Dealers boldly peddle drugs on sidewalk tables in NYC NoMad

Is there any evidence that prohibition reduces harms from drugs?

My understanding was that it marginally reduced use, but significantly increased harms (due to impure drugs, interactions with criminals, treatment budgets being used for incarceration etc.)

It's probably drug-specific too. Making alcohol illegal probably caused more harm than making heroin illegal, since alcohol substitutes are often much more toxic than the real deal)

> When we were kids we didn’t do hard drugs because we thought we’d go to prison.

Isn't this like saying, "as religious young people, we didn't commit violent acts because we thought we'd go to hell"?

Was the threat of prison really the primary factor preventing you from shooting up heroin as a kid? (That's an argument in your favor if it was, but that's a foreign concept for me.)

Or just stop prohibition, which is probably the most disastrous policy of all time, wildly infringes clear civil liberties unambiguously intended by the framers, and finances cartels so sophisticated that they are effectively narco governments and so deeply intertwined with our enforcement apparatus that we’re effectively paying administrators in those cartels.

There’s one answer that makes any sense. It’s not politically feasible, yet, but there’s just one answer. I know drugs cause damage. Prohibition always, always, always causes way more.

> People don’t realize. When we were kids we didn’t do hard drugs because we thought we’d go to prison.

I'm not sure when you were a kid, but that wasn't much of a deterrent when I was 20 or so years ago. I don't think there's been a huge change in the incentive structure since.

>People don’t realize. When we were kids we didn’t do hard drugs because we thought we’d go to prison.

That's all that kept you from doing?

The possibilities of developing physiological dependence, shitty Quality Control/amateur chemistry leading to contamination, ending up dependent on people willing to kill other people over routine business matters, etc... wasn't enough to set off "bad idea" circuits in your head? Hell, just doing the research into the the bloody substances synthesis pathways was enough to get me to largely nope out of the idea.

...Jesus. That the cops may bust me was the least of my concerns. If the only message getting through to kids is "the cops'll getcha" we have soooo many better ways to get across how these substances are not a good idea to trifle with.