It seems that in just about every nation penalties for possessing/trafficking drugs are severe at best and downright barbaric at worst, especially in contrast to crimes that have more devastating consequences on society yet are subject to comparatively lighter penalties. Why are taboos against drug consumption so strong and how is this phenomenon global? Does the USA’s global cultural influence impact other nations’ views on drugs or is there some other reason most of the planet engages in this “War on drugs”? I think drug addiction is a serious problem, but I don’t believe disproportionately long prison sentences and capital punishment are effective or humane approaches to the issue.
In East Asian countries, at least, drug laws are “severe” (per your OP) largely because they have historically caused serious societal problems and, arguably, the collapse of the last Chinese empire dynasty. So your presumption that drug use does not have “devastating consequences” is questionable when it comes to certain types of drugs.
Several reasons, but a big one is that when laws aren’t being followed, government leaders’ immediate first thoughts are to “crack down”, instead of reconsidering why such widespread behavior was criminalized in the first place.
Another is the number of overdoses which cause this to be a hugely emotional topic, rather than one which can be calmly debated. Argue online for legalization long enough, and you’ll get blamed for several people’s dead kids. That’s hard enough for me to work against, however irrational it is, but imagine if you were a professional politician?
Another is that for whatever reason, “tough on crime” is still a huge political motivator in the US. No matter what innocuous behavior is criminalized, no matter how many people are in prison, and no matter how violent and militaristic our police forces have become, politicians still win elections by vowing to crack down on crime, and lose elections when they dare broach the subject of, perhaps, maybe, rolling back some of the many failed “tough on crime” laws we’ve already enacted.
As for the “everywhere” part, the US has a huge number of treaties, trade deals and partnerships which mandate that other countries enact and enforce our drug laws in their home countries. And of course, parallel development in other nations of the same forces which led to the drug war in this one.
They are not:
Portugal decriminalised drugs 14 years ago – and now hardly anyone dies from overdosing
You might want to re-read my post because at no point did I say drugs do not have devastating consequences in society, I merely pointed out that crimes that are more detrimental to society aren’t punished as harshly.
Interesting, I didn’t know this. So if the US were to relax its drug laws, do you think that countries with economic ties to the US might follow suit? What would happen if they decided to relax their stance on drugs first?
I also wonder why in some countries drug possession is punishable by death. Seems a bit much, no?
This is honestly the first time I’m hearing about this. Why is this never mentioned by media outlets, let alone cited as an example of why decriminalizing drugs would be the best thing for society?
Can you name one thing more devastating to a country than the collapse of the government? I don’t think you understand how much of an impact the humiliation of the opium wars has had in modern political and social attitudes towards drug use in East Asian countries. A lot of the laws punishing drug use with death results from this.
So drugs are the only thing that can cause the collapse of government? This fearmongering about drugs being the ruin of civilization is exactly how we end up criminalizing people who deserve medical treatment and end up faring worse in society as a result of the ignorance-fueled “drugs are evil” approach.
Portugal’s government seems to be holding up just fine despite drugs having been decriminalized for 16 years now. Meanwhile, the US and China have the highest incarceration rates in the world and that hasn’t discouraged drug use in the least. Perhaps you might consider that opium consumption wasn’t the sole factor in China’s downfall, which is obvious in the article you linked to.
Opium didn’t cause the Chinese government to collapse. A massive campaign of opium marketing and smuggling by the British (and to a less extent, the French) did. It’s not like the Chinese just discovered the poppy one day and all went nuts.
No, at least not originally. Regulation and prohibition of cannabis long predates any efforts in the US. Egypt seems to have been the driving force behind the international prohibition in 1925, when it proposed that hashish be added to the International Opium Convention. I can’t figure out why Egypt was so dead set against it; it was at that time primarily consumed in Arab states and India.
In 1930, Harry Anslinger found himself out of a job because of the end of prohibition, and got himself named head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. As far as I can tell, it was just an agency created to give out-of-work prohibition agents something to do. Anslinger needed something to campaign against to justify his budget, so he began stoking public fear about marijuana and its supposedly crime-inducing effects. This was also the era of the Second Ku Klux Klan (though by 1930 it was collapsing), so there were plenty of people willing to believe that marijuana made white women receptive to sex with black men (without any actual evidence).
There are less well-documented but plausible claims that some major industrialists and business tycoons such as William Randolph Hearst quietly contributed to pot hysteria because the hemp industry was a direct competitor to lumber and to other natural and synthetic fibers.
In more recent times, of course, the US has given lots of other countries money to fight the drug trade, and doubtless there are some countries which pursue anti-marijuana policies just to make sure they get to keep US subsidies.
I think this is more appropriate for Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
the washington post wrote about it in 2015
there’s a ted talk
ther’s a wikipedia page
glenn beck has even talked about it
mc
So money seems to be the driving force behind maintaining the prohibition of drugs. Makes sense.
But wouldn’t legalizing and then taxing drugs just be overall better for both the economy and society? That’s the approach Canada is going with in regard to the impending legalization of marijuana.
I mean Prohibition is the biggest lesson in how legalizing, taxing and regulating a substance is an overall much better solution than outright banning it. How were they so dumb to repeat the same mistakes of Prohibition immediately after witnessing its abject failure?
Selling drugs contributes to getting people hooked on it. That’s a form of mental illness. Imagine if someone was selling mental illness in a bottle? Imagine if drinking bottles for a few months hooked them for life? Imagine if someone gave out bottles for free at a party as a “loss leader”? Imagine if people would commit fraud against relatives, rob banks and commit other crimes in order to get their fix?
Oh right, that is happening.
The punishment model doesn’t work, but I don’t think a government is going to stand by and just watch people (with already-wrecked lives) wreck their lives. (Well, Portugal made it work, but anti-drug cultures in many countries is so strong that doing the same thing just isn’t realistic.)
I recall a study, on rats, where they were given access to (apparently non-addictive) drugs in water. The rats that were given a high quality environment stopped drinking the drugged water. Supposedly being bored or suffering convinces people to take drugs. (I’m thinking extrapolating rat behavior to human behavior has some weaknesses though.)
It’s probably easier to toss someone in jail than fix their life. (Just like it’s easier to use a drug to treat a mental condition than using cognitive behavioral therapy. The former works a bit like an assembly line. Just prescribe a drug that works on most people. The individual cause isn’t really important, just as long as they’re no longer depressed, hyperactive, etc. It also takes a lot less of the doctor’s time.)
Yes, but much worse for all the people who are making money off the current system of illegal drugs.
And there’s a lot of them:
- everybody involved in illegal drug sales
- everybody involved in illegal drug importing
- all those border guards, package inspectors, etc. fighting drug importation
- all the police & federal agents arresting drug customers & seizing their vehicles
- tow companies, impound lots, car auction houses selling seized vehicles
- all the lawyers defending arrested drug customers
- all the judges & court officials trying drug customers
- all the jail & prison guards (50% of inmates are there for drug ‘crimes’)
- probation officers for drug customers
- treatment centers & counselors who ‘treat’ drug users
- banks & ATM makers who support this ‘cash economy’
- companies that make small portable scales
- companies that make tiny plastic baggies
- corner ‘grocery’ stores who’d go bankrupt otherwise
- head shops, bong shops, and so forth
- companies that make throw-away cell phones
etc.
A whole lot of people who get at least some of their income from the illegal drug economy, and would hate to see that lost.
The main point is that drug trafficking generates money - the bigger the traffic, the bigger the profits. So, naturally, it attracts organized crime which brings all the crimes from bribery to gangland massacres and the possibility of overdoses for good measure. The truly addictive drugs, for example, reduce desperate people to steal anything with minimal forethought as to consequences or likelihood of getting caught. All in all, not conducive to “peace, order, and good government”. Plus there’s the Puritan Ethic, most prominent in America, it seems, that if it’s fun it must be evil and therefore the powers that be should prohibit it.
Also, never underestimate the racist factor. Where Canada sets up polling stations to take the votes of prisoners, many USA jurisdictions take away a felon’s right to vote for a while when they get out. Considering that a significant proportion of the population is black, that’s a productive means of controlling anti-establishment - Republican - votes. (If that fails, set voter-ID laws specifically to target the ID cards black people would have the hardest time obtaining).
Yep, disenfranchisement of African-Americans is a huge motivation, and likely the biggest motivating factor in the modern war on drugs (even Nixon’s former adviser admitted so much).
But generally speaking, criminalizing drugs is beneficial to organized crime. No different than what happened in the 1920s when gangs popped up in the wake of Prohibition. Is keeping minorities oppressed just that important or do politicians really not see the economic benefit? Now that the drug epidemic is starting to affect white people to the same extent, will we see a relaxation in drug laws?
And in countries where economic and political disenfranchisement of minorities isn’t a factor, why haven’t they figured this out yet? Alcohol and tobacco are just as lethal when abused yet they’re accepted in most societies (well except for Muslim countries, obviously).
Additionally, use of khat is quite common in some Muslim countries, while it is illegal in most Western countries. It’s not about one’s view of drugs in general, but what drugs are socially acceptable.
And 2 short and sweet animated teaching videos from Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell cited about the reduction of harm made in Switzerland and how addiction continues to be misunderstood.
Why The War on Drugs Is a Huge Failure
Kurzgesagt about Addiction:
My limited understanding of the history of this is that though there always was a certain fear of drug addiction in most of the western world, certainly in the reaction to general social disruption in the aftermath of WW1, the major idea of a “war on drugs” crackdown was heavily pushed by the Nixon administration, and various pressures brought to bear on allies to conform.
The Soviet bloc would have its own reasons for repressing what it would see as any sort of unproductive self-indulgence, of course.
And they already had a really widespread (& excessive, IMO) use of alcohol in the Soviet Union, and that industry paid taxes. The other drugs didn’t pay any taxes to the government. Plus they got people in the habit of not conforming, which no tyrannical government likes.