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You managed to enumerate the potential happy path benefits without mentioning how the consumption of such hard drugs could potentially disrupt/destroy those 'po

You managed to enumerate the potential happy path benefits without mentioning how the consumption of such hard drugs could potentially disrupt/destroy those 'potential benefits'. How will the (cocaine) tourism and local & international communities be effected when people start dying because of overdosing or potential violent behaviour under the effect of these harmful drugs? Will a potential decrease of violence in one area be surpassed by potentially increased violent behaviour due to cocaine + alcohol and other drug consumption? I am very skeptical about legalising such hard drugs, especially when people fail to mention any negative consequences...

pmoriarty 6y ago
"How will the (cocaine) tourism and local & international communities be effected when people start dying because of overdosing or potential violent behaviour under the effect of these harmful drugs?" Why would they overdose if cocaine is legal? Overdosing on illegal drugs is primarily caused by people taking too much of a drug due to a misjudgment of its purity or contents. So that (for example) when someone thinks they're taking 1x of a particular illegal drug, they could actually be taking 2x of it (and that 2x is lethal, whereas 1x would have been just fine). Alternatively, someone might think they're getting 1x of drug X, whereas they might really be getting 10x of drug Y or some unknown mix of drug X and Y, and the quantity of drug Y is lethal. Such misjudgement, in turn, is caused by it being difficult or impossible to judge the purity or contents of drugs you buy on the street. When drugs become legal they are labeled as to dosage and constituency, so their users will know exactly what they're getting, and overdoses will be minimized because non-suicidal users will simply choose to take non-lethal amounts. Quality controls of the legal drug manufacturing process will further minimize adverse effects, compared to black market manufacturing which is a free-for-all in terms of quality (or lack thereof). Users could, of course, still overdose if they mix cocaine with other drugs, but education campaigns should hopefully mitigate that risk, and in any case it won't be any worse than what happens when those same people mix effectively unknown illegal substances. As for cocaine use causing violence, from my understanding it's alcohol that is most likely of all drugs to cause violent behavior, yet most people are not seriously calling for it to be made illegal because of that fact. The violence associated with cocaine is mostly caused not by the drug itself but by organized crime syndicates warring with each other over control of the illegal cocaine market. This source of violence, of course, would be completely eliminated were cocaine to be legalized, as the market would be completely controlled by legal entities, and legal entities (like Pfizer and Merk) don't tend to war violently with one another over turf.
- jedimind 6y ago
  > Users could, of course, still overdose if they mix cocaine with other drugs, but education campaigns should hopefully mitigate that risk, and in any case it won't be any worse than what happens when those same people mix effectively unknown illegal substances. I highly doubt that young people who take cocaine to party will be type of people who will listen or dedicate their time to education campaigns. > in any case it won't be any worse than what happens when those same people mix effectively unknown illegal substances. That's a bold claim which I would like to see substantiated with evidence. How could one possibly foresee the potential damage that could be caused by cocaine going mainstream once it is legalised. I'm just here to have a conversation and ask questions, just so the downvote trigger people don't lose their minds in anger because someone dares to question their narrative.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    "That's a bold claim which I would like to see substantiated with evidence." Oh, come on! You're telling me that if some random stranger offered to sell you a few grams of mystery powder and you have no idea what's in it -- could be fatal, could be not... you'd rather take it, roll the dice, risk your life, and play russian roulette than go to a pharmacy to take a known quantity of pure cocaine -- a quantity you know won't be lethal and would probably make you fell really good instead? Color me more than skeptical. I doubt anyone would choose the russian roulette option than take a legal, regulated, pure, professionally measured and reliably labeled drug that they know won't kill them. If a study was ever conducted on this, it would probably earn an Ig Nobel Prize. "I highly doubt that young people who take cocaine to party will be type of people who will listen or dedicate their time to education campaigns." This is in fact the strategy of harm reduction, and more recently of benefit enhancement. I recommend listening to interviews with Emanuel Sferios, the founder of DanceSafe (probably the most well known harm reduction organization, which does things like provide free drug testing and water at festivals). Sferios gave a good talk, the first part of which (titled "Pleasurable Drug Use is Safer Drug Use") is here: [1] (though I recommend listening to all parts of it) He focuses specifically on MDMA, but the harm reduction principles he talks about are applicable to all substances. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdRIjF5aso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdRIjF5aso
louthy 6y ago
Calling cocaine a ‘hard drug’ is just programming from 50+ years of the War on Drugs. And whilst it’s not the safest drug ever, the vast majority of people who do it are not dying, or have any real long term negative effects. Of course there will always be people who do too much, or become addicted, but that’s the same as alcohol, cigarettes, food, etc. It should then be a public health issue, not a crime issue. Prohibition has not worked, it seems like it never works. Drug use has grown exponentially since the War on Drugs started, the costs of policing it are astronomical, and the harm to communities in the supply chain is enormous. Downstream the users are criminalised and are putting themselves at risk because the product they’re consuming doesn’t have any mandated quality control. Everybody loses when prohibition is a strategy. Well, except the cartel bosses and the organisations paid to enforce these unenforceable laws. Legalisation has a cost too: public healthcare and individuals who may die or suffer because of addiction. But those people exist now, there isn’t a barrier to entry here, drugs are not hard to get hold of. My personal opinion is that prohibition is immoral. Legalisation combined with good public education and rehabilitation schemes would help the world to get out of this cycle of death and criminality.
- jedimind 6y ago
  > Calling cocaine a ‘hard drug’ is just programming from 50+ years of the War on Drugs. And whilst it’s not the safest drug ever, the vast majority of people who do it are not dying, or have any real long term negative effects. Of course there will always be people who do too much, or become addicted, but that’s the same as alcohol, cigarettes, food, etc. It should then be a public health issue, not a crime issue. I would like to see the statistics on how easily people overdose on alcohol vs cocaine + the magnitude of damage each of them causes on an increasing scale. You can't overdose on cigarettes or food, so I always thought that anything you can overdose on can be classified as hard drug, but don't quote me on that. Talking about the known dangers is easy, but what about the unknown unknowns? Also, how would it impact society if cocaine became too popular among youth? ( because it is glamorised in movies & music ) Being skeptical and asking questions on drugs and their potential negative consequences gets one downvoted nowadays... smh
  - 6y ago

pmoriarty 6y ago

"How will the (cocaine) tourism and local & international communities be effected when people start dying because of overdosing or potential violent behaviour under the effect of these harmful drugs?" Why would they overdose if cocaine is legal? Overdosing on illegal drugs is primarily caused by people taking too much of a drug due to a misjudgment of its purity or contents. So that (for example) when someone thinks they're taking 1x of a particular illegal drug, they could actually be taking 2x of it (and that 2x is lethal, whereas 1x would have been just fine). Alternatively, someone might think they're getting 1x of drug X, whereas they might really be getting 10x of drug Y or some unknown mix of drug X and Y, and the quantity of drug Y is lethal. Such misjudgement, in turn, is caused by it being difficult or impossible to judge the purity or contents of drugs you buy on the street. When drugs become legal they are labeled as to dosage and constituency, so their users will know exactly what they're getting, and overdoses will be minimized because non-suicidal users will simply choose to take non-lethal amounts. Quality controls of the legal drug manufacturing process will further minimize adverse effects, compared to black market manufacturing which is a free-for-all in terms of quality (or lack thereof). Users could, of course, still overdose if they mix cocaine with other drugs, but education campaigns should hopefully mitigate that risk, and in any case it won't be any worse than what happens when those same people mix effectively unknown illegal substances. As for cocaine use causing violence, from my understanding it's alcohol that is most likely of all drugs to cause violent behavior, yet most people are not seriously calling for it to be made illegal because of that fact. The violence associated with cocaine is mostly caused not by the drug itself but by organized crime syndicates warring with each other over control of the illegal cocaine market. This source of violence, of course, would be completely eliminated were cocaine to be legalized, as the market would be completely controlled by legal entities, and legal entities (like Pfizer and Merk) don't tend to war violently with one another over turf.

jedimind 6y ago
> Users could, of course, still overdose if they mix cocaine with other drugs, but education campaigns should hopefully mitigate that risk, and in any case it won't be any worse than what happens when those same people mix effectively unknown illegal substances. I highly doubt that young people who take cocaine to party will be type of people who will listen or dedicate their time to education campaigns. > in any case it won't be any worse than what happens when those same people mix effectively unknown illegal substances. That's a bold claim which I would like to see substantiated with evidence. How could one possibly foresee the potential damage that could be caused by cocaine going mainstream once it is legalised. I'm just here to have a conversation and ask questions, just so the downvote trigger people don't lose their minds in anger because someone dares to question their narrative.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "That's a bold claim which I would like to see substantiated with evidence." Oh, come on! You're telling me that if some random stranger offered to sell you a few grams of mystery powder and you have no idea what's in it -- could be fatal, could be not... you'd rather take it, roll the dice, risk your life, and play russian roulette than go to a pharmacy to take a known quantity of pure cocaine -- a quantity you know won't be lethal and would probably make you fell really good instead? Color me more than skeptical. I doubt anyone would choose the russian roulette option than take a legal, regulated, pure, professionally measured and reliably labeled drug that they know won't kill them. If a study was ever conducted on this, it would probably earn an Ig Nobel Prize. "I highly doubt that young people who take cocaine to party will be type of people who will listen or dedicate their time to education campaigns." This is in fact the strategy of harm reduction, and more recently of benefit enhancement. I recommend listening to interviews with Emanuel Sferios, the founder of DanceSafe (probably the most well known harm reduction organization, which does things like provide free drug testing and water at festivals). Sferios gave a good talk, the first part of which (titled "Pleasurable Drug Use is Safer Drug Use") is here: [1] (though I recommend listening to all parts of it) He focuses specifically on MDMA, but the harm reduction principles he talks about are applicable to all substances. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdRIjF5aso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdRIjF5aso

louthy 6y ago

Calling cocaine a ‘hard drug’ is just programming from 50+ years of the War on Drugs. And whilst it’s not the safest drug ever, the vast majority of people who do it are not dying, or have any real long term negative effects. Of course there will always be people who do too much, or become addicted, but that’s the same as alcohol, cigarettes, food, etc. It should then be a public health issue, not a crime issue. Prohibition has not worked, it seems like it never works. Drug use has grown exponentially since the War on Drugs started, the costs of policing it are astronomical, and the harm to communities in the supply chain is enormous. Downstream the users are criminalised and are putting themselves at risk because the product they’re consuming doesn’t have any mandated quality control. Everybody loses when prohibition is a strategy. Well, except the cartel bosses and the organisations paid to enforce these unenforceable laws. Legalisation has a cost too: public healthcare and individuals who may die or suffer because of addiction. But those people exist now, there isn’t a barrier to entry here, drugs are not hard to get hold of. My personal opinion is that prohibition is immoral. Legalisation combined with good public education and rehabilitation schemes would help the world to get out of this cycle of death and criminality.

jedimind 6y ago
> Calling cocaine a ‘hard drug’ is just programming from 50+ years of the War on Drugs. And whilst it’s not the safest drug ever, the vast majority of people who do it are not dying, or have any real long term negative effects. Of course there will always be people who do too much, or become addicted, but that’s the same as alcohol, cigarettes, food, etc. It should then be a public health issue, not a crime issue. I would like to see the statistics on how easily people overdose on alcohol vs cocaine + the magnitude of damage each of them causes on an increasing scale. You can't overdose on cigarettes or food, so I always thought that anything you can overdose on can be classified as hard drug, but don't quote me on that. Talking about the known dangers is easy, but what about the unknown unknowns? Also, how would it impact society if cocaine became too popular among youth? ( because it is glamorised in movies & music ) Being skeptical and asking questions on drugs and their potential negative consequences gets one downvoted nowadays... smh
- 6y ago