Fighting Drugs in the United States

[Bootstrap]

What actually brings down drug use or drug trafficking?

Which approaches either:

1. Reduce drug use and drug trafficking, or
2. Increase drug use and drug trafficking, or
3. Have been shown to have no effect.

Rules for this thread:

Bring data or other forms of proof.

[JohnH]

A start would be to look at countries that don’t have a drug problem or where it is far less of a problem.

We could look at Singapore. (Not sure what “data” or “proof” you want, Boot, but generally there is a consensus Singapore has the least problem with drugs and everything that goes along with it like trafficking.)

What does Singapore do?

- Strict zero tolerance policy. For example, mere possession of small amounts of drugs is considered trafficking unless the defendant can prove otherwise, which is very hard to clear.

- Elimimatiom of legal and lawyer tricks that drug traffickers use to avoid convictions:

The law also allows officers to search premises and individuals, without a search warrant, if he "reasonably suspects that there is to be found a controlled drug or article liable to seizure". Moreover, Section 31 allows officers to demand urinalysis of suspected drug offenders while section 8A prohibits any citizen or permanent resident of Singapore to use any prohibited drug outside of the country, and if found guilty to be punished as if they committed that act within the country.

- They turned this around from a society where 3% of young men were addicted to heroin in the early 1970s.

- They regularly execute drug traffickers. (They hanged 3 drug traffickers last week.)

Of course, “human rights” groups gripe about this:

GENEVA – Singapore must urgently halt the execution of Rosman bin Abdullah, who has a record of psychosocial disabilities, on drug-trafficking charges, a group of UN experts said today.
Abdullah’s execution has been scheduled at dawn on Friday, 22 November 2024.

“We are gravely concerned that Mr. Rosman bin Abdullah does not appear to have had access to procedural accommodations, including individualised assistance, for his disability during his interrogation or trial,” the experts said.

Rosman bin Abdullah was given a mandatory death sentence in 2010 for drug trafficking despite evidence presented about his psychosocial disabilities and history of drug dependence.

The experts have been in touch with the Government about this case including with a letter in 2022 to which the Government replied.

“Resorting to this type of punishment to prevent drug trafficking is not only illegal under international law, it is also ineffective. There is a lack of any persuasive evidence that the death penalty contributes more than any other punishment to curbing or preventing drug trafficking,” the experts said.

“No evidence” despite Singapore having the least drug problem out of any country.

Apparently, a drug trafficker should go free if they can prove they are… dependent on drugs? That right there is the problem. Drug addicts shouldn’t be tolerated. Being an addict is not an excuse. Drug traffickers shouldn’t be tolerated. And the laws and courts need to be adapted to be able to swiftly secure convictions and eliminate drug traffickers, not have trials that cost exorbitant amounts and drag on for years.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

It's hard to argue with what John shared. If you murder or otherwise remove from society (imprisonment or exile) anyone who has a certain problem you're targeting, eventually your society will no longer have that problem; or your society would have so little representation of that problem so as to be negligible.

[JohnH]

It's hard to argue with what John shared. If you murder or otherwise remove from society (imprisonment or exile) anyone who has a certain problem you're targeting, eventually your society will no longer have that problem; or your society would have so little representation of that problem so as to be negligible.

An example of what who I think is reasonable to remove from society is the guy who slammed a nail through an elderly woman’s eye, who walked around with a nail on a board looking for people to assault, and was known to police to regularly go around assaulting people.

Exile or imprisonment of elderly-woman-nail-in-the-eye hitters seems like a reasonable thing. Elderly women have a right not to have their eye gouged out.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

I think the way we talk about these things is just as important as what we are advocating for, and perhaps a bit more Christlikeness could be brought into the conversation.

[barnhart]

I agree the nail guy should not be moving freely in society but that seems like a different question than the those raised in the opening post.