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Comment by drzaiusapelord | Hacker News Reader

The operators of Silk Road were mafioso's that ordered hits on competitors and people they didn't like. The whole, "we're just a bunch of gentle hippie libertarians and the evil police state can't handle how chill and peaceful we are" is both factually and morally false. Please stop repeating it.

http://www.businessinsider.com/silk-road-boss-ordered-6-assa...

I also support 90% of the drug laws out there. The argument that heroin and meth should be legal is asinine. I'm not the police state. I'm common sense. I don't care if the meth dealer is a hip and gentle guy. He's empowering others to destroy their lives, which very often leads to more crime as addicts will steal or even kill for their next fix.

disagree downvotes dont change the truth: Ulbricht ordered kills casually. Physically addictive drugs cause social harm. All the libertarian claptrap in the world doesnt change reality, sorry Rand Paul supporters!

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> The argument that heroin and meth should be legal is asinine.

I don't think it's asinine. There's clearly reasonable arguments for it: mostly that the consequences to society of harsh crackdowns on drug abuse are worse than those of legalisation - in particular that addicts feel that they have no option but to kill or steal in order to obtain their next fix.

Do I think people ought to do hard drugs? Absolutely not, it's clearly a terrible idea. I just think addiction should be treated as a medical condition, not some righteous moral crusade. Legalisation might be a step too far, but criminalisation isn't clearly a better option.

I recently saw an episode of "Anthony Bourdain - Parts Unknown" where he visits Colombia. He talked to locals about the drug trade and one person he interviewed made a very good argument that stuck with me:

Many people see drugs as a single problem with a single solution (eliminate all the drugs). But it's much more reasonable to see it as two problems: trafficking and use. Trafficking would be decimated with legalization and money fighting it could be spent on programs to help users.

Minor point but one that I think is valuable. Decimating something is to reduce it by 1/10th. You are thinking of it as an analogy for destroy which it is not.

Every dictionary I can find defines decimate as "destroy a large part of." A few of them mention the 1-in-10 definition as obsolete.

Trafficking would be decimated with legalization and money fighting it could be spent on programs to help users.

Yes, as Portugal has shown us.

> He's empowering others to destroy their lives, which very often leads to more crime as addicts will steal or even kill for their next fix.

What about alcohol? Cigarettes? Poker? Penny stocks?

All of these things have contributed to people blowing their savings, futures, and ruining their own lives and their families' lives.

By criminalizing drugs, people who want to fix their behavior are unable to because they're afraid to go to jail.

What we need is support centers, like we have for alcoholics, gambling addicts, sex addicts, internet addicts, and addicts of any other kind. Prohibition didn't work for alcohol in the 20s, and it hasn't worked for drugs.

I agree. Social campaigning will be much more effective than prohibition, that's what we do for legal drugs which also are devastating for addicts.

Prohibition does absolutely nothing to control drug demand. It makes the supply swell until it overruns law enforcement's efforts to stem it. It makes hard drugs with stronger effects for a small dose more profitable for smugglers, because they're easier to ship. And as American alcohol Prohibitionism showed in the 20s, it makes drugs more popular among the underaged.

What's this argument that if N vices are legal, then N+1 vices should be legal too? Yes, it's true that alcohol can ruin your life, but that fact is not a good argument for legalizing heroin.

It depends how you read it. If proponents of banning a drug (say, marijuana) argue that it should be banned because it is harmful and will threaten the fabric of society (or something), while more dangerous drugs are legally and readily available, and have failed to destroy society, parent's argument is reasonable.

> I'm common sense.

Common sense is a great place to start from! Then you do science. You predict what will happen under various policies; you try some options and observe what happens; you revise your understanding of the problem; and repeat.

From the few places where people are thinking that way, it seems like the best approach is neither criminal law nor pure legalization, but regulation, treatment and harm reduction. There are some examples in this report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy:

http://www.undrugcontrol.info/images/stories/documents/Globa...

But we still have a huge amount to learn, because for the most part we're not even trying -- just sticking with the "common sense" approach of looking for a larger hammer, when hitting the problem with a smaller hammer failed to work.

> I also support 90% of the drug laws out there. The argument that heroin and meth should be legal is asinine.

Why exactly?

> often leads to more crime as addicts will steal or even kill for their next fix.

You realize the drug laws you support create this behavior, right?

People steal alcohol bum and steal money to get it and it's legal.

> He's empowering others to destroy their lives, which very often leads to more crime as addicts will steal or even kill for their next fix.

What do you think about state organized lotteries then?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA

Asinine? How many people do you think are dying from opiate use now, compared to when prescription painkillers were easier to get? Heroin use has actually had a massive increase due to the laws you support. Imagine if opiates were legal and well regulated. So many families might be dealing with substance abuse rather than death of a loved one due to guessing what's in an illegal plastic bag. Similar to moonshine which caused blindness and death during prohibition.

> He's empowering others to destroy their lives

So does Farmville.

Opiates build dependency that takes weeks to recover from, and 90% of heroin addicts relapse. Lets not kid ourselves.

You haven't met a Farmville addict, I take it?

> I don't care if the meth dealer is a hip and gentle guy. He's empowering others to destroy their lives

You do know that Paul Erdös, the most prolific mathematician of the 20th century (if not ever) was a meth addict, right?

I'm not saying "meth is good"; but that blanket generalizations are bad.

> Paul Erdös [sic]...was a meth addict

Do you have a reputable source for this? Wikipedia and a quick "Paul Erdos meth" Google were both fruitless for me.

He is probably referring to how he took amphetamines, which aren't meth.

Paul erdos was an amphetamine user in his later life.

You will have a better luck with "Erdos amphetamines" or something like that.

Still, uh, using amphetamines or amphetamine analogs in controlled dosages from pharmaceutical sources is a pretty normal thing to do, a pretty normal thing that doesn't seem to cause a whole lot of problems for most people. We give it to children to make them sit still, and many adults take it, too.

There are some analogs, like Methylphenidate, which are said to be less addictive, but many people prefer, and use Adderall, which isn't, and both are deemed to be safe enough to give to children in small doses. We even give straight up Dextroamphetamine to some people (though it's rather less common)

I mean, dosage is super important, of course, and so is purity, but yeah, lots of people take small amounts of amphetamines without problems.

Edit: As someone else pointed out, methamphetamines are similar in effect to, but generally more dangerous than amphetamines, and the latter, I believe, is what Erdos, and most everyday users under medical supervision use.

He was addicted to amphetamine (Benzedrine) or methylphenidate (Ritalin), not methamphetamine.

Paul Erdös was prescribed Ritalin in 1970 when he was nearly 60 years old and had already produced the bulk of his work. He was probably addicted but never varied from his doctor-prescribed dose. Also, Ritalin is nowhere near the same as Methampetamine.

http://amphetamines.com/amphetamines-vs-methamphetamines/

http://amphetamines.com/paul-erdos.html

Argh! I stand corrected. Apologies for the confusion.

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