Bang heads, take stats, tell lies

COMMENTARY

Published: 19 Aug 2012 at 00.00
Newspaper section: News

Is the government's war on drugs a success? No, it's not. You might colour it a successful PR campaign, but not much else. Banging heads and taking stats, making front page news, is nothing more than the time-honoured tradition of putting up a good face. The lords of illusion are at work and everyone else eats it up.

Truth has many colours. In reading the news you get the version of truth endorsed by the news source, which isn't necessarily the truth. It might not be an outright lie, but colourful twists and tweaks cannot be discounted.

Then there are the stats, which, of course, are subject to the interpretation of the person presenting them, which brings us back to the news source.

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englishbob
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Discussion 37 : 19 Aug 2012 at 17.3737
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No country in history has successfully 'won' against a war against drug dealers.
Drugs are available everywhere. The only way to reduce drug abuse is to educate people to the dangers and risks and allow them to choose.

And I use the term 'drug ABUSE' deliberately. I believe people should have have the freedom to make their own decisions as to what substances to use - it's drug ABUSE that causes problems. Criminalising drugs simply means poor quality, impure drugs are sold without regulations to anyone by criminals. And billions of whichever currency you choose are wasted trying to stop people making a personal choice. Nicotine, methadone, tranquilisers and alcohol are more harmful and addictive than ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana.
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mrexpat
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Discussion 36 : 19 Aug 2012 at 17.0936
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Governments war on drugs really??
According to many sources this originally was nothing to do with the government
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felixqui
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Discussion 35 : 19 Aug 2012 at 16.5935
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Oops, in D32, I meant to write that:

Legalising drugs has not been shown to increase use or addiction rates.

Nor has criminalising drugs been shown to reduce drug use or addiction, merely to corrupt society, as prohibition did for the mafia in the US as alcohol use increased, and as the same insane policy is now destroying Thailand.
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felixqui
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Discussion 34 : 19 Aug 2012 at 16.5034
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re D31, Musashi,

You seem to have bought into the common delusion that making drugs illegal at immense expense reduces addiciton and drug use. The available facts flatly contradict this simple-minded piety.

Legalising drugs has not been shown to increase use or addiction rates - merely to corrupt society, as prohibition did for the mafia in the US as alcohol use increased, and as the same insane policy is now destroying Thailand.
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ronniec
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Discussion 33 : 19 Aug 2012 at 15.4133
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Yep, Thailand has a huge drug problem as do many other nations. It also suffers from horrendous corruption, poor levels of education, low standards of public safety, shoddy goods, pollution, environmental destruction, etc., etc., the list is long.

They can all be solved permanently by removing the single root cause.

Until we dare to contemplate such action, they will all be with us until the bitter end.
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musashi
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Discussion 32 : 19 Aug 2012 at 15.1032
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“But the truth of the matter is if you confiscate 300,000 pills, there will still be three million more coming in.”

Telling one side of the "truth" is not enough. Whether or not any pills are confiscated, we know more will be coming in. But we also know that the pills coming in are not limitless. There is a limit as too how much drugs can be produced and trafficked. Therefore, it only makes sense that the more pills confiscated, the better the situation would be and the higher the chance that more traffickers will be stopped from bringing in more pills.

Downstream, the confiscated pills also mean less drug addicts, less social problems, less family crisis, and less crimes. Confiscated drugs also increases the “cost of doing business” for drug traffickers, and they can “go out of business” if more and more drugs are confiscated and more of them are arrested.
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wantmyony
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Discussion 31 : 19 Aug 2012 at 15.0131
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Sex drugs guns corruption are all family members from same blood line, no one diviates far from each other. Getting rid of one member the other family members simply find a replacement, so ingain the roots it will take a nuclear strike to eradicate the family for good.
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englishbob
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Discussion 30 : 19 Aug 2012 at 14.5430
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Half a percent of the entire Thai population arrested on drug charges in one year?
555
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mogy71
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Discussion 29 : 19 Aug 2012 at 14.3529
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Disc8 and then disc9's timing was impeccable !
It is always better to take stats from NGO's and not from the blunderbuss put in charge of the operation.
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pjt
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Discussion 28 : 19 Aug 2012 at 14.2428
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It would be useful to know how many of the 330,000 arrests were first time offenders and how many became part of the 450,000 addicts who went through rehab programme (another stat from the same report) versus some form of punishment. The problem with 'statistics' quoted by this (and many other) governments is that they are rarely shown in relation to the potential number so success is hard to judge. For example in the rehab programme until you know the definition of an addict and the estimated number of addicts in the Kingdom (and whether that totla is rising or falling) you do not know if 450,000 is success or not? BTW we seem to have prosecuted more people than we arrested
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Bang heads, take stats, tell lies | Bangkok Post: opinion