[mildtrepidation]

While I agree with this, it's exactly the reason many governments right now get almost nothing done (and what they do get done is awful): People in power who care more about their job security than their -- or anyone else's -- principles.

A politician's career should be based on reconciling principle with reality. Their livelihood should be linked directly to their ability to do this successfully.

That comes with a certain level of idealism, true, but without that we have to concede that our lives are in the hands of people we don't even expect to care.

[rayiner]

It's more complicated than that. Politicians have a limited amount of political capital, and in American politics even getting little things done requires spending a lot of it. Obama put up some huge numbers and ultimately spent all his political capital just doing two things: 1) getting us out of Iraq; and 2) passing the Affordable Care Act.

Ending the drug war is important to some people, but there are tons of people who support the drug war for moral reasons, on both sides of the aisle. Meanwhile, with an aging populace people are much more concerned with Medicare, Social Security, healthcare, pensions, etc, than the justice or injustice of the drug war.

Even a politician who does care sincerely about ending the drug war wouldn't waste his political capital actually doing it, not in face of all the more important things that people want done.

[proksoup]

Support the drug war ... for moral reasons?

That mother showing pictures of her 4 missing boys in the article this thread is about, I think she would argue the war is immoral.

I think the people who think the drug war is moral, would change their mind if they spent more than 30 seconds thinking about it.

Baffles my mind, and when pressed in person, even pious blowhards admit there are serious violent death problems with their methods --- but the people who support them seem totally oblivious to the violent oppressive death that their war causes.

How the fuck is it a moral war?

[rayiner]

Not everyone has the same system of morals. A lot of people, probably most, think that bad behavior is socially contagious. It's a premise that is not exactly divorced from reality. E.g. I would certainly be at least concerned if my daughter's friends were drug users, because I do think children and adolescents can pick up bad habits from the people around them. To these people, the possibility of drugs raises the threat of personal danger to their families.

Some people further think that bad habits like drug use can be controlled through legal means. I don't think they believe it can be eliminated, but I think they believe that if we did not have a drug war, drug use would be a lot more common.

Furthermore, those people can justify the damage caused by enforcement on the grounds that it happens to people who bring it upon themselves, by participating in drug use and drug trade. Even this proposition isn't totally divorced from reality, at least within the U.S. There is lots of collateral damage, but by and large the people dying in gang wars are involved in gangs to begin with, and the people in jail for drug crimes did use or deal drugs.

You don't have to agree with any of this to concede that these ideas are rooted in some sort of moral framework. Not a particularly compassionate moral framework, but there is nothing about moral frameworks that requires them to be compassionate.

[proksoup]

"Not a particularly compassionate moral framework, but there is nothing about moral frameworks that requires them to be compassionate."

My concern is, they think, and argue that their framework is compassionate --- but they are ignorant of reality and what's actually going on with their war.

[MichaelGG]

Some peoples' morals deny life saving medical treatment. Other morals insist that consuming alcohol desecrates a holy temple. Or that porn is evil, or prostitution a "sin". Why would you expect the morals to be based on reason and facts?

[harryh]

If your daughter was routinely going over to a friend's house where the friend's parent was visibly high on a regular basis how would you feel about it?

[atom-morgan]

What's your point here? If he had a problem with it, he probably wouldn't let his daughter go to her friend's house. Either way, we're still telling people what they can and can't put in their own bodies.

[anonymoushn]

As a result of medical treatment or recreationally? Assuming the latter and a popular choice of recreational drug, I don't much harm will come from a kid seeing a friend's parent saying stupid things and eating snack foods. If the friend's parent was visibly drunk, that would be something to worry about.

[PeterisP]

It's either up to you and your daughter to decide if going over is a good thing; however; it is not an argument that says wether that parent should be put in prison.

[harryh]

If drugs are legal, and allowed everywhere it takes that choice away from me unless I want to lock my kid up and not let her leave the house.

[PeterisP]

Alcohol is legal and allowed everywhere (especially at peoples' homes), but it doesn't in any way preclude you from telling your daughter that she's not allowed to visit mr.X because he's an alcoholic, or he's a pothead, or because you simply distrust him.

But "I don't want my daughter to meet X" is something that you need to handle within your family, not by asking armed men to forcibly remove X from the community. In your given example (daughter visits friend whose parent is high) you can punish cases if your underage daughter gets offered drugs, as currently would happen if she'd get offered alcohol or sex; but saying that your neighbor should be imprisoned for what he's doing in his own home simply because "my daughter might visit..." seems a bit ridiculous reason.

It's perfectly okay for your neighbors (and parents of your daughters classmates) to do all kinds of wierd sh*t that you wouldn't allow your underage daughter to do - they can practice crazy religions, have freaky sex including blood and bondage, do near-suicidal acts for thrills, implant horns in their foreheads, whatever. If you don't like that, then that is a valid reason for you to avoid them, but it's not a valid reason for requiring them to stop.

[dreamdu5t]

I would suggest you do concede to reality: We give control to other people at the behest of rhetoric about "getting things done" or "everything would crumble without me."

We shouldn't put people "in power" in the first place.