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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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How is it that so many people who are in favor of criminal penalties for recreational drugs use also came to believe that the covid lockdowns were bad because they were an assault on liberty? I think that an authoritarian argument such as "we like small businesses but we do not like drug users" at least is logically consistent although I find it disagreeable. But how is it that so many people who think of themselves as fans of liberty do not notice the contradiction? I believe that even here on The Motte there are some people who make libertarian-ish arguments against the lockdowns yet support the criminalization of recreational drugs.

In general much of the non-authoritarian right's attitudes toward recreational drugs make no sense to me. I dislike the authoritarians but again, at their arguments are consistent. Is this largely a matter of conservatism still being dominated by older people who have a learned-long-ago and now reflexive dislike of the idea of recreational drug use? A reaction against the hippies, some sort of view that drug use in general is politically left-coded and/or linked to sexual promiscuity? As a new generation of currently-young conservatives becomes dominant in the movement will we see the right become more accepting of recreational drug use? Given that so many on the right now enjoy thinking of themselves as dissidents against establishment orthodoxy, perhaps they will at least begin view psychedelics more favorably given that those drugs have at least some power to liberate people's mental attitudes from orthodoxy.

Finnish culture continues to be fairly strongly against the legalization of any recreational drugs, including cannabis, even if it is probably not quite as strongly as before. Meanwhile, many strong opponents of cannabis legalization or even decriminalization advocate for loosening alcohol laws (including having been against bar restrictions during the Covid era), something that cannabis legalization activists have pointed out as an inconsistency numerous times. Sometimes the cannabis restrictionists basically respond by - and I'm only slightly paraphrasing - that of course cannabis cannot be legalized, because it's a drug, and drugs are criminal.

Without a strong opinion on this topic myself, I've resolved that there is a strong correlation - in Finnish society, but probably also in others - between legality and morality, in the sense that something being illegal automatically takes it into the immoral territory and if something is immoral, well, that is already enough argument for not legalizing it. 'course, if the illegal thing is legalized, it pretty soon also becomes not-immoral, and there's no further argument needed for keeping it legal, and indeed proposing illegalizing it now becomes an onerous restriction on freedom.

Drug restrictions for lost people is a sort of disgust/purity issue, as a holdover from Christianity and other various religions. In my experience when pressed people don’t have good reasons against it.

People will bring up ODs of course but then if you point out that legalizing/decriminalizing heroin and allowing use in supervised scenarios will decrease ODs (like they did in Switzerland) you get the whole “I ain’t gonna pay for those people’s heroin!!”

So your saying someone is “lost” if they don’t want to fund someone elses drug use? Seems reasonable to me.

Besides the giant issue that not many drug addicts want to do their drugs in an institutionalized setting.

I’m saying someone is “lost” if they care more about arbitrary standards of purity than actually solving the horrific problem our society has with drug use. They’re going to pay either way, but the status quo means a lot of people are going to die for their foolish beliefs.

Whats the foolish belief ? Heroin is bad for you? That feels simplistic to me but it doesn’t feel like that bad of steelman to me.

Dope fiends are going to do fentanyl if it’s available. I don’t see a solution than lock a lot of people up. Some burnt out dope fiends will use your treatment centers but not most.

Afghanistan solved their drug issues since the US left by locking everyone up and forcing cold turkey quitting. Believing in that doesn’t feel “lost” to me.

The foolish belief is a standard chemical model of addiction, and the idea that it’s a failing of willpower. Drug addiction is caused by a society wide lack of purpose, meaning, etc.

Blaming addicts is foolish and unscientific, doesn’t solve the problem in fact it makes things worse. Again look to how Switzerland dealt with their heroin problem.

So your just going to ignore the Afghanistan model? Which has worked unlike say San Francisco?