5 ms·
Barely over a century ago you could walk into any pharmacy in America and buy a vial of cocaine and some heroin no problem, with a pint of whiskey to wash it do
by User23 4y ago
Barely over a century ago you could walk into any pharmacy in America and buy a vial of cocaine and some heroin no problem, with a pint of whiskey to wash it down. It was precisely on account of rampant drug abuse and the resultant social ills that we got drug control.
Of course the modern regime somehow manages to combine the worst outcomes of both permissiveness and prohibition. We now have junkies overrunning our public spaces while a draconian enforcement regime manages to trample our civil rights without providing any social benefit.
- anonym29 4y agoErgo the need to legalize. It's not that drug abuse is good or that we ought to encourage it, it's that criminalizing it only makes the situation worse without solving the original problem. Criminalization is an entirely unnecessary added harm, while simultaneously failing to deliver on the premise of the justification for it.
- User23 4y agoI mostly agree with you, but observe that public drug abuse is already de facto decriminalized in our major cities. Clearly decriminalization is no magic bullet either. I don’t propose any kind of one size fits all solution because I don’t think any such thing exists. I do think that if there is a policy solution, it will necessarily involve demand reduction[1], social services, and yes in some cases putting addicts into some kind of custodial managed living environment. All of that being tailored to the needs and resources of each particular locale. Practically speaking those treatment centers be a jail or an involuntary hospital, but ideally it would look a lot more like a nice rehab facility with incentives for fostering recovery. Edit: [1] I intentionally left out supply reduction, because I think we have sufficient evidence that it is impracticable.
- anonym29 4y agoWant to reduce demand for recreational drugs? Check out this one simple trick the DEA doesn't want you to know! - https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalization/ https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalizatio...