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Comment by boxmonster | Hacker News Reader

You might want to do some research before proffering an ill-informed opinion. In particular, I would look up "Harm Reduction" which is a relatively new strategy. Heroin is already illegal, so it can't be made any more illegal. What we can do is provide a place for addicts to safely use the drug while they interface with members of the community trying to help them. We are learning the dangers of nitrous oxide, so the first logical step is to limit sales of it.

Friends of Hsieh claim that he was using up to 50 cartridges of Nitrous Oxide each day and often in public or during meetings. Witnesses described his home and bedroom being littered with hundreds of used cartridges

https://www.addictioncenter.com/news/2021/11/zappos-ceo-tony...

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Republicans know that strategy and reject it. Their strategy is more about personal responsibility.

In fact, I'd expect a theoretical Republican leadership in NYC to ban the cool-whip too. For harm reduction, wouldn't allowing it be better if it's safer than the alternatives?

No the strategy is associate drugs with minorities to make being a minority illegal.

Ehrlichman told Baum. "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

This is an unverified quote from someone last in office in 1969, about president Nixon who he may have had a grudge against. But if so, which minority is being targeted with the cool-whip ban?

People in the counter culture who are against war mongering are historically considered to be a minority

The term "minority" is not only about race

Nobody said it was only race.

I'm wondering why the question was presented in the first place then, as this is in the quote:

>make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana

I asked which minority is being targeted, not which race. Hippies and anti-war aren't a race either.

Hippies and anti-war are the minority, which is specified in the quote. Hence my clarification. So why was the question presented?

My apologies, I appear to have misunderstood the comment chain. The commenter saying that the whip cream law discriminates against minorities is incorrect.

Prohibition itself does discriminate against minorities but age regulation does not, in fact age regulation of psychoactive substances is a good step in the right direction away from hard-line prohibitionist policies.

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