Not OP, and not advocating it, but I suspect with respect to drugs the problem isn't the amount of punishment. It's the liklihood of punishment. Imagine a dystopia where everyone takes a drug test every day, and if someone fails they go to jail. It seems likely drug use would plummet due to enforcement (and special ways to get around it would spring up for the select few).

Well, yes I am. But is that relevant to the question at hand: if the punishments were more severe, would they decrease drug selling/use?

How about if we banned Narcan, do you think that would affect the total number of opiate addicts long term?

What if we cut off the hands of drug dealers? Or applied the death penalty to drug dealers?

What if we rounded up all the addicts that commit so many crimes in cities today, and degrade the quality of life with tent cities strewn everywhere, and threw them all into the ocean...do you think that would decrease drug use?

Of course it would. What I'm pushing back against is the absurd claim that the problem is intractable in terms of "decreasing some behavior through disincentivization", which isn't true.

Yes I think cutting off arms would discourage drug use to some extent, but I think the price is too high. At some point a policy like that creates more suffering than it prevents. From your example on throwing people into the ocean, it sounds like you agree that a tradeoff exist here. Unless you actually think killing drug users is a good solution to reduce drug use?

The question was never whether it was possible to curb drug use with the legal system (that seems like a straw man), but whether the cure is worse than the disease, or whether an alternative cure might be better.

>was never

Not true and there are many in this thread and elsewhere for years on the internet saying exactly this.

Thank you for conceding my point against the ridiculous argument that "prohibition is ineffective"... that no it is, it's only a matter of degree of punishment, which is what I said.

>more suffering than it prevents

This only matters in some utilitarian conception where all net suffering or utility or whatever is created equal.

No, I think drug dealers suffering is not the same as suffering of normal people wanting to live their lives in a productive and healthy way for their community. But this is what politics is for, conflict over interests, values, worldviews, and societal preferences.

It's also what all of criminal law deals with: justice for crimes isn't viewed the same as suffering of law abiding people or victims.

>a tradeoff exist here

Like the tradeoff exists for the death penalty of murders in that justice for that crime requires "harm" to be inflicted on the perpetrator, yes. But this isn't that profound of a concept.

> Thank you for conceding my point against the ridiculous argument that "prohibition is ineffective"

It depends what you mean by effective and ineffective. Nuking San Fransisco would prevent tons of drug use, but is not an effective way of solving society's ills.

> This only matters in some utilitarian conception where all net suffering or utility or whatever is created equal.

Drug laws not only hurt drug users, but further criminalize nonviolent users who commit more crimes, fund organized crime (here and especially in other countries), cost billions of dollars to society in court systems, prisons, police officers, and lost productivity.

If your solution to that is literally kill people without a trial for drug use then some of those clearly wouldn't apply, but that's honestly a pretty sick worldview. I'm not sure if you're younger or maybe lived a more sheltered life and weren't exposed to drug users or similar groups of people, but you might change your tune if you knew someone affected by it (whether they were a user or the parent/child/spouse/friend).

I wonder what you think of other countries which have much lower rates of drug abuse yet don't impose punishments as harsh as the US?

> I wonder what you think of other countries which have much lower rates of drug abuse yet don't impose punishments as harsh as the US?

It’s because their currencies aren’t as powerful. Drugs are a commodity sold in USD like oil. The USA has the easiest access to USD so drugs come here as the product-market fit is optimal for both distributors and users.

Plenty of countries without reserve currencies have similar or higher rates of drug use..

Are you sure? To me it seems like USA has the highest rate of drug abuse and the higher rate of drug deaths and drug abuse disorders in the world. It is possible more people use drugs in other countries, but in that case they use it more responsibly, or their overdose deaths aren't properly registered, either way there is no evidence that other countries have a bigger drug problem than USA.

https://ourworldindata.org/drug-use

Look at the map in that link you posted, Greenland, Canada, Russia etc are all high. It's a long page, what exactly are you referring to to disagree with me?

That data probably isn't super relevant to this argument though, since it includes alcohol. I don't think alcohol is more easily available in the US than those other countries because of the USD.

You're describing the 'toddler having a meltdown in the grocery store because they want candy' course of action which I'll admit may have some sort of positive results in some situations but is more than likely to have massively unexpected consequences for the initiator.

We'd all like to feel like it was as simple as expressing our dislike at a situation to fix it, that solving problems is as simple as applying a linear amount of force that is proportional to the size of the problem but the world isn't like that.

Drug addiction, Organized Crime, racism, sexism, global climate change are all examples of Wicked Problems[0] and no amount of force behind a whimsical edict is going to solve them.

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

Maybe you're on to something. Just think about how much drug use we could stop if we just rounded up everyone in the country and executed them!