http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/megyn-kelly/florida-s-billion...
I was looking for an apartment on Craigslist here not too long ago. More than half the rooms for rent I saw were "sober living" half way houses.
I agree that users should be receiving treatment. But anyone selling or importing these drugs absolutely deserves to be punished harshly -- they are destroying millions of lives.
I don't buy it. I heard exactly this being said about cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, ecstasy, and yes marijuana in the 80s. Reefer Madness was not a parody movie, and let's not forget that pot is still officially Schedule I in the US.
I'm not saying that all drugs require equal amounts of care - carfentanyl sounds more like a chemical weapon, and for that reason alone should be heavily regulated. But folks tend to overreact with panic every single time a new drug comes up, and I've watched this excuse ("no longer able to make free choices!") used to justify ratcheting up the drug war every time.
This particular claim doesn't pass the obvious sniff test - if fentanyl was so compulsive, heroin addicts would be seeking it out instead of trying to avoid it. Yeah, these powerful new drugs are killing people - and we should lay the blame square where it belongs, with the prohibition of milder alternatives.
What do you think the addiction rate of opioids is?
What is it for fentanyl?
Adderall is not so different than methamphetamine.
The well of do these drugs legally and can afford rehab. Many of the people I've know that struggled with opium addiction could not afford to join treatment programs, many of which cost $2k ~ $15k.
There is a lot of money being made in all sides of this game and it's disturbing.
Other way around. Heroin was the response to morphine.
If you can get addicted to it, you can get rehab'd for it if you're willing.
Ftfy
So this oft-repeated mantra that the penal code cannot solve drug problems is frankly bs. I'm not suggesting that we should throw drug addicts in prison for a dozen years, but I'd have no problem letting a fentanyl dealer rot in prison for the rest of their lives. Maybe start sending commandos to kidnap cartel leaders from Mexico to bring them to the US to face charges, for trafficking drugs and for murder. Let's run sting operations with cops posing as drug-seeking addicts to catch doctors handing them out like candy.
I am an American who has lived in Thailand for several years.
The US has a huge drug problem and SE Asia doesn't even come close. The local population does not abuse drugs at all. Nearly all of the drug trade caters to American/European tourists. Which is incidentally why the punishment is so harsh, they do not tolerate foreigners poisoning their society.
Enforcement works.
I feel like if crazy penalties like that were levied in America we would take it as a challenge. We have a long history of that.
If anything, stigmatizing a situation only drives it underground where it isn't talked about, and essentially flourishes in the darkness.
In this case, how would foreigners be responsible for "poisoning their society"?
To me this sounds a lot like what you here in the West concerning drugs... America claims its' foreign traders with "terrorist connections" who do drug sales (e.g. all the talk about Colombian drug cartels, or Mexican drug wars).
This has been tried in the West for decades and not worked so far.
> letting a fentanyl dealer rot in prison for the rest of their lives
This already happens.
> sting operations with cops posing as drug-seeking addicts to catch doctors handing them out like candy
This already happens as well, although you then have to draw a line between perfectly legal prescription and illegal dealing.
> If you sell drugs, you get executed
This policy is currently collapsing the Philippines; 7,000 dead already: https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/03/02/license-kill/philippin...
"Even prior to announcing his candidacy for the May 2016 presidential election, Duterte was already very clear about his intention to eliminate crime by eliminating criminals: “If by chance that God will place me there, watch out because the 1,000 [people allegedly executed while Duterte was mayor of Davao City] will become 100,000. You will see the fish in Manila Bay getting fat. That is where I will dump you.”"
The massacre of 100,000 people would put Duerte well into the "crimes against humanity" league.
I for one am very happy not to be living in an all-powerful police state. What's obviously "moral and good" seems to be awfully fluid across history.
But I think enforcement can work if we're willing to do what must be done. People exporting and importing large quantities of hard drugs into the United States get no sympathy from me.
Your point about Singapore is taken though, you raise a strong point. I think the issue though is that there are two effective ways to deal with drugs:
1. Totalitarian-police-state-type of enforcement (lets call it the Singapore model) where even low level offenders are hit were severe sentences.
2. The end of prohibition. This destroys the current economic framework supporting the drug industry; this would severely reduce the violence associated with the illicit drug trade.
What doesn't work is this sort of middle-of-the-road approach that we currently have.
Obviously, these two are at exact opposite ends of one another. I think we should pick the one that is more fitting with our national character and purported values of life, liberty, and individualism (the 2nd option...)
But now? Super powerful chemicals being continually adjusted. A zillion e-packets zipping around the world. Forget about full enforcement. That is no longer possible if we "just try hard enough". Unless maybe you want to stop the mail and bomb 35 countries into smithereens. And incarcerate even more people than the ridiculous number we already have. We can still "discourage" with occasional busts (and probably should for deadly drugs for now) but maybe it's time to sit down and rethink rather than continuing to playing wack-a-mole.
Make better drugs. Less harmful ones. That's the eventual answer I think.
It's clearly not working.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/30/15591700/m...
The US incarcerates more people than any other country, and yet it still has much higher rates of crime, including violent crime, than Europe.
If imprisonment worked to reduce violent crime we'd expect Europe to have higher rates of violent crime than the US.
Wow, yeah, let's just invade another country and commit an act of war to get what we want.
This is one of the reasons why a lot of the rest of the world hates Americans.
"International law" does not exist. In international affairs, there is only power. If the security of our people depends on resolving some situation in another country, then we must do it. Some worthless piece of paper with no realistic enforcement mechanism (i.e. not law) be damned.
And we'd have to send your commandos into China as well as Mexico if we truly want to stop the opioid epidemic. That's where all this fentanyl and carfentanil is coming from.
I see how that can work in some cultures and countries. I just think that approach wouldn't be very effective in the US. Probably not effective in countries larger than a few thousand square miles even with strong cultural support.