I have never read a more shocking indictment of "The war on drugs" and I can only hope that this book gets its message across to everyone willing to listen.
I can't believe I live in a country with the gall to do this. My biggest question is, how can I help change this? Can I change it?
It's just sad. I can only hope that someday, some country will create opportunities and futures like those of the United States. I hope there will be someplace for people to move where they don't have to worry about something as atrocious as this. Because this sickens me.
I'm not even specifically talking about drugs: these so-called "wars" (drugs, terrorism, etc.) are just wars on citizens. I have a Polish passport, so if I ever need to go somewhere safe, I can. But Poland lacks the same opportunity that exists here. Y Combinator, Silicon Valley... everything's right here.
Portugal seems very interesting and I'd really like to hear what happens with their drug policy.
But in the end, it's all for naught if I can't get any opportunities there. Which is why I live in the US.
Well, I don't like this viewing of societies/countries as just venues for "individual opportunity".
I mean, it's not just about getting were you can get the most benefits, money, tax breaks and whatever.
It's also about working with your fellow citizens to improve the conditions where you live, and also fighting when the bad times come there, not just saying "so long suckers" and leaving for the next opportunity abroad.
The latter just makes everybody a selfish bastard, and ends up in a (non)-community of cowards stepping on each other to get to the top.
Or expressing voice through exit is much stronger than expressing voice through vote.
If I express dissatisfaction with my mobile carrier, should I work with my fellow customers to improve the conditions of the service we get, or should I just switch to a competitor? If I switched I would just be a customer of a company with lots of satisfied cowards stepping on each other for the best deal they can find.
>Or expressing voice through exit is much stronger than expressing voice through vote.
Expressing voice to what? To some greater power (ie. the government) to come and fix the issues?
What I said was about people HELPING solve the issues themselves.
>If I express dissatisfaction with my mobile carrier, should I work with my fellow customers to improve the conditions of the service we get, or should I just switch to a competitor?
See, that's my point. A society is not some company that owes you service, it's something you build.
For a better example, if you express dissatisfaction with an OSS software, you should very much work with your fellow users to improve its conditions.
By "expressing voice" I mean showing your preferences and acting in some way to make your reality closer to those.
I am not a fan of many window managers available on Linux. The most reasonable solution is not for me to attempt to change the first one I happen to use (Unity in Ubuntu for me) into one I prefer, but to find a community which better suits my use case (i3 now, in Arch - I've clearly made a big jump in communities here).
What you are arguing is that the happenstance of where one starts should absolutely dominate opinions and preferences developed through experience. Or do you think I should have fought Canonical and the entire Ubuntu community to turn it into a much more minimalist distro with i3 as the default WM? There are thousands of orphaned projects out in the wild. If I find one that I like, is it the best use of my time, or is it best for the community for me to take it over, or is it best for me to focus on one of the communities where I find up to date and functioning software?
Similarly, I was born to a pair of Christian parents (one Catholic, one Episcopalian) and experienced two (admittedly very similar) religious traditions growing up. I am now firmly agnostic. Should I follow your line of reasoning and work night and day to turn one of these religions into a bastion of agnosticism, or should I act as a reasonable adult and abandon the community I have no communion (pun intended) with in favor of a community of my choosing? Which community should I choose to fight against in order to make it more pleasing to myself?
Why should the circumstances of my birth bind me inextricably to an arbitrarily delineated geographic region and whatever society predominates there? Why do you expect me to care more about those who live within 500 miles of my birth place than those who live further? Are these people more worthy, more human?
If you admit that the happenstance of birth is exactly that, and that those who share a birthplace with me are not more deserving in any way than those who don't, then how can you demand that I pay more attention to them and make more effort to make them better off?
A strict utilitarian would argue I should go to the worst-off country I can find and help them. I do not believe either of us is a strict utilitarian.
If I find a society that I fit into better than the one I am born into, is it not a cruelty to forbid me to join it? Is it not a qualitatively identical (though quantitatively lesser) cruelty to discourage me from doing so by attempting to make me feel immoral for desiring to join another?
If you value individual choice, why not allow me the pleasure of choosing my own company and my own society? I would argue that the best way to improve societies is to allow anyone to make that same choice.
I lived in Portugal for a year back in 2011-12. It's true that they've decriminalized drugs (and that society didn't break down) but I was struck by how often I still witnessed drug dealers getting busted by police. Almost invariably, the people getting arrested and hassled were recent immigrants from places like Brazil, Mozambique, or Angola. It made me sad to see how the racial differences in drug law enforcement in the US still seemed to be present there, despite the more enlightened policies overall (i.e., if I, a white guy, were loitering on a corner selling hash, I very much doubt I'd have gotten approached by cops).
>It's true that they've decriminalized drugs (and that society didn't break down) but I was struck by how often I still witnessed drug dealers getting busted by police.
Decriminalizing drug use and possession is not the same as decriminalizing drug trade. Have they done the former or the latter too?
Considering that two US states with a combined population exceeding many European countries have a more comprehensive legalization program than anything happening in Europe and more states have similar measures in the pipeline, 'such a place' is actually the United States.
If there is anyone with anything good to say about Anslinger, I've never heard of them. Police in the US need to stop lionizing people like Anslinger and J. Edgar Hoover.
Compelling story. Would be a lot easier to follow if author were clearer on relative dates. (How long after the 1939 threat was the first bust? The later SF bust? The final hospitalization?)
Thanks for posting that. The story is compelling, but without sources for quotes and more details, I'm left wondering how much of it was "artist embellishment".
There are enough factual stories about the war on drugs that will make your stomach turn. There is no need to "spice up" the story.
The "war on drugs" is steeped in racism and plays a large part in the state repression of people to this day. I have hoped for years that people would start realizing this connection. Sadly, the racial witch hunters of the day prefer to focus their energy on symptomatic outliers (e.g. Ferguson) instead of the root source of legal injustice. The powers granted to the state through the drug war and all the side effects thereof are crippling generations.
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[ 49.3 ms ] story [ 1369 ms ] threadI can't believe I live in a country with the gall to do this. My biggest question is, how can I help change this? Can I change it?
It's just sad. I can only hope that someday, some country will create opportunities and futures like those of the United States. I hope there will be someplace for people to move where they don't have to worry about something as atrocious as this. Because this sickens me.
Portugal seems very interesting and I'd really like to hear what happens with their drug policy.
But in the end, it's all for naught if I can't get any opportunities there. Which is why I live in the US.
I mean, it's not just about getting were you can get the most benefits, money, tax breaks and whatever.
It's also about working with your fellow citizens to improve the conditions where you live, and also fighting when the bad times come there, not just saying "so long suckers" and leaving for the next opportunity abroad.
The latter just makes everybody a selfish bastard, and ends up in a (non)-community of cowards stepping on each other to get to the top.
If I express dissatisfaction with my mobile carrier, should I work with my fellow customers to improve the conditions of the service we get, or should I just switch to a competitor? If I switched I would just be a customer of a company with lots of satisfied cowards stepping on each other for the best deal they can find.
Expressing voice to what? To some greater power (ie. the government) to come and fix the issues?
What I said was about people HELPING solve the issues themselves.
>If I express dissatisfaction with my mobile carrier, should I work with my fellow customers to improve the conditions of the service we get, or should I just switch to a competitor?
See, that's my point. A society is not some company that owes you service, it's something you build.
For a better example, if you express dissatisfaction with an OSS software, you should very much work with your fellow users to improve its conditions.
I am not a fan of many window managers available on Linux. The most reasonable solution is not for me to attempt to change the first one I happen to use (Unity in Ubuntu for me) into one I prefer, but to find a community which better suits my use case (i3 now, in Arch - I've clearly made a big jump in communities here).
What you are arguing is that the happenstance of where one starts should absolutely dominate opinions and preferences developed through experience. Or do you think I should have fought Canonical and the entire Ubuntu community to turn it into a much more minimalist distro with i3 as the default WM? There are thousands of orphaned projects out in the wild. If I find one that I like, is it the best use of my time, or is it best for the community for me to take it over, or is it best for me to focus on one of the communities where I find up to date and functioning software?
Similarly, I was born to a pair of Christian parents (one Catholic, one Episcopalian) and experienced two (admittedly very similar) religious traditions growing up. I am now firmly agnostic. Should I follow your line of reasoning and work night and day to turn one of these religions into a bastion of agnosticism, or should I act as a reasonable adult and abandon the community I have no communion (pun intended) with in favor of a community of my choosing? Which community should I choose to fight against in order to make it more pleasing to myself?
Why should the circumstances of my birth bind me inextricably to an arbitrarily delineated geographic region and whatever society predominates there? Why do you expect me to care more about those who live within 500 miles of my birth place than those who live further? Are these people more worthy, more human?
If you admit that the happenstance of birth is exactly that, and that those who share a birthplace with me are not more deserving in any way than those who don't, then how can you demand that I pay more attention to them and make more effort to make them better off?
A strict utilitarian would argue I should go to the worst-off country I can find and help them. I do not believe either of us is a strict utilitarian.
If I find a society that I fit into better than the one I am born into, is it not a cruelty to forbid me to join it? Is it not a qualitatively identical (though quantitatively lesser) cruelty to discourage me from doing so by attempting to make me feel immoral for desiring to join another?
If you value individual choice, why not allow me the pleasure of choosing my own company and my own society? I would argue that the best way to improve societies is to allow anyone to make that same choice.
Decriminalizing drug use and possession is not the same as decriminalizing drug trade. Have they done the former or the latter too?
Erowid has a list of links of Anslinger's congressional testimony and a couple other references. https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/anslinger_harry/an...
Note the author, Johann Hari, has had some issues with accuracy and attribution in the past, and some argue that even his recent work is sloppy with quotes for dramatic purposes (http://www.jeremy-duns.com/blog/2014/9/7/kdgwxcbsned1rknh0h3...).
There are enough factual stories about the war on drugs that will make your stomach turn. There is no need to "spice up" the story.