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I think that if we legalize dangerous addictive drugs then we might as well legalize all medications/drugs by which point the medical establishment loses a big

I think that if we legalize dangerous addictive drugs then we might as well legalize all medications/drugs by which point the medical establishment loses a big chunk of the income that it gets from being a monopoly supplier. I wish society was mature enough for full legalization, but often those pushing for legalization underplay the negative problems associated with drug use. Particularly for that 'harmless plant' marijuana. A university acquaintance went acute schizophrenic shortly after developing a pot habit, that could be a coincidence but the timing is suspicious. A second cousin became mentally retarded immediately after smoking a joint. He's now a 30 year old who can't tie his own shoes. Big businesses already have enough power to shape politics, we're still in the process of stamping out cigarettes. I've noticed a lot of smoking on Netflix so clearly they're still working on a comeback. How long until they put coke back into Coca-Cola and funding scientific studies about how a bump a day is actually good for you. Then there is the seriousness of surreptitiously giving someone an addictive substance, to put the hook into them, which I consider to be interfering to the working of the brain and akin to murder. At the moment the focus is around the drug being illegal as opposed to the deleterious effect it can have. Criminal gangs use this tactic fairly frequently as an alternative to killing someone but I believe it should solicit the same punishment.

awillen 4y ago
A lot of people who are against legalization make this argument that those who are for it ignore the negative consequences, but for large swathes of pro-legalization people, that's just not true. I know there are negative consequences, and I know that in a very small number of people marijuana can cause serious consequences (and in larger numbers of people, harder drugs like cocaine and heroin can cause more serious consequences). But the fact that things can cause negative consequences is not sufficient reason to ban them. The obvious example here is alcohol - it is beyond clear from data that alcohol is incredibly harmful. It is beyond clear that it is more harmful than at least some banned substances (marijuana, LSD, MDMA). It is likely that it is more harmful than harder substances like cocaine, but with less data on those we can't say for sure. So yes, there are negative consequences, but as a society we have decided that we allow people to do things that cause negative consequences (as evidenced by the legality of alcohol). There are limits on that, but with alcohol as a line by which to judge those limits, it's clear that to have any kind of coherent public policy, marijuana should be legal. Or, of course, alcohol could be made illegal. The point is that if you think that alcohol should be legal but other drugs should not, you're just engaging in hypocrisy.
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  * I did use the qualifier 'often' which is not 'all' and to my opinion it's not enough. People readily forget the downsides and need constant reminders. Edit: please note that the following includes the qualifier “most” and please understand that this does not mean “all”. I think alcohol is a bad example as alcohol for most people has a way of punishing abuse on its own and quickly thereby maintaining a tight association between the high and the hangover. The aversion to the hangover means that for most people it's a self correcting problem. Most other drugs don't come with this and the association between the high and negative consequences are more remote and infrequent. I think alcohol, despite the obvious and extensive damage it causes, is a great training drug that teaches most people moderation through first hand experience and encourages caution with other drugs. Using alcohol as an example kinda makes the case for prohibiting alcohol as opposed to legalizing other drugs.
  - awillen 4y ago
    I encourage you to actually do some research on alcoholism - both the number of people it affects as well as the way it prevents itself. You're dangerously uninformed on the topic to be presenting these kinds of opinions.
    - starkd 4y ago
      oh, come on! I think you're right on this issue, but since when are opinions dangerous? He's giving his honest opinion of the issue according to his experience. You will be much more effective if you simply try to enjoy the conversation than trying to call out people for having "dangerous opinions".
      - awillen 4y ago
        You put quotes around "dangerous opinions" - you're wrong to do that, because I never used that phrase. I said he was dangerously uninformed. There are times when people can have valid, personal opinions and times when there's just objective reality. Some people these days say that their opinion is that the 2020 election was stolen. That's not a valid opinion - it's just wrong. Saying that hangovers make alcohol self-regulating when >10M people in the US are alcoholics (for whom it is, as a point of fact, untrue that alcohol is a self-regulating substance) is not a valid opinion - it's a misunderstanding of reality. As someone who knows people who have been very severely negatively affected by alcoholism, I do not enjoy conversations with people who make points about alcohol that are totally uninformed and suggest that we should base policy around those uninformed thoughts.
nibbleshifter 4y ago
> I think that if we legalize dangerous addictive drugs then we might as well legalize all medications/drugs by which point the medical establishment loses a big chunk of the income that it gets from being a monopoly supplier. Yes, absolutely.
blanketlamp 4y ago
> A university acquaintance went acute schizophrenic shortly after developing a pot habit, that could be a coincidence but the timing is suspicious. Early adulthood is when mental illness often sets in, especially illness like Schizophrenia. You're implying cause one way without considering the other likely alternatives: 1) Your acquaintance started smoking a lot of pot because of the onset of early schizophrenia symptoms as a coping mechanism. 2) They are unrelated and early adulthood is just when people experiment more with drugs, and also when conditions like Schizophrenia start to manifest. > A second cousin became mentally retarded immediately after smoking a joint. He's now a 30 year old who can't tie his own shoes. I don't know what to say to this other than nobody's ever established an even remotely plausible link between these two things, assuming you aren't being hyperbolic.
- annoyingnoob 4y ago
  https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-marijuana-link https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-marijuana-...
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  "that could be a coincidence" is a qualifier that includes the points you brought up. A friend of my 2nd cousin smoked a joint from the same stash and no such effect so it's clearly a combination of marijuana and the individual. Unfortunately such experiments are hardly repeatable in a clinical setting, he's not the only one, it's happened to number of people. One of the other mothers was collecting stories to try to turn into a book, give me a minute and I'll try to find it. Edit: it may take me a while to find it, I think it ended up getting published but it wasn’t something I paid much attention to. I’ve only met my second cousin and his family once and a very long time ago.
  - novok 4y ago
    A plant allergy gone wrong?
- starkd 4y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, I believe there is a strong causal link between marijuana and schizoid type effects. I don't think this is even disputed. Maybe he was predisposed to it anyway, but the marijuana certainly did not help.
pantalaimon 4y ago
> those pushing for legalization underplay the negative problems associated with drug use But those problems already exist and are amplified by the prohibition. I don’t understand how prohibitionists still believe that the ban on drugs would make drug use disappear when the last 80 years of prohibition completely failed at that. It’s clear that prohibition does not work. But if we just try long enough it might? That’s not science, that’s ideology.
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  Prohibition on supply just increases the prices which encourages more people to jump into the market. For prohibition to be effective there needs to be strong punishments on consumption. As someone who consumes quite a large amount of gray and black market medicine I'm actually pro-legalization of all drugs. I hate the medical monopoly and the overbearing government. But I also think people need to be very honest and frank about the consequences of legalization. My concern, beyond what happens to other people, is that I'll have to check the ingredient label for a longer list of substances I don't want in my body. We have enough food fraud as it is with suppliers lying about the content, I want it to be an extremely serious crime to add drugs to food.
  - novok 4y ago
    IMO I think legal prohibition is not the way to reduce consumption of a bad thing in a society, but to do what was done for smoking. You have to treat them as a public health issue, make it culturally distasteful and more and more annoying & expensive, but legal, to do so. That is what effectively reduces usage vs. straight out police prohibition. And when people talk about legalization, they are not saying get rid of the entire doctor supervision & prescribing system, which creates a legal outlet.
GoldenRacer 4y ago
The only problem I see with legalizing all prescription drugs is that a lot of people would use them off label or in inappropriate context (ie taking antibiotics when you have a viral infection). I think this could be managed with an appropriate regularity framework that I think should probably apply to psychoactive drugs as well. This would be some sort of licensing system. Anyone can get a license to buy antibiotics but it requires taking class and passing a test that demonstrates you understand the risks and agreeing to follow certain rules and procedures. A procedure for antibiotics might be that you agree you'll only purchase them if you have tested positive for a bacterial infection. All drugs should only be purchased for yourself (unless you have a distribution license which should be more difficult to get). If you get caught breaking any of those rules, you lose your license for some period of time and are subject to other penalties. I think for something like antibiotics, no one would bother getting licenses as it's not worth the time of getting and keeping your license up to date (licenses would likely require annual renewal and continuing education). You'd just go through your doctor the couple times a decade you need them. But this could be hugely beneficial for a diabetic person that doesn't want to go to a doctor once a month to get their insulin prescription renewed. Or women that want birth control without paying doctor fees. Yes, it would result in less revenue going to our medical system but that seems like a plus side in those cases. I don't deny that some drugs are incredibly dangerous but our society allows a lot of dangerous activities. If I want to buy a BASE jumping rig, I could do that and then start legally jumping off of cliffs with it as soon as it arrived. My chances of dying doing that are far higher than my chances of dying while taking most drugs (maybe some like fentanyl are exceptions). Would you consider whoever sold me the rig a murderer? Or do you think I'm an adult and should be allowed to make my own decisions as long as they're well informed?
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  surreptitiously - adverb in a way that attempts to avoid notice or attention; secretively. "Mary surreptitiously slipped from the room" i.e. it was something done to you without informing you. To use your analogy it would be like blind folding someone and pushing them off a cliff (with base jumping gear on) if they lived I'd consider that at least attempted murder. But with secretly giving drugs to someone there is no way to avoid interference with the workings of a sound mind so that I think is on par with murder.
gumby 4y ago
> I think that if we legalize dangerous addictive drugs then we might as well legalize all medications/drugs by which point the medical establishment loses a big chunk of the income that it gets from being a monopoly supplier. Do you seriously think this is why medication is regulated? In most developed countries prescribing and dispensing are separated (doctor/pharmacy) in part to prevent this. Japan is a notable exception and guess what: more drugs are prescribed per capita there than the rest of the OECD.
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  I would include pharmacy in the medical establishment, and yes I expect them to place significant lobby pressure to maintain their monopoly.
klooney 4y ago
> A university acquaintance went acute schizophrenic shortly after developing a pot habit, That's the age most people find out they're schizophrenic

awillen 4y ago

A lot of people who are against legalization make this argument that those who are for it ignore the negative consequences, but for large swathes of pro-legalization people, that's just not true. I know there are negative consequences, and I know that in a very small number of people marijuana can cause serious consequences (and in larger numbers of people, harder drugs like cocaine and heroin can cause more serious consequences). But the fact that things can cause negative consequences is not sufficient reason to ban them. The obvious example here is alcohol - it is beyond clear from data that alcohol is incredibly harmful. It is beyond clear that it is more harmful than at least some banned substances (marijuana, LSD, MDMA). It is likely that it is more harmful than harder substances like cocaine, but with less data on those we can't say for sure. So yes, there are negative consequences, but as a society we have decided that we allow people to do things that cause negative consequences (as evidenced by the legality of alcohol). There are limits on that, but with alcohol as a line by which to judge those limits, it's clear that to have any kind of coherent public policy, marijuana should be legal. Or, of course, alcohol could be made illegal. The point is that if you think that alcohol should be legal but other drugs should not, you're just engaging in hypocrisy.

cjbgkagh 4y ago
* I did use the qualifier 'often' which is not 'all' and to my opinion it's not enough. People readily forget the downsides and need constant reminders. Edit: please note that the following includes the qualifier “most” and please understand that this does not mean “all”. I think alcohol is a bad example as alcohol for most people has a way of punishing abuse on its own and quickly thereby maintaining a tight association between the high and the hangover. The aversion to the hangover means that for most people it's a self correcting problem. Most other drugs don't come with this and the association between the high and negative consequences are more remote and infrequent. I think alcohol, despite the obvious and extensive damage it causes, is a great training drug that teaches most people moderation through first hand experience and encourages caution with other drugs. Using alcohol as an example kinda makes the case for prohibiting alcohol as opposed to legalizing other drugs.
- awillen 4y ago
  I encourage you to actually do some research on alcoholism - both the number of people it affects as well as the way it prevents itself. You're dangerously uninformed on the topic to be presenting these kinds of opinions.
  - starkd 4y ago
    oh, come on! I think you're right on this issue, but since when are opinions dangerous? He's giving his honest opinion of the issue according to his experience. You will be much more effective if you simply try to enjoy the conversation than trying to call out people for having "dangerous opinions".
    - awillen 4y ago
      You put quotes around "dangerous opinions" - you're wrong to do that, because I never used that phrase. I said he was dangerously uninformed. There are times when people can have valid, personal opinions and times when there's just objective reality. Some people these days say that their opinion is that the 2020 election was stolen. That's not a valid opinion - it's just wrong. Saying that hangovers make alcohol self-regulating when >10M people in the US are alcoholics (for whom it is, as a point of fact, untrue that alcohol is a self-regulating substance) is not a valid opinion - it's a misunderstanding of reality. As someone who knows people who have been very severely negatively affected by alcoholism, I do not enjoy conversations with people who make points about alcohol that are totally uninformed and suggest that we should base policy around those uninformed thoughts.

nibbleshifter 4y ago

blanketlamp 4y ago

> A university acquaintance went acute schizophrenic shortly after developing a pot habit, that could be a coincidence but the timing is suspicious. Early adulthood is when mental illness often sets in, especially illness like Schizophrenia. You're implying cause one way without considering the other likely alternatives: 1) Your acquaintance started smoking a lot of pot because of the onset of early schizophrenia symptoms as a coping mechanism. 2) They are unrelated and early adulthood is just when people experiment more with drugs, and also when conditions like Schizophrenia start to manifest. > A second cousin became mentally retarded immediately after smoking a joint. He's now a 30 year old who can't tie his own shoes. I don't know what to say to this other than nobody's ever established an even remotely plausible link between these two things, assuming you aren't being hyperbolic.

annoyingnoob 4y ago
https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-marijuana-link https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-marijuana-...
cjbgkagh 4y ago
"that could be a coincidence" is a qualifier that includes the points you brought up. A friend of my 2nd cousin smoked a joint from the same stash and no such effect so it's clearly a combination of marijuana and the individual. Unfortunately such experiments are hardly repeatable in a clinical setting, he's not the only one, it's happened to number of people. One of the other mothers was collecting stories to try to turn into a book, give me a minute and I'll try to find it. Edit: it may take me a while to find it, I think it ended up getting published but it wasn’t something I paid much attention to. I’ve only met my second cousin and his family once and a very long time ago.
- novok 4y ago
  A plant allergy gone wrong?
starkd 4y ago
If I'm not mistaken, I believe there is a strong causal link between marijuana and schizoid type effects. I don't think this is even disputed. Maybe he was predisposed to it anyway, but the marijuana certainly did not help.

pantalaimon 4y ago

> those pushing for legalization underplay the negative problems associated with drug use But those problems already exist and are amplified by the prohibition. I don’t understand how prohibitionists still believe that the ban on drugs would make drug use disappear when the last 80 years of prohibition completely failed at that. It’s clear that prohibition does not work. But if we just try long enough it might? That’s not science, that’s ideology.

cjbgkagh 4y ago
Prohibition on supply just increases the prices which encourages more people to jump into the market. For prohibition to be effective there needs to be strong punishments on consumption. As someone who consumes quite a large amount of gray and black market medicine I'm actually pro-legalization of all drugs. I hate the medical monopoly and the overbearing government. But I also think people need to be very honest and frank about the consequences of legalization. My concern, beyond what happens to other people, is that I'll have to check the ingredient label for a longer list of substances I don't want in my body. We have enough food fraud as it is with suppliers lying about the content, I want it to be an extremely serious crime to add drugs to food.
- novok 4y ago
  IMO I think legal prohibition is not the way to reduce consumption of a bad thing in a society, but to do what was done for smoking. You have to treat them as a public health issue, make it culturally distasteful and more and more annoying & expensive, but legal, to do so. That is what effectively reduces usage vs. straight out police prohibition. And when people talk about legalization, they are not saying get rid of the entire doctor supervision & prescribing system, which creates a legal outlet.

GoldenRacer 4y ago

The only problem I see with legalizing all prescription drugs is that a lot of people would use them off label or in inappropriate context (ie taking antibiotics when you have a viral infection). I think this could be managed with an appropriate regularity framework that I think should probably apply to psychoactive drugs as well. This would be some sort of licensing system. Anyone can get a license to buy antibiotics but it requires taking class and passing a test that demonstrates you understand the risks and agreeing to follow certain rules and procedures. A procedure for antibiotics might be that you agree you'll only purchase them if you have tested positive for a bacterial infection. All drugs should only be purchased for yourself (unless you have a distribution license which should be more difficult to get). If you get caught breaking any of those rules, you lose your license for some period of time and are subject to other penalties. I think for something like antibiotics, no one would bother getting licenses as it's not worth the time of getting and keeping your license up to date (licenses would likely require annual renewal and continuing education). You'd just go through your doctor the couple times a decade you need them. But this could be hugely beneficial for a diabetic person that doesn't want to go to a doctor once a month to get their insulin prescription renewed. Or women that want birth control without paying doctor fees. Yes, it would result in less revenue going to our medical system but that seems like a plus side in those cases. I don't deny that some drugs are incredibly dangerous but our society allows a lot of dangerous activities. If I want to buy a BASE jumping rig, I could do that and then start legally jumping off of cliffs with it as soon as it arrived. My chances of dying doing that are far higher than my chances of dying while taking most drugs (maybe some like fentanyl are exceptions). Would you consider whoever sold me the rig a murderer? Or do you think I'm an adult and should be allowed to make my own decisions as long as they're well informed?

cjbgkagh 4y ago
surreptitiously - adverb in a way that attempts to avoid notice or attention; secretively. "Mary surreptitiously slipped from the room" i.e. it was something done to you without informing you. To use your analogy it would be like blind folding someone and pushing them off a cliff (with base jumping gear on) if they lived I'd consider that at least attempted murder. But with secretly giving drugs to someone there is no way to avoid interference with the workings of a sound mind so that I think is on par with murder.

gumby 4y ago

> I think that if we legalize dangerous addictive drugs then we might as well legalize all medications/drugs by which point the medical establishment loses a big chunk of the income that it gets from being a monopoly supplier. Do you seriously think this is why medication is regulated? In most developed countries prescribing and dispensing are separated (doctor/pharmacy) in part to prevent this. Japan is a notable exception and guess what: more drugs are prescribed per capita there than the rest of the OECD.

cjbgkagh 4y ago
I would include pharmacy in the medical establishment, and yes I expect them to place significant lobby pressure to maintain their monopoly.

klooney 4y ago

> A university acquaintance went acute schizophrenic shortly after developing a pot habit, That's the age most people find out they're schizophrenic