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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.
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.