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Comment by lend000 | Hacker News Reader

It's too bad this is being down-voted, because you're absolutely right. There will always be people who turn to substances, but the war on recreational drugs creates a black market that results in sketchy, dangerous product. Decriminalization and legalization of drugs will make everyone better off (except drug Cartels).

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I know that is the popular meme. But is it really true? What country on earth can you buy any drug you want without a prescription in a pharmacy, and how does the culture look like?

Frankly some stuff is really bad and should be kept away from people.

I'm not aware of any country that's gone that far, but, Portugal decriminalized recreational-quantity possession in 2001 (across the board) and did a study on the societal effects in 2009: "Empirical data from that report indicate that decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates. However, drug-related pathologies - such as sexually transmitted diseases and deaths due to drug usage - have decreased dramatically."[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

Maybe you'll find this persuasive? http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

No. Just because the war on drugs was started for a racist reason doesn't make banning drugs themselves a bad idea. I don't think people can make valid choices about the use or not use of highly addictive drugs. We as a society can do better than to help people be strung out.

> We as a society can do better than to help people be strung out.

Safe injecting facilities are not about helping people be strung out. They're about reducing harm, both to the addict and to the rest of society, coming from drug addiction.

Did you read the whole piece? There's strong evidence that drug abuse is bad, and that the best way to mitigate it is through harm reduction policies -- and that these policies ultimately reduce use of drugs. Which is what you want, right?

I'm pro-legalization, but there is a good argument to be made that legalization increases access and as a result you'd see a much higher rate of casual use (orders of magnitude higher). Any slight increase in healthcare costs or negative outcomes on a per-person basis multiplied across a large population is a factor worth considering.

This is purely anecdotal, but I'm not so sure legalization would have a large effect on the rate of drug use.

I consider myself fairly well insulated from drug use. In my entire social group I know of only one person that has ever tried methamphetamine (which is rampant here in Australia), and none that have tried heroin. Despite that, if you set me to the task of aquiring heroin I'd be pretty confident in my ability to do so. I doubt I'd have to go through more than 3 levels of friends to find someone that could hook me up. And that's not even taking into account darknet markets (which I imagine would be fairly easy to learn how to use as a software engineer).

If I woke up tomorrow and decided to try heroin, there wouldn't be very much in the way of obstacles in my path.

So for me at least, there's not that much difference between the current situation and legalisation. Especially if said legalisation requires a prescription. Arguably convincing a doctor that I'm an addict and in need of heroin is more of a barrier to entry than finding someone that sells it now.

I don't know, I think there are a number of factors about illegal heroin that make it less attractive than legal heroin might be:

1. Buying it illegally funds criminal organizations

2. Quality is terrible, it's certainly adulterated

3. Association with low class and poor people

You can ingest or smoke opium products, too, if the needle is the off-putting part of heroin.

But yeah, another anecdotal perspective: I've had prescription opioid painkillers but don't have any particular interest in continuing to use them after the pain goes away. So if opioids were legal tomorrow, I don't think it would change my behavior at all either.

But is there evidence that there would be a significant change? That hasn't been shown in California, Oregon, Washington, or Colorado, in the case of marijuana. Why would other drugs be different?

There's the alcohol prohibition example. Alcohol intake did go down significantly, at least initially.

I think it's maybe too early to tell what impact CO/WA/etc legalization has had on MJ use.

Do some reading on "harm reduction". There is actually a fair amount of research on this topic.

There are places like Amsterdam that are perfectly functional with recreational drugs, although they still maintain a distinction for "hard drugs." Making such a distinction is fine -- it would be a huge step in right direction to at least recognize that recreational drug use is not inherently bad. But in reality, I don't think "dangerous" drugs are any less dangerous or prevalent because they are illegal, so I'm not convinced the distinction is necessary. The government-focused stigma against drugs was never so prevalent before the 20th century.

http://www.amsterdam.info/drugs/

Who gets to make the rules as to what can or cannot be consumed, and how do you enforce those rules?

We as a society elect people who collectively create rules. And the police force enforces the rules. I.e. it's part of the social contract we join.

>What country on earth can you buy any drug you want without a prescription in a pharmacy, and how does the culture look like?

Most of the poorer Asian countries have been like this in my experience.

Yes, people don't realize that this "solution" doesn't work for any drug just because it makes sense for marijuana. For the people who disagree: In the limiting case thought experiment, imagine a drug which provides a complete DMT + MDMA experience with a single molecule, but has a 50% chance of killing you. Should this drug be easily available in a store? Run a simulation, let me know what the half life of your population ends up being...

Heroin isn't too different, really. It's very addictive, has a low LD50, and when it's easy to get, people effectively get a free ticket to a brothel on an accelerating rocket-fuel train with rarely stops. If a drug can have that much power over the body, people might think we could create microdoses, and sell those, and then it'd be safe. But then, the market for heroin/tar/etc. would still be there, and would continue underground.

It's not as simple as "selling it at CVS w/o prescription will lower overdoses and dissolve the underground H market"

I don't think it works with anything more addictive than say coffee and with reasonably negative health effects. I.e. today's engineered tobacco is likely on the wrong side of where I would personally draw the line.

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