Comment by hitpointdrew | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hitpointdrew | Hacker News Reader

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>(I balance this with a deep hatred for cartels. If you trace these questions far enough, it seems to often lead to "the cartels are at the center of it all." And they're responsible for unspeakable miseries.)

This is why all drugs should be legalized (not just decriminalized, decriminalization still leaves a black market). Cartels are meeting a demand, but cartels make up their own rules and will do anything they want to stay ahead.

Just legalize them, it solves so many problems.

1. Quality and proper labeling (no more mystery drugs/dosages). Buyers know exactly what they are getting, which would decrees the amount of OD's.

2. Vast reduction in violent crimes (legitimate, licensed distributors are very unlikely to have violent turf wars as this would jeopardize their license). Black market would suddenly have no market (provided the taxes on legal drugs aren't stupid), which means no money, which means there is nothing to kill/fight over.

3. Increased tax revenue

It is a win/win/win for everyone, I just don't get it....and please just don't with the tear jerking "What about the children!" The kids will be fine. No legalizing doesn't send a message that "drugs are OK". No it won't make them more accessible to kids, please stop fearmongering you don't know what you are talking about.

That can work for drugs with low abuse potentials, like psychedelics. But why do you think drugs like heroin will benefit the society or the people who are taking them?

There is a different course of action for high-abuse drugs. Apparently in Switzerland you can get an "addict" prescription from your doctor, and with that prescription you can go to an injection clinic and get a free professional injection of heroin and a bed to lie on.

The result of this is all drug dealers going bust, and no drug dealers - no one to market the drug, so no new users. All addicts in Switzerland are now old people, and as they die of related diseases and old age the Swiss are having hard time keeping the clinics open because there are not enough takers for free heroin.

I think all opiates can and should be taken care of this way. Not sure about stimulants though - one doesn't just lie down on a clinic bed after a dose of meth or crack. Maybe if regular coke is legalized people will give up meth and crack?

You've never been to Switzerland if you think there are no drug dealers there.

I don't know about heroin, but there are something like 3/4 Swiss cities in the top 20 for cocaine consumption based waste water sampling.

There are, in fact, even heroin dealers in Switzerland, and of course all sorts of other drugs are still being sold illegally, but compared to the early 1990s, before the heroin prescription policy, there is practically no visible drug addict scene anymore.

The problem is that people who want drugs (either because of addiction or desire to try them) will always find a way; this war has been lost already. However making these drugs legal will still remove the negative impact of the illegal drug trade such as cartels and their inherent violence (which also enables other crimes as cartels might be willing to supply their weapons - which they source already because they need them - to other criminals who are willing to pay good money for them).

People already take those drugs. Drugs are everywhere and have been for a long, long time. When I was a teenager, it was easier for me to get marijuana than alcohol. Why because one was regulated.

Why do you think the world will flock to drugs if they were simply made legal?

Drug addicts (people who need to get high) will find an alternate high if they can't get illegal drugs.

I agree with this. I don't think legality dissuades but a tiny number of people. I think most people who aren't going to do it don't take drugs because they've seen the results of the harder drugs and don't want anything to do with it.

Heroin will not benefit society, the hypothesis is that it will cause less harm if users receive it from a boring, official, controlled source instead of letting violent criminals earn millions with it. The idea that prohibition can somehow end drug use was proven wrong a long time ago.

I would not necessarily credit Heroin for it (and would definitely not advocate its use), but a sizable proportion of Rock and Jazz performers have composed and performed music under its influence.

Drugs with very high abuse potential like opioids are very dangerous and a big problem - but looking at the epidemic of opioid abuse in the US, it's evident that criminalization isn't helping.

Do you have evidence to support the idea that more people would become heroin users if it were available through legal means?

I don't, and that's a good point - if the number of users remain the same (or even increases slightly) than I do see how legalizing can be beneficial. However, in my mind legalizing drugs also means easier access, and that can lead to an increasing number of people using drugs.

>However, in my mind legalizing drugs also means easier access, and that can lead to an increasing number of people using drugs.

How many adults do you know that have never done, or tried, heroin would suddenly do so if was legal? I think the amount of people that would try heroin because it became legal would be staggering low. I don't think there are many people out there going "Man, if heroin was just legal then I would totally try it!". People that want to do heroin are already doing so, it being illegal isn't stopping anyone.

So the counterargument is hydrocodone. It is legal, and people that would never in their lives think of shooting smack now had doctors, many of whom knew better, prescribing them a highly addictive narcotic in order to get compensated by the manufacturer. Purdue Pharma was a wholly legal cartel with thousands of dealers worldwide moving their product for them.

"Heroin" has a bad name, so your legalized version would have some innocuous made-up marketing name, backed by tens of millions of dollars of advertising and it would sell like hotcakes.

My response to that is to assert that most of the negative impact of the opiate crisis is due to the fact that people become addicted to them and are then unable to obtain them through legal means, which effectively forces them into criminal activity.

I'm certainly not saying opiate addiction is a neutral/good thing, but I don't think it would cause the societal harm that we see today with them being tightly regulated.

Potential case in point: illegal methamphetamine usage/addiction is a huge issue today in the US. I qualify that as "illegal", because meth is available by prescription under the trade name Desoxyn. Many drugs with similar effects are likewise available and much more commonly prescribed - but I'm not aware of anyone calling for them to be banned. If anything, I suspect in that case the overall societal impact is positive: I know I would be much less effective as a developer if I were to lose access to ADHD medication.

Not to mention the way the opiates where marketed at doctors with claims they where less addictive.

Meaning doctors where more likely to prescribe them, that whole episode was one of multiple fuck ups at every level backed by some unscrupulous fuckers.

>So the counterargument is hydrocodone. It is legal, and people that would never in their lives think of shooting smack now had doctors,many of whom knew better, prescribing them a highly addictive narcotic in order to get compensated by the manufacturer.

How is that a counter argument? This is a breakdown/fault of the medical community and has no relation to making drugs legal. To be clear, I am arguing that all drugs should be legal for recreational use (not require a prescription).

No question, doctors need to vet information on drugs better (they should not be taking literature/studies that come from the drug manufacturers as a reputable sources of truth). No question doctors should be extremely hesitant prescribing any opioid at all. No doubt that a lot of the current opioid epidemic stems from doctors (either unwittingly or not) prescribing things that they shouldn't be. Those are all medical industry issues that need to be solved (regardless if things like heroin are legal).

I don't suppose, and don't recommend, doing a self diagnosis and getting whatever drugs you feel will help. The medical community is supposed to be the experts on that subject matter.

That said, people need to be free to determine their own risk tolerance level regarding what to put in, or use on their bodies.

Me personally? I am not going to stop going to the doctors to get medicines when I am sick, even if I could buy any and all drugs over-the-counter. Also I am sure prescriptions aren't going away even if all drugs could be bought over the counter, there is no way insurance would pay for drugs that weren't prescribed by a medical professional.

You are using "legal" in a way that implies unregulated. Regulations have a large value, at least to some people. For instance, I would like to try CBD, but I don't trust that some random product will be safe and effective and have the right amount of the active ingredient. Unless it's an approved drug.

If you have regulations on drugs, then you have all the problems, to some extent, that people attribute to their illegality.

I am afraid of opioids, and I don't trust even doctors, so I never took the ones I was offered and didn't get addicted. But there must be millions of people who wouldn't trust a heroin dealer and would trust their doctor, so legality makes a big difference.

Why would a doctor promote Heroin? If they would, especially for recreative purposes, would be very much at odds with any medical ethics. What is clear via Oxy example is that medical ethics really need to be upheld and profit taken out of the equation.

Do you see doctors promoting cigarettes? Alcohol?

I would say that your reasoning why you aren't doing CBD is highly rational. Do you really think that even if you wanted to try heroin and if you did it, it would automatically addict you? Like you're instantly gone in to the abyss?

People try heroin and nothing happens to them. Some even hate the experience. People use heroin for prolonged periods and then simply stop (non unusual in the late teens, with some kind of a trigger in the mid 20).

If there was not so much stigma involved and so much risk taking the stuff, we might see people coming out of this juvenile experimenting phase in a much much better state.

Also, do you really think that people that lifelong addicts, don't have some kind of deeper psychological reasons to go down that path?

>if you wanted to try heroin and if you did it, it would automatically addict you

I have no idea. Lots of people experiment with things and it's no big deal and they insist that must be a universal experience. There's a selection effect. If you try something at 20 and don't survive, you're not around at 40 or 80 to tell people it's no big deal.

When I was young, I enjoyed alcohol a lot, but didn't really struggle giving it up when I had to. Nor did I ever drink until blackout or vomiting, which you know, whether or not it's pathological/alcoholism, is common. I am certain that the level of compulsion is very different for some people.

I have a sibling, who I believe smoked cigarettes off and on but it never became a permanent habit. But a lot of people find them extremely addictive. I never smoked my first one, just because there was never an anticipated reward that seemed worth it. I might have been wrong, or right. Some people seem to get substantial cognitive benefits from nicotine.

Occasionally having a negative reaction to a prescription drug makes me wary of recreational or unregulated stuff, too. Seeing homeopathic stuff in the drug store makes me fearful that a CBD product might be fake too. So when I had wisdom teeth pulled and I was given a bottle of big pink pills (I think it must have been oxycodone/paracetamol based on a quick google) I didn't use a single one.

For what it's worth, I think you're at least mostly correct - I would also expect legalization to lead to increased usage, at least in the short term. I'm just the type of person who challenges those sorts of expectations, including when I'm the one holding them.

Along with wondering if "legalization leads to increased rate of usage" holds true, I also wonder if the following is true:

> legalizing drugs also means easier access

Criminality is a "barrier to entry", surely, but I'm not at all sure that ease of access changes because of it. In Arkansas, where I live, cannabis is illegal. Even though I don't consume it (the risk isn't worth the benefit to me), I'm extremely confident I could make a couple of phone calls and have some delivered to me if I wanted to. That's really no different from my experience in the LA area.

In fact, it might actually be more difficult to obtain it in LA through legal means. Generally you have to seek out a dispensary (physically, or via phone/app) and provide identification. I wouldn't need ID to get it illegally in Arkansas. If an ID requirement has a negative participation impact on other things (like voting) then I would expect that to hold true for this as well.

I don't believe that drug addicts face any real difficulty obtaining their drugs; they do face hazards to their safety and economic security.

The risk of legalization isn't so much ease of access as it is the normalization of drug abuse. We have shown with cigarette usage that education, propaganda and marketing laws can de-normalize drug use.

If anything, by making high risk drugs safely available through official venues, you can provide social services better access to those who need help.

I would say that you would likely see an initial increase in users but that a well run program would lead to both a overall decrease in users and more importantly a reduction of average harm per user.

I think that is a common misunderstanding. Access is there and not much more difficult than deciding you are curious and going to a specialty shop. Look at marijuana legalization, not a big uptick in consumption by most approximations.

Currently legal opiods: oxycodone, fentanyl, buprenorphine, methadone, oxymorphone, hydrocodone, codeine, and morphine.

The question is whether banning drugs causes more harm than good, not whether drugs are beneficial to society.

Correct, heroin addiction is problematic. In fact, I'd go so far as to simply say "addiction is problematic" If we say that instead of "drugs are problematic" perhaps a different approach seems reasonable. Portugal decriminalized drugs and focused on addiction treatment. The model isn't perfect, but it might be worth a look.

of course not; but neither does the war on drugs. Or legal drugs like alcohol. And it's quite obvious at this point that the negative consequences of the war on drugs far outweigh the negative consequences of drug use, especially if such use was regulated and supervised, and had compassionate treatment options

It is hard to see how financing a global network of violent and terroristic criminal organizations could ever be a better state of affairs than having more drug addicts. If you then include the massive loss of freedoms imposed on us to fight these organizations, it boggles my mind that anyone can support the war on drugs.

Edit: The answer I guess is that those who have supported the war on drugs had other goals than "reducing the number of addicts". If you look at the history of how the war on drugs has been used by western intelligence agencies to grow their surveillance powers and finance and the fight against left-wing/communist organizations, the real reasons become more clear.

3: tax revenue

Governments can and do tax illegal drugs. Just issue tax stamps. If drugs are found without them, you also get them for tax evasion.

All drugs used to be legal in the US. There is a reason that they became controlled a hundred years ago or so, and it does not involve conspiracies by big pharma. Go research the history - it's fascinating.

Alcohol is one of the leading causes of death in the US. A large share of car accidents, suicides, crime, heart disease, and many other things is caused by it.

>This is why all drugs should be legalized

This libertarian trope has gotten more annoying as I get older. No matter what you want legalized/deregulated, there is something that even you can't stomach. And organized crime can focus their business on that something. They probably already have.

You say legalize everything and then you say there will be "quality and proper labeling". Well duh, you have to enforce that; that means drugs that don't meet the standards are illegal. And your organized criminals will deal in them. There's no way out.

Current drug laws can be framed as a matter of "quality and proper labeling", we're just quibbling about the details.

Even legalizing some drugs would reduce organized crime. Would it completely destroy it? Probably not, but it would mean that there's less money to be made in it, and that means fewer people involved, less violence, less corruption.

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