[2devnull]

“ and disrupt international drug cartels who are looking to smuggle fentanyl into our nation,” they said.”

Just a totally absurd statement. Drug traffickers pour across the border in droves, daily. Anybody who supported this && does not support securing the border is a corrupt weasel and an enemy of Americans.

[spicykraken]

We could also, ya know... enforce our drug laws and punish folks in possession of fentanyl. But no, lets enable warrant-less spying on American citizens instead.

[mptest]

Yeah, Prohibition of substances has gone so well this far. Why hasn't anyone thought of punishing drug users? That has always worked in history!

How do people like you not realize the ONLY solution is to let adults have bodily autonomy and stop trying to police what they do in the privacy of their own home.

[cloverich]

At this point many in the US have experienced or heard about cities like Portland where removal of prohibition did not result in a utopia, but instead a city full of meth zombies. Granted Portland is probably the worst city to hold this experiment in*, but regardless at this point there are many people with first hand experience who definitely think prohibition is a lesser evil. Doesn't mean its the correct path, but I believe neither is it simple to say prohibition doesn't work. It clearly doesn't work as good as perfect treatment, but it remains to be seen if e.g. the US could actually execute on something better.

> stop trying to police what they do in the privacy of their own home

I think if most folks used in their own home Portland's experiment would have been a smashing success. Yet nobody really uses fentanyl, meth, etc, without their life and home situation falling apart. Thus the idea of hard-drug users doing so in the privacy of their own home feels a bit unrealistic.

*Mental health care / services are among the worst here, and there are insufficient treatment centers and methods of enforcement, on top of the general lack of quality execution plans the local gov't has demonstrated as of late. The complete lack of any enforcement has led to predictable droves of addicts wondering the streets.

[mptest]

>Yet nobody really uses fentanyl, meth, etc, without their life and home situation falling apart. Thus the idea of hard-drug users doing so in the privacy of their own home feels a bit unrealistic.

Equally, the notion of "just stop doing it because it's banned" clearly, empirically does not work. It is and will forever be easy to score drugs.

Prohibition is a money burning pit, funneling money to organizations that are built to torment the lower classes that use substances while everyone here knows that the wealthy don't ever have to follow the same rules.

Even the proponents of prohibition agree with me. Maybe look in to the real reason prohibition even exists as a """solution""". Here's a quote for you:

"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” - Nixon's aide John Ehrlichman

>Mental health care / services are among the worst here, and there are insufficient treatment centers and methods of enforcement, on top of the general lack of quality execution plans the local gov't has demonstrated as of late. The complete lack of any enforcement has led to predictable droves of addicts wondering the streets.

Yeah, because as you note it was a half measure where a full one was needed.

Generally I agree with the notion that hard drug use is not tenable with being functional in society, we just disagree on the solution.

As you note, mental health care, rehab, treatment facilities all need to be revamped. This is not a problem solved by prohibition.

We need to tackle inequality and a large majority of the suffering that leads to serious drug use is fixed, way up stream of the users.

We have worse than gilded age inequality. 3 people own more wealth than half the US combined. Maybe if so many weren't forced to work or starve, there would be reduced demand for unhealthy coping mechanisms like we both probably agree harder drugs generally are.

My whole point is best demonstrated by one throwaway line in the wire, "you think i sleep under a fucking bridge sober?"

Poverty is the real issue here. Not drugs. It never was drugs.

[unethical_ban]

Everything is a spectrum.

Fentanyl, heroin and a handful of other drugs are too addictive and too deadly to be acceptable.

On topic, though, I have to wonder why warrantless searches are needed to stem the distribution layer of fentanyl.

[mptest]

On topic: Warrantless searches are 'needed' to "stem the distribution of fentanyl" the same reason drug use has always been targeted. Here's a quote from one of the progenitors of the idiotic prohibition mindset (in the US at least)

>"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” - Nixon's aide John Ehrlichman

Spoiler alert: They don't give a fuck about drugs or those dying from drugs.

They use the specter of "drugs" just like child abuse and terrorism - as eternal battles that need to be fought. How? By ameliorating the conditions that lead to drug abuse and child abuse and terrorism, like poverty and war?

Of course not, they use them to erode our rights under the guise of protection.

[Bytewave81]

Possession is a victimless crime (well, the victim is yourself).

Distribution is the crime.

[spxneo]

You are not the only victim as a drug user (unless you are a loner), people around you are impacted, you are not your best self when you are intoxicated.

Distribution certainly impacts more than one person and heavy handed punishment is the best way to deter it.

Possession is voting for distribution and while not as destructive as the scalability of high profit margin black market businesses.

Should individuals have the freedom to vote for something that harms other individuals and society as a whole?

[RIMR]

You are really pushing the definition of "victim" by claiming that being in the same space as someone who "isn't their best self" is something that deserves government intervention...

[cloverich]

I think they are actually (intentionally) pushing the definition of "isn't their best self", where "not best self" may means things like "yells racial slurs", "stabs stranger" (etc), "shoots random people", etc.

[naasking]

> and heavy handed punishment is the best way to deter it.

That sounds like an empirical statement. Evidence?

> Should individuals have the freedom to vote for something that harms other individuals and society as a whole?

Arguably the legitimacy of a government derives from the consent of the governed. It sounds like you have your premises backwards.

[spicykraken]

> > and heavy handed punishment is the best way to deter it.

> That sounds like an empirical statement. Evidence?

Singapore and Japan.

[TechDebtDevin]

Yeah all those life sentences for meth, heroin and cocaine distribution have really done a number on our drug problem!!!! /s

Our country's drug use continues to go up despite having the most draconian punishments for drug dealing of western nations. Perhaps the problem has zero to do with punishment and is moreso a reflection of our very unhealthy society, physically and mentally.. just a though.

Don't worry the reddit and HN experts (morons) calling for public executions for drug dealers will get their way eventually and we will finally have our drug free Utopia!!!!

[threecheese]

I think about this a lot. It seems obvious to me that drug abuse (and a lot of crime in general) is only a proximate problem (right term?), in that it’s just a symptom of something else, and so a punitive solution isn’t going to do a whole hell of a lot even if it worked well (which I also believe it is obvious that it does not). When I look at the large portion of society - shit, humanity - that believes punishment is the fix, I have to think that they are either stupid or dishonest. Or that I am not right. Are these folks just smarter than me, and realize that the N-th order solutions - like ensuring humans have their basic needs met - are too expensive or otherwise impossible and we should pretend that incarceration (which isnt just cheap in the US - it’s a money maker) is the way forward?

[outside1234]

There is a chain of violence that goes back from most street drugs. There is no victimless usage of drugs - you are directly damaging a lot of the US and almost all of Latin America at this point.

[threecheese]

While you did qualify “street drugs” in sentence #1, you didn’t in #2, and so I have to disagree that the stinky plants in my garden are damaging to anyone :)

[spicykraken]

Being strungout and shitting on the streets is a crime though, so I'd take it if they enforced that one...