Sadly, people have been saying this forever. Criminalizing consensual personal behavior not only doesn’t work, but creates undesirable results -- like stacks of dead bodies.
I think one major impediment to rational fact based public policy on drugs or anything else is the outsized influence of Christian ideology. Here I’m not just thinking about the religious right.
The problem is Christianity creates an obsession with the need for punishment. While Christians, especially evangelicals, talk endlessly about “forgiveness” the real driving force for them is the need to punish the unrepentant sinner. (I grew up immersed in a small fundamentalist Baptist church in rural Georgia which gave me some insight on the way Christianity shapes our thinking.)
This way of seeing the world--the need for revenge really against sinners--permeates our society.
That’s why law enforcement is always the vehicle for “saving” women from sex work. And why so many proponents of this approach are oblivious to the damage it causes.
It influences even those who don’t think of themselves as being Christian or even religious. But clearly America is an extremely religious country. We are in fact more like Islamic Middle Eastern counties in this regard than we are secular Europe.
It’s also worth noting that religious groups and societies are more prone to conspiracy theories than the secular. This is another trait Americans share with fundamentalist Muslim societies.
Ultimately if you believe in magic and dictates faxed from heaven then there’s no need to conform public policy to fact.
Sadly, people have been saying this forever. Criminalizing consensual personal behavior not only doesn’t work, but creates undesirable results -- like stacks of dead bodies.
I think one major impediment to rational fact based public policy on drugs or anything else is the outsized influence of Christian ideology. Here I’m not just thinking about the religious right.
The problem is Christianity creates an obsession with the need for punishment. While Christians, especially evangelicals, talk endlessly about “forgiveness” the real driving force for them is the need to punish the unrepentant sinner. (I grew up immersed in a small fundamentalist Baptist church in rural Georgia which gave me some insight on the way Christianity shapes our thinking.)
This way of seeing the world--the need for revenge really against sinners--permeates our society.
That’s why law enforcement is always the vehicle for “saving” women from sex work. And why so many proponents of this approach are oblivious to the damage it causes.
It influences even those who don’t think of themselves as being Christian or even religious. But clearly America is an extremely religious country. We are in fact more like Islamic Middle Eastern counties in this regard than we are secular Europe.
It’s also worth noting that religious groups and societies are more prone to conspiracy theories than the secular. This is another trait Americans share with fundamentalist Muslim societies.
Ultimately if you believe in magic and dictates faxed from heaven then there’s no need to conform public policy to fact.