In your analogy, the head-bashing is the status quo and the stopping of it is the decriminalization, not the leeches. The leeches map to the safe injection sites; they may wind up having no positive outcome versus no-leeches, but ceasing the head-bashing is the crucial first step.
1 Like
SHIT. I had the leeches mapped to my E: driveā¦didnāt do anything but upset my coworkers.
Iām not disputing that decriminalization is much better than the status quo. Youāre correct, thereās tonnes of evidence that this is the case. (Your example of Portugal is probably the best).
However, āevidenced basedā policy is not about whether what you propose to do is better or worse than the status quo. It is about whether what youāre doing is better than doing nothing, and, whether what youāre doing is better than the other options.
There is simply no evidence that criminalising production and distribution is going to have better outcomes than just doing nothing. Just because the government is doing less harm than before does not make itās policy āevidence basedā.
You could ask what an āevidence basedā policy around drugs would look like. Well, thereās ample evidence from the regulation of alcohol and tobacco. There is good evidence that banning advertising, restricting premises of sale, minimum buying ages, raising the price through taxation, plain packaging, rehabilitation services and the promotion of less harmful alternative means of administration do provide positive outcomes vis a vis doing nothing.
There is a great book by David Nutt, Drugs without the hot air . That goes over this in an engaging and accessible way.
It may sound like Iām being pedantic or raining on the parade, but the distinction is really important. Drugs can do a great deal of harm to a large minority of users, and as a society we should be doing the best we can to lessen that harm.
Sorry, it may not have been the best analogy.
Youāre correct. Stopping the vicious persecution of drug users is an important and vital first step. It should be applauded.
However, that does not mean that the governments that do this can now claim that their policies are evidence based. After decades of claiming that marijuana gives Mexicans super-human strength, makes white women attracted to black men and turns white men into homicidal maniacs, governments who pursued these policies canāt now turn around and say ālook, weāre doing science now! The madness is over. Everything is ok, carry on.ā
No. Not while thousands of people die at the hands of drug cartels. Not while heroin users overdose because itās impossible to know the concentration of the drug theyāre taking. Not while we could be researching better, safer and more enjoyable alternatives to the drugs we currently use.
They should not get to claim that putting the production and distribution of drugs into the hands of brutal criminal organizations is evidence based policy when there is ample evidence of the harm that it causes and no evidence of positive benefits. To let them away with that is to demean and undermine the term āevidence basedā.
1 Like
Itās interesting you mention tobacco control as an example of good evidence based policy, itās often anything but. The tobacco control lobby (while certainly well intentioned), are incredibly ideologically driven and biased, a lot of the research is from a sociological rather than a scientific background - for example the evidence on plain packaging isnāt convincing, and they tend to be incredibly negative when it comes to e-cigs despite the large positive body of evidence there (mostly due to unevidenced theories regarding ānormalisationā and other beliefs).
1 Like
Itās very true that tobacco policy could be a lot better, and alcohol even more so. The stuff about e-cigs is a great example of how ideology can play out here. There seems to be a big split within the public health community between those who are in it to reduce harm and those who are in it to reduce smoking. It should be noted that smoking rates have been greatly reduced in countries that pursued public health harm reduction measures, so I wouldnāt throw the baby out with the bath water. That can not be said for most illegal narcotics.
However, I was not arguing that any current legislation is a good example of evidence based policy. Iām arguing that there is evidence from the various alcohol and tobacco policies that various governments have pursued. For example, we can look at what happened when the purchase age of cigarettes was raised from 16 to 18 and use that to make recommendations regarding other drugs. We do not need to endorse the decision making process that lead to that decision. Why it happened is irrelevant. It did happen, and we can learn from it.
This is important because if governments are to end prohibition, the question of what it is replace with comes up. We really donāt know what will happen, because prohibition has been around for so long. How do we treat different drugs? Do we legalize all drugs, or do we legalize the less harmful in certain families? (e.g. amphetamine but not methamphetamine). How do we manage purchase? How should they be taxed? Who should produce it? Who should sell it?
For example, amphetamine has been illegal for a long time. We have some data from when you could rock up to a pharmacy and buy it, but a lot has changed since then. There were also a great deal of harms with that regime (though much less than what prohibition has wrought). We can look to experience with alcohol and tobacco as a guide. We know that we donāt really want to listen to the companies that produce the stuff, so thatās a given. We know that advertising is harmful, so that should not be allowed.
Our experience with tobacco and alcohol regulation, good and bad, forms the basis of what comes next.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
