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A substantial fraction of people become addicted to opiates when they are not freely available, too. Which begs the question... is addiction the problem? Or are the problems consequences of restricted availability?

To put it another way... if heroin were legalized tomorrow, would you start shooting up? Is illegality the best (or only) way to prevent addiction? Look at tobacco. It's legal. Most people don't use it, because it's addictive and dangerous, and usage rates have dropped considerably due to social pressures and awareness campaigns.

When proposing (or defending) a solution, make sure you ask yourself if it actually solves the problem.

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Is illegality even A way to prevent addiction? Because most of the data in the US indicates no correlation between enforcement and addiction rates. We say we enforce drug laws for people's protection, catch them with drugs, throw them in jail and say, "see? this is what happens when you take drugs." The discussion around Denver's laws has often been on the assumption that before Colorado legalized marijuana, no one had access to marijuana. They throw around statistics with out before / after comparisons, or without full context. One famous example was a guy who drove into a parked cop car - a test confirmed that some time in the last 6 months he had smoked marijuana. Nevermind that his BAC was astronomical. Anti-marijuana headlines for days on that one.

Yes, absolutely. There is a significant population who will not do something if its illegal. Full stop.

The question is whether that same population do the thing if it were not illegal? Certainly not everyone in that group. I'm not sure it's even possible to collect this kind of data, but it's a relevant question.

Of course its relevant to understand the scope. But the question is `Does making something illegal have any ability to prevent addiction?` The answer here is an incredibly clear yes.

I don't think it's "incredibly clear" at all.

You've never met anyone who won't do something because its illegal? I suppose thats reasonable. In any event, I can assure you they exist.

Your arguments are stupidly repetitive and anecdotal. I can also assure you that people exist who make a lot of money pushing drugs because it's illegal and they're good at breaking the law. You've posted far less data and just complained about semantics of my first sentence being different from the data I've posted.

Ok, let's put this a more complex way. There are problems caused by drug prohibition that have nothing to do with addiction - namely, the black market. Prohibition creates a market where courts and the legal system cannot be used to settle disputes. Hence, drive-by shootings, money laundering, and a host of other ills.

And the more you crack down, the more valuable this market becomes. Market forces don't care that something is illegal. Supply and demand.

So here's the question for you... even accepting your premise that some portion of the population is kept from using drugs simply because they are illegal, does that justify the social cost incurred by the creation of the black market?

I understand the broader argument. Mine truly is as narrow in scope as my text: I do not think it reasonable to say the illegality of some addictive drugs has not prevented addiction for some people.

Maybe, but there's clearly and consistently no correlation between enforcing said illegality and addiction: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-bri.... In both of the specific cases mentioned in the article and my comment, it's a lower jurisdiction stopping enforcement of a higher jurisdiction's laws. Marijuana is still illegal in Colorado, but everyone knows that the TSA are the only ones enforcing it.

There's also the fact that a lot of black-market stuff only ever happens because it's illegal, which is why countries that decriminalize prostitution and take a treat-instead-of-prosecute approach tend to see benefits in addition to fewer people in jail for the associated crimes. I know there are people that won't break the law, but there are also people that make beaucoup bucks breaking the law because they're good at it. Which one wins out? No idea. Not sure if there's a way to get data on that beyond the enforcement vs. addiction studies.

Look, you prefaced your comment with a question that has a simple answer. You don't like that answer because it doesn't fit your premise that the law is never helpful to anyone. But it is the answer.

There is plenty of room to discuss the effectiveness/costs of making drugs illegal and how (potential) enforcement should be handled. To whit, your response is answering an entirely different question than the one you originally posed!

EDIT Response to below. I can't understand your position. How is the data we do have even remotely relevant? Its a study about enforcement and so presupposes a population that is excluded by the very question posed...

No I don't like your answer because you have zero data to back it up and it contradicts very closely related data that we do have.

I see people breaking the law hundreds of times every week. People jaywalking, smoking too close to a building, texting while driving, double parking, taking a piss in public, theft, buying drugs, dealing drugs, selling sex and assaults. I would in fact be shocked if there is anyone out there who does not break at least one law per month.

You (probably) do not see people breaking the criminal code every day. You see people breaking the civil code. There is a difference, and yes people are aware of what will get them a ticket vs. sent to prison.

There is also a population that will do it BECAUSE it is illegal.

And no data that I'm aware actually points towards prohibition having significant effect.

The question is not 'Is the number of people doing drugs affected by its legality' (though I think its quite likely there is a fairly large effect.

Its 'Are there people who would do drugs (and become addicted) if they were legal but will not currently because they are illegal'.

Or in real life, how many potential alcoholics will be better off with cannabis as their drug of choice? Clearly the lifetime outcomes for heavy drinking are worse than for heavy cannabis usage, and they seem to be strong substitutes for each other.

What the discussion here is missing is that it would be nearly impossible to abuse mushrooms, and that mushrooms seem more likely to get people out of other addictions than push them into one.

If it's true that "most of the data in the US indicates no correlation between enforcement and addiction rates" then that just means a somewhat different group of people is doing it, while still being about the same number of people.

This doesn't follow at all. Enforcement may not deter addiction, but illegality does in some subset of the population.

I'll grant "some subset" but does it change overall addiction rates? It's entirely possible that it increases addiction in other subsets, e.g. by making treatment less available.

And if you claim it does reduce overall rates, can you provide a source? Portugal's drug addiction rates have plummeted since they decriminalized: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/18/524380027/...

Yes agreed. Though I think it's not a panacea.

There was an article/interview that I can't find discussing the lack of available services for those with addiction in a Scandinavian country post decriminalisation. I don't remember it all that well but the jist was that now that drugs were legal, it was a personal problem rather than a societal one; the 'treat it as a medical condition' aspect of the broader argument never actually materialized with services for those in need

I think it's healthier and more reasonable to think of these problems (and their solutions) as existing on a spectrum and not in black and white.

It may or may not be illegal to jump off a cliff, but even if the government declared it explicitly legal tomorrow how many more people will start doing it?

"Because most of the data in the US indicates no correlation between enforcement and addiction rates."

This is simply not true.

This notion that legalizing something will incur less addiction is simply not reasonable.

Opiates are available by prescription and that is huge source of addiction, even within that controlled environment. Doctors in Canada now give out the absolute minimum - I had major dental surgery and got two pills. Just two! Because it's that addictive. US doctors are changing as well.

Consider what full opiate legality would mean: it would be infused into tobacco, cola, alcohol, food etc. and available within an arms reach with billions in advertising behind it.

Even though a good number of people wouldn't use it, and another chunk can actually 'handle their drugs' - for a significantly high group of others it would be destructive. If only 5% of our population fell prey to this, and instead of having jobs they were stealing, in hospitals, rehab etc. - it would be a huge crisis.

I'm always surprised by how people put this issue mostly in the context of the here and now, and don't consider how so many things would transform.

Vaping (i.e. repackaging of nicotine) is blowing up massively in the US, Juul is hiring 2000 people just in SF and their business is exploding! This is not because vaping 'tastes good'. It's because it's deeply addictive, and as an ex-vaper (short period) I suggest there's a whole host of problems we haven't seen yet.

No good will come of a generation re-addicted to nicotine.

So yes, Portugual et. al. took a different path on hard drugs, but this is nothing remotely near legalization. It's still a health problem, they just deal with it differently.

Mushrooms are a different thing, they are not remotely addictive, so they're in a different class. That said, they are actually dangerous. Also the inherent demand is just not nearly there. Some degree of de-criminalization ought to be considered surely.

I do agree with most of your points - I do wish policy & discussion was at least based on harm and addictiveness, etc. and not fear mongering because "schedule 1" == "the devil". I think alcohol, tobacco and prescription opiates cause far more harm than marijuana ever would, for instance. There is, however, a very strong corpus of data that drug enforcement as implemented in America really does achieve nothing. I posted one link further up the thread, you'll find similarly strong trends between DEA budgets, frequency of all sorts of LE activities, and addiction rates, amounts found on arrestees, etc.

> instead of having jobs they were stealing

If opiates were legal, it seems unlikely to me that any significant number of people would need to steal to support their habit. I lived in Canada for a few years, and had a friend up there who worked in an ER there. All of the drugs they used had price tags on them as an incentive to remind the staff how much government money they were spending when they used them. He told me the giant syringes full of morphine that they used for severe burn injuries were a tagged as a few dollars.

Here in Washington state, legalizing marijuana has driven down the price so much that it's actually hard for growers to turn a profit.

FWIW, I don't use either of them.

Lowering the price will simply increase consumption (supply and demand). I don't see how making addictive poison cheaper is in any way positive for anyone least of all the users - most of whom will be addicts, not casual users.

FYI - people steal for dope not because it's insanely expensive, they steal because their lives are ruined and that's their recourse.

It's really nary impossible to make the case that we should be make super cheap opiates widely available. There is a reason (actually many) that it's essentially illegal everywhere on the planet wherein there is any form of governance.

The odd thing about the 'drugs debate' is how many very intelligent people have trouble with seeing the societal implications. To me the very debate itself is a fascinating social phenom, and I wonder what drives people to make odd arguments.

There's a huge demand to get high, but most ways get high are illegal. If you start to legalize some options, the demand to get high in more dangerous ways should decline.

We can already look to a few countries --I think as success models (Portugal, Netherlands, Czech Republic) -- that have done this and see how the demand curve for more dangerous substances has trended.

All of those countries legalized Weed, LSD and Magic Mushrooms, Amphetamines, and natural opiates at the same time (I think).

I think the US states will legalize them in categories, and I'll be interested to know if by having LSD legal, if that significantly impacts the market for illegal MDMA. Or if by having MDMA legal, if that significantly impacts the market for opiates.

We should already have some data on that by weed being legal in a lot of the US for a year or more now.

DARE clearly didn't work. But whatever we did for smoking worked very well. Only 10.4% of 18-24 year olds smoke cigarettes.

We already know the answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War .

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the demand for Chinese goods (particularly silk, porcelain, and tea) in Europe created a trade imbalance between Qing Imperial China and Great Britain. European silver flowed into China through the Canton System, which confined incoming foreign trade to the southern port city of Canton. To counter this imbalance, the British East India Company began to grow opium in India and smuggle them into China illegally. The influx of narcotics reversed the Chinese trade surplus, drained the economy of silver, and increased the numbers of opium addicts inside the country, outcomes that worried Chinese officials.

In 1839, the Daoguang Emperor, rejecting proposals to legalize and tax opium, appointed viceroy Lin Zexu to go to Canton to halt the opium trade completely[8]. Lin wrote to Queen Victoria an open letter in an appeal to her moral responsibility to stop the opium trade.[9] When he failed to get a response, he initially attempted to get foreign companies to forfeit their opium stores in exchange for tea, but this ultimately failed too. Then Lin resorted to using force in the western merchants' enclave. He confiscated all supplies and ordered a blockade of foreign ships to get them to surrender their opium supply. Lin confiscated 20,283 chests of opium (approximately 1210 tons or 2.66 million pounds)[10].

The British government responded by dispatching a military force to China and in the ensuing conflict, the Royal Navy used its naval and gunnery power to inflict a series of decisive defeats on the Chinese Empire,[7] a tactic later referred to as gunboat diplomacy.

How is this relevant? This was mostly an economic war, and number on addictions and suffering are unavailable, unreliable, or in a very different society.

And I'm not expecting China to invade the US if the US legalized opium.

Look what happened with the tobacco or the alcohol regulation. It looks like most of the people got addicted to smoking pretty quickly. I can't see a single good thing if they would switch to heroin. I believe China had the opium legalised and it didn't turn to be a good idea either.

Might this outcome differ in a ubiquitous information age?

Please noone make the "Juul for opium"

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