Not sure prohibition is the correct approach but let's not strawman the other side of the argument.
True, but how much time does the average non-addict spend in drug rehabs? Both prisons and rehab facilities isolate addicts from the general population.
but mostly a better chance of not going back to the sending state's prison.
California’s prison population has been stable since 2017.
13 of 35 state-owned facilities operate beyond capacity.
Source: https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-prison-populati...
It isn't even less money, we passed that mark a long time ago. The average junkie in Seattle costs King County around $100k/year (w/o making any progress on their addiction), while we can put them in prison for around half that. This isn't about saving money anymore, its about throwing money into a bottomless pit and seeing nothing improving at all.
> At the same time, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal, the Seattle metro area spends more than $1 billion fighting homelessness every year. That’s nearly $100,000 for every homeless man, woman, and child in King County, yet the crisis seems only to have deepened, with more addiction, more crime, and more tent encampments in residential neighborhoods. By any measure, the city’s efforts are not working.
For incarceration costs:
https://www.doc.wa.gov/docs/publications/reports/200-AR001.p...
About $110/day (so $40,150/year)
Often these funds go towards housing people so they are no longer homeless, so you might have X people who are currently homeless, but Y people relying on that $1B to remain housed.
Because of that, it's inaccurate to divide $1B by X and then claim that's how much going towards individuals who are still homeless anyway, when it is more accurate to divide that figure by X+Y.
It isn't like that money is being flushed down a hole, results are being had on an individual basis, but for reasons that are nationwide in scope, the overall problem (# of homeless people on the streets of Seattle) isn't getting any better.
National problems require national solutions, but half the senate is perfectly happy to offload the cost of social ills onto coastal metros.
Think about how monumentally worse the problem might be if they didn't spend that money. There are very likely tens of thousands more people who would be homeless if not for government support/programs. Just imagine how many people would be on the streets in a week if EI and disability income streams were cut.
We, as a society, as responsible for this situation, because we allowed a company to turn hundreds of thousands of people into drug addicts, and let all of the company executives walk away without any repercussions.
We have two options, both of which are bottomless pits:
1. Do nothing, and pay the costs associated with drug addicts being left untreated (shelters, prisons, run down portions of cities, lowered property values) 2. Treat people
One of those options may cost a lot, but it also improves everyone's lives. I don't understand why this choice is so hard for some folks.
It won't happen though, because of regulatory capture, and general lobbying / corruption.
We need to address the source and the problem at the same time. Regulatory capture doesn't really apply here, but lobbying (which is synonymous with corruption at this point) definitely does. Fixing the citizen's united issue would be a proper start at addressing the lobbying problem.
If you were a doctor would your response to a patient in unbearable pain be, “Sorry, can’t help you”?
Tying success to "progress on their addiction" is also puritan brainworms, sorry.
A lot of US stuff seems to rely on punitive monitoring and "you relapsed, back to square one" nonsense, like a game of snakes and ladders. But with a body count.
Some people will never recover. Some will. Some will take fucking ages.
Being an addict and being a mostly functional, productive member of society are not mutually exclusive.
The actual ways to start fixing this problem are unfortunately, rather unpalatable to voters despite being cheaper in the long run.
Here's the thing. Heroin is dirt cheap to make at a controlled quality - its used in hospitals as diamorphine for end of life care, and some other uses.
State supply of heroin to heroin addicts is a policy that has been tested in the UK, Switzerland, Netherlands, and elsewhere at various points and it fucking works.
Decriminalization of possession with referral to addiction services is a policy that has worked phenomenally in Portugal.
Housing-first policies have worked out fantastically in Finland.
Putting supervised/safe injection rooms and needle exchanges in areas where addicts actually are (as opposed to where they are not) also works to reduce issues like people nodding off on the street, smoking up on buses, needles being discarded everywhere, etc.
Another point to note: the vast majority of addicts don't want to be addicts.
Those who do get off the drugs often relapse.
A vanishingly small minority don't want to get off the stuff.
Safe consumption spaces with state supply, clean needles/pipes/works, etc can effectively act as onboarding for users to engage with further services and progress along their journey to reintegration into society.
Get people into those spaces. Get them into supported housing.
Become their drug supplier, so they are no longer engaging in criminality or at risk of contaminated supply.
Don't make "being sober" a requirement for progression.
Aim to get them into "own door" independent housing with engagement with social services.
Help them find paid jobs and start supporting themselves, reintegrating into society.
Offer rehab/treatment, suboxone, etc.
Basically, TL;DR - offer them dignity and agency, and you will see far greater success.
End rant.
Or something like that. At least the first half. Most of us here are engineers, scientists, and tech leaders who can see how disruption can make a better system. But a lot of people see the opioid crisis not as health crisis but as a moral dilemma.
The actual “baddies” would lose their funding if you cure the junkies. The problem is the system as it is is profitable for other more socially acceptable “baddies” who stand to lose out. e.g sacklers
At it's core this is a social issue that is swept under the rug for decades since the real solutions requires harsh reform that will likely destroy careers for pursuing it.
Drugs are a strong form of control, not just for the peddlers but to appease the masses from their painful reality, something that certain branches might like with AI and stuff reducing the usefulness of labor.
The solution is to promote this alternative narrative, something which is happening now thanks in part to successful activism and better education, but also an increasing wariness on the part of the public on the true motives behind public drug policy. I don’t think it’s a pure coincidence that this is all happening at the tail end of the opioid pandemic!
The root of the sickness often extends far beyond the individual into society. That's what many people don't want to look at or acknowledge. They insist on casting blame on the victim, and keep creating more victims.
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/samuel-butler/erewhon/text...
It's ironic that Christianity says they should do exactly that.
I don't have a strong position on drug laws, as I don't live in a city that's devastated by drug use. I just wanted to weigh in on the meaning of that parable.
The point is to contrast retribution and discrimination with rehabilitation and empathy. Christianity very much endorses the latter option at least as long as the other is part of the in-group.
But maybe the in-group and out-group separation is very much the point of these laws since the war on drugs (started by Nixon) is a direct continuation of slavery after peonage was ended by FDR during WWII.
Do you have any justification for this? It seems an utterly bizarre take on the face of it.
> “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Family members of Ehrlichman reject the veracity of the quote but I see no reason to since it is not about himself, it is about Nixon and his policies. There are some more voices questioning whether he was lying but even those voices admit Nixon was racist. I think it matters not whether introducing those laws had racism as a primary purpose, or whether they "coincidentally" aligned with a hidden agenda. Prohibition might not have had the purpose of creating a mafia network but failure to foresee that and failure to promptly react when the negative side effects of a law become apparent still matter. Prohibition in the US lasted 13 years, the US war on drugs is ongoing since the 70 even after other countries like Portugal demonstrated it is cheaper and more efficient to focus on rehabilitation.
If you mean the second part, see FDR's Circular 3591 from 1941-12-12. September 1942 is when the last slave in the US was freed. Nixon was elected a few decades later.
Feel free to explain which part is an utterly bizarre take.
I don't know which is; it just appears that way. It would be that the war on drugs was a continuation of slavery, which I don't think you've mentioned
It's a continuation in the sense that it is a manifestation of the same social illness.
Ugh, no, don't argue in favor of my beliefs this badly. We know what slavery is, and creative redefinitions only make you sound dishonest. Slavery, real slavery, still exists in the US, and we don't have to make up weird definitions to say that.
Slavery still exists in the US, legally. The thirteenth amendment says:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (Emphasis mine).
This is a massive loophole, and one which has been taken full advantage of. By criminalizing things which shouldn't be criminalized, and then enforcing those laws unequally, you can effectively enslave a large portion of whatever group you want to.
In some cases such as Angola prison, the prisoners/slaves are literally forced to pick cotton for no pay. In other cases, the prisoners/slaves are paid some small amount: this is better for optics, but these same prisons easily recover the money by vending basic necessities at gouged prices: if you pay a seamstress $1/hour and then charge her $10 for a tampon at commissary, that's not pay. Prisoners can't shop elsewhere and can't work elsewhere.
And to be clear: the work isn't voluntary. Refusal to work is punished with solitary confinement and sensory deprivation--and that's if they bother to comply with the law instead of just beating prisoners who don't work or paying another prisoner to shank them. With little oversight, there's little stopping prisons from doing this.
In addition to lack of oversight allowing abuses of power, it also allows unsafe work conditions. Prisoners/slaves are unable to report unsafe conditions to anyone, and when unsafe conditions occur, there's no incentive to fix them.
Prison slavery is used by a variety of industries. JCPenney and KMart use prison slavery to manufacture clothes, IBM uses prison slavery to assemble circuitry, Wendy's and McDonald's use prison slavery to process foods.
As an eastern European, for whom high school had almost nothing to say about American history (other than WWII) and afterwards I originally learned the usually parroted variant only to later correct the knowledge I had, I am baffled again and again every time when learning new things about the putrid fractal that is slavery in the US. I was never even that curious in the first place.
I did hear about the prison industrial complex but I had no idea about the "Angola" and how close this gets to slavery called by a different name. Reading about it now. I believed that while for profit prisons were inhuman, prisoners were not used for forced labor. I always kinda assumed that meant that prisons received so much money from the state they even made a profit.
That major western brands make use of it feels nauseating. I believed this was stuff we were criticizing China for.
I hope we (as humanity) will get over punishment for the sake of punishment. It is a power tool to steer people away from harmful behavior and I don't think we can stop using it altogether anytime soon but it should be used to the extent it actually changes people's behavior - longer sentences not necessary better in this regard than shorter ones in combination with some re-integration program. And if we can prevent antisocial behavior without punishment why not at least try?
And it’s an island country with only a single airport, a couple ports and 2 bridges into the country and the death penalty for smuggling. They throw a ton of resources at trying to stop it from coming in in the first place.
If they cant stop it, i dont know how a country like the US with thousands of miles of undefended borders can.
US is failing to stop multiple TONNES of drugs. (actually >100 tonnes if you look at DEA extrapolated figures). Border policy is clearly non-existent.
But I believe he claims rightly, since the statistics match for Singapore's population and drug abusers. Please note that Singapore also considers cannabis as drug abuse.
Report: https://www.cnb.gov.sg/docs/default-source/drug-situation-re...
Not to say opioid abuse is less, but its way more than youd think considering the governments stance.
This is silly nonsense. There is no crime that can be made to zero. There is definitely crime that can be severely mitigated. You are throwing the towel on border security. Please don't make up stupid figures like trillions of dollars. Our border security budget is a fraction of the "Ukrainian War" budget. Exceed that first and you are free to complain.
Understand the scope of the problem first and you'll be free to think about how to meaningfully address the border situation.
No need for additional drug scanners at our ports or a border wall to reduce cartel trafficking. Who cares if tens-of-thousands of bright teenagers die of drugs being sent across the southern border ? We need Ukraine to crush Russia. RAWR.
"You know we're shipping military hardware to them and not pallets of dollar bills right?"
Ah.. but you are quite mistaken there. We are not just shipping military hardware. There is $30 billion in financial aid alone - and even far more being planned this year. Wow - thats more generous than many U.S. states receive for disasters.
Sure, the US could check 50% of it. But are you willing to pay 10-20% more in the cost of everything due to the subsequent inflation?
"The United States has appropriated approximately $115 billion in emergency funding to support Ukraine since February 24, 2022."
The Trump border wall cost is $12 billion. I think ~1/9th is a tiny fraction right ? I don't mean milli-fractions or micro-fractions, just tiny.
And btw, that $115 billion towards Ukraine is expected to grow quite a bit further in 2023/24. Who knows - it might become a milli-fraction or micro-fraction eventually.
Ukraine received about $7b in 2022.
$12b does not look like a tiny fraction of $7b.
A fairly conservative source is here:
Bilateral aid to Ukraine between January 24, 2022, and January 15, 2023 https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine... .
This by itself $76.8 billion in committed aid and does not include all U.S. spending related to the war. And newer appropriations made just after Jan 2023
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-money-has-the-us-give...
Please do that for border security in the U.S. Like Ukraine, there is utterly NO need to transfer all the money in ONE big bang - can do the same in chunks. As long as the "border aid" is allocated in chunks - we can have better drug scanners at ports, more personnel and patrols, more funds to care for actual migrants (as opposed to drug camels), investigative teams to track down drug-routes and personnel involved, etc
The M113s we sent to Ukraine, we have been trying to dump them on ANYONE who will take them because shipping them across the world is literally cheaper than cutting them up and making them not a weapon anymore. The stryker program is done, and the vehicles will be replaced. We don't want to keep any of these vehicles, because unlike Russia, we think using 20 year old machines to fight a modern war would be extremely embarrassing and pathetic.
We haven't spent a hundred billion dollars helping Ukraine. We spent trillions of dollars over the past many decades buying stuff to kill the soviets and blow up the desert and we have nothing better to do with them. We literally have thousands of Abrams and Bradleys sitting all over the world, being worked on every week to keep them in tip top shape, that we would rather replace before we think we have to fight China.
Russia's best is being torched by our TABLE SCRAPS.
Quit parroting the narrative of people trying to deceive you.
until the northeast liberals started getting migrants bused into their cities, they didn't care about the border
It would be better if the state's were allowed to do more on their own borders but it's a federal thing and therefore impossible. Texas has the money and will to do a lot of border enforcement on its own but it's prohibited by law.
It's easy to communicate this: We spend billions to incarcerate people for drug crimes, and then send them out with a criminal record that pushes them right back toward drug use. OR we spend fewer billions on drug addiction treatment and housing. It's not confusing or contradictory at all.
People who end up in prison don't get help, and people who get help don't end up in prison.
"Voters" wouldn't be confused if certain interests didn't keep them confused. It's profitable to keep housing scarce and prisons full. Until we start prioritizing sick people over profiteers we won't fix this problem.