Comment by pille | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pille | Hacker News Reader

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> Alcohol is however generally not defined as a hard drug

> Scientists could/do define the risk profiles for different drugs

The scientific risk profiles I've read have alcohol right up there on the top of the ranking for hardest, most damaging drugs. Sometimes it's at #1, but it's always right there in the big 4 with cocaine, heroin, and meth.

"Not defined as a hard drug" is a policy choice, almost entirely because of cultural/historic reasons, as you point out. Prohibition didn't work for alcohol, and it's not working for other drugs.

DUIs, on the other hand... harsh prosecution of DUIs is fine because they're crimes with victims, where other people are put into serious and immediate danger. That's a better approach than the overly broad, costly, and ineffective policy of simply incarcerating everyone for drug use.

Cultural and historical reasons do play a huge role, but we can see similar cost-saving argument for a drug that is distinctly less harmful than all the other drugs: Tobacco. My country is likely to start banning it sometimes in the few decades, and the argument being used is one dominated by costs and risks. Smokers are seen as a drain on the health care system, a health risk to other people in terms of second hand smoking, a major problem with littering, and irritating to people in public spaces. A lot of apartment owners and spaces around them are already trying to forbid it.

It will hopefully never end up as bad that people go to jail for it, but as culture is changing and public opinion about smoking goes more negative, tobacco as an accept social drug are loosing acceptance. In theory they could change it so that smokers loose access to public health care but I doubt such solution is preferable over simply making smoking illegal.

Last year they even made an half-attempt at making smoking illegal during a very dry period under the argument that smoking was a major risk for causing fire.

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