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Comment by vonwoodson | Hacker News Reader

This article seems to pose this as a problem... It's a victory! We have been working to end prohibition for decades, and it's working! In 22 states adults now have access to either medical or recreational marijuana and psychedelics, in general, are following a similar path. While the tone of this article (starting with the sad looking fellow with "addiction" in the caption) is what it is, I'm very happy and excited to see that people are coming to their senses to end this stupid "War on Drugs".

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You can oppose "prohibition" without supporting drug use. Most drugs are clearly harmful to the human body. This includes cannabis and alcohol. Hallucinogens can cause lasting psychological changes. Maybe you shouldn't be afraid of drug use, but you should be wary.

And I can't think of anything much more self-destructive than binge drinking. It's right up there with opioids.

I'd be cautious using language that groups so many types of chemical inputs under a single umbrella despite the gulf between them.

How is cannabis "clearly harmful to the human body"? Any amount?

I guess dry mouth increases incidence of periodontal disease. Some people get cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, but that's somewhat rare. With long term, increasing use, I personally experienced insomnia, anxiety, and lack of appetite. Only with 1g of dabs a week. YMMV. I've quit weed and alcohol, but I consider weed usually a lesser evil. Alcohol really fucked my depression up.

Smoking anything is bad for your lungs. Carcinogenic most likely.

Not all cannabis is consumed via smoking.

/pedant who finds it funny to comment on this because I don't even consume cannabis what with being allergic to it.

Let's assume the user isn't smoking or gaping it, but eating it instead.

Yeah, I don't understand why the grandparent commenter is so... happy about narcotics. Being in a permanent state of drug-induced euphoria isn't a good thing. Forget productivity—narcotics suppress every other natural emotion and memory, and people just become husks of themselves, always seeking that next high, that next injection. Alcoholism causes plenty of injury to others—drink-driving for one.

It almost sounds like the grandparent is going to welcome The Matrix. Are things so bad that they would rather take the blue pill and forget the real world altogether?

The host is dead but the substance continues to write drug positivity diatribe. Just another narco zombie doing whatever will scan for the reward button push to continur.

Name one negative thing about a drug should be a pre requisite to any adult discussion.

Hell, I could do that about cofee, drug of my choice. It's most likely loaded with cancer causing chemicals due to the roasting process. There, enlightenment first, needs and feels second.

Thank you, only on hackernews could one find levels of pedantry surpassing reddit, where someone will be so brain washed by the vestiges of the war on drugs propaganda that they'll try to demonize coffee consumption and call it enlightenment.

"narcotics" is not a singular item. You do not inject a weed. You are describing hard drugs. Cocaine, heroin, opioids, methemphetamines, and I like to include alcohol over an excess amount.

Psychedelics and green are not in the category of hard drugs. There is little to physical dependency. Nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar have much worse addicting properties and worse outcomes.

narcotics do not generally all create a "euphoria". Thc especially does not do this. It allows you to experience things in different ways, makes new connections. Some people use this to enjoy things more, same as humans have done since someone figured out the plant that feels funny when you eat it can also be smoked.

Psychedelics used in therapy bring out more natural emotion. That's why they're used.

It is remarkable how wishy-washy and borderline desperate pro-drug arguments can get.

Conflating medical/therapeutic use of narcotics (with clear, defined doses and dire warnings of overdose) with recreational drug use, making sugar somehow worse than narcotics... Also, really? Sugar? People need carbohydrates to live, and sugar is a carbohydrate.

> It allows you to experience things in different ways, makes new connections.

You know what also makes new connections? Talking to people, sober.

I suppose this entire perspective is a product of living in the thoroughly depressing and broken system that is the US. Sucked dry by the cost of education, by the cost of healthcare, by the cost of rent in cities, by the cost of pretty much everything, I suppose people have little recourse but to, as a commenter below so eloquently puts it, 'f*ck it, let's get wasted and high.' I also suppose the sugar argument comes from the US food industry stuffing high-fructose corn syrup in everything.

I believe that any recreational drug use—whether cannabis, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, or even nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, and excess consumption of sugar—should be treated with the extreme caution that they all deserve.*

> Conflating medical/therapeutic use of narcotics (with clear, defined doses and dire warnings of overdose)

What, pray tell, is the threshold of dangerous overdose for weed? For LSD? For psilocybin?

How many patients are admitted to hospitals each year suffering an overdose of these substances? How many of those patients subsequently die?

> making sugar somehow worse than narcotics... Also, really? Sugar? People need carbohydrates to live, and sugar is a carbohydrate.

Carbohydrates being biologically necessary doesn’t change the fact that sugar addiction is insanely impactful to the health of populations. In the US alone, obesity affects over forty percent of the population. A large majority of these people are effectively experiencing addiction to sugar.

And they are wrong about that anyway, there are essential fats, and essential amino acids, but there are no essential carbohydrates. Your liver will create whatever carbohydrate is needed.

With a lot of high potency weed consumption you are going to get various psychosis and such at higher rates, sure the public health ramifications are better than for alcohol..

But this thread is celebrating marijuana use and binge drinking at all time highs in a demographic as a natural ramification of ending prohibition?

Naturally, one should hope that there is an explanation that means overall use is a better public health situation after the prohibition. I.e. increased alcohol use is among generations traumatized by prohibition and younger generations will choose better for themselves.

> With a lot of high potency weed consumption you are going to get various psychosis and such at higher rates, sure the public health ramifications are better than for alcohol..

I suspect if you find the numbers for the rates of increased cases of psychosis you will realize how absolutely ridiculous this argument is.

“Higher rates” doesn’t mean a whole lot when the background rate is vanishingly small.

>Also, really? Sugar? People need carbohydrates to live, and sugar is a carbohydrate.

Heart disease is the leading killer in the U.S. you believe the arguments are "wishy washy" because you are believing rhetoric someone else told you. Likely someone paid to do so from a specific political party.

People may get "wasted", they also do this with everything else. Food and porn is most common, as is psychological abuse of others. These are physically addictive highs with far more harm.

You also forgot to address the "harm" part. You're using narcotics buzzwords and assuming green is the same as heroin.

Without being an expert that can elaborate on those points your comment is only a generic statement you likely read from somewhere else and are now telling everyone else that rhetoric.

The idea of "drugs are bad" requires one to not have knowledge of how medicine works or why it's created because "drugs" are no different from all the other medical drugs. Have you taken anti-anxiety meds? Perhaps lithium? Those solutions are barbaric when compared with cannabis and some kinds of hallucinogens.

Medical interventions must be fully encompassing. Everything is a compromise. Cannabis may be harmful, it is also very low on the list of significant harms, and high on gains for specific use. If you care about saving lives then regulate away sugar.

Except, please don't create any new prohibitions. Turns out it's really difficult to re-legalize anything.

If you don't want to use drugs, then don't use them. Leave the rest of us alone.

> "Hallucinogens can cause lasting psychological changes"

So can art, movies, and relationships.

This is the reason many show up to the show, not something to be afraid of. It's the feature, not the bug.

"The dose makes the poison" - Parecelsus

I find amusing how HN cheers on governments bullying the tobacco industries as far as forcing them to sell smokes with corpses on the packaging, while downvoting any dissenting opinion, but when it comes to drugs that actively ruin hundred of thousands of people's lives to the point years of rehabilitation are often not enough to fully recover, suddenly they love drugs.

Contrarianism? Or is it something to do with political affiliation?

Personally I think prohibitionism was a step in the right direction.

Are you possibly conflating hard drugs like crack with drugs like marijuana? I don't see people going to rehab over marijuana or even psychedelics.

I find it amusing how people can equate sending people to prison for their choice of drug to regulating product packaging.

There is no contradiction here. Tobacco is legal and nobody is trying to make it illegal. Tobacco has very clear and present health risks which were lied about for decades and nobody is arguing we should lie about the health risks of other drugs. Nobody wants a "Don't you want to smoke what your doctor smokes" ad for weed.

Alcohol is the only one of the drugs under discussion which actually ruins "hundred of thousands of people's lives".

No contradiction, Tobacco is objectively bad for people, these things are a blessing, and have been our whole existence on this earth.

I agree. Though how much is too much remains to be seen. The pendulum will swing too far one day. The more progress we make, the sooner it's too much to take.

In future generations we'll have the War on Drugs to look back on, so we won't make the same mistakes, but drug use will become too much at some point, and we'll look for other ways to curtail it.

Well the pendulum has been so far on the other side for so long that I personally don’t mind and am looking forward to the day we have this entirely hypothetical problem because it will mean that the opposite, darker era is over.

The gaining of freedom is indeed a victory. The potential self destructive misuse of that freedom (as mentioned in the article) not so much.

I don't think drug or alcohol prohibitions were aimed primarily at controlling the people and limiting their freedoms. The goal was to limit the harmful effects of substance abuse on society, even if the majority of people are reasonable and would not mess up their lives with drugs or alcohol. But the lawmakers solved it the standard way.

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