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The main problem with drugs is when companies in pursuit of wealth and power sells highly addictive drugs to kids ruining their lives. Imagine if instead of put

The main problem with drugs is when companies in pursuit of wealth and power sells highly addictive drugs to kids ruining their lives. Imagine if instead of putting sugar in everything they put addictive drugs in everything, that is what full legalization would result in. Harsh punishments for personal use are nonsense, USA are just insane on that, but I don't think making everything legal is reasonable.

valec 6y ago
> Imagine if instead of putting sugar in everything they put addictive drugs in everything who is arguing making them legal for a food additive, and even more still who is advocating them to be legal for kids?
- username90 6y ago
  A substance legal for adults will be used by most kids. Every kid knows how to get alcohol or cigarettes, just ask some random homeless dude to get it for you in the nearest store for a dollar and there, done.
  - chronofar 6y ago
    Grade A fear mongering, go for the kids. High schools are full of all kinds of illicit drugs. Regulating them and creating outreach would actually get a better handle of that. The additive argument is utterly absurd. Again legalization means regulation, which would prevent such a thing.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
Imagine if we created family-friendly policies and parents actually cared about their children, spent time with them and raised them well and taught the kids the value of saying 'Oh, up yours!' to most of the world, knowing full well most of the world doesn't care about you and isn't doing what it is doing to make your life better. Children are vulnerable when there are no adults actually looking out for their welfare in earnest. When there are adults looking out for them, children aren't anywhere near as vulnerable as we routinely paint them.
- username90 6y ago
  Buying alcohol and cigarettes is illegal for kids, yet in school 15 year old kids were still out smoking cigarettes every recess and every party had tons of alcohol. Their parents didn't get them that, they just ask random people to buy it for them at a local store, so their parents have no control over their substance use.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    Controlling kids and empowering kids aren't the same thing. You seem to assume "X substances are bad" plus "kids shouldn't have certain choices available to them, ever." Life isn't as simple as "x substances are bad." Kids are best served by an approach other than simply seeking to control them per se, which generally doesn't work and is typically counterproductive.
    - username90 6y ago
      Ok, so lets assume that is true, we can create a society with good parents everywhere. But until we have actually created that society we have to work with what we got today, and parents today aren't like that.
      - DoreenMichele 6y ago
        Today sucks. Continuing to create policies rooted in the fact that "today sucks" tends to be a path towards tomorrow sucking as well. I do realize that creating good policies during a transition phase is especially challenging. But you tend to not get there from here if you don't bother to try to go in that direction at all. Decrimilaziation is a good step in the right direction. Yes, there will be some pitfalls of taking it. We can and should work those and bringing up such concerns is a valuable part of that process, so thank you for doing that. But it's not a good reason to take a good step. It just means "We also need to be concerned about unintended consequences for vulnerable populations." That's always a good thing to have your eye on, whether those vulnerable populations are children, women, people of color, the LGBTQ crowd or cis het white males with money.
leadingthenet 6y ago
It absolutely is reasonable. Making a chemical legal doesn’t preclude disallowing it becoming a food additive. And food regulation is a very serious matter, that can, and is, being strongly enforced. If that’s the only reason you’re against legalisation, I have good news for you! You needed worry about it, at all.
- username90 6y ago
  There is a quite wide range of reasonable options on this. I don't think it is unreasonable for drugs to be mostly legal in many cases, no, but I don't think that small fines for personal use is unreasonable either. A good explanation is driving above the speed limit on roads. An unreasonable system would put people behind bars for years for any kind of speeding. That is roughly what you have today in USA with respect to drugs and I understand why you'd want to remove it. However removing speed limits is not reasonable either, even if you personally can handle it we can clearly see that deaths increase significantly with higher limits so in this case we care about their lives above your freedom. If making a particular drugs more legal to use causes a lot of deaths then I don't think it should be legal to use, no matter how much you think that your liberty gets violated if you aren't free to use it. I value their lives above your freedom. Cannabis doesn't kill people so I don't care much about it, but harder drugs often do. Edit: As an example we can see how making opium more available to people (prescribed via doctor) killed a hundred thousand people in USA the past 10 years. Making it easily accessible even without prescription would likely be worse. I don't think that properly regulating the substance and saving that many people is unreasonable.
  - leadingthenet 6y ago
    So you’ve moved the goalposts, as always happens with these discussions. I’m sorry, but if your counter argument just ignores what I said, I’m not going to bother addressing your points either.
- keiferski 6y ago
  Aren’t consumption of alcohol and cigarettes (and advertising for them) much higher among the poor? Is there a reason why other drugs would be any different?

valec 6y ago

> Imagine if instead of putting sugar in everything they put addictive drugs in everything who is arguing making them legal for a food additive, and even more still who is advocating them to be legal for kids?

username90 6y ago
A substance legal for adults will be used by most kids. Every kid knows how to get alcohol or cigarettes, just ask some random homeless dude to get it for you in the nearest store for a dollar and there, done.
- chronofar 6y ago
  Grade A fear mongering, go for the kids. High schools are full of all kinds of illicit drugs. Regulating them and creating outreach would actually get a better handle of that. The additive argument is utterly absurd. Again legalization means regulation, which would prevent such a thing.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

Imagine if we created family-friendly policies and parents actually cared about their children, spent time with them and raised them well and taught the kids the value of saying 'Oh, up yours!' to most of the world, knowing full well most of the world doesn't care about you and isn't doing what it is doing to make your life better. Children are vulnerable when there are no adults actually looking out for their welfare in earnest. When there are adults looking out for them, children aren't anywhere near as vulnerable as we routinely paint them.

username90 6y ago
Buying alcohol and cigarettes is illegal for kids, yet in school 15 year old kids were still out smoking cigarettes every recess and every party had tons of alcohol. Their parents didn't get them that, they just ask random people to buy it for them at a local store, so their parents have no control over their substance use.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Controlling kids and empowering kids aren't the same thing. You seem to assume "X substances are bad" plus "kids shouldn't have certain choices available to them, ever." Life isn't as simple as "x substances are bad." Kids are best served by an approach other than simply seeking to control them per se, which generally doesn't work and is typically counterproductive.
  - username90 6y ago
    Ok, so lets assume that is true, we can create a society with good parents everywhere. But until we have actually created that society we have to work with what we got today, and parents today aren't like that.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      Today sucks. Continuing to create policies rooted in the fact that "today sucks" tends to be a path towards tomorrow sucking as well. I do realize that creating good policies during a transition phase is especially challenging. But you tend to not get there from here if you don't bother to try to go in that direction at all. Decrimilaziation is a good step in the right direction. Yes, there will be some pitfalls of taking it. We can and should work those and bringing up such concerns is a valuable part of that process, so thank you for doing that. But it's not a good reason to take a good step. It just means "We also need to be concerned about unintended consequences for vulnerable populations." That's always a good thing to have your eye on, whether those vulnerable populations are children, women, people of color, the LGBTQ crowd or cis het white males with money.

leadingthenet 6y ago

It absolutely is reasonable. Making a chemical legal doesn’t preclude disallowing it becoming a food additive. And food regulation is a very serious matter, that can, and is, being strongly enforced. If that’s the only reason you’re against legalisation, I have good news for you! You needed worry about it, at all.

username90 6y ago
There is a quite wide range of reasonable options on this. I don't think it is unreasonable for drugs to be mostly legal in many cases, no, but I don't think that small fines for personal use is unreasonable either. A good explanation is driving above the speed limit on roads. An unreasonable system would put people behind bars for years for any kind of speeding. That is roughly what you have today in USA with respect to drugs and I understand why you'd want to remove it. However removing speed limits is not reasonable either, even if you personally can handle it we can clearly see that deaths increase significantly with higher limits so in this case we care about their lives above your freedom. If making a particular drugs more legal to use causes a lot of deaths then I don't think it should be legal to use, no matter how much you think that your liberty gets violated if you aren't free to use it. I value their lives above your freedom. Cannabis doesn't kill people so I don't care much about it, but harder drugs often do. Edit: As an example we can see how making opium more available to people (prescribed via doctor) killed a hundred thousand people in USA the past 10 years. Making it easily accessible even without prescription would likely be worse. I don't think that properly regulating the substance and saving that many people is unreasonable.
- leadingthenet 6y ago
  So you’ve moved the goalposts, as always happens with these discussions. I’m sorry, but if your counter argument just ignores what I said, I’m not going to bother addressing your points either.
keiferski 6y ago
Aren’t consumption of alcohol and cigarettes (and advertising for them) much higher among the poor? Is there a reason why other drugs would be any different?