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When is the last time you knew of someone becoming blind from a poorly made moonshine? Legalization works for one of our most widely available and life-ruining

by zwkrt 5y ago

When is the last time you knew of someone becoming blind from a poorly made moonshine? Legalization works for one of our most widely available and life-ruining drugs, why wouldn’t it work for the others?

pmoriarty 5y ago
Alcohol being legal is better than it being illegal, but plenty of people harm or kill themselves and/or others on it all the time... so I hesitate to call this "working"... it's just not as bad as prohibiting it. A similar state of affairs is likely to occur with legalization of other drugs, though fortunately most of them are much less harmful than alcohol.
- cloverich 5y ago
  > so I hesitate to call this "working"... it's just not as bad as prohibiting it. I am missing the argument here -- its better to legalize than not legalize, but you are against legalizing? To level set, I don't think many people believe legalizing will make everything rosy. I believe instead they think it will improve the situation, and optimistically free up resources used for criminalization that may be better used for treatment, i.e. instead of training someone to be a cop you can train them to be a nurse.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    "I am missing the argument here -- its better to legalize than not legalize, but you are against legalizing?" No. Look a couple of posts up in the thread you're responding to and you'll see me say: "I'm 110% for legalization, but we need to set realistic expectations." and I was responding to someone who was saying that if we legalize there'd be no overdoses. That's just wishful thinking. We need to legalize but be realistic about our predictions about what legalization is going to look like. No overdoses is not achievable (see my other posts in this thread as to the reasons why). But overdoses will definitely be reduced.
eurasiantiger 5y ago
> When is the last time you knew of someone becoming blind from a poorly made moonshine? This may not be a problem in urban America, but the world is slightly larger than that. Try living in the Eastern bloc, you will find Russian moonshine is wildly popular and sometimes comes with methanol. Same goes for China, India and many African countries — the profit motives are stronger where knowledge is more scarce.

by zwkrt 5y ago

pmoriarty 5y ago

Alcohol being legal is better than it being illegal, but plenty of people harm or kill themselves and/or others on it all the time... so I hesitate to call this "working"... it's just not as bad as prohibiting it. A similar state of affairs is likely to occur with legalization of other drugs, though fortunately most of them are much less harmful than alcohol.

cloverich 5y ago
> so I hesitate to call this "working"... it's just not as bad as prohibiting it. I am missing the argument here -- its better to legalize than not legalize, but you are against legalizing? To level set, I don't think many people believe legalizing will make everything rosy. I believe instead they think it will improve the situation, and optimistically free up resources used for criminalization that may be better used for treatment, i.e. instead of training someone to be a cop you can train them to be a nurse.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "I am missing the argument here -- its better to legalize than not legalize, but you are against legalizing?" No. Look a couple of posts up in the thread you're responding to and you'll see me say: "I'm 110% for legalization, but we need to set realistic expectations." and I was responding to someone who was saying that if we legalize there'd be no overdoses. That's just wishful thinking. We need to legalize but be realistic about our predictions about what legalization is going to look like. No overdoses is not achievable (see my other posts in this thread as to the reasons why). But overdoses will definitely be reduced.

eurasiantiger 5y ago

> When is the last time you knew of someone becoming blind from a poorly made moonshine? This may not be a problem in urban America, but the world is slightly larger than that. Try living in the Eastern bloc, you will find Russian moonshine is wildly popular and sometimes comes with methanol. Same goes for China, India and many African countries — the profit motives are stronger where knowledge is more scarce.