4 ms·

I think it's possible, but pretty difficult. There's just too much money to be made selling drugs to the US.

vorpalhex 2mo ago
I am against marijuana but I think it's clear legalizing it successfully starves the cartel of a lot of drug financing (and therefore we should both legalize it and have public campaigns against using it, ala alcohol). Even the weird state based legalization has caused the cartels to pivot into things like avocado farming and mining. Drug users don't seem to be overly preoccupied with what drug they use. Probably shifting them towards lower risk choices (pot, ketamine) and aggressively crack down on dealers is a winning combo. (A lot of low level dealers are just graduated drug users but the line between buying and selling is a large one and dealers do immense harm while also shielding more dangerous criminals. Incentives against dealing incl aggressive enforcement are powerful at dissuading low level dealers, which in turn starves the criminal organizations.)
- InitialLastName 2mo ago
  > Drug users don't seem to be overly preoccupied with what drug they use. What? In the case of opiates (which is the most significant drug problem we have at the moment), users are often physically addicted to a specific substance and that addiction was often initiated by legitimate medical usage of that substance. They'll certainly care if you say "hey, you can't use heroin any more, have some weed instead".
  - vorpalhex 2mo ago
    The medical pipeline for opiate addiction has been gone for several years now. Most users were exposed to fentanyl unknowingly through buying other tainted drugs, often expecting percocet or even ecstasy. Some of these users do require methodone treatment, but you can't give drug users unregulated access to opiates. That is just not gonna work out. Either they are going to self taper ("stretching" their tail of their stash) or they are going to end up in a hospital and get tapered by a professional.

I am against marijuana but I think it's clear legalizing it successfully starves the cartel of a lot of drug financing (and therefore we should both legalize it and have public campaigns against using it, ala alcohol). Even the weird state based legalization has caused the cartels to pivot into things like avocado farming and mining. Drug users don't seem to be overly preoccupied with what drug they use. Probably shifting them towards lower risk choices (pot, ketamine) and aggressively crack down on dealers is a winning combo. (A lot of low level dealers are just graduated drug users but the line between buying and selling is a large one and dealers do immense harm while also shielding more dangerous criminals. Incentives against dealing incl aggressive enforcement are powerful at dissuading low level dealers, which in turn starves the criminal organizations.)

InitialLastName 2mo ago
> Drug users don't seem to be overly preoccupied with what drug they use. What? In the case of opiates (which is the most significant drug problem we have at the moment), users are often physically addicted to a specific substance and that addiction was often initiated by legitimate medical usage of that substance. They'll certainly care if you say "hey, you can't use heroin any more, have some weed instead".
- vorpalhex 2mo ago
  The medical pipeline for opiate addiction has been gone for several years now. Most users were exposed to fentanyl unknowingly through buying other tainted drugs, often expecting percocet or even ecstasy. Some of these users do require methodone treatment, but you can't give drug users unregulated access to opiates. That is just not gonna work out. Either they are going to self taper ("stretching" their tail of their stash) or they are going to end up in a hospital and get tapered by a professional.