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Any time I read anything about the illegal drug trade I am struck by how much the industry would change if all drugs were legalized everywhere. So much effort i

Any time I read anything about the illegal drug trade I am struck by how much the industry would change if all drugs were legalized everywhere. So much effort is expended to keep things hidden from law enforcement and other criminals that it adds an incredible amount of friction to the purchasing process for the purchaser and the seller. From the buyer's perspective you now have to go into business with some often unsavory people just to get high. From the seller's perspective you have to make sure that the buyer isn't law enforcement and also not someone who is going to rob you because you have zero legal recourse. It's really a shitty experience for everyone involved. Considering how shitty that experience is it says a lot about people and their desire to take drugs that the market continues to exist and basically never stops serving the customer. It really seems like when confronted with something inevitable, like drug use and sales, the effort to prevent it may be more costly and damaging than just allowing it to happen in a more controlled environment.

abfan1127 10y ago
Please see Alcohol Prohibition in the United States (at least back then they amended the US Constitution to do it legally).
- idlewords 10y ago
  From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. The main reason it failed as policy is chemistry. You can make ethanol from anything—even a cactus, as Mexico has taught us.
  - digler999 10y ago
    so if alcohol weren't so easy to make, like say it had to be imported from the Golden Triangle, it would have never been smuggled (in massive quantities) past the border ?
    - Retra 10y ago
      That would have made it a border control issue, not an "everybody has an uncle that does it" issue.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. I don't know about that, didn't lead poisoning go way up?
    - blacksmith_tb 10y ago
      And methanol poisoning. Not to mention other nasty things that were intentionally added to industrial alcohol to poison anyone who tried to drink it [1] - now, it would be interesting to try and get a sense for how many drunk drivers were kept off the roads during Prohibition, but I doubt most would consider it an unalloyed success, even then. 1: http://www.vox.com/2014/8/8/5975605/alcohol-prohibition-poison http://www.vox.com/2014/8/8/5975605/alcohol-prohibition-pois...
      - TylerE 10y ago
        Gotta wonder how much of a negative impact on drunk driving the technology had... I have to imagine it's a lot harder to pull off when everything is a non-synchronized manual transmission.
      - rhizome 10y ago
        I was trying to make a joke about bullets, but bad drinks were definitely a problem,too!
    - jmcgough 10y ago
      There was also "jake leg" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_ginger#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_ginger#History)
  - randall 10y ago
    (citation required, also addressing parent's points would be helpful.)
    - idlewords 10y ago
      http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470475/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470475/ See also the very entertaining book by Daniel Okrent.
      - hx87 10y ago
        Even according to that article, Prohibition only worked in a public health sense if you considered a reduction in alcohol consumption an absolute public health good in itself. I don't know about you, but drinking 50 gallons a year of legitimate, old school, high-quality pre-prohibition beer and wine doesn't exactly sound worse than drinking 25 gallons a year of moonshine from questionable sources.
        idlewords 10y ago
        It is an absolute good, in that death rates from alcoholism and its diseases are directly related to consumption rates. Cirrhosis, for example, fell by some 20%. But there are also follow-on effects, like the death of saloon culture, a drop in domestic violence, and lower infant mortality. This stuff is documented, so you don't actually have to deduce it from first principles. http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Depew.pdf http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Depew.pdf
        alphydan 10y ago
        >> death of saloon culture, a drop in domestic violence, and lower infant mortality Didn't all those things happen in other countries which didn't implement prohibition? Are you sure it wasn't a natural evolution of society rather than a direct cause-effect from making alcohol harder to get?
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Today you can do almost anything easily.
  - pzone 10y ago
    But the whole point is that an objective function where you measure success only in terms of infant mortality, number of addicts etc. is absurd. Prohibition ruins people's lives, when they are sent to jail, marked as felons and excluded from the job market. We spend billions and billions of dollars enforcing these laws. And believe it or not, many people just enjoy drinking, and do it without any negative consequences to themselves or others. You can't ignore all of that and say prohibition is justified just because it (arguably) improves things on a single dimension.
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      That is a great point. I have no idea how anyone could be so brainwashed as to not agree. How many ruined lives is one less arbitrarily illegal drug user worth? I think that the kind of people who would agree with prohibition at any cost are followers who won't think for themselves, have no knowledge or interest in history or hopes for a better future, and would have happily extolled the virtues of drug legalization if that had happened to be the policy at the time. These people seem to attribute no value to civil liberties at all.
  - OhHeyItsE 10y ago
    > From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. Do you count skyrocketing murder rate and gov't-poisoned hooch in your metric for success?
    - idlewords 10y ago
      Sure do. It takes a lot of murder and poison to offset a 20% drop in cirrhosis. Read the paper linked below.
      - adrusi 10y ago
        If you're only counting death rates then yeah, the murder is better than the cirrhosis. But the actual experience of living in a society where anyone might be murdered in the street is significantly worse than the experience of living in a society where you can just not drink and not get cirrhosis. Obviously alcoholics can't just "not drink", but prohibition was never going to be a pleasant experience for them.
      - philhartmanonic 10y ago
        Great, and how do you quantify the value of the freedom to live your life the way you want to? Soa decrease in deaths of cirrhosis is beneficial, presumably as it extends lives. Is the extension of life an inherent benefit? If you lived for 10,000 years in abject misery would that be better than dying in 6 months? Clearly, it's conditional. Life is complex, every life is unique, so you can safely assume you aren't going to make things better when you try to violently protect people from themselves. If you were arguing about the drop in domestic abuse that'd be one thing, but cirrhosis from alcohol consumption is self-inflicted. Universally falls squarely in the "mind your own business, jack" space.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
ThomPete 10y ago
Yes it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The answer none of the people who are for the criminalization is why should a victimless action be considered a crime. Why should otherwise law abiding citizens be criminalized for something as innocent as smoking weed. Even harder drugs would be much easier and economically better, dealt with if it was legalized.
- chc 10y ago
  Grouping weed in with meth and bath salts doesn't seem like the foundation for a rational argument.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Weed is not grouped in with meth. Methamphetamine is legally prescribed in the US at a federal level. You can buy it at your local grocery store[1]. Hilariously, those same stores will restrict your purchase of cold medicine, so you don't go making unauthorized meth. They'll still sell you the pharma grade stuff though. Weed is illegal on a federal level in the US. Companies selling weed in states have a hard time operating. Companies selling methamphetamine are treated no differently than any other pharma company. 1: http://www.goodrx.com/methamphetamine?drug-name=methamphetamine http://www.goodrx.com/methamphetamine?drug-name=methamphetam...
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    It's a moral question first IMO.
mistermann 10y ago
> It's really a shitty experience for everyone involved. However, it creates many thousands of very well paid jobs for police, lawyers, prison employees, etc. - you know, the people that create the laws. Long ago I might have considered that there might be some justification for these laws (or anywhere there's rules really), but nowadays when you wonder why "the way something is" is, it's easier to just assume someone (or usually a group of people in collusion) is running a little rent seeking scam, and you'll probably be right most of the time.
- skylark 10y ago
  I find it hard to believe that there's some sort of conspiracy to keep police, lawyers, and prisons funded via laws against selling drugs. Have you considered that these laws are still in place simply because it's the status quo? Politicians voting on laws and drafting new ones must ultimately answer to their constituents. While the vast majority of things fly under the radar, "pro-drug" support is enough of a charged issue that supporting drug legalization is guaranteed to be used against you the next time you're running for office. Like it or not, logic be damned, drugs will continue to be illegal because the majority of Americans do not support drug legalization. The tides are starting to turn in some states on weed, but the average American outside of the most liberal states doesn't even support that. Good luck convincing them to legalize cocaine, ecstasy, LSD, or any "harder" drug.
  - delazeur 10y ago
    It's not a smoky room conspiracy. A quick google search turned up many articles about private prison companies funding lobbying[1], and I expect you will find similar results if you search for police union donations. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/...
    - skylark 10y ago
      While money in politics is certainly an issue which should be fixed, I still think it's disingenuous to say that drugs are illegal simply because parties profit from it. Overall I'd argue that the current state of drug laws is the will of the American people and that corporate efforts to lobby politicians actually falls in line with popular opinion. Again, I'm not necessarily supporting this point of view, I'm only trying to be reasonable.
Torgo 10y ago
Any time I read anything about legalizing all drugs I am struck by how that opinion would change if they tried to function with a heroin addiction.
- Archio 10y ago
  Why have you never tried heroin? I am struck by how often the response to that question is not "because it is illegal".
  - ponyous 10y ago
    Is this your actual experience? I have talked with few friends about this and all of them pretty much said: "I don't want to destroy my life"
    - Archio 10y ago
      That's precisely my point. Most people avoid heroin because they don't want to destroy their lives, not because it's illegal.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    I have never tried heroin because at the time when I learned about it, I looked at some information and came to the conclusion that it would not be a good decision to make given the physical addictiveness of the drug. To be honest, I attributed almost zero weight to the fact that it was illegal. Remember, opiates are legal now, with a prescription. I wonder, hypothetically if there was a drug where the effects were as pleasurable as I assume heroin must be, but with no physical addiction or nasty side effects, would people still be against it? What if, in the future, your cellphone could emit a frequency that generates pleasure in your brain, but as soon as you turn it off, you are back to normal. Would that be made illegal? Could it be simply a moral objection to unearned pleasure that people are really against?
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      Oh, I forgot to say that also it seemed much more dangerous to directly inject a drug of unknown providence into your vein than to smoke or swallow it. There's also a risk of infection that isn't there with drugs taken by a different method.
andrei_says_ 10y ago
Take a look at this short overview of research on addiction and the futility of the drug war. http://youtu.be/wJUXLqNHCaI http://youtu.be/wJUXLqNHCaI The Drug War approach is built on a few axioms: - people who take drugs would not do so if drugs are unavailable - making something illegal prevents it from happening - people who take drugs are somehow less moral or weaker or "bad" and deserve to be persecuted All of these have been disproven. Addiction is going through the roof, drugs are available (at a high cost and unpredictable quality), the jails are full and we are building more jails.
- hasenj 10y ago
  I think you're straw-manning here. The intent is certainly to make it more difficult, specially in the open. The premise is, if you want to do drugs, you're on your own. There's so much risk. You'll be dealing with bad people. You have do it in secret. etc.
  - andrei_says_ 10y ago
    Would you point out the straw-man argument? Does making it more difficult to get drugs prevent people suffering addiction from getting them? This is precisely one of the presumptions I was addressing. Also, one of the reasons people fall into addiction is that they feel "on their own".
    - hasenj 10y ago
      The strawman being: > people who take drugs would not do so if drugs are unavailable They can still do them, just, away from me (and my children, family, neighbours, community, etc) to a big risk to themselves. They alone should bear that risk. They should be looked down upon to deter other people from trying. Making something super risky does, believe it or not, deter people. Not all the people, but deters quite a lot of them.
      - Tiksi 10y ago
        > Making something super risky does, believe it or not, deter people. Not all the people, but deters quite a lot of them. Sure, it deters one chunk of people, but at the same time encourages a large amount of, arguably more risk prone (think teenagers rebelling) , people due to the allure of forbidden fruit. The people you manage to discourage are likely the people that wouldn't have had issues with drugs in the first place, even if they were partaking.
elesdee 10y ago
> I am struck by how much the industry would change if all drugs were legalized The "dark web" enabled me to have my first LSD trip a year ago. This trip as a catalytic experience, combined with daily hour of mindful meditation thereafter allowed me to stop the anti-depressants I had become dependent on. Obviously, no doctor or other pharma industry representative would have ever told me about this solution. We don't question "authority" anymore. So yes, the pharma industry would change drastically if all "drugs" [0] were made legal, which is precisely why they will be kept illegal. In the US, it's called "lobbying", in other parts of the World, it's called "corruption". Anti-depressants represent a gigantic market, fueled by ever-increasing pressure on our minds, and you sort of become dependent and it destroys things like your sex drive and therewith sabotages your relationship(s). [0] LSD does not lead to any kind of physical or psychological dependence and is not a "drug" in that sense. It can also remain a single experience (as opposed to anti-depressants) and still have that healing effect. One "trip" costs about USD 5.--, which means it's essentially free, compared to anti-depressants.
acctid4325 10y ago
To what extend it is society's job to protect people from themselves? So let's assume that we legalize 'drugs' for everyone: can I now buy pot and meth and acid and heroine and what not complete with shooting accessories from 7-Eleven? Are we seriously proposing that people in masses would be able to responsibly consume these newly available substances. If there is doubt, maybe we add, similar to obtaining a drivers license, a class of responsible substance use for kids to their high school curriculum. A 12-step program from mild to mind blowing experience that runs from elementary to the high school graduation. Which begs the question, do we make them free for all ages, subject to parents discretion, or maybe no drugs for minors? Or high schoolers? But then again, that would make it all less-free. These blanket statements about legalizing drugs made by arm chair i-dont-know-what equate to trolling, victim of which I feel I just fell ;-)
- selestify 10y ago
  It's not trolling, there are people (like me) who actually agree with what that post says. As to your points, alcohol is already legal. Which one of your points applies to other drugs but not alcohol?
- Swizec 10y ago
  So let's assume that we legalize alcohol for everyone: can I now buy beer and whisky and absinthe and whatnot complete with glasses from 7-Eleven? Are we seriously proposing that people in masses would be able to responsibly consume these substances. If ther is doubt, maybe we add, similar to obtaining a drivers license, a class of responsible alcohol use for kids to their high school curriculum. A 12-step program from mild to mind blowing drunkness that runs from elementary to the high school graduation. Which begs the question, do we make them free for all ages, subject to parents discretion, or maybe no alcohol for minors? Or high schoolers? But tehn again, that would make it less-free. And yet the world did not end when alcohol became legal where it was before illegal. Minors aren't allowed to use it. People of certain ages are allowed to use it with parents discretion. Many schools have classes about alcoholism and responsible drinking. Most people are fine with that. On the other hand, many high schoolers and below are prescribed controlled doses of amphetamines. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
theparanoid 10y ago
Darknet buying is the same as Amazon. Exactly the same. There's the sellers with suspiciously low prices and good ratings; which are always fake just like Amazon.
m82labs 10y ago
Flash Forward: The Altered State https://overcast.fm/+EmxPZFzWE https://overcast.fm/+EmxPZFzWE
tn13 10y ago
One sentence: It benefits the government. If government legalizes drug usage it would solve hell lot of problems in society and it will create far more legitimate arguments to force government to get rid of their control on other aspects such as surveillance, soda-tobacco taxes, prescription drugs etc. At this moment there are far too many commercial and vested interests involved in all this shit and radical reform wont come easy.
herbst 10y ago
I can not confirm this experience at all.

abfan1127 10y ago

Please see Alcohol Prohibition in the United States (at least back then they amended the US Constitution to do it legally).

idlewords 10y ago
From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. The main reason it failed as policy is chemistry. You can make ethanol from anything—even a cactus, as Mexico has taught us.
- digler999 10y ago
  so if alcohol weren't so easy to make, like say it had to be imported from the Golden Triangle, it would have never been smuggled (in massive quantities) past the border ?
  - Retra 10y ago
    That would have made it a border control issue, not an "everybody has an uncle that does it" issue.
- rhizome 10y ago
  From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. I don't know about that, didn't lead poisoning go way up?
  - blacksmith_tb 10y ago
    And methanol poisoning. Not to mention other nasty things that were intentionally added to industrial alcohol to poison anyone who tried to drink it [1] - now, it would be interesting to try and get a sense for how many drunk drivers were kept off the roads during Prohibition, but I doubt most would consider it an unalloyed success, even then. 1: http://www.vox.com/2014/8/8/5975605/alcohol-prohibition-poison http://www.vox.com/2014/8/8/5975605/alcohol-prohibition-pois...
    - TylerE 10y ago
      Gotta wonder how much of a negative impact on drunk driving the technology had... I have to imagine it's a lot harder to pull off when everything is a non-synchronized manual transmission.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      I was trying to make a joke about bullets, but bad drinks were definitely a problem,too!
  - jmcgough 10y ago
    There was also "jake leg" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_ginger#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_ginger#History)
- randall 10y ago
  (citation required, also addressing parent's points would be helpful.)
  - idlewords 10y ago
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470475/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470475/ See also the very entertaining book by Daniel Okrent.
    - hx87 10y ago
      Even according to that article, Prohibition only worked in a public health sense if you considered a reduction in alcohol consumption an absolute public health good in itself. I don't know about you, but drinking 50 gallons a year of legitimate, old school, high-quality pre-prohibition beer and wine doesn't exactly sound worse than drinking 25 gallons a year of moonshine from questionable sources.
      - idlewords 10y ago
        It is an absolute good, in that death rates from alcoholism and its diseases are directly related to consumption rates. Cirrhosis, for example, fell by some 20%. But there are also follow-on effects, like the death of saloon culture, a drop in domestic violence, and lower infant mortality. This stuff is documented, so you don't actually have to deduce it from first principles. http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Depew.pdf http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Depew.pdf
        alphydan 10y ago
        >> death of saloon culture, a drop in domestic violence, and lower infant mortality Didn't all those things happen in other countries which didn't implement prohibition? Are you sure it wasn't a natural evolution of society rather than a direct cause-effect from making alcohol harder to get?
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Today you can do almost anything easily.
- pzone 10y ago
  But the whole point is that an objective function where you measure success only in terms of infant mortality, number of addicts etc. is absurd. Prohibition ruins people's lives, when they are sent to jail, marked as felons and excluded from the job market. We spend billions and billions of dollars enforcing these laws. And believe it or not, many people just enjoy drinking, and do it without any negative consequences to themselves or others. You can't ignore all of that and say prohibition is justified just because it (arguably) improves things on a single dimension.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    That is a great point. I have no idea how anyone could be so brainwashed as to not agree. How many ruined lives is one less arbitrarily illegal drug user worth? I think that the kind of people who would agree with prohibition at any cost are followers who won't think for themselves, have no knowledge or interest in history or hopes for a better future, and would have happily extolled the virtues of drug legalization if that had happened to be the policy at the time. These people seem to attribute no value to civil liberties at all.
- OhHeyItsE 10y ago
  > From a public health perspective, Prohibition was a success. Do you count skyrocketing murder rate and gov't-poisoned hooch in your metric for success?
  - idlewords 10y ago
    Sure do. It takes a lot of murder and poison to offset a 20% drop in cirrhosis. Read the paper linked below.
    - adrusi 10y ago
      If you're only counting death rates then yeah, the murder is better than the cirrhosis. But the actual experience of living in a society where anyone might be murdered in the street is significantly worse than the experience of living in a society where you can just not drink and not get cirrhosis. Obviously alcoholics can't just "not drink", but prohibition was never going to be a pleasant experience for them.
    - philhartmanonic 10y ago
      Great, and how do you quantify the value of the freedom to live your life the way you want to? Soa decrease in deaths of cirrhosis is beneficial, presumably as it extends lives. Is the extension of life an inherent benefit? If you lived for 10,000 years in abject misery would that be better than dying in 6 months? Clearly, it's conditional. Life is complex, every life is unique, so you can safely assume you aren't going to make things better when you try to violently protect people from themselves. If you were arguing about the drop in domestic abuse that'd be one thing, but cirrhosis from alcohol consumption is self-inflicted. Universally falls squarely in the "mind your own business, jack" space.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]

ThomPete 10y ago

Yes it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The answer none of the people who are for the criminalization is why should a victimless action be considered a crime. Why should otherwise law abiding citizens be criminalized for something as innocent as smoking weed. Even harder drugs would be much easier and economically better, dealt with if it was legalized.

chc 10y ago
Grouping weed in with meth and bath salts doesn't seem like the foundation for a rational argument.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Weed is not grouped in with meth. Methamphetamine is legally prescribed in the US at a federal level. You can buy it at your local grocery store[1]. Hilariously, those same stores will restrict your purchase of cold medicine, so you don't go making unauthorized meth. They'll still sell you the pharma grade stuff though. Weed is illegal on a federal level in the US. Companies selling weed in states have a hard time operating. Companies selling methamphetamine are treated no differently than any other pharma company. 1: http://www.goodrx.com/methamphetamine?drug-name=methamphetamine http://www.goodrx.com/methamphetamine?drug-name=methamphetam...
- ThomPete 10y ago
  It's a moral question first IMO.

mistermann 10y ago

> It's really a shitty experience for everyone involved. However, it creates many thousands of very well paid jobs for police, lawyers, prison employees, etc. - you know, the people that create the laws. Long ago I might have considered that there might be some justification for these laws (or anywhere there's rules really), but nowadays when you wonder why "the way something is" is, it's easier to just assume someone (or usually a group of people in collusion) is running a little rent seeking scam, and you'll probably be right most of the time.

skylark 10y ago
I find it hard to believe that there's some sort of conspiracy to keep police, lawyers, and prisons funded via laws against selling drugs. Have you considered that these laws are still in place simply because it's the status quo? Politicians voting on laws and drafting new ones must ultimately answer to their constituents. While the vast majority of things fly under the radar, "pro-drug" support is enough of a charged issue that supporting drug legalization is guaranteed to be used against you the next time you're running for office. Like it or not, logic be damned, drugs will continue to be illegal because the majority of Americans do not support drug legalization. The tides are starting to turn in some states on weed, but the average American outside of the most liberal states doesn't even support that. Good luck convincing them to legalize cocaine, ecstasy, LSD, or any "harder" drug.
- delazeur 10y ago
  It's not a smoky room conspiracy. A quick google search turned up many articles about private prison companies funding lobbying[1], and I expect you will find similar results if you search for police union donations. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/...
  - skylark 10y ago
    While money in politics is certainly an issue which should be fixed, I still think it's disingenuous to say that drugs are illegal simply because parties profit from it. Overall I'd argue that the current state of drug laws is the will of the American people and that corporate efforts to lobby politicians actually falls in line with popular opinion. Again, I'm not necessarily supporting this point of view, I'm only trying to be reasonable.

Torgo 10y ago

Any time I read anything about legalizing all drugs I am struck by how that opinion would change if they tried to function with a heroin addiction.

Archio 10y ago
Why have you never tried heroin? I am struck by how often the response to that question is not "because it is illegal".
- ponyous 10y ago
  Is this your actual experience? I have talked with few friends about this and all of them pretty much said: "I don't want to destroy my life"
  - Archio 10y ago
    That's precisely my point. Most people avoid heroin because they don't want to destroy their lives, not because it's illegal.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  I have never tried heroin because at the time when I learned about it, I looked at some information and came to the conclusion that it would not be a good decision to make given the physical addictiveness of the drug. To be honest, I attributed almost zero weight to the fact that it was illegal. Remember, opiates are legal now, with a prescription. I wonder, hypothetically if there was a drug where the effects were as pleasurable as I assume heroin must be, but with no physical addiction or nasty side effects, would people still be against it? What if, in the future, your cellphone could emit a frequency that generates pleasure in your brain, but as soon as you turn it off, you are back to normal. Would that be made illegal? Could it be simply a moral objection to unearned pleasure that people are really against?
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    Oh, I forgot to say that also it seemed much more dangerous to directly inject a drug of unknown providence into your vein than to smoke or swallow it. There's also a risk of infection that isn't there with drugs taken by a different method.

andrei_says_ 10y ago

Take a look at this short overview of research on addiction and the futility of the drug war. http://youtu.be/wJUXLqNHCaI http://youtu.be/wJUXLqNHCaI The Drug War approach is built on a few axioms: - people who take drugs would not do so if drugs are unavailable - making something illegal prevents it from happening - people who take drugs are somehow less moral or weaker or "bad" and deserve to be persecuted All of these have been disproven. Addiction is going through the roof, drugs are available (at a high cost and unpredictable quality), the jails are full and we are building more jails.

hasenj 10y ago
I think you're straw-manning here. The intent is certainly to make it more difficult, specially in the open. The premise is, if you want to do drugs, you're on your own. There's so much risk. You'll be dealing with bad people. You have do it in secret. etc.
- andrei_says_ 10y ago
  Would you point out the straw-man argument? Does making it more difficult to get drugs prevent people suffering addiction from getting them? This is precisely one of the presumptions I was addressing. Also, one of the reasons people fall into addiction is that they feel "on their own".
  - hasenj 10y ago
    The strawman being: > people who take drugs would not do so if drugs are unavailable They can still do them, just, away from me (and my children, family, neighbours, community, etc) to a big risk to themselves. They alone should bear that risk. They should be looked down upon to deter other people from trying. Making something super risky does, believe it or not, deter people. Not all the people, but deters quite a lot of them.
    - Tiksi 10y ago
      > Making something super risky does, believe it or not, deter people. Not all the people, but deters quite a lot of them. Sure, it deters one chunk of people, but at the same time encourages a large amount of, arguably more risk prone (think teenagers rebelling) , people due to the allure of forbidden fruit. The people you manage to discourage are likely the people that wouldn't have had issues with drugs in the first place, even if they were partaking.

elesdee 10y ago

> I am struck by how much the industry would change if all drugs were legalized The "dark web" enabled me to have my first LSD trip a year ago. This trip as a catalytic experience, combined with daily hour of mindful meditation thereafter allowed me to stop the anti-depressants I had become dependent on. Obviously, no doctor or other pharma industry representative would have ever told me about this solution. We don't question "authority" anymore. So yes, the pharma industry would change drastically if all "drugs" [0] were made legal, which is precisely why they will be kept illegal. In the US, it's called "lobbying", in other parts of the World, it's called "corruption". Anti-depressants represent a gigantic market, fueled by ever-increasing pressure on our minds, and you sort of become dependent and it destroys things like your sex drive and therewith sabotages your relationship(s). [0] LSD does not lead to any kind of physical or psychological dependence and is not a "drug" in that sense. It can also remain a single experience (as opposed to anti-depressants) and still have that healing effect. One "trip" costs about USD 5.--, which means it's essentially free, compared to anti-depressants.

acctid4325 10y ago

To what extend it is society's job to protect people from themselves? So let's assume that we legalize 'drugs' for everyone: can I now buy pot and meth and acid and heroine and what not complete with shooting accessories from 7-Eleven? Are we seriously proposing that people in masses would be able to responsibly consume these newly available substances. If there is doubt, maybe we add, similar to obtaining a drivers license, a class of responsible substance use for kids to their high school curriculum. A 12-step program from mild to mind blowing experience that runs from elementary to the high school graduation. Which begs the question, do we make them free for all ages, subject to parents discretion, or maybe no drugs for minors? Or high schoolers? But then again, that would make it all less-free. These blanket statements about legalizing drugs made by arm chair i-dont-know-what equate to trolling, victim of which I feel I just fell ;-)

selestify 10y ago
It's not trolling, there are people (like me) who actually agree with what that post says. As to your points, alcohol is already legal. Which one of your points applies to other drugs but not alcohol?
Swizec 10y ago
So let's assume that we legalize alcohol for everyone: can I now buy beer and whisky and absinthe and whatnot complete with glasses from 7-Eleven? Are we seriously proposing that people in masses would be able to responsibly consume these substances. If ther is doubt, maybe we add, similar to obtaining a drivers license, a class of responsible alcohol use for kids to their high school curriculum. A 12-step program from mild to mind blowing drunkness that runs from elementary to the high school graduation. Which begs the question, do we make them free for all ages, subject to parents discretion, or maybe no alcohol for minors? Or high schoolers? But tehn again, that would make it less-free. And yet the world did not end when alcohol became legal where it was before illegal. Minors aren't allowed to use it. People of certain ages are allowed to use it with parents discretion. Many schools have classes about alcoholism and responsible drinking. Most people are fine with that. On the other hand, many high schoolers and below are prescribed controlled doses of amphetamines. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

theparanoid 10y ago

Darknet buying is the same as Amazon. Exactly the same. There's the sellers with suspiciously low prices and good ratings; which are always fake just like Amazon.

m82labs 10y ago

Flash Forward: The Altered State https://overcast.fm/+EmxPZFzWE https://overcast.fm/+EmxPZFzWE

tn13 10y ago

One sentence: It benefits the government. If government legalizes drug usage it would solve hell lot of problems in society and it will create far more legitimate arguments to force government to get rid of their control on other aspects such as surveillance, soda-tobacco taxes, prescription drugs etc. At this moment there are far too many commercial and vested interests involved in all this shit and radical reform wont come easy.

herbst 10y ago

I can not confirm this experience at all.