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Comment by nowarninglabel | Hacker News Reader

I think you are being unfairly downvoted for your opinion. I upvoted you though I disagree.

I'd like to know, how do you feel about the legality of cigarettes and alcohol. Presumably, you don't want your kids smoking cigarettes. Would you like them to be illegal to sell?

I'm also not really sure your thoughts on availability really hold in the way you are thinking. Take for instance glue and paint. These are both widely available for getting high currently, but are rarely used to do so because people understand the negative tradeoff associated. Under your view though, it would seem you prefer these be made illegal to prevent availability?

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Im an alcoholic and I wish alcohol would be as illegal as cocaine. I often dream of some self-registration no alcohol sale allowed list that would make it harder for me to be able to obtain it. Alcohol kills.

I've heard you can get medication that makes your body reject the alcohol? A more elaborate self-registered anti-alcohol measure.

I think you're thinking about Antabuse, which does make you sick after drinking.

There's also Naltrexone which supposedly blocks the receptors that alcohol reacts to so you don't get the "good" feeling of alcohol.

I think it's more important for people to understand WHY they're drinking though, instead of masking it or using drugs to fix it. This is probably a conversation for another thread though.

Alcohol still killed a lot when it was illegal, though, and for new reasons: On average, 1000 Americans died every year during the Prohibition from the effects of drinking tainted liquor.

I do support your idea of a list you could write yourself into. Sounds like a solution with way fewer bad consequences.

Thanks

> I'd like to know, how do you feel about the legality of cigarettes and alcohol.

I wish they were illegal. I don't see any societal benefit with cigarettes, and I don't drink alcohol so am only left to deal with its consequences.

> but are rarely used to do so because people understand the negative tradeoff associated.

I don't think the masses are good at making decisions. You have to weigh the benefits of glue and paint against the small number of people who are going to injure themselves with them. I think we've gotten along fine without psilocybin, and any societal benefits are outweighed by the problems it can cause.

I don't think mushrooms are all out bad. If they're used responsibly, they probably help you think about things in a more intelligent way. But I don't want my kids eating psychedelic mushrooms. They can be horrifying and torturous for 8+ hour stretches of time.

Just because something does social harm doesn't mean it should be illegal.

I think alcohol is a great example of this because we made it illegal and saw that the consequences of it being illegal were far worst than the consequences of it being legal.

>> I'd like to know, how do you feel about the legality of cigarettes and alcohol.

> I wish they were illegal. I don't see any societal benefit with cigarettes, and I don't drink alcohol so am only left to deal with its consequences.

Weren't the consequences much, much worse when alcohol was illegal? That was the era when the word "gangster" was invented.

> I don't think the masses are good at making decisions.

What you mean, I think, is that the masses aren't good at taking the decisions that you would take. That way lies authoritarianism.

There are elements of authoritarianism that aren't categorically bad. The example that comes to mind is Lee Kuan Yew who took the city-state of Singapore from a swamp to having one of the highest GDPs per capita through benevolent dictatorship.

Authoritarian states can be successful, for sure. But they're still immoral. Rome did really well with slaves, for centuries. Does that mean that slavery is good?

or if paint was, like hemp, regulated to the point of de facto unavailability, leading to the use of environmentally inferior alternatives like solid wood and cotton.

omg tobacco is totally different from psychedelics, come on. and glue? seriously? glue has a practical purpose other than getting high. what are mushrooms good for outside of getting stoned?

There are lots of salient differences between tobacco and psychedelic mushrooms, but they are mostly of the "banning tobacco would be much more reasonable" variety. I think that was the point.

Only if you ignore cultural path dependency which has a huge impact on the utility and adverse consequences of a ban.

Laws can only be meaningfully evaluated in a concrete social context.

So what if it's only purpose is to get high?

What moral high ground do you have to say others can't get high?

Some people just know that they're right. That they have "the truth". Burroughs called it the "Right Virus". That was before we had the concept of memes.

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