[ToucanLoucan]

So what, we continue empowering our state-sponsored thugs to harass, detain, charge and imprison more and more people for the use of substances we've decided are too bad for them, while we continue selling cigarettes, alcohol, etc. to everyone else?

Decriminalization is the only ethical way to move forwards. For decades now we have abused our own populace and those of other countries to the point of parody in the name of this prohibition, and, shock of shocks, it has failed, just like prohibition did, with the added benefit of we have the documents from the Nixon administration who were quite ready to say, behind closed doors anyway, that the entire point from the start of the war on drugs was openly to fuck with hippies and black people at scale, and that was before the CIA was flooding ghettos across the country with drugs to find/launder money for their operations.

None of this has ever been about the fucking drugs, it has always been yet another cudgel wielded by the state to further it's own ends. IF we decide we need to regulate substances based on actual scientific documented evidence, not puritan sensibilities of sin and vice, then so be it and we can figure that out after the fact. But until then, the entire existing systemic infrastructure for it is frankly, poisoned. It is not fit for the task it is entrusted and should be destroyed.

Burn it down, and start over.

[tick_tock_tick]

> it has failed, just like prohibition did

Prohibition was a massive success where did you get the impression it didn't work? Nothing has ever reduced domestic violence or alcohol related deaths as much. Even after being repealed it fundamentally changed how Americans interact with alcohol; how much people drink is still massively below what is was pre-prohibition.

> Burn it down, and start over.

They did and the whole article is just about how much worse it made everything. Not just visible issues or people complaining about moral issues but OD deaths surged.

[ToucanLoucan]

> Prohibition was a massive success where did you get the impression it didn't work? Nothing has ever reduced domestic violence or alcohol related deaths as much.

It also more or less created organized crime in the United States, and laid the foundations for every illicit-business-at-scale that would follow it. Of course it reduced alcoholism: alcohol was illegal, and anything made illegal will be necessarily reduced in availability. But it didn't get rid of it, and it made the alcohol that remained far more dangerous:

- The economics of smuggling meant that lighter alcohol like beer and wine were far less profitable to transport than hard liquors like whiskey, bourbon, vodka, and moonshine. SO MUCH moonshine.

- Because the aforementioned products were illegal, there was now zero government oversight involved in their production and distribution, meaning you often had no idea what the fuck you were actually buying and if it was any good, or hell, even safe to consume. Much like the war on drugs, and, if you wanna get REAL political, the fall of Roe v Wade, making it illegal, be it booze, smokes, pot, meth, or abortion doesn't make it not happen: it makes it unsafe.

- Worse still, the legal issues meant that if a particular establishment was selling unsafe liquor, you couldn't do shit about it because, again it's illegal and any report to authorities about the lack of safety put you in legal hot water. This meant the enforcement that did exist was basically down to the aforementioned organized crime rings, who didn't bother with a jury trial, they'd just put you in a hole out in the woods.

And, naturally, no taxes are paid on all this commerce that is very much still happening, and is riskier to the people engaged in it, to suit the puritan sensibilities of a loud minority. Which is probably a big part of why it was no longer the law of the land. And that's all before you consider the fact that it flies directly in the face of all the individual freedom that this country's supposed to be built on in the first place (not that that's usually true, but in such matters, I think we should strive for it.).

[_a_a_a_]

While I personally tend towards decriminalisation, a raging, emotive and fact-free posts like this is just plain counter-productive.

[ToucanLoucan]

Rage is the correct response to decades of systemic injustice and abuse of power.