Legalize It All – How to Win the War on Drugs (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Legalize It All – How to Win the War on Drugs (2016)

harpers.org

118 pointsaaronbrethorst109 comments

It's interesting that whenever the subject of legalizing drugs comes up, people rarely argue for legalization from the perspective of cognitive liberty. Why we allow certain people to decide what states of consciousness are allowed for other people never ceases to amaze me.

Because in the real, non-theoretical bullshit world there are many undesirable social effect. For instance, dependence, irrational behavior, broken homes and death. Which necessarily involve other people and society as a whole. That's why. Sorry to be curt, but the idea an individual is independent of society approaches orthodox communism in lack of practical workability.

However I would argue that the current approach also breaks up homes, kills people and is generally irrational so that doesn't seem the way to go either.

Gore Vidal I think has the ultimate answer to the drug problem. Invent better drugs. Mitigate the harm. People will leave off the dangerous trash if there are better (and cheaper) alternatives.

Interestingly, the war on drugs has pushed people away from better and cheaper alternatives.

I'm a huge fan of Washington State's ban on public smoking, and I wish they would ban tobacco outright.

Why then should I support proliferation of even more addictive and harmful substances? Tobacco smoke is bad enough, but used hypodermic needles laying on the ground is another issue entirely. The trouble with addictive drugs is that a person's free agency is overruled by dependancy on the substance: addicts want to quit but can't. We keep other far less harmful products off the market through regulation, and I don't see how this is any different.

Did you read the article? The percentage of people who become addicts after using drugs is actually quite low, even for the 'big four' most addictive drugs (cocaine, heroin, meth, and crack)... so it is NOT true that everyone's free agency is overruled by addiction. In fact, a significant majority do not lose free agency; should they all be restricted because some people can't handle it?

The harmful products we should regulate are ones whose use harms other people; things like pesticides, pollutants, etc. Otherwise, where do you draw the line? Lots of people think playing video games or watching tv 'rots your brain.' Some people eat way too much unhealthy food. Should we ban tvs and Doritos?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." "

I think there are enough reported cases of drug addicts resorting to crime and assault to get their fix (and it's not clear how legalizing drugs will change that, since addicts will still have to pay for their dose), not many of people would do the same to get their fix of videogames or doritos, not all addictions have the same strength and side effects.

I'm for decriminalization (still an offense, but not punishable with jail) and investing in treatment more than policing, but I don't think legalization would be beneficial.

"and it's not clear how legalizing drugs will change that, since addicts will still have to pay for their dose"

How about panhandling for an hour a week?

The street price of illegal drugs is all about compensating everyone in the production and distribution chain for the risk of being arrested or killed.

Legal drugs can be as cheap as we want them to be, weighting risk of violence against barrier for starting users and tax revenue.

The price floor (without subsidies) is dimes per dose. How much does refined sugar cost? Three bucks per kilo? Four?

this exactly, in my younger years i developed quite the interest in psychoactive substances and went out of my way to try a very large variety of them, far more than your average person could name (134 different substances to be accurate) yet i have never been addicted to anything, i have no criminal record and have never suffered any ill health due to my usage.

if taking drugs was guaranteed to cause problems id certainly have been subject to them and while i am no longer actively searching these things out or experimenting i will dabble from time to time, yet im still a "functioning member of society"

Exactly! Many people have done this as a hobby/personal research project. Alexander shulgin experimented with possibly thousands of substances and had no cognitive impairment.

It's tough. I think most ppl will agree that wine is great. Weed is great. But both in moderation. And that Heroin is evil. Not even once. Those are the two sides of the spectrum with a crazy amount of gray area and fear in the middle. We're fiddling with that line of what's acceptable for the masses. Now that the war on drugs is widely seen as a ... miscalculation. We're maturing, it's becoming less taboo to speak up and address the issue of mind alteration. It's a debate that can only happen in the context of the experience we've gained by drug use as illicit substances. How could we possibly speak with conviction about the topic without seeing first hand how certain drugs affect society? It would all be hand waving and speculation and would end in the loudest voice winning. We're getting there, starting to come to terms with the hypocrisy of alcohol, but the social progress is understandably super slow.

> In fact, a significant majority do not lose free agency; should they all be restricted because some people can't handle it?

What's the difference between this argument and "why should I have to pay for the insurance of others who get sick? should we all have to pay because a few can't live a healthy life?"?

>What's the difference between this argument and "why should I have to pay for the insurance of others who get sick? should we all have to pay because a few can't live a healthy life?"?

Accepting universal drug prohibition is not anything like accepting mandatory insurance. Mandatory insurance results in nearly everyone being covered by insurance. Conversely, universal prohibition doesn't result in people NOT using drugs, it simply results in drugs being expensive and unregulated. Over a century of of strict prohibition has demonstrated this extensively.

living a healthy life does not guarantee you a life free of health problems. but fair enough if they must restrict it have a licence system whereby people apply for the substances they wish to use and have to pass a test that confirms their basic understanding of the chemicals, if properly educated the vast majority of people would be responsible just as they are when driving a car

"Why then should I support proliferation of even more addictive and harmful substances?"

Because keeping them illegal does far, far more harm than you probably realise.

Go to Mexico or Afghanistan to see the most obvious effects of the illegal cultivation of raw materials. But also go to any poor neighbourhood in most Western cities to see what illegality does there. The corruption of law and politics, the denial of human rights and the distorting effect of too much money in the wrong places.

It's been estimated that the world narcotics industry is financially about the same size as the oil industry. If alcohol was invented today its use would immediately be criminalised. But it's not because, as the US found with Prohibition, doing so once the demand is there causes the near breakdown of social democracy. When you land at Kula Lumpur airport, the cabin attendant welcomes you to Malaysia and reminds you politely that trafficking in drugs carries a mandatory sentence of death. And as you walk to reclaim your baggage, there are posters of nooses with the words "dadah" beneath them.

That, if nothing else, should clue you that after 50 years of prohibition the situation is utterly out of control.

Nobody shoots up on the sidewalk because it's the best place for that experience; they do it because they don't have a better place to go. The problem isn't the drugs, it's the system that puts addicts on the street, and the legal system is part of that.

Amen. To add to this: one of the (many) reasons people end up on heroin is because they lose access to pharmaceutical painkillers. It might sound strange, but our restrictive drug policies are actually making the heroin epidemic worse. We need a better approach.

Well, tobacco use generally affects just the user. Alcohol is the real killer.

Alcohol users drive into school buses and kill innocent children.

Now that we have our first president who doesn't use alcohol, it's time we crack down on the alcohol users. For the children.

Sorry about the downvotes man. This was a perfect witty post that I guess needed a /s for some people.

I tend to downvote sarcastic posts on hacker news because they are sarcastic in nature, not because I disagree with their content per se. I'd encourage you to consider the idea that people downvoted this post despite understanding it, and perhaps even agreeing with the underlying sentiment. Otherwise intelligent people thought it was inappropriate in this forum.

Sarcasm is generally perceived to be a lazy and ineffective way to make an argument, because it is imprecise, tends to strawman the opposing viewpoint, and lacks precise positive claims. The belief is that if the poster actually had something to add to the conversation, they should state it clearly and precisely, rather than relying on subtext and sarcasm.

As a general rule, I think this is correct. If one can't phrase a sarcastic retort as a concrete rebuttal, one's views are likely less clear than one would like. There generally isn't any interesting reason to prefer a sarcastic variation on a response to a straight-forward one, especially in a forum where non-native language speakers, as well as individuals who do not register sarcasm, are frequent visitors.

This forum caters to a distinctly older and more highly educated demographic than reddit (or whatever), and participants are held to norms that might at first seem strange or alien.

> but used hypodermic needles laying on the ground is another issue entirely

The criminal justice response to this has clearly failed. How about treating this as the public health problem it is? Give addicts access to clean needles, safe injecting spaces, and needle disposal and you'll get rid of most of the problems of irresponsibly dangerously disposed of needles.

Smokers already have all that and still can't be arsed not to litter public spaces/nature with cigarette butts.

It takes time to move from a society where smoking was the norm to one where smoking is a private vice enjoyed by few. The general trend is towards smoke-free public spaces, but no matter how you approach the problem, some smokers will feel ostracised and act mulish and defensive, while some people are simply incorrigible. But demographically taken, they are a dying breed, and will (if the current trend in many modern countries continues) simply vanish in a generation or two.

Personally, the amount of cigarette buts littered seems to have decreased in the past decades, simply because fewer people smoke, and those who do smoke often use designated smoking areas.

It takes time, and with drugs it will take time as well.

I'm really conditioned to come at the legalization issue from other angles, but the cognitive liberty argument is quite nice. The talk here [0] provides a good introduction to the topic, but fair warning, there is a lot of passionate politics discussed (e.g. the state of jefferson etc...).

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDPL8_4W-8Q&t=1012s

The cognitive and personal liberty argument is all that should be required. It's my body and my mind, and I won't let another person exert that control over me. The negative externalities of drug use are mostly caused by prohibition itself and are minor compared to a whole host of things that are considered normal and vital to society (alcohol, junk food, driving a car, consumerism, etc.). Being branded a criminal will not exactly be the helpful push you need toward quitting drugs anyway.

Some other good arguments are...

* harm reduction through unadulterated and consistent drugs, clean needles, less stigmatization of addicts

* elimination of the black market around illegal drugs

* money from taxation

* reduction of the prison population and financial savings in the legal system / government / police

* the opportunity for research into both the medicinal effects of drugs like marijuana, mdma, psilocybin, and potential treatments based on greater scientific insight into the addictive properties of recreational drugs.

* that prohibition actually pushes people toward more dangerous drugs (heroin --> fentanyl, LSD / mushrooms --> 25i-NBOMe, marijuana --> K2)

* that the drug war is simply not working, so even if drug use has some inherent detriment to society, there's no realistic way to make that disappear.

I don't think the cost savings angle gets mentioned enough.

If you put people in jail for using drugs, everyone else is paying for that through taxation.

If they are working, then they are paying taxes. Even in areas with chronic unemployment (and we need to have a while 'nother conversation about economic inequality), a good percentage might still be working if not in jail.

So that is a double whammy to the tax payers who are paying for the War on Drugs.

I imagine it comes across as pie-in-the-sky thinking to many people who have seen what addiction does to people. Addicts will even take drugs that they know will kill them in the span of a few months (see the krokodil epidemic in Russia).

Which it turns comes across as ignorant, to people aware of how successfully Portugal handled their heroin addiction crisis, through decriminalization.

Now you're talking about an argument from efficacy, not liberty. My point is that the argument from liberty isn't going to get a good hearing when drug addiction is such a major societal problem. No one cares about your right to get high when drugs are destroying people's lives and entire communities. Drug policy will be judged mostly on its efficacy in preventing and ending addiction and wanton self-destruction.

I would rather say that it's argument from evidence, but that's perhaps an academic point.

But I disagree that drug policy is judged on the merits you mention; we have evidence of decriminalization in portugal, and its relative success in preventing destruction. Meanwhile elsewhere in the world there is very little appetite to entertain the idea of decriminalization or legalization, despite evidence supporting the theory that prohibition exacerbates the effects its intended to directly prevent.

So you would rob others of their liberty over self to preserve your own sense of righteousness?

No, to maximize their chance of a happy, productive life, and maximize the chances of those around them, and maximize the health and strength and long-term viability of our society as a whole.

Humans are not well-adapted to the temptations, challenges, and weird outcomes of modern life. Many people - probably most people - need to have their world and their choices shaped by social policy and group morality. Left with total freedom and no guidance, they would destroy themselves because they couldn't understand or handle the perverse, distant, brutal, unpredictable outcomes of their decisions.

We're just not evolved to thrive in a world with World of Warcraft, heroin, credit cards, sugary drinks, alcohol, motor vehicles, birth control, mass media, porn, reality TV, glamour magazines, Photoshopped models, etc.

The more our world diverges from the conditions of our ancient ancestors, the more it needs to be shaped. And as a very individualistic freedom-loving person, I hate saying this but it's true.

> "Left with total freedom and no guidance, they would destroy themselves"

The state should provide a certain base level safety net, especially so those who realised they messed up have a way to turn things around, but society should allow people to learn from their mistakes. It's important to give people that freedom to grow, even if it takes some self-destructive behaviour before someone wants to turn their life around. Actions that affect multiple people should be handled differently, but if all I'm doing is making myself unhealthy then perhaps I just have different priorities. In short, freedom should include the freedom to mess up.

Even if all you're doing is making yourself unhealthy, you're still harming others by destroying your own ability to contribute what you should be contributing.

Simple non-aggression isn't good enough. We all depend on others contributing to society. The standard cannot be that you simply must not actively cause harm. The standard must be that we each contribute positively.

None of us ever reached adulthood except by the contributions of others - parents, social services, earlier taxpayers, soldiers, etc. You owe those contributions back to the next generation, and to the people who share society with you.

If you're strung out or dead from foolish drug use, you cannot contribute. You cannot pay that back, and you are a wrongdoer for taking without reciprocating.

Any other attitude will create a non-viable society over the long term, and spread great suffering.

You can't force people to be happy, productive members of society. Imposing that on someone leads to bitterness and resentment. Furthermore, it's boring. If we all define ourselves as being productive workers, can't you see something more important would be lost?

You can't force people to be happy, but you can strongly encourage them to contribute to the welfare of others, thus sustaining the conditions that give everyone a chance at happiness.

Without the freedom to try (the same thing as the freedom to fail) society may never move to a better balance point. We can't know what we don't know until we try. Catch people when they fall but certainly don't try and stop them from making an attempt in the first place.

You're not superior to anyone else.

Grown adults can make their own decisions and suffer the consequences.

Acting like you have a right to tell other people what they can and can't do is incredibly egotistical.

>Grown adults can make their own decisions and suffer the consequences.

Not in any western country. People are heavily insulated from the consequences of their actions by the welfare state. We even subsidize their ability to bring children into the world and (most likely) raise them poorly.

No, what is egotistical is believing your individual choices don't affect others and believing that the consequences your actions are not externalized by society.

I'm not even pro criminalization, but, c'mon man.

If other peoples' actions affect me, I absolutely have the right to influence those actions.

That's pretty much the only argument I ever see, other than the standard one for cannabis (it's just a plant).

It seems to me the standard argument for legalizing cannabis is tax revenue. It reminds me of when Kansas was considering abolishing capital pinishment. It wasn't due to any ethical or moral reasoning, but because of the economics of housing death row inmates.

It's not that these are the best reasons to change the law. It's that these are the reasons everyone can agree on

What's the standard response of this argument to the problem of addiction? Why should we allow large corporations to market drugs which are so addictive that on balance we expect legalizing them to take people's cognitive liberty? What about children who are easier to deceive and more likely to get addicted?

As someone who's pretty firmly in the legalization/decriminalization camp, and as someone who doesn't partake in drug use, I rarely even consume alcohol or caffeine despite quite enjoying the taste, I don't really have a terribly persuasive response to your concerns. All of the things you highlight are deeply troubling and concerning to me as well, however, it seems fairly apparent that our current methods of dealing with drug use and addiction are so appallingly unsuccessful, and have been so costly, both in lives and expenditures, that legalization or at least complete decriminalization seem like a better alternative at this point. And this doesn't even take into account any views I may have on the personal liberty perspective.

Addiction is a public health, not criminal justice, problem. Many of the problems of drugs - acquisitive crime, sex work, blood borne disease transmission - are made far worse by the illegality.

People wanting to legalise drugs are not saying "it's fine to sell heroin to 8 year olds".

Legalisation of drugs would make it easier to control sales to children.

I think the answer is the same as with alcohol and cigarettes, which have all these same problems.

(1) Should we allow corporations to market addictive drugs? No, we shouldn't -- not blanket anyways. Same as tobacco. You don't get to advertise. The product sells it self you don't get to help out.

(2) Children: You don't get to advertise to children. You don't get to sell near schools. You don't get to sell to anyone under 18 (or probably 21 for some reason in the US).

(3) If that's not enough, require a license from a physician who gives you a walkthrough on the risks, how to do drugs safely and what to do if you have trouble or think you're getting addicted.

(4) Mandatory addiction counseling, as in Portugal.

Realistically, though, I would be very surprised if selling drugs legally lead to a huge spike in usage. Anyone who wants heroin now can just get it, thing is, most people don't want heroin. Legalizing that won't change that in my opinion.

Legalizing doesn't mean requiring people to take them, or even market them, or even shine a positive light on them. It means not taking people with a medical problem and throwing them into prison where they have access to even more drugs.

This post sounds suspiciously like promoting thoughtcrime and has been sent to MiniLuv for processing.

Beware, though. It's true that the war on drugs seems to do much more harm than the products they try to prevent people from consuming, but I would worry a bit about a world where big pharmaceutical could suddenly research recreational drugs as business opportunities.

Medicine is only for sick people. Recreational drugs would potentially be for everyone. Plus, they can be made extremely addictive. It's the perfect commercial product.

New drugs already exists that are more addictive and powerful than old ones. Like Fentanyl, for instance[1]. Who knows what research labs would come up with if they threw lots of money and brain power into it?

A global legalization of drugs would be quite a Pandora's box. I'll quote Noah Harari and say it would start what he calls "the chemical pursuit of happiness" [2].

In the end, the risk is that we end up like the woman with an orgasm button[3], or turn us into some kind of vegetative state, as described in "the metamorphosis of Prime intellect"[4].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Deus:_A_Brief_History_of_...

3. http://boingboing.net/2008/09/16/brain-implant-result.html

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis_of_Prime_Int...

You're raising some of the best arguments I think I've read for drug regulation, to be honest.

However, for me in the end I think it comes down to this: there's lots of horrible things people can do to each other, and we generally respond to that by punishing the offense.

So, although I'd like to see drugs legalized, I could also see huge taxes on certain types of drugs, at least in certain settings, or punishments for irresponsible advertising, etc.

Fentanyl to me is an interesting example, because to me it illustrates problems with drug regulation: it puts control over decision-making authority into a small group who are given unquestioned deference about those decisions. If anyone could get fentanyl, I think there would be an expectation that everyone evaluate it potentially, and that the consumer learn more about it, or get second opinions from other experts (psychologists, pharmacists, neuroscientists, biochemists). As it is, we sort of say "ok, whatever you say doc" and then ... well... we saw how that went.

Someone expressed surprise at how little the cognitive liberty argument gets raised in all of this, which I agree with 100%, but I'd take that further. What I'd argue is that I'm surprised that physical autonomy, as a health issue, isn't raised more.

To me, drug regulation and medical regulation are two sides of the same coin. The same laws that criminalize ecstasy are the same laws that prevent an experienced, knowledgable consumer from purchasing an antidepressant without a prescription.

People act like if you could get meds from whomever, or on your own, that all hell would break loose, but there are intrinsic consequences to acting heedlessly. People would figure it out fast. And to the extent they didn't, we're better off addressing it as a public health problem than a crime problem.

> "New drugs already exists that are more addictive and powerful than old ones. Like Fentanyl, for instance. Who knows what research labs would come up with if they threw lots of money and brain power into it?"

Taking the perspective of a business man, it's possible for drugs to be too addictive, as they have the bad side effect of killing your customers, which is bad for revenue and a PR disaster. So even if a 'designer drug' market emerged, I don't think you'd find many companies that wanted to develop something as addictive as fentanyl.

I'd imagine a legal Fentanyl wouldn't get great reviews on Yelp. Or more likely, TRIPadvisor, get it? Serious point, jokingly said.

They already are engineering highly addictive drugs to sell legally, they just need to thinly market them as treating a condition.

The quote in this article is dubious at best. There is no other evidence that Erlichman said this, and no evidence in the Nixon archives to back up allgation made in the quote, even if Erlichman had said it. Erlichman served time in prison for Watergate, and seems to have been annoyed about not being pardoned.

The records from the Nixon presidency suggest that the WOD was actually driven by Nixon's fixed belief in then-prevalent myths about the danger to America from blacks, homosexuals, drug use and mental damage.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/32247/did-ehrli...

https://medium.com/@ReachCASP/health-scientist-blacklisting-...

The war on drugs policy is a disaster.

As someone who enjoys doing drugs I have put though into the stigmatization legality and health effects of drugs.

Much like healthcare this is an extremely complex subject.

Decriminalization:

Pros: helps treat addiction as a public health issue. Keeps people out of the prison industrial complex. Takes the taboo elements out of it for the youth.

Cons: supports the drug trafficking systems that kill people. Strips tax revenue from governments and money from 9companies who can help treat addiction. No quality control of drugs - look at tweekers and junkies who can't afford quality gear. Spread of infectious diseases.

Legalization: Pros: substances can be produced by companies who can compete to make good quality drugs. Generates tax revenue and stimulates the economy. Puts a wrench in the cog of the drug trafficking systems - less babies filled with dope and dead drug mules.

Cons: companies exploit addicts. Drugs get marketed to the wrong people. Drug revenues go to support more corrupt politicians. Drug addiction becomes normalized.

It also raises other questions such as what are the goals of our greater society? Living in a rigid corporate, industrialized society leaves little time for many people to have recreation time. Being strung out or twisted on meth can make it hard to keep up with the rigors of life.

I also don't want the construction crew down the street drunk or high on heroin working the tower crane... downers impare your motor skills. Stimulants go after your cognitive and social abilities.

Tough topic.

> I also don't want the construction crew down the street drunk or high on heroin working the tower crane... downers impare your motor skills. Stimulants go after your cognitive and social abilities.

Legalisation of drugs doesn't mean you can drive while under the influence of heroin, or operate machinery under the influence of amphetamines.

Interestingly, amphetamines are already commonly used in the construction trade (particularly shop-fitting) to help people work the "crunch" timeframes.

This is another crucial but obvious point that somehow gets glossed over -- we already have laws for criminal negligence, DUI, littering (for the syringes that everyone is complaining about), disorderly conduct, theft, etc. so there is no need to worry that the world will collapse into disorderly chaos.

There is zero indication that someone will decide to just do heroin because it's suddenly legal, and Portugal's recent history indicates that it's possible to simultaneously lessen addiction rates while moving toward less criminalization.

H. L. Mencken identified in Americans “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

A better, more succinct description of the American attitude that created and still fuels the drug war (amongst other disgusting things) simply does not exist. You can write a million pages and not get as much clarity as Mencken does in this one phrase.

"Addiction is a hideous condition, but it’s rare."

Is this a true statement for harder drugs?

Yes.

> Proportion of users that become dependent:

> Tobacco: 32-68%

> Alcohol: 15-23%

> Cannabis: 9% (30% of users with abuse or dependence)

> Cocaine: 17-21%

> Stimulants: 11%

> Anxiolytics (includes benzodiazepines): 9%

> Analgesics i.e. pain relievers: 8%

> Psychedelics: 5%

> Heroin: 23%

> Anthony, Warner, Kessler, 1994; Lopez-Quintero, Pérez de los Cobos, Hasin, et al., 2011

http://www.rethinkpsychedelics.org/

Almost everything is > ~10%. Maybe it's just me, but I would consider 1/10 people getting addicted (i.e. psychologically or physically dependent on the drug to the point of ruin or death) extremely high.

> i.e. psychologically or physically dependent on the drug to the point of ruin or death

That's not what dependence means. That could be an outcome. And each of those drugs has a different potential outcome from long term use.

Take for example the difference between marijuana and cigarettes. Cigarettes are much more addictive, and have clear evidence of causing lung cancer. It would seem logical that marijuana would also cause lung cancer, but there is not enough evidence to say for certain that it does.

So dependence on cigarettes can definitively kill you. Dependence on marijuana might make you less employable, but it's not certain that it might kill you.

It would seem logical that smoking marijuana would also cause lung cancer. But there are many other ways in which you can take it.

Why would it seem logical that smoking marijuana would cause lung cancer? That seems like an overly simplified model for cancer.

Anyway, there is no data showing smoking marijuana causes lung cancer (rather, there is no high quality data. I'm sure some NIDA-funding scientists have found otherwise, but it's not considered correct).

The NSF review concluded that, at most, smoking marijuana causes respiratory problems, but not lung cancer. The only type of cancer positively associated with marijuana smoking was a form of prostate cancer, which happens to be easily treated.

Logical in a sense that it's a reasonable initial premise in the absence of other evidence. Not saying that it's true, but if you don't know if it's true or not, and you know that smoking other things does give you cancer, that's the side I'd err on.

nope, the null hypothesis is "smoking something does not give you cancer". That smoking other things gives you cancer is specific to what they contain.

Yeah, those are not numbers that would indicate "rare" for any other medical condition.

I think they are if you multiply through by the number of people who'd want to try them (legal or illegal) in the first place.

The thing is War on Drugs is doing more harm than good.

It's interesting that even Heroin has only 23%. I always believed that one shot of Heroin would be enough. On the other hand I met someone a few years ago who had done a lot of drugs who told me he had done done heroin a few times, didn't like it and never did it again.

I wonder what that would be broken out by intake mechanism. Heroin can be smoked a few different ways, eaten in brownies, eaten as pills, insufflated, or injected.

From what I understand, the addiction mechanism for heroin is more subtle then non users think. Its easy to try once, enjoy it, and then not be compelled to do it again. The problem is many users see the lack of negative experiences on their first use as sign that the drug is "safe", so they use a month later, and it still ok, so they quickly start to use most weekends, ramping up until they use every day.

Similar to you, an old boss of mine well experienced with drugs told me the only two drugs he would advise people against are heroin and crack. Heroin because you're always going to remember your first time and its amazing, and crack because you will be amazingly high for 10 minutes, crash, and really feel the insanely strong need to take another hit.

Why would you believe that aside from taking DARE classes? There is so much FUD in the drug space that it clouds proper judgement.

Probably because we don't generally become aware of anyone's heroin usage, whether they're a celebrity or someone you know, until it's a problem spiraled out of control. Most people never see non-addictive, non-destructive recreational use.

Mainly because that's the only information most of us ever get.

yep its true and very possible, while i have not tried street heroin i have tried the pharmaceutical version of it along with other opiates both weaker and stronger. ive also tried just about anything you could name but im not addicted to anything and never have been, i have a solid job and have never been in any trouble with the police etc

so you can trust me when i say there is no such thing as a "if you do it once youre hooked forever" chemical or certainly not in the 100+ unique psychoactive chemicals i have tried.

feel free to ask any questions you may have

I certainly would like to discuss psychedelics more with people who have actual experience with them. I find the topic very interesting but I don't know anybody who has experience.

The error bounds on some of these numbers is gigantic. Is 32 to 68% the best figure that could be arrived at?

Two questions:

1. What is the harm for different drugs once addicted? (health, possibility to lead normal life)

2. What percentage of people addicted can successfully quit?

I would suggest the biggest harm in drugs today is their illegality.

I personally think what we are doing today is far worse than had we never done anything about drugs in the first place.

How "rare" indeed! Imagine if car accident rate was 10%. Every 10 days you'd total your car.

No, that's not what it means.

If it meant that, all drug users would become addicted every 10 days.

It actually means 1 in 10 drivers would total their car, over a lifetime.

I'm not qualified to advise anyone on how they'll react to a substance, but I find the stats for cocaine addiction interesting. Perhaps the stats include crack cocaine, which is meant to be highly addictive and is something I'll never try, but I don't know what the big fuss is about cocaine. I've tried it a few times, it makes you feel more confident but otherwise isn't much of a 'trip'. Perhaps people become dependent on that artificial confidence.

Did you have good cocaine? Good cocaine smells noticeably and has a shimmering, "scaly" appearance like below.

https://erowid.org/chemicals/cocaine/images/archive/cocaine_...

Smoking crack feels essentially the same as cocaine, only the level of stigma is different.

It wasn't sold as a solid rock, it was in powder form, so it didn't look like the picture you showed, and it's hard to judge the purity of a powder, and I don't know how to describe the smell, but let's just say I got it from a dealer that was recommended by someone who had been addicted to cocaine and was still a customer.

It would seem to be the case, but I certainly don't have any numbers. I've only started reading the book Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari, but it starts out by describing the scene in the US and around the world in the early 20th century when drugs were legal to buy, and even after initial prohibition, when doctors would prescribe opiates to addicts. The picture that is painted by the book seems to suggest that addicts were allowed access and it was athen small minority of this group that couldn't hold down jobs and raise families.

Definitely agree.. if not legalization, decriminalization. You cannot criminalize someone who is addicted to something. In fact, if were to get politically correct with treating addicts like criminals and arresting them, it is probably likely that over 100 million Americans would be in jail for being addicted to a substance.

I wrote an article on the decriminalization of drugs. The only ones "winning" the war on drugs are those who have turned it into a business. http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/drug-user-decrimi...

I don't think we are ever going to be able to move towards a perfectly-reasonable public stance towards intoxicants. My personal problem with marijuana is that I just don't want to smell the shit everywhere.

Your human right to ingest whatever substance you want is going to inevitably conflict with my right to choose whether I want to ingest it too or not. We've gone in one policy direction with marijuana, and another entirely with tobacco. Once you get to legalization, you're inevitably thrust back towards getting it the heck back out of the public sphere.

Tobacco seems to offer the perfect opportunity to examine the intersection of human rights way of looking at it with "plain ole'" regulation for greater social harmony. Tobacco, like it or not, is a mind-altering drug that people rely on for all sorts of really personal reasons. Our recent push to banish it is pure and simple classism.

But the people decrying the war on drugs also seem to often nurture a quiet bigotry against smokers. Smoking is legal, for now at least. But eventually you won't be able to light up without running afoul of some regulation, God forbid they start actually enforcing the now-common 50 foot rule from the entrance of businesses.

So yeah, maybe the focus on tax revenue is probably the best one. I like human rights as much as the next guy. But I'm gonna turn into a raving classist asshole the second my neighbor forces me to smell his damn weed through the shared wall. (yes it's happened) I'm already quietly cheering the slow banishment of tobacco, cognitive liberty be damned.

Sure, cannabis and tobacco are both smoked, and not all drugs are. But are we really prepared as a society for a world in which drug use is truly legal? Are people really forgetting that these things are well and truly dangerous? Cocaine makes a real mess out of people.

What about synthetic drugs? I don't think you're ever going to be able to convince a reasonable person that those things should be legal. So there you go, War on Drugs part 2.

To sum up, legalization isn't really a viable public option. It's a fantasy.

> Our recent push to banish it is pure and simple classism.

No, it's a response to the overwhelming evidence we have that smoking tobacco is massively harmful.

You seem to be saying that poor people will be disproportionately affected by smoking cessation laws, and that this is somehow unjust. The fact that poor people disproportionately smoke is the actual injustice, and is one of the reasons for the mortality gap between rich and poor.

> No, it's a response to the overwhelming evidence we have that smoking tobacco is massively harmful.

Pardon me while I guffaw incessantly. That might be the excuse given, but people really just don't want to smell it all the time.

That's a disgusting reason to put people in prison.

You don't have to go to prison if you don't break the law.

Tobacco, like it or not, is a mind-altering drug that people rely on for all sorts of really personal reasons. Our recent push to banish it is pure and simple classism.

That doesn't follow. Are you suggesting that some social classes have better reasons for smoking than others?

Smoking is seen as a lower-class thing to do.

Really, I thought a fat cigar was one of the most potent images of capitalism?

Sure. Capitalism is low-class. Upper classes don't need to mess around with any of that lowly wealth-creation nonsense. They already have wealth, why bother making more of it?

The cigar-chomping capitalist stereotype is just the classist observation that you can never really change your class, only accumulate cash, which is the lowest form of wealth. Rappers seem very self-aware of this and poke fun at the tropes whenever they can.

When the cigarette-smoking vagrant finally sees a little success, he switches over to cigars and thinks he's something.

The class system in the UK is rather different. Our 'captains of industry' are commonly upper-middle class. Suprised if the the US is actually that different.

I was actually thinking more along the lines of continental Europe, where class lines were really stark through most of history and in many ways still are now. The UK has a very interesting relationship with class, one I constantly hunger for new insights on. A recent article on the class divide between barristers and their clerks had me riveted.

The US is easy. We're all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Everybody in the US is classist against everybody else. Makes it simple really.

I think the most important issue in the UK is whether your parents can afford to send you to a 'public school'. Public in this sense means 'not at home with a tutor', and actually means an obscenely expensive school with hundreds of years of history. Think 'Hogwarts' and you will be very close. A boy attending one of these (yes a boy, the situation is not quite the same for girls) has a very high chance of getting into the best universities and of getting a well paid job afterwards. The 'old boys network' ensures this continues. Pick 10 random Members of Parliament and see where they went to school. Pick 10 random VC partners.

The barrister clerk one is at least honest and open. They live in a world of wigs and gowns and oak panelled rooms where the clerks call them 'sir'. 'Pupils' (trainee barristers who have finished their academic training of law school plus specific training ) traditionally work for free in their early years, which keeps the poor people out pretty effectively. Alas I was born to the wrong family...

By this definition of win we also "won" the Vietnam war.

What if they were legal but every sale had a special tax with the money specifically going to rehab and for those who need help.

I imagine regulated distribution. Make people have to jump through hoops, get enrolled in a national registry and take educational classes on the drugs. Incentivize this route by offering cheap/free, pure drugs so that black market alternatives become exceedingly less worthwhile. Basically the meta version of parents allowing their kids to drink under supervision. Society has a chance to convey and establish norms for use and can intervene if a person falls into dangerous patterns.

Copy the driver education program? Supervised learning and testing with a controlled final "test drive", even have 5/10 year re-certification tests.

You don't see potential problems with a national registry of drug users? Like say, employers, snoopy neighbors and political opponents?

That's a great point. I actually heard of a colleague of mine who was injured on the job at his previous work. He did construction. They found out he was a medical marijuana patient and that made him ineligible for re-employment or workers comp.

No drugs are degenerate.

Not sure if this is an anti-drug statement with poor punctuation...Or pro-drug legalization.

"Is it a boy or a girl?", mathematician replies "Yes" ?

It is

Clears that right up.

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