Sure, and if you're ideologically opposed to a policy you can make a comment like this. What's needed is data on many alternative approaches, what policies _and_ executions taken as one promote better outcomes? Over what timeframes? Otherwise it's just all shouting into a windstorm.
That’s… what I’m arguing? There’s a hard problem to be solved with uncertain paths toward a solution — or uncertainty of what “solved” means in this case, maybe, depending on whether endemic is an acceptable outcome — and every attempt at a solution that doesn’t work out, or doesn’t work out sufficiently well, is data added to the project of getting better outcomes for all. I’m not entirely sure what you’ve read in my comment but I’m certainly not saying we shouldn’t view things plainly.
I would also challenge your implicit notion here that there is a binary pass/fail solution to societal levels of drug addiction. Like any seriously hard problem there are policies that have been proposed and implemented around that world that have some positive outcomes in some regards and negatives in others. Incarceration (the Drug War) theoretically makes serious drug addiction absent from public life, a positive, but with the result of growing the police state, a negative. Vice versa for Oregon’s policy, now that it’s run for a while. I think we’re recently finding that Portugal’s approach which Oregon based their policy on also does not have better than expected outcomes, although the data is early yet.
> What's needed is data on many alternative approaches, what policies _and_ executions taken as one promote better outcomes?
> Over what timeframes?
This is where the goalpost shifting happens.
I can not think of a single instance in recent history where a political leader has admitted that a policy they like has failed because it was fundamentally a bad idea.
Not PP, but the onus is always on the person or group making the affirmative claim. It _might_ be that the policy is sound but the execution is in error, but we should not _assume_ that the policy is sound.
> Not PP, but the onus is always on the person or group making the affirmative claim.
But they're both making an affirmative claim. One says that legalization is better and all these addicts are an error in execution. The other says that criminalization is better and all this widespread disrespect for the law and erosion of civil liberties and mass incarceration and cartel murder squads are an error in execution.
In general the burden should be on the party who wants make something illegal.
I’m kind of of the opinion that we shouldn’t hold addicts to account for their addictions. By the time they’re addicted they’re not rational actors any more.
By the same count we don’t judge the mentally unwell and children as if they’re well-functioning adults.
OK, so what does that concretely mean as a policy? "Not judge", fine - does that mean no arrests, no involuntary holds, not touching them? We used to take the view that we could confine people for things that weren't their fault when there was an overwhelming public interest (e.g. people with infectious diseases).
I don't think it's that simple. No one acts 100% rationally all of the time. In this respect, addicts, children, and the mentally unwell differ from the rest of us by degree - they may have diminished responsibility for their own actions, but I don't think it makes sense to try to draw a sharp line where you're either responsible for your own actions or you're not. Recovery from addiction requires assuming responsibility for one's actions.
By the same count we don’t judge the mentally unwell and children
as if they’re well-functioning adults.
Sure we do (or we did up until recently). Bill Clinton famously presided over the execution of a man missing a chunk of his brain to appear tough on crime during his presidential campaign.
Looking on from the UK, the only answer American liberals seem to have for the failures of American liberalism is that America just wasn't liberal enough.
The UK that dismisses or suppresses its own reports into drug policy and fires its leading experts because their views are not politically expedient, that UK?
I think even if we don't know what is the right way to go about drug policy, we can probably agree that sticking your head in the sand and pretending there's no debate to be had is probably not the best approach.
