I'll quibble on two points. "used as a wedge issue by foreigners", while perhaps true in some moral sense, it does not really make much sense, on closer scrutiny. To reduce things down to being some foreign imposition is to suggest that it could have been any product. But it couldn't - only opium has the special properties necessary to become this kind of product. Nobody fought a war over tobacco, or even cocaine.
It is also true that Arabia, and even the ancient Greeks ('land of the lotus eaters') were aware of and could obtain Opium. However, I'd inquire as to how it is that the primary opium growing regions of Arabia are doing lately, or say, ever.
It is true that Opium has been available to varying degrees, at various times, in various places without a total social breakdown. However, widespread, sustained, cheap availability of pure Opium without total social breakdown is, as far as I know, unheard of. The over the counter stuff in Europe and the early US were mixed with other things, as in Laudanum. Almost all of high society at the time was addicted anyway, and this was the mild form.
The Chinese discovered that they could smoke it, and changing ROA from oral to smoking is a radical step change in addictiveness. I'm not entirely sure why this didn't catch on elsewhere at the time, but the fact of the matter is it didn't, and the difference between these things is a difference in kind, not degree.
> It is not a choice between continued sadism or free reign herion and cocaine dealing
I hope you're right! But I don't observe anything in the world that would support it, unfortunately. I quit because I was arrested, for instance. I want to be careful about causal meaning here, I didn't stay off because I was arrested, but it was the excipient that proximately caused and also facilitated it. It was a structural break that allowed other things to change around it.
That's not to say that the judicial system is a good way to deal with things - it's not. But the credible threat of the judicial system cannot really be done away with here without courting disaster. When dealing with highly physically addictive substances, shaping short term behavior by force is often a necessary ingredient in having any hope of shaping medium or long term behavior via therapy, life circumstance changes, or anything else.
Causality is hard to tease out here, but more importantly, all they're doing is decriminalizing it and offering methadone/buprenorphine maintenance treatments. And the effect on number of addicts has not been good:
> Coca in Bolivia (I am on thin ice, I know too little, but they elected a coca grower as president)
Coca is really not anything. If you've ever chewed coca leaves, they're mildly stimulating. They're nothing like cocaine.
> I think there is plenty of evidence that a considered thoughtful approach to drugs is better
Considered, thoughtful approaches are always better! The question is, what are you considering and being thoughtful about. And the fact of the matter is that the most drug-liberal cities in the US have the worst drug problems, and so do the most drug liberal countries (like Portugal).
The countries that have the fewest problems with addiction are the harshest: Singapore, China, Japan. These things are not an accident. I'm not necessarily advocating adopting policies that harsh, just pointing out that they do actually work, whereas the liberal policies fail disastrously everywhere they're implemented. I'm in favor of criminalization, but only as a tool to force people into deferral/treatment programs. I don't want to see anyone actually put in jail for using drugs, unless they fail to complete their deferral program.
I'll quibble on two points. "used as a wedge issue by foreigners", while perhaps true in some moral sense, it does not really make much sense, on closer scrutiny. To reduce things down to being some foreign imposition is to suggest that it could have been any product. But it couldn't - only opium has the special properties necessary to become this kind of product. Nobody fought a war over tobacco, or even cocaine.
It is also true that Arabia, and even the ancient Greeks ('land of the lotus eaters') were aware of and could obtain Opium. However, I'd inquire as to how it is that the primary opium growing regions of Arabia are doing lately, or say, ever.
It is true that Opium has been available to varying degrees, at various times, in various places without a total social breakdown. However, widespread, sustained, cheap availability of pure Opium without total social breakdown is, as far as I know, unheard of. The over the counter stuff in Europe and the early US were mixed with other things, as in Laudanum. Almost all of high society at the time was addicted anyway, and this was the mild form.
The Chinese discovered that they could smoke it, and changing ROA from oral to smoking is a radical step change in addictiveness. I'm not entirely sure why this didn't catch on elsewhere at the time, but the fact of the matter is it didn't, and the difference between these things is a difference in kind, not degree.
> It is not a choice between continued sadism or free reign herion and cocaine dealing
I hope you're right! But I don't observe anything in the world that would support it, unfortunately. I quit because I was arrested, for instance. I want to be careful about causal meaning here, I didn't stay off because I was arrested, but it was the excipient that proximately caused and also facilitated it. It was a structural break that allowed other things to change around it.
That's not to say that the judicial system is a good way to deal with things - it's not. But the credible threat of the judicial system cannot really be done away with here without courting disaster. When dealing with highly physically addictive substances, shaping short term behavior by force is often a necessary ingredient in having any hope of shaping medium or long term behavior via therapy, life circumstance changes, or anything else.