Donald Trump

I don't think crack or meth should be any more difficult to buy or sell than alcohol.

1. The quality of product would greatly improve. I'm not saying they're great for health under any circumstances, but removing black market activity would certainly result in less deaths from consumption.
2. You can't just sell alcohol, you need a license; if you sell to under-age, you lose your license. There's probably other rules I'm not privy to. Totally unrestricted drug trade is bad for the same reason it's bad with alcohol (which can also lead to deaths).
3. DUI would still be DUI.
4. For the most part, commercial products would not contain large amounts of hard drugs, for much the same reason that you rarely go to a bar and ask for a pitcher of 151 neat. Most likely mixed with other, tamer stuff.
5. Schools would still warn children against the dangers of drug use (my 6yo can stop already telling me to quit smoking, kthx)

And yeah, no one needs hard drugs. But seriously, open your eyes and look at the costs, domestically and internationally, financially and in human lives, of trying to go to your local crackhead and saying "hey, we're going to take this from you so you don't hurt yourself with it." You'll fight a war over that? It's just too high of a cost; it's madness. If people want to harm themselves so bad, let them; if they want to harm others, there's already laws on the books for that.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

I don't think crack or meth should be any more difficult to buy or sell than alcohol.

1. The quality of product would greatly improve. I'm not saying they're great for health under any circumstances, but removing black market activity would certainly result in less deaths from consumption.
2. You can't just sell alcohol, you need a license; if you sell to under-age, you lose your license. There's probably other rules I'm not privy to. Totally unrestricted drug trade is bad for the same reason it's bad with alcohol (which can also lead to deaths).
3. DUI would still be DUI.
4. For the most part, commercial products would not contain large amounts of hard drugs, for much the same reason that you rarely go to a bar and ask for a pitcher of 151 neat. Most likely mixed with other, tamer stuff.
5. Schools would still warn children against the dangers of drug use (my 6yo can stop already telling me to quit smoking, kthx)

And yeah, no one needs hard drugs. But seriously, open your eyes and look at the costs, domestically and internationally, financially and in human lives, of trying to go to your local crackhead and saying "hey, we're going to take this from you so you don't hurt yourself with it." You'll fight a war over that? It's just too high of a cost; it's madness. If people want to harm themselves so bad, let them; if they want to harm others, there's already laws on the books for that.

Sorry man I don't see it that way. There are things that don't belong in our society and im all for exploring other ways of dealing with the drug issue but that does not include making it "no more difficult to buy or sell than alcohol."

That sounds silly to me.

I grew up in the midwest. Scrotie, as much as I want to agree with you ideologically, meth, herion, and cocaine cannot be legal to sell. I do think decriminalizing possession is a good idea, though.

(and complete legalization of everything else, including hallucinogens)

No reasons in the posts above, just denial. I mean, I'm not an idiot, they're probably unstated.

Still, the biggest problem with handling drug issues is that people lose their rationality and give into emotion. There's a lot of feels and not a lot of thought. That's something which needs to change if we want our solutions to improve.

And legalization, criminalization, for someone with a serious drug addiction neither of these things are going to really help the addict. If you want to help people with a problem, the solutions lie elsewhere.

I'm mostly in the same situation than Antnee, I've seen disturbing things. As a kid I saw poor people sniffing glue, and then there is Paco, somewhat similar to crack, killing people in a few months and starting killing sprees for some coin.

Here is how I see it: with hard drugs, legalizing it can be as problematic as not legalizing it (but we can't be sure; will general access to drugs end being more or less violent that the status quo? If cigarette companies has shown us something, it's that they'll lobby to the death any attempt at controlling the quality of a drug, and they'll misinform the population for many decades). Also, people lose their liberty to make choices if things get bad enough.

I don't think complete legalization should be completely ignored as an option, but there is one thing to try first, and that means, actually treating addicts and not misinforming people about drugs, as (part of) US has done systematically (bah, the world in general, but you hear more shit from US, specially with mass incarceration). Netherlands and other countries are trying that thing, and it will be interesting to see the results in the future.

I hope that having relatively soft, and effective stuff (like Marihuana) should be enough for people to get high, and the rest of the drugs loss enough market. Combined with treating addicts and giving information to people, it could be enough to make the problem manageable.

One factor that is not adressed frequently too: bad living conditions push people toward drugs. No solution to the drug problem can exist without solutions to the poverty problem. That would require to escape the "why do I have to do something for other people?" mentality. And ironically, it would require to escape the "why can't I spend on this random shit?" mentality too.

If that fails, yeah, Scrotie's solution. But that would be a Godzilla's threshold.

It's the good old idealism vs pragmatism debate.

But yeah, if the laws you implement to mitigate a problem only serves to make it worse, then that is a set of laws wich has lost it's purpose.

However, I don't doubt for a second that unscrupulous corporates wouldn't exploit the living shit out of addicts, as they tend to do with anything else that will net them profit. Borderline psychopatic suits earning millions on keeping people addicted to heavy narcotics isn't what I'd call a solution, though it may be a small step up from feeding the cartels. I suppose at least Mexico could be better off, and that's not nothing.

"

Upandatem wrote:

I don't doubt for a second that unscrupulous corporates wouldn't exploit the living shit out of addicts, as they tend to do with anything else that will net them profit. Borderline psychopatic suits earning millions on keeping people addicted to heavy narcotics isn't what I'd call a solution,

As opposed to the cartels... or, hell, even as opposed to the low-level corner dealer. There isn't a rung on the ladder currently where such abuses aren't presently likely.

What legitimacy would bring would be visibility. If you believe covering the wool over one's eyes makes problems go away, then keeping things black market is the answer, because it is in the industry's interest to remain hidden.

But if you actually want to address problems with addicts instead of running from them, legalization is the answer, because with legitimacy comes the public eye, and you know business have to worry about PR. I don't even believe a huge host of regulations would be needed, public pressure would probably be sufficient... although admittedly you'd have to see how it plays out.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

No reasons in the posts above, just denial. I mean, I'm not an idiot, they're probably unstated.

Still, the biggest problem with handling drug issues is that people lose their rationality and give into emotion. There's a lot of feels and not a lot of thought. That's something which needs to change if we want our solutions to improve.

And legalization, criminalization, for someone with a serious drug addiction neither of these things are going to really help the addict. If you want to help people with a problem, the solutions lie elsewhere.

How's this for a reason; it's a stupid and uninspired idea.

Legalizing everything " because we don't know any other way" is just dumb.

Let's just legalize poisonous substances, uranium, firearms and anything else that kills people because hey, cant beat em' join em' right?

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

But if you actually want to address problems with addicts instead of running from them, legalization is the answer, because with legitimacy comes the public eye, and you know business have to worry about PR. I don't even believe a huge host of regulations would be needed, public pressure would probably be sufficient... although admittedly you'd have to see how it plays out.

No, its really not. How utopian of you though. Look at Amsterdam, they legalized weed and now they have a huge surge of hard drug addicts. There are obviously many causes but the ease of availability and the normalization and legalization of substance abuse has definitely not had a positive long term effect.

Just look at how all the harder stuff spiked after they legalized cannabis

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Netherlands_v_US#sthash.x9dJ8Np2.dpbs

"

TheWretch wrote:

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Netherlands_v_US#sthash.x9dJ8Np2.dpbs

Um, did you link the wrong page or something? There's nothing there which supports your position, and plenty which supports mine.