6 ms·

> though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an

by Alupis 3y ago

> though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended). People who would have never tried it before now do so because the stigma is gone, and it's trivial to get. This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. While marijuana might be relatively benign, other drugs are not. Removing the stigma and making it easy to get harder drugs is going to be a net-negative thing for society as a hole. We can see this in-action already. Places like California have effectively de-criminalized most/all drug use if you are part of the homeless population. Surprise again - there's more drug use within that community than ever before. It's difficult to walk through the down-town area without seeing overt drug use these-days. It would be better to not throw people in prison for drug use - but instead have mandatory rehab or something... while keeping drug use out of reach for the average person.

Demotooodo 3y ago
It's a novelty right now. In Amsterdam when you go to a music festival you will not see a lot of pod heads. I was one of the few and I'm a German! Look at Portugals drug history. Legalization saved that country!
- TylerE 3y ago
  How do you see wether someone has eaten edibles?
  - Demotooodo 3y ago
    That's not common in Amsterdam
- Alupis 3y ago
  > In Amsterdam when you go to a music festival you will not see a lot of pod heads I could be wrong, but I don't believe marijuana is as-legal in Amsterdam as it is in California for example. In CA, there's very few enforced restrictions of where you can get it and where you can use it. > Look at Portugals drug history. Legalization saved that country! It doesn't appear so[1]. It appears they are struggling with the same issues - dramatic rise in drug use. It's not really effective to just simply legalize all drugs. I agree with most, we shouldn't throw people in prison for drug use. No, instead we need to throw them into mandatory rehabilitation programs. The goals of a decriminalization program shouldn't be to increase average citizen's drug use. But that's what happens without some sort of rehab/treatment program. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...
  - Ajay-p 3y ago
    I am not a consumer of marijuana but in my observations of habitual users is nowhere near the same as someone addicted to heroin, and the severe physical and mental impact it has on their bodies. One could say alcohol and nicotine have such harmful effects, but not as dramatic and sudden as harder narcotics.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    Disagree. Much more societal harm comes from the supply side (cartels, street gangs) than users, and much of the harm for/from users goes away if prices adjust to what they actually cost to produce (a tiny fraction of street price), and if the products are lab tested for potency and purity.
    - Alupis 3y ago
      This pitched scenario has played out in exactly zero markets around the world, including all of the legal-marijuana states right here in the US.
      - TylerE 3y ago
        Cartels aren't generally dealing in marijuana, it's small potatoes.
        Alupis 3y ago
        It's not just cartels in the classical sense. In CA, it's cheaper to buy illegal marijuana than going to one of the licensed stores, for a whole variety of reasons. That "market arbitrage" opens the door for a lot of things to occur - all things proponents of legalization promised would go away.
        TylerE 3y ago
        The market for hard drugs and marijuana are totally different.
- vondur 3y ago
  It looks like Portugal is having some serious issues with decriminalization. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...
  - CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
    > After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    The problem here isn't with decriminalization-- it's with lack of commitment to what they originally replaced enforcement with. From that article: "Experts argue that drug policy focused on jail time is still more harmful to society than decriminalization. While the slipping results here suggest the fragility of decriminalization’s benefits, they point to how funding and encouragement into rehabilitation programs have ebbed. The number of users being funneled into drug treatment in Portugal, for instance, has sharply fallen, going from a peak of 1,150 in 2015 to 352 in 2021, the most recent year available. João Goulão — head of Portugal’s national institute on drug use and the architect of decriminalization — admitted to the local press in December that “what we have today no longer serves as an example to anyone.” Rather than fault the policy, however, he blames a lack of funding." It was working great while they were committed to funding treatment programs and pushing users towards them.
  - jokowueu 3y ago
    >cuts funding >Decriminalization doesn't work ! >not shocked
    - Alupis 3y ago
      And the US is immune to such problems? This, "but we'll do it better" argument seems to fall flat universally. Everybody thinks they can do it better, but nobody actually does...
akira2501 3y ago
California didn't just decriminalize use, they decriminalized sales and open air drug markets. The two are technically different policy outcomes. The state was just exceptionally lazy in it's implementation, which was somewhat driven by the early response to COVID.
mrbabbage 3y ago
> We can see this in-action already. Places like California have effectively de-criminalized most/all drug use if you are part of the homeless population. Surprise again - there's more drug use within that community than ever before. It's difficult to walk through the down-town area without seeing overt drug use these-days. Is this unique to CA? The street level suffering you see in CA cities is overwhelmingly related to fentanyl, an opioid. Infamously, the US is in the midst of the opioid crisis, with deaths continuing to rise unabated [1]. Places with harsher drug policing are also seeing rises in opioid deaths. And while San Francisco is a top location for opioid deaths, the other top counties by death rates (Mendocino, Trinity, Alpine, Lake, Inyo, Humboldt, Nevada) are all very rural [2]. [1] https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd... [2] https://skylab.cdph.ca.gov/ODdash/?tab=CA https://skylab.cdph.ca.gov/ODdash/?tab=CA
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> drug use if you are part of the homeless population. Maybe. homeless are the main issue, rather than drugs? Like if I had to choose between regular cocaine habbit, and bein homeless, i'd rather be a cokehead.
- treeman79 3y ago
  Meet people that have have done a lot of drugs? Some can still function. Others, just can’t. Had an owner of a successful tech company see it fall apart because he couldn’t make decisions anymore. Was a really nice guy, but by the end I might hire him to sweep the floors, but only with supervision. Not sure how he’s doing now, but I imagine he’ll be homeless by some point. He enjoyed going to burning man a lot.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    I am not endorsing drug use at all, but I have seen highly functioning drug users. I have never met a homeless man that could still function after being on the streets for a year.
treeman79 3y ago
I have yet to meet a person. Whose personality didn’t completely changed after being on marijuana for a while. Every single one of them said it didn’t affect them.
chronofar 3y ago
> This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. These types of generalizations are usually built of straw and mud, but I'll go ahead and respond as someone in said crowd with a "no it's not." There's an implicit assumption here that increased usage is worse than the effects of prohibition, but that's at minimum highly debatable. I tend to think increased usage of a regulated and taxable substance by a well educated and supported populous is significantly preferable to prohibition and scare tactics, to say nothing of the wide swath of wide reaching knock on effects the latter has like powerful cartels/gangs, militarized police actions in response, people being groomed as convicts for their use, etc. I'm not at all inclined to sweep the dangers of hard drugs under the rug, I'm all for looking at their effects and impacts head on, and indeed I think the legalization route is the best route to do so. I think individuals should be given sole stewardship of their own conscious experience, by endogenous or exogenous means, and society's best chance of maximizing those individual choices is through well thought education, regulation, and support (which is likely to all be cheaper and more tractable than prohibition is).
- andybak 3y ago
  I can think of few things likely to befall a drug user that are more devastating and costly to society than a long period of incarceration.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ozim 3y ago
    Example 20 year old experimenting with drugs: Going to jail for a year breaks any career chances or most of the job opportunities plus messes up his mind by staying with other convicts. Letting him experiment with drugs, he might mess up his health but also he has still a chance to continue rather normal life.
    - culopatin 3y ago
      If he manages to get out. Gets addicted to meth, can’t work, needs more meth, what does he do?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
TheCoelacanth 3y ago
Is the stigma going away because it's legal or is it being legalized because the stigma is going away?
brightlancer 3y ago
> Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended). There is some evidence (not conclusive yet) that legal access to marijuana reduces abuse of opioids. I've never used marijuana, I don't like the smell of marijuana, and so I'm not keen on folks using it around me -- but in the grand scheme, pot smokers are not the ones breaking into cars and threatening folks on the train. > It would be better to not throw people in prison for drug use - but instead have mandatory rehab or something... while keeping drug use out of reach for the average person. Are we going to do that for alcohol _use_? What about caffeine _USE_? Caffeine is the most widely abused drug in the US and thousands of auto fatalities every year are due to fatigue, which caffeine perpetuates. I don't care about drug use. I care about the assaults, the robberies, and the street people who block sidewalks and harass pedestrians and transit users. I'm not keen on excusing their behavior because of their substance _abuse_.
S_A_P 3y ago
Legalize everything!= Everyone should be using drugs. This is just one step in what should be a public health approach to drug use/abuse. Take away the lock them up because they are weak minded degenerates approach to drug use. I don’t see any dissonance in saying that drugs should be decriminalized and or legal in some cases but I also don’t think most people should use drugs regularly. If someone is abusing drugs it should certainly be cheaper to provide them with mental health care than locking them up in jail. Hard drugs like heroin and cocaine would be safer if they were not sold on the black market. I think that is a net positive vs the status quo- which is a game of “Is It Fentanyl?!?”™ currently. Should people be using those drugs? I don’t know. I personally wouldn’t want to even if I could buy them from a store. As for cannabis, I’m convinced that for 90+% of the populous* it’s safer than alcohol. *I think anyone with family history of schizophrenia should avoid weed and probably all intoxicants.
antisyzygy 3y ago
Alcohol is one of the most harmful drugs ever. It leads to all sorts of societal problems like early deaths, domestic abuse, traffic accidents, workplace accidents, even murder because it reduces inhibitions. But somehow we're ok with selling unlimited quantities to people. Most opiates are downright docile by comparison. A person passes out and can't harm anyone anymore. Legalization would mean opiates are regulated. You can only get a certain strength. You can only buy so much per visit. Purity is regulated so you wouldn't accidentally get Fentanyl laced stuff and die. There should be treatment options, of course, because it's the right thing to do, and it's also much cheaper than fixing the damage addicts can do, and also cheaper than the cost throwing them in prison. Generally speaking drug addicts are actually self-medicating something anyway, it's like a slow suicide attempt due to some mental trauma or other mental illness like schizophrenia. The OP is right. Decriminalization is the worst of both worlds. For a long time we got use to not seeing as many drug addicts because a lot of them were thrown in prison where you don't see them anymore. Each one costing tax payers a full time wage, 35k per year per prisoner. Decriminalization means you see more addicts out on the streets, but they're still getting overly strong, even laced stuff on the black market and are taken advantage of by predators. Where marijuana legalization occurred there are purity limits on things like edibles. And you can only buy so much at once. It hasn't lead to really any problems but of course marijuana is one of the least harmful drugs out there. It's far less harmful than alcohol, so it might not be the best example. I'd say alcohol is a better comparison to opiates and other hard drugs. Legalization is the better path. We already should know better via our exercise in alcohol prohibition.
tastyfreeze 3y ago
> Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high That may be a result of measurement. People that used prior to legalization kept it secret. The stereotypical "stoners" are a fraction of cannabis users. After legalization people tend to be more open about their cannabis use. If the measurement is based on surveys there will be an obvious increase after legalization as the legal consequences of admitting use have been removed. If the measurement is based on sales there will also be an obvious increase after legalization as the majority of sales are recorded. Prior to legalization the majority of sales were illegal and the only sampling of the actual market size is from police seizures. Yes, there will be a growth in the market when the legality is changed and stigma is reduced over time. That is people finding cannabis useful for themselves and no fear of being judged for that choice (same as alcohol is for many people). There will always be a portion of the population that use drugs in excess to the detriment of their health or will compromise their morals to use. There is also a larger portion of the population that uses drugs regardless of legality and participates in society. You would never know the second cohort. The problem with the first cohort is breaking other laws to satisfy their desire to use. Their drug use isn't the problem. Drugs didn't make them do anything. They should be punished for their other behavior not their consumption habits.
- prepend 3y ago
  > If the measurement is based on sales there will also be an obvious increase after legalization as the majority of sales are recorded. This may be true, but it’s the best measuring that we have. I don’t know if it’s worth throwing out the existing measures we have from before and after legalization on a hunch that it might be different results. The surveys try to account for this as much as they can. I agree that people shouldn’t be punished for their drug use, but I think the point is that without punishment, drug use increases. And there are some negative impact from that increase.
  - mitchdoogle 3y ago
    It has proven untenable to treat this with law enforcement. It's too susceptible to bias, and creates a large class of people labeled as "criminals" the rest of their lives. It demonstrates an incredible lack of imagination that a large percentage of Americans can't see any way to handle this other than making things illegal, especially when we have a clear analog with alcohol. If most people can handle having alcohol readily available, then those same people should be able to have other drugs readily available.
patrickmay 3y ago
It would be very hard for the effects of allowing people to choose what they consume to be worse than the effects of prohibition. The homeless issue is multidimensional and, surprise, people were already getting drugs before they were decriminalized. Legalization is morally correct and eliminates the gangs, violence, and high costs of prohibition.
anon84873628 3y ago
Personally I think marijuana is a bit unique, more similar to alcohol in how it can fit into daily life for some people. Sure the use has probably gone up but that's just social norms changing, not necessarily for better or worse. (If it displaces alcohol or other drug use it's probably for the better). Every culture has different ideas about what drugs are acceptable. Maybe legalizing cocaine would also see occasional recreational use go up - that's not necessarily a problem either.
mcphage 3y ago
> People who would have never tried it before now do so because the stigma is gone, and it's trivial to get. This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. While marijuana might be relatively benign, other drugs are not. Removing the stigma and making it easy to get harder drugs is going to be a net-negative thing for society as a hole. That doesn't entirely follow. Marijuana is widely known to be benign, and so it's not much of a surprise that usage rose with legalization. Other drugs are known to not be benign, so you're not going to find a ton of people going "hey, why not try some heroin?"
Simon_O_Rourke 3y ago
> It would be better to not throw people in prison for drug use - but instead have mandatory rehab or something... while keeping drug use out of reach for the average person. Totally agree, but I'd be in favor of a much harder line on the distribution and production side. The problem is one of supply, so if you can help rehab and curtail supply you help reduce usage.

by Alupis 3y ago

Demotooodo 3y ago

It's a novelty right now. In Amsterdam when you go to a music festival you will not see a lot of pod heads. I was one of the few and I'm a German! Look at Portugals drug history. Legalization saved that country!

TylerE 3y ago
How do you see wether someone has eaten edibles?
- Demotooodo 3y ago
  That's not common in Amsterdam
Alupis 3y ago
> In Amsterdam when you go to a music festival you will not see a lot of pod heads I could be wrong, but I don't believe marijuana is as-legal in Amsterdam as it is in California for example. In CA, there's very few enforced restrictions of where you can get it and where you can use it. > Look at Portugals drug history. Legalization saved that country! It doesn't appear so[1]. It appears they are struggling with the same issues - dramatic rise in drug use. It's not really effective to just simply legalize all drugs. I agree with most, we shouldn't throw people in prison for drug use. No, instead we need to throw them into mandatory rehabilitation programs. The goals of a decriminalization program shouldn't be to increase average citizen's drug use. But that's what happens without some sort of rehab/treatment program. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...
- Ajay-p 3y ago
  I am not a consumer of marijuana but in my observations of habitual users is nowhere near the same as someone addicted to heroin, and the severe physical and mental impact it has on their bodies. One could say alcohol and nicotine have such harmful effects, but not as dramatic and sudden as harder narcotics.
- TylerE 3y ago
  Disagree. Much more societal harm comes from the supply side (cartels, street gangs) than users, and much of the harm for/from users goes away if prices adjust to what they actually cost to produce (a tiny fraction of street price), and if the products are lab tested for potency and purity.
  - Alupis 3y ago
    This pitched scenario has played out in exactly zero markets around the world, including all of the legal-marijuana states right here in the US.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      Cartels aren't generally dealing in marijuana, it's small potatoes.
      - Alupis 3y ago
        It's not just cartels in the classical sense. In CA, it's cheaper to buy illegal marijuana than going to one of the licensed stores, for a whole variety of reasons. That "market arbitrage" opens the door for a lot of things to occur - all things proponents of legalization promised would go away.
        TylerE 3y ago
        The market for hard drugs and marijuana are totally different.
vondur 3y ago
It looks like Portugal is having some serious issues with decriminalization. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...
- CorrectHorseBat 3y ago
  > After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs.
- chefandy 3y ago
  The problem here isn't with decriminalization-- it's with lack of commitment to what they originally replaced enforcement with. From that article: "Experts argue that drug policy focused on jail time is still more harmful to society than decriminalization. While the slipping results here suggest the fragility of decriminalization’s benefits, they point to how funding and encouragement into rehabilitation programs have ebbed. The number of users being funneled into drug treatment in Portugal, for instance, has sharply fallen, going from a peak of 1,150 in 2015 to 352 in 2021, the most recent year available. João Goulão — head of Portugal’s national institute on drug use and the architect of decriminalization — admitted to the local press in December that “what we have today no longer serves as an example to anyone.” Rather than fault the policy, however, he blames a lack of funding." It was working great while they were committed to funding treatment programs and pushing users towards them.
- jokowueu 3y ago
  >cuts funding >Decriminalization doesn't work ! >not shocked
  - Alupis 3y ago
    And the US is immune to such problems? This, "but we'll do it better" argument seems to fall flat universally. Everybody thinks they can do it better, but nobody actually does...

akira2501 3y ago

California didn't just decriminalize use, they decriminalized sales and open air drug markets. The two are technically different policy outcomes. The state was just exceptionally lazy in it's implementation, which was somewhat driven by the early response to COVID.

mrbabbage 3y ago

> We can see this in-action already. Places like California have effectively de-criminalized most/all drug use if you are part of the homeless population. Surprise again - there's more drug use within that community than ever before. It's difficult to walk through the down-town area without seeing overt drug use these-days. Is this unique to CA? The street level suffering you see in CA cities is overwhelmingly related to fentanyl, an opioid. Infamously, the US is in the midst of the opioid crisis, with deaths continuing to rise unabated [1]. Places with harsher drug policing are also seeing rises in opioid deaths. And while San Francisco is a top location for opioid deaths, the other top counties by death rates (Mendocino, Trinity, Alpine, Lake, Inyo, Humboldt, Nevada) are all very rural [2]. [1] https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd... [2] https://skylab.cdph.ca.gov/ODdash/?tab=CA https://skylab.cdph.ca.gov/ODdash/?tab=CA

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> drug use if you are part of the homeless population. Maybe. homeless are the main issue, rather than drugs? Like if I had to choose between regular cocaine habbit, and bein homeless, i'd rather be a cokehead.

treeman79 3y ago
Meet people that have have done a lot of drugs? Some can still function. Others, just can’t. Had an owner of a successful tech company see it fall apart because he couldn’t make decisions anymore. Was a really nice guy, but by the end I might hire him to sweep the floors, but only with supervision. Not sure how he’s doing now, but I imagine he’ll be homeless by some point. He enjoyed going to burning man a lot.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  I am not endorsing drug use at all, but I have seen highly functioning drug users. I have never met a homeless man that could still function after being on the streets for a year.

treeman79 3y ago

I have yet to meet a person. Whose personality didn’t completely changed after being on marijuana for a while. Every single one of them said it didn’t affect them.

chronofar 3y ago

> This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. These types of generalizations are usually built of straw and mud, but I'll go ahead and respond as someone in said crowd with a "no it's not." There's an implicit assumption here that increased usage is worse than the effects of prohibition, but that's at minimum highly debatable. I tend to think increased usage of a regulated and taxable substance by a well educated and supported populous is significantly preferable to prohibition and scare tactics, to say nothing of the wide swath of wide reaching knock on effects the latter has like powerful cartels/gangs, militarized police actions in response, people being groomed as convicts for their use, etc. I'm not at all inclined to sweep the dangers of hard drugs under the rug, I'm all for looking at their effects and impacts head on, and indeed I think the legalization route is the best route to do so. I think individuals should be given sole stewardship of their own conscious experience, by endogenous or exogenous means, and society's best chance of maximizing those individual choices is through well thought education, regulation, and support (which is likely to all be cheaper and more tractable than prohibition is).

andybak 3y ago
I can think of few things likely to befall a drug user that are more devastating and costly to society than a long period of incarceration.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ozim 3y ago
  Example 20 year old experimenting with drugs: Going to jail for a year breaks any career chances or most of the job opportunities plus messes up his mind by staying with other convicts. Letting him experiment with drugs, he might mess up his health but also he has still a chance to continue rather normal life.
  - culopatin 3y ago
    If he manages to get out. Gets addicted to meth, can’t work, needs more meth, what does he do?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

TheCoelacanth 3y ago

Is the stigma going away because it's legal or is it being legalized because the stigma is going away?

brightlancer 3y ago

> Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended). There is some evidence (not conclusive yet) that legal access to marijuana reduces abuse of opioids. I've never used marijuana, I don't like the smell of marijuana, and so I'm not keen on folks using it around me -- but in the grand scheme, pot smokers are not the ones breaking into cars and threatening folks on the train. > It would be better to not throw people in prison for drug use - but instead have mandatory rehab or something... while keeping drug use out of reach for the average person. Are we going to do that for alcohol _use_? What about caffeine _USE_? Caffeine is the most widely abused drug in the US and thousands of auto fatalities every year are due to fatigue, which caffeine perpetuates. I don't care about drug use. I care about the assaults, the robberies, and the street people who block sidewalks and harass pedestrians and transit users. I'm not keen on excusing their behavior because of their substance _abuse_.

S_A_P 3y ago

Legalize everything!= Everyone should be using drugs. This is just one step in what should be a public health approach to drug use/abuse. Take away the lock them up because they are weak minded degenerates approach to drug use. I don’t see any dissonance in saying that drugs should be decriminalized and or legal in some cases but I also don’t think most people should use drugs regularly. If someone is abusing drugs it should certainly be cheaper to provide them with mental health care than locking them up in jail. Hard drugs like heroin and cocaine would be safer if they were not sold on the black market. I think that is a net positive vs the status quo- which is a game of “Is It Fentanyl?!?”™ currently. Should people be using those drugs? I don’t know. I personally wouldn’t want to even if I could buy them from a store. As for cannabis, I’m convinced that for 90+% of the populous* it’s safer than alcohol. *I think anyone with family history of schizophrenia should avoid weed and probably all intoxicants.

antisyzygy 3y ago

Alcohol is one of the most harmful drugs ever. It leads to all sorts of societal problems like early deaths, domestic abuse, traffic accidents, workplace accidents, even murder because it reduces inhibitions. But somehow we're ok with selling unlimited quantities to people. Most opiates are downright docile by comparison. A person passes out and can't harm anyone anymore. Legalization would mean opiates are regulated. You can only get a certain strength. You can only buy so much per visit. Purity is regulated so you wouldn't accidentally get Fentanyl laced stuff and die. There should be treatment options, of course, because it's the right thing to do, and it's also much cheaper than fixing the damage addicts can do, and also cheaper than the cost throwing them in prison. Generally speaking drug addicts are actually self-medicating something anyway, it's like a slow suicide attempt due to some mental trauma or other mental illness like schizophrenia. The OP is right. Decriminalization is the worst of both worlds. For a long time we got use to not seeing as many drug addicts because a lot of them were thrown in prison where you don't see them anymore. Each one costing tax payers a full time wage, 35k per year per prisoner. Decriminalization means you see more addicts out on the streets, but they're still getting overly strong, even laced stuff on the black market and are taken advantage of by predators. Where marijuana legalization occurred there are purity limits on things like edibles. And you can only buy so much at once. It hasn't lead to really any problems but of course marijuana is one of the least harmful drugs out there. It's far less harmful than alcohol, so it might not be the best example. I'd say alcohol is a better comparison to opiates and other hard drugs. Legalization is the better path. We already should know better via our exercise in alcohol prohibition.

tastyfreeze 3y ago

> Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high That may be a result of measurement. People that used prior to legalization kept it secret. The stereotypical "stoners" are a fraction of cannabis users. After legalization people tend to be more open about their cannabis use. If the measurement is based on surveys there will be an obvious increase after legalization as the legal consequences of admitting use have been removed. If the measurement is based on sales there will also be an obvious increase after legalization as the majority of sales are recorded. Prior to legalization the majority of sales were illegal and the only sampling of the actual market size is from police seizures. Yes, there will be a growth in the market when the legality is changed and stigma is reduced over time. That is people finding cannabis useful for themselves and no fear of being judged for that choice (same as alcohol is for many people). There will always be a portion of the population that use drugs in excess to the detriment of their health or will compromise their morals to use. There is also a larger portion of the population that uses drugs regardless of legality and participates in society. You would never know the second cohort. The problem with the first cohort is breaking other laws to satisfy their desire to use. Their drug use isn't the problem. Drugs didn't make them do anything. They should be punished for their other behavior not their consumption habits.

prepend 3y ago
> If the measurement is based on sales there will also be an obvious increase after legalization as the majority of sales are recorded. This may be true, but it’s the best measuring that we have. I don’t know if it’s worth throwing out the existing measures we have from before and after legalization on a hunch that it might be different results. The surveys try to account for this as much as they can. I agree that people shouldn’t be punished for their drug use, but I think the point is that without punishment, drug use increases. And there are some negative impact from that increase.
- mitchdoogle 3y ago
  It has proven untenable to treat this with law enforcement. It's too susceptible to bias, and creates a large class of people labeled as "criminals" the rest of their lives. It demonstrates an incredible lack of imagination that a large percentage of Americans can't see any way to handle this other than making things illegal, especially when we have a clear analog with alcohol. If most people can handle having alcohol readily available, then those same people should be able to have other drugs readily available.

patrickmay 3y ago

It would be very hard for the effects of allowing people to choose what they consume to be worse than the effects of prohibition. The homeless issue is multidimensional and, surprise, people were already getting drugs before they were decriminalized. Legalization is morally correct and eliminates the gangs, violence, and high costs of prohibition.

anon84873628 3y ago

Personally I think marijuana is a bit unique, more similar to alcohol in how it can fit into daily life for some people. Sure the use has probably gone up but that's just social norms changing, not necessarily for better or worse. (If it displaces alcohol or other drug use it's probably for the better). Every culture has different ideas about what drugs are acceptable. Maybe legalizing cocaine would also see occasional recreational use go up - that's not necessarily a problem either.

mcphage 3y ago

> People who would have never tried it before now do so because the stigma is gone, and it's trivial to get. This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. While marijuana might be relatively benign, other drugs are not. Removing the stigma and making it easy to get harder drugs is going to be a net-negative thing for society as a hole. That doesn't entirely follow. Marijuana is widely known to be benign, and so it's not much of a surprise that usage rose with legalization. Other drugs are known to not be benign, so you're not going to find a ton of people going "hey, why not try some heroin?"

Simon_O_Rourke 3y ago

> It would be better to not throw people in prison for drug use - but instead have mandatory rehab or something... while keeping drug use out of reach for the average person. Totally agree, but I'd be in favor of a much harder line on the distribution and production side. The problem is one of supply, so if you can help rehab and curtail supply you help reduce usage.