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It is time to legalise cocaine: The costs of prohibition outweigh the benefits

97 points by jseliger 4y ago

telotortium 4y ago
https://archive.ph/6VuaN https://archive.ph/6VuaN
throwaway743 4y ago
Not a fan of coke, but for ending prohibition/"the war on drugs" in general. It'd likely solve a myriad of issues.
LordDragonfang 4y ago
I saw this several times on twitter, and most of the comments (besides incredulity) were along the lines of either: a) Bold stance, but most of the same "legalize, tax, and regulate" arguments do apply b) This exactly reinforces my preconceived notions about the kind of person who writes for The Economist (with a few people pointing out the classism involved in the disparities between how the judicial system treats powdered vs crack cocaine)
- bena 4y ago
  That last was going to be my question. Ok, cocaine, but what about crack. From what I understand, the difference between the two is less chemical and more demographic.
  - berberous 4y ago
    The difference between the two is not chemical but speed of effect [0]. This can lead to crack users being much more likely to become junkies than coke users, and thus more likely to result in bad behaviors like stealing to support a habit or losing a job. To use an imperfect analogy, while chemically the same (for at least some of the following examples), there is a large difference between dabs and a joint, straight vodka and beer/wine, injecting opiates vs opiate pills, and smoking meth vs taking adderal, and the stereotypical types of users for each. [O] “by snorting through nasal passages, the drug appears in the blood three to five minutes after use, with about 30 to 60 percent of the drug being absorbed into the bloodstream. Maximum physiological effects occur within 40 minutes, and maximum psychotropic effects occur within 20 minutes. Physiological and psychotropic effects fade in 45 to 60 minutes. By comparison, crack cocaine is not soluble in water and therefore can only be readily smoked. Smoking the drug produces a quicker onset, shorter duration, and more intense effects than snorting powder cocaine.61 Facilitated by the large surface area of the lungs’ air sacs, smoked crack cocaine is absorbed almost immediately into the bloodstream and reaches the brain in only 19 seconds, with 30 to 60 percent of the drug being absorbed into the bloodstream. Maximum physiological effects from smoking crack cocaine are attained within two minutes; maximum psychotropic effects occur within one minute. These effects are experienced for a shorter period of time than for snorted powder cocaine, i.e. between 10 and 20 minutes, but are similar to injected powder cocaine. In sum, although both powder cocaine and crack cocaine are potentially addictive, administering the drug in a manner that maximizes the effect (e.g., injecting or smoking) increases the risk of addiction. It is this difference in typical methods of administration, not differences in the inherent properties of the two forms of the drugs, that makes crack cocaine more potentially addictive to typical users. Smoking crack cocaine produces quicker onset of, shorter-lasting, and more intense effects than snorting powder cocaine. These factors in turn result in a greater likelihood that the user will administer the drug more frequently to sustain these shorter “highs” and develop an addiction.”
    - LordDragonfang 4y ago
      The main question is to whether those differences in speed of effect can justify penalties that are 18x harsher per gram[1] (an improvement over what was previously 100x per gram). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act
      - wahern 4y ago
        In retrospect, no, but in the 1980s even black community activists were demanding harsh penalties, precisely because of the disproportionate impact of crack upon their communities, which was utterly devastating if not existential, at least from a contemporaneous viewpoint. https://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-championed-strict-drug-laws-they-now-seek-dismantle/ https://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-champio... It's fairly well established, e.g. by admissions from Nixon administration officials, that part of the support for the War on Drugs was rooted in anti-black animus. But that's not the whole story. One of the more intractable aspects of "systemic racism" is that even without any animus, when the majority moves on from an issue, minorities get dragged along. Thus why it took decades for even moderate sentencing reform, despite a general consensus emerging much earlier. Everybody admitting to the same general problems isn't even half the battle; most of the battle is in prioritization, particularities, and process. (This dynamic is also the crux of Dave Chapelle's critique of the Woke movement wrt to how it prioritizes the demands of other minority communities over those of the black community.)
  - georgeecollins 4y ago
    The problems with crack addiction is another great argument for legalizing cocaine. Crack is more potent and addictive than cocaine, but crucially also usually cheaper. Sometimes people do want the more dangerous version of a drug, but usually they want the cheaper and more accessible version. If you take the analogy of alcohol, legalization limits the proof of alcohol. When it was illegal people made alcohol that was really strong, like rubbing alcohol or dangerous due to impurities. A legal version of a control substance can be a safer version. And the access to the safer legal version could reduce demand for another version.
6c737133 4y ago
then they'll have to raise taxes to offset the reduction in CIA and DEA revenues... i meannnnn, "budgets"
- chatterhead 4y ago
  Yeah, cause the best thing our federal agencies can do is just let whatever drugs laced with whatever shit come through the borders and kill however many people all at once because of massive overdosing. We control the supply for a reason. 50K people dying in a single weekend from spiked drugs isn't something the US can handle.
  - cia9502 4y ago
  - t-3 4y ago
    By relegating drugs to a black market filled with fast cash, they incentivize cutting drugs and other antisocial profit-seeking behavior that would be unacceptable in an open market. If heroin users could get measured, packaged, laboratory grade product from Rite Aid, they wouldn't bother playing (car)fentanyl roulette. The reduction of costs from medical, prison, and social services alone are compelling, the elimination of a major financial support for organized crime groups, and the removal of non-job occupational options from people's choice should please employers, as it has potential to depress wages and inflation (there are no solid statistics on the prevalence of drug dealing as a livelihood or side hustle for obvious reasons, but simply observing the number of US adults who admit to recreational use in surveys shows that the number must be substantial).
    - TillE 4y ago
      > If heroin users could get measured, packaged, laboratory grade product from Rite Aid Yeah exactly, this is particularly urgent with opiates. If people could just buy pure oxycodone pills at cost - stuff that's already manufactured - opiate addicts would be much much safer. And as a casual user (once or twice a month), I'm extremely skeptical that this would lead to an explosion in addiction, even without any kind of legal safeguards like purchase limits.
sgammon 4y ago
the cannabis market is in tatters. obviously this would completely ruin the Dems’ approach RE/drug use as mental health disorder rather than moral failing. not good advice imo edit: please stop downvoting i didn't make up the concept of society treating recreational drug users poorly :(
- whateveracct 4y ago
  tatters? how so exactly? as a consumer, it seems pretty boring
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    “as a consumer, it seems pretty boring” i see what you did there.
  - sgammon 4y ago
    i'm approaching this from the cannabis operator's point of view. retail prices are depressed significantly in most major markets. it's a hit and miss time for consumers. some parts of the supply chain are rich with product because of new entrants to the space, some parts of the supply chain are really dry.
- elliekelly 4y ago
  Why the false dichotomy? Recreational drug use doesn’t need to be either a mental health disorder or a moral failing. I think there’s plenty of room in the discussion to allow for recreational use knowing that for some people recreational use can and will cause health problems (both mental and physical) and we need to be prepared to help those people get treatment if we want to allow for recreational use.
  - sgammon 4y ago
    these are merely the predominant ways society treats drug use -- and i applaud the effort to move it to "mental health disorder" where previously it was "moral failing" obviously if we are talking about harder drugs like cocaine, heroin, etc., the physical damage and dependence effects must be accounted for.
chatterhead 4y ago
Allowing the government to tax addictive substances after banning them under the auspices of paternalism is morally repugnant. I don't want to live in a country where we allow the people in charge to create black markets only to prosper from them during and after "legalization". If we continue to allow the "tax it to have it" narrative we will suffer the consequences of it. No amount of "school funding" or "road construction" justifies it.
- bragr 4y ago
  As apposed to booze, tobacco, porn (18 USC 2257 among others), cannabis (in many states), gambling (also in many states), prostitution (nevada), strip clubs, etc...?
  - chatterhead 4y ago
    No, in addition to. The whole system is fucked and by design so governments and the chosen licensees can prosper from it. Often, at the expense of the disenfranchised the system destroyed to "enforce the law".
    - bragr 4y ago
      >The whole system is fucked and by design so governments and the chosen licensees can prosper from it. Ah yes, much better to rely on the definitely not fucked by design black market instead.
      - blangk 4y ago
        The black market exists because of the current system too
      - chatterhead 4y ago
        We don't have to have a black market or a government tax. It can be legalized without government skimming.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
e67f70028a46fba 4y ago
The “slippery slope fallacy” is proven to be, itself, a fallacy yet again. The slippery slope fallacy fallacy.
- anonporridge 4y ago
  Many people have argued for a long time for the complete decriminalization of all drugs. And there are many valid reasons to advocate for such a world. Not the least of which is that a country that fancies itself the "land of the free" but harshly polices and punishes people for executing their right to bodily autonomy in ways that don't directly impact others, is immensely hypocritical and damaging to the fantasy of individual freedom that largely animates this society. The "criminalize drugs" meme is losing ground not because we're falling down a slippery slope, but because the bodily autonomy and individual freedom meme is proving to be more powerful and taking ground by force. It's not a slippery slope. It's a memetic war, and the stronger meme is gaining ground step by step through constant, brutal battles. And we're winning.
  - e67f70028a46fba 4y ago
    Drugs have been used as tool by the elites to control the masses for years, since at least the opium wars. Whereas religion was once the opium of the people, now opium will be the opium of the people, as Huxley intended. I agree: you are winning.
    - anonporridge 4y ago
      Powerful people will always use whatever tools are available to control and manipulate the masses, including drugs, religion, media, and outright violence when necessary. Another thing powerful people use to control the masses is criminal law. Criminal drug laws have now been used by the rich and powerful for almost a century to stomp on the face of marginalized groups and societies while giving their own foul and weak progeny and local society a pass. This is what's coming to an end, and you are not on the side that history will look kindly on if you resist this change. However, if you've done your own moral math and determined criminalizing drugs to be a net moral good, then please continue the fight, because we all must fight for what we think is right, even in the face of seemingly inevitable defeat.
maxfurman 4y ago
As someone who supports full legalization for marijuana, I was still shocked by this headline. Cocaine is much more harmful, and much more addictive, than weed. Compared to other addictive substances we allow like nicotine and alcohol, it is significantly easier to ingest in large quantities. Painkillers have a place in medicine but IMO cocaine should remain tightly controlled. Does this position make me a hypocrite?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > cocaine should remain tightly controlled Cigarettes, alcohol and painkillers are each controlled, in some cases tightly. The article’s point is prohibition often results in the opposite of control.
- erichocean 4y ago
  > Does this position make me a hypocrite? Different fact patterns oftentimes require different policies. And you can't outsource your thinking by wholesale transferring reasoning from one set of fact patterns to another, even if they superficially seem similar if you zoom out far enough (in this case, both are "recreational drugs"). You're not a hypocrite.
- Marazan 4y ago
  No you are not a hypocrite, the world of legality and morals is not simplistic and black and white. You'll always end up with situations where close situations fall either side of a dividing line. And that happens. It's not hypocritical to have a line of what is acceptable and what is not. The key thing is to have a good self-understanding of why you think different things fall either side of that line.
  - uoaei 4y ago
    As an aside, I have been really enjoying a full watch-through of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which explores this exact idea from many angles.
    - 4y ago
nostromo 4y ago
I’ve always been a supporter of legal pot. The problem I’m seeing is that once we legalized pot, there was no enforcement of nuisance crimes related to pot. So while I think it’s totally fine to use marijuana in a private space, I’d prefer not to be inundated with second-hand pot smoke on every street corner or park or playground. I think legalizing drugs needs to be paired up with stiffer penalties and enforcement of all of the nuisance crimes that come with it.
- toqy 4y ago
  Have you been anywhere with legal marijuana? Because what you're describing isn't like anywhere that I've been that it's legal.
  - Mezzie 4y ago
    It definitely happens. I'm in a legal state and we just had to chase people away from our business because they were smoking pot in front of it and the smell was permeating our storefront. I also get random whiffs of pot smell in really inappropriate places.
  - machiaweliczny 4y ago
    I visited recently US and NYC and LA you can smell pot so much that it’s disturbing. I don’t know what’s that exactly but sometimes can smell it even in car with closed AC. We don’t have that strong stuff in EU
  - MartinCron 4y ago
    So, it's nowhere near every street corner or playground, but I encounter a surprising amount of second hand smoke here in (legal) Seattle. Although it's not really much more than it was pre-legalization.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    Huh??? You have definitely never been to downtown Denver then. I'm a big supporter of legalized pot, but I agree with GP. In downtown Denver, everything smells of weed, and a large percentage of people seem like they're stoned out of their minds. I'm not even saying there is a solution here, or even necessarily a real problem. I haven't, for example, seen any of these stoned-out-of-their mind people get violent, as I have with drunks. But that said, there was a noticeable change in Denver when legalization passed, and, at least in public spaces, it wasn't good. Walking around in public where so many people are f'd up, and it's not like a bar or something, is a pretty sad experience.
slothtrop 4y ago
If the Economist of all things is parroting this now, it's bound to happen.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  Why "of all things"? The Economist has always been in favor of free trade -- why not of drugs?
  - slothtrop 4y ago
    The Economist has always been among the most status-quo / neo-liberal publications. They've supported "free trade" in one capacity i.e. globalization, but have not always supported legalization of narcotics (they appear to have been for years, but it's been around far longer, since 1843).
- slavik81 4y ago
  The Economist has been consistently in favour of drug legalization for decades. For one example of many, see "The Case for Legalization" from July 2001. https://archive.ph/bVsdn https://archive.ph/bVsdn
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> Half-measures, such as not prosecuting cocaine users, are not enough. If producing the stuff is still illegal, it will be criminals who produce it, and decriminalisation of consumption will probably increase demand and boost their profits. Never thought about this. Makes sense. Decriminalisation could even reduce political appetite for legalisation if this effect prompts e.g. a gang-driven crime wave.
- ninethirty 4y ago
  VICE did an article on fentanyl production. Legal weed in the states cut into the Mexican cartels' weed marketshare, so they reduced their imports and pivoted into fentanyl which has 1/100th the cost to produce as heroin and is more addictive. They also increased their kidnapping and extortion rackets.
  - mountainriver 4y ago
    Oh great, maybe coke was a better outlet for them
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    I saw a body cam footage the other day of a guy who got pulled over with a fuckton of weed. It was legal in the state he was in, but not the amount he had on his. He also made the mistakes of revealing his destination (non legal state). He seems like a reasonable, chill guy, but ended up somehow as a mule. The comments on the video however, implied that the tactic was to get a dumb American to move something like a ton of weed so that the cops are kept busy while the cartels start moving hard shit like meth, fent, etc.
xiphias2 4y ago
Cocaine turned by best friend to a narcissist asshole over the years. I think we have enough narcissists already in our modern society, it's just a very different drug from cannabis.
- 12907835202 4y ago
  Anecdotally I've lost more friends to weed than cocaine (not lost as in died, just found it impossible to maintain the friendship). I'm not sure anecdotes are that helpful here. Unfortunately I've never actually read a study comparing the two, do we even have accurate statistics on cocaine use?
- MartinCron 4y ago
  This is a side effect that I'm not aware of. Can you share more, please?
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    As I tried cocaine only once or twice (I hated the fast heart beat as a side effect), I can more talk about what I felt and try to project on a long horizon: I felt like I know a lot of things, the solutions to all the hardest problems in my life. I wrote it down, and next day when it wore off, I saw how stupid I was, but I see this effect in my ex friend. He used his social skills to get money from everybody and didn't care about lying to everybody. He got super confident in everything even if his shy antisocial friends knew much more about those topics.] He was quite damaging to a lot of people who trusted him from before when he wasn't an asshole, and he's still in the process of finding new victims as he went into huge debt and played away all the money his mother gathered through hard work all her life. He is her only child, and his dad died in a car accident when he was in his teens.
    - MartinCron 4y ago
      Thanks for sharing. Seems painful. I've seen similar things where people seem to just lose their moral compass along with reasonable inhibitions and I've also attributed that to substance abuse, though not cocaine specifically.
capitalsigma 4y ago
I think this is a tough issue, I'm not sure what to think On the one hand: yeah, people dying from tainted/misdosed drugs is 100% preventable, and it's really unforgivable that we lose so many people something like that. Cocaine, apart from IV use, is relatively safe in an acute sense (unlike opiates). On the other hand: hard drugs have manifestly negative consequences on society that don't seem to just a result of enforcement. Hardly anybody ever pawned all of their belongings for weed, but you hear a lot of stories when it comes to cocaine. It seems likely that if cocaine was as easy to access as weed is in legal states, we'd see a spike in use, and that would have a very negative impact on some % that gets exposed. There's also kind of an implication that if something is legal, then the government endorses it. It's going to be tough for the state to look at news reports of overdoses and cocaine-related crime (even if it's relatively infrequent) and say "yeah, it's bad, but we think it's worth the tradeoff for society, tough luck if it's the wrong call for you." IMO, the right tradeoff is probably to have enforcement that's mostly focused on dealers and rehabilitation for users with issues, and whatever harm reduction measures are feasible.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > seems likely that if cocaine was as easy to access as weed is in legal states There is daylight between prohibition and ubiquitous access. (It’s largely unexplored policy space.) Legal weed doesn’t mean every corner gets a joint shop. Legal cocaine shouldn’t mean Whole Foods coke subscriptions marketed by Instagram to minors.
- criddell 4y ago
  > There's also kind of an implication that if something is legal, then the government endorses it. I don't think that's necessarily true. Tobacco is legal and clearly not endorsed by the government (at least not where I live).
  - capitalsigma 4y ago
    Social harms caused by tobacco are much less visible than things like "someone stole my catalytic converter for drug money." Also, yeah, cigarettes are bad, but we're talking about something that kills you in the span of 4-5 decades vs something that can wreck lives in a span of months. I'm also not saying that it's good for people to think "legal = safe," I'm just saying that it is in fact what people often think, and it would cause a lot of bad PR to lean heavily into legalization while that perception is still around.
DerekBickerton 4y ago
I never understood the fascination with cocaine. It's a brief & giddy 10 minute rush that makes your heart beat faster and you become slightly more talkative, and that's it. That's all there is to it. NO different than our favorite stimulant caffeine, with the added effect of numbing your nose after insufflation. It needs to be respected for what it is, just like nicotine, caffeine, or theanine (a relaxant found in green tea). For me it's a trivial substance with an unfortunate amount of glamorization in movies/TV shows. Yes it's dangerous in large amounts, but so is everything dangerous in large amounts. Stop criminalizing what we put into our own bodies!
- kilroy123 4y ago
  I want some of the coffee you're drinking then
- elzbardico 4y ago
  You must brew a very strong coffee, man. You're supposed to drink it, not eat it with a fork and knife.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  You've either had some really bad cocaine or drink some incredibly strong coffee.
- drcongo 4y ago
  I'm intrigued to know what country you're in now if the coke is that bad.
  - hulahoof 4y ago
    Not sure about GP but I’m in aus and can confirm the Coke is that bad
- tonyarkles 4y ago
  So this is a completely blind comment, I didn’t dig into your history or anything. Is there any chance you might have ADHD? I’ve never done coke myself but cocaine use was brought up during my adult ADHD assessment. The psychiatrist had seen a number of patients who, like you, had gotten almost zero fun out of coke. Stories like “My friends all wanted to party, but I wasn’t really feeling it and just went home and did my homework… which was weird, because I was usually pretty bad about doing homework”
DesiLurker 4y ago
Nope, It's a TRAP! cocaine is far more addictive and likely has good reason to be Schedule-II. This line of reasoning will significantly impact legalization of marijuana which should be our first priority. cynic in me says this is probably a backdoor attempt to slow down MJ reform by clubbing it with other drugs. Also, personally I am not quite sure these 'hard drugs' should be fully legalized, maybe just decriminalization should suffice. edit: cocaine schedule
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure cocaine is schedule-2 in the US.
georgiecasey 4y ago
everyone giving their opinion in this thread should disclose whether they've tried cocaine. proper fishscale cocaine, not stepped on washing up powder. the problem is it's too damn good. way too addictive and harmful
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  Legislation and regulation may mean high purity substances aren't necessarily available for retail sale in unlimited quantities.
lordnacho 4y ago
I like the idea, but I also don't want to reward people who are currently doing illegal stuff. It just seems to me the most likely beneficiaries of such a change would be the gangs who already know who the customers are, how to grow the stuff, and so on. Plus it won't become legal everywhere at once, so it makes sense if you're an international drug gang to not just jump out of the closet, rather to hide your association with "legal" entities in countries where the law has changed. Aside from that I do think there needs to be a change.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
danielodievich 4y ago
There is a great book about the business of drug trade called "Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel" by Tom Wainwright, who is a business editor for Economist and made the book after writing an article for the Economist on this topic and was prompted to expand it. It is a fantastic read, going deep into the reasons why drugs are profitable and how cartels are just like any other business with challenges like cash flow, human resources, motivation, competitors, etc. Key (and well argued) takeaway at the end of the book is that making ALL illegal drugs legal (and taxed and regulated) would bring immense relief to the levels of organized crime worldwide, huge benefits to the budgets, at the cost of maybe slightly more people in society who will kill themselves with said drugs, Check it out in your local library https://www.amazon.com/Narconomics-How-Run-Drug-Cartel/dp/1610397703 https://www.amazon.com/Narconomics-How-Run-Drug-Cartel/dp/16...
tayo42 4y ago
These drugs should be available, regulated and controlled. Most people need some support when dealing with addiction, drugs and escaping. bad drugs lead to over doses and deaths when people just needed some support and time. I used a lot of drugs, i got lucky and well didn't die then grew out of a lot of the harder stuff. I just needed some patience and support to get through whatever i was going through. other people weren't so lucky, now they're gone forever. friends are dead because this insane drug war. never mind all the other stuff that comes with black market drugs, cartels and w/e. put meth and heroine in a plain white box behind a pharmacist counter. 18+ to buy. dont allow advertising. itll become boring, less will use it, its no longer counter culture to have it. make the doses clear and predictable. keeping people safe should be the number one priority. what were doing now is failing
- machiaweliczny 4y ago
  Agreed but maybe 21+
  - avidiax 4y ago
    Any age, but you test positive for the street version. Add a chemical taggant to the pharmaceutical version. Make it cheaper than the street drug. All the dealers have to find new jobs because the invisible hand took all the money out of their pockets.
  - justsomehnguy 4y ago
    People on the street doesn't do age checks. I bought beer and alcohol from 14 y.o., some other things from 15-16.
  - tayo42 4y ago
    I think 21 plus for alcohol causes more problem by encouraging that group between high school and 21 to still have to hide it despite being adults. 18 means kids in college can get safe access, where alot of experimenting happens.
- c7DJTLrn 4y ago
  I guarantee that if hard drugs were made available at pharmacies that usage would not go down. Deaths, maybe. You would end up with a whole lot of dysfunctional addicts. 14 year olds can easily get their hands on a bottle of vodka, what happens when they get amphetamines?
yboris 4y ago
An amazing book on this topic, a must-read, is Legalize This! by Douglas Husak He argues that all drugs should be decriminalized (note that this is different from legalized; he is arguing no one should be punished for consumption of any drug). The argument is elegant, simple, and profound. Anyone who is going to jail requires an explanation for why that is happening. It is easy to provide one for violent crimes (for example). But you can't come up with anything reasonable for drug offenses. In the book he goes through four categories of possible responses and shows that they are all lacking (or prohibit too much if imposed in general). For example: we don't put people to jail for risky behavior like skiing or skydiving; we don't put people to jail for things that hurt their health, like alcohol, or pizza. https://www.versobooks.com/books/724-legalize-this https://www.versobooks.com/books/724-legalize-this
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > The argument is elegant, simple, and profound. FWIW, an argument can be "elegant, simple, ... profound," and wrong. Some of the most pernicious ideas are like that.
  - yboris 4y ago
    You're right. But I also do attempt to summarize the idea in the following paragraph. I hope you can judge from the sketch that it's a compelling argument. After all, given that putting someone in jail is just about the worst thing our government can do to a person, any person being put in jail deserves a good reason. And there is just none provided when someone is put in jail. This is why it's so hard to argue against the status quo - there is no argument to argue against.
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > You're right. But I also do attempt to summarize the idea in the following paragraph. I hope you can judge from the sketch that it's a compelling argument. Compelling doesn't mean correct. The impression I got of it was it's one that takes a small(ish) number of philosophical propositions and situational variables, comes up with some solution that's maximally consistent with those propositions, then insists that be applied rigorously to a real word (that's rather more complicated). I'm generally skeptical of that kind of stuff. That maximal consistency is extremely seductive, but the simplifications taken to get there are often oversimplifications, and seductiveness makes it tempting to avert your eyes from the problems and be satisfied.
thenoblesunfish 4y ago
I've never tried cocaine or had its usage described to me by someone that has. Someone here must have. What's it like? Do people get addicted? How often do people do it? How does it compare to the other drugs you've used? Is it fair to compare it to cannabis? Tobacco? alcohol? Heroin?
- maxfurman 4y ago
  Cocaine creates a very strong short-lived dopamine response in the brain. It feels really really good, for a few minutes. Then you want to do more. You don't really want to do anything else. Eventually you run out, and coming down is not fun. Not as bad as opiates but much worse than weed or psychedelics. People can get very addicted to it, but you need a lot of money to really build up a serious habit.
- onemoresoop 4y ago
  The effect is short lasting and user seeks 'fixes' a few times per hour till it runs out. Then you're in for a little depressive episode, or a very unpleasant dysphoria. And the nose gets stuffy for some time afterwards. If you try once in a while you won't get hooked but if you like it you may open to it and eventually... But if you see how it's made and learn what it is cut with by different dealers, how it's transported (sometimes even defecated post transportation) you may never want to touch it. I had a boss who was a daily user. His septum, the separating wall between the nostrils was perforated and frequently had bits of dried blood around his nose. He eventually went off the rails and his life took a dark turn.
fancyPantsZero 4y ago
Are people worried about the costs of cocaine prohibition these days? I expected this headline to be about meth or fentanyl
Mizza 4y ago
Only two months into the Adderall shortage and the Economist is taking the mask off!
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
One of my top 10 most memorable nights is when I was lying on my exes bed completely drunk and high on a massive dosage of cocaine with practically zero tolerance for it while he was having a cokehead conversation in the kitchen with the acquaintance who brought the cocaine. I was listening to music, my heart was beating very fast and it just felt so damn good. Yet I never went for it again, because I hate cokeheads: People with specific goals desire specific drugs. If you are socially awkward and want to be close to people, you will love ecstasy, because it makes you feel love, loved and close to others. Cocaine is for people who want to feel like the smartest, the best, the most liked, the king of the world! Perfect for nervous start up founders, bankers and other undesirables I suppose. Cokeheads like to stand in circles on the toilet, babbling shit while each one thinks he is spouting the highest wisdom. Also, it's expensive and you can snort away HUNDREDS of euro on a binge that can take DAYS at a time, while one hit of ecstasy is... 10€. I am all for legalization, but I know there are people that can't control their addiction and spend all their money on it until their life breaks apart. I wouldn't know how to engage an enemy of legalization in regards to this topic.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  > I wouldn't know how to engage an enemy of legalization in regards to this topic. How about the simple fact that the people who want it already are getting it? And maybe some part of the people who are addicted wants to get help, but because it's illegal it's harder to reach out.
- c7DJTLrn 4y ago
  The irony is that coke is shit and more expensive compared to synthetic cathinones, but it's culturally ingrained.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
Just legalize all the drugs. It makes no sense to keep something arbitrary banned for greater good. Some people will abuse it and some people will try it and then stop because they don't like it. Just like today with alcohol. Edit: My main point to for legalization is better quality of product, more collected taxes and less crime.
- metadaemon 4y ago
  Education over prohibition is the only real solution
p0pcult 4y ago
The criminalization of recreational drug use leads to its selective enforcement: people of color, the poors get fucked by the police. Rich white kids? Not so much. https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/06/19/race-drugs-and-law-enforcement-united-states https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/06/19/race-drugs-and-law-enfor...
exabrial 4y ago
I can't agree with this. Cocaine and Pot are two completely different subjects; the first creates a dependency and literally causes people to ruin their lives in pursuit of the substance, the second is about as dangerous/addictive (likely less so) than a beer. I already deal with enough people on various drugs running around the neighborhood committing repeated "petty" crime in pursuit of the street drugs available.
- yboris 4y ago
  Are you saying that the status quo of putting a person in jail is the best response society can have? Is it the case, in your opinion, that for most cocaine users, is it better for them to be locked up in jail than to "literally ... ruin their lives"? It seems like in the US, going to jail is ruining someone's life. Note that the people you are unhappy about are doing "petty crime" - which means they already can be punished without the need for extra punishment due to substance possession.
  - exabrial 4y ago
    Not really. I think the status quo needs reform; an intent to sell a drug illegally and possession should be treated far differently. And petty crime is a problem: the police don't come when someone's trespassing on your property; yet when you kick them off they come back and piss/shit everywhere, break windows, etc. There's no single answer, but all of these things need to be addressed in addition to possession.
    - yboris 4y ago
      I think one could argue that drug crimes jam up courts and police work (there's paperwork for every criminal processed). So removing criminality from all drugs would free up the police to address the "petty" crime.
ativzzz 4y ago
I think full drug legalization should be the goal of every modern society. Not for the sake of the drugs themselves, but for what it signifies. A society that has full access to drugs without falling to addiction and self-destruction is a healthy society, that has ample opportunity and optimism. People don't become addicted to drugs when they are happy and satisfied with life. A society where people can get help for their problems without having to turn to drugs to cope There will always be individuals who turn to drugs for self destructive purposes, but we obviously see that regardless of whether drugs are legal or not. For example, the U.S. is not in a position where it can legalize drugs because our society is not healthy in the slightest. We are also a winner-takes-all culture where we mostly care about our own selfish pursuits at the expense of the rest of society
klyrs 4y ago
The Economist as high readership among the finance industry. Every coke user I've knowingly met, aside from crack smokers at bus stops, was in sales or finance. Imagine my surprise at seeing this article from this source.
braingenious 4y ago
I’ve always been on the side of “legalize all drugs” for two reasons: safety of consumption and reducing the funding of violent organizations (cartels, gangs etc.) Cocaine is an interesting case study here because (especially in the US) unlike crystal meth, purity varies wildly. You can get two grams from two different dealers in the same neighborhood and one might be 20% pure or 60% pure. Beyond that, the impurities that make up the remaining 40-80% vary just as much. You could be snorting virtually any white powder be it baby formula, maltose powder, de-worming medication, antibiotics, etc. To call it unsafe is a huge understatement, especially now that fentanyl has showed up in some batches! Beyond that, I am not a fan of cartels that chop people up and burn bodies in mass graves! I would prefer they had fewer resources. Decriminalization does not address either of these issues. While I like that it addresses the pointless hamster wheel of arresting end users, it does not even attempt to address any other issue, which I find very shortsighted.
riskneutral 4y ago
> The worst harm falls on producing and trafficking countries, where drug profits fuel violence. Murder in Colombia is three times more common than in the United States; in Mexico, four times. In some areas, drug gangs are so wealthy and well-armed that they rival the state, giving cops and officials the choice of plata o plomo (silver or lead): be corrupted or be killed. Prohibition also sucks children out of school, as drug gangs favour recruits who are too young to be prosecuted ... I see this as the best argument for legalizing. The harm done to these countries by the "war on drugs" is at such a scale that war reparations from the US ought to be paid after they legalize this crop.
drukenemo 4y ago
Thankfully I’m seeing some negative responses here. I think there’s an effort by to destroy our societies. It’s clear that cocaine is harmful to people, and legalizing it could remove many criminals from jail. The argument that “people use it anyway” could be transferred to any crime. We’re not decriminalizing anything because of that reason (cost/benefit analysis). Many fights for the right thing are a constant and costly battle. It’s a bad excuse.
RickJWagner 4y ago
Considering the homeless crisis, and how many of the homeless cite drug addiction, I'd have to disagree.

97 points by jseliger 4y ago

telotortium 4y ago

https://archive.ph/6VuaN https://archive.ph/6VuaN

throwaway743 4y ago

Not a fan of coke, but for ending prohibition/"the war on drugs" in general. It'd likely solve a myriad of issues.

LordDragonfang 4y ago

I saw this several times on twitter, and most of the comments (besides incredulity) were along the lines of either: a) Bold stance, but most of the same "legalize, tax, and regulate" arguments do apply b) This exactly reinforces my preconceived notions about the kind of person who writes for The Economist (with a few people pointing out the classism involved in the disparities between how the judicial system treats powdered vs crack cocaine)

bena 4y ago
That last was going to be my question. Ok, cocaine, but what about crack. From what I understand, the difference between the two is less chemical and more demographic.
- berberous 4y ago
  The difference between the two is not chemical but speed of effect [0]. This can lead to crack users being much more likely to become junkies than coke users, and thus more likely to result in bad behaviors like stealing to support a habit or losing a job. To use an imperfect analogy, while chemically the same (for at least some of the following examples), there is a large difference between dabs and a joint, straight vodka and beer/wine, injecting opiates vs opiate pills, and smoking meth vs taking adderal, and the stereotypical types of users for each. [O] “by snorting through nasal passages, the drug appears in the blood three to five minutes after use, with about 30 to 60 percent of the drug being absorbed into the bloodstream. Maximum physiological effects occur within 40 minutes, and maximum psychotropic effects occur within 20 minutes. Physiological and psychotropic effects fade in 45 to 60 minutes. By comparison, crack cocaine is not soluble in water and therefore can only be readily smoked. Smoking the drug produces a quicker onset, shorter duration, and more intense effects than snorting powder cocaine.61 Facilitated by the large surface area of the lungs’ air sacs, smoked crack cocaine is absorbed almost immediately into the bloodstream and reaches the brain in only 19 seconds, with 30 to 60 percent of the drug being absorbed into the bloodstream. Maximum physiological effects from smoking crack cocaine are attained within two minutes; maximum psychotropic effects occur within one minute. These effects are experienced for a shorter period of time than for snorted powder cocaine, i.e. between 10 and 20 minutes, but are similar to injected powder cocaine. In sum, although both powder cocaine and crack cocaine are potentially addictive, administering the drug in a manner that maximizes the effect (e.g., injecting or smoking) increases the risk of addiction. It is this difference in typical methods of administration, not differences in the inherent properties of the two forms of the drugs, that makes crack cocaine more potentially addictive to typical users. Smoking crack cocaine produces quicker onset of, shorter-lasting, and more intense effects than snorting powder cocaine. These factors in turn result in a greater likelihood that the user will administer the drug more frequently to sustain these shorter “highs” and develop an addiction.”
  - LordDragonfang 4y ago
    The main question is to whether those differences in speed of effect can justify penalties that are 18x harsher per gram[1] (an improvement over what was previously 100x per gram). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act
    - wahern 4y ago
      In retrospect, no, but in the 1980s even black community activists were demanding harsh penalties, precisely because of the disproportionate impact of crack upon their communities, which was utterly devastating if not existential, at least from a contemporaneous viewpoint. https://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-championed-strict-drug-laws-they-now-seek-dismantle/ https://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-champio... It's fairly well established, e.g. by admissions from Nixon administration officials, that part of the support for the War on Drugs was rooted in anti-black animus. But that's not the whole story. One of the more intractable aspects of "systemic racism" is that even without any animus, when the majority moves on from an issue, minorities get dragged along. Thus why it took decades for even moderate sentencing reform, despite a general consensus emerging much earlier. Everybody admitting to the same general problems isn't even half the battle; most of the battle is in prioritization, particularities, and process. (This dynamic is also the crux of Dave Chapelle's critique of the Woke movement wrt to how it prioritizes the demands of other minority communities over those of the black community.)
- georgeecollins 4y ago
  The problems with crack addiction is another great argument for legalizing cocaine. Crack is more potent and addictive than cocaine, but crucially also usually cheaper. Sometimes people do want the more dangerous version of a drug, but usually they want the cheaper and more accessible version. If you take the analogy of alcohol, legalization limits the proof of alcohol. When it was illegal people made alcohol that was really strong, like rubbing alcohol or dangerous due to impurities. A legal version of a control substance can be a safer version. And the access to the safer legal version could reduce demand for another version.

6c737133 4y ago

then they'll have to raise taxes to offset the reduction in CIA and DEA revenues... i meannnnn, "budgets"

chatterhead 4y ago
Yeah, cause the best thing our federal agencies can do is just let whatever drugs laced with whatever shit come through the borders and kill however many people all at once because of massive overdosing. We control the supply for a reason. 50K people dying in a single weekend from spiked drugs isn't something the US can handle.
- cia9502 4y ago
- t-3 4y ago
  By relegating drugs to a black market filled with fast cash, they incentivize cutting drugs and other antisocial profit-seeking behavior that would be unacceptable in an open market. If heroin users could get measured, packaged, laboratory grade product from Rite Aid, they wouldn't bother playing (car)fentanyl roulette. The reduction of costs from medical, prison, and social services alone are compelling, the elimination of a major financial support for organized crime groups, and the removal of non-job occupational options from people's choice should please employers, as it has potential to depress wages and inflation (there are no solid statistics on the prevalence of drug dealing as a livelihood or side hustle for obvious reasons, but simply observing the number of US adults who admit to recreational use in surveys shows that the number must be substantial).
  - TillE 4y ago
    > If heroin users could get measured, packaged, laboratory grade product from Rite Aid Yeah exactly, this is particularly urgent with opiates. If people could just buy pure oxycodone pills at cost - stuff that's already manufactured - opiate addicts would be much much safer. And as a casual user (once or twice a month), I'm extremely skeptical that this would lead to an explosion in addiction, even without any kind of legal safeguards like purchase limits.

sgammon 4y ago

the cannabis market is in tatters. obviously this would completely ruin the Dems’ approach RE/drug use as mental health disorder rather than moral failing. not good advice imo edit: please stop downvoting i didn't make up the concept of society treating recreational drug users poorly :(

whateveracct 4y ago
tatters? how so exactly? as a consumer, it seems pretty boring
- yrgulation 4y ago
  “as a consumer, it seems pretty boring” i see what you did there.
- sgammon 4y ago
  i'm approaching this from the cannabis operator's point of view. retail prices are depressed significantly in most major markets. it's a hit and miss time for consumers. some parts of the supply chain are rich with product because of new entrants to the space, some parts of the supply chain are really dry.
elliekelly 4y ago
Why the false dichotomy? Recreational drug use doesn’t need to be either a mental health disorder or a moral failing. I think there’s plenty of room in the discussion to allow for recreational use knowing that for some people recreational use can and will cause health problems (both mental and physical) and we need to be prepared to help those people get treatment if we want to allow for recreational use.
- sgammon 4y ago
  these are merely the predominant ways society treats drug use -- and i applaud the effort to move it to "mental health disorder" where previously it was "moral failing" obviously if we are talking about harder drugs like cocaine, heroin, etc., the physical damage and dependence effects must be accounted for.

chatterhead 4y ago

Allowing the government to tax addictive substances after banning them under the auspices of paternalism is morally repugnant. I don't want to live in a country where we allow the people in charge to create black markets only to prosper from them during and after "legalization". If we continue to allow the "tax it to have it" narrative we will suffer the consequences of it. No amount of "school funding" or "road construction" justifies it.

bragr 4y ago
As apposed to booze, tobacco, porn (18 USC 2257 among others), cannabis (in many states), gambling (also in many states), prostitution (nevada), strip clubs, etc...?
- chatterhead 4y ago
  No, in addition to. The whole system is fucked and by design so governments and the chosen licensees can prosper from it. Often, at the expense of the disenfranchised the system destroyed to "enforce the law".
  - bragr 4y ago
    >The whole system is fucked and by design so governments and the chosen licensees can prosper from it. Ah yes, much better to rely on the definitely not fucked by design black market instead.
    - blangk 4y ago
      The black market exists because of the current system too
    - chatterhead 4y ago
      We don't have to have a black market or a government tax. It can be legalized without government skimming.
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago

e67f70028a46fba 4y ago

The “slippery slope fallacy” is proven to be, itself, a fallacy yet again. The slippery slope fallacy fallacy.

anonporridge 4y ago
Many people have argued for a long time for the complete decriminalization of all drugs. And there are many valid reasons to advocate for such a world. Not the least of which is that a country that fancies itself the "land of the free" but harshly polices and punishes people for executing their right to bodily autonomy in ways that don't directly impact others, is immensely hypocritical and damaging to the fantasy of individual freedom that largely animates this society. The "criminalize drugs" meme is losing ground not because we're falling down a slippery slope, but because the bodily autonomy and individual freedom meme is proving to be more powerful and taking ground by force. It's not a slippery slope. It's a memetic war, and the stronger meme is gaining ground step by step through constant, brutal battles. And we're winning.
- e67f70028a46fba 4y ago
  Drugs have been used as tool by the elites to control the masses for years, since at least the opium wars. Whereas religion was once the opium of the people, now opium will be the opium of the people, as Huxley intended. I agree: you are winning.
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    Powerful people will always use whatever tools are available to control and manipulate the masses, including drugs, religion, media, and outright violence when necessary. Another thing powerful people use to control the masses is criminal law. Criminal drug laws have now been used by the rich and powerful for almost a century to stomp on the face of marginalized groups and societies while giving their own foul and weak progeny and local society a pass. This is what's coming to an end, and you are not on the side that history will look kindly on if you resist this change. However, if you've done your own moral math and determined criminalizing drugs to be a net moral good, then please continue the fight, because we all must fight for what we think is right, even in the face of seemingly inevitable defeat.

maxfurman 4y ago

As someone who supports full legalization for marijuana, I was still shocked by this headline. Cocaine is much more harmful, and much more addictive, than weed. Compared to other addictive substances we allow like nicotine and alcohol, it is significantly easier to ingest in large quantities. Painkillers have a place in medicine but IMO cocaine should remain tightly controlled. Does this position make me a hypocrite?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> cocaine should remain tightly controlled Cigarettes, alcohol and painkillers are each controlled, in some cases tightly. The article’s point is prohibition often results in the opposite of control.
erichocean 4y ago
> Does this position make me a hypocrite? Different fact patterns oftentimes require different policies. And you can't outsource your thinking by wholesale transferring reasoning from one set of fact patterns to another, even if they superficially seem similar if you zoom out far enough (in this case, both are "recreational drugs"). You're not a hypocrite.
Marazan 4y ago
No you are not a hypocrite, the world of legality and morals is not simplistic and black and white. You'll always end up with situations where close situations fall either side of a dividing line. And that happens. It's not hypocritical to have a line of what is acceptable and what is not. The key thing is to have a good self-understanding of why you think different things fall either side of that line.
- uoaei 4y ago
  As an aside, I have been really enjoying a full watch-through of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which explores this exact idea from many angles.
  - 4y ago

nostromo 4y ago

I’ve always been a supporter of legal pot. The problem I’m seeing is that once we legalized pot, there was no enforcement of nuisance crimes related to pot. So while I think it’s totally fine to use marijuana in a private space, I’d prefer not to be inundated with second-hand pot smoke on every street corner or park or playground. I think legalizing drugs needs to be paired up with stiffer penalties and enforcement of all of the nuisance crimes that come with it.

toqy 4y ago
Have you been anywhere with legal marijuana? Because what you're describing isn't like anywhere that I've been that it's legal.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  It definitely happens. I'm in a legal state and we just had to chase people away from our business because they were smoking pot in front of it and the smell was permeating our storefront. I also get random whiffs of pot smell in really inappropriate places.
- machiaweliczny 4y ago
  I visited recently US and NYC and LA you can smell pot so much that it’s disturbing. I don’t know what’s that exactly but sometimes can smell it even in car with closed AC. We don’t have that strong stuff in EU
- MartinCron 4y ago
  So, it's nowhere near every street corner or playground, but I encounter a surprising amount of second hand smoke here in (legal) Seattle. Although it's not really much more than it was pre-legalization.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  Huh??? You have definitely never been to downtown Denver then. I'm a big supporter of legalized pot, but I agree with GP. In downtown Denver, everything smells of weed, and a large percentage of people seem like they're stoned out of their minds. I'm not even saying there is a solution here, or even necessarily a real problem. I haven't, for example, seen any of these stoned-out-of-their mind people get violent, as I have with drunks. But that said, there was a noticeable change in Denver when legalization passed, and, at least in public spaces, it wasn't good. Walking around in public where so many people are f'd up, and it's not like a bar or something, is a pretty sad experience.

slothtrop 4y ago

If the Economist of all things is parroting this now, it's bound to happen.

jhbadger 4y ago
Why "of all things"? The Economist has always been in favor of free trade -- why not of drugs?
- slothtrop 4y ago
  The Economist has always been among the most status-quo / neo-liberal publications. They've supported "free trade" in one capacity i.e. globalization, but have not always supported legalization of narcotics (they appear to have been for years, but it's been around far longer, since 1843).
slavik81 4y ago
The Economist has been consistently in favour of drug legalization for decades. For one example of many, see "The Case for Legalization" from July 2001. https://archive.ph/bVsdn https://archive.ph/bVsdn
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> Half-measures, such as not prosecuting cocaine users, are not enough. If producing the stuff is still illegal, it will be criminals who produce it, and decriminalisation of consumption will probably increase demand and boost their profits. Never thought about this. Makes sense. Decriminalisation could even reduce political appetite for legalisation if this effect prompts e.g. a gang-driven crime wave.

ninethirty 4y ago
VICE did an article on fentanyl production. Legal weed in the states cut into the Mexican cartels' weed marketshare, so they reduced their imports and pivoted into fentanyl which has 1/100th the cost to produce as heroin and is more addictive. They also increased their kidnapping and extortion rackets.
- mountainriver 4y ago
  Oh great, maybe coke was a better outlet for them
- the_only_law 4y ago
  I saw a body cam footage the other day of a guy who got pulled over with a fuckton of weed. It was legal in the state he was in, but not the amount he had on his. He also made the mistakes of revealing his destination (non legal state). He seems like a reasonable, chill guy, but ended up somehow as a mule. The comments on the video however, implied that the tactic was to get a dumb American to move something like a ton of weed so that the cops are kept busy while the cartels start moving hard shit like meth, fent, etc.

xiphias2 4y ago

Cocaine turned by best friend to a narcissist asshole over the years. I think we have enough narcissists already in our modern society, it's just a very different drug from cannabis.

12907835202 4y ago
Anecdotally I've lost more friends to weed than cocaine (not lost as in died, just found it impossible to maintain the friendship). I'm not sure anecdotes are that helpful here. Unfortunately I've never actually read a study comparing the two, do we even have accurate statistics on cocaine use?
MartinCron 4y ago
This is a side effect that I'm not aware of. Can you share more, please?
- xiphias2 4y ago
  As I tried cocaine only once or twice (I hated the fast heart beat as a side effect), I can more talk about what I felt and try to project on a long horizon: I felt like I know a lot of things, the solutions to all the hardest problems in my life. I wrote it down, and next day when it wore off, I saw how stupid I was, but I see this effect in my ex friend. He used his social skills to get money from everybody and didn't care about lying to everybody. He got super confident in everything even if his shy antisocial friends knew much more about those topics.] He was quite damaging to a lot of people who trusted him from before when he wasn't an asshole, and he's still in the process of finding new victims as he went into huge debt and played away all the money his mother gathered through hard work all her life. He is her only child, and his dad died in a car accident when he was in his teens.
  - MartinCron 4y ago
    Thanks for sharing. Seems painful. I've seen similar things where people seem to just lose their moral compass along with reasonable inhibitions and I've also attributed that to substance abuse, though not cocaine specifically.

capitalsigma 4y ago

I think this is a tough issue, I'm not sure what to think On the one hand: yeah, people dying from tainted/misdosed drugs is 100% preventable, and it's really unforgivable that we lose so many people something like that. Cocaine, apart from IV use, is relatively safe in an acute sense (unlike opiates). On the other hand: hard drugs have manifestly negative consequences on society that don't seem to just a result of enforcement. Hardly anybody ever pawned all of their belongings for weed, but you hear a lot of stories when it comes to cocaine. It seems likely that if cocaine was as easy to access as weed is in legal states, we'd see a spike in use, and that would have a very negative impact on some % that gets exposed. There's also kind of an implication that if something is legal, then the government endorses it. It's going to be tough for the state to look at news reports of overdoses and cocaine-related crime (even if it's relatively infrequent) and say "yeah, it's bad, but we think it's worth the tradeoff for society, tough luck if it's the wrong call for you." IMO, the right tradeoff is probably to have enforcement that's mostly focused on dealers and rehabilitation for users with issues, and whatever harm reduction measures are feasible.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> seems likely that if cocaine was as easy to access as weed is in legal states There is daylight between prohibition and ubiquitous access. (It’s largely unexplored policy space.) Legal weed doesn’t mean every corner gets a joint shop. Legal cocaine shouldn’t mean Whole Foods coke subscriptions marketed by Instagram to minors.
criddell 4y ago
> There's also kind of an implication that if something is legal, then the government endorses it. I don't think that's necessarily true. Tobacco is legal and clearly not endorsed by the government (at least not where I live).
- capitalsigma 4y ago
  Social harms caused by tobacco are much less visible than things like "someone stole my catalytic converter for drug money." Also, yeah, cigarettes are bad, but we're talking about something that kills you in the span of 4-5 decades vs something that can wreck lives in a span of months. I'm also not saying that it's good for people to think "legal = safe," I'm just saying that it is in fact what people often think, and it would cause a lot of bad PR to lean heavily into legalization while that perception is still around.

DerekBickerton 4y ago

I never understood the fascination with cocaine. It's a brief & giddy 10 minute rush that makes your heart beat faster and you become slightly more talkative, and that's it. That's all there is to it. NO different than our favorite stimulant caffeine, with the added effect of numbing your nose after insufflation. It needs to be respected for what it is, just like nicotine, caffeine, or theanine (a relaxant found in green tea). For me it's a trivial substance with an unfortunate amount of glamorization in movies/TV shows. Yes it's dangerous in large amounts, but so is everything dangerous in large amounts. Stop criminalizing what we put into our own bodies!

kilroy123 4y ago
I want some of the coffee you're drinking then
elzbardico 4y ago
You must brew a very strong coffee, man. You're supposed to drink it, not eat it with a fork and knife.
jaywalk 4y ago
You've either had some really bad cocaine or drink some incredibly strong coffee.
drcongo 4y ago
I'm intrigued to know what country you're in now if the coke is that bad.
- hulahoof 4y ago
  Not sure about GP but I’m in aus and can confirm the Coke is that bad
tonyarkles 4y ago
So this is a completely blind comment, I didn’t dig into your history or anything. Is there any chance you might have ADHD? I’ve never done coke myself but cocaine use was brought up during my adult ADHD assessment. The psychiatrist had seen a number of patients who, like you, had gotten almost zero fun out of coke. Stories like “My friends all wanted to party, but I wasn’t really feeling it and just went home and did my homework… which was weird, because I was usually pretty bad about doing homework”

DesiLurker 4y ago

Nope, It's a TRAP! cocaine is far more addictive and likely has good reason to be Schedule-II. This line of reasoning will significantly impact legalization of marijuana which should be our first priority. cynic in me says this is probably a backdoor attempt to slow down MJ reform by clubbing it with other drugs. Also, personally I am not quite sure these 'hard drugs' should be fully legalized, maybe just decriminalization should suffice. edit: cocaine schedule

hotpotamus 4y ago
I'm pretty sure cocaine is schedule-2 in the US.

georgiecasey 4y ago

everyone giving their opinion in this thread should disclose whether they've tried cocaine. proper fishscale cocaine, not stepped on washing up powder. the problem is it's too damn good. way too addictive and harmful

TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
Legislation and regulation may mean high purity substances aren't necessarily available for retail sale in unlimited quantities.

lordnacho 4y ago

I like the idea, but I also don't want to reward people who are currently doing illegal stuff. It just seems to me the most likely beneficiaries of such a change would be the gangs who already know who the customers are, how to grow the stuff, and so on. Plus it won't become legal everywhere at once, so it makes sense if you're an international drug gang to not just jump out of the closet, rather to hide your association with "legal" entities in countries where the law has changed. Aside from that I do think there needs to be a change.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

danielodievich 4y ago

There is a great book about the business of drug trade called "Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel" by Tom Wainwright, who is a business editor for Economist and made the book after writing an article for the Economist on this topic and was prompted to expand it. It is a fantastic read, going deep into the reasons why drugs are profitable and how cartels are just like any other business with challenges like cash flow, human resources, motivation, competitors, etc. Key (and well argued) takeaway at the end of the book is that making ALL illegal drugs legal (and taxed and regulated) would bring immense relief to the levels of organized crime worldwide, huge benefits to the budgets, at the cost of maybe slightly more people in society who will kill themselves with said drugs, Check it out in your local library https://www.amazon.com/Narconomics-How-Run-Drug-Cartel/dp/1610397703 https://www.amazon.com/Narconomics-How-Run-Drug-Cartel/dp/16...

tayo42 4y ago

These drugs should be available, regulated and controlled. Most people need some support when dealing with addiction, drugs and escaping. bad drugs lead to over doses and deaths when people just needed some support and time. I used a lot of drugs, i got lucky and well didn't die then grew out of a lot of the harder stuff. I just needed some patience and support to get through whatever i was going through. other people weren't so lucky, now they're gone forever. friends are dead because this insane drug war. never mind all the other stuff that comes with black market drugs, cartels and w/e. put meth and heroine in a plain white box behind a pharmacist counter. 18+ to buy. dont allow advertising. itll become boring, less will use it, its no longer counter culture to have it. make the doses clear and predictable. keeping people safe should be the number one priority. what were doing now is failing

machiaweliczny 4y ago
Agreed but maybe 21+
- avidiax 4y ago
  Any age, but you test positive for the street version. Add a chemical taggant to the pharmaceutical version. Make it cheaper than the street drug. All the dealers have to find new jobs because the invisible hand took all the money out of their pockets.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  People on the street doesn't do age checks. I bought beer and alcohol from 14 y.o., some other things from 15-16.
- tayo42 4y ago
  I think 21 plus for alcohol causes more problem by encouraging that group between high school and 21 to still have to hide it despite being adults. 18 means kids in college can get safe access, where alot of experimenting happens.
c7DJTLrn 4y ago
I guarantee that if hard drugs were made available at pharmacies that usage would not go down. Deaths, maybe. You would end up with a whole lot of dysfunctional addicts. 14 year olds can easily get their hands on a bottle of vodka, what happens when they get amphetamines?

yboris 4y ago

An amazing book on this topic, a must-read, is Legalize This! by Douglas Husak He argues that all drugs should be decriminalized (note that this is different from legalized; he is arguing no one should be punished for consumption of any drug). The argument is elegant, simple, and profound. Anyone who is going to jail requires an explanation for why that is happening. It is easy to provide one for violent crimes (for example). But you can't come up with anything reasonable for drug offenses. In the book he goes through four categories of possible responses and shows that they are all lacking (or prohibit too much if imposed in general). For example: we don't put people to jail for risky behavior like skiing or skydiving; we don't put people to jail for things that hurt their health, like alcohol, or pizza. https://www.versobooks.com/books/724-legalize-this https://www.versobooks.com/books/724-legalize-this

tablespoon 4y ago
> The argument is elegant, simple, and profound. FWIW, an argument can be "elegant, simple, ... profound," and wrong. Some of the most pernicious ideas are like that.
- yboris 4y ago
  You're right. But I also do attempt to summarize the idea in the following paragraph. I hope you can judge from the sketch that it's a compelling argument. After all, given that putting someone in jail is just about the worst thing our government can do to a person, any person being put in jail deserves a good reason. And there is just none provided when someone is put in jail. This is why it's so hard to argue against the status quo - there is no argument to argue against.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > You're right. But I also do attempt to summarize the idea in the following paragraph. I hope you can judge from the sketch that it's a compelling argument. Compelling doesn't mean correct. The impression I got of it was it's one that takes a small(ish) number of philosophical propositions and situational variables, comes up with some solution that's maximally consistent with those propositions, then insists that be applied rigorously to a real word (that's rather more complicated). I'm generally skeptical of that kind of stuff. That maximal consistency is extremely seductive, but the simplifications taken to get there are often oversimplifications, and seductiveness makes it tempting to avert your eyes from the problems and be satisfied.

thenoblesunfish 4y ago

I've never tried cocaine or had its usage described to me by someone that has. Someone here must have. What's it like? Do people get addicted? How often do people do it? How does it compare to the other drugs you've used? Is it fair to compare it to cannabis? Tobacco? alcohol? Heroin?

maxfurman 4y ago
Cocaine creates a very strong short-lived dopamine response in the brain. It feels really really good, for a few minutes. Then you want to do more. You don't really want to do anything else. Eventually you run out, and coming down is not fun. Not as bad as opiates but much worse than weed or psychedelics. People can get very addicted to it, but you need a lot of money to really build up a serious habit.
onemoresoop 4y ago
The effect is short lasting and user seeks 'fixes' a few times per hour till it runs out. Then you're in for a little depressive episode, or a very unpleasant dysphoria. And the nose gets stuffy for some time afterwards. If you try once in a while you won't get hooked but if you like it you may open to it and eventually... But if you see how it's made and learn what it is cut with by different dealers, how it's transported (sometimes even defecated post transportation) you may never want to touch it. I had a boss who was a daily user. His septum, the separating wall between the nostrils was perforated and frequently had bits of dried blood around his nose. He eventually went off the rails and his life took a dark turn.

fancyPantsZero 4y ago

Are people worried about the costs of cocaine prohibition these days? I expected this headline to be about meth or fentanyl

Mizza 4y ago

Only two months into the Adderall shortage and the Economist is taking the mask off!

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

One of my top 10 most memorable nights is when I was lying on my exes bed completely drunk and high on a massive dosage of cocaine with practically zero tolerance for it while he was having a cokehead conversation in the kitchen with the acquaintance who brought the cocaine. I was listening to music, my heart was beating very fast and it just felt so damn good. Yet I never went for it again, because I hate cokeheads: People with specific goals desire specific drugs. If you are socially awkward and want to be close to people, you will love ecstasy, because it makes you feel love, loved and close to others. Cocaine is for people who want to feel like the smartest, the best, the most liked, the king of the world! Perfect for nervous start up founders, bankers and other undesirables I suppose. Cokeheads like to stand in circles on the toilet, babbling shit while each one thinks he is spouting the highest wisdom. Also, it's expensive and you can snort away HUNDREDS of euro on a binge that can take DAYS at a time, while one hit of ecstasy is... 10€. I am all for legalization, but I know there are people that can't control their addiction and spend all their money on it until their life breaks apart. I wouldn't know how to engage an enemy of legalization in regards to this topic.

jaywalk 4y ago
> I wouldn't know how to engage an enemy of legalization in regards to this topic. How about the simple fact that the people who want it already are getting it? And maybe some part of the people who are addicted wants to get help, but because it's illegal it's harder to reach out.
c7DJTLrn 4y ago
The irony is that coke is shit and more expensive compared to synthetic cathinones, but it's culturally ingrained.

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TheLoafOfBread 4y ago

Just legalize all the drugs. It makes no sense to keep something arbitrary banned for greater good. Some people will abuse it and some people will try it and then stop because they don't like it. Just like today with alcohol. Edit: My main point to for legalization is better quality of product, more collected taxes and less crime.

metadaemon 4y ago
Education over prohibition is the only real solution

p0pcult 4y ago

The criminalization of recreational drug use leads to its selective enforcement: people of color, the poors get fucked by the police. Rich white kids? Not so much. https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/06/19/race-drugs-and-law-enforcement-united-states https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/06/19/race-drugs-and-law-enfor...

exabrial 4y ago

I can't agree with this. Cocaine and Pot are two completely different subjects; the first creates a dependency and literally causes people to ruin their lives in pursuit of the substance, the second is about as dangerous/addictive (likely less so) than a beer. I already deal with enough people on various drugs running around the neighborhood committing repeated "petty" crime in pursuit of the street drugs available.

yboris 4y ago
Are you saying that the status quo of putting a person in jail is the best response society can have? Is it the case, in your opinion, that for most cocaine users, is it better for them to be locked up in jail than to "literally ... ruin their lives"? It seems like in the US, going to jail is ruining someone's life. Note that the people you are unhappy about are doing "petty crime" - which means they already can be punished without the need for extra punishment due to substance possession.
- exabrial 4y ago
  Not really. I think the status quo needs reform; an intent to sell a drug illegally and possession should be treated far differently. And petty crime is a problem: the police don't come when someone's trespassing on your property; yet when you kick them off they come back and piss/shit everywhere, break windows, etc. There's no single answer, but all of these things need to be addressed in addition to possession.
  - yboris 4y ago
    I think one could argue that drug crimes jam up courts and police work (there's paperwork for every criminal processed). So removing criminality from all drugs would free up the police to address the "petty" crime.

ativzzz 4y ago

I think full drug legalization should be the goal of every modern society. Not for the sake of the drugs themselves, but for what it signifies. A society that has full access to drugs without falling to addiction and self-destruction is a healthy society, that has ample opportunity and optimism. People don't become addicted to drugs when they are happy and satisfied with life. A society where people can get help for their problems without having to turn to drugs to cope There will always be individuals who turn to drugs for self destructive purposes, but we obviously see that regardless of whether drugs are legal or not. For example, the U.S. is not in a position where it can legalize drugs because our society is not healthy in the slightest. We are also a winner-takes-all culture where we mostly care about our own selfish pursuits at the expense of the rest of society

klyrs 4y ago

The Economist as high readership among the finance industry. Every coke user I've knowingly met, aside from crack smokers at bus stops, was in sales or finance. Imagine my surprise at seeing this article from this source.

braingenious 4y ago

I’ve always been on the side of “legalize all drugs” for two reasons: safety of consumption and reducing the funding of violent organizations (cartels, gangs etc.) Cocaine is an interesting case study here because (especially in the US) unlike crystal meth, purity varies wildly. You can get two grams from two different dealers in the same neighborhood and one might be 20% pure or 60% pure. Beyond that, the impurities that make up the remaining 40-80% vary just as much. You could be snorting virtually any white powder be it baby formula, maltose powder, de-worming medication, antibiotics, etc. To call it unsafe is a huge understatement, especially now that fentanyl has showed up in some batches! Beyond that, I am not a fan of cartels that chop people up and burn bodies in mass graves! I would prefer they had fewer resources. Decriminalization does not address either of these issues. While I like that it addresses the pointless hamster wheel of arresting end users, it does not even attempt to address any other issue, which I find very shortsighted.

riskneutral 4y ago

> The worst harm falls on producing and trafficking countries, where drug profits fuel violence. Murder in Colombia is three times more common than in the United States; in Mexico, four times. In some areas, drug gangs are so wealthy and well-armed that they rival the state, giving cops and officials the choice of plata o plomo (silver or lead): be corrupted or be killed. Prohibition also sucks children out of school, as drug gangs favour recruits who are too young to be prosecuted ... I see this as the best argument for legalizing. The harm done to these countries by the "war on drugs" is at such a scale that war reparations from the US ought to be paid after they legalize this crop.

drukenemo 4y ago

Thankfully I’m seeing some negative responses here. I think there’s an effort by to destroy our societies. It’s clear that cocaine is harmful to people, and legalizing it could remove many criminals from jail. The argument that “people use it anyway” could be transferred to any crime. We’re not decriminalizing anything because of that reason (cost/benefit analysis). Many fights for the right thing are a constant and costly battle. It’s a bad excuse.

RickJWagner 4y ago

Considering the homeless crisis, and how many of the homeless cite drug addiction, I'd have to disagree.