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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of people who want all drugs to be legalized haven’t spent time in a place where they functionally are. It’s not a pretty sight.

Try parts of the Midwest and Appalachia. Industrial jobs went abroad and never came back, leaving large swaths of the population in poverty and without any real career outlook beyond low end retail. Enter fentanyl. It only made most of these problems worse.

Decriminalization, not legalization, seems like a far better path to me for seriously addictive things like heroin. If it’s not combined with serious economic plans to help the unfortunate, you’ll just be further embedding an already disadvantaged underclass. Against billion dollar advertising campaigns (which will happen with full legalization), the average person doesn’t stand a chance.

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Drugs are not “functionally legal” in the area you’ve pointed out, and the issue you point to is economic in origin not drug related. This is not a coherent argument.

Now the argument you’re getting to is somewhat coherent, which is it could be dangerous to let advertisers loose with severely dangerous and addictive drugs like heroine. But the answer to this is rather easy, you don’t. The same way tobacco advertising is regulated, you regulate drug advertising and provide outreach for those who are addicted.

>I think a lot of people who want all drugs to be legalized haven’t spent time in a place where they functionally are. It’s not a pretty sight.

>Try parts of the Midwest and Appalachia. Industrial jobs went abroad and never came back, leaving large swaths of the population in poverty and without any real career outlook beyond low end retail. Enter fentanyl. It only made most of these problems worse.

That's why you let the government provide clean drugs at cost and let professionals administer the drugs. This saves on healthcare costs because cutting agents (such as brick dust in combination with a something stronger e.g. substitutes such as fentanyl) cause 99% of the health risks associated with drugs. The other 1% are caused by overdoses directly leading to death or mental decline. None of them will happen when you have professionals taking care of your dosage and tapering it off over time to reduce chemical dependence. Since people no longer have to engage in prostitution and theft to pay for drugs they are financially better off and you will see a reduction in crime at the same time.

I think you’ve completely missed the point of my comment. These people are on drugs because their livelihoods have been destroyed. Making their drug use less dangerous doesn’t make it any less of a tragedy and economic problem.

Prostitution and theft are also not really an issue in the mentioned areas.

heroin's not part of the bill. did you even read the article?

The comments here are discussing drug legalization in general, as is normal for virtually every HN topic (ancillary issues to the actual link.)

you're still attacking a straw man

Considering that the top comment is arguing for exactly that, no, it’s not a strawman.

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