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Comment by nickthemagicman | Hacker News Reader

It sounded extremely preachy. "What you should have done"....

OP wasn't asking for your advice about drugs...as a matter of fact dude probably knows more about them than you.

OP was making a point about how the consequences for minor offenses are way too punitive for the crime.

He's right. Having a little drugs on you should NOT be two months in jail...That's insane.

And having a felony should not ruin your life and make it impossible to get a job and take care of yourself and your family.

People make mistake. It's part of being human. But nowdays we have predators in the wings waiting for you to make a mistake, so they can exploit you with moral justification.

Banks, health insurance, governments...

It's really gotten out of hand.

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OP did not mention anything about legal drugs. Id rather it be preachy and inform him and others that it is not difficult to get a prescription for Adderall if you have ADD symptoms.

The point is less about his mental problems and more about how brutal drug laws are in America. Half of people in American jail's are drug offenders. How insane? Portugal, Netherlands have decriminalized drugs and have had no issues.

This is exactly my point, and relates nicely to the original article's point that stigmatizing non-violent drug offenders for much of their professional lives really serves no purpose beside driving people away from wanting to work.

Why has US society adopted this meme that felony possession of, say, cocaine at age 25 should brand you unhireable for much of your professional life?

Obviously, your examples of Portugal and the Netherlands show that there is no overarching societal need for this branding.

I got your point. I have friends in the same position. If someone has a drug felony they can't even get financial aid for college.

It's so fucked how we have this illusion of Drugs being evil pounded into our head from an early age. When they're not really that big of a deal. Literally like 90% of the country does drugs. Some of the most successful people do Cocaine. Sorry...ALL of the most successful people do it.

You got fucked for being poor essentially OP.

The sick sick part is...it's all exploiting the vulnerable for money. Fines, Salaries, Budgets, Grants for Prisons..

This is all well explored by numerous journalists. I'm not treading any new ground here in my thoughts here though.

Sorry you got trapped in the Murican B.S. O.P.

The reason the OP gave for taking the drugs is "cognitive enhancement", not ADD treatment. It's probably going to be more difficult to find doctors willing to prescribe that, if this is your given reason.

(That being said, maybe this need for "cognitive enhancement" really does arise from an underlying medical condition like ADD. A sane legal system would in my opinion have, instead of jailing, sent this person to a doctor to figure this out.)

And don't think it should be overlooked, the feeling that one needs to take meth for cognitive enhancement in order to be useful enough to society to feed themselves, is a problem.

It won't even work for that and will end up destroying your brain. If you're going to take something not legal, use modafinil at least.

The idea of cognitive enhancement is mostly fake. If you're ADD, ADD medication helps, but if you're baseline it doesn't. Get some sleep and go running.

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