Should we set the bar for behaviour so low?
Even if drugs were legalized, the cost for treatment would be high (and presumably be bourne by the tax payer).
Japan imprisons a very small percentage of people compared to the USA.
Furthermore,it is a personal choice only if the other individual's choice does not have negative externalities.
Yet, a casual stroll through San Francisco 's mission district would tell you that this is not the case.
Who would have thought that drug use by the mentally unstable would result in a bad outcome...
> You are an authoritarian,
Perhaps. But when I compare the outcomes of Japan/ Singapore to that of the US, it is simple to see which model is the best.
So we should ban every personal choice with negative externalities? There goes alcohol, twinkies, contact sports, driving, etc. It's a personal choice as much as anything else, so just estimate the cost of any negative externalities and cover that through taxation.
> Yet, a casual stroll through San Francisco 's mission district would tell you that this is not the case.
Of course you don't know any of those people and can't say for sure whether drug abuse is what lead them to the behavior that you disapprove of.
> But when I compare the outcomes of Japan/ Singapore to that of the US, it is simple to see which model is the best.
The model of inhumane prisons and death sentences? Actually the US has a pretty similar model to that already, so I'm not sure what your point is.
I am pretty sure the needles on the sidewalk is just there because everyone suffers from diabetes, right?
I think that, fortunately for most IT people like us, we can live in nice neighborhoods, where none of the social ills of drug-ridden neighbortlhoods affect us. So, we can support drug legalization, without being affected by the consequences.
> The model of inhumane prisons and death sentences?
Japan/Singapore imprisons much less people for drug crimes than the US - due to the USA's lenient laws on drugs (grey line vs. red line). The ill effects of drug use in japan is virtually non-existent.
You can moralize all you want, but it is a better system with less actual harm.
The author is a ex-prison doctor who's spent his career working with the convicted and the mentally ill.
Japanese people drink. Japanese people also are major users of over the counter drugs which we in the west can't get hold of, notably benzodiazepines like flutazolam and flutoprazepam are available to buy there.
> Japanese people also are major users of over the counter drugs
Japan is much stricter with medicine than US. Several medicibes that are OTC in US are illegal in Japan: https://jp.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/local-resource...
I am sure that there are abuse of prescription drugs. But I have not heard anything about a systematic, widespread problem (comparable to prescription drug abuse in US).
A cursory reading of the WP says that the legal status of the drugs you mentioned is more or less the same as the US: