The Problem with Legalizing Drugs

The fact is that drugs other than alcohol are used by a small niche of the population. Furthermore the majority of the drugs are consumed by an even smaller subset of problem users within that niche, this applies to alcohol too. Worst of all whether it is alcohol or newly legal cannabis their taxation revenue isn't even enough to cover the health costs caused by their use. Drugs just are not a very profitable industry outside of select medical uses. The human demand for intoxication can be mainly seen as a social ill for society to seek to minimize the harms of. Through this lens it doesn't seem too wild an idea to seek to completely squash it through violent means of prohibition. Even for medical uses caution should be applied and one could generalize a trend to always seek to minimize and eventually completely forgo the use of drugs. I expect that the whole spectrum of various drugs will eventually be replaced by more nuanced and surgical biotechnological tools. For working with brains the current use of psychoactive substances are like using a shotgun for surgery! Why are you using drugs? Is it to improve the outcomes of your life? Is your use of positive benefit to you and those around you? Have you collected data and tested this? Could you stop your use for the purposes of such testing? If not, there might be help available!

Anything becomes an addiction if you abuse a feel-good activity so much that you become dependent on it to just feel normal. I feel great when I masturbate. I love smoking weed on the weekends and I love growing it myself. Whisky helps me relieve stress after a long day. I enjoy these things because I use them in moderation, it's key to not get addicted to something. People get addicted to all sorts of things. Smartphone addiction, gaming addiction and gambling addiction do more harm (and financial ruin) to society than hard drugs. You don't hear about those things because they are less visible, and doesn't justify massive budgets for law enforcement and surveillance companies. Maybe they should use their all so pervasive data collection to identify vulnerable persons at an early age and connect them to counselors. We both know they won't do that because that would actually solve problems wouldn't incite a moral panic in society.

>>19620 >Smartphone addiction, gaming addiction and gambling addiction do more harm (and financial ruin) to society than hard drugs. I am somewhat dubious of this. Perhaps due to hard drug use being so sparse their total harm could be less? Certainly it is a good argument that if drugs were decriminalized / demilitarized the violence related to their use would go down and there would be less tragic loss of life. Yet alcohol use still relates to a lot of violent crime even as a fully legal commodity so the decoupling isn't quite so easy to achieve! Quickly looking around I find estimates that mental illness costs about 4% of GDP and smartphones, social media and gaming make up 10-15% of GDP so I would argue these things are profitable in a way drugs just cannot compare. Looking at this purely through numbers can be hard because so many interrelated things that are hard to keep track of. Yet I do get the feeling that those in tech will have an easier time going to the hospital and looking in the eyes of the family of some kid who killed themselves over cyberbullying than those in drugs will have doing the same for the family of someone who was lost in the drug economy, licit or illicit.

>>19621 >Perhaps due to hard drug use being so sparse their total harm could be less? That's my guess. >Yet alcohol use still relates to a lot of violent crime even as a fully legal commodity so the decoupling isn't quite so easy to achieve! I would like to see the proportion of crimes related to alcohol use out of all crimes before we can agree on something. >social media and gaming make up 10-15% of GDP so I would argue these things are profitable in a way drugs just cannot compare. What proportion of that income benefits the population? It seems to me that most of that revenue is locked behind a handful of companies. Artists earn much less since the inception of Spotify. OnlyFans made prostitution accessible for the masses but concentrated most of that revenue around top 100 creators. YouTube doesn't offer a livable income unless you have >1 million subscribers. It is obvious that social media enabled a permanent displacement of wealth towards a handful of investors, creators, c-suites and some employees and it is a net negative for everyone else in lost time, opportunities, resources, and mental health. >Yet I do get the feeling that those in tech will have an easier time going to the hospital and looking in the eyes of the family of some kid who killed themselves over cyberbullying. I get the feeling that these companies benefit from giving children the fear of missing out and keeping them perpetually trapped in their platforms. Out of court settlements for those children are only a small rounding error in their quarterly earnings calls. >than those in drugs will have doing the same for the family of someone who was lost in the drug economy, licit or illicit What proportion of children have unfettered access to alcohol? Now, if you legalized drugs and tied it to in-person ID checks, how likely is it that children would be able to find any drug sellers who would be willing to risk jail and their business for some snotty kid?

>Why are you using drugs? Is it to improve the outcomes of your life? Sometimes, yes. Sometimes I want to explore, sometimes I want to let loose with my friends, sometimes I need a beer to numb the crushing weight of existing in this boring-ass dystopia. >Is your use of positive benefit to you and those around you? Sometimes, yes. I certainly have never gone to the hospital or committed a crime on drugs. Psychedelics need to be taken very carefully or they lead to psychosis, but on the other hand, the psychedelic community is already good at minimizing this harm with no government input. Things would probably be even better if they were allowed to operate legally. Marijuana -- who cares? I firmly believe all the lazy stoners in the world were lazy long before they started smoking weed. That said I've only ever seen people use heroin and synthetic opiates when they are deep in self-destructive cycles. I think the health and addiction risks from those drugs specifically is far too great. Meth, in addition, makes people fuarrrking menaces, and it should only be available in small controlled doses.

>>19624 >I would like to see the proportion of crimes related to alcohol use out of all crimes before we can agree on something. Just searching about it I find UK reports 39% of all violent crime involves alcohol and some US report of 4 in 10. >What proportion of that income benefits the population? It seems to me that most of that revenue is locked behind a handful of companies. Artists earn much less since the inception of Spotify. OnlyFans made prostitution accessible for the masses but concentrated most of that revenue around top 100 creators. YouTube doesn't offer a livable income unless you have >1 million subscribers. It is obvious that social media enabled a permanent displacement of wealth towards a handful of investors, creators, c-suites and some employees and it is a net negative for everyone else in lost time, opportunities, resources, and mental health. >I get the feeling that these companies benefit from giving children the fear of missing out and keeping them perpetually trapped in their platforms. Out of court settlements for those children are only a small rounding error in their quarterly earnings calls. Good points, but I don't see how the drug trade fares better in terms of inequality! >What proportion of children have unfettered access to alcohol? Now, if you legalized drugs and tied it to in-person ID checks, how likely is it that children would be able to find any drug sellers who would be willing to risk jail and their business for some snotty kid? I found these stats: 41.7% Of teenagers in 12th grade have abused alcohol in their lifetime. By the time they’re in 12th grade, 36.8% of teens have tried illicit drugs. It does not seem that the ID system is really managing to protect kids, of course without it the number would be higher. Yet illicit drugs which do not have an ID system still fall behind the rates of alcohol use by children. From my perspective intoxicants are a kind of natural catastrophe, a calamity upon society. Perhaps you could compare it to a monster that roams out there, if it has not set its sights upon your society then doing your best to keep it that way seems the most profitable course of action! Through this lens the violent treatment of drug users as modern day lepers seems palpable! Yet I personally believe the drug wars were a mistake and drug users should not be violently cleansed and instead loved and cared for so that they might outgrow the self-destruction. There isn't much political will to end alcohol use and I believe the drug wars are a distraction from treating this social calamity. Yet I question whether legalization of currently illicit drugs would in any way help rather than bring us further down this hole. >Marijuana -- who cares? I firmly believe all the lazy stoners in the world were lazy long before they started smoking weed. Searching for statistics I found that 3 in 10 cannabis users suffer from a cannabis use disorder and that this costs many billions. 2023 USA Overall Total of tax revenue from cannabis approximately $4,188,431,717 According to a study cannabis use disorder patients (4.2 million people in USA) cost $1057 per person in hospital bills, thats about 4.4 billion USD. The Canadian numbers are similar with 2 billion estimated costs and tax revenue amounting to 1.9 billion. I found this good quote by Babor et al( https://global.oup.com/academic/product/drug-policy-and-the-public-good-9780198818014 ): "Unlike technical problems that can be ‘solved’ and then recede into the realm of routine government administration (e.g. how to purify water or build a sturdy bridge), social problems like illicit drugs must be ‘solved’ again and again by each generation. Policy can minimise the damage drugs cause and what sort of problems exist, but it does not allow society to choose to be completely free of drugs or drug problems." Yet I yearn for a solution!

alcohol is only incidentally an intoxicant, its real value is calorie preservation.

>>19634 This doesn't make sense, grain keeps better than beer.

>>19619 >Why are you using drugs? As a result of soykaf mental health, which I can thank my parents for, because my amygdala has had a great reaction to beatings and belittlement :3 [/s]; at least I no longer live with them (so the pic isn't related). >Is it to improve the outcomes of your life? It improves life in the moment, however not the ultimate outcome, but I don't give a fuarrrk anymore. >Is your use of positive benefit to you and those around you? Well, they don't have to bother caring about me if I deal with my emotions this way, which I class as a victory to both me and those around me -I wouldn't want to be a burden.

>>19634 By delaying gastric emptying? ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

>>19634 based but really it is mostly an intoxicant >>19640 >>>alcohol == beer consider the following: wine.

>certain arrangements of letters are illegal >certain arrangements of pixels are illegal >certain arrangements of 1s and 0s are illegal >certain arrangements of atoms are illegal >consuming certain chemicals is illegal >evading taxes (read: subsidizing your local billionaire's next beachside mansion) is illegal When will moral crusaders settle in their own gated communities and not mess with what other people are allowed to do? Is freedom such an alien concept to you?

>>19676 You’ll get drunk before drinking a significant amount of calories.

That depends on your definition of a drug. Most people are on drugs by some definition. >>19682 >evading taxes (read: subsidizing your local billionaire's next beachside mansion) is illegal More money goes into the money big bosses take from their employees profits they produced than is taken from taxes.

>>19686 In Russia, taxes should be way beyond 50% of your salary, so I wouldn't be so sure.

>>19683 a normal beer/glass of wine runs ~110-150 calories a serving on a full stomach, takes someone w/o tolerance ~3 drinks to get drunk that's 330 - 450 calories in booze if you instead drank 1 beer every 2 hours, you could easily down 5 drinks before you got drunk thats 550 - 750 calories in booze most (inactive city-dwellers) need only 1500 - 2000 calories a day, so thats anywhere from 1/7 to 1/3 of your daily intake in booze alone. also important to note that modern beverages are hitting higher % alcohol than the "good old days" when calorie preservation mattered. sage for offtopic >>19682 devil's advocate: - i build a nice gated community without homeless, drugs, CP, bombs, and unregistered machine guns - the unwashed masses immediately bitch about not being included in my gated community - they bring CP, drugs, homeless, etc. in with them when they inevitably break in - i leave to start another gated community

>their taxation revenue isn't even enough to cover the health costs caused by their use. >Through this lens it doesn't seem too wild an idea to seek to completely squash it through violent means of prohibition. Do you understand that drugs will still exists regardless of your regulations? You can outlaw it and jail users and dealers, but in the end, your tax dollar just ends up funding the prisons to incarcerate these people for engaging in drugs. Meanwhile, that drug never actually left your city and your prisons are getting filled up for no serious reason than for the petty crime of smoking the funny green grass. >Even for medical uses caution should be applied- and it is. You have anxiety issues? Have access to a doc? Your doctor could prescribe you Cannabis instead of Benzodiazepine because benzo has STRONG withdrawal effects. The risks of the FDA approved drug could be higher than weed. I've also heard of LSD prescribed in Australia therapeutic treatment. (like to help treat alcohol dependence) >Why are you using drugs? For social reasons >Is it to improve the outcomes of your life? Purely for that? No. It's to have a good time for a moment. >Is your use of positive benefit to you and those around you? Yeah. We all having a good time. >Have you collected data and tested this? why? Source : The smiles on the faces of my friends? >Could you stop your use for the purposes of such testing? What tests? >If not, there might be help available! I'm not the target audience for help, but I'm sure someone somewhere appreciates the thoughts.

maybe healthcare shouldn't be funded by taxation so that people would have an incentive in keeping themselves healthy. Never understood why it should be my money that is used to keep some comatose drunkard alive.

>>19693 >Maybe waste systems shouldn't be funded by taxation so that people would have an incentive in keeping the streets clean. Never understood why it should be my money that is used to keep someone else's diarrhea away from public spaces. cmon.

>>19694 How does that make sense? Maybe it makes sense for infectious diseases, but how is letting a drunkard die of cirrhosis will make my life soykafty?

>>19693 the only counterargument i've got is that very rich people can help subsidize costs for poor people this could be considered fair, since it is rich people that drive up healthcare costs in the first place, by inflating expectations e.g: doctor charges 100000$ for checkup, nobody pays, price goes down vs doctor charges 100000$ for checkup, rich person pays, price stays same, poor people are sad >>19694 >healthcare, which directly and only affects each individuals body >vs >soykafting on the shared public property of the roadway granted, part of healthcare's job in the modern west is keeping drug addicts and alcoholics off the street, so that *kind of* helps clean up the public space but that could be accomplished for a lot less by just shooting them maduro style or imprisoning them or deporting them etc etc

>>19696 >but that could be accomplished for a lot less by just shooting them maduro style or imprisoning them or deporting them etc etc to me, it feels like we are just pulling out the weeds from the stem if we just do violence. Yeah it looks pretty once they are ripped up, but they'll pop up again in the same places and with more of em the next season. Gotta go to the roots. For a lack of better analogy here, like an herbicide, Healthcare helps speed it up by providing safer methods of using the drug in question. to eventually get people off the drugs. it starts with tolerating users and trying to get em out. Healthcare is a prevention layer. "but they weeds are still there" And yeah. like gardening you can't rip them all in a wide open lawn that the country is. you can't prevent them from regrowing in the long run either. but going to the roots sure beats just ripping them all willy nilly. keeps the lawn cleaner for longer. I feel we do gain more from helping em and putting em back in the workforce rather than deporting em in the neighbor countries or executing em. They are executing themselves anyway with how hard drugs kills a person.

>>19697 this is right in principal but I think you're looking at it the wrong way. The right way is to breed a population that doesn't engage in that sort of stuff, and the way to do that, generally speaking, involves killing drug dealers. And users.

>>19696 Rich people don't get rich by paying more than necessary, they won't agree unless you're very special or can point at poor masses rushing to overspend their infinite insurance money. And even then, they might just go to a cheaper country. Endless lawsuits helped too.

>>19700 *and the sort of people who try to shape society into a form that tolerates them,

>>19702 >>19700 Like you are on the drug board, arguing in favor of killing drug users?

Here I took my issue to chatgpt it suggests that legalization is more profitable even if it causes a 3x increase in use https://chatgpt.com/s/t_693979b531508191aecbcf89e1e49e50 The killing of drug users does not seem very profitable, they tried that recently in the Philippines and now their ex president is apprehended and on trial in the international court.

>>19701 >rich people don't get rich by paying more than necessary A lot of people get complacent if they are extremely wealthy. Doubly so if they did nothing in particular to earn it. I don't think rich people are the primary thing driving up costs, it's just price-gouging bureaucrats. It should be punishable by firing squad to be honest.

fuarrrking drugs man, most of all i want to be smoking crack and doing pcp but it comes with consequences and im willing to do anything so i dont end up doing what i most want to do. addiction is a bitch and to be honest i cant wait for this to be over and me to be dead.