4 ms·

Cocaine, I could maybe see the argument. But the article also said there was another submarine seized with 4.5BN worth of meth aboard. And I really hope you are

Cocaine, I could maybe see the argument. But the article also said there was another submarine seized with 4.5BN worth of meth aboard. And I really hope you aren't suggesting legalising meth. I could see the argument that if other amphetamines were legal no one would use meth, but.....I don't think that's necessarily true. All the illegal meth would have to do to keep existing is to be cheaper than legal speed.

bigmadshoe 1y ago
The war on drugs has failed. Everyone agrees that no-one should do meth. But the solutions presented so far by prohibition are not just conceptually flawed - they demonstrably don’t work. We literally have 50+ years of data that shows it. We need to a) legalize drugs, b) provide proper treatment to addicts, and c) get unsafe drugs off the streets. I’m speaking as someone who lost a close family member to an overdose. What we’re doing now is not working.
- crackrook 1y ago
  I know we have data that shows just how harmful the war on drugs has been, but I'm curious if we have data showing that legalization in a modern society, with global supply chains and marketing campaigns, does not result in a bunch of people who previously wouldn't have done drugs - for fear of legal consequences, or just because they're hard to obtain - suddenly doing drugs. I'm genuinely interested to know, this isn't something I've made up my mind about. I finally managed to quit vaping a year ago after starting as a teen. To be honest, if I could get a dime bag at the corner store, I'm not certain that I would be able to resist the temptation to do so for the first time or umpteenth time. Speaking only for myself, I suspect I would be a happier and more productive member of society if it continued to be the case that these chemicals were inaccessible to me. I'm interested to know if there's data suggesting that I'm mistaken or just an outlier. Just given what I know about the issue (which, admittedly, isn't a lot), I feel decriminalizing possession and keeping distribution illegal would be my first choice. I want people to be able to test their drugs for fentanyl without fear of legal consequences, but I'm reluctant to trust corporations or individuals not to push addictive poison into the hands of the vulnerable when there are profit incentives and no legal boundaries.
  - vineyardmike 1y ago
    > To be honest, if I could get a dime bag at the corner store, I'm not certain that I would be able to resist the temptation to do so for the first time When people discuss "legalizing drugs" in the context of ending the war on drugs, they don't necessarily mean it should be sold at corner stores. Generally the exception to this is Cannabis which has its own legalization movement, but not hard drugs. > I feel decriminalizing possession and keeping distribution illegal would be my first choice This is usually what legalization means in most practical policy discussions. They want to make possession legal or "de-criminalized", not distribution. Because they want addicts to feel safe seeking help. Portugal had a big "legalization" push around 2000 which saw a huge uptick in rehab and addiction treatment cases, and it's often the program advocates point to. Oregon tried this in 2020, but didn't couple it with strong social support (recovery programs) and rolled it back a few years later. Oregon is often what detractors point to.
    - crackrook 1y ago
      I see. I understood "legalization" to mean the same thing in this context that it means for cannabis, e.g. legal to distribute/purchase for recreational use. I should have clarified, thank you.
    - vidarh 1y ago
      Decriminalising without legalising manufacturing and distribution is a pretty shitty compromise, because it leaves lack of control of the safety of the drugs, and the violence and other criminality through the entire chain.
  - reactordev 1y ago
    making drugs legal doesn’t mean it will be available at your local corner store. I’m all for keeping certain volumes of distribution illegal but no good has come from the war on drugs.
    - crackrook 1y ago
      Yep I misunderstood "legal" to mean "regulated like alcohol/tobacco" or "unscheduled" in this context and "decriminalized" to be the colloquial term meaning "legal to own and use but illegal to sell." My mistake!
inemesitaffia 1y ago
The $amount is dishonest. Check the weight then compare with wholesale prices
stickfigure 1y ago
We already have legal meth, it's branded Adderall® and we regularly prescribe it to children, grad students, and hedge fund managers. You just have to be rich enough to afford the 'scrip.
- tayo42 1y ago
  The brand name is Desoxyn for meth
- blincoln 1y ago
  Adderall is an amphetamine, but it is not methamphetamine. It would be closer to accurate to compare it to Dexedrine than meth.
  - nandomrumber 1y ago
    Isn't Dexedrine just slow release dextroamphetamine? There isn't really a whole lot of difference between amphetamine and methamphetamine. Meth is, weight for weight, stronger due to the methyl- group enabling the molecule to pass through cell membranes / the blood-brain barrier easier, and at the effect-equivalent dose most people wouldn't notice any difference.
    - scns 1y ago
      Adderall is a mixture of 75% Dextroamphetamine and 25% Levoamphetamine.
- lupusreal 1y ago
  I do think Adderall should be available OTC to everybody. It's an open secret that rich kids with no legitimate mental issues buy prescriptions for adderall to boost their school and job performance. The popular talk of "ADHD brains" for which Adderall works differently is pseudoscience tacitly endorsed by the medical community to make people feel okay about using these drugs. They don't just boost the school performance of people who have ADHD, they do that for everybody. It's a relatively harmless drug in the vein of caffeine, almost everybody would benifit from using it, not just the people with diagnosed attention disorders. Broad legalization would level the playing field. Meth is different, even though it's basically the same if you look at it reductively. Meth hits you fast, it's not slow release. It gives you mind melting sex and gives you psychosis if you use it a lot. In a world where Adderall is easily and legally accessible to everybody, meth will remain desirable and ruinous.
Synaesthesia 1y ago
Addicts need help, if we want to reduce drug use we can do it through education and support. That's how tobacco use has dropped in western countries, not by banning it and using violence.
- LorenPechtel 1y ago
  And understand that use of heavy drugs is often driven by seeking to escape some aspect of life. Fix that and people can often quit on their own by slowly tapering. Don't fix that and they're very prone to falling off the wagon.
LorenPechtel 1y ago
No one should do meth. But that doesn't mean people don't do meth. And many of the bad results are because it's street stuff.
rufus_foreman 1y ago
Meth is legal for people with poor attention.
AngryData 1y ago
If amphetamines were legal we could get a lot of people to switch away from black market meth into cleaner and safer amphetamines in better controlled doses though. With most amphetamines being illegal and the fewer medical amphetamines being highly controlled and restricted to limit supply, you guarantee people are going to be taking black market street meth of unknown quality and type. There is a reason prescribed adderall has 4 different amphetamine salts in it and not just one random one, and is a large reason why problems with adderall abuse are so less common and severe than problems with unregulated meth abuse. If your goal it to have zero bad effects from people using drugs, and you think you can achieve atleast close to that, then prohibition does seem like an ideal policy. But if you believe a decent number of people will find or produce and consume drugs regardless of the law or enforcement capabilities, as evident by the last 60+ years of failed strong illegal drug policies, prohibition drug policies for any drug is silly and leaves you almost no room to educate people about drug usage or how to minimize harm and addiction and limites their choices in being able to pick the safest versions of a drug.

bigmadshoe 1y ago

The war on drugs has failed. Everyone agrees that no-one should do meth. But the solutions presented so far by prohibition are not just conceptually flawed - they demonstrably don’t work. We literally have 50+ years of data that shows it. We need to a) legalize drugs, b) provide proper treatment to addicts, and c) get unsafe drugs off the streets. I’m speaking as someone who lost a close family member to an overdose. What we’re doing now is not working.

crackrook 1y ago
I know we have data that shows just how harmful the war on drugs has been, but I'm curious if we have data showing that legalization in a modern society, with global supply chains and marketing campaigns, does not result in a bunch of people who previously wouldn't have done drugs - for fear of legal consequences, or just because they're hard to obtain - suddenly doing drugs. I'm genuinely interested to know, this isn't something I've made up my mind about. I finally managed to quit vaping a year ago after starting as a teen. To be honest, if I could get a dime bag at the corner store, I'm not certain that I would be able to resist the temptation to do so for the first time or umpteenth time. Speaking only for myself, I suspect I would be a happier and more productive member of society if it continued to be the case that these chemicals were inaccessible to me. I'm interested to know if there's data suggesting that I'm mistaken or just an outlier. Just given what I know about the issue (which, admittedly, isn't a lot), I feel decriminalizing possession and keeping distribution illegal would be my first choice. I want people to be able to test their drugs for fentanyl without fear of legal consequences, but I'm reluctant to trust corporations or individuals not to push addictive poison into the hands of the vulnerable when there are profit incentives and no legal boundaries.
- vineyardmike 1y ago
  > To be honest, if I could get a dime bag at the corner store, I'm not certain that I would be able to resist the temptation to do so for the first time When people discuss "legalizing drugs" in the context of ending the war on drugs, they don't necessarily mean it should be sold at corner stores. Generally the exception to this is Cannabis which has its own legalization movement, but not hard drugs. > I feel decriminalizing possession and keeping distribution illegal would be my first choice This is usually what legalization means in most practical policy discussions. They want to make possession legal or "de-criminalized", not distribution. Because they want addicts to feel safe seeking help. Portugal had a big "legalization" push around 2000 which saw a huge uptick in rehab and addiction treatment cases, and it's often the program advocates point to. Oregon tried this in 2020, but didn't couple it with strong social support (recovery programs) and rolled it back a few years later. Oregon is often what detractors point to.
  - crackrook 1y ago
    I see. I understood "legalization" to mean the same thing in this context that it means for cannabis, e.g. legal to distribute/purchase for recreational use. I should have clarified, thank you.
  - vidarh 1y ago
    Decriminalising without legalising manufacturing and distribution is a pretty shitty compromise, because it leaves lack of control of the safety of the drugs, and the violence and other criminality through the entire chain.
- reactordev 1y ago
  making drugs legal doesn’t mean it will be available at your local corner store. I’m all for keeping certain volumes of distribution illegal but no good has come from the war on drugs.
  - crackrook 1y ago
    Yep I misunderstood "legal" to mean "regulated like alcohol/tobacco" or "unscheduled" in this context and "decriminalized" to be the colloquial term meaning "legal to own and use but illegal to sell." My mistake!

inemesitaffia 1y ago

The $amount is dishonest. Check the weight then compare with wholesale prices

stickfigure 1y ago

We already have legal meth, it's branded Adderall® and we regularly prescribe it to children, grad students, and hedge fund managers. You just have to be rich enough to afford the 'scrip.

tayo42 1y ago
The brand name is Desoxyn for meth
blincoln 1y ago
Adderall is an amphetamine, but it is not methamphetamine. It would be closer to accurate to compare it to Dexedrine than meth.
- nandomrumber 1y ago
  Isn't Dexedrine just slow release dextroamphetamine? There isn't really a whole lot of difference between amphetamine and methamphetamine. Meth is, weight for weight, stronger due to the methyl- group enabling the molecule to pass through cell membranes / the blood-brain barrier easier, and at the effect-equivalent dose most people wouldn't notice any difference.
  - scns 1y ago
    Adderall is a mixture of 75% Dextroamphetamine and 25% Levoamphetamine.
lupusreal 1y ago
I do think Adderall should be available OTC to everybody. It's an open secret that rich kids with no legitimate mental issues buy prescriptions for adderall to boost their school and job performance. The popular talk of "ADHD brains" for which Adderall works differently is pseudoscience tacitly endorsed by the medical community to make people feel okay about using these drugs. They don't just boost the school performance of people who have ADHD, they do that for everybody. It's a relatively harmless drug in the vein of caffeine, almost everybody would benifit from using it, not just the people with diagnosed attention disorders. Broad legalization would level the playing field. Meth is different, even though it's basically the same if you look at it reductively. Meth hits you fast, it's not slow release. It gives you mind melting sex and gives you psychosis if you use it a lot. In a world where Adderall is easily and legally accessible to everybody, meth will remain desirable and ruinous.

Synaesthesia 1y ago

Addicts need help, if we want to reduce drug use we can do it through education and support. That's how tobacco use has dropped in western countries, not by banning it and using violence.

LorenPechtel 1y ago
And understand that use of heavy drugs is often driven by seeking to escape some aspect of life. Fix that and people can often quit on their own by slowly tapering. Don't fix that and they're very prone to falling off the wagon.

LorenPechtel 1y ago

No one should do meth. But that doesn't mean people don't do meth. And many of the bad results are because it's street stuff.

rufus_foreman 1y ago

Meth is legal for people with poor attention.

AngryData 1y ago

If amphetamines were legal we could get a lot of people to switch away from black market meth into cleaner and safer amphetamines in better controlled doses though. With most amphetamines being illegal and the fewer medical amphetamines being highly controlled and restricted to limit supply, you guarantee people are going to be taking black market street meth of unknown quality and type. There is a reason prescribed adderall has 4 different amphetamine salts in it and not just one random one, and is a large reason why problems with adderall abuse are so less common and severe than problems with unregulated meth abuse. If your goal it to have zero bad effects from people using drugs, and you think you can achieve atleast close to that, then prohibition does seem like an ideal policy. But if you believe a decent number of people will find or produce and consume drugs regardless of the law or enforcement capabilities, as evident by the last 60+ years of failed strong illegal drug policies, prohibition drug policies for any drug is silly and leaves you almost no room to educate people about drug usage or how to minimize harm and addiction and limites their choices in being able to pick the safest versions of a drug.