Indeed, I think some of the most damaging policies in existence are the draconian drug laws. There is clearly much bipartisan support for them, but Conservatives in general are much more deeply held on it. Many believe drug use (except their own) is immoral and that justifies the heavy paternalistic approach they take. There are definitely "morally superior" people on both sides of the coin, they just tend to have different issues on which they think they know better than everybody else.

For real?

Drug use (including alcohol) is probably the most common way for people to seriously and irreperably destroy their lives.

A "paternalistic approach" is absolutely justified if it can prevent this level of harm.

> Drug use (including alcohol) is probably the most common way for people to seriously and irreperably destroy their lives.

I actually agree with that. But I don't see the logical progression from that to locking people in cages and forcing them to buy from the least trustworthy people on earth as the solution. During Prohibition in the US did lives stop getting destroyed by alcohol?

I see a lot of lives seriously and irreperably destroyed by criminal records and long prison sentences that otherwise could have been productive.

> A "paternalistic approach" is absolutely justified if it can prevent this level of harm.

Would you advocate for government banning processed sugar? Sugar behaves like a drug in most ways, including addictiveness (psychological and physiological), euphoria, etc. Untold levels of harm are caused by people to their own bodies and the healthcare system at large by over indulging in sugar and products containing such. Diabetes is a true living hell that never stops one it's started.

Following that logic, it seems like the government should jail people for sugar use, but that obviously seems absurd (reductio ad absurdum).

> During Prohibition in the US did lives stop getting destroyed by alcohol?

I do not want to defend Prohibition, but AFAIK it has a persistent effect on alcohol consumption patterns in USA by lowering per-capita consumption of hard spirits (that was significantly higher before).

Putting people in prison for drug use is also a very common way to seriously and irreparably destroy their lives, including cases where their drug use was not, by itself, harming them.

I think this view is empirically quite challenged. It's practically impossible to win the debate for strict drug laws because key pieces of sociological evidence are just inadmissible on stereotype grounds.

But when you see the effect of these libertarian policies in American cities the results speak for themselves. Harm reduction and lax enforcement have really destroyed some communities, and this was simply not as large a problem in the 50s or 60s.

There's really no better poster child for this phenomenon than San Francisco. It was the economic center of the technology boom and unlike New York or London of centuries past, completely failed to become a "center of the world" city despite having the “center of the world” economy. By most accounts, it actually functions less well than it did before the internet was invented.

I think there's a lot more to the cities. The drugs that people have access to are in part so damaging to them and the community because they are entirely unregulated and sometimes aren't even made up of what the person thinks they are taking. This (is a big part of) what leads to the overdoses and addiction. Mix that in with the threat of law enforcement, job loss, and heavy social stigma, etc that prevents people from seeking help, and you have a recipe for disaster. Imagine if everytime you bought a beer you had to wonder if you could trust the seller, and whether it had methanol or fentanyl in it?

No doubt there would be some damage from libertarian drug policies, but it would look a lot more like alcohol does, which IMHO would be less damaging to society and people than prohibition and heavy handed legal punishments is. People do need help with alochol issues sometimes, and it does sometimes destroy lives/families, but we don't make it orders of magnitude worse by treating them like criminals. (although we did try it in the US a hundred years ago and it didn't go well like we thought it would).

I want the drug problem solved. I don't care if it's with harsh laws or fentanyl vending machines next to treatment centers. I am interested in what works.

I think there is strong empirical evidence that drug liberalization sounds good but has failed where tried. If an American city can turn it around (as SF had a great chance to do) I'll change teams and stop talking about the issue.

Now imagine the inverse. We find somewhere a thriving city with "draconian" drug policies. Would you reconsider your position?

> We find somewhere a thriving city with "draconian" drug policies. Would you reconsider your position?

^ That's bait, we all know Singapore exists…

Tokyo?

Yes I would reconsider! However the city would have to be a reasonable sample

Yes I think many people who have dissenting views today, conservative or otherwise, feel more and more that the establishment position is fundamentally bankrupt and that most establishment members do have any deep convictions.

I myself wonder how many of the liberal flag bearers would change their "views" without protest if they saw another ideology becoming dominant. We've seen this happen with gender blank-slatism. It has been fully adopted by most western institutions by osmosis, and the priorities of a 60's or 70's liberal were put in the back seat without objection.