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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21930 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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Nevermind that there are alternative interpretations of the US's experience with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s.

Yes, there are revisionist interpretations pushed by those who want to do it again despite the clearly destructive results from the last time.

And the US drug prohibition has not, regardless of your protestations, covered itself in glory.

there are revisionist interpretations pushed by those who want to do it again

Nah. I think a lot of the data requires a pretty significant revision on the standard narrative, but I also don't want to do it again.

And the US drug prohibition has not, regardless of your protestations, covered itself in glory.

The good news here is that we now have memorialized that this is your standard. Not covered in glory. Oof, you are a pure child of light, and I'm sure this standard will never come back to bite you ever.

The good news here is that we now have memorialized that this is your standard. Not covered in glory. Oof, you are a pure child of light, and I'm sure this standard will never come back to bite you ever.

I know all sorts of wordplay is against the rules on The Motte, but that was in fact understatement.

I view the people who want to re-enact Prohibition to be the socially-conservative equivalents of all those whose only solutions to current problems are "more of the same, which had absolutely terrible results", like non-policing and eliminating discipline in schools, doing nothing but "helping" homeless, etc.

Oh goody! I know you won't want anything that could be cast as "more of the same, which had absolutely terrible results", so I'm sure you'll be very forthcoming with your incredible, innovative solutions to current problems, solutions which don't look anything like what has come before. I so look forward to that little red bell icon.

If you insist. Both of you are being jerks. (And @The_Nybbler, as usual, is being dishonest, claiming that we prohibit "wordplay." Like all our other anklebiters, you know where the line is and you pretend not to when you petulantly insist on crossing it.)

Knock it off, both of you.

If you prefer sneering in order to paper over the point that "more of the same, which had absolutely terrible results" is transparently a very bad idea, knock yourself out.

I learned my sneering for the purpose of papering over the point that "more of the same, which had absolutely terrible results" is transparently a very bad idea from only the very best.

I really like both of you guys, why can't we all just get along? (cry emoji)

but drug prohibition in other places do quite well. Korea, China, Japan, Singapore, - in comparison US basically does not prohibit drugs at all.

If America stopped being America and Americans stopped living there, we might get Singaporean results. Until then citing an island city with no hinterland is an absurdity.

those who want to do it again

Fascinatingly, there is still a Prohibition Party in the United States. They've apparently run a Presidential candidate in every election since 1872.

They’ve morphed into a tiny third party for Protestant fundamentalists who think the constitution party isn’t socially conservative enough, though- the last platform of theirs I looked at said to refer to the King James Bible rather than articulate specific policies.

the last platform of theirs I looked at said to refer to the King James Bible rather than articulate specific policies.

So they're open-borders (Leviticus 19:34) gender-neutralist (Galatians 3:28) welfare liberals (Ezekiel 16:49)?

I have trouble considering it much of a morph, considering how much Protestant fundamentalism had to do with the Temperance movement from the beginning.

The original prohibition movement was as much of a woman’s movement as anything else, tied up with progressive politics moreso than fundamentalism.

Being a woman's movement and with a relationship to progressive politics was absolutely not mutually exclusive with being an evangelical movement, especially prior to the Civil War.

Protestantism and especially English or Scandinavian inflected Protestantism was heavily correlated with Temperance for a very long time. There's a reason many dry counties left in the South are heavily Protestant even though they're deeply conservative.

Last time, the prohibition worked well in lowering alcohol abuse. Also it partly failed due to corruption. The drug problem is so bad also because of corruption and influential people connected to the drug trade like spooks of the CIA.

The solution to this is to go after criminals, mobsters, gangsters, criminal spooks that use drugs to fund their black budget, etc.

Decriminalization of drug policies lead to far greater addiction to harmful substances. There is no solution to corruption than to punish those engaging it. You can't escape the negative consequences through legalization and tolerance.

Last time, the prohibition worked well in lowering alcohol abuse.

It worked well in reducing alcohol use. Long term it probably did lower alcohol abuse (basically by ending saloon culture) but I don't know that alcohol abuse during prohibition was down.

South Africa is far more corrupt than the USA, so if this was really the root of the issue, we’d expect prohibition to have failed there as well.

Well, it depends on how much you want policies to work. American prohibition worked in improving alcohol related diseases but there was still some success by mobsters in bypassing it.

Also there were other legal avenues to bypass it. Doctor prescriptions, religious exceptions, etc. https://www.tastingtable.com/1180444/the-legal-way-you-could-obtain-alcohol-during-prohibition/

These loopholes were abused to continue the trade during prohibition. For example, there were a lot of fake rabbis abused the religious exception. https://www.jta.org/2019/08/27/ideas/the-clever-fake-rabbis-who-made-millions-off-of-prohibition

Quoting from the above:

The likelihood of getting caught was reduced by enabling and participating law enforcement officials and politicians. Furthermore, for those who were caught, the punishments were not severe. For example, the Volstead Act stated that the fine was at most $500 for a first violation, which barely made a dent in what many violators typically made selling the illicit drinks.

In a more failed society, with more serious abuse problems, prohibition policies might work even better.

I am more addressing the "drug war hasn't solved the problem" claim. Even with the corruption, anti-drug policies in comparison to decriminalization policies, still save lives related to the drug abuse. In South Africa it also helped with the murders.

Another relevant issue, is the problem that criminals might take advantage of black market conditions to become powerful. Appeasing them by legalizing their industry still gets you the harmful consequences of the drug trade. There isn't a better alternative than actually genuinely trying to get rid of corruption.

Are there societies with more corruption on other issues like the economy, with less corruption on drugs than the USA? I am not speaking about south africa here. But there are plenty examples of countries without America's drug abuse problems. Part of the reason for the corruption might be this pro drug use ideology. How much does the police actually tries to enforce laws against drug abuse? In addition to American corruption, being bordered by countries that have powerful drug cartels is also important. That is still about criminals capturing power and acting with impunity.

But the worldwide record shows that American style drug use is not a problem shared by all societies, and not even all affluent societies.

And the US drug prohibition has not, regardless of your protestations, covered itself in glory.

Decriminalization has been a disaster. The overdose death rate increased by 2,400% between 1980 and 2020. The data cuts off, but it's even worse now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_drug_overdose_death_rates_and_totals_over_time

Over 100,000 people died due to overdoses in the United States last year.

And of course the negative effects of the War on Drugs are highly overstated as well.

The overdose death rate increased by 2,400% between 1980 and 2020.

That is not the time window over which hard drug decriminalization occurred for a small portion of the national population. In fact that time window is so much wider that I accept this as evidence that unrelated social trends are swamping the data.

"Deaths of despair" from opiates blow up in regions across the country. Mostly in areas that certainly didn't legalize recreational fentanyl. I'm blaming something other than Oregon state law.

Decriminalization has been a disaster. The overdose death rate increased by 2,400% between 1980 and 2020. The data cuts off, but it's even worse now.

It's impossible to untangle recent decrim efforts from the recently increased popularity of fentanyl if you are looking at OD rate as a metric -- it is just much easier to OD on, and I'd argue that the popularity (which we are probably now stuck with) was a direct result of the WOD enforcement regime.

I agree that fentanyl is the biggest cause.

But, c'mon, the overdose rate in places that decriminalized has spiked by huge amounts. In King County, where I live, deaths TRIPLED between 2019 and 2023. In 2023, one in 1700 people in King County died of an overdose. This is massive.

https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dph/health-safety/medical-examiner/reports-dashboards/overdose-deaths-dashboard

What changed after 2019? Fentanyl was already out there. The difference was open air drug markets with ZERO enforcement.

In good news, deaths will be lower in 2024 than in 2023. And, as coincidence would have it, when I drive by 12th and Jackson now, there are only a handful of junkies, not the 100 or so that used to congregate there. Drug enforcement works.

It's right there on page 1 -- non-fentanyl-involved ODs are flat.

I haven't been to Seattle lately, but just north in Vancouver there have been lightly enforced open-air drug-marts for decades. I think Portland too? Decriminalization is just a recognition of the de facto situation -- as such it doesn't really change things much. Actual legalization such that the drug supply is not left in the hands of brutal smuggling gangs might help -- but I think it's probably too late now that the hardcore opiates users are hooked on fentanyl in particular, and actively prefer it to other less finicky opiates. This intractable situation came about entirely because fentanyl is easier/cheaper to smuggle -- which is a direct result of the War on Drugs.

Actual legalization would alleviate accidental fentanyl overdoses because they are due to insufficiently good manufacturing. There's plenty of margin between a dose which gets you high and a dose which kills you if you can get a consistent dose.

I know that New York City has had an issue with unlicensed weed shops. The licensed weed shops have complained that because of their higher expenses that stem from obtaining and maintaining a license, they can’t compete with the unlicensed.

I wonder how much actual legalization would alleviate accidental fentanyl overdoses, given the huge problem with fentanyl is it is so cheap to produce. It winds up in all sorts of other drugs as it is a cost-effective way to boost another drug’s high. Could the cost of actually-legalized drugs be brought down enough that people shy away from street drugs like most would currently with bathtub gin?

Could the cost of actually-legalized drugs be brought down enough that people shy away from street drugs like most would currently with bathtub gin?

Not sure about cocaine (or LSD I guess -- neither are prescribed very much), but prescription versions of all the other popular ones are already way cheaper than the street versions. (not including marijuana of course, since it's roughly as hard to grow as lettuce and various regulations tend to make the official versions more expensive to produce than the ways the black market has already figured out)

I know that New York City has had an issue with unlicensed weed shops. The licensed weed shops have complained that because of their higher expenses that stem from obtaining and maintaining a license, they can’t compete with the unlicensed.

Licensing isn't legalization. Licensing is making something illegal unless you have special permission from the state to do it. New York's City process to get that special permission is hugely expensive but their enforcement is terrible, hence the illegal shops.

How many people are too stupid to read and follow the directions?

Hundreds of people OD on Tylenol every year in the US. I cannot imagine the carnage that would result from OTC fentanyl.

How many people are too stupid to read and follow the directions?

It's easier than measuring a dose of heroin, which druggies manage without instructions all the time.

Hundreds of people OD on Tylenol every year in the US.

Mostly deliberately.

Is that the fault of decriminalization? Rates have basically only gone up since 1979.

Oregon’s policy was a disaster, but didn’t exactly show up in overdose deaths. Take that result with a tiny, but still incredibly lethal, grain of fent. It still suggests that the 2400% insanity isn’t due to decriminalization. No, people are just doing harder stuff, whether or not they can get arrested for it.

I can't find the article at the moment but I believe overdose deaths in Oregon exceeded the rest of the country during the measure 110 period.

Decriminalization has been a disaster. The overdose death rate increased by 2,400% between 1980 and 2020.

Which includes a large part of the drug war. Which hasn't stopped.

The overdose death rate increased by 2,400% between 1980 and 2020

When prohibition was in full effect across the united states?

This just suggests that prohibition or no prohibition is largely drowned out by other factors in terms of the harms inflicted by drugs

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