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Comment by ray__ | Hacker News Reader

The fallout from the over-criminalization of opioids, meth, etc is a big reason that you're observing these behaviors. Stigmatizing drug use perpetuates the punitive approach to this problem. If the law treated addiction and the abuse of hard drugs with compassion rather than the draconian approach that we have in place currently you'd be seeing a lot less of this stuff.

This post could have easily been written about alcohol in the prohibition era. We've since learned that criminalizing alcohol makes its impact on society worse rather than better. We can't strip drug users of their autonomy and their ability to lead any sort of normal life and then act surprised when they turn to crime or turn back to drugs when they have nothing left.

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> This post could have easily been written about alcohol in the prohibition era. We've since learned that criminalizing alcohol makes its impact on society worse rather than better.

It's worth remembering that Prohibition was, in fact, quite successful: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit...

To quote that article:

> Across the Hudson River, in Manhattan, the number of patients treated in Bellevue Hospital’s alcohol wards dropped from fifteen thousand a year before Prohibition to under six thousand in 1924. Nationally, cirrhosis deaths fell by more than a third between 1916 and 1929. In Detroit, arrests for drunkenness declined 90 percent during Prohibition’s first year. Domestic violence complaints fell by half.

Of course, one can still find Prohibition objectionable, or think that the costs outweighed the benefits. But there is strong evidence that Prohibition succeeded in reducing some of the negative impacts of alcohol use.

Interesting, thanks! I think I mostly took issue with the idea that throwing drug users in jail is the best course of action, and the condescending/judgemental tone of the original comment. I think we can dissuade substance use and abuse through other means (better drug education and rehabilitation, taxation, non-felony level criminalization) that will be a good middle ground between no drug laws and the draconian life-ruining ones that we have in place right now.

> The fallout from the over-criminalization of opioids, meth, etc is a big reason that you're observing these behaviors.

Didn't the massive opiod epidemic occur before they were criminalized?

Opioid possession without a prescription is a class C felony

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