The Prison-Industrial complex is pumping out criminalization literature. Here's an older article that talks about how it works regarding homelessness, but you can see how it works with drugs as well.
Good link. Having funding from reactionary billionaires who fund private for profit prisons is quite an incentive to spread propaganda.
I noticed that when more sources do report about something (even though they got money for it), my family does take it more as "true" or "known" than if it is one really well researched media/academic outlet that reports on it (or in this case the inverse).
Even some socialists I know are weirdly pro-drug enforcement now.
That's what 0 material analysis does to a mf. Yes, you can say hard drugs do hurt the most vulnerable in our society. But so is enforcing the ban. Damn, we live in capitalist society, bourgeoisie is the ruling class. Hostile ruling class. If something is implemented it will be implemented exactly in a way that will benefit them. We don't have control over it.
I'm not saying there is nothing we can do, or shouldn't discuss it. What i'm saying is that hard drug use is a huge systemic issue you can't solve by being vaguely pro/anti. Having a comprehensive plan is actually a good thing, at very least for propaganda purposes. It might even help with socialist construction after the revolution. But don't assume you can just pull a policy from your ideal dream communist society inside your head into the real world for bourgeois government to implement and expect a good result.
There is definitely no material conditions of a century of humiliation that wouldnt affect a country like that now would it?
What if I told you that the Americans created the cartels like the British propped up the opium trade? I am team legalized coca sure, but at the end of the day there is a reason why the hard stuff and real drug pushers aren’t welcome in Cuba.
Cocaine is a very hard drug my dude. I've seen people lose their lives on it . But not because of the drug but the capitalist duty tax burden X10. on a product that is essentially leaf extract. idk man kind of drunk
Mao handled the issue with a combination of supported rehab for addicts and execution of drug dealers (although if I remember correctly this was only the dealers who refused to turn on their organisation). Although it is also worth pointing out that the drug triads of 1940's China were essentially warlords and aren't very comparable to US drug dealers and the production of opium in China was undermining food growth
It is also the case that Chinese drug laws are not very different to Singapore's drug laws
It is 100% like that with drugs dealers in Mexico
Mexico doesn't have a death penalty and it's kind of stopped a lot of justice
I think Maos guys did the right thing
It's a complex issue but killing Bougie Chapos ... God why did they name is chapotraphouse ...plus on drugs too 🤌
Not sure what you mean by that. I'm saying you shouldn't trust
govs to handle social issues in favor of proletariat. Not that you shouldn't shoot drug lords under any circumstances.In order to shoot drug lords, you have to be willing to kill their hired guns. Let’s not be naive. You have to treat them all like fascists if they don’t submit.
This has very little to do with what i said, but i'll bite.
If we're talking about a particular law enforcement operation by a theoretical socialist state, then here is not that many people would be willing to die in a last stand against a whole country's forces. No amount of drug money will change that. You need to be alive to spend them, after all. The only ones who would be willing to do that are people who will to face the same punishment as hypothetical drug lord. We shouldn't bolster their ranks by going overboard here. Whatever you meant class politics or some idea of justice, i think you taking it too abstractly. We should consider particular effects of our theoretical policies too.
I feel like this goes hand in hand with the anti-psychedelic energy that’s been getting into left wing spaces too. Seems so regressive in a lot of ways.
But Joe Rogan like taking them so they must be bad
As Mao wrote, not being contrarian is the 69th form of liberalism
I feel like part of is was just because a lot of the anti war on drugs sentiment was driven by cannabis being illegal, but now that it's starting to get legalized in more and more states, that's going away
Not me, I still hate the cops and the DEA and every corporation that supported prohibition and want some fucking revenge
Ya know, after I get high
From what I've noticed, even discussion of safe consumption spaces (which would reduce public drug use) brings out the libs' inner Officer MacGruff. I wouldn't be surprised if this is also related to the fentanyl scare.
Ok and? Safe injection sites still drastically reduce overdose deaths, HIV infections and are a critical waypoint to drug rehabilitation
Ok and?
The guy I'm responding to is bringing up negative reaction to safe injection sites. I am pointing out a material reason for why this might be. Most people are opposed to being randomly shot.
And this is a consequence of general poverty caused by the material conditions of capitalism not of safe injection sites.
Saying “most people are opposed to crime” as a defense of reactionary beliefs and the removal of safety protocols is a lowhanded way to support pro-police “tough on crime” propaganda.
So then what is your policy proposal for this then?
Increased police presence? Shut down of safe injection sites? Because I'm seeing a lot of disingenuous "concerns" and appeals to public opinion but zero actual calls to action
I dont have a solution. The topic is the shifting view of the war on drugs and attitudes towards safe injection sites came up. I described the public reaction, and negative reactions from otherwise left or liberal individuals, as I've seen them.
I described the public reaction, and negative reactions from otherwise left or liberal individuals, as I've seen them.
For what reason? We are all aware of them, this is neither new nor groundbreaking information especially when you frame it as a "people do not wish to be around criminality" style of concern trolling we expect out of tough on crime liberals and conservatives.
This is even worse considering you literally do not have any idea on how to address it besides just bringing up the opposition of right wing liberals and conservatives to effective strategies to reducing addiction and addiction related deaths as a means to....what? Appeal to consensus? As if just because liberals and conservatives think a thing is a bad we must cede ground to it out of fear of bad optics?
Like the entirety of a communist/socialist project is unpopular to these people, and yet here we are on a website that explicitly in support of it.
taking part in the discussion same as you
This is doubtful at best.
You haven’t engaged in anything anyone has said besides stating what everyone already knows about liberals and conservative opinions about drug treatment.
Stating over and over again that libs and cons are against “criminality” while bringing up unprompted a random shooting in Toronto is city subreddit level of uselessness.
You’ve refused to engage in pressing the matter into the realm of action or solution and continue to obfuscate, about what should be done.
Do you want more police presence to address addiction or not?
Do you wish to continue safe injection sites or not?
What is the correct method of addressing the current health crisis of addiction?
And what are the material consequences of continuing the War on Drugs as you and other liberals wish to see it followed through?
The reaction I've seen isn't "people might get shot," it's "people shouldn't be allowed to consume illegal substances without legal consequences."
Not once have I ever seen that reaction. The most common complaint is the spread of used needles into nearby parks and gardens, which is an objective reality. Clinic workers do their best to clean them up but they cant find them all and they're not allowed to go on private property to get at them.
Ok but they are still going to be using needles to take drugs without the centres
private property as a bourgeois institution is forming a legal barrier preventing health officials from doing their job
I feel like if you’re hooked into political discourse enough, you can smell it every time a think tank adviser takes a shit. Some special interest group decided they wanted more people to believe in the war on drugs, and so they do.
I'm more interested in the drug abuse epidemic of suburban parents. They're at home, supercharged on amphetamines, adrift on opioids, whirling in a benzo blur, and drowning in a sea of alcohol.
Yep, the only real difference is that while PMCs are all yonked out of their minds all day, they have a script and a copay (although I'm sure that are a bunch who get some from a "respectable" drug dealer too). Hypocrisy baybee.
Libs are constantly afraid of moving things progressive/left-ward “too fast” lest they upset the mythical hordes of Bloombergian centrists that only exists in their heads. So yea, no surprise some of them are getting spooked by decriminalization/legalization.
There is like a rise of the "Purity" or "Moderate Social Values" type of leftist recently for some fucking reason. Like do we need to do a prohibition struggle again?
My thoughts exactly.
Left liberalism has become a camp for hall monitors and moralist puritans who have given up any real life change and seems more interested in self aggrandizing and using the existing structures to punish anyone who isn't as pure and enlightened as they are.
It is politics of The Other. If you're not 100% on board with them, you are The Other. It is very satisfying to hold oneself up as the moral holier-than-thou and claim this moral superiority enables - nah, compels - you to police the rest of society. And one thing that people at the top can always do without repurcussion is punch down and punish the little people for failing to live up to your moral standards. It is exhilarating. It is proof positive of your high status.
Parse libs saying "end the war on drugs" as "I personally want to smoke weed".
But beyond that, I think the Opiod and Fentanyl crises (or crisis, depending on how you see it) has really discredited the libertarian-leaning argument of simply decriminalizing everything, hoping thar people don't fuck up their own lives, and providing remedial assistance when some of them do.
Not only that, but the abject failure of further Healthcare reform has put the damper on any idea of broader and better rehabilitation programs for addicts and users, so many people default to the American option of throwing the Police at the problem.
Personally, I think there's a broader issue with campaigning to abolish something but not having clear plans to replace the parts of that something that actually provide some sort of social function. Or at the very least, not communicating those plans forcefully enough.
But beyond that, I think the Opiod and Fentanyl crises (or crisis, depending on how you see it) has really discredited the libertarian-leaning argument of simply decriminalizing everything, hoping thar people don't fuck up their own lives, and providing remedial assistance when some of them do.
Criminalization just leads to black markets and deregulated (i.e. laced) forms of drugs. It is much better to allow legal, regulated avenues for drug consumption, alongside social assistance for getting out of addictions, and education against using in the first place. America has a problem doing decriminalization, not because "decrminalization doesn't work", but because we have a highly deregulated capitalist political economy where the legal avenues for obtaining drugs are barely better than the illegal avenues. We also fail at providing social assistance and educating people. Anti-drug education is hysterical reefer-madness style propaganda that is misinformative and makes drugs frankly look rebellious and cool. There needs to be an effort to educate people on the real known differences between substances. It needs to be made clear to kids from a young age that smoking weed isn't going to fuck you up the way heroin does. But none of this is possible in our current society at a system-wide level, because it is designed to fail at these things in the first place. Capitalists need slave labor, and a good way to get that is having full prisons. This means convicting and jailing people for drug use / possession.
Also there has been endless discourse about the lack of walkable urban spaces, a "third place" (besides the church!) where people can go to be with each other outside of work/school, etc. I think these kinds of bleak environments are created by capitalism and lead to drug addiction and mental illness.
I agree with what you're saying and I just want to think about the black market aspect of this more.
Criminalizing anything conceivably leads to a black market. Murder is illegal, but there are black market hitmen. Rape is illegal but there are black market human sex trafficking operations. Child pornography is illegal but there's a black market for that too. Obviously no leftist in their right mind is going to advocate for legalizing murder/rape/CP to mitigate their harms, so how do we draw the line between something we legalize for harm mitigation and something we keep criminalized and come down hard on the black market for?
Moreover, would a socialist West (and I say West specifically because material conditions elsewhere are different) keep some of the more destructive drugs illegal, or does the line of harm minimization fall above all forms of drugs?
so how do we draw the line between something we legalize for harm mitigation and something we keep criminalized and come down hard on the black market for?
rape, murder, and child pornography aren't drugs and alcohol. That's where the line is.
Moreover, would a socialist West (and I say West specifically because material conditions elsewhere are different) keep some of the more destructive drugs illegal, or does the line of harm minimization fall above all forms of drugs?
the problem is criminalization of the substances themselves and not their unregulated manufacture and distribution. Why is possession and use lumped in with distribution? Because
needs prison slavesEDIT: Also let's be real, there's a race and class element to this as well. Some wall street schmuck can do a line of coke off his desk at work/home every day and a cop will never catch him because he is in a privately owned space and public law enforcers don't see him as priority. Public law enforces want to get poor addicts out of public spaces where their continued existence bothers the sensibilities of the petit bourgeoisie and into jail where their continued existence is converted into slave labor.
Public law enforces want to get poor addicts out of public spaces where their continued existence bothers the sensibilities of the petit bourgeoisi
Friday in Toronto two dealers who sold near a safe injection site started shooting at each other. They missed each other but shit a random woman multiple times. Her petit bourgeoisie sensibilities were so offended by these gunshot wounds that she died. What a square.
I'm talking about how the police funnel addicts into prison where they are exploited as slaves. You're talking about a (sample size of 1 anecdote) dealers shooting at each other at a safe injection site. I'm not talking about dealers, I'm talking about criminalization of addicts, and of possession with the intent to use rather than distribute. I'm talking about why this problem can't be solved in a capitalist political economy. Your response seems only tangentially to my post. Not sure what your intention is, here.
We’re talking about safe injection sites and peoples opposition to them in the context of the shift of opinion on the war on drugs amongst liberals and lefties, which includes the environments that form around safe injection sites. I agree that this problem can’t be solved in a capitalist political economy. I’m not sure why you’re confused. I’m taking part in the discussion same as you.
I’m not sure why you’re confused.
I'm not confused. you're responding to my comment that didn't bring up safe injection sites at all with a (sample size of 1 anecdote) dealers shooting at each other at a safe injection site. Your response to my comment had nothing to do with my comment. Typically when you respond to someone you respond directly to what they said.
The opium epidemic in China ended by China slaughtering anyone even remotely involved in the opium trade. If you're willing to go that scorched earth against drug abuse it can work, but if not you're probably better off just regulating it.
Yeah, I was mostly joking. The PRC's campaign against opium leaned much more on land redistribution to incentivize farmers away from poppies, rehabilitation for addicts, and mass propaganda campaigns then it did violence. Not to say that people weren't arrested and executed, but those were mainly dealers and ringleaders (proffiteers).
Compared against the failed attempts of both the Qing (hobbled by British interference and the collapse of their empire) and the KMT (hobbled by Japanese invasion and the KMT's own hilarious corruption), the PRC's programs were much more focused on incentives rather than violence.
finding a handful of opium peddlers and subjecting them to needlessly torturous and antiquated death penalties like "death by a thousand cuts" might be more brutal, but it is fundamentally less effective than eliminating the opium trade in its entirety through swift and effective revolutionary activity.
Murder, rape, and child pornography all violate consent. Drug use does not. That's where I'd draw the line: consent.
But beyond that, I think the Opiod and Fentanyl crises (or crisis, depending on how you see it) has really discredited the libertarian-leaning argument of simply decriminalizing everything, hoping that people don't fuck up their own lives
That's not the case. Fentanyl only exists in huge quantities in the illegal drug supply because of prohibition making lesser opioids less profitable to sell and smuggle. The drugs can't be regulated if they are illegal. What we have now with the drug black market is essentially a libertarian's totally unregulated dream market. It shouldn't be left up to a market at all, ideally we would see government programs supplying people with a history of addiction their drug of choice so they don't turn to using dangerous, stepped on shit they bought off the street.
Other than that, decriminalizing everything is absolutely necessary. We can't be putting people in prison for being addicted to drugs.
I think the Opiod and Fentanyl crises (or crisis, depending on how you see it) has really discredited the libertarian-leaning argument of simply decriminalizing everything, hoping thar people don't fuck up their own lives, and providing remedial assistance when some of them do.
The opioid shit could not possibly be due to decriminalization and assistance, because we've done neither. Liberal.
Beyond that, there's a clear and obvious line between the war on drugs and the rise of fentanyl. Smuggling drugs is easier when they're more potent and all that.
No, ofc the current crises aren't because of decriminalization. The point I was trying to make, and maybe I didn't make it well, is that opiods and fent derivatives are so destructive and have become so widespread that most people will reject trying to solve the problem with decriminalization (and they already reject aiding victims of drug use anyway).
Legalization itself is not a golden panacea for the problem. If it was, Britain forcing Qing China to legalize the opium trade would have helped the problem instead of making it worse.
Oh my bad. I'm sorry I called you a liberal.
Yeah it's definitely not a panacea - the only problems I see solved by decriminalization are fewer people being caged, and one less counter-insurgency tool for pigs to use. The tack I take when I'm not being antagonistic is to emphasize that, however bad drug problems may be, caging people hasn't helped at all with those problems, and has made some of them worse by destroying so many lives. For positive solutions, though, it's almost impossible to do anything that wouldn't require a completely different kind of governance to fully replace the US government
It's weird though - the few mild libs in my life have seemed weirdly at ease with me saying things like, "This is one of the worst possible solutions, and we would still literally be safer if we took every cops guns and distributed them to every prisoner." I think a lot of them feel a strong dissonance about our justice system
No worries Comrade, no offense taken.
Fwiw I do think that broad decriminalization could work in the context of a country that actually gives a shit about the wellbeing of its people. In the US context though? Even if decriminalization could pass into law you'd never be able to get enough people on board to fund the necessary social/medical support systems to make it work.
Honestly, no notes. Any time the libs in my life want to talk policy with me - virtually any policy toward improving things, since today's greatest problems are the ones that capital is invested in maximizing - the issue of dismantling the Great Satan and the drawing the rest of the owl implied in that become the first part of any proposal
So, I don't tend to make proposals anymore so much as just eroding their sense that the US is the best country, then that it's at least a decent country, then that it's at least not an especially bad country like the CSA or Nazi Germany. It's gone okay, but I think real erosion is a good bit faster
I don't think the opium trade in Qing China is really comparable, and I think the impact of opium on China's century of humiliation is a bit overwrought - at imports of 6500 tons annually, that's only enough for a maintenance dose of 10 grams of opium tincture a day for a million people, or 0.25 percent of the population.
I don't think full legalisation and limited controls (creating an opioid version of the alcohol market) is the answer, but even that would likely produce less harms than the war on drugs.
But beyond that, I think the Opiod and Fentanyl crises (or crisis, depending on how you see it) has really discredited the libertarian-leaning argument of simply decriminalizing everything, hoping thar people don't fuck up their own lives, and providing remedial assistance when some of them do.
Who knew, drug addiction is way less of a problem in societies that have decriminalization... and don't have a medical industry which is allowed to pump harmful, addictive shit into common medication without consequences, so narcotics stay for the purpose of recreation.
I don't do any drugs myself, but even taking ibuprofen for a headache makes me reluctant. If that becomes the default response, that's probably a bad thing.
yeah it's like when they abolished abusive asylums aka snakepits which was good as those places were horrific but then just started sending all the people in need of the treatment those places were supposed to give to prison instead because they didn't replace them with functional mental health hospitals
Seems to be somewhat linked to a lot of cities having issues with unhoused people
The genesis of the war on drugs during the Nixon era and afterward was to use the state to suppress and terrorize persons of color, political agitators and organizers, the remnants of socialists, and the poor at large. Also these policies were a way of turning those bodies imprisoned into economic reinvigoration into prisons and the communities that benefit from prisons: businesses that clothe, feed, medicate, communicate, and provide consumer goods for the people in prison. At the taxpayer's expense through subsidies or through ordinary people sending money to the imprisoned for those amenities.
Unhoused people are becoming more visible, and their visible presence in communities and cities is disturbing for people to see. Americans and capitalists are willing create a regime where the state would provide healthcare, mental health facilities, drug rehabilitation centers, public housing, job programs, in a twisted manner: invigorate the prison industrial complex to address these concerns.
Here in my state (I’m sure some quick Googling can tell you which it is) we did decriminalize drug use. However, we provided no additional rehab support, even though that was what the bill said we would do. Didn’t happen.
That sounds like the policy was sabotaged and that Oregon's outcomes shouldn't be used to shoot down similar policies elsewhere.
appears to be coming from China, in an attempt to destabilize our society
American pharmaceutical companies are purchasing fentanyl, and American doctors are prescribing it to patients. From there, it is sometimes re-sold as a street drug. This is not a Chinese conspiracy, nor the mirror of the opium war you seem to think it is. The British empire forced the Chinese to engage in the opium trade at gunpoint. The Chinese are not doing this to the Americans. America is destabilizing itself just fine.
Cheap Fentanyl, which is an order of magnitude stronger and more deadly than heroin, appears to be coming from China, in an attempt to destabilize our society
it is more likely the case that it's being sold because it has a market and generates profit
but yeah that doesn't sound ideal. Drug use is a real problem and drugs are in fact bad for their users and society. Really you would want some sort of program to get people off of drugs
i have noticed it and its really annoying . even the people directly affected by these shit policies, are not immune to such brainworms .. out of all of my friends: most are living on the streets, and all (or almost all of them( do drugs….yet sometimes i will hear pro drug war talking points out of their mouths, which is just baffling to me
bUt i'M sUcH aN aDdIcT tHaT i NeEd OtHeR pEoPlE aRrEsTeD sO i DoN't ReLaPsE
We have three data points. Almost no one becomes "addicted" without untreated mental or social problems. Portugal does fine. There are dudes doing life for selling weed and that could only be described as political prisoners.
So in America if we legalized all drugs it would hurt people because we don't have the social and medical resources to handle people's needs. It would however hurt less people and waste less resources than the war on drugs.
