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Comment by seanw444 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why it's illegal to partake of whatever substance/plant/medicine I choose to partake in, anyways. If I intentionally fused it with a far more dangerous chemical, and I don't make that obvious to the purchaser, then yeah, that should be a felony. Just like how false advertising is something you can take to court.

We treat the population too much like children. Let people make their own decisions. If it kills them, it kills them. They made their choice. If they want help, they'll seek it on their own.

If you become a public nuisance, and/or threaten or injure people due to the influence, those are also obvious offenses.

If you drive under the influence of chemicals that reduce your motor skills and reaction time, and alter your perception of reality, that is an obvious offense.

Other than those cases which we can almost all agree should be intervened, why are we telling people what they're allowed to do with their bodies?

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I'm actually in agreement with you here, but I can see the other side. You have a substance that you know, for a fact, a certain proportion of the population will abuse, to the detriment of both themselves and society at large. If you make it illegal, the proportion who fall to its ill effects may be reduced, even if the cost to those who still use it is greatly magnified. It's a classic case of what's best for society versus what's best for the individual.

I, personally, would argue that enforcing overly harsh rules results in a net cost for society, due to the costs of enforcement, loss of productivity to society by those you put in jail, etc. But the motive behind these laws is not always just "muh morality," and it's not a sure bet that allowing people unfettered freedom in their personal life is a good thing for society.

>you have a substance that you know, for a fact, a certain proportion of the population will abuse, to the detriment of both themselves and society at large

The problem is you can extend this to all sorts of things that people abuse. Sugar, video games, alcohol, caffeine, etc. The solution is not to put people in jail and ruin their lives, its to educate them on the risks and to provide solutions to get help when needed.

> You have a substance that you know, for a fact, a certain proportion of the population will abuse, to the detriment of both themselves and society at large.

I can understand why someone may take this stance, but I think this argument is something of a hasty generalization when it comes to drug policy. For starters, the policy alone (prohibited vs decriminalized vs legalized) does not appear to be the determining factor in the "certain proportion" of the population that use drugs problematically or otherwise. The US consistently has some of the highest drug usage and abuse rates compared to our western counterparts in Europe. I don't know of the exact reason for this. Could be other cultural differences between the US and Europe. Could be the fact that most European countries approach drug abuse as a public health issue opposed to a criminal one, and focus on harm reduction and rehabilitation instead of jail time.

I can think of many potential reasons between the US and Europe that explains the difference.

  1. Europe has a greater emphasis on welfare and has greater social saftey nets

  2. US private healthcare makes it harder for the poorest in society to get drug-related issues cared for

  3. US War on drugs being a historical political selling point to gather voters

  4. Private prisons; lobbying for stricter drugs laws equals profit

  5. Over-prescription of pain medication by US doctors; lobbied by pharmaceutical companies for profit

Some of these points don't apply at all to Europe, or do with much reduced impact.

As with most issues, this one can be reduced to collectivist vs. individualist. I'm primarily an individualist. Hence my opinion.

That reduction is lossy. There's a large middle ground where free individuals make agreements with each other to cooperate in ways that make them all better off.

The previous commenter's handle alludes to one possible item, crystal meth: that's a substance that doesn't seem to have any redeeming value, and a lot of risk for other cooperative endeavors. So perhaps we should all agree not to traffic in it. (And if we later find a good use for it that stance can be revised.) Mushrooms have a very different calculus, and all that said I agree in general that the drug war has been very badly conceived and executed.

Not to take from the (very real I am afraid) dangers of substance abuse (starting with alcohol and sugar, of course) - I am curious: who you trust more to decide for the individual: the person itself or the larger social group?

Well said. Nanny state vs the sovereign individual.

Yes, and the world consists only of responsible sovereign individuals, who need no guidance at all.

I refer to the 18th century gin craze, here's an impressive print: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/William_...

This picture is a like a caricature of satire for poking fun at prohibitionists, complete with the think of the children meme in forefront with the falling toddler. I love it.

In addition to sovereign individuals the world also have only responsible nanny states, who would not abuse their citizens.

An individualist with no definition of an individual is quite useless.

In particular, classical liberalism depends on rational actors. Even in the most liberal countries, there are ways to declare particular individuals as wards of another (disability, elderly, children, etc). Without rationality, the basis of classical liberal philosophy disintegrates.

So if we want to be consistent as a liberal individualist, we need to place rationality on quite a high pedestal, which means at least making concessions that those taking drugs ought to be temporarily at least deprived of particular civil rights.

> In particular, classical liberalism depends on rational actors

It does not; classical liberalism is an ideology that depends on a particular structure of moral precepts of rights, independently of how people might make use of them.

The utilitarian, rather than deontological, argument for laissez-faire capitalism depends on the rational (in a very particular technical sense) actors, but this is (while people who identify as “classical liberals” overlap considerably with rhetorical, at least, advocates of laissez-faire capitalism) not the same thing.

I agree with the sentiment and think that legalizing drugs like psilocybin is a positive step. But I have learned from seeing the consequences of drugs like fentanyl and meth that some substances are too dangerous and addictive to be available to the public. And in practice, cities don't have enough resources to deal with the consequences associated with them that you've listed. It is not practical to allow the use of drugs that consistently drive people to lives of crime and dependence. Often lives are damaged irreparably and the societal costs are incalculable, but emergency bills and social services can alone be staggering high.

But drugs like fentanyl and meth are still available to the general public despite being illegal. So the question instead is do the practical effects of illegality help society, and that's not at all clear.

I think if you look at areas that try to restrict the supply of these dangerous drug options you will find that that they are less available and expensive. When you look at areas like Portland/West Coast of US, you see that with increasing availability there are lots of associated problems. Perhaps there needs to be institutionally provided drug alternatives for those who have already become addicted, but id argue its very clear that lowering barriers to use has clear negative impacts.

I'm not sure that's the case. Meth and heroin was plenty cheap and plenty available in the deep south, and it's not like they're known for being soft on drug crimes down there.

Availability is more than just price. In the deep south its more difficult to buy/sell and use these drugs in public than it is in portland.

I'm mean, I'm from the deep south. They have a much larger issue with hard drugs than the west coast does. The drugs are just as available despite the increased enforcement.

Drugs have won the war on drugs.

And many people are too afraid to get help because of the potential consequences.

I no longer believe this after Oregon decriminalized drugs, there are no consequences and people still do not seek out help.

It takes time to see results. For instance it took a few years after Portugal decriminalized all drugs before their program really hit it's stride. There's a lot of societal infrastructure that needs to be dismantled and reconstructed for the new system and that takes time.

Would drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine be as popular if the population had as easy access to less dangerous/harmful alternatives like morphine or methylphenidate?

> why are we telling people what they're allowed to do with their bodies

I don't think this is a useful defense of permissiveness, because it proves too much. We don't let people mutilate themselves either, because we consider it an indication of wrong thinking. It just isn't the case that all choices are respected, because not all behavior is accepted either.

I don't think the state treats subjects like children. It treats them like components, components exist within tolerances or they are discarded/altered. The state isn't my parent, it is my master.

Would that make overdosing a criminal offense?

In the UK, being treated for an overdose is an expense of the tax payer. Obviously people still overdose, and that expense already exists. But the legality of dangerous substances is to minimize the harm, and therefore the cost associated with that harm.

A free-for-all approach would either have to accept a greater expense (not just economically) or introduce other measures to minimize the harm.

Whether free for all drug use would be more expensive is an empirical question and- if it displaces any alcohol use — the evidence would be strongly that it would cut costs, especially if basic standards for purity were enforced.

What would the punishment for the offense be? If it is prison time, that also costs the tax payer.

I've no idea. It's a complex arguement to make, and my few points don't do it justice.

I'm sure there is an optimal balance with legality that minmizes harm and cost. I think we are on the conservative side of that balance. But going for a free-for-all approach is the other extreme side.

We treat obese people (as is probably ethical) so we can as well treat all the other self-imposed conditions without counting the pennies.

I agree. That is why the cost isn't just economical.

We treat obese people while enacting laws to improve public health. Such as food quality laws.

This kind of hazard that helps legitimize criminality of risky health decisions (like drug consumption) is one of the major reasons why I am against taxpayer funded healthcare.

You can decriminalize risky health decisions without legalizing them. There are other costs to such actions other than economical cost.

As am I. If you want to make your own personal decisions, you can't rely on someone else's money.

If you are in society and altering your mind and impairing your judgement, you're no longer the default "you" but a chemically compromised and unpredictable actor, who may be out of control.

In her third week of college, my daughter found the naked body of a student who leapt through the eighth story dorm window to his death while tripping on magic mushrooms.

She is traumatized for life because somebody chose to make a choice with their body by ingesting unpredictable drugs.

I am fairly confident, given the state of pro-psychedelics evangelism today, that the young man expected a fun trip. Instead, he died and could have killed another student with his fall.

> leapt through the eighth story dorm window to his death while tripping on magic mushrooms

So if keeping them illegal apparently utterly failed to prevent people from having ready access to them as your anecdote suggests, what was the benefit of keeping them illegal in the first place? Other than funneling government coffers into the prison-industrial complex, itself perpetuating far more tragedy and engendering a far more dangerous society as a result...and not just for your daughter, but for everyone.

Was it this one this one [1]?

They don't know if he fell, jumped, or slipped. They only have released anecdotals that he ingested psilocybin. You don't know what kind of trip the young man had, you don't know if he had suicidal tendencies, you're speculating that psilocybin, if even ingested, was responsible based on nothing but your own bias. Hell, we have people falling out of windows to their death trying to catch cell phones they've dropped.

> If you are in society

Here we go. Every time I see a sentence start with this, I know that there's a "we need to protect everyone from themselves" take that's sure to follow.

This is the kind of boomer anecdote I call bullshit on. My father is in his late 70s and any time low-dose medicinal studies around psychedelics are brought up he defaults to the same kind of Nixon-esc paranoia about "gateway drugs" and "I heard about..." boomerisms, because he lived through the 60s and saw things he didn't like, and is incapable of considering new information. It's the same kind of thinking that has cannabis still illegal at the federal level. Psilocybin, like any intoxicant or stimulant, can be lethal when abused. You can die from taking too much Tylenol, and the doses aren't even that high [1].

[1] https://nypost.com/2010/11/08/death-plunge-at-the-st-george-...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK441917/

No, it was this one. [1]

I would respond more in depth, but your total lack of sympathy shows a dismissive bias as tenacious as any boomer you insult.

[1] http://www.montanakaimin.com/features/a-death-at-aber-hall/a...

Sad story, condolences to all who knew Otto. Something that stuck out to me from that article was that his floormates were aware of his condition prior to his death and were worried for his and their own safety, but weren't sure what to do. I imagine the legality of the substance played a role in that; they were likely conflicted as to whether to seek medical/police help which would almost guarantee legal issues for Otto, or do nothing and risk his well-being.

They’re not joke substances.

But for every mushroom related death, there are literally tens of thousands of alcohol related deaths.

I don't disagree. Not long after that incident, a drunk frat student plunged to his death at the same college.

Maybe what society needs is each city gets its own walled Sin City, a sort of padded playground where people can choose to risk hangovers, overdose or death by their substance of choice, without being amid general society. Then after they sober up, they get to return to society.

Perhaps you know already, but for the record the Oregon law only allows psilocybin use under trained supervision.

In the case of alcohol, in my opinion we need a similar cultural attitude. Your state flips on your 21st birthday from absolute prohibition to...as much as you want. We need not so much a place for people to safely binge, as to guide them to considering for themselves why they would want to in the first place. Some people always will of course, just like there will always be people who drive like assholes.

> Maybe what society needs is each city gets its own walled Sin City

Or perhaps the inverse, where folks like yourself can live fully protected, and insulated from individual liberty.

Or just an indoctrination process focused on personal responsibility to one’s consciousness and loved ones; instead of a deranged “education” composed of a fixation on prohibition and self-repression.

America has a smart play here, actually. Your "can I use drugs?" test is "If you were a drug user, would I know?". That's why I worked at startups with rampant use of cocaine. I've used psychedelics for years. Loads of people I know go to Burning Man and do hella drugs. Everyone in the group is doing fantastically.

But someone I know told me a director at his bank was fired for inviting interns over after a bar crawl to do drugs. Or something like that. That was the test: do you know who to let know what you do?

puritanism and moral authoritarianism. People love imposing their morals on others, and most are taught from a young age that drugs other than alcohol and caffeine are bad

I personally don't take anything (other than maybe some over-the-counter painkillers when I've got a minor injury, or what doctors prescribe to me - just to quell the gotchas). I don't drink or smoke cigs, because of the obvious health defects that are associated with them. Drinking less so, but I am personally concerned about acquiring an addiction.

But if there was one thing I would consider trying, it's psychedelics. It can help you think outside the box, apparently has some link to treating depression, and they're not particularly addictive (other than an adrenaline junkie type of addiction, which can develop with anything).

Point being, I don't do anything of the sort. But it baffles me that people are incapable of allowing others to do things that they personally don't want to partake in.

Don't underestimate the amount of lobbying the alcohol industry does to make it seem like always having a drink is the best and only way to wind down and have fun.

> I don't know why it's illegal to partake of whatever substance/plant/medicine I choose to partake in, anyways.

You could start thinking outside the frames your government and/or religious leaders wants you to to keep between.

Why? All you have to do is read through an HN thread on some financial product with high risk, say interest-only mortgages, to learn that if you give people freedom to do what they want they’ll turn around and blame someone else when things go wrong.

I agree that adults should be able to take whatever substance they want, but I also know that if we did that people who had negative experiences would then blame the media, sellers, their parents, the medical establishment, the internet, the courts, the FDA and anyone else for the consequences, except themselves.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

> If you become a public nuisance, and/or threaten or injure people due to the influence, those are also obvious offenses.

Too many good innocent people will be unable to fix the issue once it gets started. This view may appear well intentioned but the end result is suffering for people who are lied to by people offering prescriptions or who fall for the people who talk up legal things that they themselves like but that are actually bad for health. (Like alcohol)

> if it kills them, it kills them

This attitude is fine, and I understand it, if it's accompanied by actually letting people fail. Unfortunately, when they do fail, it's the impetus to start yet another social welfare program for people who made terrible decisions, instead of just regulating the terrible decision out of existence to begin with.

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