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The Dutch government makes a difference between soft drugs (e.g. Cannabis) and hard drugs (e.g. Cocaine), and for good reason. While most people don't get into

The Dutch government makes a difference between soft drugs (e.g. Cannabis) and hard drugs (e.g. Cocaine), and for good reason. While most people don't get into trouble from using Cannabis, cocaine usage can wreck people's life. Unfortunately I have had to witness this a couple of times in my circle of friends. While criminalising hard drugs is not ideal, legalising them and thereby making them more easily available will have a devastating impact and destroy too many lifes.

nickthemagicman 6y ago
Like Alcohol? I haven't looked at the stats but I'm assuming alcohol has way more addiction than any other drug. I think the original posters point was that people are doing the drugs anyway, making it illegal may put a slight dent in usage, but it doesn't stop people from doing the drugs. And the number of lives ruined, the cartels, the massive police required, and the side effects from the war of drugs are much worse than if all drugs were decriminalized. The cartels are destabilizing entire governments in Latin America murdering police and journalists making entire regions inaccessible. It's real bad.
- anonfornoreason 6y ago
  I have friends who are alcoholics and definitely have negative impacts in both actions and health, but it's more of a slow boil. I've had friends that went down a very very fast spiral (1-2 years from normal to streets) when using hard drugs. Alcohol is harmful, but cocaine/meth/opiates are at least an order of magnitude worse.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    So your friends did the hard drugs anyway even though they were illegal? I think you kind of support the case of why not make them legal.
    - anonfornoreason 6y ago
      Sorry, not intending to have my reply read as a support one way or another, just wanted to make sure to draw the distinction between alcohol and hard drug use. I see some people advocating for complete legalization claiming that alcohol use has terrible effects and is legal, so other drugs should be as well. I can only imagine those people haven't watched what a year of meth can do to a person, or that cocaine use is strongly correlated to other hard drug use as well, etc.
      - samatman 6y ago
        I've watched what ten years of meth can do to a person, it's terrible, he graduated college, built and sold his first company, now he's independently wealthy, bought a house, and is starting a second company. And I don't mean Adderall I mean meth, he has a Desoxyn prescription and it's pure meth, not the most common prescription for ADHD but perhaps it should be. So do you think legalizing amphetamines would improve outcomes or not? I know which side of the fence I'm on.
        anonfornoreason 6y ago
        Speaking to the choir - I have had prescriptions to both adderall and ritalin (swap back and forth every year or two) for the last 15 years, definitely helped me start a business while going to college, crank on that business insane hours for the first 7 years. Doesn't mean I think meth, opiates, etc legalization aren't without consequences, or that they can be honestly compared to alcohol. Personally, I go back and forth on legalization, and recently voted for decriminalization of all drugs in my state. Might as well make law reflect practice.
    - melenaboija 6y ago
      I don't see how is it related, I guess the point is that the situation would exist being alcohol legal or illegal (hard to prove). To me the thing is trying to imagine alcohol industry and alcoholics dealing with it if it was illegal.
  - TuringNYC 6y ago
    Without arguing about what is worse, i think it is important to look at the stats of Alcohol damage in the US for example: https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/impaired_driving/im https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/impaired_driving/im... In 2016, 10,497 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for 28% of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.1 Of the 1,233 traffic deaths among children ages 0 to 14 years in 2016, 214 (17%) involved an alcohol-impaired driver.1 The victims can be total strangers, on the road for example. Also, this above citation is just regarding traffic accidents, there are of course other impacts.
    - est31 6y ago
      Alcohol consumption is legal though. If you made hard drugs legal as well, likely consumption would increase, and thus the ill effects they cause.
      - DanBC 6y ago
        In places like Portugal consumption decreased.
    - varjag 6y ago
      Alcohol is entirely legal though and is in ubiquitous use. Not sure it's a good argument for hard drugs legalization.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Alcohol is a hard drug. It's deceptive because it's legal but it's killed more people than any other drug. It's ruined more lives than any other drug. It has one of the worst withdrawals of any drug.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      >It has one of the worst withdrawals of any drug. They don't chain up copper on job-sites because alcoholics are looking for something to steal and sell for a fix.
      - nickthemagicman 6y ago
        They absolutely do. Homeless people people spend money on alcohol instead of food.
      - DanBC 6y ago
        I don't understand your comment. Withdrawal from alcohol can cause fits and even death. It's severe. That's why, during covid lockdowns, stores selling alcohol were often allowed to remain open. Acquisitive crime has nothing to do with how dangerous withdrawal is. It's mostly about how expensive the drug is and how much is needed. Alcohol is dirt cheap.
        GauntletWizard 6y ago
        Water is a dangerous drug. Sudden withdrawal of water can result in death with 3 days. Over the years, millions of people have died of withdrawal effects. Wars have been fought over it. It’s dirt cheap on the street - You could regularly find sellers hawking it for a dollar outside of sports events. Ban water.
        samatman 6y ago
        Please find somewhere else to make Reddit-tier trolling comments, thank you.
        6y ago
- vmchale 6y ago
  It's more comparable to cannabis, maybe worse though? Don't think it's on the same level as cocaine.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
  Alcohol is very significantly less addictive and less harmful than "hard drugs".
- axlee 6y ago
  Alcohol is a very hard, very dangerous drug indeed. And with it being legal, it's a good example of what over-availability of drugs can cause. If cocaine was made legal, sold and marketed over the counter as alcohol and now weed are, I'm convinced that the ripple effects on society would be absolutely disastrous in terms of public health. Looking at the opioid crisis for example, we can definitely see that a high availability of a substance, backed by a legal capitalist drive of selling stronly said substances, is not something that do good for society in the long run. We're talking about more than half a million dead over the past 20 years, with many more millions whose lives are ruined. And we're talking about a medically-sanctioned effort, with prescriptions and regulations. If opioids were marketed and sold as alcohol, legal weed or cigarettes are, can you imagine the disaster? I think there are a lot more good people to lose to addiction than there are good people to lose to the cartels and the "war on drugs". It's a tough choice to make as a society.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    You make some good points but I think overall... the war on drugs does way more damage to the world.
qsort 6y ago
I get the argument, and I agree to the extent that different drugs have different risk profiles. But I don't see an argument for prohibition there. Anyone who wants to get cocaine, will get cocaine. Enforcing a ban requires resources that are almost always more efficiently spent elsewhere.
- throwaway1777 6y ago
  If only there were a way to make it harder to get without making it illegal. Unfortunately any way I can think of would lead back to the black markets being viable.
  - Larrikin 6y ago
    I read an excellent article years ago (that I've sadly never been able to find again) that talked about how it would be possible to legalize all drugs by putting them into different levels. The lowest level would be things like caffeine where you can just buy it at the store with zero checks. Weed would be in the next level with alcohol where the only check is an age check (this was before legalization of weed had become mainstream in the US). I forget the exact number of levels and where all the specific drugs landed but there would a level where you get a physical and prescription for a certain class and it requires regular check ins. The final level would be for the hardest most addicting drugs where you could only use them in certain places under supervision of a nurse. There would still be the people who get drugs illegally that are willing to go out side the system (same as there are kids willing to pay a premium to a homeless guy for beer) but it would destroy or greatly reduce the market for illegal drugs
    - occamrazor 6y ago
      This looks like a reasonable system. It is however a sad fact that a similar system has already failed for opiates. It’s a hard problem.
      - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
vmchale 6y ago
> While criminalising hard drugs is not ideal, legalising them and thereby making them more easily available will have a devastating impact and destroy too many lifes. Also tricky, quaaludes are the only drug I can think of that actually got banned successfully.
jrochkind1 6y ago
Alcohol wrecks plenty of people's lives for sure even today, and yet... it probably wrecked more people's lives in the US when they tried to illegalize it. You have the people's lives it wrecks as users (probably not all that diminished when illegalized), and then you can add to it the people's lives wrecked as a result of the criminalized industry. But that's why they made alcohol illegal in the US for a bit in the early 20th century, because they worried it was wrecking people's lives. (And it surely was wrecking some people's lives, as it still is).
- abfan1127 6y ago
  This is an important point. Those that choose to use will get wrecked regardless of legality. However, the ripple is small. Illegality drives all sorts of huge ripples: tax money sinks (police, courts, prisons), post-prison felony limits life improvement, unrelated victims of violence, are all just a few issues. Users even stuggle with getting help because of illegality.
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    Yes, all of that, 100%. There are other surprising ways the illegality can wreck more people's lives by changing consumption in ways other than "discouraging". Prohibition in the US is when people started drinking a lot more liquor and less beer or wine. If the thing is contraband and you have to sneak it around, better to have lower volume to sneak. But liquor is of course more dangerous in a variety of ways. (On the plus side, we owe the modern cocktail to liquor drinking in prohibition -- because people were drinking more liquor, and it was BAD liquor, you had to cover up the taste. And I do like a cocktail myself). Similarly, someone getting fentanyl when they wanted to get cocaine is consequence of it being criminalized, and their life is really going to get wrecked, and it was criminalization that did it. Or for that matter the "crack" formulation of cocaine in the first place is a consequence of the criminalized market, it was invented to fit the "business" needs of black market vendors.
    - iguy 6y ago
      > Prohibition in the US is when people started drinking a lot more liquor and less beer or wine Here's a graph I found, it looks like prohibition happened at the end of a huge swing from 90% liquor in 1850 to majority beer in 1915 (with wine always a tiny slice): https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/alcohol-consumption-per-person-us https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/alcohol-consumption-per-p... That doesn't have data during prohibition, consumption was obviously not zero, and I'm sure it swung towards hard stuff. But I think there are estimates, maybe 30-40% of pre-prohibition levels (with some lasting effect, but not huge, 1980 above the 1910 peak). I also believe that consumption in say 1700 was considerably higher than 1900.
gopalv 6y ago
> While criminalising hard drugs is not ideal, legalising them and thereby making them more easily available will have a devastating impact and destroy too many lifes. The problem is with demand creation driven by the process, not with the supply part of it. The whole opioid epidemic is a classic example of accidental demand creation for the drugs and trying to fix it in steps by crushing the supply. But the actual medical use prevents the supply from being completely locked down. In the US, I'm waiting to see what the Oregon experiment looks like - where they're trying to tackle the existing demand instead of worrying about demand growth (i.e help existing addicts, instead just of preventing new addicts).
- eric_h 6y ago
  > The whole opioid epidemic is a classic example of accidental demand creation for the drugs Perhaps orthogonal to your point but it seems pretty clear from information coming out that the demand creation for opioids was very much not accidental.
godelski 6y ago
I think the problem is a little different in Colombia. The cartels are big enough that the government can't fight them. This results in 0 regulation and a lot of exploitation of the people that live in the regions the cartels settle in. As long as there are people on Earth that want cocaine, Colombia will have this problem (because they produce most of that cocaine). So unless Colombia's military can get a lot stronger over night and a lot less corrupt, this problem will continue to exist. They've been trying to fight with force for the last 50 years while the cartels have only grown stronger (by a lot actually). So maybe it is time to change strategies and rethink the problem. Because clearly this one hasn't been helping (and many think it has made it worse). Edit: I'm not saying the cartels are more powerful. I said the government is ineffective at fighting them. Guerrilla warfare is difficult.
- dontreact 6y ago
  I’m sorry but you are emblematic of someone who has watched Narcos and thinks they understand 2020 Colombian politics and drug trade. Which cartels in Colombia are more powerful than the government? Also, at least get the spelling of the country right.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    Presumably Marquitos Figueroa, alleged to have illegally helped Márquez win election, would at least claim semi-equal status with the government.
    - godelski 6y ago
      Not only this, but the cartels are literally shooting at government armed forces and effectively able to keep them at bay (hell, this even happens in Mexico). I did say >>> The cartels are big enough that the government can't fight them Maybe I should have said "the cartels are big enough that the government is ineffective at fighting against them" Which is more of an observation than anything else. Guerilla tactics are hard to fight against, as every America should be well aware of considering Vietnam and all our campaigns into the Middle East. "More powerful" wouldn't be the right descriptor here and is why I didn't use it. But they are gaining more power and subsequently the Colombian government is having a more difficult time combating them. It doesn't take a genius to realize that we've been using one tactic for 50 years and it hasn't worked. Though it does take a genius to figure out the solution to the problem. I'm not sure that legalization is the solution but I'm not sure it isn't either.
BryantD 6y ago
I agree that different drugs have different danger thresholds. However, I noted that Columbia's already legalized personal consumption of cocaine, so in terms of personal danger I don't think the proposed law changes anything. On the other hand, that doesn't mean the effect hasn't been problematic. If anyone has any good studies at their fingertips I'd be curious.
efdee 6y ago
There's legalising, and then there's decriminalising. For hard drugs, the latter sounds quite useful.
jlengrand 6y ago
If you can get past the style of Vice, this documentary has quite some interesting facts about Portugal : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dU5yiKBqCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dU5yiKBqCk. Not claiming it's a solution of any kind, but it is interesting to get some insight from a country that actually tried to legalize everything.
rv-de 6y ago
> While criminalising hard drugs is not ideal, legalising them and thereby making them more easily available will have a devastating impact and destroy too many lifes. You mean your friends live in a country where cocaine is legal? o.O Would love to know more about that! Or is it that you just didn't understand the arguments in favour of drug legalization and decriminalization?
Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
>...legalising them and thereby making them more easily available will have a devastating impact and destroy too many lifes. The evidence does not bear this out. https://transformdrugs.org/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight/ https://transformdrugs.org/drug-decriminalisation-in-portuga...
DoreenMichele 6y ago
While most people don't get into trouble from using Cannabis, cocaine usage can wreck people's life. Unfortunately I have had to witness this a couple of times in my circle of friends. Cocaine is an extract from the coca plant. Historically, Indigenous peoples chewed the leaves to get moderately high and also used it for medicinal purposes. The coca plant does good things for the lungs and gut. Among other things, it was used to help them be productive at altitude due to its impact on lung function. What most of the modern world knows as "cocaine" is a highly concentrated form of what is found in the coca plant. A little googling suggests that when you similarly concentrate THC, you start seeing similar problems: THC concentrates stimulate the same areas within the brain which heroin, cocaine and alcohol reaches. The effects of standard marijuana vary from those related to using THC concentrates. While this may seem like no big deal, using THC concentrates can produce additional physical and psychological effects. According to the NIH These include: • Paranoia • Delirium • Anxiety • Panic/Fear • Delusions/ Hallucinations • Increase in blood pressure • Blood shot eyes • Weight gain • Lung and/or throat infections In addition to the above, there is new evidence which shows that people who have a history of schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, bipolar disorder or psychosis may be at a greater risk of experiencing a breakdown or mental health episode. https://siamrehab.com/effects-of-marijuana-concentrates/ https://siamrehab.com/effects-of-marijuana-concentrates/
- samatman 6y ago
  "Siam rehab" really? > THC concentrates stimulate the same areas within the brain which heroin, cocaine and alcohol reaches. This is not-even-wrong, drugs don't stimulate areas they reach specific receptors. These people don't even understand the circulatory system, let alone psychopharmacology! THC is a partial agonist of cannabis receptors. What that means is, and any pothead can confirm this for you, there's a level of high which you can't exceed, no matter how much you take in. It's habit-forming, and can have numerous unpleasant psychological consequences, including psychosis. But concentrates aren't magic. They mostly exist for users with a high tolerance from prior use, which includes recreational addicts but also includes pain patients, whether by prescription or not. There is no world in which the effects of concentrated cocaine should be compared to dabs, Doreen.
syshum 6y ago
The law should not be used to prevent someone from destroying their own life, if they want to ingest chemicals that screw them up, it is their life. The law should be to protect people from having their lives destroyed by others. On that front the score is clear, the effect of prohibition to peoples lives is FAR FAR FAR FAR more damaging to the general public than the use of the drug is. Prohibition creates criminal gangs, street violence, increased overdose, increases load on health systems, erodes personal liberty as the government clamps down harder and harder on drug use, rips apart families with life line consequences of criminal charges, and 100's of other negative effects on general society far and beyond someone personally wrecking their own life by using drugs.
samatman 6y ago
One of the casualties of prohibition is responsible use patterns. When America experimented with banning alcohol, beer and wine became scarce. Instead, our markets were flooded with high-octane spirits, of dubious purity. I have never used purified cocaine, and don't intend to start. Back in the early Noughts, coca tea bags were available for purchase on Amazon (yes, really) imported from Bolivia; this was illegal, but tolerated. They were lovely! I would enjoy a glass in the early evening when I was going out, it gave me a nice, pro-social boost that wears off faster than caffeine, letting me sleep at night. Of all the many drugs I've tasted over the years, coca tea might be the least harmful. Chewing coca is manifestly not a problem either, Bolivian and Peruvian indigenous society is in no danger from this habit, though I don't doubt they get grumpy if they can't get their leaf (I don't think I would commit actual murder to obtain coffee but I never want to find out). Here's the kicker: At point I had probably three ounces of cocaine-bearing material in my cupboard, next to the Earl Grey. If I had suffered some bad luck, and my white-privilege shield broke down, that's in the ten-year mandatory minimum category of felony. So, if cocaine is illegal, the vast majority of users are going to rail lines of it, as pure as they can get, or smoke the carbonate salt. I hope I've explained why that's a bad idea?
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  coca leaves is different from cocaine. coca leaves are used traditionally for anti nausea and altitude sickness. It is not uncommon to stick a wad of coca leaves while hiking up maachu picchu. having said that..i cant stress this enough..cocaine is entirely different from medicinal herb known as coca leaves. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-cocaine-is-made-2017-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-cocaine-is-made-2017-10 > how cocaine is made https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_tea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_tea > coca tea

nickthemagicman 6y ago

Like Alcohol? I haven't looked at the stats but I'm assuming alcohol has way more addiction than any other drug. I think the original posters point was that people are doing the drugs anyway, making it illegal may put a slight dent in usage, but it doesn't stop people from doing the drugs. And the number of lives ruined, the cartels, the massive police required, and the side effects from the war of drugs are much worse than if all drugs were decriminalized. The cartels are destabilizing entire governments in Latin America murdering police and journalists making entire regions inaccessible. It's real bad.

anonfornoreason 6y ago
I have friends who are alcoholics and definitely have negative impacts in both actions and health, but it's more of a slow boil. I've had friends that went down a very very fast spiral (1-2 years from normal to streets) when using hard drugs. Alcohol is harmful, but cocaine/meth/opiates are at least an order of magnitude worse.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  So your friends did the hard drugs anyway even though they were illegal? I think you kind of support the case of why not make them legal.
  - anonfornoreason 6y ago
    Sorry, not intending to have my reply read as a support one way or another, just wanted to make sure to draw the distinction between alcohol and hard drug use. I see some people advocating for complete legalization claiming that alcohol use has terrible effects and is legal, so other drugs should be as well. I can only imagine those people haven't watched what a year of meth can do to a person, or that cocaine use is strongly correlated to other hard drug use as well, etc.
    - samatman 6y ago
      I've watched what ten years of meth can do to a person, it's terrible, he graduated college, built and sold his first company, now he's independently wealthy, bought a house, and is starting a second company. And I don't mean Adderall I mean meth, he has a Desoxyn prescription and it's pure meth, not the most common prescription for ADHD but perhaps it should be. So do you think legalizing amphetamines would improve outcomes or not? I know which side of the fence I'm on.
      - anonfornoreason 6y ago
        Speaking to the choir - I have had prescriptions to both adderall and ritalin (swap back and forth every year or two) for the last 15 years, definitely helped me start a business while going to college, crank on that business insane hours for the first 7 years. Doesn't mean I think meth, opiates, etc legalization aren't without consequences, or that they can be honestly compared to alcohol. Personally, I go back and forth on legalization, and recently voted for decriminalization of all drugs in my state. Might as well make law reflect practice.
  - melenaboija 6y ago
    I don't see how is it related, I guess the point is that the situation would exist being alcohol legal or illegal (hard to prove). To me the thing is trying to imagine alcohol industry and alcoholics dealing with it if it was illegal.
- TuringNYC 6y ago
  Without arguing about what is worse, i think it is important to look at the stats of Alcohol damage in the US for example: https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/impaired_driving/im https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/impaired_driving/im... In 2016, 10,497 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for 28% of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.1 Of the 1,233 traffic deaths among children ages 0 to 14 years in 2016, 214 (17%) involved an alcohol-impaired driver.1 The victims can be total strangers, on the road for example. Also, this above citation is just regarding traffic accidents, there are of course other impacts.
  - est31 6y ago
    Alcohol consumption is legal though. If you made hard drugs legal as well, likely consumption would increase, and thus the ill effects they cause.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      In places like Portugal consumption decreased.
  - varjag 6y ago
    Alcohol is entirely legal though and is in ubiquitous use. Not sure it's a good argument for hard drugs legalization.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Alcohol is a hard drug. It's deceptive because it's legal but it's killed more people than any other drug. It's ruined more lives than any other drug. It has one of the worst withdrawals of any drug.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >It has one of the worst withdrawals of any drug. They don't chain up copper on job-sites because alcoholics are looking for something to steal and sell for a fix.
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      They absolutely do. Homeless people people spend money on alcohol instead of food.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      I don't understand your comment. Withdrawal from alcohol can cause fits and even death. It's severe. That's why, during covid lockdowns, stores selling alcohol were often allowed to remain open. Acquisitive crime has nothing to do with how dangerous withdrawal is. It's mostly about how expensive the drug is and how much is needed. Alcohol is dirt cheap.
      - GauntletWizard 6y ago
        Water is a dangerous drug. Sudden withdrawal of water can result in death with 3 days. Over the years, millions of people have died of withdrawal effects. Wars have been fought over it. It’s dirt cheap on the street - You could regularly find sellers hawking it for a dollar outside of sports events. Ban water.
        samatman 6y ago
        Please find somewhere else to make Reddit-tier trolling comments, thank you.
        6y ago
vmchale 6y ago
It's more comparable to cannabis, maybe worse though? Don't think it's on the same level as cocaine.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
Alcohol is very significantly less addictive and less harmful than "hard drugs".
axlee 6y ago
Alcohol is a very hard, very dangerous drug indeed. And with it being legal, it's a good example of what over-availability of drugs can cause. If cocaine was made legal, sold and marketed over the counter as alcohol and now weed are, I'm convinced that the ripple effects on society would be absolutely disastrous in terms of public health. Looking at the opioid crisis for example, we can definitely see that a high availability of a substance, backed by a legal capitalist drive of selling stronly said substances, is not something that do good for society in the long run. We're talking about more than half a million dead over the past 20 years, with many more millions whose lives are ruined. And we're talking about a medically-sanctioned effort, with prescriptions and regulations. If opioids were marketed and sold as alcohol, legal weed or cigarettes are, can you imagine the disaster? I think there are a lot more good people to lose to addiction than there are good people to lose to the cartels and the "war on drugs". It's a tough choice to make as a society.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  You make some good points but I think overall... the war on drugs does way more damage to the world.

qsort 6y ago

I get the argument, and I agree to the extent that different drugs have different risk profiles. But I don't see an argument for prohibition there. Anyone who wants to get cocaine, will get cocaine. Enforcing a ban requires resources that are almost always more efficiently spent elsewhere.

throwaway1777 6y ago
If only there were a way to make it harder to get without making it illegal. Unfortunately any way I can think of would lead back to the black markets being viable.
- Larrikin 6y ago
  I read an excellent article years ago (that I've sadly never been able to find again) that talked about how it would be possible to legalize all drugs by putting them into different levels. The lowest level would be things like caffeine where you can just buy it at the store with zero checks. Weed would be in the next level with alcohol where the only check is an age check (this was before legalization of weed had become mainstream in the US). I forget the exact number of levels and where all the specific drugs landed but there would a level where you get a physical and prescription for a certain class and it requires regular check ins. The final level would be for the hardest most addicting drugs where you could only use them in certain places under supervision of a nurse. There would still be the people who get drugs illegally that are willing to go out side the system (same as there are kids willing to pay a premium to a homeless guy for beer) but it would destroy or greatly reduce the market for illegal drugs
  - occamrazor 6y ago
    This looks like a reasonable system. It is however a sad fact that a similar system has already failed for opiates. It’s a hard problem.
    - Broken_Hippo 6y ago

vmchale 6y ago

> While criminalising hard drugs is not ideal, legalising them and thereby making them more easily available will have a devastating impact and destroy too many lifes. Also tricky, quaaludes are the only drug I can think of that actually got banned successfully.

jrochkind1 6y ago

Alcohol wrecks plenty of people's lives for sure even today, and yet... it probably wrecked more people's lives in the US when they tried to illegalize it. You have the people's lives it wrecks as users (probably not all that diminished when illegalized), and then you can add to it the people's lives wrecked as a result of the criminalized industry. But that's why they made alcohol illegal in the US for a bit in the early 20th century, because they worried it was wrecking people's lives. (And it surely was wrecking some people's lives, as it still is).

abfan1127 6y ago
This is an important point. Those that choose to use will get wrecked regardless of legality. However, the ripple is small. Illegality drives all sorts of huge ripples: tax money sinks (police, courts, prisons), post-prison felony limits life improvement, unrelated victims of violence, are all just a few issues. Users even stuggle with getting help because of illegality.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  Yes, all of that, 100%. There are other surprising ways the illegality can wreck more people's lives by changing consumption in ways other than "discouraging". Prohibition in the US is when people started drinking a lot more liquor and less beer or wine. If the thing is contraband and you have to sneak it around, better to have lower volume to sneak. But liquor is of course more dangerous in a variety of ways. (On the plus side, we owe the modern cocktail to liquor drinking in prohibition -- because people were drinking more liquor, and it was BAD liquor, you had to cover up the taste. And I do like a cocktail myself). Similarly, someone getting fentanyl when they wanted to get cocaine is consequence of it being criminalized, and their life is really going to get wrecked, and it was criminalization that did it. Or for that matter the "crack" formulation of cocaine in the first place is a consequence of the criminalized market, it was invented to fit the "business" needs of black market vendors.
  - iguy 6y ago
    > Prohibition in the US is when people started drinking a lot more liquor and less beer or wine Here's a graph I found, it looks like prohibition happened at the end of a huge swing from 90% liquor in 1850 to majority beer in 1915 (with wine always a tiny slice): https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/alcohol-consumption-per-person-us https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/alcohol-consumption-per-p... That doesn't have data during prohibition, consumption was obviously not zero, and I'm sure it swung towards hard stuff. But I think there are estimates, maybe 30-40% of pre-prohibition levels (with some lasting effect, but not huge, 1980 above the 1910 peak). I also believe that consumption in say 1700 was considerably higher than 1900.

gopalv 6y ago

> While criminalising hard drugs is not ideal, legalising them and thereby making them more easily available will have a devastating impact and destroy too many lifes. The problem is with demand creation driven by the process, not with the supply part of it. The whole opioid epidemic is a classic example of accidental demand creation for the drugs and trying to fix it in steps by crushing the supply. But the actual medical use prevents the supply from being completely locked down. In the US, I'm waiting to see what the Oregon experiment looks like - where they're trying to tackle the existing demand instead of worrying about demand growth (i.e help existing addicts, instead just of preventing new addicts).

eric_h 6y ago
> The whole opioid epidemic is a classic example of accidental demand creation for the drugs Perhaps orthogonal to your point but it seems pretty clear from information coming out that the demand creation for opioids was very much not accidental.

godelski 6y ago

I think the problem is a little different in Colombia. The cartels are big enough that the government can't fight them. This results in 0 regulation and a lot of exploitation of the people that live in the regions the cartels settle in. As long as there are people on Earth that want cocaine, Colombia will have this problem (because they produce most of that cocaine). So unless Colombia's military can get a lot stronger over night and a lot less corrupt, this problem will continue to exist. They've been trying to fight with force for the last 50 years while the cartels have only grown stronger (by a lot actually). So maybe it is time to change strategies and rethink the problem. Because clearly this one hasn't been helping (and many think it has made it worse). Edit: I'm not saying the cartels are more powerful. I said the government is ineffective at fighting them. Guerrilla warfare is difficult.

dontreact 6y ago
I’m sorry but you are emblematic of someone who has watched Narcos and thinks they understand 2020 Colombian politics and drug trade. Which cartels in Colombia are more powerful than the government? Also, at least get the spelling of the country right.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  Presumably Marquitos Figueroa, alleged to have illegally helped Márquez win election, would at least claim semi-equal status with the government.
  - godelski 6y ago
    Not only this, but the cartels are literally shooting at government armed forces and effectively able to keep them at bay (hell, this even happens in Mexico). I did say >>> The cartels are big enough that the government can't fight them Maybe I should have said "the cartels are big enough that the government is ineffective at fighting against them" Which is more of an observation than anything else. Guerilla tactics are hard to fight against, as every America should be well aware of considering Vietnam and all our campaigns into the Middle East. "More powerful" wouldn't be the right descriptor here and is why I didn't use it. But they are gaining more power and subsequently the Colombian government is having a more difficult time combating them. It doesn't take a genius to realize that we've been using one tactic for 50 years and it hasn't worked. Though it does take a genius to figure out the solution to the problem. I'm not sure that legalization is the solution but I'm not sure it isn't either.

BryantD 6y ago

I agree that different drugs have different danger thresholds. However, I noted that Columbia's already legalized personal consumption of cocaine, so in terms of personal danger I don't think the proposed law changes anything. On the other hand, that doesn't mean the effect hasn't been problematic. If anyone has any good studies at their fingertips I'd be curious.

efdee 6y ago

There's legalising, and then there's decriminalising. For hard drugs, the latter sounds quite useful.

jlengrand 6y ago

If you can get past the style of Vice, this documentary has quite some interesting facts about Portugal : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dU5yiKBqCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dU5yiKBqCk. Not claiming it's a solution of any kind, but it is interesting to get some insight from a country that actually tried to legalize everything.

rv-de 6y ago

> While criminalising hard drugs is not ideal, legalising them and thereby making them more easily available will have a devastating impact and destroy too many lifes. You mean your friends live in a country where cocaine is legal? o.O Would love to know more about that! Or is it that you just didn't understand the arguments in favour of drug legalization and decriminalization?

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago

>...legalising them and thereby making them more easily available will have a devastating impact and destroy too many lifes. The evidence does not bear this out. https://transformdrugs.org/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight/ https://transformdrugs.org/drug-decriminalisation-in-portuga...

DoreenMichele 6y ago

While most people don't get into trouble from using Cannabis, cocaine usage can wreck people's life. Unfortunately I have had to witness this a couple of times in my circle of friends. Cocaine is an extract from the coca plant. Historically, Indigenous peoples chewed the leaves to get moderately high and also used it for medicinal purposes. The coca plant does good things for the lungs and gut. Among other things, it was used to help them be productive at altitude due to its impact on lung function. What most of the modern world knows as "cocaine" is a highly concentrated form of what is found in the coca plant. A little googling suggests that when you similarly concentrate THC, you start seeing similar problems: THC concentrates stimulate the same areas within the brain which heroin, cocaine and alcohol reaches. The effects of standard marijuana vary from those related to using THC concentrates. While this may seem like no big deal, using THC concentrates can produce additional physical and psychological effects. According to the NIH These include: • Paranoia • Delirium • Anxiety • Panic/Fear • Delusions/ Hallucinations • Increase in blood pressure • Blood shot eyes • Weight gain • Lung and/or throat infections In addition to the above, there is new evidence which shows that people who have a history of schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, bipolar disorder or psychosis may be at a greater risk of experiencing a breakdown or mental health episode. https://siamrehab.com/effects-of-marijuana-concentrates/ https://siamrehab.com/effects-of-marijuana-concentrates/

samatman 6y ago
"Siam rehab" really? > THC concentrates stimulate the same areas within the brain which heroin, cocaine and alcohol reaches. This is not-even-wrong, drugs don't stimulate areas they reach specific receptors. These people don't even understand the circulatory system, let alone psychopharmacology! THC is a partial agonist of cannabis receptors. What that means is, and any pothead can confirm this for you, there's a level of high which you can't exceed, no matter how much you take in. It's habit-forming, and can have numerous unpleasant psychological consequences, including psychosis. But concentrates aren't magic. They mostly exist for users with a high tolerance from prior use, which includes recreational addicts but also includes pain patients, whether by prescription or not. There is no world in which the effects of concentrated cocaine should be compared to dabs, Doreen.

syshum 6y ago

The law should not be used to prevent someone from destroying their own life, if they want to ingest chemicals that screw them up, it is their life. The law should be to protect people from having their lives destroyed by others. On that front the score is clear, the effect of prohibition to peoples lives is FAR FAR FAR FAR more damaging to the general public than the use of the drug is. Prohibition creates criminal gangs, street violence, increased overdose, increases load on health systems, erodes personal liberty as the government clamps down harder and harder on drug use, rips apart families with life line consequences of criminal charges, and 100's of other negative effects on general society far and beyond someone personally wrecking their own life by using drugs.

samatman 6y ago

One of the casualties of prohibition is responsible use patterns. When America experimented with banning alcohol, beer and wine became scarce. Instead, our markets were flooded with high-octane spirits, of dubious purity. I have never used purified cocaine, and don't intend to start. Back in the early Noughts, coca tea bags were available for purchase on Amazon (yes, really) imported from Bolivia; this was illegal, but tolerated. They were lovely! I would enjoy a glass in the early evening when I was going out, it gave me a nice, pro-social boost that wears off faster than caffeine, letting me sleep at night. Of all the many drugs I've tasted over the years, coca tea might be the least harmful. Chewing coca is manifestly not a problem either, Bolivian and Peruvian indigenous society is in no danger from this habit, though I don't doubt they get grumpy if they can't get their leaf (I don't think I would commit actual murder to obtain coffee but I never want to find out). Here's the kicker: At point I had probably three ounces of cocaine-bearing material in my cupboard, next to the Earl Grey. If I had suffered some bad luck, and my white-privilege shield broke down, that's in the ten-year mandatory minimum category of felony. So, if cocaine is illegal, the vast majority of users are going to rail lines of it, as pure as they can get, or smoke the carbonate salt. I hope I've explained why that's a bad idea?

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
coca leaves is different from cocaine. coca leaves are used traditionally for anti nausea and altitude sickness. It is not uncommon to stick a wad of coca leaves while hiking up maachu picchu. having said that..i cant stress this enough..cocaine is entirely different from medicinal herb known as coca leaves. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-cocaine-is-made-2017-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-cocaine-is-made-2017-10 > how cocaine is made https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_tea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_tea > coca tea