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> It's worse than useless (like negative net effect) in terms of protecting society and individuals from the harms of drug abuse. I wouldn't say that. For gene

by ythl 10y ago

> It's worse than useless (like negative net effect) in terms of protecting society and individuals from the harms of drug abuse. I wouldn't say that. For generally law-abiding citizens like me, the lack of availability has done wonders to protect me from drugs. At some point or another in my life, I've been tempted to experiment with the legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco, etc.). I've never been tempted to try LSD or cocaine (for example), because there is currently no legal way to obtain it and I definitely don't feel like engaging in risky activities just to try. Making all drugs legal and accessible will definitely have a negative impact on one portion of the population (curious people like me). A certain percentage of curious but otherwise law-abiding people will destroy their lives once drugs are legalized.

chimeracoder 10y ago
> At some point or another in my life, I've been tempted to experiment with the legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco, etc.). I've never been tempted to try LSD or cocaine (for example), because there is currently no legal way to obtain it and I definitely don't feel like engaging in risky activities just to try. There are a lot of assumptions in there - the biggest one is that, in a legal market, drugs which are currently illegal today would still be more dangerous than drugs which already are legal. That's a big assumption, and there's plenty of evidence to suggest the opposite. For example, the success of diacetylmorphine maintenance strongly suggests that it is just as possible to be a regular user of heroin as it is to be a person who drinks regularly in the evenings but otherwise lives a 'normal' life. On that note, we dramatically overestimate the danger of drugs like cocaine and dramatically underestimate the danger of drugs like alcohol and caffeine. Alcohol, incidentally, is one of the only drugs for which the withdrawal can literally be fatal[0]. (By contrast, while heroin withdrawal can cause dehydration and other problems, as long as those are treated correctly, the direct effects of the withdrawal are non-fatal)[1]. [0] Benzodiazepines can also cause the same effect. [1] This does not mean that heroin detoxification is easy or should be taken lightly. Lots of things can still go wrong, and it's one of the reason why detox programs exist. But partly due to the legal status of heroin, we ascribe these to the 'danger' of heroin as a drug, all the while ignoring that alcohol detoxification shares all of these same challenges and many more.
- thrownblown 10y ago
  methadone gets you just as high as heroin. the only difference is that its made by in a lab pharmaceuticals companies and controlled by the government. and methadone withdrawal is fatal too. this recent John Oliver piece on opiods holds a lot of truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdPrQFjo2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdPrQFjo2o Benzodiazepines are far more addictive than opioids, and while their abuse has declined a bit, a lot of people still abuse xanax and klonopin, and before that valium. that' a lot of doctors directly and indirectly enabling all those addicts. why hasn't the war on drugs taken on the opioid and benzo manufacturers? it makes me wonder why pharmaceutical companies and their executives aren't locked up like the drug kingpins they are?
  - not_kurt_godel 10y ago
    > why hasn't the war on drugs taken on the opioid and benzo manufacturers? Probably because it has little to do with what would actually be good for society, and more to do with filling the pockets of people who maliciously abuse moral rhetoric to their own advantage.
  - mveety 10y ago
    Methadone withdrawal isn't fatal. No opioid has fatal withdrawal symptoms. Anyone that tells you that doesn't know what they're talking about or is actively lying to you. And frankly, it's a lot better that people use pharmaceuticals recreationally. They're of known purity and strength, which makes overdoses less likely, and for opioids, protects the user from long term effects. Most opioids are safe to use basically indefinitely and have few, if any, long term detrimental effects for your average person. You can't make the claim that drug A is more or less addictive that drug B. Addiction has little to do with the substance used as far as is known and there is no way to measure addictiveness objectively. Also, methadone is used because it's legal, politically safe, and has a long half-life. The long half-life is useful because the person using it doesn't need to dose as frequently and it lets politicians and addiction treatment professionals pat themselves on the back because they got the patient off of heroin.
loeg 10y ago
I agree in general. Criminalization keeps a substantial population from using drugs. > people will destroy their lives once drugs are legalized I don't think this statement is really a good summary of that, though. The better example is prohibition. I wouldn't say most people who consume alcohol are destroying their lives, but alcohol has a moderate impact on the liver. Regular use increases liver-related disease. And during the prohibition, liver disease went down starkly. Say we legalize everything. Even if the additional addiction is negligible, any minor to moderate health detriment spread across a larger population (due to legalization) is a big societal cost. Anyway, I think there is still a decent argument to be made about individual freedom being worth the cost, and a decent argument to be made about a substitution effect (given how bad we already know alcohol to be, a legal drug just needs to be no worse than alcohol).
- WalterBright 10y ago
  > Criminalization keeps a substantial population from using drugs. Alcohol consumption went up during Prohibition, and went back down after it was repealed.
  - loeg 10y ago
    I don't believe that is true. Do you have a citation for that claim? E.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States#Rates_of_consumption_during_Prohibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat... > Scholars estimate that consumption dropped to a low of about 60% of pre-prohibition levels around 1925, rising to almost 80% before the law was officially repealed.[citation needed] After the prohibition was implemented, alcohol continued to be consumed. However, how much compared to pre-Prohibition levels remains unclear. Studies examining the rates of cirrhosis deaths as a proxy for alcohol consumption estimated a decrease in consumption of 10–20%.[96][97][98] However, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's studies show clear epidemiological evidence that "overall cirrhosis mortality rates declined precipitously with the introduction of Prohibition," despite widespread flouting of the law.[99] One study reviewing city-level drunkenness arrests came to a similar result.[100] And, yet another study examining "mortality, mental health and crime statistics" found that alcohol consumption fell, at first, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level; but, over the next several years, increased to about 60–70 percent of its pre-prohibition level.[101]
mcbits 10y ago
Right now a percentage of otherwise law-abiding people have had their lives destroyed by the justice system because they got a little too curious about drugs, and still more by all the crime and conflict that's fueled by prohibition and artificially high prices. And another percentage of people overdose or ingest toxic adulterants because the purity of street drugs is unstable and unregulated.
- ythl 10y ago
  > Right now a percentage of otherwise law-abiding people have had their lives destroyed by the justice system because they got a little too curious about drugs, and still more by all the crime and conflict that's fueled by prohibition and artificially high prices That's an argument for decriminalization, not legalization.
  - mcbits 10y ago
    It's an argument for any policy that would reduce harm to drug users without causing additional, worse harm of its own. Decriminalization, as it's usually conceived, still sends billions of dollars flowing into underground markets and criminal subcultures.
pstuart 10y ago
Or maybe you'd try LSD in the right setting and frame of mind and have your consciousness expanded. Your argument is offensive. If you need to be protected from your lack of self control then to make the rest of the world suffer is depraved.
- ythl 10y ago
  > Your argument is offensive. My argument is not offensive, you simply chose to be offended. > If you need to be protected from your lack of self control then to make the rest of the world suffer is depraved. Yeah, let's get rid of all the guard rails on mountain roads too. Some of us like the adrenaline of getting near the edge and if you need to be protected from your lack of self control, too bad. My desire to ride the edge should trump your desire for guard rails... right?
  - pstuart 10y ago
    Apples and oranges. Drug use is a personal choice and the government has already indicated they're ok with people killing themselves with alcohol and tobacco. I'm offended by your reasoning and lack of insight into the overall societal cost of having certain temptations kept out of your reach. This not just about getting high, it's about the crime, corruption and death that comes from this madness. I'm guessing you are a relatively intelligent person - try thins thought experiment: Do you drink alcohol? Can you control your intake? Know anybody who does? Know anybody who is an alcoholic? Do you accept that most people who use it can enjoy it but there are some unfortunates who can't and that's just the price of the freedom to drink? Now replace the word "alcohol" with "drugs". Because guess what? Alcohol is a drug too, except it's socially acceptable. I'm not trying to be an asshole, but your original premise comes off as "sure, other people may be fucked by the system now, but it works pretty ok by me so I see no need to change it"
    - ythl 10y ago
      > Do you accept that most people who use it can enjoy it but there are some unfortunates who can't and that's just the price of the freedom to drink? Do you accept that most people who own and use guns do so responsibly but that there are some unfortunates who can't and that's just the price of the freedom to own and use guns?
chillingeffect 10y ago
> protect me from drugs. > definitely have a negative impact What would you forecast the expected effects of you trying LSD or cocaine would be? A night of amusing delusions? Heightened spiritual awareness? A one-way ticket to pus-oozing blowjobs in bus station parking lots? Part of the effectiveness of the Drug War has been to implant a binary perspective on the dangers of drugs: uncompromising, guaranteed, full-scale disaster. They manage to re-arrange everyday peoples' notions of cause and effect to make it seem as if the drugs are the problem leading to emotional disaster. This is a convenient scapegoat. The real situation is the breakdown and loss of faith in the fully industrialized world is causing more people to want to escape than ever, breakdowns in family structure, financial stress, physical stress, loss of freedom and so on. These things can't be fixed easily and despite all of the drug arrests, people are continuously becoming more desperate.
- ythl 10y ago
  > What would you forecast the expected effects of you trying LSD or cocaine would be? For me? Probably not much. But who knows, maybe I'll try it the first time, nothing happens. 10 years later I fall on hard times and then I try it again to try and deal with my situation, this time become addicted, and then make my problems an order of magnitude worse. That's how alcoholism generally works.
  - marcos123 10y ago
    Ah, I see. According to you, the world needs laws on the books to keep dunces from harming themselves in all the different ways possible. Ythl, I don't mean to scare you, but did you know you can die from drinking too much water? And can you believe there aren't yet any laws preventing this?! Scary, right? Source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CHICO-Fraternity-pledge-died-of-water-poisoning-2733418.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CHICO-Fraternity-pledg...
    - chillingeffect 10y ago
      I kinda agree with you, but I think it's a bit harsh (and unpersuasive) to call him a dunce. Take a look at my post where I analyze his reaction a bit more charitably/emotionally. It's not stupidity on his part at all, it's just fear. And it's understandable that there's fear, because look at the world we're in! Fear is generated constantly. It takes effort and a gentle intervention to snap people out of it and encourage them to grow and become responsible and let others live freely.
rwmj 10y ago
Apart from anything else it seems very naive to imagine that you have no access to (currently) illegal drugs. Your son / friend / neighbour / university pal / co-worker could probably supply you with many common substances. Asking a friend or relative isn't normally a "risky activity".
- khedoros1 10y ago
  Not to agree with yhtl's general line of argument, but right now, I'm not sure that I know anyone I could ask, especially if part of the implied goal is to get it quickly. In college, I knew half a dozen people, and I'm positive that someone among my coworkers has access (and would be discreet), but I have no idea who. Not knowing who to ask is a practical equivalent of having no one that I can ask.
alasdair_ 10y ago
Legality aside, if you are able to post on HN right now, you're likely able to go on one of the many tor-enabled drug marketplaces and buy anything you wish with bitcoins.
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
> Making all drugs legal and accessible will definitely have a negative impact on one portion of the population (curious people like me). You aren't the same sort of curios. I'm the sort that goes to Amsterdam as a vacation spot. I tried out things when I was younger. Drug education? Mine was in the 80's and 90's. I figured it was a bit ... overblown. The only addictions I've truly had were to nicotine and caffeine, both of which I have today. Completely legal too. The thing is that it was possible for me to combine the anti-drug propaganda, tone it down some, and balance it with what I saw around me. I asked folks questions about stuff. We can educate, control strength and purity, and invest in treatment programs. We can educate on safety like say we do with alcohol. We can invest in much improved public transportation. And so on. > A certain percentage of curious but otherwise law-abiding people will destroy their lives once drugs are legalized I actually think the small percentage whose lives get ruined due to drugs will be smaller than the percentage of lives that are ruined and uprooted due to the war on drugs. Folks have lost houses and their children for pot - or lsd, even if they are as responsible as you can be with kids (relative babysitting for example, or they are at their mom/dad's house). Many have went to jail or prison and this is pretty common. Most folks don't get addicted to drugs - a few have higher addiction rates, and I think we can minimize that with proper education and investment.
- MaysonL 10y ago
  Interesting side note: anesthesiology has the highest substance abuse rate of any medical specialty: over 25% will experience abuse at some point in their career. from http://www.vice.com/read/the-first-fentanyl-addict http://www.vice.com/read/the-first-fentanyl-addict "Roughly 10 to 14 per cent of all physicians will be substance-dependent over their lifetime, and the incidence in anesthesia providers is 2.5 times higher than other physicians, according to a five-year outcome study from 16 physician health programs in the US."
  - Broken_Hippo 10y ago
    I have read that before and I still find it intriguing. I know the rates are high with nursing as well. I often think it has something to do with the work or work environment when there are such trends, and start working to figure out why or if anything relieves it.
Johnny555 10y ago
I wouldn't say that. For generally law-abiding citizens like me, the lack of availability has done wonders to protect me from drugs. At some point or another in my life, I've been tempted to experiment with the legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco, etc.) I've never been tempted to try LSD or cocaine (for example), because there is currently no legal way to obtain it Is the law really the only thing that keeps you away from harder drugs? Don't you think that it's your own willpower? Like you, I'm generally law abiding, but thanks to certain friends, I have easy access to a number of illegal drugs - and it's in an relatively safe environment where my chance of getting caught is quite low. But despite that access, the only drugs I've ever used in my life are alcohol and marijuana (well ok, I'm literally addicted to caffeine). I've never even tried cigarettes. It's not the law that keeps me away from certain drugs, I just don't want to do them.
beedogs 10y ago
> I've never been tempted to try LSD or cocaine (for example), because there is currently no legal way to obtain it and I definitely don't feel like engaging in risky activities just to try. That's a real shame. LSD is incredible.

by ythl 10y ago

chimeracoder 10y ago

> At some point or another in my life, I've been tempted to experiment with the legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco, etc.). I've never been tempted to try LSD or cocaine (for example), because there is currently no legal way to obtain it and I definitely don't feel like engaging in risky activities just to try. There are a lot of assumptions in there - the biggest one is that, in a legal market, drugs which are currently illegal today would still be more dangerous than drugs which already are legal. That's a big assumption, and there's plenty of evidence to suggest the opposite. For example, the success of diacetylmorphine maintenance strongly suggests that it is just as possible to be a regular user of heroin as it is to be a person who drinks regularly in the evenings but otherwise lives a 'normal' life. On that note, we dramatically overestimate the danger of drugs like cocaine and dramatically underestimate the danger of drugs like alcohol and caffeine. Alcohol, incidentally, is one of the only drugs for which the withdrawal can literally be fatal[0]. (By contrast, while heroin withdrawal can cause dehydration and other problems, as long as those are treated correctly, the direct effects of the withdrawal are non-fatal)[1]. [0] Benzodiazepines can also cause the same effect. [1] This does not mean that heroin detoxification is easy or should be taken lightly. Lots of things can still go wrong, and it's one of the reason why detox programs exist. But partly due to the legal status of heroin, we ascribe these to the 'danger' of heroin as a drug, all the while ignoring that alcohol detoxification shares all of these same challenges and many more.

thrownblown 10y ago
methadone gets you just as high as heroin. the only difference is that its made by in a lab pharmaceuticals companies and controlled by the government. and methadone withdrawal is fatal too. this recent John Oliver piece on opiods holds a lot of truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdPrQFjo2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdPrQFjo2o Benzodiazepines are far more addictive than opioids, and while their abuse has declined a bit, a lot of people still abuse xanax and klonopin, and before that valium. that' a lot of doctors directly and indirectly enabling all those addicts. why hasn't the war on drugs taken on the opioid and benzo manufacturers? it makes me wonder why pharmaceutical companies and their executives aren't locked up like the drug kingpins they are?
- not_kurt_godel 10y ago
  > why hasn't the war on drugs taken on the opioid and benzo manufacturers? Probably because it has little to do with what would actually be good for society, and more to do with filling the pockets of people who maliciously abuse moral rhetoric to their own advantage.
- mveety 10y ago
  Methadone withdrawal isn't fatal. No opioid has fatal withdrawal symptoms. Anyone that tells you that doesn't know what they're talking about or is actively lying to you. And frankly, it's a lot better that people use pharmaceuticals recreationally. They're of known purity and strength, which makes overdoses less likely, and for opioids, protects the user from long term effects. Most opioids are safe to use basically indefinitely and have few, if any, long term detrimental effects for your average person. You can't make the claim that drug A is more or less addictive that drug B. Addiction has little to do with the substance used as far as is known and there is no way to measure addictiveness objectively. Also, methadone is used because it's legal, politically safe, and has a long half-life. The long half-life is useful because the person using it doesn't need to dose as frequently and it lets politicians and addiction treatment professionals pat themselves on the back because they got the patient off of heroin.

loeg 10y ago

I agree in general. Criminalization keeps a substantial population from using drugs. > people will destroy their lives once drugs are legalized I don't think this statement is really a good summary of that, though. The better example is prohibition. I wouldn't say most people who consume alcohol are destroying their lives, but alcohol has a moderate impact on the liver. Regular use increases liver-related disease. And during the prohibition, liver disease went down starkly. Say we legalize everything. Even if the additional addiction is negligible, any minor to moderate health detriment spread across a larger population (due to legalization) is a big societal cost. Anyway, I think there is still a decent argument to be made about individual freedom being worth the cost, and a decent argument to be made about a substitution effect (given how bad we already know alcohol to be, a legal drug just needs to be no worse than alcohol).

WalterBright 10y ago
> Criminalization keeps a substantial population from using drugs. Alcohol consumption went up during Prohibition, and went back down after it was repealed.
- loeg 10y ago
  I don't believe that is true. Do you have a citation for that claim? E.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States#Rates_of_consumption_during_Prohibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat... > Scholars estimate that consumption dropped to a low of about 60% of pre-prohibition levels around 1925, rising to almost 80% before the law was officially repealed.[citation needed] After the prohibition was implemented, alcohol continued to be consumed. However, how much compared to pre-Prohibition levels remains unclear. Studies examining the rates of cirrhosis deaths as a proxy for alcohol consumption estimated a decrease in consumption of 10–20%.[96][97][98] However, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's studies show clear epidemiological evidence that "overall cirrhosis mortality rates declined precipitously with the introduction of Prohibition," despite widespread flouting of the law.[99] One study reviewing city-level drunkenness arrests came to a similar result.[100] And, yet another study examining "mortality, mental health and crime statistics" found that alcohol consumption fell, at first, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level; but, over the next several years, increased to about 60–70 percent of its pre-prohibition level.[101]

mcbits 10y ago

Right now a percentage of otherwise law-abiding people have had their lives destroyed by the justice system because they got a little too curious about drugs, and still more by all the crime and conflict that's fueled by prohibition and artificially high prices. And another percentage of people overdose or ingest toxic adulterants because the purity of street drugs is unstable and unregulated.

ythl 10y ago
> Right now a percentage of otherwise law-abiding people have had their lives destroyed by the justice system because they got a little too curious about drugs, and still more by all the crime and conflict that's fueled by prohibition and artificially high prices That's an argument for decriminalization, not legalization.
- mcbits 10y ago
  It's an argument for any policy that would reduce harm to drug users without causing additional, worse harm of its own. Decriminalization, as it's usually conceived, still sends billions of dollars flowing into underground markets and criminal subcultures.

pstuart 10y ago

Or maybe you'd try LSD in the right setting and frame of mind and have your consciousness expanded. Your argument is offensive. If you need to be protected from your lack of self control then to make the rest of the world suffer is depraved.

ythl 10y ago
> Your argument is offensive. My argument is not offensive, you simply chose to be offended. > If you need to be protected from your lack of self control then to make the rest of the world suffer is depraved. Yeah, let's get rid of all the guard rails on mountain roads too. Some of us like the adrenaline of getting near the edge and if you need to be protected from your lack of self control, too bad. My desire to ride the edge should trump your desire for guard rails... right?
- pstuart 10y ago
  Apples and oranges. Drug use is a personal choice and the government has already indicated they're ok with people killing themselves with alcohol and tobacco. I'm offended by your reasoning and lack of insight into the overall societal cost of having certain temptations kept out of your reach. This not just about getting high, it's about the crime, corruption and death that comes from this madness. I'm guessing you are a relatively intelligent person - try thins thought experiment: Do you drink alcohol? Can you control your intake? Know anybody who does? Know anybody who is an alcoholic? Do you accept that most people who use it can enjoy it but there are some unfortunates who can't and that's just the price of the freedom to drink? Now replace the word "alcohol" with "drugs". Because guess what? Alcohol is a drug too, except it's socially acceptable. I'm not trying to be an asshole, but your original premise comes off as "sure, other people may be fucked by the system now, but it works pretty ok by me so I see no need to change it"
  - ythl 10y ago
    > Do you accept that most people who use it can enjoy it but there are some unfortunates who can't and that's just the price of the freedom to drink? Do you accept that most people who own and use guns do so responsibly but that there are some unfortunates who can't and that's just the price of the freedom to own and use guns?

chillingeffect 10y ago

> protect me from drugs. > definitely have a negative impact What would you forecast the expected effects of you trying LSD or cocaine would be? A night of amusing delusions? Heightened spiritual awareness? A one-way ticket to pus-oozing blowjobs in bus station parking lots? Part of the effectiveness of the Drug War has been to implant a binary perspective on the dangers of drugs: uncompromising, guaranteed, full-scale disaster. They manage to re-arrange everyday peoples' notions of cause and effect to make it seem as if the drugs are the problem leading to emotional disaster. This is a convenient scapegoat. The real situation is the breakdown and loss of faith in the fully industrialized world is causing more people to want to escape than ever, breakdowns in family structure, financial stress, physical stress, loss of freedom and so on. These things can't be fixed easily and despite all of the drug arrests, people are continuously becoming more desperate.

ythl 10y ago
> What would you forecast the expected effects of you trying LSD or cocaine would be? For me? Probably not much. But who knows, maybe I'll try it the first time, nothing happens. 10 years later I fall on hard times and then I try it again to try and deal with my situation, this time become addicted, and then make my problems an order of magnitude worse. That's how alcoholism generally works.
- marcos123 10y ago
  Ah, I see. According to you, the world needs laws on the books to keep dunces from harming themselves in all the different ways possible. Ythl, I don't mean to scare you, but did you know you can die from drinking too much water? And can you believe there aren't yet any laws preventing this?! Scary, right? Source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CHICO-Fraternity-pledge-died-of-water-poisoning-2733418.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CHICO-Fraternity-pledg...
  - chillingeffect 10y ago
    I kinda agree with you, but I think it's a bit harsh (and unpersuasive) to call him a dunce. Take a look at my post where I analyze his reaction a bit more charitably/emotionally. It's not stupidity on his part at all, it's just fear. And it's understandable that there's fear, because look at the world we're in! Fear is generated constantly. It takes effort and a gentle intervention to snap people out of it and encourage them to grow and become responsible and let others live freely.

rwmj 10y ago

Apart from anything else it seems very naive to imagine that you have no access to (currently) illegal drugs. Your son / friend / neighbour / university pal / co-worker could probably supply you with many common substances. Asking a friend or relative isn't normally a "risky activity".

khedoros1 10y ago
Not to agree with yhtl's general line of argument, but right now, I'm not sure that I know anyone I could ask, especially if part of the implied goal is to get it quickly. In college, I knew half a dozen people, and I'm positive that someone among my coworkers has access (and would be discreet), but I have no idea who. Not knowing who to ask is a practical equivalent of having no one that I can ask.

alasdair_ 10y ago

Legality aside, if you are able to post on HN right now, you're likely able to go on one of the many tor-enabled drug marketplaces and buy anything you wish with bitcoins.

Broken_Hippo 10y ago

> Making all drugs legal and accessible will definitely have a negative impact on one portion of the population (curious people like me). You aren't the same sort of curios. I'm the sort that goes to Amsterdam as a vacation spot. I tried out things when I was younger. Drug education? Mine was in the 80's and 90's. I figured it was a bit ... overblown. The only addictions I've truly had were to nicotine and caffeine, both of which I have today. Completely legal too. The thing is that it was possible for me to combine the anti-drug propaganda, tone it down some, and balance it with what I saw around me. I asked folks questions about stuff. We can educate, control strength and purity, and invest in treatment programs. We can educate on safety like say we do with alcohol. We can invest in much improved public transportation. And so on. > A certain percentage of curious but otherwise law-abiding people will destroy their lives once drugs are legalized I actually think the small percentage whose lives get ruined due to drugs will be smaller than the percentage of lives that are ruined and uprooted due to the war on drugs. Folks have lost houses and their children for pot - or lsd, even if they are as responsible as you can be with kids (relative babysitting for example, or they are at their mom/dad's house). Many have went to jail or prison and this is pretty common. Most folks don't get addicted to drugs - a few have higher addiction rates, and I think we can minimize that with proper education and investment.

MaysonL 10y ago
Interesting side note: anesthesiology has the highest substance abuse rate of any medical specialty: over 25% will experience abuse at some point in their career. from http://www.vice.com/read/the-first-fentanyl-addict http://www.vice.com/read/the-first-fentanyl-addict "Roughly 10 to 14 per cent of all physicians will be substance-dependent over their lifetime, and the incidence in anesthesia providers is 2.5 times higher than other physicians, according to a five-year outcome study from 16 physician health programs in the US."
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  I have read that before and I still find it intriguing. I know the rates are high with nursing as well. I often think it has something to do with the work or work environment when there are such trends, and start working to figure out why or if anything relieves it.

Johnny555 10y ago

I wouldn't say that. For generally law-abiding citizens like me, the lack of availability has done wonders to protect me from drugs. At some point or another in my life, I've been tempted to experiment with the legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco, etc.) I've never been tempted to try LSD or cocaine (for example), because there is currently no legal way to obtain it Is the law really the only thing that keeps you away from harder drugs? Don't you think that it's your own willpower? Like you, I'm generally law abiding, but thanks to certain friends, I have easy access to a number of illegal drugs - and it's in an relatively safe environment where my chance of getting caught is quite low. But despite that access, the only drugs I've ever used in my life are alcohol and marijuana (well ok, I'm literally addicted to caffeine). I've never even tried cigarettes. It's not the law that keeps me away from certain drugs, I just don't want to do them.

beedogs 10y ago

> I've never been tempted to try LSD or cocaine (for example), because there is currently no legal way to obtain it and I definitely don't feel like engaging in risky activities just to try. That's a real shame. LSD is incredible.