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Comment by sovietmudkipz | Hacker News Reader

Too fast too soon?

I fear this gives rhetorical ammo to folks who don’t want any “drugs” (besides caffeine and alcohol, of course) in their communities legal. I can hear the argument now. “Maybe you want weed, because it’s harmless? How about magic mushrooms? Where do we stop? Cocaine? Meth? How about we empty out the pharmacy for all to get high on whatever they want!” Slippery slope.

I fear the successful movement thus far is about to have breaks applied in the “on the fence” states after this news.

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This debate isn’t about whether or not these drugs are harmful, but whether or not the criminal justice system’s overwhelming capacity to enact harm against people is the way to protect ourselves.

Try telling that to people who don't understand anything and don't care to try. The people who are OK with a life sentence for three strikes of weed possession because "just don't break the law." That's who the parent poster was talking about taking up those arguments.

Yes, the logic is faulty, but guaranteed you'll see it on social media memes and the evening opinionews.

And if you don't know anyone who thinks like that, consider yourself lucky, then know that they are out there and they vote in force.

Naw, I regrettably have known many folks like that, and grew up around plenty even though my family believed otherwise.

I found that to convince them of the mutual benefit of the humane approach required beginning the conversation from where they were at and slowly working our way toward the understanding of pursuing better outcomes through a thoughtful reimagining of our reaction to antisocial behaviors. If you just dump on people and tell them they're wrong they stop caring about the idea and only want to fight you off.

So, oddly enough, actually making progress toward convincing people to be humane requires being humane in the doing of the convincing.

> Maybe you want weed, because it’s harmless? How about magic mushrooms? Where do we stop?

We could stop wherever there's actual evidence of harm. I know, radical notion.

Psychedelics are not harmless.[1] Neither is alcohol, but I don't think it's a good strategy to claim that weed and shrooms have no risks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin#Psychiatric

Literally nothing is harmless. Harm is always dose-dependent.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

This is not a slippery slope. The only proper response to people who don't want drugs is:

"Then don't do drugs"

That's not really the proper response, since it doesn't address their actual argument. People arguing against drug legalization don't want other people doing drugs. The argument against them is around personal freedom and an adult's right to do what they want with their own body. They'll generally respond with concerns about societal impact. Those concerns are, in my opinion, valid and are where discussions can be had to actually come to a resolution.

Then maybe we should be concerned about the societal impact of alcohol. Oh, we already tried that? whoops

I'm not sure what your argument is. The "Oh, we already tried that? whoops" seems like you just wanted to say something snarky. We have plenty of laws in place around regulating the societal impact of alcohol. Minors can't drink, you can't drive under the influence, there's very strict limits on drinking in public in many places. These are all things in place to address societal concerns.

Those boundaries are likely very different for a drug that detaches you from reality, and discussions around that are where concerns can be met and middle ground can be found.

I think you're delusional if you're under the impression that ethanol doesn't "detach you from reality"

but yes, psychoactive substances should be made legal and controlled in a similar fashion where one would need to be of a certain age to legally purchase them. I don't understand how people think "oh well kids would just be high on meth all the time!" when that thought process in itself, is the one detached from reality.

You're arguing against points I'm not making, and equating the ability of alcohol and psychedelic drugs to detach you from reality is willful ignorance. This is the kind of argument that hurts the cause you're arguing in favor of.

Tell me then at what dose an NMDA antagonist, of any variety you can choose, detaches one from reality? I'd love to hear your take on the effect of anti-glutamatergics on consciousness.

Are you fine if depressed/lonely/traumatized people are being targeted with highly addictive drugs that could kill them? You can say that it's their choice but you need right mind for the choice.

Are you fine if your child has easy access to drugs and it being 'cool' to have drugs?

Seriously? That already is happening. Look at the opioid crisis and fentanyl.

This is about not taking a clear public HEALTH issue into a criminal justice one.

Why do so many Americans think we can jail or kill our way out of every single problem?

Yes I specifically told the things that is currently happening and I am not fine with it. I am not saying that mushrooms should be banned, just saying I criticize legalizing everything just because you have choice to not do drugs.

Do you support the return of prohibition of alcohol, then, but keeping it "decriminalized"?

I think a lot of this fear that legalizing drugs will lead to a bunch of non-drug users suddenly becoming drug addicts is simply hysteria. People use illegal drugs to self-medicate some other problem; healthy people are not suddenly going to want to be crack users.

A lot of the hysteria in Colorado prior to marijuana legalization was that youth consumption rates would increase. The opposite happened:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/11/follo...

OxyContin is an example of targeting vulnerable with highly addictive drugs that can kill you. Corporations are far more effective at this than a local mushroom dealer.

Call it psilocybin and have it officially used for addiction treatment, depression, anxiety, and terminally ill patients. The transition from medical psilocybin to recreational can be gradual, and should prevent the slippery slope you mention. Though are you serious with meth and cocaine? No one is advocating legalizing those.

> Though are you serious with meth and cocaine? No one is advocating legalizing those.

From following the discusssions here on HN it seems a number of people are actually arguing to legalize everything for personal use.

I did pretty much every drug imaginable in my 20s other than opiates and sitting here in my 40s I don’t see any reason they should be illegal. Certainly none of them had worse effects on me or my friends than alcohol and smoking.

survivor bias. I did the same and know 6 people dead because of it. My wife knows more.

"No one is advocating legalizing those."

I am. You should be able to walk into a doctor's office and ask for a prescription to treat your addiction and withdrawal symptoms. If there's no methadone type reduced-harm variant of your drug of choice, it should be straight up prescribed to you so you can buy it in a metered, safe and pure form from a pharmacist. And your doctor should continue to try and keep you safe even if you are never able to beat the addiction.

The moral hazard into turning doctors and pharmacists into pushers and dealers is obvious, but bringing it above board should make the problem tractable.

You'd definitely save tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives per year in reduced overdoses, elimination of the drug war and reduction in gang warfare.

There direct counterpoint here is that many doctors treated opiates in this way - allowing people to walk in and ask for them, and it let to significant issues for society.

Was the harm when they started or when they stopped?

It's not that simple. By prescribing these kinds of drugs an ethical obligation is assumed to prevent the patient from becoming addicted or experiencing withdrawals unnecessarily. If we allow anyone free access to drugs, would we not bear a similar responsibility?

I think they should be legalized and regulated. Too many people get killed by a dealer's shitty cutting skills. Having the stuff regulated by the FDA and requiring FDA certification for labs would save thousands of lives every year, as well as make the drugs potentially safe for recreational use.

The other thing legalization does is eliminate the need for a seedy underbelly of dealers and thugs. The thugs exist because nobody can risk going to the cops and asking for help. You don't want to get arrested for reporting a robbery or assault. A lot of the bad things associated with drug sales are a result of the drug sales being illegal.

> Though are you serious with meth and cocaine? No one is advocating legalizing those.

I am. Criminalization has proven to be a dead-end strategy, inflicting serious harm on people to people and society. Several studies have shown alcohol to be on par or worse with heroine and cocaine in terms of harm inflicted and it's still legal to sell to adults. The opiate epidemic has all but proven that OTC and prescription medication can have effects at least as bad as cocaine and meth. Criminalization fosters crime and leads to drugs that are worse in side effects, leading to increased harm.

Criminalization makes it substantially harder to reach affected people and get them into treatment since we treat the addicts as criminals- Portugal has proven that decriminalization is an effective harm reduction strategy. I'm all for it "make all recreational drugs available to adults" and at the same time invest in educating people and helping them to leave the circumstances that lead to the addiction.

Technically they’re both already legal (in that they’re not schedule I) and meth is sometimes prescribed to children.

> Though are you serious with meth and cocaine? No one is advocating legalizing those.

Methamphetamine and cocaine are both schedule 2, meaning they are legal with a prescription. Pot and shrooms, arguably way safer, are schedule 1, meaning there are no valid medical uses and are outright prohibited in the US.

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