Why I favor legalization of most recreational drugs

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The only drug I am interested in is oxytocin.
And that has always been free.

Doesn't work well for me, because there's a "defect" in my oxytocin receptors (Rs53576(A;G)). So the most interesting drug for me is Ketamine right now. Used both as possible self-therapy and tool to induce a spiritual (psychedelic) experience.

People who want the state to threaten me with violence for possessing Ketamine are toxic.

Read what I wrote again. As I said it does not matter what drug it is. If the person is high in a laboratory setting, it is a major safety issue. It does not matter if the drug is legal or not. If it affects your ability to concentrate in the lab, it is not allowed there. I have kicked out students who were high on caffeine to the point that they could not hold a glass beaker without dropping it. Six double shots of espresso can do that.

Encouraging recreational drug use is a really bad idea. It will only lead to further pain down the road for all involved. I want to clarify that I am not talking about medicinal drug use that does have a purpose. However too many use it as an excuse to push the use of those drugs recreationally where I live.

As for the war on drugs, I have a much different way that it could be played out. You do not want to know.

How much more violent would you like it?

There is a middle ground between the War on Drugs and "encouraging" recreational drug use.

Even if most recreational drugs were legalized, there could still be laws governing their use. There could still be laws against driving while impaired, for example. There could still be requirements that various drugs be packaged with warning labels.

In addition to laws, there also could still be privately-enforced rules. Employers could still fire employees for being impaired by drugs on the job. You could still have the right to require the students in your lab not to be on drugs, and you could still kick them out if they are visibly impaired.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 05 Mar 2023, 3:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm generally in favour of legalisation but within limits. Harm minimisation doesn't really apply in this context as it relates to addict recovery. Legalisation has one issue in that reduces the effectiveness of preventative measures.

The goal of prevention is that children/teens don't experiment with recreational drugs in the first place. Young brains are easily primed for harder drugs.

I sometimes wonder if we'll look back at the normality of drinking alcoholic beverage in a similar manner to how we'd look at someone making a mixed drink with GHB. Compared to other things it's pretty bad, it just so happens to be grandfathered in due to historic contingencies and relative availability (with the added benefit that it helps make babies/taxpayers and causes people to question less rather than more).

Main reason I bring that up - I think there's been a heavy counterfactual skew in terms of how people actually view alcohol and caffeine on one hand and 'narcotics' (anything that got hit by the drug war) and the more one examines that basket the more they realize how little the later substances have in common.

One should encourage recreational drug users to use them in a reasonable way. E.g. don't do certain drugs in the evening when on the next day you have to go to the lab.

Once I took a dissociative drug (DXM) the night before the final exams, because I never tried that drug before. Next morning I could barely concentrate and felt derealization (though I was still one of the best students). Obviously I'd never do that again, and discourage everyone from making my mistake.

To be Klear.
My position is:
"To each their own."
As long as they don't affect others negatively.

Personally I don't much care what another individual imbibes, as such. The law doesn't much care how much alcohol an individual consumes as long as their behaviour doesn't deteriorate into anything harmful to others etc. Some employers see it as grounds for dismissal but I think as long as it's not affecting their job performance then it's nobody's business. Different people can cope to a different degree with some of these things inside them, so why not just judge them on important aspects of their behaviour? But as long as illegal recreational substances are illegal, the gov is artificially creating a problem of lawbreaking, associating with potentially shady characters, etc.

It gets a bit different when somebody using a substance (alcohol, cannabis, or whatever) is doing something that's already potentially risky to others, such as driving. It's unfortunate that the authorities focus on the presence of this or that in the bloodstream as some kind of perfect marker of competence to do these things safely. It's a very blunt instrument and "sober" people often get away with being unfit to drive while those with the wrong stuff in them get nailed for things that the stuff didn't contribute to. But it's hard to know what else could be done that would be any better. Society doesn't seem able to afford to apply due diligence to these things. Blunt instruments cause a lot of injustice, but they're cheap.

As for the self-harm angle, it would be nice if we lived in a society that particularly cared, and if that were so then I might support using a certain amount of force in protecting people from their own bad habits. But only to a degree. I don't want people being harrassed for not having their five vegetables a day.