What happens when an entire country legalizes drug use?

It should come as no surprise that the right answer is treating drug addiction and substance abuse like medical conditions rather than legal ones. The idea that the government should regulate what I choose to put in my own body is preposterous to begin with.

If you want to criminalize something, try starting with the actions that drug addicts take towards others, not themselves. Driving while intoxicated, theft, vandalism and more serious crimes are already illegal and should stay so. It is impossible to violate your own rights; why should making a 100% personal decision be a crime?

I think there are a few counties that could benefit from this approach of battling ramped drug use. It seems to have done something in Cali aswell as here in Massachusetts, for Mary-Jane that is. I have witnessed a few of my school mates succumb to heavy use of marijuana and some of them have had their problems with the law, but the majority of pot-heads I know can hold it within limits and actually do rather well. I was amazed to see how much drug use there was going to school in boston. Freshman year I would estimate that about 75-80% of people smoked atleast weed and close to everyone drank. To put my estimations into proportion, I must mention that I dont smoke and i cant say I hung-out with lots of potheads.

To the point: I think there is a great number of people that can deal with light drug use in everyday life, but there are some, in my experience mostly bipolar or psychologically depressed people have a hard time controlling themselves. Therefore I think that it may be a good idea for other countries to try similar measures.

Looking at the other replies, this topic just begs for a reference to the work of Terence McKenna.

Especially to a speech like "The World & It's Double"

Terence McKenna: The World & It's Double - 1/11 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkUkGUY7hsY

It goes into subjects like boundary dissolution, how this is not something that some parties (governments, many religions, etc.) really like.

It also mentions how particular drugs (the ones that make you productive, e.g. caffeine) are the ones that are allowed. Not those which make you snap out of the standard Western materialistic view of the world:

"All the boundaries we put up to keep ourselves from feeling our circumstance are dissolved [when using psychedelics]. And boundary dissolution is the most threatening activity that can go on in a society. Government institutions become very nervous when people begin to talk to each other. The whole name of the Western game is to create boundaries and maintain them."

"The drugs that Western society has traditionally favored have either been drugs which maintain boundaries or drugs which promote mindless, repetitious physical activity on the assembly line, in the slave galley, on the slave-driven agricultural projects, in the corporate office, whatever it is."

I've once listened to this when I was in a skyscraper, looking at the world below.. seeing all those tiny people and vehicles move and pondering about this is really something that puts things in perspective.

Finally, although I don't use drugs/alcohol/caffeine myself.. I too cannot help wondering why one should not be allowed to experiment with ones own consciousness. Why not allow this in a legal, safe, special environment which watches over things?

Perhaps not all drugs are suitable for this, but let's not forget that drugs like DMT, which as McKenna describes give one 'the ride of a lifetime', are naturally occuring in our own bodies... yet they are one of the most illegal things out there.

Isn't that odd?

#daretoask, #questioneverything ;)

It's the same in Spain. You get a fine (around $500), but you don't go to prison.

“We really needed to learn how to prevent and discourage the use of drugs, especially in adolescent years. But you should use tools appropriate to the purpose, and criminal sanctions carried a lot of costs that really weren’t appropriate.”

I've always thought that the war on drugs was fought on the wrong side. That instead of working towards punishing people after the fact, we should have figured out why people use drugs and how to fix that problem. As with most things though, the easy way (prosecution) is the most traveled.

Registration required. Personally, it is harder to find better journalistic photography on the web.

as far as i know, drug use has been legal here in Portugal at least since 10 years ago and, like, the sky is still up where it's supposed to be

Malcolm Gladwell talks about this phenomenon in his book: "The Tipping Point". He calls it the 'stickiness factor'. He analyzes the phenomenon where children begin taking drugs even when they fully understand that it greatly harms them.

Teenagers are inherently, perhaps even genetically predisposed to imitate others and try on new behaviors and attitudes during adolescence. Second, the types of the people who are more likely to engage in dramatic, easily romanticized behavior such as early cigarette smoking or suicide are also more likely to be those that others tend to gravitate toward and seek to emulate.

When Portugal legalized all drugs, they greatly lowered the 'Stickiness Factor' for those drugs.

http://www.wikisummaries.org/The_Tipping_Point#Chapter_7:_Ca...

immigration...