Why I favor legalization of most recreational drugs

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I've also had a mom that wouldn't pick me up from school or take me to the Dr's because she was SO Paranoid about being caught being high, she wouldn't leave the house or call someone else to do it.

This is whats called a "negative externality." The way you approach this is with a harm minimization mindset.

So what was she on? The best way to reduce the risk of this happening is for her to get her stuff from legal sources who can use part of the cost of the drug to ensure she is able to care for her kids. When it goes to the black market, we have no say in how the harm is minimized.

Lets just say it was an opiate drug. The cost of producing a gram of heroin is about the same as a gram of coffee. What drives up the cost of it on the user end is that the supply has to get through a border and evade detection.

If that same cost was used to instead minimize the harm that is done by its usage, it would have far more beneficial effects.

A typical hardcore heroin addict can spend $100 a day on the habit, maybe more. Make it legal and that same money can be going to a social worker to check up on the kids and medical care to ensure that she doesn't overdose and die.

What you don't see in the black market from the user end is the number of people affected by the black market itself. Because black market sellers can't go to courts, they tend to resolve disputes with violence.

You want the harm concentrated in one area and to have the ability to reduce that harm as much as possible via taxation of the product with the funds used to reduce the social harms. As it is now, the harms from illegal drugs affect so many people along the supply chain who have nothing to do with the supply.

Idk I say legalize, then at least drugs can be regulated

like you could potentially trust that your cocaine does not have fentanyl in it. Meh me and my boyfriend do like cocaine once in a while but with the fentynol problem we aren't going to risk it. For sure better to go without than to die from that s**t being mixed in.

TBH for anyone whose life has been seriously (negatively) impacted by the drug use of family members and even parents I don't blame them for having proportional views on the topic.

This is part of why I'd rather use be licensed and the license require classes, exams passed, signed waivers, and in particular agreeing that if you are found to be in a situation where you do negligent damage of the sort that has to go on public record your license is revoked. The goal is to find a way to take this as far away as possible from stepping on the rights of either those who want to explore their own minds responsibly or those who'd be ill-impacted by others' misuse of said substances, especially children. Rather than play a tug-of-war between those two polls try to address both concerns adequately.

Exactly. Cocaine is not as bad as it is made out to be. Most of the complaints about it are from its high cost, but the high cost is due to it being illegal. The death rate from cocaine use (and cocaine itself, not from the drug trade) are less than alcohol. A lot of the cocaine deaths that do happen is because people are using it ways to economize. If it were legal and cheaper, it could be done in a such a way to incentivize drinking it. Even caffeine can be a much different drug if you snorted it or shot it up!

Yeah part of the harm reduction mindset is to accept that a percentage of the population is going to do things like this. So you can set it up so that part of the cost of the drug goes into harm reduction. Want to keep doing meth? Fine, keep a job. Legal amphetamines were widely abused in the 1950s and 1960s but when they were made illegal, meth exploded.

I'm in favour of drugs but only for other people. Everyone else needs to mellow out man.

One additional caveat is making sure that the cost and, in the case of some plants lack of variety, doesn't send people back to the black markets. California's been having that problem with marijuana based on how they're taxing it as well as the dispensary overhead costs.

I cannot condone legalization of many drugs that people want to consume recreationally nowadays. Being a chemist, I understand what they do in the human body and what toll one may pay with misuse. Also, I have basically lost part of my family to the drug world (methamphetamines and OxyContin). My oldest nephew and his wife abandoned their own children in the pursuit of drugs. My sister is now raising them. Is that fair to do to others?

Drug use effects shows up nearly everyday in my workplace. Try teaching students who are high as a kite, it really does not matter what the drug is. They are a danger to themselves and others in a laboratory setting involving chemicals. It makes my job this much harder to do. I will say that we will all pay a heavy price for those choices later on.

Uhmm.. So the issue is not the smoking of weed(dope ) but clearly it is the quality that is available ??

Ya'll need coffee

This quote sums up the whole reason for the right's War on Drugs:

If you show this quote to a Democrat, they'll support legalization.

If you show it to a Republican, they'll support stricter penalties and sentences.

A lot of what you are seeing is the dangers of making it illegal.

Nicotine is highly addictive and millions of people are addicted to it yet function normally. If opiate addicts get their fix legally, it would be more like cigarette smokers. Nicotine gets you "high" at first but addicts don't really get high, same with opiates. Eventually they just need it. It sucks, but its better than the alternatives.

What you said about the lab- same could be said about legal drugs like alcohol.

Yeah Nixon ramped it up for sure but even when pot and cocaine were made illegal, the record of the debate in congress was shocking.

Opiates, pot, and cocaine were all made illegal with arguments basically "____ are using it to lure white women and raping them."

With opiates (the first) it was "Chinese males are using it to lure white women into opium dens and raping them."

With pot, it was Mexicans.

With cocaine it was the crazed black man who went on murderous raping sprees because of the drug.

The funny thing is you can read the same about tobacco when rolled cigarettes were first introduced, but because tobacco had a strong domestic lobby, it ended up getting a pass despite cigarettes killing far more people than all other drugs combined by a gigantic factor.

No, it does not seem to me that this video was made by a Mormon. It appears to have made by an evangelical Christian who regards Mormonism as heretical. This YouTube channel also has a similar cartoon video about the Jehovah's Witnesses.

I'm not sure how accurately the video represents Mormon beliefs.

Anyhow, I agree with you about legalization of most drugs.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 05 Mar 2023, 1:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

IMO we really need to become a better neighbor to Mexico, for two reasons:

1) If we treat them too badly, they may eventually decide seek friends elsewhere, and we may end up with Chinese or Russian troops at our southern border.

2) If Mexico -- and Central America -- were better off than they are now, the U.S.A. would have much less of an immigration crisis at the southern border.