5 ms·

To me, the best argument (not only for cannabis, but for stronger drugs too) is that illegalization has been tried for a long time and it just doesn't work in p

To me, the best argument (not only for cannabis, but for stronger drugs too) is that illegalization has been tried for a long time and it just doesn't work in practice. I don't consume any drugs other than alcohol and don't have any interest in doing so, but if I did, it would be trivial to obtain them in my (smallish) city. Everyone knows where to go. So illegalization doesn't meet its purpose (making drugs difficult to get) and yet it does have negative effects (the drugs sold have no quality control at all -which often causes deaths-, pay no taxes, are sold without any legal warranty, etc.) I'd rather they were sold in pharmacies, being dispensed together with reliable information (like tobacco), forbidden to minors (which could actually work reasonably well, because no one would go to the trouble of setting a black market exclusively to sell to minors) and paying taxes that could be used to fix the problems they cause. To me, this is enough grounds for legalization, regardless of the exact health effects of drugs.

n0mad01 8y ago
you seem to be right, prohibition does not have the effect it was meant to have. but too many people have a job through this regulation as is (police can easily improve quotas, prosecutors/legal advice etc., in my country there are medical staff in state institutions doing nothing else but testing people if they used cannabis/again ...), so the resistance is great to change anything.
- yogthos 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure prohibition had the exact effect it was actually intended to have. There's a reason US prisons are a big business now and US has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    This is not true. Most people do not know how to get hard drugs. If hard drugs were legal, they'd be in soda, candy, food, cigarettes - it would be sold literally on every street corner and grocery store. So the contrast between 'arms reach' and 'most people do not know how to get opium' is quite high. For weed, it's a different story, but for pretty much all other drugs, prohibition has a pretty dramatic effect on supply and demand.
    - yogthos 8y ago
      Weed accounts for a huge portion of incercerations in the states. Also, many of these "hard drugs" like LSD or MDMA have legitimate medical uses. The motivation here was never to protect the public, and if you want to see what that actually looks like check out countries like Netherlands or Germany.
      - sonnyblarney 8y ago
        Having lived in Germany and visited the Netherlands on a number of occasions, I can assure you that opioids, LSD, MDMA are not remotely legal in those areas. They have slightly different take on those drugs, but they are definitely out of bounds. Opioids have legit medical use obviously, and they are legal for those, and even then we have to be very careful.
        yogthos 8y ago
        I didn't say they were legal there, I said those countries take a different approach to dealing with them.
wallace_f 8y ago
>the best argument (not only for cannabis, but for stronger drugs too) is that illegalization has been tried for a long time and it just doesn't work. This is a pragmatic perspective, but if you care I will share a principled one. I think the bigger problem is with the principle of individual liberty. What right has a king or bureaucrat to order armed thugs to enter my home and tell me what plants I can or can't eat, smoke, or whatever? I also think if you look at history, one of the most glaring lessons is that authoritarianism "has been tried for a long time and it just doesn't work."
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  "I also think if you look at history, one of the most glaring lessons is that authoritarianism 'has been tried for a long time and it just doesn't work.'" This isn't really true from a historical viewpoint. By far the most common societal regime in history is empire, nearly all totalitarian empires, from the Babylonian totalitarian kings/emperors on forwards to the Greeks, Romans, Ottomans, Aztecs, Incas, etc. If you want more on this, refer to the writings of Yuval Harari in his book Sapiens, as well as podcast with Sam Harris, where he lays out how empire is indeed the most frequent/stable regime we've devised. While I make no claim for the superiority of any particular governmental regime, totalitarianism has worked for itself for thousands of years, proving itself out far more than democracy has yet to do. If we look to the height of democracy in the USA, it had not even existed for 100 years before a savagely brutal civil war to end slavery, the scars of which are still open sores upon our American psyche. In a totalitarian regime, it may have been possible to dispatch slavery in a far less bloody and scarring manner. Therefore, I do not agree that history has shown totalitarianism to not work, perhaps you care to elaborate. I ask you then, which other democracy or form of govt is truly the shining example that you would point to?
  - UncleEntity 8y ago
    > In a totalitarian regime, it may have been possible to dispatch slavery in a far less bloody and scarring manner. Under every other regime (except perhaps Haiti) slavery was "dispatched" without a bloody civil war. And the US civil war wasn't fought over slavery as they want you to believe, freeing the slaves was merely a byproduct of the war between the industrialized north and agrarian south (mostly) over tariffs.
betterunix2 8y ago
"...illegalization doesn't meet its purpose (making drugs difficult to get)..." This is a common assumption about the purpose of drug prohibition, but historically things are more complicated. Racism played a much bigger role in drug prohibition and the war on drugs than genuine concerns about public health. The basic concept is that some non-white group is corrupting white youth/white women with drugs; therefore, to protect white people, the police are empowered to imprison/kill those scary drug peddlers. On some level it was about making drugs harder to get, but the assumption was that white people have no interest in drugs until some non-white person pushes it on them. The assumption was always that the impact of drug prohibition would be mostly concentrated on non-white populations.
- antt 8y ago
  This does not explain the situation in Europe, South America or Asia, all of which have (or had) laws similar to the US for drugs.
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    To my knowledge, these are all US-imposed policies.
    - kowdermeister 8y ago
      You are right and it needs to stop.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      You don't want to piss off the US.
    - musik 8y ago
      all US-imposed policies. In what sense? For examples China under Mao, 'cured' the opium problem using extreme repressions [1]. Have you got any evidence that Singapore or Duterte's repression was requested by the US? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_opium_in_China#Under_Mao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_opium_in_China#Unde...
edoo 8y ago
There will always be tragedies with drugs but criminalization only compounds the tragedy. It is not a problem you can fix with the kneejerk violence of placing people in cages. At the root I think the problem is addictive drugs remove people from society. Incarceration all but guarantees that removal is maximized. Portugal legalized everything a while back and it was a major success. It is worth reading up on their experience. A great quote I heard a couple years back: "It is an atrocity what we do to people when we don't like what they do to themselves." - Anon
sonnyblarney 8y ago
"Everyone knows where to go." - No, most people don't actually. Most people definitely do not know how to get something beyond weed. Most people live really normal lives, the might 'know someone or know someone who knows someone' who smokes weed, but not coke, lsd, mushrooms or crack. Illegalization 100% makes things 'hard to get' - it's a game of supply and demand: if opiates were legal, they would be infused into coca cola, cigarettes, candy and orange juice and be available in every corner store tommorow. I'm a fairly 'experienced' individual and as of today I'd have zero idea how to get a hold of opiates. If they were legal, they'd be within arms reach. Legalization of hard drugs, particularly opiates would cause a public health crisis like we've never seen. Only a small percent of people can handle that stuff, the rest go downhill very quickly and our health services would be overflowing, people would not be showing up for work. And fentanyl basically closes the argument. That drug is like Russian Roulette and has caused a marked upswing in overdoses around the world - and it's something the junkies are asking for (because they like the potency). Legalize that and it would be like the plague. I would legalize weed but not allow for commercialization, and then make hard drugs a health issue not a criminal issue. And of course, open things up for research. It's really silly universities can't experiment safely with weed.
- zrobotics 8y ago
  Well, for opiates specifically all one really needs to do is visit a doctor. It's gotten better, but in the past 5 years I've been offered a prescription for painkillers after nearly every doctors visit where I could have conceivably used them. I needed 5 stitches on my leg, and was offered 4 weeks worth of drugs. Ridiculous, considering the stitches weren't even in a month, and after 3 days I wasn't even taking acetaminophen.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    In Canada doctors prescribe them in the singles. For a tooth removal I got 2 pills total. Literally a prescription for 2! For most things you get nada. And it's tracked. So this problem can be fixed basically by doctors treating them like the very addictive substances they are. But you're right - this is where a lot of people are addicted!
apta 8y ago
> To me, the best argument (not only for cannabis, but for stronger drugs too) is that illegalization has been tried for a long time and it just doesn't work in practice. Maybe only in the US. Drugs are illegal in places like the UAE or Singapore, and the prohibition seems quite effective there. There seems to be more things involved here.

n0mad01 8y ago

you seem to be right, prohibition does not have the effect it was meant to have. but too many people have a job through this regulation as is (police can easily improve quotas, prosecutors/legal advice etc., in my country there are medical staff in state institutions doing nothing else but testing people if they used cannabis/again ...), so the resistance is great to change anything.

yogthos 8y ago
I'm pretty sure prohibition had the exact effect it was actually intended to have. There's a reason US prisons are a big business now and US has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  This is not true. Most people do not know how to get hard drugs. If hard drugs were legal, they'd be in soda, candy, food, cigarettes - it would be sold literally on every street corner and grocery store. So the contrast between 'arms reach' and 'most people do not know how to get opium' is quite high. For weed, it's a different story, but for pretty much all other drugs, prohibition has a pretty dramatic effect on supply and demand.
  - yogthos 8y ago
    Weed accounts for a huge portion of incercerations in the states. Also, many of these "hard drugs" like LSD or MDMA have legitimate medical uses. The motivation here was never to protect the public, and if you want to see what that actually looks like check out countries like Netherlands or Germany.
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      Having lived in Germany and visited the Netherlands on a number of occasions, I can assure you that opioids, LSD, MDMA are not remotely legal in those areas. They have slightly different take on those drugs, but they are definitely out of bounds. Opioids have legit medical use obviously, and they are legal for those, and even then we have to be very careful.
      - yogthos 8y ago
        I didn't say they were legal there, I said those countries take a different approach to dealing with them.

wallace_f 8y ago

>the best argument (not only for cannabis, but for stronger drugs too) is that illegalization has been tried for a long time and it just doesn't work. This is a pragmatic perspective, but if you care I will share a principled one. I think the bigger problem is with the principle of individual liberty. What right has a king or bureaucrat to order armed thugs to enter my home and tell me what plants I can or can't eat, smoke, or whatever? I also think if you look at history, one of the most glaring lessons is that authoritarianism "has been tried for a long time and it just doesn't work."

WhompingWindows 8y ago
"I also think if you look at history, one of the most glaring lessons is that authoritarianism 'has been tried for a long time and it just doesn't work.'" This isn't really true from a historical viewpoint. By far the most common societal regime in history is empire, nearly all totalitarian empires, from the Babylonian totalitarian kings/emperors on forwards to the Greeks, Romans, Ottomans, Aztecs, Incas, etc. If you want more on this, refer to the writings of Yuval Harari in his book Sapiens, as well as podcast with Sam Harris, where he lays out how empire is indeed the most frequent/stable regime we've devised. While I make no claim for the superiority of any particular governmental regime, totalitarianism has worked for itself for thousands of years, proving itself out far more than democracy has yet to do. If we look to the height of democracy in the USA, it had not even existed for 100 years before a savagely brutal civil war to end slavery, the scars of which are still open sores upon our American psyche. In a totalitarian regime, it may have been possible to dispatch slavery in a far less bloody and scarring manner. Therefore, I do not agree that history has shown totalitarianism to not work, perhaps you care to elaborate. I ask you then, which other democracy or form of govt is truly the shining example that you would point to?
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  > In a totalitarian regime, it may have been possible to dispatch slavery in a far less bloody and scarring manner. Under every other regime (except perhaps Haiti) slavery was "dispatched" without a bloody civil war. And the US civil war wasn't fought over slavery as they want you to believe, freeing the slaves was merely a byproduct of the war between the industrialized north and agrarian south (mostly) over tariffs.

betterunix2 8y ago

"...illegalization doesn't meet its purpose (making drugs difficult to get)..." This is a common assumption about the purpose of drug prohibition, but historically things are more complicated. Racism played a much bigger role in drug prohibition and the war on drugs than genuine concerns about public health. The basic concept is that some non-white group is corrupting white youth/white women with drugs; therefore, to protect white people, the police are empowered to imprison/kill those scary drug peddlers. On some level it was about making drugs harder to get, but the assumption was that white people have no interest in drugs until some non-white person pushes it on them. The assumption was always that the impact of drug prohibition would be mostly concentrated on non-white populations.

antt 8y ago
This does not explain the situation in Europe, South America or Asia, all of which have (or had) laws similar to the US for drugs.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  To my knowledge, these are all US-imposed policies.
  - kowdermeister 8y ago
    You are right and it needs to stop.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    You don't want to piss off the US.
  - musik 8y ago
    all US-imposed policies. In what sense? For examples China under Mao, 'cured' the opium problem using extreme repressions [1]. Have you got any evidence that Singapore or Duterte's repression was requested by the US? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_opium_in_China#Under_Mao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_opium_in_China#Unde...

edoo 8y ago

There will always be tragedies with drugs but criminalization only compounds the tragedy. It is not a problem you can fix with the kneejerk violence of placing people in cages. At the root I think the problem is addictive drugs remove people from society. Incarceration all but guarantees that removal is maximized. Portugal legalized everything a while back and it was a major success. It is worth reading up on their experience. A great quote I heard a couple years back: "It is an atrocity what we do to people when we don't like what they do to themselves." - Anon

sonnyblarney 8y ago

"Everyone knows where to go." - No, most people don't actually. Most people definitely do not know how to get something beyond weed. Most people live really normal lives, the might 'know someone or know someone who knows someone' who smokes weed, but not coke, lsd, mushrooms or crack. Illegalization 100% makes things 'hard to get' - it's a game of supply and demand: if opiates were legal, they would be infused into coca cola, cigarettes, candy and orange juice and be available in every corner store tommorow. I'm a fairly 'experienced' individual and as of today I'd have zero idea how to get a hold of opiates. If they were legal, they'd be within arms reach. Legalization of hard drugs, particularly opiates would cause a public health crisis like we've never seen. Only a small percent of people can handle that stuff, the rest go downhill very quickly and our health services would be overflowing, people would not be showing up for work. And fentanyl basically closes the argument. That drug is like Russian Roulette and has caused a marked upswing in overdoses around the world - and it's something the junkies are asking for (because they like the potency). Legalize that and it would be like the plague. I would legalize weed but not allow for commercialization, and then make hard drugs a health issue not a criminal issue. And of course, open things up for research. It's really silly universities can't experiment safely with weed.

zrobotics 8y ago
Well, for opiates specifically all one really needs to do is visit a doctor. It's gotten better, but in the past 5 years I've been offered a prescription for painkillers after nearly every doctors visit where I could have conceivably used them. I needed 5 stitches on my leg, and was offered 4 weeks worth of drugs. Ridiculous, considering the stitches weren't even in a month, and after 3 days I wasn't even taking acetaminophen.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  In Canada doctors prescribe them in the singles. For a tooth removal I got 2 pills total. Literally a prescription for 2! For most things you get nada. And it's tracked. So this problem can be fixed basically by doctors treating them like the very addictive substances they are. But you're right - this is where a lot of people are addicted!

apta 8y ago

> To me, the best argument (not only for cannabis, but for stronger drugs too) is that illegalization has been tried for a long time and it just doesn't work in practice. Maybe only in the US. Drugs are illegal in places like the UAE or Singapore, and the prohibition seems quite effective there. There seems to be more things involved here.