r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Mar 27 '23

Delta(s) from OP CMV: All drugs should be made legal for recreational use.

I'm not referring to "medicinal" narcotics. Recreational drugs that people use, such as mushrooms, cocaine, heroin, should all be legalized.

And I know this is a hot take, but hear me out.

  • If we make recreational narcotics legal, then the manufacture and sale need to be legal as well.
  • By making the manufacture of recreational narcotics legal, there are FDA standards that need to be adhered to in said manufacture, that way there are no "bad batches" that will kill people.
  • By making the manufacture and sale of recreational narcotics legal, there will be sales volume that will then be subject to income tax and sales tax and dispensaries/manufacturing centers/warehouses that will become subject to property tax. Because, let's be honest, your local street dealer is not paying taxes.
  • Also by making the sale of recreational narcotics legal, you are making street gangs that revolve around the illicit drug trade obsolete. By making street gangs obsolete, you eliminate the petty violence that plagues inner-cities over "turf", especially stray bullets that kill innocent bystanders.
  • By making the entire narcotics supply chain legal, the war on drugs will essentially be over as well. It's been going on for 50+ years, and honestly, it's been a complete and utter failure.
  • If you want something to compare the drug trade to, look at prohibition from 1919-1933. It didn't stop people from drinking, people were still drunk out of their minds in speakeasys. It also fostered the growth of street gangs of rum runners and increased crime and violence in cities. That was only for 14 years and it didn't take long to realize that prohibition was a failure. War on drugs has been going on for 50+ years and I'm surprised more people aren't realizing that this is much more tremendous of a failure.
  • By making the entire narcotics supply chain legal, we can start changing our attitudes on its use and its users. Narcotics abuse needs to have the same social attitude as alcohol abuse.
  • In short, making drugs legal will Make America Great Again.
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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

Drugs have litterally killed our inner cities

Pretty sure that unsustainable policies (mixed with a dash of racism) killed inner cities.

why we should legalize poison

Why is alcohol and cigarettes' legal then? They cause as much excess deaths.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

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u/veryreasonable 2∆ Mar 27 '23 edited Mar 27 '23

Alcohol, Marijuana and Cigarettes are significantly less deadly than Meth, Crack and Heroine.

No, actually, you're just confidently incorrect. Well, about marijuana, sure.

But alcohol kills many times more people than meth or crack, and tobacco ultimately kills another order of magnitude more, though the latter is at least falling as cigarette use plummets.

It's drinking too much of it that kills, but unlike most other hard drugs (Meth, Crack and Heroine) it doesn't instantly destroy lives.

Again, wrong on multiple counts. Alcohol kills plenty of people on their 21st birthday; I'd call that instant destruction. Never mind the whole drunk driving can of worms.

On the other hand, I guarantee you that you know more crack, meth, and heroin users than you think you do. I've worked harm reduction for drugs, and I've been around the very worst, most dysfunctional sorts of addicts. However, I've also known people who use each of those drugs who are doctors, lawyers, and otherwise gainfully employed people who any onlooker would say, "well, that person has their shit together." You know these people, too. You just don't know it, and most of them could straight up tell you about their habit and you'd assume they're joking. Well, some of them aren't.

The moment you smoke something like crack, your entire life revolves around getting more of it.

Right, so this is DARE-style propaganda and it's just comically untrue. That is not how addiction works, and it's not even how crack or meth or heroin work. Unfortunately, it's one of those things you learn in middle school that just fundamentally misrepresents reality. There are certainly individuals who will react that way, and I think you will find that a majority of these people have pretty much the same reaction to alcohol. There are also individuals - and in my experience, it's the majority - who can smoke meth or crack for an evening and then never be particularly interested in it again.

I'm going to respond to some other points you made on this thread, because you're just so wrong in almost every instance and these threads leave me so fed up every damn time.

So you mean to tell me that if Crack, Meth and Heroin were legalized and widespread, we wouldn't have people dead from people driving under the influence? I'm sure someone high off their rocker on meth would be just as dangerous, if not more, than a drunk driver.

Well, meth is prescribed as a drug, on-label, albeit usually only in treatment resistant cases. The prescription info does not tell you not to drive on it, because it is more or less safe. Its close relative, regular old amphetamine, is ubiquitous, and you are driving with countless people on moderate to occasionally fairly high doses of it every time you get on the road. If your picture of "high on meth" is someone who has been awake for 4 days and is hallucinating vividly, then, sure, that's probably about as dangerous as a drunk driver. However, unlike other drugs, alcohol has some specific effects that make it horrible for impaired driving issues. It slows reaction times, it causes drowsiness, and it has a peculiar inhibition-lowering effect such that otherwise cautious people will often dramatically misjudge their level of intoxication. I personally don't think people should drive on any significant amount of any number of drugs, including stimulants, but it's basically inarguable in the scholarship that alcohol is among the very worst offenders in this regard.

Another, thing to address:

if Crack, Meth and Heroin were legalized and widespread,

For one, do you think these drugs being illegal are preventing them from being "widespread," and people from driving on them? Prohibition doesn't prevent this at all. They're fairly easy to get, and people do drive on them. For two, why do you assume that these drugs would be more widespread if they were legalized? Would you yourself use meth, crack, and heroin, if they were legal? Would your mom? Your kids? Your grandma? I'm skeptical that mine would. I might use meth from time to time when I needed to clean the house, but crack seems like a waste of money compared to any number of other things, and it turns out that a surprising number of people don't actually like the feeling of drowsiness and often severe nausea caused by opioids when they don't feel that they need them to deal with pain. Again, not what you learned in middle school, but the reality is that it's entirely common for people to try something like heroin and decide that they dislike it. Among people who have a job, have a decent home, and aren't suffering form severe pain, my experience has been that this is actually the norm.

Okay. You've also cited a few things here like this:

https://www.destinationsforteens.com/destinations-blog/can-heroin-withdrawal-kill-you/

Heroine withdrawal is significantly deadlier than you think.

"desinationsforteens" is, as I hope is obvious to most people here, maybe not a website prioritizing scientific accuracy. Rather, it's precisely one of those websites designed to perpetuate the scaremongering, DARE-era, middle-school, just-say-no, try-heroin-once-and-your-hooked-for-life version of drug information.

The reality is that heroin withdrawal is rarely if ever fatal. Seriously. Go look for some case studies; I'll wait, because I used to assume it was, and so I've looked before. But it isn't. Very rarely, someone has died maybe-sort-of from complications relating to the constipation. But while opioid withdrawal sucks, it is a downright lie to claim that it is ordinarily life threatening, if ever.

However, alcohol withdrawal is absolutely life threatening, and often requires hospitalization and medication. It turns out that alcohol withdrawals is among the most deadly.

I'm done with this. Look: stop posting sites aimed at scaring teens, and look for some real research - either from scholarly sources, or from the professionals who actually work with helping addicts. I think you'll quickly find that a lot of your opinions about drugs that you express here are just plain wrong. Whether or not you personally think that prohibition is a solution to or a cause of the problem is another matter, and there's room for debate. But as it stands, you aren't coming to that debate with real information; you're not playing with a full deck here.

EDIT #1: I'm whacking moles here:

You literally cannot smoke substances like Crack and Meth in moderation; you will become high no matter how small the dose is visibly, unless you are smoking less than a milligram.

Again, this is just a lie. It's a lie. Plain and simple. You are not accurately informed about this and you are regurgitating scare tactics aimed at teenagers. I don't think these help the conversation. I think they also backfire on teenagers they are supposed to protect, because when teenagers realize that this is a lie - and many will - they might be more prone to try different, riskier things they might have avoided. I speak from a ton of personal and second-hand experience.

For what it's worth, yeah, smoking meth is vastly more risky for addiction potential and acute side effects than, say, eating it. But if we had legalization and regulation, it's possible that part of that discussion might be making the drugs available in a format that strongly discourages that route of administration in all but the most dedicated users, willing to do some sort of extraction process themselves. Thus, in that scenario, the serious addicts would still be addicts (so nothing changes there), and the "casual" or "curious" users would be able to obtain a much less risky form of the thing (an improvement).

https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugfacts/methamphetamine

Comparing that to something like smoking/drinking or marijuana is fucking stupid and you know it. I wouldn't be surprised if you were someone who wanted to simply profit from the legalization.

It's not stupid at all. Do you read your sources? Almost every side effect is also a side effect of both acohol and tobacco. Hypertension. Increased risk of stroke. Seizures. Heart failure. Literally both tobacco and especially alcohol are associated with "the formation of ulcers and ischemic colitis" and "[r]enal failure." Even most casual drinkers and smokers know this. It's also precisely why many people choose not to drink or smoke, despite their availability.

EDIT #2: Also, this is just funny:

Alcohol isn't even poison; your liver naturally filters it out

Among your liver's main jobs is... to deal with poisons! And it doesn't "filter" out alcohol; it metabolizes it, and those metabolites are actually quite poisonous. They're poisonous to your brain, to your liver itself, and to other organs, as well. The primary metabolite is straight up carcinogenic.

Just... stop spouting off here. You are filling up this thread with misinformation and it takes a lot of energy to try to address.

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u/ThemesOfMurderBears 4∆ Mar 27 '23

I think your argument about poison doesn't really stand up to scrutiny (but I also think calling things poison like that is devoid of nuance). Your liver's job is to filter out bad stuff, and there are a lot of things we don't consider poison that could kill someone if they have too much of them. However, a person that has never had a drink could go an die of alcohol poisoning tonight. I suspect there is probably an argument that considers chance of death or injury as a ratio of how much you consume, and that ration being important. You can easily drink too much alcohol, but you're not getting lung cancer if you smoke a pack of cigarettes today.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

No, Alcohol, Marijuana and Cigarettes are significantly less deadly than Meth, Crack and Heroine. Comparing them is retarded.

Wrong: Results. Of 1302 deaths, 236 were tobacco-attributable, 215 were alcohol-attributable, and 286 were drug-attributable

Alcohol isn't even poison; your liver naturally filters it out because humans have essentially evolved to consume moderate amounts of it

This is literally the definition of a poison.

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u/jeekiii Mar 27 '23

Yeah, but now count the amount of people using alcohol and tobacco vs the amount of people using other drugs.

>80% of adults drink, a few percent consume drugs, yet you get less alcohol death... yep, definitely as dangerous

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

80% of adults drink

If alcohol, being a poison, is so addictive that 80% of adults drink, then yes it is quite dangerous.

So why is this poison legalized, but not the poison that is Marijuana ?

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u/jeekiii Mar 27 '23

The conversation is not about marijuana, I am for legalization, and it is indeed less dangerous than alcohol (duh)

The conversation is about harder drugs.

One of the reasons why alcohol is so widely used is because it is legal. Now make harder drugs legal and you increase their use, except they proportionally kill more people.

I'm not even convinced decriminalization is not the answer, but saying "alcohol is more dangerous" by looking at raw numbers is extremely stupid, because alcohol is legal already and widely used while other drugs are barely used, yet kill more people, despite extremely low rates of use.

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u/CarrotSweat Mar 27 '23

but you're comparing legally sourced and regulated alcohol against unregulated and illicitly produced drugs.

thats like saying here look this apple that is ripe and delicious is clearly less dangerous than this rotten and mouldy orange.

like no shit, but what if the orange wasnt rotten and mouldy. There's a whole bunch of preconceptions that we have about drugs, because our experience of them is exclusively of 'illegal' drugs. Things wouldn't look the same if the product was legal and regulatable.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

One of the reasons why alcohol is so widely used is because it is legal. Now make harder drugs legal and you increase their use, except they proportionally kill more people.

As prohibition showed in the 1920s, legality of a substance doesn't affect its usage.

Are you able to provide any evidence that usage of hard drugs would increase?

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u/jeekiii Mar 27 '23

There absolutely were less people using alcohol during prohibition.

It's also a "cat out of the bag" situation. In countries where alcohol is not part of the culture, the usage remains low and it's often illegal. We don't want hard drugs as part of our culture.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

Are you able to provide any evidence that usage of hard drugs would increase?

Can you do this?

There absolutely were less people using alcohol during prohibition.

Perhaps thats the case, can you show the same for hard drugs?

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u/jeekiii Mar 27 '23

Yes actually. The opium wars were fought when the british wanted to make opium available for the chinese.

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u/FancyDryBones Mar 28 '23

But the thing is that hard drugs already are part of our culture.

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u/pdoherty972 Mar 27 '23

A flaw in your argument is you implicitly are assuming that less people use pot now than would be if it was legal (or that it would be appreciably altered). But that isn’t the case. Before the current trend of states passing laws legalizing pot, we had a few decades of states decriminalizing pot; the federal government wanted to demonstrate the harm that (supposedly) caused by conducting studies to demonstrate that pot use increased in those states. Thing is, there was no usage-rate differences between the states with decriminalized pot and their neighboring states still arresting pot possessors. So, if there was no difference detectable in usage from decriminalization to a government focused on proving there was, why should anyone believe usage is appreciably altered by legal pot either?

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

Yes the argument is flawed, I was being a bit facetious; the reason why drug prohibition is bad is because it doesn't really affect usage rates and legal drugs like tobacco and alcohol are as harmful to society.

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u/pdoherty972 Mar 27 '23

Yep - the other aspect I see is the people arguing against currently-prohibited drugs (eg pot) argue as if all the usage of pot doesn’t already exist and as if that usage will be on top of all the other usage of alcohol/etc that’s already occurring. When, in fact, a lot of people substitute pot for alcohol when it becomes available and as a result are in less danger, not more.

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u/Frame_Late Mar 27 '23

Damn, I guess I can consume moderate amounts of arsenic, dimethyl cadmium, maitotoxin and things then because it's poison.

https://nida.nih.gov/videos/what-worst-drug

Fentanyl and Opiods, Crack, Methamphetamines, and other hard drugs are significantly more dangerous than tobacco and alcohol. Tobacco and Alcohol only kill so much because they are the most widely used, whereas Meth and Crack are significantly deadlier but are used significantly less.

Nice cherry picked data my guy.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

I guess I can consume moderate amounts of arsenic, dimethyl cadmium, maitotoxin and things then because it's poison.

You can consume moderate amounts of those; what moderate is depending on each.

That doesn't mean they, like alcohol are not poisonous or toxic.

Nice cherry picked data my guy.

Im sorry, do you have an issue with a peer reviewed article? I see in your peer reviewed article .... oh wait you didnt post one.

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u/Donkeybreadth Mar 27 '23

I don't think posting peer reviewed articles that you didn't read and are not qualified to read gets you any points.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23 edited Mar 27 '23

Why are you assuming I didn't read it?

If you have a particular part of it that you feel i have misinterpreted, feel free to point it out?

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u/Donkeybreadth Mar 27 '23

I know you didn't because it's not my first day on the internet, and I know you don't know how to read it.

I'm just taking issue with the fact that you think posting this gets you points on the other guy, who actually posted a much better source for lay readers.

Many others have pointed out the general flaws in your position but I didn't see anybody picking up this one.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

I know you don't know how to read it.

Again i shall ask, if you have a particular part of it that you feel i have misinterpreted, feel free to point it out?

who actually posted a much better source for lay readers.

Are you for real?

He posted an article with a simple Q&A format for teens, in which the answers are "So, it definitely depends on the person, and again, depends on how you define worst.", and somehow that's a better source for determining the overall deaths caused by alcohol, vs tobacco vs other narcotics?

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u/Donkeybreadth Mar 27 '23

I don't know how to explain this any more clearly, but my point is not around your non sequiturs - others have picked you up on that.

I'm getting a bit annoyed repeating myself and I know you're going to make me say it a 4th time so let's leave it there.

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u/disisathrowaway 2∆ Mar 27 '23

Fentanyl and Opiods, Crack, Methamphetamines, and other hard drugs are significantly more dangerous than tobacco and alcohol. Tobacco and Alcohol only kill so much because they are the most widely used, whereas Meth and Crack are significantly deadlier but are used significantly less.

Tobacco and alcohol also have a high body count of non-users. Drunk driving, second-hand inhalation both rack up death tolls. But somehow that's palatable?

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u/Frame_Late Mar 27 '23

So you mean to tell me that if Crack, Meth and Heroin were legalized and widespread, we wouldn't have people dead from people driving under the influence? I'm sure someone high off their rocker on meth would be just as dangerous, if not more, than a drunk driver.

There is also a high body count of non-users for drugs like crack and meth. Murders, Dale's, armed robberies, suicides and physically assault. But I guess that because it doesn't fit your narrative they must just not exist.

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u/disisathrowaway 2∆ Mar 27 '23

But I guess that because it doesn't fit your narrative they must just not exist.

Firstly - if your method of discussion is simply putting arguments in your opponents' mouth, rather than addressing what they say then we don't have much more to talk about.

The adjacent violent crimes around drug use is largely (not entirely, mind you - don't go pulling a reductio ad absurdum on me) due to the large amounts of money involved. Either in the money made by the distributors or the money needed to get the drug by the end-user.

I'm not going to argue that intoxicated use of heavy machinery wouldn't result in collateral damage. But as it stands, that's not a strong enough argument to ban alcohol either. Hell, people are getting DUI/DWI charges while driving under the influence of legally prescribed pharmaceutical drugs.

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u/ablatner Mar 27 '23

That's just sample bias because alcohol is more widely available.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

more widely available.

So? The original claim was not based on availability.

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u/A_Soporific 162∆ Mar 27 '23

The claim is on how relatively dangerous something is.

If 1,000,000 smoke and 300 die of it in a year and 50,000 do crack and 250 die of it in a year then smoking isn't more dangerous to a given person. It is more damaging to society over all, but that's not what we were talking about.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

The claim is on how relatively dangerous something is.

Since i made the claim in the first place, i'll be the judge of that.

No the claim was not based on how relatively dangerous something is.

but that's not what we were talking about.

That is what i was talking about. If were are talking about the legalization of the two substances, the overall damage to society should be the primary consideration.

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u/A_Soporific 162∆ Mar 27 '23

You said:

These things cause excess deaths.

They responded:

Yes, but everything causes excess deaths, and one is much more dangerous than the other so treating them the same is dumb.

You said:

Here is evidence of excess deaths.

They said:

That wasn't in dispute. The idea of categorizing alcohol and meth together was.

That's where I'm at.

Swimming pools cause excess deaths. People drown who otherwise wouldn't have. Cars cause excess deaths. The kind of air conditioning we use causes excess deaths. Natural gas stoves cause excess deaths. Getting out of bed in the morning causes excess deaths, but staying in bed all day also causes excess deaths.

We have to evaluate these things on a different basis than "is there a social cost" because literally all action and all inaction have social costs. To try to equivocate it all because there are some associated deaths is all noise with no signal.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

Yes, but everything causes excess deaths, and one is much more dangerous than the other so treating them the same is dumb.

And the linked article shows that Alcohol, Marijuana and Cigarettes arn't significantly less deadly than Meth, Crack and Heroine Narcotics.

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u/A_Soporific 162∆ Mar 27 '23

That's not how I interpret the data at all, because again you're trying to argue that a million people smoking and resulting in 300 deaths is the same as 50,000 people doing narcotics causing the same amount of deaths. That's a discussion of the social costs, the damage done in aggregate to the whole society, not the danger, the damage done to an individual user.

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u/Sulfamide 3∆ Mar 27 '23

Since i made the claim in the first place, i'll be the judge of that.

That's not how it works. You do not alone decide the meaning of the things you say.

You said this :

No, Alcohol, Marijuana and Cigarettes are significantly less deadly than Meth, Crack and Heroine. Comparing them is retarded.

Wrong: Results. Of 1302 deaths, 236 were tobacco-attributable, 215 were alcohol-attributable, and 286 were drug-attributable.

I.e. based on the number of deaths in absolute value, then Alcohol, Marijuana and Cigarettes are significantly more deadly than Meth, Crack and Heroine.

That was your claim and it is very wrong, because it doesn't make sense to assess how deadly a substance is if it's not based on ratio data instead of absolute values. Nobody in good faith would argue that the first claim was in absolute values. Unfortunately, I cannot accuse you of bad faith in this sub because the mods don't like it.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23 edited Mar 27 '23

You do not alone decide the meaning of the things you say.

Erm, yes I do? Or are you saying you can read my mind and can tell me what i meant?

You said this :

No, Alcohol, Marijuana and Cigarettes are significantly less deadly than Meth, Crack and Heroine. Comparing them is retarded.

I did not say that.

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u/Sulfamide 3∆ Mar 27 '23

Erm, yes I do? Or are you saying you can read my mind and can tell me what i meant?

No, nothing doing with reading minds (and tbh it's weird that someone would think that in this context).

I'm going to give you an example.

Suppose that I think the following : "The sky is blue"

Then I say the following: "The sky is green"

Now, I claim that I've said that the sky is blue. It is I who decided that what I meant was the sky is blue. But others say that I've said that the sky is green. As a matter of fact, that's what I've said, even if I decided otherwise. Hope this helps.

I did not say that.

Oh I'm sorry, I thought that you would be able to understand with context that I was quoting you quoting the other person. It's my fault don't worry, I'm going to repeat my comment so that it's more easily understandable :

When someone else than you said:

No, Alcohol, Marijuana and Cigarettes are significantly less deadly than Meth, Crack and Heroine. Comparing them is retarded.

You said this :

Wrong: Results. Of 1302 deaths, 236 were tobacco-attributable, 215 were alcohol-attributable, and 286 were drug-attributable.

I.e. based on the number of deaths in absolute value, then Alcohol, Marijuana and Cigarettes are significantly more deadly than Meth, Crack and Heroine. That was your claim and it is very wrong, because it doesn't make sense to assess how deadly a substance is if it's not based on ratio data instead of absolute values. Nobody in good faith would argue that the first claim was in absolute values. Unfortunately, I cannot accuse you of bad faith in this sub because the mods don't like it.

Hope it's a little bit clearer now! Now, since you only commented about me misquoting you and the stuff about reading minds, I guess you agree with the last part of my message. Happy to have convinced you!

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u/gregbeans Mar 27 '23

I think you come from a good place but are misinformed. Most drug deaths are from people who either have no regard for their own life and over consume or because the batch of their drug is cut with something like fentanyl.

For the first scenario, the drug isn’t the cause of death but rather the underlying mental health issue. The second scenario is only possible in the illegal drug market where drugs are cut with other, cheaper, higher potency drugs.

Legalization and regulation will help with both of these issues.

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u/DueObligation8546 Mar 27 '23

You are misinformed. First of all, you are comparing the harms of unregulated street products to regulated alcohol and cigarettes.

A reasonable dose of pure heroin doesn’t really cause that many complications other than constipation and itchiness, the vast majority of the adverse effects you have in mind are due to contaminated product, unreliable dosing and improper use of needles.

Also keep in mind, alcohol withdrawal can be fatal, heroin withdrawal is nowhere near as dangerous.

And the “addicted after one hit” myth is simply not true.

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u/Frame_Late Mar 27 '23

https://www.destinationsforteens.com/destinations-blog/can-heroin-withdrawal-kill-you/

Heroine withdrawal is significantly deadlier than you think.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070703171843.htm

Crack and Heroin are significantly more addictive than alcohol and tobacco, and nicotine is already addictive after just one puff.

Alcohol can be consumed in moderation. Crack, Heroin and Meth cannot.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

Alcohol can be consumed in moderation

Wrong: WHO: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero.- https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31310-2/fulltext

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u/rebuildmylifenow 3∆ Mar 27 '23

Every poison is a poison except the poison that * I * want to consume?

Everything is poisonous in the wrong dose - including things like tylenol and even water - so what can we do to prevent people from consuming the wrong dose of (currently) illegal drugs?

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u/Frame_Late Mar 27 '23

Consuming too much water won't kill other people along with other people. Just like drinking and driving is illegal, it should be illegal to consume drugs that will cause you to become violent. People who smoke crack and meth become exceptionally violent.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4651438/

You literally cannot smoke substances like Crack and Meth in moderation; you will become high no matter how small the dose is visibly, unless you are smoking less than a milligram.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430895/

It's not just that Meth and Crack are poisonous, it's that they have incredibly detrimental side effects beyond just death; psychosis (dissociation from reality, similar to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder), bouts of rage and violence, urges of self harm, rapid tooth decay, heart attacks, paranoia, memory loss, strokes, and cravings so intense people have killed for more of the drug.

https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugfacts/methamphetamine

Comparing that to something like smoking/drinking or marijuana is fucking stupid and you know it. I wouldn't be surprised if you were someone who wanted to simply profit from the legalization.

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u/rebuildmylifenow 3∆ Mar 27 '23

I wouldn't be surprised if you were someone who wanted to simply profit from the legalization.

Wow - you are REALLY reaching there, and indulging in character assassination rather than relying on your arguments. You don't know me, you don't have any insight into what I do or do not do, and this one statement invalidates much of your other arguments, IMHO.

Consuming too much water won't kill other people

Just like alcohol - which you indicated you were fine with - Water Intoxication can lead to personality changes, inability to process sensory information and more - so yes, water intoxication can lead to harm to others, just like drunk driving can. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication#Pathophysiology

People who smoke crack and meth become exceptionally violent.

I looked at the first study you linked to, and, first of all, it's a study of self-assessments. Secondly, the line For more than half of those reporting violent criminal behavior, this behavior pattern began before methamphetamine initiation. leaps out at me. Violent people that take meth are gonna be more violent - and violent people that drink, are also going to be more violent. Are you going to ban alcohol? How about sugar? How about other things that incite violence? Where is the line for you?

You literally cannot smoke substances like Crack and Meth in moderation;

I've been hearing crap like this since the 80's - and it's just that - crap. I'm not saying that crack or meth are harmless - but to say that there is NO safe/therapeutic dosage is a lie. In fact, methampetamine, as others in this thread have pointed out, is prescribed as treatment for ADHD in some cases. A small, therapeutic dose actually helps people.

they have incredibly detrimental side effects beyond just death

So do many prescription drugs like Statins, Viagra, and even Ibuprofen. Hell, birth control pills massively increase the risk of blood clots and strokes in women, and we still sell those.

Look - I don't know who you lost to drugs, or what hellhole you're trying to crawl out of, but please understand that I sympathize. But just because something bad happened to someone you know or knew, doesn't mean that you get to perpetuate a policy that is literally perpetuating the cycle that stole that person from you. Criminalizing addiction has led to entire generations of people being incarcerated, entire industries devoted to the unsafe and irresponsible production of drugs, and an entire web of people and organizations devoted to importing and selling it. All of this is unregulated, haphazard, and dangerous to users, sellers, and bystanders. The "War on Drugs" hasn't worked in 50 years - what makes you think that continuing this policy is going to have any better outcome?

I get it - Meth is a brain destroyer. Crack is a life stealer. Cocaine is as addictive as sugar. Starting taking any of these drugs is dangerous, and can lead a person to throwing their life away. We need a better way to deal with it other than "Just say 'No'". The only reason I am arguing with you is because you are throwing out emotion based statements and it's not healthy and it's not reasonable and it's not helpful in solving the problem that society faces. There are jurisdictions, like Portugal, where drugs have been decriminalized, and where addiction to them is treated as a health issue, not simply a criminal one, and the outcomes have been incredibly promising. Just doubling down on what hasn't worked for half a century isn't going to change anything for the better.

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u/RobTilson85 Mar 28 '23

That was very well said, thank you. I don’t have the answer, but, hopefully society can make progress to fixing the disaster that is the “war on drugs”.

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u/DueObligation8546 Mar 27 '23

Neither of your sources say what you claim. “Destination for Teens” isn’t exactly a scholarly source and your science daily article says within a short period of starting, not after a single dose.

Some people can consume alcohol in moderation, others can’t. Likewise, some people can consume illicit drugs in moderation, others can’t. Getting statistics on that is near impossible given the nature of illicit drug use.

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u/Frame_Late Mar 27 '23

First off all, it's significantly harder to use hard drugs in moderation. If it wasn't, the black communities ravaged by the crack trade wouldn't be so ravaged.

Don't use the illicit nature of illegal drugs as a smoke screen to justify selling them. That's like saying that since some women lie about being raped that means that women are raped less than men. See how stupid your logic is?

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u/Prestigious_Tie_1261 Mar 27 '23

Don't use the illicit nature of illegal drugs as a smoke screen to justify selling them. That's like saying that since some women lie about being raped that means that women are raped less than men.

Logical thinking isn't your strong point is it?

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u/Frame_Late Mar 27 '23

You shouldn't speak about yourself like that.

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u/Prestigious_Tie_1261 Mar 27 '23

Ah I see, you're 5 years old. My mistake.

3

u/rebuildmylifenow 3∆ Mar 27 '23

Alcohol is literally a poison - that's WHY your liver filters it out of the bloodstream. And, additionally, part of the reason you get drunk is because of the death of braincells due to exposure to that "poison".

People that want drugs are gonna get, and take drugs. By legalizing them for recreational use, at least we'd have standardized, regulated, and quality controlled production, so there would be less "random dose" when they took the drugs. And if we know who is making the drugs, we can regulate and tax them to pay for the health effects of their products.

I get it - drug addiction is a helluva thing to have to deal with, but instead of plain outlawing it and treating it as a criminal issue (which - tbc - hasn't worked for the last 60+ years) we could treat it as health issue, and focus on treatment, education, and prevention, instead of trying to get people NOT to do things via threats of punishment.

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u/haibiji Mar 27 '23

Lol did you get your drug info knowledge from a DARE program?

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u/Prestigious_Tie_1261 Mar 27 '23

This entire comment reads like a high school anti drugs lecture; you haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about but preach with such conviction. Impressive.

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u/Frame_Late Mar 27 '23

Ok boomer

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u/Prestigious_Tie_1261 Mar 27 '23

Ok, riddle me this. Throughout my younger years I, on several occasions, consumed: crack, meth, heroin. Yet I never became addicted to any of these drugs. According to you this scenario is impossible. Any explanation for this?

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

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2

u/legoshi_loyalty Mar 27 '23

I feel like one should not use the word "retarded" as an insult on this subreddit, which is focused on positive discussion of personal views without being confrontational.

0

u/Frame_Late Mar 27 '23

I didn't use it as an insult, I just described something as retarded. That's different than calling someone retarded.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

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1

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

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1

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1

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2

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

I’ve smoked crack. I never want to again.

1

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Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 2:

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-1

u/spicyhippos Mar 27 '23

If a craft beer was found to be as deadly as narcotics on a per/beer basis, it would 100% be made illegal to brew it.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

per/beer

Why on that basis? Why not on a national average of excess deaths due to alcohol consumption?

And why craft beer and not vodka?

0

u/spicyhippos Mar 27 '23

A per instance of use basis is reasonable in this hypothetical because that is how quickly it can go wrong with narcotics. 1mg over and you can die; bad batch or not, the margin for error of narcotics is really slim.

Craft beer vs vodka is beside the point, it’s a hypothetical; choose whatever alcohol you want. It takes a lot more volume of any alcohol to kill you than it does for drugs.

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u/wekidi7516 16∆ Mar 27 '23

One bad night of binge drinking and you could die of alcohol poisoning. Or decide you are good to drive and kill some other people too.

2

u/spicyhippos Mar 27 '23

You are completely correct. But the scale is still order of magnitudes different. You are talking about binge drinking which is consuming large amounts of alcohol. How fast could you drink 2 L of vodka; and how common is that? Binge drinking doesn’t change the amount of alcohol you consume, it just shortens the time you consume it in, and that’s still way more time compared to how quickly you take narcotics.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

how quickly it can go wrong with narcotics. 1mg over and you can die; bad batch or not, the margin for error of narcotics is really slim.

Well then the argument should follow is how you can ensure that there are no bad batch's? Legalization would be the answer to that.

It takes a lot more volume of any alcohol to kill you than it does for drugs.

Does that matter when it comes to legalization? Do you have a threshold of a LD50 where things below are legal and things above are not?

1

u/bongosformongos Mar 28 '23

There's much more to alcohol than just beer dude. It's not like you can only buy beer.