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tweet by Johann Hari: The core of addiction is not wanting to be present in life, because pour life is too painful a place to be. This is why imposing more pain or punishment on a person with an addiction problem actually makes their addiction worse.
I don't agree with decriminalisation. Only full legalization makes sense. Treat addiction as a health issue instead of a justice issue. It's amazing that we're still stuck with the legacy of Nixon era policies, with 50 years of data to say the war on drugs cannot ever be won through prohibition.
Okay but can we start with decriminalization?
Honestly, decriminalization is possibly worse a drug war (if only barely). Where legalization creates a regulated environment with research and controls, decriminalization increases the use by individuals without giving a legal way to acquire - which just empowers organized crime to get bigger and sell more.
Pot is a weird magical exception because a lot of individuals started growing for their friends and family. But that wouldn't happen with actual hard drugs.
You just can't grow stimulants in most states. Go grow a field of Coca or Khat, good luck unless you live in like Florida or Southern border states. I guess you could grow poppy, but the landmass to output ratio is insane unless you chemically alter the opium. And at that point you might as well just grow thebaine yields and find a chemist.
I think you're agreeing with me, here? It seems like you meant to reply to a comment below or beside mine, very similar to what I posted but not a direct response.
But yeah... the fact that you can't make most drugs is why decriminalizing will empower organized crime.
Just expanding on why it won't work. People often think you can just take a coca plant and stick it in Michigan or whatever soil and expect it to grow during the summer season. Or they think a greenhouse will magically solve the problem. You would need a huge grow operation and even with current illicit prices I am not sure you would make a profit with the amount of power it would take.
Coca needs equatorial latitudes and high altitudes, so even the Mexican mountains probably don't grow it that well. I've long thought the New Guinean highlands would be a great place to grow coca. As for khat, it should be growable in the southwest US.
I don't know Coca very well, but I have known marijuana growers and the lengths they're willing to go for their crops even now suggests to me coca could be profitable. I knew a guy a few years ago who had a license to wholesale (whatever they call it) in his own state. Small warehouse that's fully temperature and humidity-controlled with grow lights, with a carbon dioxide injection system. His electric bills were massive, but his profit margins were more than sufficient.
Would you say cocaine has tighter margins than pot? I would believe that maybe, but I don't know for a fact.
Here's an example that's playing out live - the Australian Capital Territory is decriminalising several hard drugs as of tomorrow. The conservative media in Australia is making all kinds of ridiculous prognoses that I highly doubt will come to anything except a more humane approach to something most can't explain coherently why flat-out prohibition has been the status quo around the world for a century.
I think the main consideration in decriminalisation is reducing the burden on law enforcement and the courts, but this cost saving must be passed on to the health services that must go further than they currently are resourced to do. The thinking is, since police treatment and imprisonment of addicts leads to worse health outcomes anyway, we might as well help them with their addictive behaviours and minimise harm instead of adding to this harm by vilifying hard drug users. Most who choose to use them in the first place are already suffering with other psychological and physical traumas but lack the knowledge or ability to address them in the healthiest way.
What does that do about the illegal sources of drugs? Are they not dangerous criminal elements like in most countries? It also seems to make all health-related responses reactionary. I still hold that having dispensaries that provide those hard drugs in as safe a manner as possible would alleviate both of those concerns. The gangs distributing drugs suddenly have one fewer tool, and the dispensaries could also be trained (and even incentivized) on addiction handling
Sure, and I agree, but what your approach is forgetting is that you're not a dictator who can change the laws at will, and the people must still obey them. Politics takes time, and the community won't let any democratic government force revolutionary new laws on them without trying them out first. So decriminalisation is the first step. The Netherlands has one of the most advanced drug policy frameworks in the world, and might be in a position to establish government dispensaries - however, even they started with decriminalisation, the rest of us are just behind.
There's two types of philosophy about the law. There's the philosophy that laws are meant to be followed for organized society. Then there's the philosophy that laws are about taking (or reclaiming) antisocial elements out of society. The former has always been toxic to me. The latter would say "if a law says something useless or wrong, you should be changing it instead of mindlessly obeying it)
And "people must still obey them" is simply untrue. The fact that people won't obey bad laws is exactly what leads us to this situation.
As I said elsewhere, making the black market stronger isn't necessarily a step in the right direction. Politics aside, I think someone needs to get their head out of their ass and find a better way to get from "illegal" to "legal" without going through "organized crime paradise"
I don't think you need legalization to make the decisions necessary to help the health issue, I think you could work that sort of help in with decriminalization as well. However, people will still be using less than safe practices to get said substances without legalization as well, so I do agree it would be the overall better arrangement.
But I do agree with the other commenter, starting with decriminalization is at least a step in the right direction.
I'm reasonably okay with crack and meth being unavailable at gas stations.
Marijuana has no damn reason to be illegal. Psychedelics are probably okay. Opiates, you can make arguments for. But some drugs are genuinely more trouble than they're ever worth, individually or societally. I'd just like laws to be based on that reality instead of moralized by irrational liars.
Whoever said legislation means no regulation?
Walk me through how that's an argument.
Currently, gangs will sell unregulated drugs to anyone. Those drugs can be anything, and cut with anything. Which is why calling them "controlled substances" is so fucking laughable.
So the harm for the average recreational user of substances like MDMA or classic psychedelics isn't from the drug itself. It's from having to buy it illegally, with no assurances of what is in it, and with the prospect of incarceration if you are caught. It's the prohibition that causes the harm, not the drug.
There have been many deaths from dealers selling what consumers thought was MDMA but it turned out to be bath salts or even worse. Making drugs like MDMA legal, with appropriate controls on who can use it, and proper quality controls, will reduce harm.
When the laws cause more harm than the substance, and have done so for 50 years, it's insane to pretend prohibition is anything over than a complete failure.
Meth addicts are mostly harmed by meth.
The danger from some drugs is absolutely the drug itself, especially the ones that are so addictive we use them as shorthand to describe addiction. With a wider palette of mind-altering substances available - we won't need the ones that ruin if you stop taking it, or ruin you if you keep taking it.
And to get ahead of the obvious 'but alcohol--', it is impossible to stop people from making alcohol. Not hard. Impossible.
We don't have to pretend all drugs are equal, to say no drug use deserves punishment. Quality control is not the issue with krokodil. Or bath salts. Or paint. Some substances really are bad for you, and nobody should be selling them as drugs.
Lumping together LSD and crack to say they're both awful is exactly as irrational as lumping together LSD and crack to say they're both fine. You should not do crack. Nobody should do crack. Crack is bad, mmkay? And finding something else to do to your brain will be easy when 7-11 has cocaine and quaaludes up beside the Pall Malls.
Then the capitalists will start getting people addicted to hard drugs, sold in stores.
Legalization does not necessarily mean deregulation
I can agree with that. I think that all drugs should be legal if doctors responsibly and in good faith believe that they are necessary.
Yeah, because this system of "I know this is a life-saving medicine. But if you don't come have a physical and pay my copay, I'll cut you off and let you die" works wonderfully now.
I prefer the Home Depot variant of drug sales. If you're sure you know what you're doing, you can go in and buy that mainline electric wire to install your own panel without once showing them a license. You don't need to be trained if you buy a chainsaw despite the fact it will absolutely kill you if you screw it up. Pharmacies should be the same way. If you know what Xgeva (random drug name) does and are 100% sure it's for you, you can buy it with or without a prescription. But the rest of us would go to a doctor first just like you go to an electrician.
But if you're on something long-term, and you have no reason to go to a doctor, it shouldn't be a contingency. I had a friend told she wouldn't get diabetes meds if she didn't get her annual female exams.
People aren't responsible enough to go in and buy weed and only use it for medicinal purposes.
If we did that, Trump supporters would use it to get ivermectin for their kids.
People aren't responsible enough to not drink enough water to kill themselves, too. What's your point? Are you planning to have the government regulate food intake as well? Ban hamburgers?
Luckily you can't OD on weed, and the psychosis rate even at high dosages is extremely low compared to other drug acute reactions (like coffee). If we're going to legalize anything, it should be weed. Even before fried food.
I'd rather they give their kid ivermectin (with a pharmacist telling them they shouldn't) than them giving them a spoonful of lysol. Or are you suggesting we stop people from being able to buy lysol and bleach?
We cannot stop a bad parent from having access to things that harm their kids, we can only educate them and take the children from them if they are unfit to parent their child.
You can't stop people from doing stupid things, but you can make it harder. We also don't give in to emotional blackmail when hedonists threaten self harm to get their way.
I used to support legalizing weed, but I've seen how damaging it is to the type of vulnerable people who think it's a miracle drug.
We already have governments that are passing laws against junk food. I don't think that's appropriate, but I think it would be acceptable to impose government intervention on people who demonstrate that they are incapable of taking care of themselves. Food stamps should not cover junk food.
I support extensive welfare, but only for people who are productive with it. If you have big government, then that government will come back and tell you what to do.
We have centuries of evidence that banning drugs doesn't make it harder to get. It makes it easier to get.
And I'm not sure what you mean by emotional blackmail. You're saying you don't care that the Drug War is a net harm because you "think it's right"? Or something altogether different.
They legalized weed where I live. Here's what it did:
Factually speaking, states (I'm in the US) where pot is legal are overall better off than demographically similar states where it is illegal. And states that chose to legalize pot improved in many ways with virtually no negative side-effects except gen-Xers complaining "I can't go anywhere without getting a whiff of someone that smells like they smoke pot"
It sounds like you are happy to make a million people suffer because of a few so-called "vulnerable people" who disagree with you on the medicinal value?
Agreed with everything but the last part. That's just an opening to politicize what is "junk food". Well, actually, I think I'm a bit concerned with "demonstrate that they are incapable of taking care of themselves" on the topic of junk food. Are you suggesting monthly weigh-ins and anyone over 10lbs overweight gets put in jail?
Translation - your idea of welfare is to give big businesses more power by forcing the poor to work for them? I think I'll avoid responding further on your "extensive welfare" point because that's just not what this topic is about and I'm getting tired of the anti-evidence stance most people take on the topic.
Ironic. Since everything above this point, you are encouraging the government "come back and tell us what to do" wrt drug laws. You seem to want to have your cake and eat it, too? Is the hypocrisy of that lost on you, or do you embrace it willingly?
I mean, bold of you to assume they can't do that with presently legal drugs....
Yeah, but they're doing that already (see: opioid epidemic, pill mills). I'd much rather people be able to buy FDA-regulated drugs from the gas station than from some random guy in a parking lot that scraped the drugs off the bottom of an RV bathtub.