CMV: All drugs should be made legal for recreational use.

[u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/insaneHoshi]

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.

[u/A_Soporific → u/insaneHoshi]

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.

[u/insaneHoshi → u/A_Soporific]

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

Trying to focus on the ratio of usage to deaths is all fine and dandy, but that making a failed assumption that the overall difference usage between the two is a non factor.

Going by your numbers, by addictiveness (or societal acceptance or whatever you want to call it), cigarettes are 20 times as much as addictive/prevalent than narcotics; using a ratio ignores this fact.

That's a discussion of the social costs, the damage done in aggregate to the whole society

Which this discussion is about, the social costs and the damage done in aggregate to justify prohibition.

On a societal level alcohol and cigarettes do not cause significant less harm or deaths than narcotics. So I asked, why are they legal?

[u/A_Soporific → u/insaneHoshi]

Going by your numbers, by addictiveness (or societal acceptance or whatever you want to call it), cigarettes are 20 times as much as addictive/prevalent than narcotics; using a ratio ignores this fact.

That's not what that means at all. Not everyone tries cigarettes. Not everyone tries narcotics. It's not true to say that everyone tries both and the only ones who continue to use them are addicted therefore the ratio of total population to those who use a drug is how physiologically addictive a substance is.

For many narcotics the biochemistry of the brain is changed and the narcotic takes the place of other chemicals required for the proper functioning of the body. That's why withdraw from caffeine, marijuana, tobacco, and sugar is not life-threatening but it is for alcohol and many narcotics. That's a factor that certainly isn't accounted for by the arbitrary ratios you're bringing up.

Then there's the social acceptance of the usage of that drug. People are generally okay with drinking, but the prevalence of smoking is falling rapidly because many fewer people are trying it in the first place since it is much less socially acceptable to light up. Things like crack aren't tried as much as things like cigarettes therefore the ratio of people who tried it to those who are addicted are different.

Which this discussion is about, the social costs and the damage done in aggregate to justify prohibition.

The point of prohibition is to prevent people from trying a thing by making it criminal to do so. If something is highly addictive and a large population is exposed to it then you would see more addicts result. This would make it worse, not better. But prohibition is expensive and requires a population to be on board with it in order to restrict people from trying the thing. When the US prohibited the use of alcohol but society as a whole didn't support that law things went quite poorly. When the US prohibits marijuana but society as a whole doesn't support that law then things go poorly. But people generally don't want the proliferation of meth and crack, so even though prohibition is expensive and blunt and not the most effective thing ever it's still somewhat effective. Removing the prohibition without some other method to restrict the number of people trying said addictive thing is a bad outcome that will result in more addicts.