Comment by PM_me_your_math | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PM_me_your_math | Hacker News Reader

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PM_me_your_math

If you go outside, you will see what unfettered access to drugs does to a society. Of course, you don't need to go outside to see it, since you can do a search and find plenty of examples and studies. The truth can exist, even if someone doesn't want to do your homework for you. Late 19th century China comes to mind. Right now, one only needs to walk the streets of LA, NYC, Chicago, Charlotte, Orlando, Detroit, San Diego, Philly, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and any other city. You will see this on the streets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e72zMER95ps

Is this really glamour? How is it helping, exactly? I don't see any purpose to unrestricted access to these substances, unless your goal is to shatter and/or destroy the lives of 20,000,000 Americans.

I'll add that I think people should have a choice, but rights cease being rights when they impose on the rights of others. Weed, tobacco, and alcohol are legal, but that doesn't mean there is no cost to society. People do stupid shit after smoking. Tobacco has health care implications. Alcohol destroys families. Free access to fent, heroin, crack, cocaine, lsd, meth, and even mdma is going to incur a very big cost. Those are non-starters. And while I think mdma can be used under medical care, abuse of that specific drug incurs a debt.

The annual NSDUH survey disagrees with you. You know, actual evidence. And a random Sky News video about a specific increase in fentanyl-associated deaths where xylazine was detected is hardly evidence of larger trends.

https://www.samhsa.gov/data/release/2021-national-survey-dru...

> one only needs to walk the streets of LA

So you follow one poor example of evidence with another. There are many confounding factors for why large cities are more likely to have observable population of unhoused and drug abuse, such as availability of services and facilities that treat vulnerable populations and the habit of smaller cities to ship their vulnerable populations to these areas. Let's not forget stagnant wages and disproportionate increases to the cost of living and lack of housing.

Decriminalization also means we're not hiding away this vulnerable population by stuffing them in jails and treating the justice system as a half-assed mental health solution. Let's also not forget that the Greater Los Angeles area has a population equal to the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Utah combined.

> Free access to fent, heroin, crack, cocaine, lsd, meth, and even mdma

How do you jump from decriminalization to free drugs? What a silly attempt at a straw man.

So about your list of cities and the masses of homeless in them. Are you saying that drugs are legal in all those cities? It seems like the homeless issue is completely orthogonal to drug decriminalization.

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