In Britain, even jails have a class system
&gt; Lewis: Tell me about “spice,” which seems to have become the British prisoner’s drug of choice.<p>&gt; Atkins: It was so ubiquitous. You could tell straightaway if someone was on it, they’d be zombified, with glazed eyes. They’d just be lying on their bed in a vegetative state.<p>&gt; I think [spice users] are used to smoking strong cannabis. And you can&#x27;t really get away with that, because of the smell. But spice doesn’t smell. The sniffer dogs can’t get it.<p>&gt; It’s the law of unintended consequences. An older screw [prisoner officer] said, it used to be that inmates would smoke weed. But then [jails] brought in drug testing, and marijuana stays in the system for a month. So they stopped doing that, and started to do spice, which makes people vegetative and violent.<p>There&#x27;s hundreds of laws like this outside of prison. You take one thing away [with good intention] and then people find a new thing. But the new thing leaves society worse off (in this case crazy and violent off spice).<p>I personally believe the whole obsession with prison time for punishment in the US is a good example of this. The general public gets very vindictive, then you send them to con-college and they come out a worse criminal. With difficulty finding a job but plenty of new friends in the criminal world and a reputation as a tough-guy.<p>Consequently the whole war on drugs is the perfect example of unintended side-effects. Creating a hundred-billion dollar black market funding the worst cartels and street gangs. And hey we have thousands of tough guys coming out of prison in need of work.<p>Zoning laws are another good example of something that sounds like a good idea that ultimately hurts communities more than it helps - resulting in the mass suburbanization of America and urban ghettos [1]. Now people are moving back to cities with a serious lack of housing density, food deserts [2], driving to work becomes mandatory, etc etc. Then there&#x27;s the War on Terrorism.....<p>I could go on.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Zoned-Out-Regulation-Transportation-Metropolitan&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1933115157&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Zoned-Out-Regulation-Transportation-M...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Food_desert" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Food_desert</a>