Swiss capital city wants to test controlled sale of cocaine | Hacker News Reader

Swiss capital city wants to test controlled sale of cocaine

swissinfo.ch

18 pointselsewhen21 comments

Cocaine is rife in many major cities. The police are using it, the public, the politicians. It’s shifted from a lower class thing to a fairly widespread middle class tipple.

It’s also a hell of a drug. It’s cut with impure and obscure substances, but that doesn’t negate the actual addictiveness of cocaine itself.

It’s not like weed where there are several components to addiction. It’s a hell of a drug. And when you really understand what that means it’s a bit too late.

I’m all for reducing the influence on gangs and street peddlers. But selling cocaine, even if it’s cut with government mandated and safe agents seems a bit too far. I personally see it more in the medicinal methadone category than the recreational “let’s legalise everything” marijuana category

Huh, curious that the news site of the public broadcaster of the country doesn't clarify that Bern is the de facto but not dejure capital city...

As Wikipedia says: > Bern is referred to as "federal city" (German: Bundesstadt, French: ville fédérale, Italian: città federale). Swiss law does not designate a capital as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel, St. Gallen a.o.).

Because its kind of an irrelevant difference and everybody in Switzerland just calls Bern the Capital.

Bern is the closest thing the Swiss have to a capital. Most of the foreign embassies are located there (if not all, though some countries just have a presence in Geneva).

The most dangerous thing about cocaine is the nasty crap it's cut with and the violent gangs that control its distribution.

We literally craft laws that guarantee people will die from impure substances and that violent criminals will get richer, and we call it the morally correct policy. We pretend it is stopping people from using drugs, when in reality it simply ensures that a 15-year-old can get coke more easily than whiskey. It is fucking psychopathic.

a certain pleasure is derived from the fact that the substance is illegal, make it legal and people would pursue other substances instead because they are perceived as banned hence more fun

In reality, the legal substances are the most widely consumed by a gargantuan margin. It's a comically massive gap between alcohol/caffeine/weed and the apparently forbidden fruits you're referring to.

Also, how "forbidden" is cocaine really when it's universally available and ridiculously easy to get?

It is absolutely not "ridiculously easy" to get cocaine in most major cities.

Or even "fairly" easy. With a few exceptions it's still (at least) a moderate hassle.

I live in Rotterdam which has the distinction of being Europe's largest port and also Europe's largest cocaine port of entry. It's obvious to anyone living here there's lots of money laundering going on and ocassionally they'll make an effort to try and stop it.

Money laundering is the opposite of tax evasion. It's people trying to pay taxes on profit that they otherwise would not be able to pay taxes on, because these profits are made through illegal means. Money laundering is proof that criminals are willing to pay taxes on their income, so why not let them?

If the Dutch government were to magically stop all money laundering in The Netherlands they would receive less tax income, and would therefore either have to raise my taxes or lower the government's budget. My taxes are kept lower because of money laundering, yet I'm regularly told that money laundering is bad.

It's like you say, once you look at drug policy from a systematic viewpoint it doesn't make any sense. If you take any perspective other than jingoistic moralism drug policy makes absolutely no sense.

I think if you want to have public healthcare, the cost/benefit analysis of a drug like cocaine that has actual negative health implications becomes more tricky. Then there's the secondary effects of people becoming more prone to violence and risky behavior, which in turn increases healthcare costs even more and adds policing cost.

That’s what we need another highly addictive legal substance that’s harmful to health and can buy in every store.

Making it illegal does not eliminate its use. It reduces its use. 63% of Americans drink. 1.7% use coke (have in the prev 12 months).

It is only "illegal" in an abstract sense. It's play-acting, so we can pretend we're doing something good.

In reality, any popular illicit drug is universally available, with no regulation, no testing, no age-restrictions and no taxes. There are zero people who want cocaine and can't get it with relative ease.

I love the idea that if you legalize something that it will be available in every store.

When they legalized weed in Colorado I couldn’t even find carburetors at Napa Auto, only carbureted bongs! No WD-40, only WeeD-420!

Those jazzy grass smokers stuffed Williams Sonoma so full that you can’t buy “pots” anymore, only “pot”!

If they legalize cocaine, music stores won’t sell my daughter a trumpet for marching band, only “marching powder”!

Right? And in every single case, a popular illegal drug is more widely available than a legal drug. In most states you can't buy alcohol after a certain hour or on certain days, or you need to go to a state-run store. And there are limits to potency. Marijuana is of course highly regulated in every state its been legalized. And in both cases you're going to have to show your ID.

But coke and mushrooms and ecstasy? No age check, no state-run stores, no potency limits, and business hours are 24/7/365!

I would love to see more tests like this. If it works great, if not we can always roll it back.

Can you "just roll it back" tho?

I think the naivety with which drugs are discussed by the intelligentsia and petit bourgeoisie versus their real toll once normalized is impossibly dangerous at a societal level

Crack/paco/pasta base is *not* something to be played with, and it is ofc a direct easy to mass produce derivative cocaine with multiplies the profits of selling base cocaine itself...

Most people just want to get high, and they do (no one is stopping them), but they are forced to do so at vastly greater risk than if it was regulated. There will always be some people who want to push the limits, but we have ample evidence that, even given near-universal access, most people are pretty picky about the drugs they consume. Lots of people like to smoke a few hits off a joint. Comparatively very few people want to dab. Most people enjoy a beer or a glass of wine. Comparatively very few people like to take shots of 151.

Seems to me hash oil has become the preferred consumption method among young people. Not to detract from your greater point, but that aspect is maybe a bad analogy.

I don't think hash oil is necessarily ultra-potent. Wax (which I believe is what is normally used for dabbing) may be the most potent form to date:

https://thevape.guide/cannabis-oil-vs-marijuana-wax/#:~:text....

Most of the younger people I know smoke vapes, which vary in potency but are definitely not intended to get you as fucked up as possible like dabbing.

Hash oil is what old heads use to refer to anything that is used to dab with. All hash is going to be significantly stronger than the flower it was derived from.

You know a cocaine addiction isn't like a pipeline deployment right?

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