Huh.
(01-07-2017 08:29 PM)Marshall D. Teach Wrote: Kofi Annan makes an excellent argument in his essay:
Why I’m Calling to End the War on Drugs
All right; let's look through this argument.
Quote:In my experience, good public policy is best shaped by the dispassionate analysis of what in practice has worked, or not. Policy based on common assumptions and popular sentiments can become a recipe for mistaken prescriptions and misguided interventions.
Nowhere is this divorce between rhetoric and reality more evident than in the formulation of global drug policies, where too often emotions and ideology rather than evidence have prevailed.
First question: who the fuck is Kofi Annan and why should we give a fuck about what he has to say on global drug policies?
The guy is a fucking diplomat. One with an abysmal record in his most notable position, the head of the UN. Oh, he got a Nobel Peace Prize? Big deal, Obama got one too for a similar achievement of fuck-all; all the black players get one these days.
Annan was personally responsible for failing to protect or even intervene militarily in the Rwandan genocide. That's eighty thousand people dead on his watch, and yet he thinks the divorce between rhetoric and reality is nowhere more prevalent than in the formulation of global drug policies?
Let's leave aside his bureaucratic incompetence (which includes failing to stop the Syrian civil war, by the way, despite his supposed competence as a diplomat). What's his specific experience in drugs? I see none in his bio: he's not a scientist, doctor, law enfrocement, etc. etc. He has degrees in economics, international relations, and management at MIT, i.e. the three degrees that make assholes think they understand large and complex problems much more than they actually do.
He has not one day of practical or theoretical experience dealing with drug issues specifically, going by Wikipedia. What does his experience on HIV amount to?
According to Wackypedia, it's this:
"
Towards the end of the 1990s, increased awareness of the destructive potential of epidemics such as HIV/AIDS pushed public health issues to the top of the global development agenda. In April 2001, Annan issued a five-point "Call to Action" to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Stating it was a "personal priority", Annan proposed the establishment of a Global AIDS and Health Fund, "dedicated to the battle against HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases"[36] to stimulate the increased international spending needed to help developing countries confront the HIV/AIDS crisis. In June of that year, the General Assembly of the United Nations committed to the creation of such a fund during a special session on AIDS, and the permanent secretariat of the Global Fund was subsequently established in June 2002."
Read: "I wrote a document asking a bunch of countries for money principally for Africa, i.e.e. I was
less effective than every minor celebrity not excluding Bob Geldof over the past fifty years or so."
Point being, Annan's argument is not his own. It is reheated from other sources, none of which are apparent from his essay. It doesn't come from his own experience. Using him in particular is the logical fallacy of
argumentum ad auctoritatem, or
resort to authority, trying to convince us that the guy's argument is good just because he happened to be black and got elected to a high-profile position ... one without any actual, accountable responsibility in achieving any of the goals he sought out, one might add.
Quote:Take the case of the medical use of cannabis. By looking carefully at the evidence from the United States, we now know that legalizing the use of cannabis for medical purposes has not, as opponents argued, led to an increase in its use by teenagers. By contrast, there has been a near tripling of American deaths from heroin overdoses between 2010 and 2013, even though the law and its severe punishments remain unchanged.
This is what we call comparing apples with oranges. It's pretty fucking difficult to top yourself by way of smoking too many blunts. By contrast it's pretty fucking easy to top yourself by putting just a little too much snow in the row, which is part of the reason (a) more idiots die from heroin overdoses and therefore (b) it's more severely policed than weed.
Since a tripling in heroin overdoses is presumably not intentional due to the youth getting their first exposure to Lady Gaga, one would presume it's accidental. Invariably, accidental overdoses are because the shit is either (a) mixed with shit, i.e. dealers are cheap or (b) too good, i.e. dealers are stupid. The law and its severe punishments being unchanged is also laughable: asking the legislative system to respond to small upticks or downticks in criminality is like asking an ocean liner to get out of the way of a lifeboat: it's a slow and often late process.
Quote:This year, between April 19 and 21, the United Nations General Assembly will hold a special session on drugs and the world will have a chance to change course. As we approach that event, we need to ask ourselves if we are on the right policy path. More specifically, how do we deal with what the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has called the “unintended consequences” of the policies of the last 50 years, which have helped, among other things, to create a vast, international criminal market in drugs that fuels violence, corruption and instability? Just think of the 16,000 murders in Mexico in 2013, many of which are directly linked to drug trafficking.
(1) Self-promotion.
(2) 16,000 murders in Mexico in 2013 have a lot more to do with the fact that Mexico's a fucked-up country with a piss-poor rule of law more than three blocks from the nearest police station. You fix that by making your political institutions non-corrupt, not by legalising the drug trade, which simply changes where the drugs end up, not the demand.
Quote:Globally, the “war on drugs” has not succeeded. Some estimate that enforcing global prohibition costs at least $100 billion (€90.7 billion) a year, but as many as 300 million people now use drugs worldwide, contributing to a global illicit market with a turnover of $330 billion a year, one of the largest commodity markets in the world.
Is this an argument for reducing the use of drugs, or an argument simply that it's fertile grounds to tax people for even more money? After all, as many drug proponents tell us, alcohol causes more murders than any drug. Has the massive excise tax take of the West over the past, oh, century or so managed to meaningfully reduce or stop alcohol abuse or its consequences? Is Kofi arguing that throwing more money at the issue (taken from the people) will solve it?
Quote:Prohibition has had little impact on the supply of or demand for drugs. When law enforcement succeeds in one area, drug production simply moves to another region or country, drug trafficking moves to another route and drug users switch to a different drug. Nor has prohibition significantly reduced use.
Put the word "paedophilia" in place of "drugs" in the above tract, and you'll see the silliness of the argument. Same old "We can't stop the shit so let's just regulate it" thing. It's an
excise argument, not a law enforcement or public health argument.
Quote:Studies have consistently failed to establish the existence of a link between the harshness of a country’s drug laws and its levels of drug use.
Therefore there is
no suggestion that legalising a drug will reduce levels of drug use either. There is simply no link one way or the other. By contrast the harshness and
effectiveness of a country's drug laws and its levels of
drug production shows a significant link:
https://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2...223173.htm
Per the State Department, the significant producers of illicit drugs are, almost without exception, third world countries -- places where the rule of law is absent or highly corrupt.
Quote:The widespread criminalization and punishment of people who use drugs, the overcrowded prisons, mean that the war on drugs is, to a significant degree, a war on drug users a war on people.
The phrase "war on drugs" is a stupid expression. Always was. As is the "war on poverty" or "war on social injustice". Calling it a war on
people is just as stupid, just empty hyperbole like all of the previous "wars" was. Law enforcement is not war: they are separate concepts entirely. Nobody calls breaking the law a declaration of war by a criminal against the state.
Quote:Africa is sadly an example of these problems. The West Africa Commission on Drugs, which my foundation convened, reported last year that the region has now become not only a major transit point between producers in Latin America and consumers in Europe, but an area where consumption is increasing. Drug money, and the criminality associated with it, is fostering corruption and violence. The stability of countries and the region as a whole is under threat.
Blahblahblah, see above about third world countries with shit rules of law being the significant producers of illicit drugs, also see: the entire continent of Africa now and forevermore, world without end.
Quote:I believe that drugs have destroyed many lives, but wrong government policies have destroyed many more. We all want to protect our families from the potential harm of drugs. But if our children do develop a drug problem, surely we will want them cared for as patients in need of treatment and not branded as criminals.
And here's what the Last Psychiatrist describes as the misuse of psychiatry in social policy. Is the use of drugs a medical issue, or a legal issue? Governments, simply put, have to make up their fucking minds on this. Invariably a drug user has to
ask for help to deal with their problems. They have to
want to stop using. Invariably the acts that "brand" drug users as criminals are not having a couple ounces of weed but rather beating the snot out of some civilian to get money to buy more heroin or similar.
That is unequivocally a law enforcement issue. Half the problem in our world is that everyone gets an excuse, now backed by psychiatric pats on the shoulder.
Also note the attempt to personalise via a "Won't Someone Think Of The Children" argument: raise your fucking kids right and it's their problem and their fault if they use drugs, not yours.
Quote:The tendency in many parts of the world to stigmatize and incarcerate drug users has prevented many from seeking medical treatment. In what other areas of public health do we criminalize patients in need of help?
In short, all areas.
That was part of the wonderful world of "deinstitutionalisation", where governments started warehousing crazies in prisons rather than hospitals. Drug users have no special privileges in that respect. If you want it otherwise, prepare to pay a shitload more in taxes -- and expect that you will still have law enforcement problems from these people you want to "help", because rehabilitation or intervention is just as expensive as punishment if not moreso.
Quote:Punitive measures have sent many people to prison, where their drug use has worsened.
This is called "not getting the message." Also see: Darwin Awards. Also also see: mental health problem, i.e. no special privileges there, boys and girls, the homeless wino ingesting perfectly legal drugs is going to get banged up in prison for loitering just like you do.
Quote:A criminal record for a young person for a minor drug offense can be a far greater threat to their wellbeing than occasional drug use.
Kind of like a sex offender tag for a teenage boy who has sex with a teenage girl, albeit the teenage girl never gets charged for some odd reason.
Quote:The original intent of drug policy, according to the UN Convention on Narcotic Drugs, was to protect the “health and welfare of mankind.” We need to refocus international and national policy on this key objective.
This requires us to take four critical steps.
First, we must decriminalize personal drug use. The use of drugs is harmful and reducing those harms is a task for the public health system, not the courts. This must be coupled with the strengthening of treatment services, especially in middle and low income countries.
Invariably the public health system fails to solve drug problems, because unlike law enforcement it cannot be coercive. Also see: deinstitutionalisation. Also see: your tax rates rise.
Quote:Second, we need to accept that a drug-free world is an illusion.
False premise. Law enforcement does not presume murder, arson, robbery, etc, etc, is ever going to be wiped out no matter how many courts and prisons there are -- the point is to take a dangerous fuckhead off the street for a while. It is there because society condemns those actions as harmful and demands retribution for them.
Quote:We must focus instead on ensuring that drugs cause the least possible harm. Harm reduction measures, such as needle exchange programs, can make a real difference.
Like alcohol, perhaps, a fat source of government excises, a legal drug, and, as said, still the biggest contributor to homicide in the West?
Quote:Germany adopted such measures early on and the level of HIV infections among injecting drug users is close to 5 percent, compared to over 40 percent in some countries which resist this pragmatic approach.
Always beware a single country put forward as an example of shining policy in one restrictive area. It ignores the wider context. A suitable analogy is Sweden: has the best welfare system in the world and a low crime rate, but the moment you make the population non-homogenous, the experiment fails.
Quote:Third, we have to look at regulation and public education rather than the total suppression of drugs, which we know will not work. The steps taken successfully to reduce tobacco consumption (a very powerful and damaging addiction) show what can be achieved. It is regulation and education, not the threat of prison, which has cut the number of smokers in many countries. Higher taxes, restrictions on sale and effective anti-smoking campaigns have delivered the right results.
The problem being:
(1) Same regime applies to alcohol. Still a massive killer. Which is why Kofi doesn't mention it.
(2) Tobacco usually only kills its user.
(3) These achievements took a good fifty or sixty years to show any effects, mainly because the manufacturers of what was an entirely legal drug fought with tooth and nail and massive resources to prevent any regulation and denied any real harm was caused by their drug of choice. Expect those companies to buy up big and start pumping out similar such stories if some fool makes heroin entirely legal.
Quote:The legal sale of cannabis is a reality that started with California legalizing the sale of cannabis for medical use in 1996. Since then, 22 U.S. states and some European countries have followed suit. Others have gone further still.
More logical fallacies: this time, argumentum ad populum, i.e. the other lemmings are jumping off the cliff, why don't you?
Quote:A voter initiative which gained a majority at the ballot box has caused Colorado to legalize the sale of cannabis for recreational use. Last year, Colorado collected around $135 million in taxes and license fees related to legal cannabis sales. Others have taken less commercial routes. Users of Spain’s cannabis social clubs can grow and buy cannabis through small noncommercial organizations. And Canada looks likely to become the first G7 country to regulate the sale of cannabis next year.
Excise argument again. Also see: governments taking more money to do fuck all with it, unless anyone can see alcohol abuse stopping any time soon.
Quote:Initial trends show us that where cannabis has been legalized, there has been no explosion in drug use or drug related crime.
The vapidity of this argument can be seen in the first two words.
Also see: early adopter regret, i.e.e. are you still using your BlackBerry?
Quote:The size of the black market has been reduced and thousands of young people have been spared criminal records.
Show me some statistics on this other than lower arrests, which does not by itself evidence reduction of a black market.
Quote:But a regulated market is not a free market. We need to carefully think through what needs regulating, and what does not. While most cannabis use is occasional, moderate and not associated with significant problems, it is nonetheless precisely because of its potential risks that it needs to be regulated.
And therefore, the fourth and final step, is to recognize that drugs must be regulated precisely because they are risky. It is time to acknowledge that drugs are infinitely more dangerous if they are left solely in the hands of criminals who have no concerns about health and safety. Legal regulation protects health. Consumers need to be aware of what they are taking and have clear information on health risks and how to minimize them. Governments need to be able to regulate vendors and outlets according to how much harm a drug can cause. The most risky drugs should never be available “over the counter” but only via medical prescription for people registered as dependent users, as is already happening in Switzerland.
See again: governments' wonderful track records in regulating the sale of alcohol. These fuckers can't regulate Jack and Jim properly, does anyone really think they can meaningfully regulate Ice, Blow, or Snow?
Quote:Scientific evidence and our concern for health and human rights must shape drug policy.
Why?
Seriously, this is advanced like an a priori conclusion without breaking down the argument for it. Why should drugs, deadly substances, be considered with human rights first?
Quote:This means making sure that fewer people die from drug overdoses and that small-time offenders do not end up in jail where their drug problems get worse. It is time for a smarter, health-based approach to drug policy. It is time for countries, such as Germany, which have adopted better policies at home, to strongly advocate for policy change abroad. The United Nations General Assembly special session on the world drug problem would be a good place to start.
Blahblahblah, one world government, give the UN General Assembly more make-work to do, etc, etc.
(01-08-2017 07:24 AM)Marshall D. Teach Wrote: But this is simply not the case. Data trends have a shown that, since the introduction of the Needle Exchange and Drug Substitution Programs, there has been a steeper continuous decline in HIV incidence and prevalence rates among intravenous drug users in Germany. There is absolutely no need for "what ifs" since epidemiological fact sheet for all European countries is readily available.
The first thing to note is that correlation is not cause. What has been the introduction rate of HIV treatments into Germany, which cuts across the HIV incidence and prevalence rate?
God save us from people who mean well. -storm
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