Decriminalization is this weird grey area where it's legal(ish) to possess small quantities, but generally not to produce, sell, or distribute.
Decriminalisation keeps the organised crime and dodgy product while removing any sort of demand reducing effect keeping it illegal had.
This is not a sufficient step, but a likely first step in normalizing the use of weed in the eyes of the public. Abrupt changes scare people (and for a good reason).
In any case, were it about health and well-being, it likely won't look like a war.
I think makes sense for drugs govt won't legalise like Heroin, while they should legalise lower end drugs like pot.
> The problem with decrim is that it forces users to interact with criminals to get their fix.
also, decriminalization is usually a step towards legalization. because it's too much to straigh-up legalize them.
also, it's beyond me how some people can get on their high horses about what drugs are okay (alcohol? coffee?) and what drugs are not okay. we should have figured this out by now - but seems that we're going to need more time /s
So legalization seems to be the way forward, i do wonder what organized crime will do in response.
The most lucrative crimes are Counterfeit goods, drug trafficking and human trafficking according to this source.
https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/6240-ngo-transnational-organi...
so you decriminalize it first and after that you make it straight up legal.
Organized crime is going to move to other things in response. There is a risk/reward curve.
I suppose Meth and Crack are not on the list of legalized drugs, which means that half of all drug offenses will not be affected.
Still, halving drug offenses is not a bad result.
Source:
https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...
Allowing businesses to legally sell, develop, and advertise addictive psychoactive substances seems dangerous to me. History has shown that if they come up with a new compound that is 20% more addictive but 15% more dangereous, you can bet that this will be their next best seller. On top of that, we should welcome their "innovation" for tax dollars and give them a legal shelter ?
We already have seen what it leads to with opioids, even when we gate it behind doctors prescriptions: a usage crisis. We need more control, not less.
And we need a legal framework that does allow us to help users instead of putting them to prison, that does not pack the courts with addicts, and that allows the police to focus on more pressing issues. That is what decriminalization is about.
Extreme repression is as bad as extreme indulgence, there is a middle ground.
Look to the commercialization in US states like Colorado as a better (but not perfect) model.
[0] if you want to be pedantic about it, owning up to 5 cannabis plants is decriminalized, but nobody is under the illusion that such personal use scale agriculture is fueling the commercial trade
Sounds crazy, but one of the best models in the United States right now is actually the state of Oklahoma's.
It's fairly straight forward, easy to apply, and barrier to entry is low. Fees are low. Not a lot of red tape. It's working well.
Legalize It All: How to win the war on drugs
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
It's an excellent read which addresses both sides of the drug legalization debate, side effects of the legalization and how to prevent the bad side effects and presents similar actions in other countries.
A significant majority of my conservative friends are also moving in this direction. Conservative leaning Justice Clarence Thomas today said federal laws against marijuana may no longer be necessary: "The federal government's current approach is a half-in, half-out regime that simultaneously tolerates and forbids local use of marijuana,” the conservative Supreme Court justice wrote.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/clarence-thom...
Now, I am for legalizing and pardoning (non-dealing/manufacturing) weed, cocaine and mushrooms. The only reason I am hesitant for heroine, meth and fentanyl is because if I remember right, heroine and meth get laced with fentanyl which is very easy to overdose on. But I am willing to be corrected if that's not the case.
The last month's ban on menthol cigarettes and flavoured tobacco is a step backwards unfortunately. Considering menthols are preferred by 86% blacks and 46% hispanics, it will just create a new black market and put more of them in prison.
With that said, I don't want everywhere to devolve into San Fransisco either where you see needles everywhere and addicts tweaked out everywhere. Most people who are against legalization aren't going to agree with it if they see things like how San Fran is turning out. So the legalization must be done correctly.
If they are legalized and provided via stores which check ID, that would reduce the black market, reduce cartels across the border, reduce gangs, drug dealing and reduce the prison population which had played a major role in wreaking havoc on many families. It would also reduce policing gone wrong / corruption and have less "rebellious" kids doing it.
The argument you usually hear back is that if those harder drugs were more regulated, there would be no accidental overdoses where the street drug has been cut or consists of unknown quantities, safer places to consume, no drug deals gone wrong, etc... I am still not sold on the solution there. I know other countries have some sort of program that gets pointed to, but I don't know enough to comment. I do only know that those drugs have absolutely wrecked the lives of people I knew. If they were legal they still seem to be so addictive that the user's life is 100% focused on getting high as often as possible. So maybe some regulation so that certain people can get those drugs but without risk of overdose? But isn't that what methadone is for? I am sort of rambling here as I try to form a better opinion - because if we just outlaw those certain, very-addictive drugs, a black market will always exist. But that is also something I would never want my family members to try on a whim.
If users know exactly how strong & how much they're taking then it should greatly reduce overdoses. Some will still happen but, as a society, we've decided a certain amount of alcohol overdoses are acceptable. Opiate overdoses would get similar consideration.
Isn't injection the more "quicker" way for heroine though?
Patches would also be a very viable option. My partner once received a fentanyl patch at the hospital for an injury. She later told me it was an instant trip to a very happy place, and she could understand why some would get addicted to it.
We in the US like to plaster freedom everywhere. And it's FREEDOM this, FREEDOM that. But I'm sad to report most people don't understand what freedom means. Freedom means that you can do whatever the f you want, anything, as long as you don't impact other people. If I drink alcohol, smoke weed or do heroin or mushrooms, or like to bang my head against the wall - as long as it does not impact you you should not care about it. Period. That's true freedom.
When it comes to legalizing or forming an opinion about something IMHO the question should be: is this going to impact me? If the answer is not I believe that be default we should not put any gates or laws or rules in place.
I think the govn should step in only to regulate the quality of the product (ie: if you're gonna sell weed it better be weed, if you're gonna sell alcohol it better be alcohol etc) not to dictate what is okay to sell and what is not okay to sell.
Is our medical system so well tuned that people receiving a procedure that literally saves their lives is inconvenient for you?
Do you agree that people that need and want help should receive it?
Where does your personal freedom and where does my personal freedom begin?
That said, nalozone should be stocked in every pharmacy across America.
Just like needles. Needles can be bought in CA.
Hell--I would put it in emergency glass boxes all around SF, and most cities.
(To anyone addicted, bupernorpine works pretty well. Most of you could get down to a very low dose of bupenorpine pretty quick. It really helped me. I was never a bad addict. I just started taking pain pill from a nurse friend. Well, kind of a friend. She meant well. I could have just told her no, but didn't.)
In the nineties, a friend of mine called me up, and asked me what do you do with someone who is overdosed.
I told him there was naxolone, but it's only available at the hospital.
He called back while in transit. She died at the hospital.
He was living next to CVS pharmacy. If it was available, she would still be here. She wasen't even a long term addict. It was her second time using.
I immigrated from India to Canada and plan on immigrating to US in the future. So I have experienced the ongoing failed "war on drugs" in India which has created a major overdose problem along with worsened the police/government corruption and thrown many people in prison. I have also seen the legalization of weed couple years ago in Canada.
I agree with you about the "Freedom means that you can do whatever the f you want, anything, as long as you don't impact other people." and share the exact same opinion. That's the same standard I apply to everything else too - from gay marriage to freedom of speech. I don't care about what's happening in someone's bedroom or whom they are having sex with as long as it's consensual adults. That's also why I am free speech absolutist. I absolutely hate the smell of weed and have never touched any drugs. But I want it to be legal because I believe the federal government/police needs to stop wasting tax payer resources on shutting down fundamental liberties. Similarly I believe we need to learn to develop a thicker skin and ignore things if they offend us instead of censoring/banning them using governmental or trillion dollar corporations. Just like sunlight is the best disinfectant for free speech, same approach with drugs. Same approach to allowing euthanasia (and even suicide but that can get messy and impacts too many other people so maybe not).
Let drugs be legal and prevent black markets and ensure "proper advertising" like we do in every other industry. Make sure regulations aren't getting in the way of the industry to the point where the government has to step in to subsidize them (Canada and California are having this problem).
It can mean you have to go to a government-run outlet, and if it's your first time, someone is going to ask you some pointed questions about why you want to buy it, make it very clear to you that heroin addiction is a real risk and no fun, maybe offer some counseling services on the spot as an alternative, and if you're still determined to get some, you can fill out a form and get a card with your face on it to present next time.
Note that this isn't the same thing as a prescription, where a doctor is gatekeeping access to the medicine / drug in question. It's an approach which acknowledges legal drugs as less harmful to users and society than the alternatives, and stresses harm reduction for everyone and ending addictive patterns for users who are able and willing.
> The only reason I am hesitant for heroine, meth and fentanyl is because if I remember right, heroine and meth get laced with fentanyl which is very easy to overdose on. But I am willing to be corrected if that's not the case.
When you look at this through the lens of business it doesn’t really make sense. Drug dealing is a financially driven business and there’s not an incentive to cut drugs like heroin and meth with fentanyl. Both are HIGHLY addictive in their own and in the case of meth it’s actually really counterproductive. Neither drug needs assistance from fentanyl to become more addicting. But beyond this, fentanyl is pretty dang valuable by itself on the streets and hard to come by. Why cut heroine with something valuable when you can use baking soda or sugar?
Honestly the whole “laced drugs” thing is a scare tactic that doesn’t pass the smell test in my eyes. I’m willing to change my opinion but it really doesn’t make sense to me.
Fentanyl is synthesized in China or Mexico (with precursors from China) extremely cheaply and without the need to maintain large plantations. It can then be imported to the US much more easily than heroin (extremely potent by weight and doesn't smell as much) where it's then diluted/mixed with other drugs. This is easily provable, there's tons and tons and tons of evidence/documentation of all of this.
I don't understand the original posters point either though, because providing addicts with clean drugs and access to treatment is the only real way to curb the current fentanyl epidemic.
You are right about that. When I was referring to fentanyl laced heroine, I was talking about black markets. If it's legalized and the production is regulated, then that problem won't occur.
Stop watching fox news. Only the small areas where homeless people congregate have those homeless problems. The rest of the city is normal. Every major city has sketchy areas filled with all sorts of problems.
Please refrain from dismissing view points with ad hominem attacks "right wing nonsense". That doesn't further the discussion to anywhere productive and is equivalent to "she's a witch" from 1600s. You are not talking in objective facts. Ignoring the problem by yelling "La la la, I can't hear you!" and gaslighting people by claiming what they are seeing is not real and is some Fox talking point is not going to encourage those who are reluctant to make drugs legal to change their mind. There is a very serious problem with homelessness and needles/feces to the point where they literally have an app to report poop on the streets.
Here's all left leaning sources:
> 2018: Survey of Downtown San Francisco Reveals Trash on Every Block, 303 Piles of Feces and 100 Drug Needles
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/diseased-streets/16660...
> NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit reported a 20m² 153-block downtown area it surveyed was littered with refuse. The team found discarded needles on 41 blocks and piles of feces on 96. In July, a major medical association canceled future events in the Golden Gate City because of its filthy streets.
https://www.newsweek.com/san-francisco-needles-human-feces-1...
> 'It's raining needles': Drug crisis creates pollution threat in San Francisco, across US
https://abc7news.com/needles-found-in-sf-left-on-streets-rep...
> EPA Issues Violation Notice To San Francisco Over Needles, Human Waste
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/10/02/epa-issues-viol...
> Business Insider: San Francisco's dirtiest street has an outdoor drug market, discarded heroin needles, and piles of poop on the sidewalk. The block's homeless residents — including drug dealers, addicts, and the mentally ill — leave behind piles of feces and discarded needles.
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.businessinsider.co...
> 'SnapCrap' app invites San Francisco residents to report poop on city streets
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SnapCrap-app-San-Fran...
Even this year's Academy Awards events had to clean up the homeless people before holding the event:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/homeless-ordered-out-of-la...
No one is going to write an article saying "normal day in Glen Park" witriing articles about needles gets clicks. So I think your confidently uninformed. Maybe listen to people who live there instead on forming opinions based off stuff you don't have experience with. You don't know about drugs and you don't know about sfs homeless situation and you don't know about the city.
Your first article just focuses on the tenderloin. Homeless doesn't equal drug problems. There's way to much to unpack and set straight here.
> I have left leaning friends there who run businesses and it's very well reported even by them.
CA has been the state which has lost population because people are fleeing the state and one of the reasons is "Filth":
https://travelmedium.com/usa/california/why-are-people-leavi...
I also stated I am very pro legalizing all drugs. I think you are being insincere on purpose because despite me presenting multiple left leaning articles which go against your narrative, you prefer to have blinders on. This discussion isn't worth going forward.
What your saying and the conclusions your drawing make no sense. Your also showing a misunderstanding of the nuances of san fransisco. Your own articles show that these problems are concentrated in historically problematic neighborhoods. Go back to the original quote i picked from you, it shows a complete lack of understanding of what is going on, and you cant form a coherent argument.
Show me one article that says, sunset, richmond, bernal heights, glen park, excelsior, pacific heights, presidio, noe valley, balboa park are full of needles.
Your inability to make ad hominem attacks prevents me from replying further. Have a good day.
[1] - https://theconversation.com/re-criminalizing-cannabis-is-wor...
I suppose if we go down the rabbit hole, if a person is so moody they lose their job and they have children dependent on them, that's a problem. I would put that in the same category as drinking on the job though.
[1] - https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/mari...
Everything hurts others. People and their actions don't exist in a vacuum - we are all players on a team called "society"; the actions of people, even if done privately, can end up affecting the performance of the team. Cars, alcohol, and tobacco are all legal, and all of those things end up harming others directly or through second/third order effects.
I'm not necessarily against decriminalizing or even legalizing marijuana, but I don't think the reason for doing so should be because it "doesn't hurt others", but rather because governments should infringe on liberties as little as possible even if it means bad consequences could emerge from abuse of said liberties.
If you really want to think of it as a system, then the proper way to think of drug usage is as an escape valve for societal issues like loneliness, hopelessness, etc. If so, then it's important to legalize it so that it can be monitored and measured; if it's measured, then society's government can focus on reducing that measurement as low as possible by treating the systemic issues and not the symptom.
Look around yourself, how many people are fat? That is how well people will responsibly use drugs. A large majority lacks the self control to properly use these substances and the law helps them do it.
Your comparison to the obesity epidemic is a non-sequitur. People abuse drugs to fill an emotional hole in their lives. While that does sometimes happen with food, most overweight people in the US are generally happy. The obesity epidemic isn't caused by people abusing sugar to escape unfulfilling lives; it's caused by callous government policy that makes healthy food expensive and junk food cheap. Too many Americans genuinely lack access to healthy options, let alone ones that are economical.
It's true people need purpose in life. They can find purpose in art, in travel, in maintaining a personal garden, in maintaining connection to their community. Not through bullshit jobs. What's the point of humanity if we can't truly automate the toils of physical and knowledge labor to somewhere south of 10 hours per week? What's all of this for, anyway?
Let people have their legal weed and live a little. We don't need to work so hard. We've achieved so much innovation in the past few thousand years, we ought to enjoy it before perishing, or continuing focusing our lives wholly on work.
I used to think that but I don’t anymore. Not having your shut together and not being a contributing member of society hurts others, so drugs aren’t harmless. Drug users are people’s kids, parents, etc., who have responsibilities and often can’t meet them because of their drug use and that hurts people. And the ship has probably sailed on letting drug users die in the street if they need help so the cost of welfare and services are also a burden.
The real question to me is whether making drugs illegal actually creates more burdens than it avoids. I suspect the answer is that if the culture condones drug use, you’ve already lost that battle and making it illegal is pointless. Laws should help reinforce norms. If the norms have broken down, enforcement of the law needs to be too coercive to be feasible. For example divorce also imposes tremendous social costs, but we probably can’t fix that by repealing no-fault divorce laws.
That policy hasn't historically worked well.
People can actually overcome all sorts of mental and physical problems using these substances, and if that's not a net win for society, I don't know what is... especially considering the abominably ineffective mental health system and insanely expensive medical system.
Religious, sacred, and sacramental use of these substances is something many people also value, as is just having fun or connecting to others in loving ways (as with MDMA).
Not everything's about being a worker drone in the system and valuing your life and everything you do by how much you can contribute vs how much you cost.
Cannabis too can be used sacramentally, spiritually, recreationally, or medicinally. It can be an appetite stimulant or a sex enhancer. Some can get insight through it, while others prefer to get so stoned they can't think.
It's helped me to reconnect with my feelings and motivated me to seek therapy. It can be a wise teacher if you listen.
Or you can watch cartoons on it and eat snacks..
The many uses of it are not mutually exclusive, but how you use it and what you get out of it is your choice.
We’re watching this happen to a friend of my BIL now and it’s hard to watch. To be fair the kid’s problems started with his parents exercising “choice” to pursue serial marriages instead of raising their kid, but smoking pot (with a blow torch apparently?) isn’t helping.
The story about potheads that mess up their lives are usually stereotypes of people in rough situations that are f'ed with or without weed. It's usually poverty and lack of opportunity that messes you up, not smoking a joint
Study and publicize the risks, the rest should be left to personal decisions.
“Meth dens”, like “crack houses”, are a thing which prohibition may punish, but does not prevent, but instead creates.
Also, completely tangential. But poverty is the thing that really kills people (including driving them to seeking the thrills of hard drugs). I can almost guarantee that there is a correlation between income level/standard of living and meth zones.
Does that mean you should do stupid things and ruin your life? Probably not. But this is not about doing stupid things. It's about having the option and the option not being constrained by arbitrary things (ie who gets to decide that A is good and B is bad, A is okay, B is life destroying)
also, one thing to consider: It's mostly non-controversial that pot is harmless nowadays. The more you go back in time, the more pot was painted as wrecking your life, a gateway drug, etc. So a lot of what the effect of a drug are can (and is) hearsay + fear-mongering.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4337025/
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4827335/
Definitely seems to suggest there are potentially harmful side effects.
ever take tylenol? the pain killer that is available OTC virtually everywhere? do you know what happens if you take double the max recommended dosage? liver failure. for something that's OTC.
for all intents and purposes weed is harmless. In WA, most people that I know have tried weed and some of them are actually doing it on a regular basis. I have yet to hear of any [mental] health issues.
If you do something all day everyday you are dealing with something else and the drug is a way of escapism.
Do you think a few hundred people in the central government should decide how to handle those situations, or the people most intimately familiar with the details?
we want a caring society but not at the cost of restricting personal freedoms
And smoking weed doesnt? They are both plants.
The content of cannabis smoke is quite different from tobacco smoke, and in particular it contains a lot of terpenes, and the cannabinoids themselves, which are potent antioxidants.
Last I checked, cannabis smoke was implicated in COPD, but doesn't appear to contribute to lung cancer. That was at least a decade ago, however.
The problem is that, like the old "we had to destroy the village to save it" cliche from Vietnam, the War on Drugs destroys the very lives it purports to protect.
The illegality of drugs means that the drugs people buy are either not what they're sold as or are of an unknown purity, which leads to overdoses. Such unintentional overdoses from mistakes in gauging substance or purity would virtually disappear if drugs were legal.
The organized crime that runs the drug trade kills many people and has a corrosive effect on our justice system and government and that of many other nations. That too will be greatly reduced with legalization.
Arrests of users, killing of them and their families by police during raids, imprisonment, separating families and ruining lives by all of the above and on top of that criminal records for possession are yet another horrific consequence of the War on Drugs.
Rights are thrown away, police power and surveillance of the population is ratcheted up to ever greater levels in the name of fighting the WOD. Billions of dollars are wasted and billions more given to organized crime instead of paid as taxes to governments.
And on top of it all the WOD is not even effective. People continue to use drugs anyway, if they want to.
So what is the point?
And quite literally everything is harmful in one way or another, it's just a matter of degrees, and people should be allowed to make their own decisions.
That's a strawman, but I'll roll with it. Yep, totally fine with it (although I have not used any illegal drugs). Mostly because there are massive amounts of people currently using prohibited drugs. Why not study and make known the risks instead of hopelessly trying to directly control everyone's actions?
At a higher level, I do not believe in any authority's ability to consistently produce a net benefit over long periods of time by deciding what substances are legal. I do however think that the markets will figure it out pretty quickly.
Just like if an adult wants to go skydiving, which is a risky activity, it should be their choice.
There's no reason we can't apply the same reasonable controls to cannabis.
As far as I know there's no way to tell. Last I checked the available drug tests could only tell if you've used cannabis in the last 30 days, not if you used it on the day you were driving.. and even if you had that doesn't mean you were high at the time you drove.
Drug tests should really be replaced with performance tests.
It's none of their business if you're high. What matters is if you can drive safely.
Seems that you are right that there is no reliable way of testing for this (and the 5 nanograms might have been pulled out of someone’s a…ttic when the law was written).
Cannabis is way more restricted and controlled than tobacco or alcohol in most places. If you buy cigarettes or alcohol, cops won’t bother you. If you’re caught with cannabis, you are potentially facing criminal charges.