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Comment by cubefox | Hacker News Reader

> Illegal stills make quality control impossible, so legalisation and government certified testing can make it safe.

Another way to increase safety is to reduce the availability of illegal stills without quality control by enforcing the ban.

(Anyone who thinks otherwise presumably also thinks all hard drugs should be legalized since this presumably wouldn't lead to an increase in consumption.)

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I think hard drugs being legal would greatly increase the amount of responsible consumption. Methamphetamine used to be purchaseable from any pharmacy over the counter in the US, and there was not a meth crisis at that time. Now there is.

>Another way to increase safety is to reduce the availability of illegal stills without quality control by enforcing the ban.

I can see you're lacking some knowledge on what makes up a still, as well as it's completely legal use for distillation of water.

A still is just a bucket with a heat source and some vapor collector and condenser. It's easy to build from a couple of pickle jars and hot glue if you're determined.

And you can literally buy them on Amazon!

> (Anyone who thinks otherwise presumably also thinks all hard drugs should be legalized since this presumably wouldn't lead to an increase in consumption.)

Why should the government be in the business of reducing consumption? Do you believe alcohol to be immoral, and the government's role to be enforcing morality?

Do you believe heroin is immoral? I don't. I think it's dangerous, which is bad, and it causes addiction, which reduces freedom more than banning it.

I do think heroin is dangerous, but I'd favor regulation (such as we do for alcohol, which is also dangerous, though certainly less so) over prohibition. By far the most dangerous aspect of heroin and all the illicit opiates is that you don't know what you're actually getting. Makes it extremely easy to unintentionally overdose.

But you're out here trying to ban spoons thinking it's going to reduce access to heroin

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