So to specify the drugs I’m talking about here, cocaine herion weed etc… Most drugs you would come across when wanting to have a good time, not drugs specifically targeted towards medical purposes. Why should we keep these illegal? It seems counter productive considering prohibition, and violent crime as result of black market activity. If we legalized most of these drugs then we could kill a lot of the profits drug cartels make. When we make things illegal they seem to become more potent, abused more often, and have more dangerous side effects as a result of lack of research and regulation.
If the government stops murdering and disenfranchising citizens over drugs will everything become better?
I think Portugal decriminalized all drugs and since then has seen a drop in virtually all the bad things supposedly caused by drugs (ODs, HIV, drug-related crime). No idea why this wouldn’t work anywhere.
OP: we’ve done that with two major recreational drugs: alcohol and cigarettes. There have been massive negative consequences: about 480,000 people die every year from cigarette smoking for example. Are the negative consequences of all illegal drugs greater than the negative consequences of 480,000 deaths per year?
You say that… But it’s widely accepted that alcohol prohibition was a total mess, and historically a very bad idea. We tried banning it; the result was the rise of organized crime to fill the black market, the rise of stronger forms of alcohol as people needed to smuggle it in higher concentrations, and a rise in corruption, as federal officials couldn’t help but get in on the money flowing through the black market.
We currently have a prohibition on Marijuana, and yet more than half the US population has tried it, and regardless of where you are it’s fairly trivial to find someone who knows someone, (if you catch my drift). As a result, it’s hardly a surprise that we’ve seen a whopping 1.2%-point increase in marijuana use after legalization - people who wanted weed before knew how to get weed. Meanwhile, the consequences of marijuana prohibition include a massive rise in prison populations, the criminalization of an entire generation, and (to the degree that marijuana use is fungible with alcohol use - and I will admit this is entirely anecdotal on my end and not based on any stronger evidence I am aware of) a possible increase in drinking, which is far worse.
Ultimately, the question of “is prohibiting a drug worth the cost of prohibiting a drug” comes down to the drug. With marijuana, we have a very clear picture - the answer is “no”. Obviously, definitely, no question whatsoever, marijuana prohibition is a colossal failure that should be relegated to the ashheap of history as soon as humanly possible. But this should come as no surprise, given what we learned about alcohol prohibition.
See, given that alcohol prohibition was, on balance, a huge failure, we have a baseline for how dangerous and addictive a drug needs to be before prohibition makes all that much sense. And the thing is, experts generally agree that alcohol is actually really, really bad. (I’m explicitly disregarding Nutt et al. 2010, which ranks alcohol above heroin in terms of harm and is seen as flawed for a lot of reasons.) You find charts like these, which show that alcohol has a high dependency factor and an extremely high Active Dose:Lethal Dose ratio. It’s phenomenally harmful; far closer to Cocaine than Marijuana. This means that, ultimately, prohibition for most drugs is more likely to be, on balance, a failure. This includes things like LSD, Psylocibin, MDMA/Amphetamines, Ketamine, and many more. It should not come as a surprise, then, that Portugal’s decriminalization experiment is yielding predominately positive results. I think most people agree that Heroin should remain illegal, and that we shouldn’t legalize cocaine or crystal meth. These drugs are extremely harmful and incredibly addictive. But at this point, I think anything that doesn’t reach that level of “clearly fucking awful and incredibly addictive” should be up for grabs. Because that’s pretty much where alcohol is.
Or to put it on a more personal level: gimme my goddamn stimulants and psychoactives and get off my case!
(I recognize that this model is possibly missing a few factors; the most notable one that comes to mind is that alcohol was extremely culturally prevalent and that therefore people had a huge incentive to work around prohibition. However, the fact that marijuana only barely ticked up after legalization seems to indicate to me that we won’t see a huge increase in the number of people taking drugs like LSD or MDMA post-legalization; demand for drugs is famously inelastic.)
I’m all for the decriminalization of all illegal drugs. If people want to stick a needle in their arm they’ll find a way. Why not take all of that out of criminal hands?
Prescription drugs are meant to treat medical conditions. If pot were falsely advertised as curing cancer I could see the FDA/FTC cracking down on its sale for that purpose.
Other than false and/or unproven medical claims, I agree and I don’t see why you need a prescription for prescription drugs as long as you’re paying with your own money.
I do however think the amount and quality of the drugs should also be regulated. Any substance that’s recognized as a “drug”, prescription or recreational, should be properly labelled, and the label should list the proper strength of each drug and not leave anything out. With the exception of minimally processed natural products such as opium and pot where it would be overly burdensome on small producers to measure and regulate the amounts of the various substances in each batch.
This would substantially diminish the lethality of the opioid epidemic, since addicts could buy their maintenance opioids at your friendly pharmacy without the fear of fentanyl.
I think it should first be stated that heroin and cocaine are very different than marijuana. From just about any angle you look at it from. Very simplified, marijuana isn’t likely to cause you to lose your house, your teeth, your family, your money etc. You also can’t OD on marijuana. Accidentally smoke way too much? Kids got into the edibles? You’re/they’re going to be really, really high, but they’ll be 100% back to normal in a few hours. In fact, every time you hear about someone hospitalized for anything related to (pure/unlaced/real) marijuana, it’s because they got so stoned they panicked or their kids got into it and they took them to the ER. All the ER does is keep you calm (pharmaceutically or otherwise) until the high wears off.
Coke and heroin, on the other hand does have the ability to kill you. Whether your heart explodes or your breathing is depressed, dropping dead right then and there is a real possibility.
Having said that, I like me some drugs and would love for them to be legal, but coke and heroin, I doubt, will ever be legal due to the dangers.
I do understand that being illegal causes an often dangerous black market. Violence, products that are laced*, more difficult to get help etc. But you end up with a Catch-22, especially with things like pot. It’s illegal because you shouldn’t do it and you shouldn’t do it because it’s illegal. Ask lawmaker why they vote to keep marijuana laws as they are and see if you get a better answer than ‘because [I think] you shouldn’t do it’.
Something else, fines for drug crimes are a huge money maker for the government. Or, at least local governments that write tickets but aren’t footing the bill for inmates and addicts. I don’t know, but I’d guess that a tax on marijuana sales would bring in more than jailing people. Plus, the local and state government would likely see more income from it.
*Just a few weeks ago I was talking to a friend and mentioned that back in college I’d snort, smoke or swallow anything you’d put in front of me. It seems that nowadays, that blow you bought might get you a nice buzz or you might OD on fentanyl 10 minutes later. Don’t know why they’re putting fentanyl in everything these days, but it’s enough to keep me away (even though I haven’t done anything like that since college).
Fentanyl is incredibly potent - a tiny amount of fentanyl goes a really long way. This is useful for smuggling operations. It’s also dirt-cheap, and you can’t tell the difference at a glance (or without a chemical test).
What about antibiotics? Even if all other drugs are openly available for purchase, antibiotics have a special risk. Taking them without the instruction of a doctor can lead to resistant bacteria that spread to others.
Smoking cigarettes or marijuana affects other people with “second hand smoke” which can and does kill innocent people. Shooting and snorting drugs or drinking alcohol affects no one, as long as you don’t drive.
Given the relative rarity of alcohol overdose deaths, that’s a pretty big “as long as”. In fact, as Scott Alexander details here, whether or not marijuana legalization leads to more or less (due to substitution effects with alcohol) traffic accidents is probably the single largest factor in judging whether ending prohibition is a good idea or not - and that calculation seems to be leaning towards “more”. Compared to damages from DUIs, second-hand smoke is a rounding error.
Good plan, let’s cut out doctors and pharmacists from the process of people getting the right drugs in the right dosages at the right time to treat their conditions.
That has to be the most idiotic thing I’ve heard on here in a very long time.
It’s not mean old Uncle Sam preventing you from having your fun, it’s making sure that idiots don’t take Z-packs for “the flu”, when they have allergies. Or taking opiate cough suppressants and becoming addicted. Or any number of other pitfalls and dangers involved with the dosage, frequency and interactions of prescription drugs.
When I refused a (prescription) drug by saying “I don’t do drugs,” I was actually told “That’s not drugs, that’s medication.”
What is the difference? Does the same drug have a different effect if it’s prescribed?
When I broke my arm, the E/R people practically begged me to take a prescription for a pain killer (and I can only guess what that would do, combined with my addictive personality)> I got along fine with Tylenol and Aleve. Lot cheaper and safer too.
I’ll one up you. I want to not only see them legal, but see them given for free at government run clinics. Don’t just kill the black market, completely eliminate it. Give control to the government - they can institute age limits and keep drug users in a safe environment while high. The biggest problem with drugs is the criminality that it brings. If they’re free, then you crush cartels and you help to eliminate the need to steal to support the habit. It would stop the spread of infectious disease and risk of overdose and I personally think it would lower the number of addicts since it would lower the amount of illicit drugs by quite a bit, so lower the number of drugs out there for first exposure. It also puts addicts in contact with people that can help their addiction should they wish to discontinue it. It would also give us more geopolitical power over drug producing areas. Look at the Taliban in Afghanistan. They’re making a large amount of money on opium production. Make the farmers able to sell directly to the US government and it limits Taliban support.
Why should my taxes go for funding this? I work check to check for the things I have. I don’t need more of my money thrown away on degenerates wasting their life.
You would hopefully save money in the long run. It would lower health care costs and prison costs, as well as insurance premiums. Ultimately, the goal would be to have very few people on harder drugs. Everything is cost and benefit analysis. It’s like needle exchange programs. You can spend a little bit of money on needles or you can spend a lot treating Hepatitis outbreaks. You can spend a little bit of money giving junkies their fix, or you can worry every morning that your car is missing from your driveway or that your home will be broken into. We can spend a ton of money fighting the Taliban or spend that money stabilizing Afghanistan. We can spend a ton of money on drug interdiction and combatting gang violence or spend that money controlling the drug trade. It’s all about tradeoffs and priorities and if yours is simply to horde as much of your wealth as you can, then there’s little I can do to convince you otherwise. If your priority though is a more stable and safe society, then maybe my plan has merit.
