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Comment by aristophenes | Hacker News Reader

I can partially understand that point of view for marijuana (though I think it’s important for a functional society to obey laws, and get them changed if they aren’t working instead of just breaking them based on personal preference). But the guy had been selling methamphetamine too, which is life destroying poison. Our government provides costly services for people who are incapable of taking care of themselves, and that drug creates a bigger burden on those programs. Unless you also advocate for the removal of social safety nets I don’t see how you can justify thinking that the government shouldn’t try to limit drug use.

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Prohibition doesn't work for meth or heroin either. Making them freely available under doctor supervision is what works. Switzerland did it and an out of control heroin problem went away and especially important, usage among young people plummeted. Yes it costs money to treat a medical problem. It costs way more money to treat medical problems as something else. Let's go with the most effective solution even if "free and legal heroin" upsets some people's morals.

Also consider that methamphetamine is not "life destroying poison". Addiction is the medical condition that destroys lives. Methamphetamine and similar drugs are also prescribed for medical conditions where they help people. Focusing on the substance is just more drug war propaganda.

> Switzerland did it and an out of control heroin problem went away and especially important, usage among young people plummeted.

You still go to prison in Switzerland for selling heroine on the street. Also there still is a heroine problem though arguably smaller than it used to be.

> You still go to prison in Switzerland for selling heroine on the street.

And yet it was widely available on the streets back when it was illegal, and now it's hard to find on the streets and it's still illegal. So what changed? Clearly it was not the law that fixed things, right?

> Also there still is a heroine problem though arguably smaller than it used to be.

A tiny fraction of what it used to be. Since I would consider that success, I don't get your point? I very much doubt anyone is expecting addiction to disappear? The point is that it costs tax payers far less when you fix the actual problem instead of trying to treat medical problems as if they are a legal problem.

In Switzerland there are legal injection sites where addicts medicate with medical supervision and controlled dose.

Very few people are incarcerated for dealing because people with this problem have better and safer alternatives than street scores.

> Also consider that methamphetamine is not "life destroying poison". Addiction is the medical condition that destroys lives.

It might not sound like it, but this is nothing but a tautology. Interfering with the person's life was just the definition of addiction.

This was obviously-dumb enough that the DSM-V gave up on the word "addiction" entirely.

> It might not sound like it, but this is nothing but a tautology.

Quite the opposite. Focusing on the substance instead of the medical condition is part of the war on drugs and essential for the propaganda to work.

Here's what I'm saying:

Imagine two people who regularly consume cocaine. One of them is homeless; the other is an executive somewhere.

By definition, the definition of "addiction", the first one was "addicted", and the second one wasn't.

There are arguments to be made for this kind of definition. But you can't use it to say "addiction is what destroys lives, not drugs". That's a tautology. Addiction is the name we give to destroyed lives, not something that can be observed independently of whether a life is destroyed.

> you can't use it to say "addiction is what destroys lives, not drugs".

Sure you can. It's perfectly reasonable to say sports injuries are what hurts people, not sports themselves. Even though by definition an injury hurts someone. Especially to make the point that what we want to focus on is reducing the injuries, not reducing the sports.

Everyone understands why the distinction was made, and flagging it as a tautology is just engaging in pedantry.

But here's an interesting experiment: rewrite my point that "it isn't the substance that destroys lives but the medical condition of addiction" - without using the offending tautology. Maybe I'll learn something.

> But here's an interesting experiment: rewrite my point that "it isn't the substance that destroys lives but the medical condition of addiction" - without using the offending tautology. Maybe I'll learn something.

This can't be done. Addiction isn't a medical condition. It is, according to this characterization, a description of a set of circumstances. You cannot determine whether somebody suffers from addiction by inspecting the person's behavior or reaction to whatever they're supposedly addicted to. You make a subjective judgment about whether their life would improve if they stopped doing it. Again, this is why the field of medicine gave up on using the word.

Compare https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=3303 .

> It's perfectly reasonable to say sports injuries are what hurts people, not sports themselves.

"He's not hurt because a rock hit him in the head. He's hurt because his skull is broken."

This is a terrible analysis. It tells you that the solution is to not break your skull, regardless of whether you get hit with a rock / bullet / whatever. Of course, that's impossible. The solution is to avoid the trauma that leaves you with a broken skull, not to resist the breaking.

> Especially to make the point that what we want to focus on is reducing the injuries, not reducing the sports.

To the extent that you want to reduce injuries, you abandon that goal when you define the groups as "uninjured; no problems" and "already injured; nothing to be done". If that's how you see things, you're limited to fixing injuries that have occurred; you can't take any steps to prevent or avoid them. To do so would be to admit that sports might be dangerous even if you're not yet injured.

> this is why the field of medicine gave up on using the word.

From this year:

"The Journal of Addiction Medicine (JAM), the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, seeks Editorial Fellows. Applicants should have at least two years of addiction research experience, have an MD or PhD degree, have completed clinical specialty training, and hold faculty positions at the instructor, or assistant professor level or other junior faculty level equivalent. Candidates who have published at least 3 peer-reviewed papers, have strong knowledge of addiction science..." [1]

> Addiction isn't a medical condition.

We now have genetic markers for inherited tendencies for addiction, and we are starting to understand the changes that occur in the brain.

From Harvard medical school (also note the use of the word "addiction" - I guess they missed the memo that everyone in the field of medicine gave up on using the word?):

"It might seem strange to group gambling problems in the same category as a problem with drugs or alcohol. But addiction experts are beginning to move away from the notion that there are multiple addictions, each tied to a specific substance or activity. Rather, the Syndrome Model of Addiction suggests that there is one addiction that is associated with multiple expressions.

For example, brain-imaging technologies have revealed that our brains respond similarly to different pleasurable experiences, whether derived from ingesting psychoactive substances, such as alcohol and other drugs, or engaging in behaviors, such as gambling, shopping, and sex. Genetic research has revealed that some people are predisposed to addiction, but not to a specific type of addiction." [2]

You can provide counter evidence to my evidence, by my evidence remains, so the best you can say is that addiction as a medical condition is currently being debated in the medical community. Your claim that it is not a medical condition goes too far.

> "He's not hurt because a rock hit him in the head. He's hurt because his skull is broken."

> This is a terrible analysis.

No it isn't. It's perfectly fine to get hit in the head with a rock if you can avoid getting your skull broken by it or avoid getting hurt by it. Softer rocks or better helmets are both solutions, so it is of course worth talking about the broken skull being the root problem, and how to avoid that root problem.

> To the extent that you want to reduce injuries, you abandon that goal when you define the groups as "uninjured; no problems" and "already injured; nothing to be done". If that's how you see things, you're limited to fixing injuries that have occurred; you can't take any steps to prevent or avoid them. To do so would be to admit that sports might be dangerous even if you're not yet injured.

That's a strawman. No one did that here. You can of course talk about sport injuries as something that hurts people (uh oh tautology) and as something that you want to prevent and how you might go about that. And of course sports and gambling might be dangerous even if you're not yet injured. No one here claimed otherwise. However, gambling is far more dangerous for some people than it is for others. Admitting that gets us much closer to solutions than "gambling is just dangerous".

[1] https://journals.lww.com/journaladdictionmedicine/pages/defa...

[2] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-addiction-2-2017...

> Prohibition doesn't work for meth or heroin either. Making them freely available under doctor supervision is what works.

Those things can be mutually exclusive though. For example, you could make it so meth/heroin isn't readily available at the local pharmacy/gas station, yet also make it freely available under doctor supervision at rehab centers.

I think many people (myself included) are apprehensive about making drugs totally legal because many law abiding citizens who otherwise would have never touched the drug may whimsically decide to try it at a rough patch in their life just by seeing it on the shelf at the gas station. I am more in favor of decriminalization, but if legalization really is the most effective solution I would like to see advertising completely banned, behind-the-counter only, generic labels only, etc.

It difficult to even start talking about decriminalizing all drugs because it immediately turns into hypothetical situations about "buy heroin at 7-11 across from a school". Nobody is advocating that position, no need to bring it up.

> many people (myself included) are apprehensive

Well yes, a lot of the discussion is around fear of what might happen. Why isn't anyone afraid of what already is happening? Illegal recreational drugs are literally a greater than $ billion dollar a year business in the US alone. I could understand this position if recreational drugs were somewhat uncommon and the fear was that legalizing them would make them more widespread. They are widespread already. Anyone who wants recreational drugs in the US can easily get them.

> many law abiding citizens who otherwise would have never touched the drug may whimsically decide to try it at a rough patch in their life just by seeing it on the shelf at the gas station

They already do. Anyone can try alcohol to get over a rough patch in life. I think a lot of people would be shocked just how low addiction rates are for addictive drugs. Even a drug like heroin that can cause physical dependence, has an addiction rate of about 12%. Let's turn that around. A full 88% of people who try heroin never get addicted. Plenty of people even become physically dependent on opiates like heroin but never become addicted. Think pain treatment and then the thing causing the pain goes away. People successfully withdraw from the physical dependence because they don't have an addiction problem.

> I would like to see advertising completely banned, behind-the-counter only, generic labels only

I don't find that unreasonable. Interesting how that contrasts to the constant advertising on TV in the USA for prescription drugs.

This. Whatever we are doing now definitley does not work; drugs are destroying millions of peoples lives already, and also contributing to lots of violence caused by the black market drug trade. We've been trying "that, but MORE of it" for a few decades, and the problems caused by drugs have gotten WORSE. So, how about something different?

umvi doesn't oppose something different, above, but says there the most optimal approach may be between either of the extremes (outright prohibition vs. completely unregulated, buying off the shelf at a gas station). So if you're going to argue with him, please be sure to refute something he actually advocates for.

Well, then umvi made the same mistake you're warning about, as the person they replied to wasn't advocating for completely unregulated gas-station drugs but rather "Making them freely available under doctor supervision." They didn't even respond to the parent.

I think it makes sense to decriminalize at the federal level and leave it to states to determine the appropriate level of local regulation.

Banning corporatization, advertising, and branding of these substances is an intriguing idea, and probably necessary to make progress in this country.

> because many law abiding citizens who otherwise would have never touched the drug may whimsically decide to try it

They likely wouldn't. Most drugs aren't socially accepted, the gas station wouldn't stock them (and that's usually not what people ask for when they talk about legalization).

Consider LSD. It's illegal, heavily so. But there's 1P-LSD, it's a "research chemical" and very similar to LSD. It has been legal for a few years (and still is in many countries) and has only been made a controlled substance in parts of Europe last year.

If illegality was what kept people away from drugs, you'd expect to have seen a lot of normal people tripping in the last year. But you haven't (okay, maybe you have, it would explain a lot of things, wouldn't it?), and it was really only used as an easily obtainable and legal alternative to LSD by people who want an LSD-like drug because they know LSD.

> They likely wouldn't. Most drugs aren't socially accepted, the gas station wouldn't stock them

I don't know, I'm still not convinced. I think legalization is an important step on the path to social acceptance.

Examples: Marijuana, abortion, gay marriage

These things used to be socially unacceptable and illegal, but they are now socially acceptable and legal

Some drugs might not be socially acceptable right now, but I would argue legalizing them would help them become more socially acceptable. I admit that legalization may only be partially causal though (i.e. social acceptance was mounting before legalization). And convenience stores would certainly stock drugs if there was demand and they were allowed to.

> Examples: Marijuana, abortion, gay marriage

> These things used to be socially unacceptable and illegal, but they are now socially acceptable and legal

And you don't get Marijuana or an abortion at the gas station. But you might be able to get gay married at a gas station in Vegas ;)

I don't think they're anywhere close to socially acceptable yet, outside of young and very progressive people. You're not going to talk to your manager at a bank about getting an abortion or smoking weed, but you can absolutely talk to them about smoking cigars or some new whisky. They're less ostracized, I'd say, but I see your point.

I'm not sure it's legality and availability changes frequency. Abortions aren't becoming more common, they peaked in the 80ies (in the US) and have been falling since. I don't know the current numbers, but a few years ago they recorded the lowest numbers since they started recording them in the early 70ies.

> And convenience stores would certainly stock drugs if there was demand and they were allowed to.

If they were socially accepted at the level of Alcohol, maybe, but that'll take decades if not centuries. There's a demand for sex toys, and they're legal, but convenience stores don't usually have them stocked. It's changing, but very slowly, because society is much more socially conservative than Hollywood and media companies reflect back, and most people don't want dildos and life-size sex dolls presented where they shop with their children. I believe the same is true for drugs.

Also, there's no reason why they wouldn't be sold in special stores, and that's a big plus for legalization: you can regulate what is legal. You can put age restrictions on what's legal. And, from a state perspective: you can tax what's legal.

You have the causation reversed. Marijuana, abortion, and gay marriage were all legalized because they became socially acceptable while illegal and the laws no longer reflected the values of society.

I admitted as such, but wouldn't you say the legalization gave an additional boost to social acceptance? Social acceptance isn't a yes/no, it's a 0-100% based on the fraction of the population that accepts it. And if marijuana was at, say, 50% acceptance before legalization, I would imagine (I'm just making these numbers up) legalization boosted it to 75%.

No, I don't think you've nailed causation of social acceptance. In Switzerland after they legalized heroin and decided it was not a legal problem but a medical problem, heroin use plummeted among young people. It became socially unacceptable.

Abortion is tricky because you can be against abortion but in favor of the right to choose. I know many people, even Christians, who hold this stance. We do know abortion rates go down when abortions are made legal. So that would seem to perhaps point to the laws not having much to do with social acceptance around abortion.

As far as marijuana we could use real numbers. Only 8% of Americans think marijuana should be illegal. So no I don't expect a big jump with legalization. I would imagine the number of people who find it socially acceptable to go from let's say 92% to maybe 93%. [1]

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/14/americans-s...

> I think legalization is an important step on the path to social acceptance. Examples: Marijuana, abortion, gay marriage

Social acceptance among whom? Half of the country votes for a party that made reversing Obergefell, the Supreme Court case that made gay marriage legal in the US, part of its party platform[1] in 2016 and 2020:

> Defending Marriage Against an Activist Judiciary

> Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values. We condemn the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to define marriage policy in federal law. We also condemn the Supreme Court’s lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was a “judicial Putsch” — full of “silly extravagances” — that reduced “the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Storey to the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie.” In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Court twisted the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond recognition. To echo Scalia, we dissent. We, therefore, support the appointment of justices and judges who respect the constitutional limits on their power and respect the authority of the states to decide such fundamental social questions.

> Our laws and our government’s regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman and actively promote married family life as the basis of a stable and prosperous society. For that reason, as explained elsewhere in this platform, we do not accept the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal, whether through judicial reconsideration or a constitutional amendment returning control over marriage to the states.

[1] https://gop.com/platform/

First, legality does not presuppose morality. America is the result of breaking laws based on personal preference, and taking up arms against the current government to get it done.

Second, other life destroying poisons include: alcohol, nicotine, sugar, fast food, dopamine hits from social media feedback/gambling/gaming... are you ready for the government to decide your intake for those?

The only thing prohibition does is fund organized crime, and increase the costs of policing by pretending that the "war on drugs" can be won. Taking drugs are part of human culture. It may as well be a war on human behavior.

When you subtract the dangers of dealing with cartels and policing, drug use is another form of escapism. As with any form of escapism, it can reach the point of abuse. We should absolutely have a social safety net for addicts of every sort, and it would be much cheaper than the costs of imprisonment and the war on drugs. Added bonus: actual liberty, instead of slogans on a bumper sticker.

I say this coming from a long line of addicts/alcoholics, including myself. If our drug of choice had been available from the local pharmacist:

- the drugs would have been cheaper and free of more dangerous cutting agents

- gangs/cartels would not make a dime

- we would've spent less time finding them

- some of us would have gone to rehab instead of prison

In a nutshell, even though we are poor, we would have had the same opportunities to get our act together as wealthy addicts.

And no, this isn't a crazy idea. This is how things worked before prohibition.

https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/kicking-ha...

> Second, other life destroying poisons include: alcohol, nicotine, sugar, fast food, dopamine hits from social media feedback/gambling/gaming... are you ready for the government to decide your intake for those?

The government does regulate alcohol ad nicotine directly. The federal gov subsidizes sugar, various localities tax it. Various politicians have made it clear they want to regulate or ban social media. Gambling is banned, monopolized, or regulated by every state government. Ever heard "video games cause violence"?

My point is that the government has its hands in everything. People should be free to do all of the above activities. I fully support legalization of everything mentioned. But unfortunately it's not outlandish for the government to control them.

Meth isn’t life destroying poison sorry to inform you. I take 10mg for ADHD a day and it’s saved my life when all other alternatives have failed. I would argue the bad cases you’ve seen are from people with no self control. Why should the government be able to tell you what you can and cannot put into your own body? Better, let people do what they want as long as they don’t hurt anybody else and educate them.

I challenge to do a google image search for faces of meth and come back and say that again with a straight face. That stuff is a poison that destroys both mind and body. If you think self control is enough to keep that stuff from rotting your face, making your hair fall out and keep yourself from going crazy you are foolish. Comparing it to ADHD medications is plain and simple stupid. If you think meth is the drug you need to focus you already need professional help because there are lots of stimulants out there, even illegal, that have nowhere near the side effects and consequences of meth.

Stop it with the hyperbole, as you clearly have no clue what you’re talking about.

Methamphetamine is routinely prescribed for the treatment ADHD (also obesity and narcolepsy, amongst other off-label uses), and is sold under the brand name of Desoxyn (in the US). Meth IS medication!

On that note, maybe don’t believe everything you read about drugs online.

I may need to clear up a misconception of mine, so here goes.

Isn't it Dexamphetamine that is the routine treatment for ADHD? As far as I understood, methamphetamine has much stronger effects than dexamphetamine, also meth been prone to cause more adverse effects and have more neurotoxicity than the dex counterpart?

Maybe I'm completely off base here.

Dextroamphetamine is a common first line treatment for ADHD, but methamphetamine is a second line treatment.

A lot of the information about methamphetamine is, bluntly, propaganda. For example, there seems to be nothing about methamphetamine that is uniquely harmful to teeth, but "meth mouth" is a common trope. When taken orally at therapeutic doses it's not clear methamphetamine is any more harmful than dextroamphetamine, but it's certainly possibly it has more scope for abuse. It's certainly dangerous at high doses! Unfortunately it's hard to find hard data and not drug war propaganda.

Thanks for the reply. Is second line treatment, what is heard from others may be derived from drug war propaganda, got it. This clears things up nicely. Thanks.

dexamphetamine / dextroamphetamine works well but over-focuses me (could watch paint dry) and causes depression + robotic behavior after a few days. Every med is distinctly different, even different isomers of the same chemical.

Yeah I mentioned it because I got put on dexamphetamine once. Couldn't stand it personally, couldn't sit down or keep still, and made me more annoying I think. Totally understand that even chemically similar medications can be very different to each other.

i think the OP is talking about crystal meth, not ritalin or adderall. Ritalin and Adderall is not what "faces of meth" depicts, as it depicts long term use of smoked crystal meth addiction.

This is correct, also part of the nuance that's often missing in these kinds of discussions. Pharmacy grade drugs are a different beast than the street drugs. From packaging to usage, it's two sides of the same coin.

So we should make all of it pharmacy grade?

Perhaps they are talking about Desoxyn. FDA approved for treatment of ADHD. Not saying that it isn't bad but just pointing out there is a comparison to ADHD medications.

I was, but can switch out with crystal if needed. Almost as pure.

Actually I've tried most all of the alternative stims and they all affect me worse in all areas of life. Meth is a drug used to treat ADHD and is FDA approved for this reason.

My doctor wanted to prescribe me benzodiazepines for depression / insomnia / brain shakes but, after seeing what withdrawal from legal benzodiazepines looks like, I refused. Illegal weed keeps me sane and let me sleep, but go and explain that to lawmakers...

Good choice. Benzodiazepines screw with brain chemistry like no other drug I've seen people use medically or recreationally. As one friend put it about his Xanax: "I'm not sure where the anxiety goes when I take Xanax, but I think it goes to the gym considering how strong it is when it comes back". My guess is that 20 or 50 years from now we are going to look back on the widespread prescription of benzos as a really bad idea. Hopefully the legalization of cannabis continues to accelerate so people like yourself don't have to risk legal consequences for treating a medical condition.

Just as a counterpoint I can handle benzos fine. Some slight rebound anxiety if I use multiple days in a row.

Weed on the other hand will send me one a 1 month train to hell smoking every day falling deeper and deeper into a depressive haze and there's nothing I can do about it.

Everybody is different, I guess.

It certainly can be good, it can also be a harmful addictive drug.

"self control" is a nearly meaningless phrase when used in the same sentence as drugs

Nah mate, you just aren't informed or experienced on this topic.

No, I understand that some people can exercise self control with drugs. But there is a certain, non-negligible % of drug users that are physically unable to exercise self control once they've experimented with the drug.

> Why should the government be able to tell you what you can and cannot put into your own body?

The answer to that question that I see is that the government is responsible to step in when someone else get hurt under humanitarian obligations. If you make someone responsible for an outcome then they will likely want to implement rules to reduce their own risks.

The rules should of course be proportional to the risk and balanced. It make sense that drugs and driving should not be combined and which outcome can't be fixed afterward. Parenting and drugs are also a pretty problematic area, but it is difficult for the government to make a law against that combination without banning drugs completely. If people took drugs while working with heavy equipment, makes decisions that impact people, work within health care or education, then there is an additional increased risk that the government is expected to manage.

ADHD medicine, especially the non-self medicated versions, have the opposite effect for the government. It reduces the risk that they have to step. If all the other alternatives have failed and you found a solution that do work then that is good and the law might then need to change to incorporate that success. It doesn't however change the reason why the government might still want to tell you what you can and cannot put into your own body.

Where I live we also have universal health care and meth stresses the heart quite a lot. The result is that when the heart start to fall apart it is the government that has to pay for repairs, and those are often quite expensive surgeries that need to be redone every few years. I am no doctor so I can't answer if 10mg is small enough to be safe, but if I was taking it I would find a doctor and do regular heart checkups.

Governments shouldn't be responsible for the outcome of their people, the individual should. This is the perspective difference we share. It's really a choice between individual freedom despite possible negative stats "addictions" vs less freedom and more government control while optimizing number of addictions. I value my personal freedom and see no reason why the government should pay for healthcare. In the USA, they caused this distorted market to begin with (see also student loan bubble)

The vast majority of countries where healthcare is both far cheaper and more effective than in the US have government provided healthcare. Most of those countries also have affordable or free higher education. So the smoking gun would seem to point at US style capitalism and lobbyists rather than government services themselves.

"It doesn't work in the USA" is increasingly very poor evidence when it does work many other places, and often has for over a half a century.

I understand the idea in theory but have a much harder time in practice to not want the government to take a final responsibility. If a child parents can't take care of them it make humanitarian sense that the government step in. We should not punish children because their parent won't take responsibility for the outcome of their own behavior.

Similar, I would want the government to step in and pay for healthcare when a victim get hit by a car driven by an uninsured driver. It is not fair to let the victim die just because someone else were unable to take responsibility for their own faults.

So to make a general theory, people should be responsible for their own actions when there is a high likelihood of repayment for wrong doing. For those things individual freedom is positive. For other actions which is irreversible and where individuals will sometimes be unable to take responsibility, and we expect the government to step in, then individual freedom may be balanced against risk.

2.5 mg methamphetamine daily saved my life.

Compared to dexamphetamine:

- It has less cardiovascular impact (no cold extremities, no excessive sweating, less "fight or flight")

- It has a lower impact on sleep (I can take a nap while under the influence)

- It lasts longer (9 to 12 hours, compared to 4 to 6)

- It makes living a balanced live easier (dexamphetamine would feed perseveration, meth makes switching tasks much easier)

- No noticeable comedown

Some of the downsides of methamphetamine include:

- A much higher abuse potential (however, I have never felt the need to exceed my daily dose. I want to live a normal live, not experience some shallow euphoric bliss.)

- It is unclear what the neurotoxic properties are in therapeutic dosages.

- The social stigma

Glad to see somebody else benefiting. Agree with most of the above, I do believe therapeutic doses are well studied and tolerated since this was frontline treatment a few decades ago.

Thank you for giving a counter example of how useful some of these drugs can be.

> I would argue the bad cases you’ve seen are from people with no self control.

Please reconsider this position. It is outdated and goes against all recent evidence about the science of addiction, and the chemical changes that occur in the brain to cause addiction. Addiction is a medical condition. It has as little to do with self control as having cancer does.

Yes that is fair. I think the stats are something like <10% of people that use meth are addicted.

Back in the mid 90's I worked on a concrete crew for a few months. It was a big outfit building tip up buildings like box store type, maybe 50 guys on site.

Everyone (I think) did meth except me and one other guy, a Native American. It was expected. The pace was set by meth. Lunch was about 10 minutes. Often we would get to work like 3AM for pours. I lasted like 3 months and couldn't handle it any more.

After awhile guys would burn out and not show up. No big deal, replace them with another guy. I saw my supervisor later at a restaurant. He told me how he had tried at one point tried to commit suicide. The resulting impacts on the former employees lives (and the lives of their families and associates) wasn't the companies problem so long as the building went up fast.

That company is still around too. No, not going to name and shame.

While I'm generally in favor of people being allowed to put whatever they want in their bodies there is significant moral hazard and danger. Particularly with drugs like meth and heroin.

Soda creates a much bigger burden on those programs as well. Much of the food industry does, as well as the alcohol industry and the entertainment industry (encouraging sedentary lifestyles). These things have a much bigger impact than a guy selling meth on the darknet.

I think as a society it is worth talking about limiting activities that are a net drain on society (and not just on health - also credit cards, advertising, the lottery, and much more). We don't do that, though. Instead we crack down extremely harshly on a small subsection, and completely ignore the rest.

Civil disobedience is the strongest way of bringing change.

We've used it as a tactic for decades and it's been the only reliable force for change.

There is no reason for your representative to listen to you in America unless you throw a wrench in the gears.

Good luck getting generation smartphone to do something.

Like BLM protests proved, you will just get ex-felons robbing honest people and burning down buildings.

Thanks for your contribution.

Just in case you don't know, there have been about 110 nights of continual protests in nearly every metro area in the US.

You may want to ask yourself why you're not joining in with them to influence the movement instead of complaining about it here.

Sure, but purely from the side of pragmatism, throwing people in jail isn't effective either. Treating them compassionately and giving them help for their problem works much better.

Also imagine saying the US has social safety nets.

The US has social safety nets.

I think you're falling in the same trap I fell in when I was watching jackass thinking: how is it fair that someone willingly puts their body in danger and we have to pick up the tab when they get injured and hospitalized.

News flash: we already pay for these things because emergency rooms can't ask for payment before delivering life preserving treatment. Also, we already pay for a lack of social safety net by paying for the cost to put so many people behind bars not to mention an unhinged law enforcement that refers to the population as civilians and has a motto like "protect and serve" while going to the supreme Court to get a ruling that the police has no duty to protect.

Of course, the government should try to limit drug distribution and sales. For example, we will still need strict labeling requirements. Unlabeled, improperly labeled, and unsafe storage conditions should be against the law. But it helps nobody to put anyone in prison for personal drug possession* or drug use.

*Assuming they are not selling/distributing improperly labeled controlled substances.

>Our government provides costly services for people who are incapable of taking care of themselves, and that drug creates a bigger burden on those programs.

Maybe the Gov should go after Coca Cola and Pepsi or McDonald's and Burger King. The fast food industry has caused more health issues peddling their poison than all the drug dealers in the country. An epidemic of obesity and related illnesses from type II diabetes, HBP, Heart Disease, etc have destroyed more families than all the marijuana use could ever.

Not that anyone will read this now, but I am disappointed how all these replies ignored the equation. If you want freedom to choose what goes in your body, you need to absolve society from a responsibility to take care of you if you screw up. It’s totally ok to want freedom for what you put in your body, you just have to be consistent and get the government out of the business of providing for you. Everyone saying let us take whatever drugs we think we should, no one saying they want the government to stop other services.

> But the guy had been selling methamphetamine too, which is life destroying poison.

Indeed, and if you feel this way, perhaps you should seek penalties against those who actually wrought the destruction: the people who put that methamphetamine into human bodies, where it does the harm.

I think you'll find that those people who hold the ultimate responsibility for this destructive act were destroying property that entirely belonged to them (to preserve or destroy as they please).

If we don't have the right to own and control our own bodies, the only thing in the world that totally unambiguously belongs to us, we have no meaningful rights to own or control anything.

At such a point (which is where we seem to be), they're not rights that are being respected, simply privileges temporarily afforded by the state to be revoked arbitrarily.

This is really an excellent argument. Thank you, am using this.

The war on drugs (officially) started in the 70s. What do we have to show for it 50 years later? Are there more drugs or less drugs today? How many lives destroyed by the drugs vs the enforcement and violence caused by their legal status?

While I whole-heartedly agree with you, it's easy to frame this situation in a misleading light: "we've been fighting drugs for 50 years, and we still barely have them under control. Imagine how much worse the situation would have been if we hadn't fought them! Now give us more money and let us be even harsher!"

Of course, this is pure sophistry, but it will appeal to many people. The better line of argument I believe is about the extreme positive impact that decriminalization/legalization have had in every single country that have tried. That is much harder to dispute and twist.

I understand it will seem that I am playing devil's advocate here, but the dose makes the poison. How are you to know that the folks buying the methamphetamine are not in fact experienced microdosers who are taking functional 5-10mg doses for productivity or ADD? While I have known methamphetamine users to take things too far, I've known far more heavy alcoholics who ruin their lives and their families lives dealing with them drinking each and every day. Aside from that, the government has no right to tell another man what type of substance he puts in his body unless he is doing harm to others.

Thats just not how it works and never will.

Our society should prevent stupid things / unknown things. Like lead paint.

And for everything else it should make sure people from themselvs are aware of the risks and should have options which are more favoriable then drugs.

It is absolutely possible to be a functional methamphetamine user. Methamphetamine is prescribed for ADHD under the brand name Desoxyn. Not as often as amphetamine, largely because of the tighter legal restrictions on methamphetamine, but there are still plenty of people who take that drug daily without fitting the stereotype of a meth addict (not to mention all of the functional illegal meth users who you wouldn't hear about because why would they want other people to know about their illegal habits?)

Meth does not make you incapable of holding down a job. It will probably make you incapable while you're in your chasing-the-high phase where you're constantly upping the dose to outrun your tolerance. But in the climate of prohibition, everyone either stops doing that at some point or reaches an equilibrium where they can't afford higher doses so they settle into a maintenance dose where they would be totally capable of holding down a job if they hadn't spent the last n months making themselves unemployable.

And why do they become unemployable? Because the word getting out that they use meth in itself makes them unemployable, and then because the price of meth is inflated due to prohibition[1], they turn to crime to make enough money to pay for their addiction.

Legalizing meth would certainly lead some people who wouldn't have otherwise tried it to try it, and some fraction of them would become addicted and suffer the health consequences[2], and many of those who got addicted would in fact become burdens of the state. But life would be better for anyone who did find themselves addicted, life would be better for people who didn't choose to try the drug on account of lower crime[3]. Some people who would try meth under prohibition would be less interested in it because if it were legal it would fail to signal their disregard for authority, and it's possible that the different personality types of new addicts under legalization would lead to different outcome, but it's probably not worth speculating about what differences there would be.

Legalization trivially reduces crime by denying an income stream to organized crime. If public policy under legalization were not entirely incompetent, and we were able to either help a significant number of addicts hold onto a legitimate income, or help a significant number settle into an affordable maintenance dose (which would be easier than it sounds since their drug would likely be much cheaper), then the criminal activity of drug users would likewise plummet. These cost savings surely offset the increased burden on the social safety net.

[1] This is generally the case with illegal drugs. Generic Desoxyn is actually extraordinarily expensive, at 1 USD/mg in the US. which is higher than the street price in some parts of the US per https://havocscope.com/black-market-prices/meth-prices/. It's possible that this has to due with the cost of achieving pharmaceutical-grade purity, but I'm skeptical of that. I think it's more likely that the price of the pharmaceutical drugs reflects one of the many market failures of the US healthcare system, or the costs of DEA licensing for its production and distribution. But it's worth acknowledging that a quick google search doesn't back up my claims about price inflation.

[2] The health consequences of meth are also exaggerated by prohibition. Meth is somewhat neurotoxic for chronic high-dose users, and definitely caridotoxic. The skin issues associate with meth addicts are caused by the meth itself combined with obsessive picking at the face, but while meth can cause some dental problems as a result of clenching the jaw and gnashing one's teeth, it's likely that most of the dental issues associated with meth addicts are actually cause by impurities in the drug that's available to them, a result of prohibition.

[3] This is critical: the consequences of drug use would be redirected from people who made no choice whatsoever to involve themselves in drugs to people who at least made some choice, even if they somehow didn't fully comprehend the consequences of that choice. And even for the latter group, the consequences wouldn't be as bad as they are under prohibition, though that group would probably be larger.

> (though I think it’s important for a functional society to obey laws, and get them changed if they aren’t working instead of just breaking them based on personal preference)

This is an unbelievably privileged position to take.

Are you not aware that the country itself was established in the finest tradition of civil disobedience?

The declaration of independence was an act of civil disobedience.

The end of colonial empires was an act of civil disobedience.

Slavery and segregation were resisted by civil disobedience.

Oskar Schindler is the only member of the Nazi party to have been buried in Jerusalem in recognition of his civil disobedience.

Are you really suggesting that all of these acts in defiance of unjust laws were morally wrong, and that everyone should have just waited for the law or regime to change?

You always hear calls for "civil disobedience" or "non-violence" when it concerns systems that the speaker may not want outright support, but is highly sympathetic to. You never hear anyone say that US should have pursued a path of non-violence during the Cold War, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, or during the War On Terror. In those instances, violence is assuredly the order of the day. But when the villain is the West, civil disobedience is the max discomfort they can stomach.

The majority of people on Earth and in the US itself would tell you that non-violence would have been preferable to the "War On Terror". All of millions of people who have felt the brunt of the US Cold War would tell you the same - be they peasants in virtually all of South America or Vietnam; or US soldiers sent to die in Vietnam.

Perhaps WWII is an exception to this, but it is absolutely in the minority. Wars of aggression (Cold War, War on Drugs, War on Terrorism) have never improved any part of the world in any way - they cause misery and poverty for the majority for untold generations, no matter what high-minded rhetoric is used to justify them.

I believe every person should act according to their own subjective morality and understanding of the social consequences of their behavior. In fact, that is exactly what they will do, regardless of what is written or spoken to them. If their acts agree with expectations it is only due to a coincidental alignment of beliefs.

I find it incredibly doubtful that I would elect to place myself in harms way to further any of the campaigns you've listed. I do not believe it is my place to judge others for doing so, however.

> But the guy had been selling methamphetamine too, which is life destroying poison.

Time to arrest the liquor store owners?

And don’t forget bartenders!

I think it would be great to remove social safety nets and a war on drugs.

Social safety nets are just forcefully taking money from people creating value in society, taking a fee to keep alive government bureaucrats, and give the rest to people who don't produce value. It's an incentive to not create value and a disincentive to do so.

If you want to donate to people in need, feel free to do it, just don't force the entire of society to do it.

The concept of controlled substances is ridiculous and I don't think it needs to be justified, unless you're a government shill who benefits from it or some authoritarian person who feel like they need to impose their values on everyone else.

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