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Comment by devwastaken | Hacker News Reader

"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.

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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.

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