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Maybe you'll find this persuasive? http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

• brianwawok 10y ago
  No. Just because the war on drugs was started for a racist reason doesn't make banning drugs themselves a bad idea. I don't think people can make valid choices about the use or not use of highly addictive drugs. We as a society can do better than to help people be strung out.
  • DanBC 10y ago
    > We as a society can do better than to help people be strung out. Safe injecting facilities are not about helping people be strung out. They're about reducing harm, both to the addict and to the rest of society, coming from drug addiction.
  • nooron 10y ago
    Did you read the whole piece? There's strong evidence that drug abuse is bad, and that the best way to mitigate it is through harm reduction policies -- and that these policies ultimately reduce use of drugs. Which is what you want, right?
    • loeg 10y ago
      I'm pro-legalization, but there is a good argument to be made that legalization increases access and as a result you'd see a much higher rate of casual use (orders of magnitude higher). Any slight increase in healthcare costs or negative outcomes on a per-person basis multiplied across a large population is a factor worth considering.
      • lend000 10y ago
        But is there evidence that there would be a significant change? That hasn't been shown in California, Oregon, Washington, or Colorado, in the case of marijuana. Why would other drugs be different?
        • loeg 10y ago
          There's the alcohol prohibition example. Alcohol intake did go down significantly, at least initially. I think it's maybe too early to tell what impact CO/WA/etc legalization has had on MJ use.
      • BigJono 10y ago
        This is purely anecdotal, but I'm not so sure legalization would have a large effect on the rate of drug use. I consider myself fairly well insulated from drug use. In my entire social group I know of only one person that has ever tried methamphetamine (which is rampant here in Australia), and none that have tried heroin. Despite that, if you set me to the task of aquiring heroin I'd be pretty confident in my ability to do so. I doubt I'd have to go through more than 3 levels of friends to find someone that could hook me up. And that's not even taking into account darknet markets (which I imagine would be fairly easy to learn how to use as a software engineer). If I woke up tomorrow and decided to try heroin, there wouldn't be very much in the way of obstacles in my path. So for me at least, there's not that much difference between the current situation and legalisation. Especially if said legalisation requires a prescription. Arguably convincing a doctor that I'm an addict and in need of heroin is more of a barrier to entry than finding someone that sells it now.
        • loeg 10y ago
          I don't know, I think there are a number of factors about illegal heroin that make it less attractive than legal heroin might be: 1. Buying it illegally funds criminal organizations 2. Quality is terrible, it's certainly adulterated 3. Association with low class and poor people You can ingest or smoke opium products, too, if the needle is the off-putting part of heroin. But yeah, another anecdotal perspective: I've had prescription opioid painkillers but don't have any particular interest in continuing to use them after the pain goes away. So if opioids were legal tomorrow, I don't think it would change my behavior at all either.
  • deleted 10y ago
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