We have no empirical proof that the permissive extreme works. There's also no moral impetus for the permissive extreme, except maybe in rare cases when people are forced into drug use against their will. We are talking about something that virtually always starts out as a deliberate, anti-social choice.
Prohibition failed because European Americans have a deep affinity for alcohol. And it was adopted shortly after the mass immigration of Irish and Italians to the US, who had a specially deep affinity for alcohol. It wasn’t just prohibition, it was removing something that the whole country was already addicted to—an addiction that was cultivated over generations and ingrained in the culture.
Prohibition can work fine with alcohol when combined with a strong social taboo. In my home country of Bangladesh, alcohol is illegal for Muslims and virtually nobody drinks it.
Drugs are much more like prohibition of alcohol in Muslim countries than the prohibition of alcohol in America. We have a pre-existing taboo against drug use that we could be strengthening instead of trying to tear down. Capital punishment for drug dealers would go a long way towards reaffirming the taboo.
Prohibition worked by basically all measures. Cirrhosis rates were down. Violence overall was actually down. Child abuse was down. 100s of thousands of people were saved due to prohibition of alcohol.
I'm not even in favor of alcohol prohibition but denying it saved lives goes completely against all data.
The common cultural belief that prohibition failed is a total myth. It achieved everything it set out to achieve. People just wanted to drink. There's actually very little evidence of the supposed ills of prohibition.
For example, organized crime is typically said to have been caused by prohibition, but there were other factors at play as well (immigration, economics, etc). Harder liquor being available is another one, and this is true. Cirrhosis severity increased during prohibition but the drop in cirrhosis rates more than made up for that.
Criminals due to prohibition, i.e. drinkers of alcohol, should report to the prohibitor, cirrhosis, which a very good and clear sign of alcohol consumption, indicative of their criminal behavior?
A pregnant unmarried young woman of muslim religion, should report to her parents she is pregnant, indicative of sexual behavior with no one claiming legal status as her husband? That's prohibited, why should she do it?
I mean, a criminal reporting their own crimes to the prohibitor, doesn't sound like a very bright move to say the least.
I know personally people who drink alcohol a lot, their friends, family and social circles usually drink as well. Not always but increased probability. As soon as i meet a cousin of mine 3 times a week, and he gets busted for alcohol then i know i am next. So why should i let him report his own disease?
Cirrhosis kills, so the data is pretty 'fair', unless you're claiming there are piles of unnamed, uncertified dead people who died of cirrhosis during prohibition but were not autopsied. The data showing cirrhosis decreased is counting cirrhosis deaths as reported by hospitals getting indigent bodies. Several hospitals went from handling thousands of indigent cirrhosis deaths to handling a few hundred. You can't hide dead people easily.
Yes you can. You can change their cause of death. Covid proved, this can be very easily achieved. Hundreds of thousands of people with wrong and misleading cause of death.
When the doctor is intimidated because he will be fired or he will be beat up by thugs then you put in the cause of death anything you like. A doctor can be intimidated by FDA thugs who revoke licenses, or beat up street thugs with the same effect.
I know personally one doctor who does autopsies. Autopsies are far from rigorous.
Usually people care about a person while he is still alive, as soon as his soul flies away to some remote heaven no one cares. Especially when that person is drinking for decades, usually everyone knows what the cause was, his family, his friends, it is not rocket science.
I didn't read the citations, it is many hours of study, but if any of the above is in question, i can give pretty lengthy citations about Covid and cause of death. A lot of research is pretty widely known.
Well, I'm just describing the practical effects of the drug policy in Singapore.
It's very similar in the West: poor people get busted for doing drugs much more than rich people do.
Yes, I sometimes think policies could be made more efficiently, if they were to openly acknowledge the loopholes that exist for rich enough people, and just turn them into a saner official policies, instead of 'open-secret' accidents.
Singapore has a good example for gambling: foreigners can just enter our casinos, but locals have to pay something like 200 dollars to enter. Just so that you are under no illusions that you could come out ahead on net by going to the casino.
In theory, they could open 'opium dens' where you pay 200 dollars to enter, and then you can do your drugs there (all regulated and taxed and under supervision).
The link you provided does not even remotely support your claim, which I can only assume is that the death penalty stops drug distribution.
But unless you control for Singapore’s somewhat unique geography and politics, pointing to Singapore’s death penalty - itself the result of a wider political context - signifies very little.
The death penalty is very important. What makes ordinary people follow the law is a desire to conform to society’s expectations. Humans are social animals—we want to be “good people,” not “bad people.”
Imposing the death penalty for drug dealers cultivates a social norm about how evil drug dealers are. Its society’s ultimate sanction and indicator of the acts society deems evil. It’s like the social opprobrium we have in the US for child molesters, where we look the other way when they get killed in prison. It reinforces the norm—even other criminals realize that child molesters are especially evil.
The majority providing for an orderly, clean, and safe society for themselves through democratic means is not “totalitarianism.” Democracy does not require kowtowing to antisocial individuals. If you want to be disorderly then go live in the jungle.
By this token, if the majority believes that an "orderly, clean, and safe society" means not having, say, people with a certain skin color in it, do you think that is also fine?
Or taking an existing modern example of Russia. The majority of its population genuinely believes that e.g. LGBT persecution (which, to remind, these days means that two women kissing in public get arrested) is necessary for an "orderly and clean society". Is that also a good example of such a democracy?
I don't think there's any comparison between drug users and dealers and racial minorities and LGBT people. Putting that aside, democracy--the collective right to create the kind of society the people want--is more important than individual rights. Societies sometimes make terrible mistakes. Democracy doesn't mean that people always make good decisions. But there is no moral justification for any other approach. Such as having a minority decide that the majority must put up with having to step over drug needles in streets or public parks.
You don't think so, but who are you to argue against the democratic social consensus? In Russia they believe that being LGBT is a choice and that it is a choice that is socially harmful. Just like you believe the same wrt drugs.
Putting that aside, if you believe that democracy is more important than individual rights, then you are in no position to claim that democracy and totalitarianism are incompatible. One can certainly have a totalitarian society in which the majority consents to it being so.
The moral justification for a different approach is that unchecked majority rule is merely "might is right" dressed up in a way that makes it a bit more palatable for the masses.
> In Russia they believe that being LGBT is a choice and that it is a choice that is socially harmful. Just like you believe the same wrt drugs.
Except sexual orientation isn’t a choice and drug use is a choice. Except maybe if you’re one of those children born addicted to drugs because of pre-natal exposure.
> Putting that aside, if you believe that democracy is more important than individual rights, then you are in no position to claim that democracy and totalitarianism are incompatible
“Totalitarianism” is defined as “government that is centralized and dictatorial.” Dictatorial is defined as referring to “a ruler with total power.” So defimitinally totalitarianism is a form of minoritarianism. A government that imposes rigid norms based on broad social consensus isn’t dictatorial. Toxic individualists might deem such a government oppressive, but that doesn't make it dictatorial.
We have empirical proof that the restrictive extreme works: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/singapore-announces-plans-....
We have no empirical proof that the permissive extreme works. There's also no moral impetus for the permissive extreme, except maybe in rare cases when people are forced into drug use against their will. We are talking about something that virtually always starts out as a deliberate, anti-social choice.