Why Everything We Thought About Drugs Was Wrong

https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-everything-we-thought-about-drugs

by kevbin • 5 years ago

17 18 5 years ago

michaelshellenberger.substack.com

The vicious cycle of people attaining an elusive freedom at some cost, and then backpedaling after measuring the cost to be greater than the freedom. But this memory doesn't last, and in the not too distance future we'll again forget why drugs are bad.

dbspin• 5 years ago

Incredibly disingenuous article. Other than pot at the state level, and psychedelics in Oregon, the US has not liberalised drug laws - especially laws around the kind of drugs that result in addiction, death and mass incarceration. The author confounds police taking a hands off approach to enforcement of drug laws (i.e.: ignoring public nuisance behaviour from addicts) with liberalisation. i.e.: treating addiction as a public health issue, adequate service provision, provision of clean drugs etc. All policies proven to be effective in reducing use and reducing public nuisance. He also wilfully ignores the context of the (most recent) opiate crisis in America - mass evictions beginning during the sub-prime crisis, and continuing to this day. Precarious employment protections. A radically dysfunctional health care system, offering little to know protection in cases of severe mental illness and chronic illness. Not to mention the context of the first opiate crisis in the 1980s - mass unemployment amongst the urban poor, the closure of state mental health facilities, and the collapse of service provision for inner cities under Reganomics.

555553• 5 years ago

the US has not liberalised drug laws - especially laws around the kind of drugs that result in addiction, death and mass incarceration.

You are effectively allowed to smoke meth in public now in LA and some other cities on the west coast. There are countless videos on social media of people smoking meth on public transit and breathing second-hand meth smoke in other people's faces. Commenters say that the police refuse to do anything about it.

Here's a video of a homeless lady smoking meth in public and telling the person videotaping her that "crystal [meth] is legal now".

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRZObCSDWPh/

"Law" is not just legislation. It's one part legislation, one part precedent, and one part enforcement.

You may not think it's legal, but I trust the homeless lady smoking meth in public to better know what she's allowed to get away with.

misja111• 5 years ago

The US as a whole might not have liberalised drug laws, but California definitely has. Here is some data about California drug overdoses (until 2018, after that the trend continues): https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/opioids/opioid-summari...

As you can see the amount has gone up by 50% since 1998, despite, or maybe because of, the more liberal laws in CF.

555553• 5 years ago

America's love and abuse of hard drugs is, like our love of violence, mostly a cultural problem. There are many poor countries where people are much worse off where these problems are far less severe. However I do understand that a relative change in these factors is likely to have contributed in a pretty massive way. I just think these discussions always overlook the biggest factor, which is culture, which is too bad, even if it's partly because we don't know how to fix culture like we know how to fix housing, employment, etc.

sooheon• 5 years ago

Clickbait title. Everything we thought about drugs isn't wrong, SF just implemented poorly (compared to Portugal and the Netherlands).

yung_steezy• 5 years ago

Thought provoking article. I am not convinced that the correlation of drug liberalization and deaths is sufficient to say there is a causation. However, I do agree with the author's main point that policy should not be dictated by ideology. The will certainly be some people who would benefit from a 'tough love' approach.

vehementi• 5 years ago

Yes, he jumps to a lot of conclusions like that.

The common problem is that forced mental treatment has had a really really bad history. (How) Can we be trusted to do better this time?

555553• 5 years ago

Relevant, recommended viewing: @gutterpeoplefromlosangeles on instagram.

Edit: The name of the page lacks empathy, I know. But if you don't live in a major west coast city, you should really take a look.

mxxc• 5 years ago

the whole argument is based on a single unverified piece of data. it also doesn't get elaborated on further, backed up or explained. do those 90000 deaths also include famous "prescription opioids"? etc

portugal arresting heroin users who do it in public is obviously besides the point and good for a "see??" sort of reaction only. if decriminalisation has worked in the places where it's been implemented the case is closed.

dvh• 5 years ago

US government should build large camp in Nebraska, provide anyone who goes there with free potatoes, lentils, water, toilet and any amount of medical grade hard drugs they want. Drug addicts will go there, voluntarily overdose in a month, problem solved.

Guthur• 5 years ago

Did you take this from George Carlin? :)

KingMachiavelli• 5 years ago

While SF and a few other cites are very progressive towards drug use/crime, the majority of the US is not. It's no surprise the cities with the most progressive attitudes attract drug users.

For some reason SF has an extreme policies on many issues and implements strange policies that are sure to fail when implemented only locally. Unless you want to bear the cost of treating every victim/drug user in the US, you can't be too lenient.

Additionally, SF thinks they have have their cake and eat it. The bay area is one of the most expensive places in the world. Providing housing to the even the most victimized in society doesn't change that. It doesn't address the root issue. (Low income housing is even worse, it let's many people afford renting and a few afford owning via easy loans which in turn pushes prices higher.)

Besides that I agree with the article. Tough love in some form is often needed to break addition. Addiction is by definition when you cannot break the cycle yourself.

Laws need to be more nuanced. Drug use in private and without slowing/quickly killing yourself is not the governments business. Drug use in a public street should be. Addiction should be handled like any medical case which can involve state-backed psych holds.

AdrianB1• 5 years ago

What is the progress in using hard drugs to call it this way? The Nedherlands system is a bit better, but still it cannot be called progressive.

57844743385• 5 years ago

Other countries don’t have the same problem in the same way.

Stop manufacturing fentanyl.

Jetrel• 5 years ago

This seemed like a somewhat reasonable article, but once I saw the "suggested links" at the bottom - all by the same author, I've got a bad feeling this is pure astroturf.

The guy has a series of articles that are almost formulaic "list of clichéd right wing talking points" - but critically, they're things that don't have anything to do with each other. The only common ground is merely that.

An actual activist who cared about an issue wouldn't have a spread of topics like that.

beej71• 5 years ago

Everybody I knew in that period, myself included, smoked marijuana, drank alcohol, and experimented with psychedelics and occasionally with harder drugs. Several of the donors who supported our work were known to smoke marijuana.

I can't help but wonder how the author's life would have been improved by a felony drug conviction.

KoenDG• 5 years ago

In this entire text, the most important questions are missing:

1/ Why does a person start to use drugs?

2/ Why does a person use so much drugs it kills them?

The entire article is talking about symptoms, not causes.

That's not to say all drug use is bad.

What's bad is living a life that's so full of stress and pain that you feel you have no way out other than to distract yourself with these drugs. Eventually leading to death by overuse.

It's not looking at the causes, only at the symptoms, and wondering how we can work within that limit.

And it is exactly that limit that prevents us from seeing the cause.

Why Everything We Thought About Drugs Was Wrong

Related Stories