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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

Do you seriously think people wouldn't OD on drugs if there were legal sources?

People ruin their lives pretty well currently with highly addictive drugs, and I don't see how increasing supply would stop that from happening.

You can be clever that sticks kill people all you want, but that's completely sidestepping why people are worried about drug legalization: many drugs have extremely well documented negative effects on people, and these effects end up affecting others as well (hence "no smoking in public places'-style laws), and it has a real cost to society (hospitalisation, and just the human cost). Last I checked Sticks aren't that costly to civilisation in recent times.

Trying to be clever with semantics won't convince anyone of anything.

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> People ruin their lives pretty well currently with highly addictive drugs, and I don't see how increasing supply would stop that from happening.

I don't see how prohibition and the War on Drugs prevented them from happening too. All that was achieved by the War on Drugs was a massive waste of taxpayer money[0], the creation of a large, organised, violent and powerful criminal underground[1], filling up of prisons with non-violent offenders[2], denying treatment to millions of addicts and treating them like criminals, and the violation of the rights, freedoms and liberties of large numbers of innocent people[3].

[0]-

1) http://cdn.thewire.com/img/upload/2012/10/12/drug-spending-v...

2) http://www.drugpolicy.org/wasted-tax-dollars

3) http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/06/opinion/branson-end-war-on...

[1]- http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/Crime-brief...

[2]- http://www.ibtimes.com/drug-offenses-not-violent-crime-filli...

[3]-

1) http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/balko_w...

2) http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/26290903/police-militariz...

3) http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10826084.2015.1...

What would you say the impact of the prohibition and the war on drugs have had on the number of people who are negatively affected by drugs? That must be considered too.

It's pretty obvious that drugs being illegal isn't stopping people from OD'ing, so I don't understand how this can be used as an argument against legalizing drugs.

I'm not arguing against legalizing drugs, I'm saying GP's argument is no good.

If you actually want to convince people on the fence (GP's comment is clearly meant only for the audience of those already convinced), it's more important to actually use convincing arguments. "Sticks hurt people" convinces no one.

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