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Comment by techbro92 | Hacker News Reader

What is the argument for legalizing drugs that are contraindicated for all medical purposes, are toxic, and have a high addictive potential? How does it benefit me or society if my neighbor is permitted to choose to basically roll the dice on afflicting themselves with a debilitating chronic illness (severe addiction)? If I don’t want to do illegal drugs why would I ant to support this?

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I went to a southeast asian country and got a staph infection. I walked down to the pharmacy, asked the pharmastst for a topical and an oral antibiotic. 3 days later i was healed, continued the course the rest of the week and that was it. $12 dollars american.

I got another staph infection previously in the united states. Needed to go to a doc in the box who misdiagnosed it. A few days went by and i needed to go to another doc in the box who gave me topical and trued to give me a steroid shot. Needless to say it progressed and turned into fullblown MRSA which required admitance and a IV antibiotic. Extremely painful. I don't have the ability to add the costs but north of $10k easily.

That's why drugs should be legalized.

I'm sorry that happened to you. Sincerely. That sounds incredibly frustrating, painful, and scary.

I think your maximalist conclusion of "drugs should be legalized" might have some second-order effects that might be net worse for society, though. Addiction, misuse, MRSA, overdoses, etc.

But it's part of this world. Who is to say who can participate in aspects of the world?

How do you contrast this stance with say, Vietnam, where drug prescriptions are not required? Is their society collapsing?

It’s almost like there are other factors at play, and our system is an inadequate band-aid on those issues that has its own side effects.

Okay question was about drugs that are contraindicated for all medical purposes like heroin.

Also do you see any ironic connection between your two examples: easily accessible antibiotics and a medically resistant infection?

>"What is the argument for legalizing drugs that are contraindicated for all medical purposes, are toxic, and have a high addictive potential?

> That's why drugs should be legalized.

And dead men tell no tales.

Particularly the tales on why they shouldn't be legalized.

- People that want to do drugs already can buy them, with worse quality and the with the side-effect of funding crime at a planetary scale.

- Alcohol, tobacco & weed are already legal... why them and no other drugs? Check how many deaths do alcohol & tobacco provoke.

- Taxes, lots of taxes, literal mountains of money... a small percentage of which can be redirected to treating addicts.

Legal status of these chemicals is not going to prevent your neighbor from getting them and becoming addicted.

Legal status (along with stigma associated with it) does prevent them from getting help before completely crashing out. It has the additional side effect of whatever portion of their lives they come out of it with being completely destroyed by the legal process. You know, because chronic illness obviously deserves punishment.

So I guess the real question is: what is the goal? Help chronic illness, or punish people that do things we don't like?

Also, don't we already have laws for literally all the bad things someone can do while addicted? If not, then why is it bad just because they are suffering from a chronic illness?

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