A lot of the draconian laws and mandatory sentences trace back to the late 1980s/early 1990s when crack cocaine hit. If you were too young to remember or not born yet, it was absolutely devastating. At least the equivalent of today's opioid crisis if not worse. Entire neighborhoods just fell apart. Politicians and voters freaked out and demanded harsh new drug laws and penalties. Lobbiest support from those who benefited helped perpetuate this, but it got started at the time with widespread public support.

I really hate to sidetrack this discussion with an obvious political rant, but it's important to remember the CIA was intimately involved in creating the crack epidemic in the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...

I was intrigued so I read the page.

"the CIA's Office of the Inspector General which ultimately concluded the allegations were unsupported."

"Webb's series led to three federal investigations, all of which concluded there was no evidence of conspiracy by the CIA or its employees to bring drugs into the United States.

.. sounds to me like it was investigated and nothing turned up?

The CIA concluding that the CIA didn't do something and hide it from the public doesn't seem the best way to settle such an issue.

They also ruled his death a suicide despite him having 2 bullets in his head.

https://theintercept.com/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-m...

"We investigated ourselves and found that we did nothing wrong."

"...the allegations were unsupported."

If one was to read this very carefully, they're not saying it didn't happen, they're just saying the evidence to support the allegations no longer exists. For a top secret program, that sounds about right.

I was a black teenager living on the South Side of Chicago during that time, and the media crack obsession was largely hysterics, and sometimes outright fiction (as with "crack babies.")

Yea, I think experts agree that journalists are almost as much to blame for the war on drugs as politicians. If I remember correctly Johan Hari also writes about this in "Chasing the Scream".

I think in addition concentrating so much poverty in place amplified how bad it was. In actuality and also in perception.

What you're describing is the story the media told. The numbers don't support the kind of coverage it got at the time.

When you add the race issues, which drove the narrative, policies and policing, there's really no comparison between the crack and opioid crises.

So even then we could not believe the media? Good to know. And sad to know.

It looks like drug laws are bound to become a cycle.

1- Drugs are cool, and not really an issue, people take them mostly reasonably.

2- Hey, drugs can be addictive, that's when people stop being reasonable

3- Too many drug addicts, it is a real society problem

4- People demand strict laws, drugs are not cool anymore

5- Parents, who have seen the damage done by drugs support these drastic laws, and tell their kids how bad drugs are

6- Kids, who didn't experience a real drug epidemic, start questioning what their parents told them, and realize that taken reasonably, drugs are not that bad

7- These kids, now adults, seeing how harsh anti-drug laws do more harm than drugs, demand more tolerance

8- Drug-related legislation softens, back to 1

Legalization is more about judiciary reform, public health and allocation of resources. We've already been through this before with alcohol, where prohibition was prohibitively expensive, and basically created a completely unregulated market full of products so dangerous they regularly killed people. You can see a parallel with black-market cannabis, where there are basically no health and safety regulations or transparency. So black-market growers are free to use as much carcinogenic pesticide as they wish. On the production side, there is nothing stopping a manufacturer from distributing vape cartridges containing unsafe levels of ethanol, lead contaminated materials, bacterial and fungal contamination. So imagine we set up a system for licensing, independent inspections, regular testing, and Boom, suddenly the drug dealers are paying the state, instead of the state paying to hunt the drug dealers down and keep them alive incarcerated.

I am pretty much convinced that Reagan's war on drugs was mostly about destroying south american economies and exterminating or enslaving non-whites, rather than public health and safety. Because of that, I don't believe de-criminalization will lead to criminalization.

Exactly! Many people don't realise that decriminalisation/legalisation is meant to reduce the drug problem, not "make it legal to be a junkie". The three main points I usually give to people are: - regulating production and distribution will make drugs safer for existing users, - the money from that regulation (taxes, fines...) will go towards education and rehabilitation, - the money and time cops save from not chasing after stoners will go towards catching actual criminals.

Add to that the potential medicinal benefits that will be better-studied and available to more people and there's really nothing to lose. DUI is still illegal, as is showing up to work high. Children will of course not be allowed anywhere near drugs and what grown adults do in their free time is really none of anyone else's business.

The real issue isn't the drugs -- it's mental health. Most drug users who become addicts started using drugs to cope and escape from problems they have in life: depression, anxiety, bipolar, PTSD, etc.

If we started treating the real source of the problem -- mental health -- then there would be far less appeal for these types of people to turn to drugs to begin with.

They rely on polls. Very long and specific polls. This cycle a lot of us are looking at some seriously wrong polling. But that's how larger campaigns and politicians make decisions.

Marijuana legalization probably isn't polled unless it's on the ballot.

But politicians have rational incentive to move towards what is clearly popular. 60% is a landslide. There are definitely 'Mavericks' who hold strong to their beliefs or independence, but for the most part those who win follow their constituents rather than lead.

How do unions rely on “a steady flow of meat into the grinder?”

Police unions have a vested interest in ever increasing police department budgets that were driven in many ways by the war on drugs.

police unions - that makes sense. Since the comment didn't specify that, I was also quite confused for a bit

I don't know if it was edited, but the comment your responded to did specify police unions when I made my comment.

It looks like it's been edited, so there was probably some weird caching happening on my side that showed me the original