5 ms·

We already have many problems caused by alcohol and cigarettes, costing taxpayers billions in unnecessary expenses. I get it, people need to escape reality they

by bitL 8y ago

We already have many problems caused by alcohol and cigarettes, costing taxpayers billions in unnecessary expenses. I get it, people need to escape reality they live in. We know that some weed smokers end up schizophrenic and that in general smoking weed weakens one's will, so in many cases we end up with grown up children going only after the things attainable by easiest efforts. There are also some legit medical uses that might help a wide range of disorders; those are fine regulated the same way as medical heroin or amphetamines are. However, why open another Pandora's box, add another bunch of disorders to the open, inviting people that would have never used them before, causing them issues? Nobody knows how would their genetic makeup respond to even first absorption of a drug. I.e. the minimal requirement of justice in preventing harm to innocents would be violated. If you however like post-justice post-truth world, then anything goes. Why not accept all hard drugs, all sexual deviations, all violent or manipulative behaviors then? It's natural anyway, observed in animals daily, isn't it? The hard line must be placed somewhere, or not?

pennaMan 8y ago
Pandora's box was opened by the first sprouting seed of Cannabis on earth. The prohibition came after, so if anything we're talking about a pre-justice world, aren't we? >Why not accept all hard drugs, all sexual deviations, all violent or manipulative behaviors then?Why not accept all hard drugs, all sexual deviations, all violent or manipulative behaviors then? Because those things cause falsifiable and measurable harm to society. Cannabis use is by all measures benign while its prohibition actually causing real harm.
- bitL 8y ago
  As I said, those substances are natural, for many people they would be beneficial as well for some specialized uses, like improving one's medical condition. But leaving humans in pure nature "as intended" destroys civilization - regulating behavior is necessary (even if I personally don't like it and tend to think "I know better" when I don't). I would propose an experiment - let's look into history and see which civilizations propagated and which went extinct or ended up zombified in a non-progressive isolated state. I'd bet there will be quite a few where "substance abuse" went through the roof, and those that restricted it either completely or moved it to a dedicated "crazy week" (Bacchanalia?) prospered and progressed. Seems like hardships are necessary for progress/motivation(?), short-circuiting pleasure centers with drugs doesn't move society towards higher complexity and beauty.
- bitL 8y ago
  > Because those things cause falsifiable and measurable harm to society. Cannabis use is by all measures benign while its prohibition actually causing real harm. There are unfortunately people that could be damaged by smoking weed, irreversibly, if their schizophrenia proclivity gets activated. Also the easy escape from problems is not in society's best interest - see the ongoing shaming for gaming, where boys are pushed into the "real world" to get some society-benefiting work done instead of them having more fun. We usually have 1-2 generations that act as guinea pigs on effects of new inventions or discoveries. The wild time with LSD, heroin etc. is thankfully over. Not sure why would we want to backtrack on cannabis, even if it is objectively less harmful. Alcohol & cigarettes are objectively less harmful than heroin etc. but we would be better off without them.
  - biotech 8y ago
    > There are unfortunately people that could be damaged by smoking weed, irreversibly, if their schizophrenia proclivity gets activated. I don't think we need to enforce laws on everyone just to protect a very small minority of people. That would be like making grapefruit illegal because it interferes with some peoples' medications in a potentially dangerous manner.
  - iaml 8y ago
    Your view is justified and valid, but have you considered what happens to those same people you care so much about now? They just get some from street, and it's not only impossible to reliably notify them of any danger, they risk incarceration afterwards as well. That's not mentioning questionable quality of street drugs and substance lottery. You might be tempted to say that without legislation population exposure to the drug may be lower, but I'd argue it's impossible to objectively measure it when people are afraid they get jailed if they somehow slip and let it be discovered they do it. I bet the actual percentage of people using drugs is much higher than you think.
    - bitL 8y ago
      It's difficult to figure out proper approach, I agree. However, there also must be a strong negative reinforcement for the sake of learning - e.g. inserting one's hand into hot flowing lava should scar one both physically and mentally so that this person and anyone seeing them doesn't attempt the same. I know a guy who was fairly smart and decided to take LSD at university in his "teaching assistant" room, and make notes about his experience. Something went wrong during his trip and he ended up confronting some kind of demons. Previously purely rational person within a year switched to become a seventh-day adventist. Since then I simply couldn't trust his judgement anymore; not because he became religious, but because something really damaged his brain on his first trip. Another person I knew was a brilliant winner of math and informatics Olympiad. Decided to try heroin once. Dropped out of university the following year, spent a year working in construction, went to a lesser university, dropped out after two years. A talent gone. Some drugs ("krokodil", meth), seem to give pretty brutal feedback about their use, e.g. literal zombification of humans. There are so many horrible stories... It's really complicated as a human has to go against their own nature to override brain's pleasure complex, often also against their friends, tribe, customs etc. while the whole world keeps saying: "Just take it, it's normal, everything will be fine", and 10 years later finding themselves one step from abyss. I would rather convey a strong message: "It's not OK, don't ever do it!"
pjc50 8y ago
> all sexual deviations We're currently in the middle of the long process of realising that a lot of things that were thought to be harmful or ""degenerate"" actually aren't, and that more harm is done in suppressing them; conversely a whole range of ""normal"" behaviour is non-consensual and actually harmful.
- bitL 8y ago
  Maybe the line should be like they have over in Czechia - weed is illegal but police ignores it for single individuals as necessary evil addressing human weakness, but prosecutes sellers and manufacturers. So the "hard line" is given, i.e. legally the line is not pushed more towards hard drugs as next generation might argue "we have weed legal, why not heroin? It only affects some people!", pushing the line further, damaging more people because some can't or don't want to attain mastery of self-control and delayed satisfaction. BTW, when you look at the beginning of communism in Russia, they tried these kinds of experiments and it fell like house of cards in ~20 years, leading them to be even more repressive than what their conservatives would be. Our estimates of what is harmful are too often incorrect. I am not saying that the algorithm in law we have now is perfect, but it's definitely organic and a result of many optimization procedures. It could be local optima, there could be much better optimas, but it's hard to predict if a given step leads to another optima or wrecks the whole civilization like the Chinese population addiction during Opium wars.
  - cc-d 8y ago
    > It could be local optima, there could be much better optimas, but it's hard to predict if a given step leads to another optima or wrecks the whole civilization like the Chinese population addiction during Opium wars. Ask yourself, why is it that almost every society on the planet had access to opium during this time period, but it was only the Chinese who suffered government destabilizing consequences as a result of opium availability? The answer is that opium was weaponized in China by the British. The British government (along with some rather wealthy US citizens) essentially forced opium onto the Chinese population in an attempt to equalize trade deficits. This was effective at not only re-balancing trade in favor of the British, but also weakened the Chinese population considerably, allowing for Britain to more easily control the population. You know what happened whenever the Chinese government was finally like, "hey this stuff is harming our population, we're going to attempt to curtail the widespread consumption of opium"? The British intervened with full military might, crushing the Chinese resistance and forcing the continued exploitation of the Chinese people. Twice. The reason opium was so destructive to the social fabric of 19th century China is that opium was weaponized, and as a result it fulfilled the role of any other weapon.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
toomanybeersies 8y ago
Sugar and fried food cause more health problems than marijuana. Refined sugar can cause serious problems for people with diabetes and is not at all a required part of our diet, so why is refined sugar legal? 300,000 people die every year in the USA due to obesity related issues, compared to 70,000 deaths due to drug overdose. Obesity is the biggest public health crisis in the USA, but is largely ignored as it's seen as a personal choice to die of diabetes. My purpose in life is not to slave away creating wealth for society until I die. Why does it matter if someone escapes from the world whether by taking drugs, playing in video games, or engaging in kinky sex? Are we supposed to go to work to advance society, then come home, eat dinner, make some more children (missionary position only!), and then sleep?
mirhagk 8y ago
I do believe we need to discourage hard drug use, but criminalization simply isn't doing that. You mention cigarettes, and cigarette usage has actually been dropping pretty dramatically over the last few decades. This is because instead of prohibition (like was tried and failed with alcohol) the government took the approach of educating people and creating social pressures to get people to stop. The same could absolutely be done with heroin et al. Create places where people can legally buy and consume heroin (under the supervision of nurses) and all the while advertise how terrible it is and offer addiction counselling etc. The problem is that such a system would have to be run with the explicit goal of getting people to stop and the US's fondness for running everything privately would be disastrous in this case.
thanatropism 8y ago
> We know that some weed smokers end up schizophrenic and that in general smoking weed weakens one's will, so in many cases we end up with grown up children going only after the things attainable by easiest efforts. I'm concerned about things like this too, but ultimately the only way forward is to let some societies experiment with it and face the consequences. I hope it doesn't become a global UN thing.
AngryData 8y ago
Smokers at least, and im sure it would also apply to alcohol abusers, actually costs less money because they die much faster and easier (conveniently usually just before retirement age), they are offered less health treatment options overall because of their smoking, and they miss out on the most expensive healthcare, old age care when you need two hips, two knees, and 30 medications a day. The idea that smokers cost money to take care of is pure myth, and in most places they end up paying more in sin taxes to the state than they receive for life medical care costs.
- bitL 8y ago
  Alright, I was under impression that a typical mid-term oncological care often needed for heavy smokers is still very expensive - were there any recent pricing adjustments?

by bitL 8y ago

pennaMan 8y ago

Pandora's box was opened by the first sprouting seed of Cannabis on earth. The prohibition came after, so if anything we're talking about a pre-justice world, aren't we? >Why not accept all hard drugs, all sexual deviations, all violent or manipulative behaviors then?Why not accept all hard drugs, all sexual deviations, all violent or manipulative behaviors then? Because those things cause falsifiable and measurable harm to society. Cannabis use is by all measures benign while its prohibition actually causing real harm.

bitL 8y ago
As I said, those substances are natural, for many people they would be beneficial as well for some specialized uses, like improving one's medical condition. But leaving humans in pure nature "as intended" destroys civilization - regulating behavior is necessary (even if I personally don't like it and tend to think "I know better" when I don't). I would propose an experiment - let's look into history and see which civilizations propagated and which went extinct or ended up zombified in a non-progressive isolated state. I'd bet there will be quite a few where "substance abuse" went through the roof, and those that restricted it either completely or moved it to a dedicated "crazy week" (Bacchanalia?) prospered and progressed. Seems like hardships are necessary for progress/motivation(?), short-circuiting pleasure centers with drugs doesn't move society towards higher complexity and beauty.
bitL 8y ago
> Because those things cause falsifiable and measurable harm to society. Cannabis use is by all measures benign while its prohibition actually causing real harm. There are unfortunately people that could be damaged by smoking weed, irreversibly, if their schizophrenia proclivity gets activated. Also the easy escape from problems is not in society's best interest - see the ongoing shaming for gaming, where boys are pushed into the "real world" to get some society-benefiting work done instead of them having more fun. We usually have 1-2 generations that act as guinea pigs on effects of new inventions or discoveries. The wild time with LSD, heroin etc. is thankfully over. Not sure why would we want to backtrack on cannabis, even if it is objectively less harmful. Alcohol & cigarettes are objectively less harmful than heroin etc. but we would be better off without them.
- biotech 8y ago
  > There are unfortunately people that could be damaged by smoking weed, irreversibly, if their schizophrenia proclivity gets activated. I don't think we need to enforce laws on everyone just to protect a very small minority of people. That would be like making grapefruit illegal because it interferes with some peoples' medications in a potentially dangerous manner.
- iaml 8y ago
  Your view is justified and valid, but have you considered what happens to those same people you care so much about now? They just get some from street, and it's not only impossible to reliably notify them of any danger, they risk incarceration afterwards as well. That's not mentioning questionable quality of street drugs and substance lottery. You might be tempted to say that without legislation population exposure to the drug may be lower, but I'd argue it's impossible to objectively measure it when people are afraid they get jailed if they somehow slip and let it be discovered they do it. I bet the actual percentage of people using drugs is much higher than you think.
  - bitL 8y ago
    It's difficult to figure out proper approach, I agree. However, there also must be a strong negative reinforcement for the sake of learning - e.g. inserting one's hand into hot flowing lava should scar one both physically and mentally so that this person and anyone seeing them doesn't attempt the same. I know a guy who was fairly smart and decided to take LSD at university in his "teaching assistant" room, and make notes about his experience. Something went wrong during his trip and he ended up confronting some kind of demons. Previously purely rational person within a year switched to become a seventh-day adventist. Since then I simply couldn't trust his judgement anymore; not because he became religious, but because something really damaged his brain on his first trip. Another person I knew was a brilliant winner of math and informatics Olympiad. Decided to try heroin once. Dropped out of university the following year, spent a year working in construction, went to a lesser university, dropped out after two years. A talent gone. Some drugs ("krokodil", meth), seem to give pretty brutal feedback about their use, e.g. literal zombification of humans. There are so many horrible stories... It's really complicated as a human has to go against their own nature to override brain's pleasure complex, often also against their friends, tribe, customs etc. while the whole world keeps saying: "Just take it, it's normal, everything will be fine", and 10 years later finding themselves one step from abyss. I would rather convey a strong message: "It's not OK, don't ever do it!"

pjc50 8y ago

> all sexual deviations We're currently in the middle of the long process of realising that a lot of things that were thought to be harmful or ""degenerate"" actually aren't, and that more harm is done in suppressing them; conversely a whole range of ""normal"" behaviour is non-consensual and actually harmful.

bitL 8y ago
Maybe the line should be like they have over in Czechia - weed is illegal but police ignores it for single individuals as necessary evil addressing human weakness, but prosecutes sellers and manufacturers. So the "hard line" is given, i.e. legally the line is not pushed more towards hard drugs as next generation might argue "we have weed legal, why not heroin? It only affects some people!", pushing the line further, damaging more people because some can't or don't want to attain mastery of self-control and delayed satisfaction. BTW, when you look at the beginning of communism in Russia, they tried these kinds of experiments and it fell like house of cards in ~20 years, leading them to be even more repressive than what their conservatives would be. Our estimates of what is harmful are too often incorrect. I am not saying that the algorithm in law we have now is perfect, but it's definitely organic and a result of many optimization procedures. It could be local optima, there could be much better optimas, but it's hard to predict if a given step leads to another optima or wrecks the whole civilization like the Chinese population addiction during Opium wars.
- cc-d 8y ago
  > It could be local optima, there could be much better optimas, but it's hard to predict if a given step leads to another optima or wrecks the whole civilization like the Chinese population addiction during Opium wars. Ask yourself, why is it that almost every society on the planet had access to opium during this time period, but it was only the Chinese who suffered government destabilizing consequences as a result of opium availability? The answer is that opium was weaponized in China by the British. The British government (along with some rather wealthy US citizens) essentially forced opium onto the Chinese population in an attempt to equalize trade deficits. This was effective at not only re-balancing trade in favor of the British, but also weakened the Chinese population considerably, allowing for Britain to more easily control the population. You know what happened whenever the Chinese government was finally like, "hey this stuff is harming our population, we're going to attempt to curtail the widespread consumption of opium"? The British intervened with full military might, crushing the Chinese resistance and forcing the continued exploitation of the Chinese people. Twice. The reason opium was so destructive to the social fabric of 19th century China is that opium was weaponized, and as a result it fulfilled the role of any other weapon.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

toomanybeersies 8y ago

Sugar and fried food cause more health problems than marijuana. Refined sugar can cause serious problems for people with diabetes and is not at all a required part of our diet, so why is refined sugar legal? 300,000 people die every year in the USA due to obesity related issues, compared to 70,000 deaths due to drug overdose. Obesity is the biggest public health crisis in the USA, but is largely ignored as it's seen as a personal choice to die of diabetes. My purpose in life is not to slave away creating wealth for society until I die. Why does it matter if someone escapes from the world whether by taking drugs, playing in video games, or engaging in kinky sex? Are we supposed to go to work to advance society, then come home, eat dinner, make some more children (missionary position only!), and then sleep?

mirhagk 8y ago

I do believe we need to discourage hard drug use, but criminalization simply isn't doing that. You mention cigarettes, and cigarette usage has actually been dropping pretty dramatically over the last few decades. This is because instead of prohibition (like was tried and failed with alcohol) the government took the approach of educating people and creating social pressures to get people to stop. The same could absolutely be done with heroin et al. Create places where people can legally buy and consume heroin (under the supervision of nurses) and all the while advertise how terrible it is and offer addiction counselling etc. The problem is that such a system would have to be run with the explicit goal of getting people to stop and the US's fondness for running everything privately would be disastrous in this case.

thanatropism 8y ago

> We know that some weed smokers end up schizophrenic and that in general smoking weed weakens one's will, so in many cases we end up with grown up children going only after the things attainable by easiest efforts. I'm concerned about things like this too, but ultimately the only way forward is to let some societies experiment with it and face the consequences. I hope it doesn't become a global UN thing.

AngryData 8y ago

Smokers at least, and im sure it would also apply to alcohol abusers, actually costs less money because they die much faster and easier (conveniently usually just before retirement age), they are offered less health treatment options overall because of their smoking, and they miss out on the most expensive healthcare, old age care when you need two hips, two knees, and 30 medications a day. The idea that smokers cost money to take care of is pure myth, and in most places they end up paying more in sin taxes to the state than they receive for life medical care costs.

bitL 8y ago
Alright, I was under impression that a typical mid-term oncological care often needed for heavy smokers is still very expensive - were there any recent pricing adjustments?