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Comment by pennaMan | Hacker News Reader

Pandora's box was opened by the first sprouting seed of Cannabis on earth. The prohibition came after, so if anything we're talking about a pre-justice world, aren't we?

>Why not accept all hard drugs, all sexual deviations, all violent or manipulative behaviors then?Why not accept all hard drugs, all sexual deviations, all violent or manipulative behaviors then?

Because those things cause falsifiable and measurable harm to society. Cannabis use is by all measures benign while its prohibition actually causing real harm.

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> Because those things cause falsifiable and measurable harm to society. Cannabis use is by all measures benign while its prohibition actually causing real harm.

There are unfortunately people that could be damaged by smoking weed, irreversibly, if their schizophrenia proclivity gets activated. Also the easy escape from problems is not in society's best interest - see the ongoing shaming for gaming, where boys are pushed into the "real world" to get some society-benefiting work done instead of them having more fun.

We usually have 1-2 generations that act as guinea pigs on effects of new inventions or discoveries. The wild time with LSD, heroin etc. is thankfully over. Not sure why would we want to backtrack on cannabis, even if it is objectively less harmful. Alcohol & cigarettes are objectively less harmful than heroin etc. but we would be better off without them.

> There are unfortunately people that could be damaged by smoking weed, irreversibly, if their schizophrenia proclivity gets activated.

I don't think we need to enforce laws on everyone just to protect a very small minority of people. That would be like making grapefruit illegal because it interferes with some peoples' medications in a potentially dangerous manner.

Your view is justified and valid, but have you considered what happens to those same people you care so much about now? They just get some from street, and it's not only impossible to reliably notify them of any danger, they risk incarceration afterwards as well. That's not mentioning questionable quality of street drugs and substance lottery. You might be tempted to say that without legislation population exposure to the drug may be lower, but I'd argue it's impossible to objectively measure it when people are afraid they get jailed if they somehow slip and let it be discovered they do it. I bet the actual percentage of people using drugs is much higher than you think.

It's difficult to figure out proper approach, I agree. However, there also must be a strong negative reinforcement for the sake of learning - e.g. inserting one's hand into hot flowing lava should scar one both physically and mentally so that this person and anyone seeing them doesn't attempt the same.

I know a guy who was fairly smart and decided to take LSD at university in his "teaching assistant" room, and make notes about his experience. Something went wrong during his trip and he ended up confronting some kind of demons. Previously purely rational person within a year switched to become a seventh-day adventist. Since then I simply couldn't trust his judgement anymore; not because he became religious, but because something really damaged his brain on his first trip.

Another person I knew was a brilliant winner of math and informatics Olympiad. Decided to try heroin once. Dropped out of university the following year, spent a year working in construction, went to a lesser university, dropped out after two years. A talent gone.

Some drugs ("krokodil", meth), seem to give pretty brutal feedback about their use, e.g. literal zombification of humans. There are so many horrible stories...

It's really complicated as a human has to go against their own nature to override brain's pleasure complex, often also against their friends, tribe, customs etc. while the whole world keeps saying: "Just take it, it's normal, everything will be fine", and 10 years later finding themselves one step from abyss. I would rather convey a strong message: "It's not OK, don't ever do it!"

I was born in a pretty rough city of a pretty rough country and it was a popular past-time for my peers to get a hold of some non-prescription meds and overdose on them hard to catch a glimmer of a trip. I'm sure a lot of them damaged their mental & physical health doing that. If those exact drugs were illegal nothing would change, except the label of the drug. I think stopping people by law is pretty pointless and highly ineffective, so maybe alternatives are better.

> There are unfortunately people that could be damaged by smoking weed, irreversibly

Perhaps peanuts should be made illegal. There are people that can be irreversibly damaged by consuming peanuts.

If we’re goi to be consistent and ban or regulate substances because there might be harm to an incredibly small minority then sadly there would be very very few legal foods, medications, etc. hell we should probably ban strobe lights as well.

On another note you’d probably be disappointed to hear research and use of hallucinogenic substances has been on a sharp rise. So it seems those wild times you’re fearful of are returning.

> wild times you’re fearful of are returning

I am not really fearing them for the sake of myself (well, except for the rise of violence/poverty they might cause). I can actually benefit from it myself by estimating what junkies would be willing to pay for and moving my e-commerce business into that direction, like what many are cynically doing now with older women and pet food. But I pity them, would rather see people achieving their full potential instead of getting their quick fix and wasting rest of the day on silly things. I just think by enabling (even if lighter) drugs, it would have profound effect on progress of our civilization, meaning no advanced space travel ("flying saucers"), no more improved physics, no faster computers, because if everybody is happy from smoking the weed, content with their life, why would they want to push frontiers of civilization? And frankly, I don't want to see USA/Europe end up as India, that has strong historic traditions of hallucinogens intervowen with their culture, together with tantric Buddhism suspected as the main reason of their millennium-long decline and abhorrent societal divisions.

I think you’re making some quite wild assumptions about motivation and impact of the use of various substances.

If you looked at those that literally are making those profound advancements you’re worried about losing, you’d also often be looking at those that moderately and recreational partake in some of these substances.

The people that partake but still excel aren’t as visible as those that don’t get themselves off the couch. You mistakingly assume that it’s purely about escapism and wasting away as a result.

I think you’d be quite surprised at the number of successful, motivated people that don’t feel the need to get a “quick fix” that partake.

Many find it helps creativity for example (and research backs this up). If you’re going to put any stock in research then the assumptions your making about motivation and impact simply doesn’t jive with what’s being observed.

It’s all beside the point anyway. Ultimately we have to decide what the role of the government has in regulating things like this and what metrics it uses to decide. Whatever those are they should be consistent. From my point of view though they’ve been anything but that. With so many prescription drugs being more addictive, more deadly, and often with fewer potential benefits than substances that are restricted even from research it’s hard to reason about.

The majority of the drug policy is less about the science (both medical and social) and more about perception and politics.

A quick aside. If it’s escapism you have an issue with then really the entire entertainment industry should be in your laser sights. Capitalism definitely has a strong embrace of promoting and capitalizing on escapism. Drugs are hardly a significant contributor here.

EDIT forgive the rambling nature of the post.

I think it's inevitable we research what exactly drugs do to people as science progresses; I am strictly against exposing the whole population to it though. What I would be in favor of is to give adults a choice to take those drugs for 20-30 years but require them to be enrolled into a health monitoring system so that the effects could be researched properly and then an informed judgement be made (only for those persons that don't posses known risk factors). So removing the stigma of "junkies" by willing participation (license + mandatory insurance?), regulate it on manufacturing side, but also place an obligation on users to provide some benefit to society as well in better understanding of how human body works. Of course, there would be automatic limitations imposed like participation in sport competitions, high-risk jobs etc.

And ramblings are fine, it's always refreshing to read somebody's unfiltered opinion; even in disagreement it sometimes removes some innate tunnel vision ;-) I agree with what you've written about escapism.

I think that’s a legitimate approach. Though I personally think all substances should be decriminalized (rather than legalized) as in the case of things like heroin addiction the addicts fear of punishment and the stigma keeps people from seeking help and ultimately we should want them to seek help.

Alcoholism would exist with or without alcohol being illegal, the only difference would be that drinking alcohol would be more dangerous for those wishing to drink responsibly and those drinking irresponsibly would have less options to become well.

Regarding these other substances though I wholeheartedly agree real research is needed. It’s one of the really tragic things about the war on drugs actually, that research was completely stopped. Even if you keep a substance illegal, researchers should still be allowed to investigate these things. There’s life changing non mind altering treatment for cluster headaches for example that has been nearly impossible to research until recently and even still it’s never going to see the light of day in this political climate around drug paranoia even though it has zero mind altering impacts (it’s a chemical related to lsd where they modified to remove the altering effect).

I’m pretty ok with substances being banned (albeit not my preference) in general as long as research is allowed to continue and the ban persists based on information produced from that research. I.E. it’s not based on fear mongering but science.

Another aside, one of the main reasons I think decriminalization (for all) and legalization (for some) is pretty compelling is that it makes it a lot easier to regulate to ensure the products themselves are safe. A large number of the safety issues simply comes from people obtaining unsafe/fake products. Though regulation you have consistency. Nowadays with recreational marijuana you can see the lab report for every single product. Back in the day you just had to rely on some shady character telling you “it’s good”.

People are going to be doing these things, keeping them illegal in the way we have been (serious jail times for personal possession) only creates more harm and cost to society rather than alleviate it (the supposed goal). The war on drugs has created a quite insane cost through mandatory minimums and three strikes laws.. if the goal was to reduce cost to society we’d have saved money providing government supplied drugs to addicts. If the goal is to “save” or prevent harm to addicts, locking them up and making them felons seems to be having the opposite effect. They fear seeking help, and once caught up in our penal system it’s hard to escape.

So what part of criminalization is really benefiting us?

As I said, those substances are natural, for many people they would be beneficial as well for some specialized uses, like improving one's medical condition. But leaving humans in pure nature "as intended" destroys civilization - regulating behavior is necessary (even if I personally don't like it and tend to think "I know better" when I don't).

I would propose an experiment - let's look into history and see which civilizations propagated and which went extinct or ended up zombified in a non-progressive isolated state. I'd bet there will be quite a few where "substance abuse" went through the roof, and those that restricted it either completely or moved it to a dedicated "crazy week" (Bacchanalia?) prospered and progressed. Seems like hardships are necessary for progress/motivation(?), short-circuiting pleasure centers with drugs doesn't move society towards higher complexity and beauty.

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