> Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults.
Got a cite for that? I doubt it's true.
We're seeing the same problems with drug prohibition that we saw with alcohol prohibition. It's time for the government to stop destroying people's lives.
> The best way to have less people use drugs is probably to make it illegal to use and buy drugs.
I think we have proven this to be incorrect.
In fact, making it illegal to use and buy drugs has the effect of locking people into a counter-culture and making it a major life decision to use drugs instead of a daily decision like it should be.
If I want to take time off of work to waste a day of my life doing drugs for fun and pick up where I left off the next day, that shouldn't be a life destroying decision.
> Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults.
This isn’t even remotely true. The number of people in SF who use marijuana, cocaine, LSD, ketamine, MDMA, GHB, 2-CB and/or a laundry list of other substances would astonish you.
The majority of them successfully hold jobs: many of them highly paid ones as tech company engineers and execs.
What you associate with “not living like normal adults” is poverty plus opiates.
> Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults.
Yes. Claiming people can use these things without consequences is just wrong. Anyone who thinks otherwise has clearly never dealt with addicts. The only possible argument for drug decriminalization is getting rid of all the violent crime surrounding it. That's a worthy reason but must certainly be weighed against the significant risks presented by drugs. Lots of people out there have literally never witnessed the extent an opioid addict's drug seeking behavior.
>knowing first-hand of some screwed up lives plus collateral damage, some drugs might just be evil.
Criminalization and stigmatization cause more harm in the long-term than drugs do.
Are all drugs as innocous as cannabis or psilocybin? Gosh no.
Does criminalization and stigmization of drug use make the problem 10,000x worse? Very.
Imagine if the US followed Oregon's lead and decriminalized all personal use. Drug users can seek out help and get harm reduction (eg: needle exchanges, advice, etc) and get them participating in the medical system where we can help them out of addiction, no families will be destroyed because of a little weed (or heck, meth), we save a bunch of money on drug enforcement, we could close private prisons, etc.
I am not saying utopia, but maybe we should look at drug use as something besides a personal moral failing. No one wakes up and decides to be a drug addict... no one _wants_ to be an addict.
This idea that drug users are burn-outs who chose that life is absurd.
> All I've seen in drug users is wreckage and death.
Drug use is illegal and is taboo. Many people who take drugs are not going to talk to you about it.
You won't have seen a lot of drug use. You'll only have seen the worse end of drug use.
You have seen plenty of people who can have a few alcoholic drinks a week? That's drug use that doesn't end in wreckage and death, even though alcohol is very harmful and very addictive. (And physically addictive, not just psychologically addictive.)
> If made legal, then how do we navigate the normalization of a substance which can quite literally ruin a life? It prohibited, how do you manage the safety concerns and crime we know will stem from the ceaseless demand for drugs which are unregulated? How do we manage education in either case?
I believe you underestimate peoples ability to ruin their own lives, regardless of what laws and regulations are put into place to try to help them.
Many people kill themselves with food, legal drugs to name a few.
We’ll be in a much better place if more people become knowledgeable in the workings of their own minds, bodies and emotions so that seeking self-destruction is less common.
> You basically spell it out yourself. Making it legal and accepted to use drugs makes more people use.
I don't think I said that at all. Just because it is made to be a major life decision does not mean that the decision is made with proper due diligence or even with a rational mind.
In fact, these decisions are usually made by very young people. This has the unfortunate side effect of locking a lot of people into a way of life because they decided to try drugs as a teen.
It is possible to try some drugs and walk away like smoking a little weed as a college kid, but a lot of times drugs are used as an escape. At a young age that escape can be tempting and you can develop a habit. Now, if drug use were legalized and normalized, you could seek help and not otherwise impact your life, but as it stands it is more likely that a habit would result in a conviction which will follow them around for life making it harder to find a well paying job, decent housing etc. The cycle reinforces itself over the course of a lifetime.
Now as far as numbers go, the current policies ensure that a drugs retention rate is as high as possible. If policies forced more churn, then the number of simultanious users at any one time could be lower. They could be higher, but we havent had the oportunity to see.
> People ruin their lives pretty well currently with highly addictive drugs, and I don't see how increasing supply would stop that from happening.
I don't see how prohibition and the War on Drugs prevented them from happening too. All that was achieved by the War on Drugs was a massive waste of taxpayer money[0], the creation of a large, organised, violent and powerful criminal underground[1], filling up of prisons with non-violent offenders[2], denying treatment to millions of addicts and treating them like criminals, and the violation of the rights, freedoms and liberties of large numbers of innocent people[3].
> Meanwhile the damage of outlawing drugs is mainly from imperfect enforcement and inflicted on people who willingly broke a law for personal enjoyment.
That's omitting the murderous drug cartels that wouldn't otherwise exist.
> A person that gets permanently mentally damaged (e.g becomes schizoid) from drug use is causing an 80 year long drain on society in every way.
What about a person who gets denied necessary medication out of overzealous enforcement, or can't get access to it because they would have to already be on the medication in order to navigate the bureaucracy necessary to get a prescription?
> People apparently have to find out the hard way before they can understand how bad drugs are.
This is like pointing to a stabbing victim and saying "people apparently have to find out the hard way how bad knives are."
Yes, cutting tools are dangerous. No, we shouldn't ban cutlery.
But maybe we should teach people how to safely use sharp objects.
> those pushing for legalization underplay the negative problems associated with drug use
But those problems already exist and are amplified by the prohibition.
I don’t understand how prohibitionists still believe that the ban on drugs would make drug use disappear when the last 80 years of prohibition completely failed at that.
It’s clear that prohibition does not work. But if we just try long enough it might?
That’s not science, that’s ideology.
> more people destroying their lives with drugs than people who can regulate their use.
I think you are either intentionally exaggerating, or vastly overestimate the number of people destroying their lives, or underestimate the number of people who use drugs (especially alcohol, consumed by >50% of the US population).
> Should we eliminate all potential sources of illogical behavior?
How about we try to avoid the really harmful stuff that ruins lives and kills people like drug addiction? We place plenty of limits on stuff that can kill people. This is not some slippery slope thing, allowing it to flourish in our society is not in the long term best interest of literally anyone.
> If we assume consenting adults are capable of making decisions and we value their freedom in doing so, drug prohibition is directly counter to that value
That is the problem, we cannot assume that adults in the throws of addiction are capable of making decisions that are in their best interests. Your thought process is not logical when addicted and maximizes getting high at the cost of everything else.
> To end this loop, lets just legalize anything that doesn't hurt others and let people decide what is good or bad for themselves
I used to think that but I don’t anymore. Not having your shut together and not being a contributing member of society hurts others, so drugs aren’t harmless. Drug users are people’s kids, parents, etc., who have responsibilities and often can’t meet them because of their drug use and that hurts people. And the ship has probably sailed on letting drug users die in the street if they need help so the cost of welfare and services are also a burden.
The real question to me is whether making drugs illegal actually creates more burdens than it avoids. I suspect the answer is that if the culture condones drug use, you’ve already lost that battle and making it illegal is pointless. Laws should help reinforce norms. If the norms have broken down, enforcement of the law needs to be too coercive to be feasible. For example divorce also imposes tremendous social costs, but we probably can’t fix that by repealing no-fault divorce laws.
> He's empowering others to destroy their lives, which very often leads to more crime as addicts will steal or even kill for their next fix.
What about alcohol? Cigarettes? Poker? Penny stocks?
All of these things have contributed to people blowing their savings, futures, and ruining their own lives and their families' lives.
By criminalizing drugs, people who want to fix their behavior are unable to because they're afraid to go to jail.
What we need is support centers, like we have for alcoholics, gambling addicts, sex addicts, internet addicts, and addicts of any other kind. Prohibition didn't work for alcohol in the 20s, and it hasn't worked for drugs.
> And they will hold the regulation tight as long as they can, regardless of what's actually best for people all things considered.
I get dismayed when people think of drugs in terms of social freedom and opposing government. This is quite frankly a highly liberal view. And not one at all in line with the true definition of drugs.
Drugs are an intoxicant. They destroy minds. They destroy health. And they can make addicts lose control. Not to mention destroy communities. There are laws on the books specifically for this reason. It affects society. It does not just stop at the individual. There is a reason why neighborhoods around bars fall in value. While those around coffee shops rise in value.
Drug users WHO ARE IN CONTROL OF THEMSELVES see rules against drugs as oppressive. But the rules were never made for them! Using drugs is like balancing the tight rope, not something everyone can do. And advocates need to understand this.
Lastly comparing illegal intoxicants as similar to legal intoxicants is a poor justification. You try to stretch people’s benign feelings to one form of drugs onto another.
> I think he is just saying even if you legalize it and allow addicts to get drugs easily, it’s not viable long term as the addicts will develop tolerance to the drugs and will need ever increasing doses.
Right, and that's not true, because that's not how addiction actually works.
> Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults
Is this true? The US consumes a lot of hard drugs, but my perception is that most users not have their lives fall apart as a result. Curious if there are estimates on the % of e.g. cocaine users who are recreational vs those who eventually end up on the street as a result of their use.
Got a cite for that? I doubt it's true.
We're seeing the same problems with drug prohibition that we saw with alcohol prohibition. It's time for the government to stop destroying people's lives.
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