4 ms·

I wonder what would have happened if drugs were just legal, and anyone could buy whatever they wanted.

• colechristensen 6y ago
  Look into Portugal.
  • filoeleven 6y ago
    Portugal did not legalize the sale, possession, and use of drugs. For those already addicted, they changed possession from a criminal to an administrative offense. So it’s decriminalized in one aspect, but far from legal. Producing and selling drugs is still illegal and still targeted. Their system sounds a damn sight more beneficial to society than ours, but it’s still a far cry from the “all drugs are legal” experiment being proposed here. My instinct says that “legalize and regulate” works better for the vast majority of drugs, and “decriminalize possession but not sale or manufacture” for the rest. There wouldn’t be much call for meth if MDMA or coca products were cheap and legal. Opiates wouldn’t be spiked with fentanyl if they were regulated. This is just my guess, and I wish I had data to point to. Maybe something can be extrapolated from Portugal’s outcomes, but the situation is not the same. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
• R0b0t1 6y ago
  For opiates a UK study found that people eventually get bored of them and quit. For other drugs it is not necessarily clear, but other experiments exist indicating it is likely the same. E.g. mice will intentionally go through withdrawals when there are enough resources available to procreate and other mice present.