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Comment by betterunix | Hacker News Reader

Pharmaceutical drugs are too inaccessible to really remove the criminal element from recreational drugs. What is really needed is for regulated, high-quality drugs to be sold over the counter, with loads of warning labels, to any adult who wants them. It make sound crazy, but we already do it with two of the most dangerous drugs known to man: alcohol and tobacco.

Nobody is claiming that there will not be issues with dependence or abuse of these drugs. The point is that people should not have to deal with dangerous criminals, nor should they be afraid of jail time for admitting their drug use.

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I kind of think we separately need some better mechanism for dealing with addiction, abuse, and self-destruction, regardless of the context. Unfortunately, I don't yet have anything specific to propose.

I agree. I don't have a specific plan, either, but I have intuitions. The key things we need to address are people's natural spiritual and medical curiosity. In another thread, someone pointed out some hackers hack to scratch an itch, not just for fun. I believe the same can be said for needlepoint, carpentry and heroin.

We could make space in society for people to explore the parallel worlds. Maybe a week per year research period. Many users I know of all types of drugs take them just to tolerate their jobs. We could somehow make work more tolerable.

We could make everyday life more fulfilling and have less stigma attached to exploring alternate states of mind. We need to find a way to fit or shoehorn this stuff into our lives because we can't eradicate it. Perhaps this is the skill of the shamanic ritual and modern day music festivals... to put boundaries of time and space around the exploration of this alternate states of mind. We need to protect and shepherd people into safe places while they're experimenting and keep them away from responsible areas like driving and machinery while they're temporarily intoxicated. We need to keep them productive even if they're using.

I don't think it's really fair to label tobacco as "dangerous". It's definitely toxic and it will shorten your lifespan by a number of years but it's not "dangerous". Tobacco doesn't make people do stupid things like alcohol does.

Yeah, but tobacco makes you smoke tobacco.

This note from the US National Fire Data Center:

  http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/tfrs/v11i4.pdf

suggests that a few hundred people die every year in the US because of fires started by people smoking in bed.

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