2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: A gay man's view on Hillary's Nancy Reagan/AIDS comments [View all]Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Last edited Sat Mar 12, 2016, 07:47 AM - Edit history (2)
They're crimes no matter who commits them or why. So-- you punish those as crimes.
Addiction- not "drugs"-- you treat as a public health matter, not a law enforcement one. Harm reduction on harder drugs, legalize and regulate and tax marijuana, also stop inanely trying to pretend that "drugs" are a monolith. Marijuana isn't meth and psilocybin is really fucking different from heroin or jack daniels.
For drugs with no redeeming social value at all- think meth- I think the best argument or advertisement against it is meth users themselves. And treatment on demand should be available to everyone. But I don't think you can separate the country's meth epidemic from larger societal forces which have driven it; among them that meth is worst in places where the traditional "drug war" has worked exceptionally well, also a great deal of meth use in this country is being driven by people working 2 or 3 minimum wage jobs with few benefits, and trying to maintain any way they can. How else is someone who isn't 18 supposed to come off an 8 hour day job and then work the night shift at the mini mart?
There are people who understand this and are capable of dealing with the complexities of human chemistry, human society and our long-running history as primates of altering our consciousness (not to mention the relationship dating back to ancient societies, between altered states of consciousness and things like shamanism, growth and coming of age experiences, consensus reality and collective mythology) ... but few of them have gotten very close to public policy in the beltway.
However, that's changing. More people in the 21st century actually understand these things.