Comment by mattmaroon

Comment by mattmaroon 2 days ago

I don’t think that’s true of heroin to a large extent, but I do think it would be true of cocaine, psychedelics, and other drugs. But regardless, I think the overall effect would be net harm mitigation given all the downsides of making it illegal. Funding violent crime at home and abroad, stigmatizing it and deterring treatment, overdoses from unsafe supply, etc. It’s entirely possible that more people would use it and it would still result in less harm to society.

sfn42 2 days ago

I've been saying the same thing for years. Everything should be legal, prohibition just causes more problems. We learned this lesson with alcohol already.

Making it legal we could have things sold over the counter in pharmacies with proper age checks, we could even require further checks like before you can purchase heroin you need to go through a process where it is explained how it works, what a reasonable dose is, what side effects are, how addictive it is etc.

Same with other stuff. Most drugs are quite safe and harmless if done by people who know what they're doing. Of course self destructive people and morons would still harm themselves but honestly I'm not too worried about that. They will always find ways to harm themselves.

At least drug users wouldn't be funding cartels and warlords etc.

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jeffhuys 2 days ago

Go to the QuittingKratom subreddit and see for yourself how a legal opioid-like substance destroys lives.

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- mattmaroon 2 days ago
  
  Sure. Alcohol does too. We made it illegal, it only worsened problems.
  It’s a balance sheet and you can’t just look at the debits and not the credits.
  
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- sfn42 2 days ago
  
  I already addressed this. Drugs are currently illegal and yet millions of people are destroying their lives with drugs right now. So clearly, prohibition does not solve this problem. I could buy heroin right now, on a a Sunday when most stores are closed in my country, within an hour. The only difference is I wouldn't know if it was cut with fentanyl and other adulterants, they wouldn't care about selling to youth, etc.
  
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  qcnguy 2 days ago
  
  But the post you're replying to is about a legal substance, so that doesn't seem relevant.
  
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  sfn42 2 days ago
  
  Kratom definitely isn't legal where I live. And either way I don't see your point. I said things should be legal because prohibition only causes more harm - they said this legal thing causes harm - I said that does not disprove my point.
  Prohibition does not stop the sale, use and abuse of substances. This is indisputable. The question then is whether or not legalization actually reduces the harm caused by these substances. I believe it does. Both by weakening the black market, ensuring people actually get what they think they're buying rather than whatever the dealer happens to give them, controlling who can purchase things, providing opportunities to educate people before they are able to purchase etc.
  All these things are already widely and easily available. Legalization doesn't really change anything in that regard. And most illegal drugs aren't as bad as people are led to believe either. Most of them can be used responsibly with hardly any negative effects, certainly no more than alcohol. The worst part about them is that we don't know what we're getting. We don't know the concentration and we don't even know whether it is what we think it is at all.
  There's also the tax revenue we would collect from the legal sale of drugs which could be used to provide education and help those who are struggling.
  
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  _DeadFred_ 2 days ago
  
  I used to think like this. But lets take a different addictive habit that recently became legal. People were able to gamble pre-legalization, but hardly anyone I knew was addicted to illegal sports betting. Now that it is legal, I would say large amount of friends show very addicted looking behavior around it.
  There is a reason why heroine used to be sold as cough syrup and over time became illegal. I know we want to say the war on drugs was all a war on minorities (and with pot it was), but have you looked into the history of people turning into junkies?
  
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