible that things have gotten a little better in Colorado.   I'll need to ask my Colorado Springs cop contacts how things are going these days.  Because this is what it was like in 2018:

Quote

They've got 6 cops and a Sargent working 4 days a week, doing nothing but busting illegal grow ops.  They served 100 warrants last year, each one of them a story like I just told you.  This is just in one city in Colorado.  He showed us the pictures of the homes, the mold, the air conditioning units, the holes drilled through the floor, results of the electrical fires.   Some of these growers are so good at it, their plants are like small trees, you have to use a chain saw to cut the trunk.  

Yeah, no, there's more going on here than just neighbors complaining about the smell.

Edited November 11 by NeuroTypical

[Carborendum]

53 minutes ago, Phoenix_person said:

Rounding up users just turns the War on Drugs into the War on Poor People.

Let it be known that I had said that the users would be placed into rehab facilities rather than prisons.

Do you believe they should not be required to go through rehab?

[zil2]

The solution to drug abuse / addiction is the same as the solution to every other such problem: the traditional family and the gospel of Jesus Christ¹.  The two together allow people to avoid the avoidable problems and better cope with the unavoidable (because they have a perspective and a support group to help them cope).  As the family shrinks and extended family disconnect, those available to help become fewer and the burden on any given individual greater.

Yes, I'm well aware that the world will not accept this solution and there are all too many for whom it's too late to have a traditional family (their parents are gone / were never married / siblings alienated / etc.).  That doesn't change the fact that this is the proper solution.

Everything else is a hack.  A "band-aid" to manage the terminal disease that cannot be fixed in whole, but only, when we're lucky, for specific individuals who are fortunate enough to find / be found by a support group and learn / be taught better coping mechanisms.  To that end, your method, @Carborendum, seems as good as any, but it has to include not just rehab, but general education, job training, and potentially relocation away from areas where the underlying problem is inescapable.

 

¹Obviously, this assumes the family is loving and functional and that folks are living the gospel.

[HaggisShuu]

You can't force somebody to rehabilitate. 
UK prisons sink millions into trying to rehabilitate, only for persons to reoffend remarkably quickly. 
 

God gave us agency, and people need to choose to change. As much as the argument to imprison addicts probably makes for an interesting thought experiment if nothing else - whats happens after their forceful induction into a prison like rehab facility? After being clean for sufficiently long an addict will be released into the same broken conditions that caused their addictions. Such measures would probably make the stigma surrounding addiction even worse, and the trap even harder to escape. 
 

At the end of the day addicts need a loving support network and community, and western society is so fundamentally broken and poisonous, addiction is practically bred into children from birth. Sugary cereal for breakfast, an Ipad for an education and when the parents decide their precious kiddies are too difficult to handle they dose them up on mind altering medications to fix the mess they made.

I'm so glad we have a saviour because humanity is awful. 

[Phoenix_person]

17 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

If you'd like to replace those scare quotes with some information, here you go.

To be fair, it has been 4 years since my friend had his rental property destroyed by a cartel marijuana grow operation.  It's entirely possible that things have gotten a little better in Colorado.   I'll need to ask my Colorado Springs cop contacts how things are going these days.  Because this is what it was like in 2018:

Yeah, no, there's more going on here than just neighbors complaining about the smell.

Colorado definitely suffered growing pains, as I understand it. In the 6 years since federal legalization of (some) hemp-derived cannabinoids*, the number of legal states has literally more than doubled. I know several people here in MN who are growing their own. That's not to say that cartel interference isn't still a problem, but their customer base is being absorbed by the increasing number of legal states (and their neighbors).

*I won't get in the weeds about the different 'noids except to say that there's a lot you can make in a lab using the legal non-THC compounds in hemp. The farm bill essentially legalized Weed Lite nationwide (except Idaho, they actually banned the compounds by name, as I understand it).

21 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Do you believe they should not be required to go through rehab?

Yes. You you can't force an addict to get clean. They have to get there on their own.

[Carborendum]

13 minutes ago, Phoenix_person said:

Yes. You you can't force an addict to get clean. They have to get there on their own.

You make a good point that you can't force them to be clean.  But I still believe there would be some benefit to having them out of the negative environments that addicts tend find themselves.

If they're forced to stay away from drugs for some significant time (like a year or so) and don't give them the opportunity to commit more crimes that will feed their habit, that will at least give them a better chance of coming clean than the endless cycle of use-crash-crime-use-crash...

But at the end of the day, if they don't want to get clean, they won't get clean.  I fully agree.  But, then again, can't you say that about any crime?

Edited November 11 by Carborendum

[JohnsonJones]

15 hours ago, mirkwood said:

Regulate it with licensing, tax the crap out of it, imprison and significantly fine any business that fails to follow the laws.  Imprison the druggies for all the other crimes they are committing to feed their habit.  Be ready for the problems that accompany legalization.  Perhaps @NeuroTypical would like to share his observations as a resident of state that legalized marijuana.  sarcasm/ I'm sure Colorado has improved./

 

I'm not sure if this is your opinion or not, but if it is, I actually agree with this idea.

If you legalize and license drugs, regulate them, and tax it, you solve several problems.  It will take several years to turn things around into a 180 of what they are now but in theory should work.

You reduce the cost of the drugs and the government has more control over the drugs itself.  This has the benefit of reducing the amount of unknown substances (Fentanyl crisis would be reduced most likely with regulation and such), and controlling who is selling.  You make it so that it is available in places like drug stores and with wider availability and more of it easily obtainable you reduce the price.  Reducing the price along with the regulation will drive the illegal drug market into not being able to compete.

With no profit in the drug business the illegal market (similar to what happened with prohibition's alcohol gangs and smugglers) go out of business and cannot use that avenue as a source of income.  They will either have to find other illicit activities or die off.

Now, some people say prohibition did not work (and it did cause serious problems such as the illegal alcohol trade, etc), however, the usage of drinking alcohol actually went down during prohibition.  The prohibition actually reduced those who drank and those who had alcohol addictions.  It didn't get rid of it, but it reduced it.  When it ended, drinking alcohol and getting drunk increased. 

I imagine if we legalize drugs, the same end result will occur (It could be interesting to see if this is reflected in the states that have legalized marijuana).  Drug use would probably increase greatly. 

This could also cause a headache for those who have to deal with the increase problems these types of addictions cause (thievery to pay for the drugs would probably increase, driving or operating vehicles under the influence of drugs, and many other phenomenon related to drugs would probably rise).  Crimes caused by those who are addicted probably would rise, even as those incarcerated simply for having drugs decrease.  As those who are drugged up and causing crime may be more violent in the acts, this could be a consideration in regards to police safety and enforcement.  I would be in favor of more stringent lock-ups for those who are doing drug related crimes.

However, I favor less government intervention in trying to stop the flow of drugs.  Reduce the government imprint overall by legalizing it and oversee their distribution and sales anyways, while taxing it (maybe at 100% so...lots of incoming money at first?) and you get a nice bonus for government spending.  Use that to pay for the regulation of the drugs, and you may be able to reduce taxes in other areas (gas tax?  property tax?) from the income generated from this. 

Edited November 12 by JohnsonJones

[NeuroTypical]

18 hours ago, Phoenix_person said:

18 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Do you believe they should not be required to go through rehab?

Yes. You you can't force an addict to get clean. They have to get there on their own.

Common story, that is so common, I cannot bring myself to brush it aside: "The best thing my family ever did was call the cops and get me locked up".  Rehab is hardly perfect, and yes indeed, addicts are responsible for their own choices.  That said, it's entirely possible to weaken or lose your ability to act through drugs or alcohol.  About the time you spin out of control and become a burden/threat to society, that's a perfect time for society to try to force a solution on you.

@Phoenix_person, if we ever end up living in the same neighborhood, and you notice that I'm losing or have lost my job, my car, my family, my house, and my health with some addiction, please, if you love anything about human potential, please call the cops on me and get me locked up and forced into rehab.  Even if they have to taze me and drag me kicking and screaming against my will.  Especially if it has to go down like that.

Edited November 12 by NeuroTypical

[mikbone]

35 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

I'm losing or have lost my job, my car, my family, my house, and my health with some addiction, please, if you love anything about human potential, please call the cops on me and get me locked up and forced into rehab.  Even if they have to taze me and drag me kicking and screaming against my will.  Especially if it has to go down like that.

[mirkwood]

None of the above will slow the cartels down.  Not. One. Bit.

 

But at least we would have some tax money from the legal side of it.

[Carborendum]

18 minutes ago, mirkwood said:

None of the above will slow the cartels down.  Not. One. Bit.

None of us will know because it has never been tried since the war on drugs began.  But my statements are at least based on sound economic theory.

Are there other factors involved?  Most probably.  But I have yet to see valid theories as to how any other factors are being applied in such a manner as to decrease the drug trade in any way shape or form. 

Unless... you could educate me?

18 minutes ago, mirkwood said:

But at least we would have some tax money from the legal side of it.

And there would be less violence due to the drug trade.  The stat I heard many years ago was that 80% of drug violence is enforcement related.  This means that more people were killed due to enforcement activities than people who died of overdoses.

Feel free to correct me if I have that wrong.

Edited November 12 by Carborendum

[Phoenix_person]

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

None of us will know because it has never been tried since the war on drugs began.  But my statements are at least based on sound economic theory.

Are there other factors involved?  Most probably.  But I have yet to see valid theories as to how any other factors are being applied in such a manner as to decrease the drug trade in any way shape or form. 

Unless... you could educate me?

And there would be less violence due to the drug trade.  The stat I heard many years ago was that 80% of drug violence is enforcement related.  This means that more people were killed due to enforcement activities than people who died of overdoses.

Feel free to correct me if I have that wrong.

Another big problem with radical enforcement is the burden it would place on taxpayers. I imagine many conservatives would balk at the idea. Not because they can't morally get behind it, but because they don't want their tax dollars paying for it. You're talking about holding people for months to get them clean, many of them poor and likely uninsured. That's gonna get very expensive very fast.

While I still oppose the idea of mass roundups and forced rehab, I think a good middle ground would be full legalization and taxation of cannabis and low dose psychedelic drugs. Use the tax revenue from those sales to subsidize rehab programs for alcoholics, meth/crack heads, and opioid addicts. I guarantee a lot of cannabis users would be on board with that on a bipartisan basis, because a lot of cannabis users are former addicts themselves.

Edited November 12 by Phoenix_person

[Carborendum]

2 minutes ago, Phoenix_person said:

Another big problem with the radical enforcement is the burden it would place on taxpayers. I imagine many conservatives would balk at the idea. Not because they can't morally get behind it, but because they don't want their tax dollars paying for it. You're talking about holding people for months to getthem clean, many of them poor and likely uninsured. That's gonna get very expensive very fast.

While I still oppose the idea of mass roundups and forced rehab, I think a good middle ground would be full legalization and taxation of cannabis and low dose psychedelic drugs. Use the tax revenue from those sales to subsidize rehab programs for alcoholics, meth/crack heads, and opioid addicts. I guarantee a lot of cannabis users would be on board with that on a bipartisan basis, because a lot of cannabis users are former addicts themselves.

Without force rehab, I don't think any of that will have the positive effects we're all hoping for. 

• Enforcement costs money.
• Imprisoning dealers costs money.

I don't have the stats.  But I'd be willing to bet that even if we only spent half the money we're currently spending on the war on drugs, then we'd be dollars ahead.  And I think we'd see at least a significant minority actually getting clean -- more than what we currently see. (BTW, this is what is done in several European countries.  And it did drastically reduce the number of users and pushers.)

And there would be no more reason for civil asset forfeiture to continue.  Yey!!!

[Traveler]

History does tell us (teaches us) things – some things history teaches and tells us is not what we wish to discover.  I will first give some history to create the background.  It all started in the late 13^th century when Marco Polo spend a little over a decade and a half living in the emperor’s court in China.  Suddenly the powers of Europe wanted to open up trade with China.  And trade they did.

But there was a problem; China did not want anything that Europe had to trade – with the exceptions of gold and silver.  Over the next two centuries the wealth of Europe’s gold and silver was drained significantly.  That is until the Americas was discovered with gold and silver aplenty to plunder.  There is a lot of criticism of Europe’s plunder of the Americas – so I will skip that.  All we need to know at this point is that the plunder was necessary for Europe to survive intact.  

By the 18^th century (1700’s) China was once again depleting Europe’s gold and silver reserves.  To survive Europe came up with a plan that involved creating a drug cartel to introduce heroin (opium) to China to retrieve the gold and silver lost to China.  A 20-family coalition was organized under the political protection of Europe.  By the 19^th century one of the families developed a strong tie into the newly formed United States of America.  Everything was working as planned except China was suffering unbelievable drug addictions leading to political, economic and social destruction of China.  This became know in China as the opium wars and the 100 years of shame.

China attempted every possible means to stop the drug trade and finely attacked the drug cartel and their island operation that was refining and importing the drugs.  Europe and the USA responded with full military might and defeated China’s military that was lost in age old military traditions.  As punishment for China’s rebellion against the drug cartel, Hong Kong and the Island of Tiawan was taken from China.  Within a few years the Quin dynasty collapsed, and the former China superpower fell into chaos.

It was not until the rise of Communism in China that the drug problem was solved and remains solved to this day.  It is my personal opinion that the draconian methods of dealing with the drug trade is why China has become such a dominate force in current world politics and why so much support is maintained for that government by its people despite the strong authoritarian methods.   No one even comes close to what China will level as punishment for dealing or using drugs.  The other side of that coin is that China has effectively no street crime and virtually no random violent crimes.

Dealing drugs in China is defined by how much drugs are in your possession or if you provide drugs to someone else, and you can be put to death for dealing in drugs.  Using drugs results in years of drug free incarceration.  In addition, family members will not be able to hold responsible well-paying jobs, and this family connection reaches parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.  It is impossible to get a lawyer willing to defend you.  If you are accused your best defense is to admit guilt and through yourself to the mercy of the government – and everybody knows it.

Two things.  One is that you will not get fair treatment and two, no one is going to help or support you.  Any support – even visiting you in jail will be very bad for them.

China was destroyed by drugs – I do not think it bothers China one bit to contribute to our current drug problem.

Obviously, all our current methods have not worked and do not work.  I think there are only 3 real options left.  First, we can continue any, some or all the current policies that do not work until we are destroyed as a country.  Second, we can wait for the second coming of the Messiah that will likely solve the problem by destroying all the drug users that will not or cannot quit and dealers (including the entire cartel organizations.)  Three, we can declare an actual war on drugs – executing (by the authority of military courts – not civilian courts) drug dealers as traders (including drug users and sympathizers that refuse to cooperate) with our country’s efforts and targeting, with our military any foreign facilities used by the cartels until all members of the cartels (foreign and domestic) surrender and end their evasive and hostile operations.   One note concerning option 3 is that there will likely be innocent collateral damage, as there always has been with war.

 

The Traveler

[Phoenix_person]

34 minutes ago, Traveler said:

destroying all the drug users

The Jesus I learned about in Sunday School would heal addicts, not "destroy" them. The cartels would probably get the flamethrower, though.

35 minutes ago, Traveler said:

One note concerning option 3 is that there will likely be innocent collateral damage, as there always has been with war.

There's already been tremendous amounts of collateral damage as a result of the war on drugs, especially in the foreign countries where a lot of opioids and cocaine originate.

[Carborendum]

1 hour ago, Phoenix_person said:

The Jesus I learned about in Sunday School would heal addicts, not "destroy" them. The cartels would probably get the flamethrower, though.

There's already been tremendous amounts of collateral damage as a result of the war on drugs, especially in the foreign countries where a lot of opioids and cocaine originate.

I'm glad we could finally find something that we align 90% on.  I'm not too worried about the other 10%.

Here's a thought I just had about "You you can't force an addict to get clean":

We often think about users as "victims."  And I'd agree that there are plenty who are.  But there are plenty who simply enjoy it.  Take Bill Maher, Snoop Dogg, Joe Rogan.  It makes me reminisce about eating kim chi when it used to taste good.  Anyway...

I think there are various classes of users.  I'd like to focus on those who got into it without knowing what was going on, or who were pressured into it and got hooked.  At least for these individuals (whom I'd really consider victims) I would think that they would benefit most from a forced rehab.

Edited November 12 by Carborendum

[NeuroTypical]

2 hours ago, Phoenix_person said:

the idea of mass roundups and forced rehab

 Good points about nobody wanting to foot the bill for this.   However, if I could inject a little "how humans act" into the equation:

You know who needs mass roundups of addicted people?  Blue cities with lax drug laws or lax enforcement or safe needle zones and all that.    You know who doesn't need mass roundups of addicted people?  Places with strong drug laws and strong enforcement.   You get what you pay for.  The more you pay for services for drug users, the more drug users you'll have.  Especially if painful accountability is not part of the equation. 

This notion is not really applicable to the "affluent using drug scene", because everyone has jobs and wealth and families and lawyers and insurance and safety net.  There are no masses to round up from those demographics.  But holy crap is it applicable to the homeless/illegal/mentally ill/desperate drug scene.  Folks sleeping on the streets just understand you don't go to Colorado Springs because they'll run you through the system.  Best to stay in Denver or Arvada where they actually give you stuff and you don't even need ID.  Winter coming?  Time to head south to Phoenix, or somewhere like Miami if you can make it. 

 

On a related note, everyone should go tour their local jail.  City or county.  It can be incredibly eye opening.  My sheriff is one of the staunchest deep red conservatives out there.  But he also knows reality.  He tells us his jail is the largest provider of mental health and chemical addiction services in the county.  He's not happy about that, and he tries to get everyone else not happy about it too, so maybe something can change. 

[Carborendum]

6 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

He tells us his jail is the largest provider of mental health and chemical addiction services in the county.  He's not happy about that, and he tries to get everyone else not happy about it too, so maybe something can change. 

So, do those services result in significant numbers who stay clean?

Edited November 12 by Carborendum

[NeuroTypical]

2 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

So, does those services result in significant numbers who stay clean?

Well, there's hardly any long-term follow up after you get sprung from jail.  You might have some parole conditions requiring you to take periodic drug tests, but it's not like the Sherriff is going to keep records on that sort of thing. 

He brags about his jail in 2 ways:
1 - Same or lower inmate deaths than last year.   
2 - Everyone who shows up addicted, leaves his jail healthier than when they got here.   Largely due to 3 good meals a day, or having someone actually hand you your prescription so you actually take it.  

[Phoenix_person]

8 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

We often think about users as "victims."  And I'd agree that there are plenty who are.  But there are plenty who simply enjoy it.  Take Bill Maher, Snoop Dogg, Joe Rogan.  It makes me reminisce about eating kim chi when it used to taste good.  Anyway...

I think there are various classes of users.  I'd like to focus on those who got into it without knowing what was going on, or who were pressured into it and got hooked.  At least for these individuals (whom I'd really consider victims) I would think that they would benefit most from a forced rehab.

There are also different classes of drugs. The biggest potential harm from weed is smoke inhalation. It's less harmful than tobacco smoke, but inhaling any kind of smoke can be harmful. And nowadays there are quite a few smokeless options. Weed is also far safer than alcohol in terms of impairment, especially driving. And no, people definitely shouldn't drive high.