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So, let's just legalize them all and hope that people will use them responsibly. As a German, I can, with no problem whatsoever, go into the next supermarket a
by martin_a 6y ago
So, let's just legalize them all and hope that people will use them responsibly.
As a German, I can, with no problem whatsoever, go into the next supermarket and buy enough alcohol and cigarettes to severly hurt myself. No one gives a shit, probably because the state earns money when I do so.
Either we find (all) drugs bad, or we stop being such liars in regards to this.
- pengaru 6y agoI agree 100%, on the condition that a substantial portion of the taxes collected are allocated explicitly for funding free public mental health and addiction treatment facilities, perhaps homeless assistance programs as well.
- martin_a 6y agoI'm totally with you on that.
- 88840-8855 6y ago"So, let's just legalize them all and hope that people will use them responsibly." Same logic as... "let us not legally force face masks on people, but trust in their responsibility. Let us not control social distancing, but trust that people, especially young people, will be responsible" ... booooom, over 9000 covid cases. Democracy assumes rational people and people with responsibility. We see now how well it all works. Same "responsibility" applies to the free internet. It is amazing, when people are responsible and are not pushing fake news to allow demagogues and populists to rise to power. Was it Sokrates who once said that Democracy fails because of Unmündigkeit? I cannot find the English translation of this word.
- starfallg 6y ago>Democracy assumes rational people and people with responsibility. We see now how well it all works. That's got nothing to do with whether people are in a Democracy at all. It's not even to do with whether the society is individualistic or collectivist. It's more to do populist messaging and how they are spread.
- njanirudh 6y agoNah. The collectavistic countries are as badly affected as the individualistic countries of not more.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoIt's not the same logic. Weed isn't a contagious disease responsible for probably the majority of last year's deaths, and if you overdose on heroin, your neighbours' grandparents won't also die of a heroin overdose. There are plenty of problems with drugs, but that ain't one. Now, banning smoking in public, that I can get behind. I don't want none of that nasty second-hand smoke.
- 88840-8855 6y agoWell, directly there are no negative implications, but indirectly very many. I do not want to finance health insurance for drug addicts, for example. And yes, I agree, also smoking should be banned and the health insurance limited. Sorry, but not sorry for having a conservative stand. You _must_ accept my opinion instead of downvoting... I thought that Pluralism of Opinions is a valued concept in democracies...
- dmingod666 6y agoGenuinely curious, how old are you? don't want the exact number rounded up or down to the nearest multiple of 10 is fine.
- 88840-8855 6y ago40
- dmingod666 6y agothanks!
- wizzwizz4 6y ago> I do not want to finance health insurance for drug addicts Rehabilitation of drug addicts is, iirc, cheaper than the policing and economic (inc. opportunity) costs they tend to otherwise cause. The health insurance system can't natively deal with this kind of thing, but a decent healthcare system supporting drug addicts would cost you less.
- raxxorrax 6y agoWell, we would need to elect a strong leader in that case that helps us with our immaturity. ... booooom, millions of people dead. ... or we could look at countries that did indeed legalize drug use completely and are successful with it.
- Tepix 6y agoAlcohol is a big problem in Germany: 3 million people with alcohol issues and 74,000 yearly deaths.² Weed is considered less of a problem by the scientific community. The logical conclusion: Increase taxes on alcohol and legalize weed. -- ² https://www.dhs.de/suechte/alkohol/zahlen-daten-fakten https://www.dhs.de/suechte/alkohol/zahlen-daten-fakten
- that_guy_iain 6y agoFrom my experience talking to the people whose job it is to provide support and services to those who abuse substances. Most experts in substance abuse normally say Alcohol is the worst of all the substances. With many stating, it causes more havoc in families on scale than heroin. More people die because of Alcohol, not just from drinking it but from drink drivers, drunken fights, etc. The general violence caused by it is more than any other drug. The amount of families dealing with alcohol abuse with their family is more than any other substance. Drugs like heroin cause crime problems and family problems not because of what the drug does but because of the cost of the drug. It generally causes lots of petty crimes instead of murder, rape, etc.
- brazzy 6y agoBut note that all those statement are about the amount of harm in an environment where alcohol is legal, cheaply available in every supermarket, widely advertized, and its consumption socially accepted, even expected. Can you really say in good conscience that other drugs wouldn't be worse if they became equally ubiquitous?
- yspeak 6y agoThis obviously.
- cfcosta 6y agoYes. If they were as widely available, you would be able to know what you're buying, how much and hopefully how to apply it as safely as possible. Having drugs being illegal make them stronger, as they have to be transported in secret, and create derivative drugs to fill lower price ranges for long term addicts, such as crack and oxy.
- red_trumpet 6y ago> No one gives a shit, probably because the state earns money when I do so. That's a bit shortsighted though. Because if you end up in the hospital or with lung cancer, you will cost the public insurance lots of money.
- refurb 6y agoYeah, but that smoker would have paid a lot more in tobacco taxes and won’t be collecting a pension.
- bluescrn 6y agoI suppose there's even environmental benefits to smoking/drinking yourself into an early grave. Think of all the resources you won't consume and CO2 you won't emit by not living those extra years
- refurb 6y agoMy comment is kind of glib but I recall hearing about a study in Canada decades ago that looked at this. What they found was that smokers, on average, died early so they collected a decade or two less in pension payments. They paid tens of thousands in tobacco taxes. And when they did die, it was relatively quick and not that expensive to treat (chemotherapy). Overall, smokers were a net benefit to society. That equation might have changed today with expensive lung cancer drugs and longer life.
- cyberdelica 6y agoI once looked into purchasing pure ethanol, for the production of a topical liniment for martial artists. The duty to be paid per litre is eye wateringly high, to the point that it constitutes almost the vast majority of the cost. I came away wondering how manufacturers make any money. I guess, by volume.
- ageofwant 6y agoTrue, but heavy smokers and drinkers tend to die earlier removing the states burden off supporting them later on. So it kind of evens out.
- quchen 6y ago| So, let's just legalize them all and hope that people will use them responsibly. Like for alcohol, I doubt that would work. Some substances are simply hard to use responsibly, some offer unique ways of escapism (especially during a lockdown), many people lack restraint. I don’t imagine the number of people dependent on substances would go down, it would probably just diversify. In the end, I think it’s very hard to predict societal outcome of such a big decision. To name a few – confused parents, drug tourism, self-medication instead of going to doctors. In any case, we don’t have to go fully legal-as-broccoli drugs. We could start by decriminalization for well-defined amounts, by legalizing drug checking, by educating instead of fearmongering. But since we replaced the worst imaginable state representative for drugs with the second worst imaginable state representative for drugs, I doubt anything will happen here soon. | Either we find (all) drugs bad, or we stop being such liars in regards to this. It’s not that people are liars, most just don’t know that alcohol is among the hardest drugs out there, and fear the unknown.
- pasabagi 6y agoI think alcohol works better as a counter-argument. In Germany, it is not only legal, but it is also legal to sell in 'bubblegum flavour party boxes', obviously aimed at children. It is legal to sell at checkout, so after a recovering alcoholic is tired out by all the shopping they can be tempted by a little bottle of vodka or whatever. Despite this, and a social culture that revolves around drinking, the vast majority manage to avoid serious alcohol problems. This essentially shows how responsible people are - even with a culture that makes it very easy to start, and very difficult to quit, most people manage to maintain a reasonable distance from an extremely addictive drug. If you follow this argument along, I think if you legalized drugs, but also put some restrictions on their use (for instance, not allowing supermarkets to sell them, not allowing child-branded stuff, etc) - there's no reason to imagine the situation would not improve vis-a-vis the current one. All this said, my preferred drug policy (for all drugs, including alcohol) would be something like a ban on their public use and sale. As somebody who used to take a lot of drugs, I have no illusions about the destabilizing influence they can have on people's lives. Alcohol is well known for being a force multiplier for pre-existing misery or mental instabillity, and I think even mild drugs, like weed, work in the same way.
- lucioperca 6y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/nov/02/david-nutt-dangerous-drug-list https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/nov/02/david-nutt-d...
- gameswithgo 6y agoI would suggest that it is possible that some drugs are worse than others. That perhaps caffeine should be freely available but meth should be regulated or outlawed, for instance. I do not KNOW this to be the correct I am simply asking you to consider that it could be the case that some drugs are more dangerous to people/society than others. I do however agree that alcohol is likely extremely bad for people/societies but its sort of a cat that can't be put back in the bag as the USA showed. It escaped thousands of years ago.
- giantg2 6y agoNot to mention alcohol is extremely easy to manufacture from normal household products.
- hrktb 6y agoEducation and supervised access can strike a good balance. Not really a recreational drug, but for instance paracetamol is mostly free of access while having a potential for severe damage on overuse, and it kinda works thanks to having someone hand over the goods with a kind warning (and not being able to buy it willy-nilly at night when you're drunk for instance)
- driverdan 6y ago> meth should be regulated or outlawed In the US methamphetamines are already available legally as Desoxyn.
- MivLives 6y agoI think one of the problems with banning alcohol is that it's too easy to make. Synthing LSD is hard. Fermentation can happen accidentally. When you look at something like Meth, you may not realize it's a schedule 2 drug in the US (so are cocaine, and pcp). While weed is a schedule 1. We really need to look at how this scheduling works, and consider lowering the bar for certain substances, and raising it for other.
- dd_roger 6y ago> So, let's just legalize them all and hope that people will use them responsibly. This edgy comment is brought to you by someone who wasn't around in the 80s to see junkies piling up in the streets.
- swirepe 6y agoLegalization, probably not. Criminalization can work. Portugal decriminalized in 2001 and overdose deaths dropped 80%. People weren't as afraid to get help.
- jokethrowaway 6y agoIt's not even about hoping people will use them responsibly, it's about giving people personal responsibility. What we need to decouple are costs on society for people that decide to endanger themselves by shifting socialised health care to a voluntary basis.
- snarf21 6y agoAnd tax them and use the tax money for rehab centers for those that can't.