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Comment by phaemon | Hacker News Reader

Everybody knows the "war on drugs" is nonsense. It's finding someone who has both the ability and the courage to change it that's proving difficult.

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I had a very disturbing discussion about this with a colleague who I like and find intelligent enough.

He fully supports the War on Drugs because he thinks it's protecting people from becoming addicted to dangerous drugs.

He's done cocaine in the past, smokes cannabis on rare occasion and enjoys his alcohol. And he's much younger than I am.

This is the messaging battle that needs to be won....

Tell him to try heroin and see if the war on drugs comes to his aid.

There's a very sad story of a kid who told his DARE teacher that he found a couple of joints in his parents' room.

This resulted in his parents being led away in handcuffs, and the children being taken away by social services, in tears. When he was asked about it, he said, "They told us that people who used drugs need help, and I just wanted my parents to get help."

http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2010/10/welcome_to_the_ussa_kid...

That's really sad...

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Junior Spies are critical to Minitrue's operation to uncover Thoughtcrime.

Hitlerjugend membership became mandatory for Aryans in 1936.

Indoctrinating children, and especially getting children to spy on their parents, is essential for dystopian governments to function.

Are you suggesting that the previous popes education was lacking?

I guess that would be a lesson to never trust people from the government claiming they're here to help. Too bad the pay for this lesson is a ruined life.

A lot of people are quite clueless about it being nonsense, enough to make taking a stance against it unpalatable for politicians.

On the other hand, even when people are clueless about it being nonsense, it's hard to find politicians who are willing to support it.

Take, for example, the (successful) 2008 initiative to decriminalize marijuana in Massachusetts. Nearly every town in the state voted in favor of it, often by a wide margin (it won with 65% support statewide)[0].

Yet, my own then-congresswoman, a Democrat in a very safe district, couldn't be bothered to vocalize her support for it (in fact, in a response to an open letter from a constituent, she still clung to the ludicrous belief that marijuana contains no medicinal value, despite the copious evidence to the contrary included in that very letter).

Sadly, she's not alone in failing to represent her constituents' views on the issue of drug policy. For whatever reason, drug policy is the issue where the disparity between politicians' views and their constituents' views is the greatest and lasts the longest, far more so than any other issue I can think of.

[0] http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/election_results/ma...

You are completely correct. Even in Texas the majority of the citizens support legalizing medical and recreational marijuana[0] but no politician will ever bring it up.

http://txcann.com/2013/10/08/texans-support-marijuana-medica...

And don't forget there is a massive lobby on the other side pushing for the continuation of the war on drugs, which probably affects the public sphere.

That's true in the sense that "everyone" knew that gay people should be able to get married. If you're under 40 and in tech, you're likely to be in a bubble of social liberalism.

I posted a link further down in the thread about the majority of Texas supporting recreational and medical cannabis use, quoting from the study

"Respondents whose age fell between 30 and 65 were most likely to be in support of the measures, with the 18-29 age group being the most unsure. Those 65 and older showed the least support but were still a part of the majority approval"

But the over-65 demographic is far more likely to vote, and with now-aging Boomers, there are far more of them.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/voting-statistics/ (census.gov is currently down)

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