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Well, even as a legalization sympathetic person, I can _sorta_ see the argument when you look at how marijuana legislation has gone. Dispensaries all over the d

Well, even as a legalization sympathetic person, I can _sorta_ see the argument when you look at how marijuana legislation has gone. Dispensaries all over the damn place and the endless variety of products and general "mainstreaming" of weed use... I'm not opposed in principle but as sympathetic as I am I can't help wondering if some of it has gone a little far. That said though, I totally agree that "legalize all drugs" doesn't have to imply that we would do the same super fun dispensary thing that we do for weed for something like fentanyl, or even something more benign like mushrooms. I imagine legal fentanyl would be more like a freely available prescription or similar, where you can be dispensed a certain amount under reasonable conditions as opposed to just walking into the fentanyl dispensary and picking your favorite strain in a colorful container.

wyre 4y ago
I wonder if there is a correlation between an accessibility of cannabis and alcohol-related incidents. Cannabis is much safer than alcohol. Would my friends and I have drank as much as we did when I was younger if cannabis was cheap and accessible? Methadone is accessible for people dealing with opioid addiction, but that doesn’t provide a high so it doesn’t actually solve the problem of addicts choosing to continue opioid use. Keeping fentanyl illegal evidentially can’t stop the problem of it ending up in street drugs causing overdoses. I concur a prescription for fentanyl patches would likely be the best approach.
- agentwiggles 4y ago
  Prescription of some kind, maybe in a similar but less permissive vein as medical marijuana, seems right to me too. I'm pretty much in favor of letting people decide what goes into their bodies but I can't see a lot of benefits to freely available fentanyl. But I would definitely like to see an approach that decriminalizes addiction. It's a really tough nut to crack though. Not sure what the best approach is. One of the purported benefits of legalization is that you eliminate some of the black market incentives for distribution. Prescriptions still leave room for a black market so I'm not sure they solve much... I'd be interested to hear arguments for any approach that could make the problem better.
  - version_five 4y ago
    > freely available fentanyl I posted up-thread and want to clarify. Fentanyl and other strong synthetic opiates are mostly the product of heroin or opium being illegal. Decriminalized heroin would mean that opiate addicts would not have to resort to sketchy drugs to get high.
    - wyre 4y ago
      I don’t think it would. Fentanyl is on the streets because it is cheaper, stronger, and easier to smuggle than heroin is. Decriminalized heroin wouldn’t stop dealers from cutting their supply with fentanyl which is the main cause of opioid overdoses afaik. Regulated, controlled, and accessible fentanyl would mean addicts can safely get high.

wyre 4y ago

I wonder if there is a correlation between an accessibility of cannabis and alcohol-related incidents. Cannabis is much safer than alcohol. Would my friends and I have drank as much as we did when I was younger if cannabis was cheap and accessible? Methadone is accessible for people dealing with opioid addiction, but that doesn’t provide a high so it doesn’t actually solve the problem of addicts choosing to continue opioid use. Keeping fentanyl illegal evidentially can’t stop the problem of it ending up in street drugs causing overdoses. I concur a prescription for fentanyl patches would likely be the best approach.

agentwiggles 4y ago
Prescription of some kind, maybe in a similar but less permissive vein as medical marijuana, seems right to me too. I'm pretty much in favor of letting people decide what goes into their bodies but I can't see a lot of benefits to freely available fentanyl. But I would definitely like to see an approach that decriminalizes addiction. It's a really tough nut to crack though. Not sure what the best approach is. One of the purported benefits of legalization is that you eliminate some of the black market incentives for distribution. Prescriptions still leave room for a black market so I'm not sure they solve much... I'd be interested to hear arguments for any approach that could make the problem better.
- version_five 4y ago
  > freely available fentanyl I posted up-thread and want to clarify. Fentanyl and other strong synthetic opiates are mostly the product of heroin or opium being illegal. Decriminalized heroin would mean that opiate addicts would not have to resort to sketchy drugs to get high.
  - wyre 4y ago
    I don’t think it would. Fentanyl is on the streets because it is cheaper, stronger, and easier to smuggle than heroin is. Decriminalized heroin wouldn’t stop dealers from cutting their supply with fentanyl which is the main cause of opioid overdoses afaik. Regulated, controlled, and accessible fentanyl would mean addicts can safely get high.