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Comment by Ajedi32 | Hacker News Reader

The reason drugs are illegal is because they are addictive. Many of them so addictive, in fact, that they can easily suck you in and destroy your life even if you resolve to only try them "just once". Some drugs like tobacco and alcohol are less addictive than most and are therefore still legal, others like whereas others like heroin are more addictive and are therefore banned.

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I'm sorry, but this isn't true at all.

Alcohol is terribly addictive and destructive. Far more so than many illegal drugs. Its legality has nothing to do with these issues.

> Alcohol is terribly addictive and destructive. Far more so than many illegal drugs.

That's probably true. I doubt it's more addictive than heroin though, which was why I used that as my example for the other end of the spectrum. If alcohol was as addictive as heroin, I'm quite confident it would be just as illegal.

One thing to consider here, is the addictiveness of many drugs has to do with the purity. If meth is over 60% pure, then the addiction rate goes WAY up. Legalization is one way of managing the purity.

Maybe. Though if you ban meth that's >60% pure but allow meth <60% pure, really all you're doing is drawing the line on what is allowed and what isn't in a slightly different location. The linked article seems to be arguing that all drugs should be legal, regardless of how addictive they are or are not.

"Potential for abuse", not "addiction" is the legal standard the DEA uses to classify drugs. And actual harm to society is factored in. Caffeine is more addictive than steroids, yet guess which one is a DEA controlled substance.

Nobody denies that heroin is extremely addictive. Total harm and "potential for abuse" caused by alcohol and tobacco would likely land it somewhere on schedule 2 or 3 if they weren't economically useful for their profits, despite their "potential for abuse".

You are contradicting yourself, and plain wrong.

Please point out the contradiction in my previous statement. As it stands, it seems to me that you're the one who's wong.

You claim drugs are illegal because they are addictive, then admit that alcohol and tobacco are addictive, yet not illegal.

Furthermore, marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug by the DEA, making it illegal at the federal level (no known medical uses), which based on your reasoning, would indicate it to be addictive.

Yet, prescription opiates, which people are overdosing daily, is legal.

And, you spelled 'wrong' as 'wong'.

That's a needlessly pedantic interpretation of my comment. As I clearly explained with my comparison between alcohol and heroin, the point is it's a matter of degree. Less addictive substances are less likely to be banned, whereas more addictive substances are more likely to be banned. That's why tobacco isn't banned, but heroin is. I would have thought that was obvious to everyone. Apparently not.

(And yes, obviously the laws aren't entirely consistent on this. They should be, but they aren't. That's not a valid refutation of my main point.)

I must not understand "The reason drugs are illegal is because they are addictive."

And as a result, more addictive drugs are more likely to be illegal, whereas less addictive ones are less likely to be illegal. What's not to understand?

What's not to understand is where ethanol falls here. It's easily as addictive as opiates, including heroin

Mmm, no. Marijuana is used habitually by some, but withdrawal syndromes are hardly as severe as alcohol or tobacco. Hallucinogens are not atypically used habitually either (some of the dissociatives might be habit forming but from what I understand habitual use of the serotogenics is pretty rare).

Most of these substances you are describing are older; from what I see, I'm afraid the narcotic regulation of more "traditional" narcotics largely rested on societal structure. Tobacco and alcohol are narcotics traditionally used for a long time by Europeans. Alcohol prohibition was tried, but failed in part, I feel, because many of the people in power didn't really, deep down, believe in it at all. (If I recall, at least two Prohibition-era American presidents, Warren Harding and Woodrow Wilson, had private liquor stashes available during their time in the White House.)

Marijuana, cocaine, and opium are not traditional European narcotics. As such, it was something "other people" used; the ill effects were much more easily demonized. There was some fairly racist propaganda surrounding the original Harrison Narcotics Tax Act that kind of demonstrated this point.

Obviously the ill effects of narcotics (such as addiction) are the driving force behind these prohibitions, but in my opinion a fair bit of the current "scheduled hierarchy" of narcotics is not really based on medical science.

> Obviously the ill effects of narcotics (such as addiction) are the driving force behind these prohibitions, but in my opinion a fair bit of the current "scheduled hierarchy" of narcotics is not really based on medical science.

Sounds to me like we're in agreement. I'm not sure why you started your comment with "Mmm, no." The laws aren't perfectly consistent on which side of the line they place different substances on (for a variety of historical reasons), but the underlying reason as to why drugs are illegal in the first place is (quite obviously) because of their addictive nature.

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