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Comment by tremon | Hacker News Reader

> with them having seen people close to them destroyed by drug use.

But isn't this a false correlation, then? Were they destroyed by drug use, or by the daily misery of their ghetto neighborhood?

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I think poor people in the US are against legalization mostly due to the decades of “war on drugs” propaganda or other forms of conservatism (eg religion), not because they’ve seen people close to them being destroyed by drug use

These same sources also mistake causality, as many folks with mental health issues self medicate, rather than having drugs be the absolute source for mental health issues. Example: Cleon Skousen.

Spot on- so many social problems get attributed to everything but the economy and inequality. If we could make our system more equitable, then we would not have such desperation.

What happened with the tremendous social spending by the government?

Government spending is not a panacea for structural economic issues

That money is handed to the poor.

The combination, which is the point of the comment above. Legalization may be fine in places where people have other support factors that make them less likely to destroy their lives with drugs and alcohol, but in areas without those protective forces, it's good that there are some controls (or at least many of the people who live there think so).

At that point it becomes important to ask (1) how much damage does the illegalization itself do; (2) how much harm does the limited access actually prevent; and (3) how much damage alcohol does, and what the tradeoff is.

If you’re going to make a harm reduction argument, you need to do your best to fully account for all the harms in play.

Imagine hearing someone's loved one dying to drug use and asking them, "But isn't this a false correlation?". What a deeply and unsettlingly cold question that lacks any potential for empathy.

Okay, but the person wasn't asking this of the family of a dying loved one, they were asking it in this space where ideas are discussed and examined. Yes, it would be disturbingly unempathetic to ask that question in such a circumstance, but asking it in this circumstance is neither cold, inappropriate, or a demonstration that the asker lacks empathy.

> "But isn't this a false correlation?". What a deeply and unsettlingly cold question that lacks any potential for empathy.

That's an absurd mental picture you've imagined. Using that to undermine the discussion of the reality that people use drugs to temporarily escape from desperate conditions is unsettling and lacks empathy and judgment.

You've deeply misunderstood my comment.

You've deeply misunderstood your own comment

I disagree entirely, and I have personally witnessed people lose themselves to drug use.

Anyone with a relative dying of addiction has no doubt been long exhausted in watching them circle the pit of their addiction. They are going to be under no illusions regarding the chances there were to escape it, and the choices made to remain there.

Asking if they were escaping from a miserable reality vs chasing a high isn't offensive. It's just dealing with the reality of the situation as it is. The only person I see being offended is someone in denial, blaming the drugs alone rather than allowing any blame to the person using them, trying to imagine them an innocent victim without agency in the matter.

The question is a good one. It actually looks for what caused everything to go wrong, rather than just being pointlessly offended on behalf of the imagined umbrage you think others might feel.

I disagree with your characterization of my comment and I think you greatly missed the point I was making. The OP presented a false dichotomy as if these things aren't woven in with each other in a large feedback loop.

You comment falsely assumes that I don't have familiarity or loss stemming from addiction.

You've had multiple people "misunderstand" your comment. I suggest reconsidering how you express whatever it is you are trying to say, as I and the others are responding to what you managed to actually communicate, whether that message was your intended one or no.

It has been put into consideration. But now that we've made it clear that there have been ~ misunderstandings ~, can you try to see where I'm coming from now? :)

No, I don't know what you intended to say there if not what I initially read it as. It seems a straightforward reading to me.

My point was to suggest to OP that their dichotomous reductionism goes way, way overboard to the point of unproductive callousness. People with addictions aren't just data points. Saying this as a data journalist who focuses on policing and jails.

That you used a forced analogy (even if experiential) and ethos in a policy discussion? Sure, I can see that. I can even see blaming drugs for mental health issues and addiction despite the causality really being screwy if you try to force it that way.

It's okay to be wrong, even when emotional, so long as we learn from it.

Friend, your lack of consideration that you might be wrong or that I'm wrong, absolutely-fullstop, is telling. I stand by what I said.

Telling is that you expect folks to introspect because you're failing to admit rhetorically twisting the head off the chicken of an argument.

We thus persist. Pleasant evenin' to you sir or madame.

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