• dependencyinjection
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    8 months ago

    How successful has the war on drugs been?

    I could leave my house right now with no phone numbers and get pretty much most major drugs within an hour and things like Xanax and stuff you can source on the darkweb.

    Look at prohibition and how it empowered the mafia.

    Banning things doesn’t work. It funds larger crimes like human trafficking, slavery and terrorism.

    I think we could use the money we spent fighting an unwinable war on things like education, treatment and helping people get off drugs.

    Look at alcohol it’s legal and cause far more issues and expensive than say weed.

    • Allero@lemmy.today
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      8 months ago

      I think the real issue is the way we wage this war.

      War on drugs has been a cover for insane international operations that siphon away endless amounts of money but don’t work on the root causes.

      I think we absolutely should build more rehabilitation facilities, educate more about the real dangers of drugs, but at the same time we should come up with smart policies regarding fight on drug crime.

      And that regulation should exist - even the Netherlands, well-known for trying not to control this but go other ways, actually prohibits everything but the lightest of drugs.

      I think the approach should be more like the new ideas on fighting things like bribery - you should be able to legally buy, but not sell drugs, and be rewarded for reporting sellers. This way you can easily turn up with real recording of the transaction and some evidence and be covered and rewarded as the perpetrator is sent to jail. Additionally, you should be offered witness protection.

      This puts sellers in a super cautious asymmetric position relative to buyers and forces them out of the market. And without sellers, there’s no drugs.

      • dependencyinjection
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        8 months ago

        You’ve made some good points here, but I do think you’re underestimating people.

        You can executed in the USA for murder yet people still do it. You can get a longer sentence for your third felony, people still commit them.

        If there is a market for something, someone will fill that void. Regardless of the consequences.

        What we need to fix is society. Why do people do drugs. A massive factor is to escape reality, or no prospects. This can be seen as drug addiction and abuse is by far a larger problem in poorer areas than affluent ones. So if we build a society where everybody has the bare minimum and maybe some prospects we will see a lot less drug use.

        As with everything this doesn’t mean there won’t still be people that will so drugs no matter what and that’s fine. Those are the minority and our aim is for maximum improvements to society.

        If drugs are legalised to buy from stores like they do with weed, and it is priced competitively then there wouldn’t be much of a black market as they won’t be able to compete, this is why I believe these should be run my governments and not greedy companies as well the price will rise and street buying will be cheaper. The profits can be used to fund other programs.

        What is interesting is wondering what the cartels would move to to keep their profits the same. Would they move to scams, kidnapping and such. Would they go legit and supply legal cocaine and stuff.

        • Allero@lemmy.today
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          8 months ago

          And I absolutely agree on “fix the society” part!

          There is a lot of issues in the modern world that drive people to drugs, rampant inequality and lack of prospects included.

          But trying to fix that doesn’t mean rejecting every other approach to the prevention of drug abuse. We need all we can do right now.

          And if making murders illegal decreases homicide rates, we should make them illegal. Same idea.