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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that we actually have a potential big opponent for the drug cartels - drug companies. Legalizing drugs will drive cartels out of business because they'd be competing with clean drugs sold in pharmacies, prepared in well-funded laboratories of entities used to cooperating with safety regulations. So why the Big Pharma isn't lobbying for ending the war on drugs?

I wonder if it isn't the social view that's blocking them - the first pharmaceutical company to step up and vote for legalization could face a serious PR shitstorm centered about morality of "legitimizing addiction".

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Firstly because they are well known drugs which they can't patent and make big profits off, their interest is in novel drugs which they can invent and profit off. Secondly they are a part of the system, and many drugs can actually threaten their model, like if mushrooms proved effective for depression, it could affect their sales of anti-depressants.

Many illegal drugs are actually dangerous, so you need legalization and some mechanism to shield them from liability.

They also already sell many analogues to illegal drugs under prescription, so you have to look at whether a legalized market would be a better business than the one they currently have.

You're right. As long as there are limits to access to drugs, there will be some market for getting them illicitly - even if for convenience reasons (say, getting prescription drugs without a prescription). The question is, whether that market will be big enough to support organized crime the way the war on drugs does.

> So why the Big Pharma isn't lobbying for ending the war on drugs?

Because the stuff used as illegal drugs is actually dangerous to health, and pharma industry selling that stuff -- even if completely pure and legitimate -- would be disastrous for their public image, and profits.

The public will want separate recreational drug companies (but even then there will be "revelations" that Big Pharma is "secretly" producing harmful drugs in factories that are also used for production of legitimate, useful medication).

"Dangerous" is too vague to be useful. There's plenty of legal, commercially produced opioids and opiates. Those have been well studied and have a variety of adverse reactions if not used delicately. However, they're perceived as "medicine" or "useful drugs" and hence do not have the same stigma.

If "dangerous" is too vague, then "untested" is valid. You can absolutely get me on board with the "DEA/FDA limit testing of illegal substances" rebuttal, but you can't say the variety of illegal substances have been as well tested through customer dosage as something that currently goes to market.

I think the biggest advantage Big Pharma would have over the cartels and fly-by-night drug makers is that legitimate companies are held accountable to quality and safety standards, therefore you can be sure that you're buying a drug produced following a proper process and contains only what it's supposed to. A lot of deaths from (illegal) drug use is caused by impurities and not by the drug itself, and illicit actors don't have incentives to reduce them.

> Because the stuff used as illegal drugs is actually dangerous to health

Recreational drugs are not inherently any more dangerous than the chemicals produced for medicinal use. They are the same kind of thing, recreational drugs just happen to be used for, well, recreation.

Some recreational chemicals are even less dangerous than drugs you can get OTC. For example, LSD has a stellar safety record. There are no recorded overdoses on it, and no known long term physical side effects. It is impossible to get addicted to LSD, because frequent use builds up a massive short term tolerance extremely quickly.

Contrast that with acetaminophen. It is widely and cheaply available, overused by a large number of people and it does some serious damage to your liver. You can also overdose on it.

Also, the pharmaceutical industry already produces many chemicals that are used recreationally, like opiates, benzodiazepines, amphetamines(including methamphetamine), various other stimulants, ketamine, DXM etc.

Infact, the only class of popular recreational compounds they don't produce happen to be the comparatively much safer psychedelics including tryptamines, phenylethylamines and lysergamides.

Recreational drugs typically get overused, to the point of toxicity. Just do a 'ride-along' with your emergency room nurse friend any weekend evening, and keep count of overdose cases - prescribed vs recreational.

Maybe that's because the recreational drug doesn't come with an MSDS/safe use documentation, because it was bought on the street.

Or perhaps because its recreational, and more fun is better, folks have no self control. They are called 'addictive' for a reason.

> They are called 'addictive' for a reason.

A reason that has little to do with recreation and a lot with altering brain chemistry.

You're not really refuting his point.

It ultimately comes down to the concept of personal responsibility. Drinking does not absolve one of their subsequent actions and choices, regardless of their subsequent "mental state". Any choice to have an "unsound mind" was made while of sound mind, and thus responsibility for all results lie with the person themselves. Being mentally impaired doesn't magically transform someone into a blameless zombie.

Colleges seem to be doing their best to erode this concept, but I digress.

There's an article I linked to in another comment subthread, it deals in details with this issue - in particular, when we should talk about personal responsibility and when just call it an illness.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10424645

I don't see why the two are mutually exclusive. In the article you linked, the husband is right for making it clear that it is Sandy's problem, the doctor is also right for recommending medical treatment, and Sandy is right for seeking the doctor for help solving her problem.

What isn't right is things such as the doctor telling Sandy that obesity is "primary genetic". Even if the statement is scientifically correct in a narrow context, it functions to absolve Sandy of responsibility for solving her own problem - whether it be by dieting, seeing additional doctors, exercising, or all of the above. Heck, telling her husband "I am fine with my weight" is in this same category of self-actualization, although she must accept others' inevitable reactions.

As for my comment, I certainly wasn't meaning to advocate "personal responsibility" in the sense of "let them suffer". In aggregate, addiction should be addressed as a public health problem. But that doesn't mean we should absolve the individuals of responsibility for their own actions because their brain has been chemically altered. This is what I was getting at, because that junk reasoning is used to justify inebriated behavior as nobody's fault, which is then used to justify a sweeping bans on altering one's mental state.

Or perhaps it's some unknown combination of all the factors that you can think of, but no one really knows because the very illegality makes it difficult to determine.

This means logically, you have to ignore the preconceptions, because they have no basis in reality, just your biases.

The parent commenter was implying that the public wouldn't stand for having recreational drugs being manufactured by regular pharm companies, because they were somehow more dangerous. I pointed out that pharm companies already manufacture dangerous chemicals, that include these recreational drugs.

Yes, but the fact that a company manufactures pharmaceuticals that are known to be dangerous but used in a controlled way (e.g. narcotic substances used for sedating persons when making operations by qualified medical personnel) is perceived by the public highly differently from manufacturing and delivering the same narcotics for recreational use.

And I think this is quite understandable, and not really about "war on drugs", it's about corporate responsibility.

Many companies are taking some flak for supplying completely legal chemical substances to the public (say, sugar drinks).

Having perused the literature it seems that everything you said of LSD is also true of psilocybin.

> Recreational drugs are not inherently any more dangerous than the chemicals produced for medicinal use.

That is true, but the general public creates its view on perceptions. Recreational drugs are frowned upon in many societies. In some (often primitive) societies the same substances may even be revered. But much of the world is very averse to psychoactive drugs in the popular opinion.

Same is true for other chemicals in our environment, too. For instance, it is common that people (even the same people) have a negative attitude towards a company that sells alcohol for human consumption (recreational use for intoxication) and a positive attitude towards a company that sells alcohol for use as fuel (biofuel, a renewable source of energy).

(And it is also common that people approve of drinking alcohol but do not approve of smoking marijuana, regardless of legality. And vice versa.)

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