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> The total society wide harms of legalization are higher than the total society wide harms of criminalization Can you please elaborate why have you concluded

> The total society wide harms of legalization are higher than the total society wide harms of criminalization Can you please elaborate why have you concluded so? I can see that legal consumption is naturally larger than illegal, as illegality is a deterring factor for some unknown to me fraction (all I know it's a lot more than 0%, but significantly less than 100%) of the population. Without the concrete numbers (how much bigger is legal consumption exactly, what's the probability of adverse side effects like those psychotic episodes, what's the probability of trying even less safe substances - like opioids - if cannabis is illegal vs with access to legal and well-regulated cannabis-only dispensaries, etc etc - lots of factors) it's really hard to me to make any sensible conclusion. According to the article, it estimates 18*3=54M users, out of which 3M (about 5.6%) have a use disorder (which, as I get it, is effectively a term for addiction). It is, however, unknown, how many of those actually exhibit any severe side effects, how many of those would be addicted either way (just illegally) and so on. E.g. if we have to weighting legalization with tax-funded information and rehabilitation/anti-addiction support services for people who are affected, vs full prohibition or medical-only cannabis - it's really not clear what's the best strategy (in terms of least adverse effects on the society in general).

slibhb 2y ago
People in this thread have said that harms caused by criminalization exceed harms caused by legalization. I think that's wrong. My sense is that people have a cognitive bias here. Diffuse harms are hard to measure and usually underestimated. Whereas larger harms focused on a small number of people are very noticeable, draw a lot more sympathy, and are easier to measure. But the diffuse harms generally end up being greater in sum.
- drdaeman 2y ago
  > My sense is that people have a cognitive bias here Of course - we all do! :-) I just thought you possibly have seen some more numbers/details about those diffuse harms, rather than merely a belief they must be bigger (which is totally fine, we're all entitled to our opinions or lack thereof, it's just that I believe that opinions are impossible to debate meaningfully until they become supported by facts). This said, I think I understand your logic, but even without having any numbers I also think it's really hard to weigh different harms against each other, especially when it comes to such diffused harms. As a simple contrived (and strictly synthetic, not connected to real life but merely a very naive thought online-comment-grade thought experiment to demonstrate the point) example - what's better, millions coughing or hundreds behaving aggressively? Or, say, thousands jailed for possession? (All numbers absolutely not related to real world situation, only to have different scales for the argument purposes!) How do we assign some "weights" to those, on what scale, and how do we "sum" those weights (it could be that a naive arithmetic sum is not the appropriate operation in the field of social well-being)? Hope this makes sense!

slibhb 2y ago

People in this thread have said that harms caused by criminalization exceed harms caused by legalization. I think that's wrong. My sense is that people have a cognitive bias here. Diffuse harms are hard to measure and usually underestimated. Whereas larger harms focused on a small number of people are very noticeable, draw a lot more sympathy, and are easier to measure. But the diffuse harms generally end up being greater in sum.

drdaeman 2y ago
> My sense is that people have a cognitive bias here Of course - we all do! :-) I just thought you possibly have seen some more numbers/details about those diffuse harms, rather than merely a belief they must be bigger (which is totally fine, we're all entitled to our opinions or lack thereof, it's just that I believe that opinions are impossible to debate meaningfully until they become supported by facts). This said, I think I understand your logic, but even without having any numbers I also think it's really hard to weigh different harms against each other, especially when it comes to such diffused harms. As a simple contrived (and strictly synthetic, not connected to real life but merely a very naive thought online-comment-grade thought experiment to demonstrate the point) example - what's better, millions coughing or hundreds behaving aggressively? Or, say, thousands jailed for possession? (All numbers absolutely not related to real world situation, only to have different scales for the argument purposes!) How do we assign some "weights" to those, on what scale, and how do we "sum" those weights (it could be that a naive arithmetic sum is not the appropriate operation in the field of social well-being)? Hope this makes sense!