> The purpose of existing drug laws, especially marijuana, is to give police a reason to harass and discriminate against certain populations.

Japan is largely homogenous and has very harsh drug penalties:

Japan drug law among world’s toughest, personal possession attracts five-year jail https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-b...

Why Japan Is So Strict About Drugs https://kotaku.com/why-japan-is-so-strict-about-drugs-183328...

Drug Laws in Japan: You'd Better Have a Prescription https://www.tofugu.com/japan/drug-laws-in-japan/

The purpose of existing drug laws in America is to give police the means to harass minorities though. See:

https://archive.attn.com/stories/1503/war-on-drugs-real-reas...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/real-reasons-marijuana-is-ban...

http://www.history.com/news/why-the-u-s-made-marijuana-illeg...

https://www.salon.com/2015/07/02/the_real_reason_marijuana_i... (though this one pretty much reiterates the attn article).

So what’s the purpose of them in Japan?

We don't have to explain the purpose of the laws in Japan to prove their purpose in the United States.

Has an actual proof been provided of their purpose in the United states? I see only a theory.

Japan offers an alternative explanation.

Most of them were instated after the US occupation of Japan post-world war 2. At the time they served the purpose of asserting America's control over Japan. What purpose they serve there now, who knows?

It's unclear what purpose they serve in Japan. That doesn't make it less clear in the US.

Japan is a different country, with different cultures, values and history. Answering ‘whataboutism’ type of questions almost always leads to an endless loop of accomplishing nothing.

What about Russia? What about China? Etc... There is no value in these questions when they have no relation to the original statement being made.

GP's comment can of course be read more correctly as "the purpose of existing drug laws (in the US), ..."

Sweden has harsh drug laws too. So does China. The point is that there are other reasons people favor drug laws, since many homogenous countries have them too.

And yet the literal tons of fentanyl and fentanyl derivatives that are swamping black markets in the US and killing thousands are almost exclusively manufactured in China and shipped to the US.

I'd take 10 years in a swedish prison over 3 months in a US prison...

"Harsh" is very relative. I would be very surprised to see anyone caught using drugs for the first time, or even the 3rd time, not just getting a fine unless they're in possession of a larger quantity. The maximum sentence is 3 years, which I would assume would require a substantial criminal record.

China also has concentration camps. Just saying...

Canada had very harsh drug laws too (at least for hard drugs). And so did much of Europe.

Did all those countries also create those laws to harass certain populations?

How many did basically at the behest of the US? The US very much lead the crusade on drugs criminalisation after WWII.

All of them, it's part of the founding UN treaties, as far as I know.

The People's Republic of China has maintained its draconian anti-drug stance since before the international drug conventions of the 60s and 70s.

I would concur much of the puritanism and authoritarianism around the world about drugs originates from the US, but hardly all of it.

They were actually agreed upon by the UN. It didn’t take the US to convince other countries to make drugs illegal.

In many cases yes: European attitudes towards the lower classes are often similar to (though not as extreme as) racist attitudes in the US.

Lots of European countries (and probably the rest of the world) also copy US laws for no apparent reason.

More or less everyone I know has tried drugs (MJ, magic mushrooms, LSD) or does them on a regular basis, but I don't know anyone who's ever been arrested over it. What I'm saying is there doesn't seem to be (much) of a stigma against drugs, neither with the population, nor with the cops. Nevertheless, MJ is illegal, and the protests for legalization started soon after the ones in the US.

> Japan is largely homogenous While that's true I always like to remind people of the Ainu people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people). They are an example of a suppressed (largely extinct) ethnic group in Japan. Basically Japan's native Americans.

Aside from that, drug prohibition has always been used to h arras people on a basis of their class background. The working and caring classes always take the main toll in prohibition.

I'm not so sure if that's the only thing people voted for when they wanted to be hard on drugs. As you can see in this comment thread (on an extremely left-leaning site) we have some people who think drug use is immoral. One of the sister comments says "I believe it's wrong".

Definitely some section of the population wanted to use this as a way to bully minorities but another section of the population was convinced "drugs are bad".

Either way if "hard on drugs" was a dog whistle to signal "hard on minorities" then politicians may realize saying "hard on drugs" will actually hurt their voter base far more than they realized. Maybe that will put an end to this kind of signalling/abuse.

> we have some people who think drug use is immoral

Sure. But that's a big aspect of the argument, at least for me - lots of things are immoral, many of which are legal.

It is entirely possible to concede the point and still, for either public health or cost reasons, want to stop doing destructive, expensive things that don't actually reduce drug use, decrease property crime or violence, or dampen business for the cartels. (My views are different, just saying these are logical views people hold.)

Politicians will never have this 'realization'. Either a pro-drug-war politician is already using this as a dog whistle and does not want it exposed (else why not be open about your stance on minorities), or he isn't using it as a dog whistle but still does not want this connection made.

Voters are the ones who need to make the connection. The politicians will follow.

Many on the left, particularly on social media, are quick to claim that supporting a particular policy is racist if the policy itself is racist, regardless of the reason an individual supports the policy.

My own personal view is that the intent of this definition and behavior is not to 'solve racism' but to stifle discussion and influence voters. The fact that this definition is seldom, if ever, applied to the war on drugs is confirmation of my view.

What I see instead, and is present in some of these threads, are offers of solutions that are ill-defined, untried, and even if effective do not have clear timelines for actually helping people; and very clearly will do nothing to help in the short term. In contrast, solutions that have worked in other places, have immediate effects, and are generally accepted as good ideas are vilified as harmful to minorities with no evidence provided.

The war on drugs was tied specifically to anti-communist and anti-hippie movements. You can argue that black community was only one type of minority being policed.

Still, marijuana was given such disproportionate higher punishments largely because of it's adoption in black communities. No one thinks of alcohol as a narcotic or drug. The same was true before. But by lumping MJ in with heroin, they were able to convince people to think about them similarly. I recommend the propaganda film "Reefer Madness" for an example taken to the extreme, where science was discarded in favor of learning on people's existing moral apprehensions in order to get the desired ban.

This. The fact that the public was able to eventually push some of this idiocy aside ( there are still vestiges of really strong resistance ) is more of an indication of that somewhat hopeful message that will of the people eventually wills out. Granted, it took white teenagers doing what all teenagers do ( try everything ) to make it happen, but it happened.

I don't have a firm grasp on the history of prohibition, but my understanding is that at least there, at the time there was a real, clear drinking problem among the US population.

I think drug use is immoral, especially in a society with a welfare system. (That’s the basis for anti-drug attitudes in places like Sweden.)

I’m against harsh drug laws because I think they’re create a lot of problems in criminal justice and are abused against Black communities.

> I think drug use is immoral, especially in a society with a welfare system.

I mean, park systems could be immoral in a society with a welfare system.

People might end up spending time they could use being productive at a job instead having picnics in the park, and they could spend more of their money on entrance and parking fees, and on unhealthy things like hot dogs, soda and funnel cakes.

Same thing with fields and stadiums. People could end up spending all their time and money on tickets, hot dogs, beer and gambling.

> That’s the basis for anti-drug attitudes in places like Sweden.

Sweden also has a notoriously abstinence-based and zero-tolerance drug policy that encourages the denial of real addiction problems and epidemics, and causes harm reduction efforts to be ineffectual[1].

[1] https://transformdrugs.org/drug-policy-in-sweden-a-repressiv...

What is your opinion of Alcohol, lower grade stimulates (Caffeine), and pre-processed unnatural addictive substances (pure sugar)?

If you are on welfare should you be prohibited from drinking alcohol? What about eating low nutritional value fast foods?

Obesity and alcoholism is far more rampant than most drugs used in the war on drugs. In America ~40% of our population was obese in 2016 [0], ~25% of people drank >5 drinks in 1 day over the past year [1], >50% of America drinks coffee daily and of that group 50% report "severe head aches" that last 2 to 5 days when attempting to stop. Meanwhile cannabis usage is around ~12% of the population [3] and I've not been able to find unrefuted studies of it's negative effects while for obesity, alcoholism, and caffeine there's some compelling work out there linking these to interesting population statics.

It's medicine so it's not actually science or iron clad but from a risk & pervasiveness perspective do you think introducing legislation on these substances is warranted?

[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2018/021.pdf

[1] - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/alcohol.htm

[2] - https://healthresearchfunding.org/shocking-caffeine-addictio...

[3] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/284135/percentage-americans-smo...

Not OP but how do you normalise this statement:

> Obesity and alcoholism is far more rampant than most drugs used in the war on drugs.

since ... of course alcoholism is more rampant when i can just buy it legally in the supermarket. that is a nobrainer conclusion. same for nicotine. caffeine has so little impact in a drug-related conversation that i won't even bother going there. i dont think you do yourself any favour dragging it into this discussion.

problem with 'low nutritional value fast foods' is that eating is a necessity. you need your X calories a day. drugs (nicotine, alcohol, heroine, prescription drugs,...) on the other hand are purely optional (genuine medical reasons aside). so the process of consuming food can't be dropped similar to how you could just not drink alcohol. that leads to a complicated question as you need to substitute the low nutritional value fast foods with something more substantive. this leads you to evaluate the entire process of food consumption, from agriculture to purchasing decisions to prep work to marketing to food labelling etc.

> If you are on welfare should you be prohibited from drinking alcohol? What about eating low nutritional value fast foods?

because of the above i don't think those two things are comparable at all.

Drugs are already highly available. The availability of legal drugs would result in reduced medical complications due to increased regulation on supply side. Caffeine, etc has some small statistical probability of triggering a heart issues which is the most common cause of death - from a nationalized health cost perspective this is not negligible. If you consider quality of life as the metric rather than death then low nutrition food is probably worse than caffeine, etc.

> Drugs are already highly available.

not sure i follow, what is your definition of highly available? if cocaine is highly available, how do you classify nicotine and/or alcohol?

> some small statistical probability of triggering a heart issues which is the most common cause of death - from a nationalized health cost perspective this is not negligible.

do you have a link to a writeup of sorts showing the damage on the national cost perspective (don't even care if it is health or any other associated cost). it just seems 'some small statistical probability' and 'not negligible' is borderline orthogonal. would be interesting if that is already non-negligible how much worse the real offenders are.

> because of the above i don't think those two things are comparable at all.

I'm not attempting to compare to them, I'd like to know how the person I was responding to feels about these things. I originally asked "What is your opinion of Alcohol, lower grade stimulates (Caffeine), and pre-processed unnatural addictive substances (pure sugar)?"

I'm not saying to do one thing or another, I'm attempting to ask what that specific person feels about other chemical substances that are in high demand which are also addictive and disproportionately consumed by lower income individuals.

Thanks for the clarification.

> alcoholism is far more rampant than most drugs used in the war on drugs

Unfair comparison. Alcohol is legalized and freely available. Let's compare alcohol and drugs at times, when drugs were free to use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars .

That very much depends on the drug. Two years into cannabis legalization in Canada, and alcohol continues to claim the lion's share of the harm from legal drug use. I suspect this won't ever change.

I’m curious why you think that is so, and why is for example alcohol and cigarettes (or even sugar) included as drugs? Certainly many medical drugs should be included.

There is a reason people use all of these and for example marijuana is not really more dangerous.

Well, and taxes, too, as has been the case with distilling alcohol since before marijuana became an issue. The government gets pissed if they don't get their cut. Way more fires would be caused by illicit stills blowing up if it was actually about safety.

Taxes are a red herring. You can grow tax free in every legal state. Enough to have pounds a year.

Just because the USA uses the war on drugs to harass people by skin color doesn't mean you need to assume that is the only reason possible. The USA tends to think of all white people at the same, but europeans don't.

In europe, remember that the "lower class" could still be visually "white", but just from a different ethnic background. (Turks, for example).

No it isn't.

The purpose is to provide a source of labor for for-profit prisons, to legally extort money from an activity or activities that largely harm no one, and to provide something for the police to actively do.

If police were to enforce what most people consider the "important" laws, their death rate would go through the roof, because they'd be actively chasing after large criminal gangs.

They want the low-hanging fruit of an 18 year old who's dealing a little pot, they don't want to have to go after the crime syndicate that will kill them and their family.

> The purpose of existing drug laws, especially marijuana, is to give police a reason to harass and discriminate against certain populations.

I've heard it argued that this is the purpose of traffic laws as well. A lot of enforcement is based on officer discretion which is IMO a moral trap.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Red light cameras seem to be hated because they catch everybody impartially.