mvanwink5 wrote:Diogenes
The damage caused by not having a drug war is worse, but nobody ever thinks along those lines because Libertarians are incessantly pointing out all the abuses which have occurred in the drug war. (Which really isn't a War. For a real drug war, see Singapore.)
For real world experimental evidence of what occurs in the absence of a drug war, see China.
That is the central disagreement, that the only solution to drug use is police action by the state. There are civil ways to deal with drugs, it is a false choice to say that state run criminal law, police enforcement, and incarceration by jail is the only true choice for opposing drugs use.
And what "Civil Way" do you perceive as workable against drugs and addiction? From my perspective this is like saying there is a civil way to deal with ISIS. Not seeing it.
The primary purpose of government is protecting it's people from threats, especially external ones. That is what it exists to do.
mvanwink5 wrote:
I wonder how much culture plays in Singapore? And there is always Mao's solution, line em up against the wall for a bit of target practice. That would also work to lower healthcare costs. With a billion people...
No, it is a matter of safety that employers will have a large say on drug use, economics will be the sane driving force.
What need have drug addicts for a job when government will support them?
mvanwink5 wrote:
Then there are the religious forces.
Which are effectively nonexistent. Might as well wish on a rabbit's foot.
mvanwink5 wrote:
As for the medical issues that lead to drug use, the medical industry is hobbled by the state.
Still, I appreciate where your heart is on the matter and realize that you aren't callused against the collateral damage. You just don't see other solutions as effective and see great tragedy by drug abuse. My point is there is a non simplistic multi pointed solution to take the problem down to size without the collateral damage. Furthermore, when has politician driven solutions ever not ended in a mess as the WOD has devolved?
Best regards
Well thank you. I have noted that the War on Drugs has been devolving into a serious of ever more egregious abuses, but so has abuses from every other aspect of government as well, so i'm not sure that WOD abuses are an outlier. The whole D*mn system is falling apart, and for the same reason.
Now what would that reason be? Well i'm agnostic, but I have to say that the words of Alexander Sozinietzin seem sort of profound.
" More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.
Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —