When I first considered writing this particular post, there were three options on how to proceed. I could have: 1] Written this as a standard length normal post; 2] Substack Note or 3] very brief normal post. As you can see, I chose option 3. Here is why..
Just have a look at the graph below. As things stand in 2023 (graph is only up to 2021), more than 100k people in USA die each and every year from overdoses or addiction. Note that this figure does not include all the other deaths due to rapidly rising rates of alcoholism. If you put both sums together, it is almost 200k every year now and shows no sign of decreasing. We can pretend that this is simply due to all those drugs being “bad”, but you can clearly see- the numbers have really gone up within past decade. Chances are that someone you used to know has died of an overdose in past decade.
We can sit around and come up with more bullshit and ineffectual “solutions” such as tightening borders with Mexico or inspecting every shipment from China, but it is clear that the real problem is vastly increased demand. And why not.. just look at the dismal, lonely and pathetic future faced by a significant percentage of people under the current status quo. People who have something worth living for typically don’t go down the rabbit-hole of becoming habitual drug users or addicts. My point is that a real long term solution to this problem will require far more effort than passing a few dumb laws and pretending to intensify the “War on Drugs”.
Drug prohibition, of any sort, has never worked for any significant length of time in recorded human history. Some of you might say that only programs with forcible rehab can solve this problem. But that brings us back to the real problem with any program to selectively help the “needy” which create a bureaucracy- namely, those with such jobs require to keep the problem alive and growing to ensure their own job security. As things stand, the only thing which will reduce total harm (both to the drug user and society) is to make them very inexpensive and legal. While some might think that making drugs inexpensive, safe and legal will increase their use (it might for a short time), making them legal will increase their quality resulting in less ODs.
Other might say something about all the liberal drug initiatives in San Francisco have not made it a safer city. But face it, the problems with homeless in SF have everything to do with poorly treated mental illness, very high cost of living, lack of affordable housing, extreme social atomization, issues concerning policing of certain crimes and other issues which have nothing to do with full drug legalization. Also, the state of California is screwed up in many other ways (governance related) which have nothing to do with the homeless or drug issue. I am also not claiming that full drug legalization is going to transform current users (most of whom are not homeless) into saints.
The only things which full drug legalization will do is as follows: 1] reduce the risk of overdose deaths; 2] make the path to rehabilitation easier and 3] reduce the need for users to commit petty crime. It is not going to change the fucked-up situation for homeless in Bay Area or bring back “old-fashioned family values”. But if we don’t do anything, somewhere between 100-200k (or more) of the working age population in this country will keep dying each year, and the current status quo is actually far more expensive to the taxpayer. Just because we cannot solve every problem in this world right now does not mean we shouldn’t try something within our grasp.
What do you think? Comments?
Very dumb idea. The Netherlands tried this and as a kid commuting to school by rail I found all kinds of junks doing heroin in front of me. Of course the commuter town I lived in got lots of enrichment by said junks doing home invasions and strangulation of helpless stay at home wives.
WTF do you think will happen once weed is nothing but the first step, hard drugs really get into all those high schools, and anybody you run into could be self-medicating her or himself with a cheap cocktail of drugs. Oh wait, that’s Russia today.
That 18th amendment can be re-enacted and expanded, Mexico can be invaded up to 100 miles deep and seeded with trillions of bouncing Bettys, and shoot to kill would finally end that trafficking across the gulf. Or across the pacific. Just like we did with Somali pirates. Or Mexico in the past.
I’m in favor of holding show trials for all those bleeding heart doctors that convinced weed would be used for kids with terminal cancer, and be better than morphine. Yeah, morphine worked really well for my late son, fuck weed.
The war on drugs would have worked better if we’d actually destroyed the supply AND treated the addicts. But that costs real money.
Cocaine in liquid form is incredibly useful - to numb up your nose and sinuses prior to surgery, and that’s about it. Meth just needs to be wiped off the planet, and fentanyl should warrant air strikes with napalm. Heroin, well the Taliban can eradicate that overnight. They’ve done it before. China... well those container ships just seem to shipwreck themselves when the welds fail...you guys really should stop cutting corners on welding .. or was it a torpedo.. hmm. I guess we’ll never know.
How ruthless will this get? Nothing the Brits haven’t done dozens of times.