There hasn't been a serious "war on drugs" for over 30 years in the UK. Most drugs are de-facto legal since the laws are simply not enforced. To say "prohibition of drugs is a counterproductive failure" is a straw-man, because there is no enforcement. The laws would probably have been dropped many years ago were it not for international treaty obligations.
Rajoy has made a simple calculation: jackboots in the faces of peaceful Catalans trying to vote equals more votes for the Partido Popular in the rest of Spain.
I think it would be really interesting to build something like dispora as a suite of dockerised micro-services which would allow you to add and extend functionality based on a new social-networkong protocol in a language-agnostic way. It would also be very easy to incorporate email and xmpp which are already federated protocols.
I think it's quite ethical, because it removes the burden from law-abiding people. There's also evidence to show that punishment works as a deterrent when applied as uniformly as possible, hence saving people from falling into the misery of criminality.
Thank you for the explanation. Since I have your attention momentarily, would it be possible to delete my entire HN history from the beginning of time? Posts and comments.
There's plenty of evidence that tough sentencing reduces crime - do your own research.
Of course, some people are so selfish and impulsive not much will deter them, but at least they're off the streets where they can make life miserable for the rest of us.
The best way to stop people doing bad things they want to do is the fear of certain and severe punishment. "Getting involved" is not something that you do by "mistake", you have to want to do it first. The only "mistake" is believing you won't get caught, presumable because so few do.