# Resolved: The United States should significantly reduce the number and severity of laws against recreational drugs **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 11, 2020, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360 "2020-09-11T17:42:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2024, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/81 "2024-02-25T18:11:05Z")
This sounds reasonable enough: > [@](#): > > In the other camp were those convinced that Measure 110 must be undone, in whole or in part, in order to give police a greater role in disrupting the open drug use and disorder playing out on some city streets. There’s nothing about decriminalization that requires society to tolerate public nuisance. If someone’s shooting up in the park, tell them to go home and do it. If they don’t have a home, a blueprint exists for creating safe-use facilities, and it sounds like it’s time for this person to work with social services to maybe get some housing or other assistance. All of those things cost money of course. If you decide you don’t want to do incarceration, then you have to invest in alternatives to incarceration, and meeting with a social worker once a week won’t cut it. Decriminalization wasn’t supposed to be an automatic silver bullet and money-saver. It’s about choosing different ways to spend money, ones that don’t involve adding suffering on top of suffering. ---
**Author:** ![Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecc23a/32.png) [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reno_Nevada_Jr)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2024, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/82 "2024-02-26T02:32:24Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > …and some of the suggested revisions sound not entirely unreasonable. It sounds to me like the problems people are complaining about are: 1. People are taking drugs in public, in the view of decent people 2. More people are dying from Fentanyl overdoses. I just don’t see how recriminalization will do anything to address those problems, and I don’t see the advocates for recriminalization actually presenting any reasons to believe it will. To my mind recriminalization does two things: 1. It allows cops to bust the heads of people living _absolutely shitty_ lives; 2. It increases the costs of street drugs, which will increase the profits for drug dealers and the incentives to sell shitty junk with more adulterants. I think that the good people of Oregon should address those two problems by putting up big tents, with Porta Potties, and sell pharmaceutical grade Fentanyl in known concentrations for about 100% markup. This would still be cheaper than the junk sold on the streets, and the profits can be used to pay security and upkeep for the tents and Porta Potties. This gives people whose lives are _absolutely shitty_ a warm, dry place to take drugs, out of the sight of decent people. I don’t know the dose necessary to get high on Fentanyl, or the fatal dose, but I think that junkies **do**. If they had a source of pure Fentanyl I think they could get high without killing themselves. If there is not a lot of daylight between those two numbers, and they try to get high anyway, I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for them–my sympathy certainly does not extend to having cops kick them in the head and throw them in prison to keep them from getting high. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2024, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/83 "2024-02-26T09:30:46Z")
There are a lot of people in our society that would happily spend $50,000 a year to keep someone locked up in shitty conditions but would strongly resist spending $5,000 a year to give such a person shelter on the “outside”, much less a safe place to take drugs. It’s stupid and illogical, but as always there are people who want to punish rather than help. > [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](#): > > I don’t know the dose necessary to get high on Fentanyl, or the fatal dose, but I think that junkies **do**. If they had a source of pure Fentanyl I think they could get high without killing themselves. Pure fentanyl is incredibly potent. 2mg is considered a lethal dose and it’s a very tiny amount. It makes it very hard to control the dose outside of someone really well trained and equipped to do the job. One reason fake/knock-off pills are so dangerous is that evenly distributing such small amounts through a batch of pills isn’t as easy as it looks and you get inconsistencies, meaning some pills in the batch have nearly none and others way too much. No, I don’t think your average junkie could manage the dosing properly. This is what a lethal dose of pure fentanyl looks like: [![](https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2021-06/Authentic_Fentanyl_lethal_dose_pencil.jpg) ](https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2021-06/Authentic_Fentanyl_lethal_dose_pencil.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecc23a/32.png) [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reno_Nevada_Jr)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2024, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/85 "2024-02-27T02:07:42Z")
I don’t think the volume of pure Fentanyl in a fatal dose is really relevant. The DEA page says 2 mg is a potentially lethal dose; contrast 60 mg of nicotine or 50 to 100 mg of cyanide. However, the problem with Fentanyl is that if you are using pills produced by a random underground lab you don’t know how much is in a dose. If you got pills with a known 200 mcg dose, you would know that 10 pills would be that “potentially lethal dose”. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2024, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/86 "2024-02-27T02:59:18Z")
> [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](#): > > I think that the good people of Oregon should address those two problems by putting up big tents, with Porta Potties, and sell pharmaceutical grade Fentanyl in known concentrations for about 100% markup. This would still be cheaper than the junk sold on the streets, and the profits can be used to pay security and upkeep for the tents and Porta Potties. This. Decriminalizing drugs needs to address the supply side as well as the demand. Prohibition era problems caused by guys like Al Capone weren’t solved by telling the neighborhood drunk that he wasn’t going to get arrested if he got caught having a pint of beer. The problem was solved by allowing guys like Augustus Busch to make and distribute beer legally. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2024, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/87 "2024-02-27T12:30:09Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > This is what a lethal dose of pure fentanyl looks like: Why do we not stop production of pencils? ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2024, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/88 "2024-02-29T14:19:35Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Why do we not stop production of pencils? Pencils don’t kill people, pencils with fetanyl on ‘em kill people. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2024, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/89 "2024-02-29T16:52:28Z")
a sharp pencil to the heart or puncturing the carotid artery, though … ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2024, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/90 "2024-02-29T17:04:47Z")
I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that the reason most fatal fentanyl overdoses happened wasn’t because the drug users were unaware of fentanyl’s incredible potency, but rather, that they mistook fentanyl for some other drug (like heroin) and injected what they thought was a safe dose of heroin when it was in fact a lethal dose of fentanyl. Someone correct me. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2024, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/91 "2024-03-02T07:40:31Z")
> **[Oregon’s drug decriminalization experiment appears dead](https://www.opb.org/article/2024/03/01/oregon-legislature-passes-bill-recriminalizing-drug-possession-sends-to-governor-measure-110/)** > > The voter-approved Measure 110 is nearing its end as the Legislature sends a bill unwinding Oregon's drug decriminalization toward the governor's desk. > HB 4002 would upend a voter-approved decriminalization policy that has been in place for three years. Under the bill anyone caught with small amounts of illicit drugs like meth or fentanyl could face up to six months in jail. The bill offers people options to pursue drug treatment rather than receiving criminal penalties, and allows people convicted of possession to have their record automatically expunged. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2024, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/92 "2024-03-02T07:50:58Z")
I always heard it was Switzerland (not exactly left-leaning) that mitigated a lot of its drug problems. Getting the police to focus less on users was only one aspect of this: > **[Switzerland couldn’t stop drug users. So it started supporting them.](https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2019/01/21/switzerland-couldnt-stop-drug-users-so-it-started-supporting-them/)** > > The Swiss people took drastic measures to reduce the number of people dying from opioid overdose. Their approach is effective - and unorthodox. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2024, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/93 "2024-03-03T02:43:37Z")
Oregonians on Reddit have blamed the state not creating the treatment facilities also required by the law for the failure. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2024, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/94 "2024-03-03T02:54:55Z")
What’s the data on treatment: in what percent of cases does it result in drug users quitting using drugs? My guess would be that it is fairly low. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2024, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/95 "2024-03-03T09:28:05Z")
Last I looked it was running about 12-15% per course of treatment for _long term_ abstinence. And here is where I point out that it usually takes 3-4 rounds for people to “get clean” and stay that way a substantial amount of time. So, as long as you’re counting _multiple_ trips through treatment (which is the norm) eventually the majority of drug users can achieve long-term sobriety. Drug treatment is not a quick fix - those celebrities doing a 30 day “detox” (or whatever the hip term for it these days may be) then declaring themselves sober are laughable. That’s not a cure, that’s only the _start_ of treatment. In addition to eventual sobriety, even short-term periods of abstinence are a harm reduction and, in my mind, worthwhile. Keep in mind that addition is a _chronic_ condition - it can go into remission but it never really goes away. People who stay off drugs 20, 30, 40, or more years are still dealing with the problem. The fact they are doing so successfully doesn’t mean the problem is gone any more than someone diabetic keeping their blood sugar under control means their diabetes is gone. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2024, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/96 "2024-03-07T07:12:28Z")
I mis-read the title as “Recreational **dogs** ” ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2024, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/97 "2024-03-11T23:32:52Z")
_Hey, over here, man, I have pure, uncut Lundehund._ ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2024, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/98 "2024-03-18T03:07:06Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Drug treatment is not a quick fix - those celebrities doing a 30 day “detox” (or whatever the hip term for it these days may be) then declaring themselves sober are laughable. That’s not a cure, that’s only the _start_ of treatment. > > In addition to eventual sobriety, even short-term periods of abstinence are a harm reduction and, in my mind, worthwhile. Yes, I concur. Although I am not in favor of total legalization of everything, the War on drugs has cost America too much. We have the highest rate of prison occupancy of any free nation. The Mexican cartels are destroying Mexico as a democratic nation. Legalize pot. Tax it. Use the $ for drug treatment programs. Mostly decriminalize the rest, like Oregon has. The money saved in the prison industry alone will make it worthwhile- prisons are now just factories for making lifetime criminals. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2024, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/99 "2024-03-18T10:17:51Z")
Unfortunately, with the rise of privately owned and run prisons incarcerating people has now become and industry and has lobbyists to protect its interests. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2024, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/100 "2024-03-18T11:24:09Z")
> [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](#): > > This seems to me a bad slogan, because it does not really capture what the movement leaders want to happen, and it stiffens resistance in those people inclined to resist the movement. Agreed, so whoever was responsible for the slogan made a very bad mistake. “Defunding” means no money, and no money means no police force. There is a faction, however, that really does want to defund the police. I call them the “Pro Crime” faction because, if I’m a criminal, I’m very happy to have them around. We have reduced “the number and severity of laws against recreational drugs”, but it takes time to change the paradigm. Look at the difference between the Prohibition era that helped solidify organized crime and the way we have handled cigarettes. Instead of banning them, we slowly weaned much of society off of them while taxing the crap out of them and creating a good revenue flow. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2024, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360/101 "2024-03-18T13:58:35Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > whoever was responsible for the slogan made a very bad mistake. “Defunding” means no money, and no money means no police force. There is a faction, however, that really does want to defund the police. I call them the “Pro Crime” faction because, if I’m a criminal, I’m very happy to have them around. The problem with the police is that they are primarily a protection racket, with similar closed-ranks behavior. In addition, they are interested in their own agenda. They address street crime, but little else, which is more a symptom of broader social ills (which I personally believe is largely financial in nature: the police trend toward protecting the wealthiest among us, whose behaviors create the environment that fosters street crime).        What we need to do is ReImagine Public Safety. (RIPS? ok, maybe not.) We could start by requiring all LEOs to have a 4-year college degree, just like doctors and lawyers (the other professionals who make life and death decisions). And establish fine-pooling, so that a department does not rely on fines and seizures as a revenue stream but has to share it with other cities.        I would prefer to see a society in which policing is a community effort rather than a cohort of official thugs. But that is an argument for a different thread. From my perspective (a person who rarely encounters police and does not get harassed by them), we are not doing it right, and the drug war has been a major part of the problem. > [@Jasmine](#): > > We have reduced “the number and severity of laws against recreational drugs”, but it takes time to change the paradigm. Look at the difference between the Prohibition era that helped solidify organized crime and the way we have handled cigarettes. Instead of banning them, we slowly weaned much of society off of them while taxing the crap out of them and creating a good revenue flow. I think one of the complaints is that "people can just shoot-up in the park. I am not sure how true that is, but the way tobacco laws are these days, smoking has become highly restricted. People used to light up a cigarette just about anywhere. Now, smoking (even vaping) is “prohibited” (to the extent that it is enforced) even in public parks. There is no reason those kind of restrictions could not be imposed on fixing (to the practical extent that it could be enforced). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-the-united-states-should-significantly-reduce-the-number-and-severity-of-laws-against-recreational-drugs/920360.md?page=4)