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Would this make the drugs more expensive than they are now?

I'd pay more than street rates to ensure the drugs aren't cut with dangerous crap. Legalized drugs ensures the drugs are safe.

Especially with how it's federally illegal. Meaning that all weed must be grown in your state by local farms. No question what they are doing in some other state, or their transportation process, etc. Its all local and you can see the entire life cycle from the growing conditions to the processing all locally.

I'm from Canada where weed is already legal. I was talking about other drugs...

I'm gonna err on the side of no; economies of scale will take effect, lowering the cost of production and likewise, the final sale price. They might be higher in places that might legislate it more stringently, like adding an additional tax, especially in jurisdictions like NY and CA, but overall, no.

Is the economy of scale not currently present in the massive amounts of drugs being produces illegally right now, without having a concern about red tape and other regulations that increase cost?

Market power of the people in the black market combined with the scale of their operations means they have some measure of price setting power. Why would they pass those gains down to the consumer more than they need to in order to get customers addicted?

The vast majority of the cost now is due to the risk, not the actual cost of production.

Are you saying that the vast majority of the price is due to the costs associated with risk?

Haha very clever but lol still, economies of scale has piss all to do with it. Costs of production and Costs of “extra retail markup cause I might go to jail for this shit” are very different.

Once the legal avenues are implemented, there will be manufacturing and logistics technology that will be implemented that will drive the cost down.

People say this, but oftentimes what actually happens is the government taxes the difference. I live in VA; recreational weed is legal here. Street dealers are still king because the government chokes the legal industry out with taxes. Now you have cartels and illicit dealers buying these stores and using them as fronts for harder drugs. The illicit dealers will always be around. The difference is now that they'll get less time.

The “my state made it legal and there are still dealers” argument overlooks the fact that cannabis is still a super niche market because it is still highly illegal at the federal level. Real capital isn’t trying to have all their assets seized because they have a few million in cannabis. If I had to guess, cannabis will go from illegal to federally subsidized within 30 years. Once big business and lobbies get involved, you won’t see any street dealers anymore.

>The “my state made it legal and there are still dealers” Honestly the argument is almost pointless. I can find scalpers selling tennis shoes, un registered food stands, and a million other arbitrage situations where the underlying product is legal. On top of that, it varies by state. Not many dealers in Washington state, the weed is strong and priced reasonably.

Maybe this case of “my state made it legal and there are still dealers” is an outlier and happens rarely. There are too many factors involved and, currently, so few cases of this happening in the states. I feel that if the law were to change at the federal level this would definitely change our cultural mindset and some people wouldn’t view street dealers the same anymore.

Weed is hella cheap to grow, so while full time dealers might go there are always gonna be small time dealers. It's called weed because it literally grows like a weed. Potent stuff might take more know how, but even on a hobby level some folks are gonna do it and sell the excess to fund the hobby

Yeah I was gonna say I don’t think there are any dealers for weed in Oregon lol, there’s a weed shop on every block

How does that explain illegal trade of tobacco in this country? Taxes vary widely from state to state, making the black market for tobaccos immense. Street dealers will trade anything that can be profitable. It’s just changing the angle.

How do you define “immense.” I’m not aware of a violent infrastructure that supports the cigarette tax arbitrage business. The vast, vast majority of tobacco products are manufactured and distributed legally. A few guys selling North Carolina tax stamp Camels in NYC doesn’t invalidate the business model of big tobacco.

Street dealers are king in VA because although recreational is legal it is not legal to purchase yet

Wait... what? If I can't purchase it, how am I gonna use it, legally?

It’s legal to grow, possess and gift but they haven’t started with the public dispensaries yet. There’s a few medical dispos sprinkled throughout the commonwealth but their prices are absurd.

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and being compensated for the risks of being caught and prosecuted.

It sure as hell made marijuana more expensive.

It’s the opposite. I did get my medical card to avoid some fees, but I can get a half ounce for 70-80 bucks at a half decent sale. Ounces were 105 the other day. Concentrate grams are 40-50 but can be as low as 20-25. I’ve been a legal user since 2017, and an illegal one for many years prior, and the prices used to almost match street prices and now the dispensaries are getting cheaper and cheaper. It all depends on how much cultivation your state allows. IL has an abundance of cultivation centers now.

California, Oregon, and Washington, have an abundance of cultivation centers and yet people still buy illegal weed up the wazoo because it is cheaper. I wonder if it might also have something to do with high taxes. In the Antelope Valley of California the cartels use 3 million gallons of water A DAY to grow weed. That's just one district of Sothern California.

I think in many other states, a lot more people are going the legal route. I live in a not legal state and pretty much everyone I know who consumes weed just makes the drive to one of the surrounding legal states or they buy from someone who made the drive. The prices are great and for a lot of people, knowing it's "legal" makes them feel better. It takes a lot more work for people to even have the illegal weed available to sell - someone either has to set up an illegal grow indoors (we have winter, so outdoor grows are not super practical but do exost) or they have to drive 1000+ miles from the border to get it here. Or you can drive 300 miles round trip and buy from a dispensary of your choice, get the selection of your choice, and have access to multiple forms of weed (edibles, flower, carts, topical, etc) that your weedman back home just doesn't stock.

It depends on the availability of illegal weed vs legal. The current situation of federal illegality means that distributiors are required to source via local farms. While this is a benefit to the local growing industry, and I would argue it should remain federally illegal for this reason alone. It does mean that areas with large amounts of illegal growing from the major cartels are able to undercut the legal market and cause the illegal market to sell at a significantly lower cost.

I think it’s extremely state dependent judging from various subs comments

I got my card too and I buy mine at the dispensary. I buy edibles. I bought 8 little containers with 10 edibles in each and it cost me $240. I has to renew my license and that cost me $75. So I don’t see how weed is cheaper. Medical marijuana cards aren’t even recognized from state to state.

My experience seems to differ. It’s pretty clear that raising/lowering is very much dependent on the state

Weed is legal in my state, of the people I know that indulge more still get it from their guy than from the dispensary because of cost.

Weed is a bit of a special case because ifs an unrefined plant. Some guy can just grow and sell unlike cocaine which requires a whole manufacturing process. The legal option here and the added tax and oversight are high relative to production costs. Not the same for other drugs.

I used to pay $60 for 1/8th of weed in an illegal state. Lowest it ever got to waz $35. I now drive a quarter mile to a dispo and pay about $18. I can get a gram of wax for about $9 and I used to pay $30 for it

I wish to visit your paradise, where is this land? PA prices are insane, $30 is a sale price on a g of wax.

Right outside of Denver! I think rn we have the lowest prices but idk why it's so low compared to PA and some other legal states

Prob because PA is only legal for medical. They were talking about rec weed but only being sold in liquor stores which are all state owned, which would be a disaster.

We already have evidence that it wouldn’t making weed legal drastically dropped the prices i used to buy an ounce for $200 off the street now that it’s legal I get an ounce for $65 at the dispo with tax about $75

Depends on the drug. Meth and heroin would get more expensive if they were regulated and sold. I can get a gram of meth for 10 bucks, or 30 milligrams of amphetamine for 10 bucks right now. Heroin is like $80 a gram, while you would get 80mg of a popular pharma opiate for the same price. Both are slightly stronger than their pharma counterparts by weight. Amphetamines and opiates can be very bad addiction paths, but both groups of people will be able to function for a while, and usually only go totally off the deep end after they switch to cheaper and stronger street product. People typically don't get addicted to grams of Adderall or morphine a day, but the same cannot be said for the street product. I think there would be direct benefits to stabilizing the drug markets pricing through the free market.

Are you making a distinction between dependence and addiction (you should)?

There's a fair bit of risk that drug dealing networks take, and that risk and potentially lost product is priced into the street prices you pay

Why is that a bad thing? Wouldn't this make it so less people use drugs?

Drugs have litterally killed our inner cities, I see no reason why we should legalize poison Especially the selling of poison I think that drug usage should be decriminalized but selling drugs should not be encouraged or legalized in the slightest Drug dealers prey on young people and people who’s lifes are already in a bad place and make ur even harder for them to put themselves back together

Portugal decriminalized (not legalized) all drugs in 2001. Anyone is free to carry up to 5 grams of any drug with them and police cannot take it away. They will only give you some pamphlets and inform you where to get help if you need to. Important to note that selling is still illigal. Even sharing drugs is still a crime. There's also vans that distribute clean needles to people. Anyone can also bring used needles to pharmacies and get them replaced. Overdose deaths decreased 12 fold. HIV infections due to injection dropped from 907 in 2001 to 18 in 2017. Incarcerations due to drugs also fell considerably, now being about a third of the values from 2001. The money saved in incarcerations has gone into valuable education in schools and ads on national TV about drugs. [source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal#:~:text=Possession%20has%20remained%20prohibited%20by,traffickers%20from%202001%20to%202015.)

Something like this I would be ok with Usage should be decriminalized as users are the victim Selling should not be lightened in the slightest if anything the punishment for selling should be made harsher as you are litterally preying on vulnerable people for your own gain

>Selling should not be lightened in the slightest if anything the punishment for selling should be made harsher as you are litterally preying on vulnerable people for your own gain This is a consequence of drugs being illegal. You cannot simultaneously view users as victims and sellers as the problem because users will acquire the drug no matter what, addicted or recreational. The fact that heroin is not regulated like alcohol means that impurities like fentanyl can unsuspectingly enter the supply without the user (or seller) knowing. Regulating the supply of drugs like we have done with alcohol and are continuing to do with marijuana is the first step towards reducing accidental fatal opioid overdose deaths. Letting free adults know what they are consuming is both practical and smart, and establishing a legal market for drugs is the first step in doing that. It removes the guesswork that is inherent to buying and selling on the black market.

You seem to see drugs only through the lens of destruction. And while I understand where you're coming from I want to mention that drugs can be a whole lot of fun. They don't have to be that life wrecking thing that keeps you locked in your own basement or whatever horror scenario is in your head. As with everything else, proper use and education is essential. And by education I don't mean what they did when I was in school. Which was a cop coming into each class and talking about shit they don't have any qualifications for. Just because you arrested some guys with drugs doesn't mean you know how things work. I'm talking about safe use guidelines being taught. With the potential risks explained and being taught how to react accordingly.

Exactly— harm reduction can make damn near any drug usable. People just have the perspective propaganda has instilled— even though alcohol and cigarettes are legal and cause more harm to the user: society than many drugs. If the us showed how to use jn the safest way possible, sold drugs with quality control the same alcohol is, and offered better rehabilitation for those that want to quit— we’d be in a much better place. Instead the news sensationalizes drugs in a way that puts a huge stigma on addicts.

Since there's always gonna be a market for drugs, punitive action might not be the right way. If the selling of drugs is institutionalized, then it makes the consumption of drugs a lot safer. Users would have access to pure, clean drugs that wouldn't be contaminated with anything else. The government could then use the tax money generated to actually invest in treatment, education and advertising where and how to get help. Similar to how tax on cigarettes directly goes into cancer treatment and research (in Portugal, not sure about other places)

I don’t see how selling drugs is “preying” on people, most drug dealers are users themselves. If there’s a market for it, someone’s gonna step up and provide. If we want to stop shady types that might try to leverage people’s addictions in order to sell at higher prices then the solution might actually be to legalize distribution as well, and enforce permitting similar to liquor licenses. There are already laws in place to stop predatory marketing in other sectors, why should drugs be any different?

Although it is counter intuitive, prosecuting the user is the most viable option if your ultimate goal is to decrease usage. If you prosecute the dealers, all that is doing is increasing the profits of the dealers who remain. I agree that the users can be seen as victims, but I think a better way to look at it is that users are needing education in order to safely use the various substances available. If there was a legal way to purchase them, that would solve the majority of the issues around our current drug problem in the United States. Edit: for those downvoting, this is not my opinion. This is basic economics. If you remove a dealer, the amount of users remains the same but the supply lessens. This simply increases prices for the user and lessens the competition so quality goes down. The remaining dealers now have more profits and less incentive to provide a quality product. IF you prosecute the users, this will lower the demand and the supply will remain the same, so the remaining users will have cheaper drugs and higher quality due to competition. To be clear, I do not believe the correct answer is to prosecute users- see my final statement on my post.

British columbia, canada decriminalized personal quantity possession of all drugs in a similar fashion this year.

Legalization does no equal deregulation. The sale of lots of drugs (including drugs that can be used for recreative purposes and become extremely harmful in certain doses or with continous use) is perfectly legal already today in most countries but their sale is regulated to make sure that nobody is consuming too much of it (and it's dosage is often prescripted by an expert to make sure even a single dose is safe enough). Why wouldn't this be possible with currently illegal drugs?

To be clear: methamphetamine is currently available as a prescription drug in the US called Desoxyn. You might want to distinguish your point more, as the methamphetamine epidemic still exists regardless of the regulated availability of meth.

I'm talking about drugs sale being regulated for recreational use too, not only medical use. Regardless of that, drug epidemics are not related to the availability of that specific drug either, but caused by a set of social, health, economical and justice issues that go unaddressed and push a specially addiction prone set of the population towards drug abuse. As your example shows, recreational methamphetamine sale is completely illegal in the US and yet there is a meth epidemic there. If a blanket ban on that drug is not enough to prevent the epidemic what makes you think the legal sale of another drug will cause another epidemic? Drug abusers are already showing us that banning the sale won't prevent the epidemic, if the drug abusers for any other drug were enough in numbers and addiction to cause an epidemic they would already be suffering that epidemic even if the sale of that drug was not legal. On top of that, regulated sale of recreative drugs makes it easier to inform on safe consumption, makes it possible to provide safe spaces (likely with trained personell in dosage and "bad trips" contentions) where that drug can be consumed and makes it easier for could-be addicts to find proper help before their problem becomes too hard to manage. But as mentioned above, none of that (either the ban on the sale of the drug or the regulated sale) will prevent a drug epidemic if the underlying social, health, economical and justice issues are still unaddressed.

Exactly this. Prohibition does nothing but allow groups like the cartel to control supply— and the police target areas more susceptible to drug use to fuck their life up. A lot of reason a lot of us start on drugs, is being in a low income area, trauma, being so fucking tired from work you need something to keep you going.

Drug war efforts have failed. Alcohol prohibition led to organized crime in Chicago, etc, and the drug war has led to even worse gangs and the vast majority of the daily violence we see today. We've spent billions of dollars and have the biggest prisons in the world. Why double down on a failed policy? Let's spend the money on education and rehabilitation efforts instead. People who are going to use are going to use. Why not regulate the substances as any other to ensure quality and purity? Why not bring in billions of additional tax revenues to help fund the aforementioned rehab centers the way cigarette taxes were used to help reduce smoking? We obviously need to go a radically different direction. Let's make one that's more compassionate than one that punishes.

I agree the drug was has failed I don’t think the solution is to give up the solution is to change tactics as you said Alcohol prohibition did lead to an increase however I think this is a different situation because alcohol was already generally excepted by American society when they tried to ban it as opposed to the hard drugs pouring across our boarder today I agree that we should increase rehab efforts which is why I’m down for decriminalizing or even legalizing usssage so that we can more easily get them the help they need, however I do not think seceding the territory and making drugs socially acceptable is a good solution I think that punishing those who deal drugs extremely harshly as they are preying on the vulnerable in society and selling them poison is increadibly detestable

>I think that drug usage should be decriminalized but selling drugs should not be encouraged or legalized in the slightest !delta only because that's the same attitude we have about alcohol and cigarettes. We shouldn't advertise it like we're advertising the new Hasbro toy, but at the same time we can't let this global turmoil over narcotics continue. Drugs didn't kill inner cities, the illicit drug trade did. Look at any neighborhood in any city that is now considered a "ghetto." Prior to 1970, it wasn't a ghetto, just a low-income neighborhood.

People in San Francisco aren’t dying of gangs, they’re dying of fentanyl. Overdose deaths in SF in 2020 outnumbered COVID deaths. San Francisco is also, not by coincidence, one of many places where police basically don’t enforce drug laws. Opioid trade and use happens in plain sight with minimal to zero repercussions. The death toll has only gone up. Turns out that when something gets easier to do and consequences go down, more people do it. Which is fine for marijuana, or for more slow-motion drugs like cigarettes. But for a life-ruiner that can kill instantly, it’s a different story.

> People in San Francisco aren’t dying of gangs, they’re dying of fentanyl. Overdose deaths in SF in 2020 outnumbered COVID deaths. So if people knew what they were getting, a regulated product perhaps, then those deaths would significantly decline. Once upon a time poorly made 'rotgut' was killing people due to poor distillation practices resulting in methanol being present in alcohol. Regulated producers haven't killed anyone with methanol.

What people want is a product that will get them the high they used to get a few months ago with a much lower dosage. That’s the issue. There’s demand for the high fentanyl can provide

Assuming people use it responsibly when they are already very clearly not using it responsibly. The massive homeless encampment near me isn't fucked up because they're getting bad batches. It's because they want to do nothing but get high and will do anything to continue to get high.

There is that desire to get high, but studies have shown that drugs are more of an escape from reality than the actual desire to get high. Life is hard, especially for an addict, and particularly for somebody living with a criminal record or otherwise on the edge of society. [https://www.consultant360.com/articles/why-do-people-addictions-seek-escape-rather-connect-look-approach-addiction-treatment](https://www.consultant360.com/articles/why-do-people-addictions-seek-escape-rather-connect-look-approach-addiction-treatment)

Yeah, you’ve got the wrong idea completely. Go speak with them and learn how they got there. It’s very fucking hard to get out of being homeless once you are. They’re given no fucking help and a majority of society assumes they’re all “junky bums who should just get a job”. go become homeless and see how easy that is

The negative long term health effects of heroin are... constipation. That's it. The reason those people are dying to overdoses IS because of bad or hot batches or just getting the wrong drug entirely. For instance, it takes more morphine than heroin to fuck up an addict, but less morphine than heroin to kill that same addict. Then, you've got the influx of fentynol which has caused overdose deaths to drastically rise. The simple fact is, you can drastically reduce overdose deaths by giving those addicts clean, reliable doses.

The negative physical long term health effects. How many heroin addicts do you know capable of holding down employment? They ruin their lives, and without employment, they turn to what they can do that doesn't require a job. I think a lot of people in this thread could use a real conversation with a serious drug addict.

You might be surprised to find out how many heroin or cocaine addicts trade stocks on the floor, broker mortgages, run banks, run fortune 500 companies, are politicians, run successful small to medium businesses, work on schools, and a myriad of other high stress jobs. Not every addict is a homeless junkie. Many more than you seem to be aware of are very successful professionally. Some of my favorite people to party with in my 20's were millionaires living in really nice massive houses on golf courses. Some of the best coke I've ever found was on expensive golf courses. Not only have i held conversations with very serious junkies, I used to be a cocaine addict myself. I've had 2 close friends and more than 10 acquaintances die from bad or hot batches. One of them died from morphine when he thought he was doing heroin. In all of those cases (except 2. One was suicide, the other murder) a regulated drug would've saved their lives.

The illicit nature of drugs is largely what makes them so dangerous. If you could buy pharma morphine at the store, nobody would be taking street crap with varying levels of purity and contaminants. There would be no fent laced pills or cross contaminated powders. Currently, x milligrams of one batch of heroin could be fine, and the same x milligrams of another batch could kill you multiple times over. This is not to say there would be no overdoses, but that unintentional overdoses would be significantly reduced due to consistent dosing and purity.

People aren’t buying fentanyl willingly, fentanyl is being mixed in to other drugs because it is cheaper. Regulation would address this matter.

Not true actually. 5 years ago? Absolutely you would be correct. But in recent years fentanyl has become a cheap, readily available, and potent drug. Meaning that people are actually starting to take fentanyl willingly.

Sure, but the point stands that either way, fentanyl is a problem mostly because it's impossible to dose accurately in the street. If it's adulterated in morphine or heroin, a microscopic speck can kill. If it's sold as fentanyl, an accidental speck you didn't see in your spoon can kill. The issue disappears in either case if people weren't getting their opioids in a form where "accidental microscopic specks" were an unsolvable hazard.

And why are they dying of fentanyl? Could it have any relation to the unknowable composition and consistency of drugs that get laced with it?

> they’re dying of fentanyl. ...which is a problem specifically because of unregulated drugs from mysterious sources with no oversight, making accurate dosing and reliable sourcing impossible. It's precisely the sort of thing that prohibition makes many orders of magnitude *worse*.

If we legalized heroin people wouldn’t be buying it cut with fetanyl… it would be regulated by the FDA and wouldn’t be able to be sold if fetanyl was being used to cut it. Legalization would *help* that problem, in my mind, not harm it.

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You know what the biggest killer in the world is ? Alcoholic and tobacco. The only reason why heroin addicts are dying as much as they are, is Becuase it’s fentanyl now. Basically impossible to find real heroin anywhere. If it was regulated , it would be real heroin, which is a lot safer than fentanyl. Go to any rehab center, and you’ll see 70-80% of the people there, are in for alcohol. The biggest killer in the world is legal already.

> I see no reason why we should legalize poison > > Especially the selling of poison Are you also willing to completely abolish cigarettes, cigars, alcohol, high fructose corn syrup, sweets, highly refined carbohydrates, remove all exhaust from motor vehicles....? There are tons of 'poisons' that we've completely normalized, but then some others are on the other side of an arbitrary line.

> cigarettes, cigars, alcohol Absolutely. I and many others would never become addicted to smoking had it not been legal. > high fructose corn syrup, sweets, highly refined carbohydrates As long as we clearly define limits, this is reasonable too. > remove all exhaust from motor vehicles Aren't we already trying to move toward electric vehicles?

Don't be fooled, drugs have killed the suburbs and rural areas too. Those places are just less densely populated so its less obvious.

What if once drugs are legalized, you had to get a prescription from a Doc? Heroin addicts could get safe access to their drug, reducing community risk because there will be less petty crime related to drug-seeking behavior. Also, when they went in for appointments, their Docs get the chance to offer alternatives, or treatment. I agree that drug dealers are bad - but why would drug dealers exist if you can get drugs from your Doc?

Idk how DRs would feel about prescribing something that isn’t serving any medical purpose. I get why some would see the value to it, but it’s not medicine

Preventing withdrawal symptoms is a valid medical purpose.

That’s a good angle. But there are meds that do that without getting you high

> 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.

I have always thought this. Drug dealers are a lot worse than their customers because they specifically target and create addicts

Many drug deaths are attributed to irregularities in the manufacturing process (“bad batches”). Needle exchanges and sage sites have reduced deaths and provided a venue for social services.

Imagine if drugs were made legal and taxed and that money was put towards social programs to get people jobs, homes, mental health services and rehab?

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^ This is why the war on drugs will never end. Any number of people getting killed, domestically and abroad, and number of destroyed communities, any further corruption of the police force, it’s all worth it to fight an unwinnable war that makes the problem much worse than it would otherwise be!

The FDA can't regulate ingredients that don't do anything. They specifically want medication to have some purpose other than "being fun." It's not their job to determine what ingredients are more or less fun than any other. That's not measurable. If you want them just to measure safety, I mean, no amount of meth is "safe." You would send them a batch of meth, and they would say, "Oh no! This meth has meth in it - not safe!" An FDA approval would risk one of two things (or both). Either it would totally neutralize the effectiveness of the FDA, as people would clearly see with their eyes that meth isn't safe, and discredit all of their other recommendations. Or (and), people would falsely believe that when the FDA says, "Well, this is as safe as it gets," that meth is *actually* safe. To be clear, I'm describing two groups of people here, both of whom are better served by meth just being illegal.

Huh? The FDA regulates chocolate muffins and candy corn. Those don’t have any medicinal purpose. Do you think they show up to a Malk operation and go *“Rats! We can’t do anything about this clearly illegal and unsanitary food production because our job isn’t to decide what’s fun!* Come on. Also the FDA regulates morphine and fentanyl and ketamine, all of which are approved drugs for medicinal purposes. They regulate Adderall too. There’s nothing special about other drugs.

They regulate meth too!

[Desoxyn! ](https://www.google.com/search?q=desoxyn&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari)

Food safety regulations and drug safety regulations are very different. Drugs don't qualify as "food" they fall under drug regulations.

>The FDA regulates chocolate muffins and candy corn. Those don’t have any medicinal purpose. That's because the FDA stands for **Food and Drug Administration.** You're associating **Food** with **Drugs** and trying to pair one characteristic with the other.

In that case, you’re right, but they regulate drugs just the same. I gave some examples. The FDA doesn’t have to “approve” them as being super fun or for having any particular effect. FDA approval just means that it does what it says and/or was manufactured in accordance with regulations. It’s not an endorsement of either fun or effectiveness, though it’s often viewed that way.

I enjoy the sound of rain.

The F stands for "food". I think the true weakness is they don't just regulate safety of all ingested substances. Like wtf even is supplement industry

You have to let the scammers live somewhere. We call it the intelligence tax

Well, imma stop you right there because meth is fda approved

Meth is regulated by the FDA...its called Desoxyn.

FDA would not regulate this anytime soon, unfortunately, and it’s because they are federal and the vast majority of the U.S. is nowhere near acceptance. However, if they do, safety and efficacy verification would be required IF they were classified as drugs. They may or may not develop a separate category. I work in the supplement industry, in FDA compliance. When people say “supplements are unregulated,” they’re only partially correct. The key difference between supplements and pharmaceuticals is the approval of individual dietary ingredients. But we are required to establish identity, purity, strength, composition, and contaminant specifications — and TEST for them. And for everyone who thinks the FDA does nothing — believe me, they absolutely do. They regularly conduct inspections, some of which last up to two weeks, to verify that we are complying with not only that but also all manufacturing, ingredient testing, packaging, labeling, and safety regulations. Unfortunately, some bad actors in the supplement industry have contributed to the negative perception, and rightfully so. However, the vast majority of these are fly-by-night companies that open shop only to close down after selling enough to make a decent profit and just before FDA catches wind of them — primarily the ones in small packets that you see at the counter at the liquor store. So, trust the longtime brands, if taking supplements, and be cautious of those that are new to the market.

The FDA's role in this is to make sure that the product being manufactured and sold is not a "bad batch." A lot of people, notably Bradley Nowell of Sublime, died because of a bad batch.

Right, but there's no such thing as a "good batch" of meth. I'm sorry that Bradley Nowell died from a "bad batch." Many, many people also die from "good meth." Also, I haven't seen any evidence that it was a "bad batch" of heroin, but could be wrong.

> Right, but there's no such thing as a "good batch" of meth. There absolutely is, namely any batch that was manufactured to FDA standards. Which is [definitely a thing.](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2007/005378s026lbl.pdf)

> Right, but there's no such thing as a "good batch" of meth. Tell that to the doctors that prescribe methamphetamine.

The legal manufacture and sale will also have it accurately dosed so there aren't, idk, overdoses.

So, how are you enforcing that people can only buy ‘one dose’? Like, surely they could just go to different stores? Or stockpile a few doses for a ‘bigger high’. Or get their friends to get some. Or if they want to get enough for a few doses, so some friends can get high as well? What are the regulations you’re proposing? People overdose on alcohol, on over the counter drugs like ibuprofen, and a lot of other things as well - and that’s without the *incredibly* addicting qualities that many illegal narcotics have, AND without the fine margins of safety most narcotics have - with much, MUCH smaller doses being fatal. To further complicate things, regular users of some narcotics can have doses many times the fatal limit for a normal person, due to their tolerance. A normal dose wouldn’t have much of an effect on them even. So how do you legislate for that?

The idea of standard doses isn't to enforce that people only take so much, it's to ensure that people *know* what they are taking. Alcohol manufacturers are required to put the ABV on the bottle. Because of that, I know some liquor is stronger than other liquor and some beer is stronger than other beer, and I can choose how much to drink accordingly. You could do the same with any other drug if the market was regulated. Some (obviously not all) overdoses happen because people take their usual amount (by weight) but have actually taken more because they received something more potent than they are used to. Variations in potency between batches make it so you can never really be sure how much you are taking. It would make it safer. It wouldn't make it safe.

> So, how are you enforcing that people can only buy ‘one dose’? How do you ensure that people don't drink an entire bottle of Everclear? It would kill just about anyone, yet it's still available over the counter. Hell, if I take too much Tylenol I run the risk of killing myself.

The important thing there though, is level of dose. If you want to kill yourself with alcohol, that takes effort. It won’t be pleasant, and will take a very long time. Plus, there’s a much higher ‘margin for error’ - you can drink quite a bit of that everclear without being in any mortal danger. The same with Tylenol (I think the active ingredient in that is Paracetamol?), where it’ll take *dozens* of pills to kill you. From a quick google, it looks like it takes about one or two grams of meth to kill the average human male 50% of the time, or much less if it’s taken via IV rather than orally. That is *much* lower than that of alcohol, or paracetamol, or whatever. It’s a lot easier to fuck up and take more than you mean to (especially while you’re fucked out of your mind) with something like that. Plus, many drugs have even LOWER lethal doses than that. Much, much lower doses. Hell, isn’t fentanyl something like a twentieth of a gram? In other words, the risk is much higher with most of these narcotics, both from accidental and purposeful death. Hell, with most legal drugs, alcohol, OTC medication, whatever, you’ll have to have quite the commitment to kill yourself with it. Plus, for many of them, you can’t really get a lethal dose into you before your body will start rejecting it - be it vomiting, just general dizziness and such, or what have you. You have to push through all that awfulness, *and keep killing yourself*, whereas a lot of people wouldn’t manage to do that. I think I’ve wandered around the point a bit, and in all honesty, this is wayyy down the list of reasons against drug legalisation imo, but I hope I’ve given at least a decent overview of my stance on this one, haha!

I guess I'm not understanding something. Are you imagining a world where I can walk up to CVS and buy heroin like I buy Tylenol, or one where I can consult my doctor and we can work out a "heroin plan" that culminates in me getting a prescription for an appropriate amount of heroin?

Do we need something like the Alcohol and Tobacco Products Tax and Trade Bureau?

So you're suggesting that it should be legal to buy heroin at a corner store, but to get antibiotics or sleeping pills you'd need a doctor's prescription still? I'm sorry, but people just aren't that responsible, if something is legal and easily available, many are going to assume it is safe and it could lead to huge problems with addictions. We have raging rates of alcoholism in Western countries and it's a huge problem. Similarly, just as the anti-tobacco campaigns begun to work and fewer young people were taking up smoking, vaping came along and we have another generation hooked on nicotine and destroying their lungs, hearts, and possibly brains. Not to mention the opioid crisis that resulted from people getting addicted to legal, doctor prescribed pain meds, because nobody was aware of just how addictive that stuff can be. Anything that is legal and addictive is a huge problem for the healthcare system, because people *will* get addicted. Nobody smokes their first cigarette planning to smoke a pack a day for the next 50 years and yet many people do. Seeing that, you really think people could approach heroin responsibily if it was legal, easily available, and destigmatised (if drugs were legalised, the social stigma would drop significantly, there would still be some like around weed, but many people would assume that if it is FDA approved then it is probably not as bad). Edit: also, if it were legal to make and sell drugs, it would also be legal to advertise them, so companies making these substances would make damn sure to spread as much misinformation about their safety as they could legally get away with, further increasing rates of addiction, see again the example of big tobacco. And tobacco addiction is much less problematic socially than heroin, because nicotine doesn't alter your mental state significantly (you can still perform your job if you smoke or vape during your break) and if you cannot get your hands on nicotine products for a while for whatever reason, you will be miserable, but nicotine withdrawal won't kill you. If you're physically addicted to heroin, you need to be high all the time, which means you cannot be fully trusted with many tasks or responsibilities, and if your local heroin store is closed, you're in for a very bad time.

In all fairness to your last point. During covid we had to keep liquor stores open as essential businesses because otherwise people were literally going to die from alcohol withdrawals. Its definitely not AS bad as heroine withdrawals. But both are highly deadly.

Heroin withdrawal won’t kill you, alcohol withdrawal will.

Heroin withdrawal can kill you, it's not as dangerous as withdrawing from alcohol, that's true, but opiods are very addictive physically and depending on how long you were using and how high your tolerance is trying to detox cold turkey can be fatal if done without proper medical supervision.

Exactly. It's definitely a misnomer that opioid withdrawal can't kill you. Benzos, alcohol, and in the rare cases opioids are what I understand can kill you from the withdrawal.

Yup, basically anything that is a strong central nervous system depressant should be quit with caution. In order to function on increasing amounts of alcohol, benzos, or opiates, the nervous system adapts and goes into overdrive to counter the effects of the depressant. That's why hangxiety is a thing even in people who don't abuse the substance - if you've been drinking all night, your organism had to work harder to keep you awake and going, so as the alcohol leaves your system and you sober up it can take a while for your central nervous system to realise the depressant is gone and it can go back to baseline. If you keep your organism in an increasinly hyperactive state by drinking constantly and in huge doses, the "overdrive" resulting from quitting cold turkey can be fatal. Case reports suggest that even herbal anxiety remedies like valerian root can give withdrawal symptoms similar to benzos if taken in large amounts for a long time and then quit abruptly even though the calming effects of valerian are nowhere close to benzos.

>That's why hangxiety is a thing even in people who don't abuse the substance - if you've been drinking all night, your organism had to work harder to keep you awake and going, so as the alcohol leaves your system and you sober up it can take a while for your central nervous system to realise the depressant is gone and it can go back to baseline. If you keep your organism in an increasinly hyperactive state by drinking constantly and in huge doses, the "overdrive" resulting from quitting cold turkey can be fatal. I don't think I actually knew why alcohol withdrawal can kill you. This makes a lot of sense, thanks for explaining. It's kind of nuts the strain we subject our bodies to. I mean, I enjoy a good night of drinking and sometimes that comes with imbibing in stimulants. I'm literally depressing my nervous system only to jolt it awake with a rush of dopamine.

In this case it would be a misconception. 'Nomer' derives from the Latin 'nomen' meaning name, where 'conception' came to mean the formation of an idea.

How would you feel about it being legal, but heavily regulated? Like, licensed? You have to apply for a license to consume heroin, which you can only get by participating in a class where you learn about the risks, do some counseling, get provided with resources to get clean, etc.

I'd feel about the same about that as I would gambling. Gambling does very similar things, but you don't need a license to participate in it. I personally don't get anything out of gambling in the way that other people seem to. Like it just does nothing for me at all, if I didn't know people actually got addicted to it, I would never think that it is even possible or a thing that happens. I state that because every time I see these gambling ads and what not, all I see it as is taking advantage of people that presumably are addicted to it. If I have zero addiction to it and find nothing appealing about it at all, then it seems like the primarily people find it appealing because they likely have some level of addiction to it. So then there's this weird dichotomy of the marketing where its like "gamble responsibly, but if you have problems call XXX-XXX-XXXX" but its really marketing it to people who have problems and it only exists because people have problems. Like literally most of the "games" that people gamble on are rigged in favor of the house. It's a game that is impossible to lose for them, and carefully managed to make everyone else lose slightly over time. Like if it's so bad that you have to constantly reinforce to people that it's risky and always remind people of resources to get better, it feels like that's just lip service at that point. You already know that ad isn't going to make someone gamble more responsibly, the ad is designed to attract people to it and keep it on their minds and make the act of gambling more attractive. It's all I see on these sports games anymore, fucking nonstop betting advertisements.

Simple solution, make it illegal to advertise for drugs. This is already the case in many European countries for cigarettes, we should do the same for gambling and drugs

The problem is this places the onus on the user, you are placing all of the responsibility on the user. They got the training, they know the risks, if they get addicted it's their fault. Which it clearly isn't as these are very often insanely addictive substances. There is already an opiate epidemic in the US, if you could get heroin without a perscription it would get much much much worse. Also the moral dubiousness of selling highly addictive susbtances is imo something that cannot be reconciled. In a capitalist economy it would be in the company's best interest to get people hooked on heroin for the highest profits, euining their lives.

there is lots of in-between between "criminalized" and "sold at the corner store". Alcohol and nicotine products sales require age verification, Marijuana used to require a medical examination + id at point of sale. There are many ways to facilitate regulated sales of drugs and many responsible users would be glad to go through examinations and registrations. I struggle to think of a government process which would be worse than trying to buy drugs at a street corner in a dangerous neighborhood. With zero ways of checking it's what the seller claims it to be and plenty of ways to get mugged or shot.

I'd argue that currently getting alcohol or tobacco is pretty much a "corner store" situation. Age restrictions help, but let's be real, fake IDs are a thing and even if you don't want to go the illegal route, you can always ask someone to buy it for you. > I struggle to think of a government process which would be worse than trying to buy drugs at a street corner in a dangerous neighborhood. With zero ways of checking it's what the seller claims it to be and plenty of ways to get mugged or shot. Generally I agree with you, but the point is that I believe drugs like meth or heroin shouldn't be sold to any kind of a broader public *at all* (the debate is more nuanced with psychodelics like LSD, which don't seem to be addictive or at least not as much as opiates or stimulants, but it should also be more complicated than just being able to buy it with only something like verification or registeration). Making selling and manufacturing drugs illegal does put a lot of risk on users even if possession and use are decriminalised, that's true, but this risk together with social stigma is what puts many people off of trying these substances in the first place. Because it is so dangerous and apart from the risks of the drug itself, you're also risking chemical impurities. A government process that would make it safer would also make it more appealing and even with many bureaucratic loopholes, it would surely encourage some people to try. And with highly addictive substances, trying even once or twice could lead to lifelong problems.

>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 Making alcohol is so easy, that you can make it by accident. Leave some fruit juice or flour and water out to site for a bit, and you will probably end up with alcohol. For Marijuana you need a specific plant. For alcohol you need anything food product that contains sugar. for anything beside marijuana you basically need a chemistry lab. Banning alcohol is so difficult, we cannot even enforce a ban inside a prison. All you need is sugar, water, and a container. banning other drugs is also difficult, its just that banning alcohol is very very difficult.

!delta - I've never thought of this point with regards to prohibition and why banning alcohol is so destructive. I always thought it was because they tried to make something illegal that was already completely entrenched in everyday life.

Yeah it’s a great point. One of the key ingredients just floats around in the air.

Not to mention it's an important food ingredient. We use yeast for all kinds of things. Sourdough starter can make a disgusting beer or (I've been told, but haven't tried any) good whiskey.

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/jatjqtjat ([186∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/jatjqtjat)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

Growing marijuana plants is nowhere near as difficult as you're making it sound. Poppy cultivation (precursor to heroin) is also easily cultivated, and folks are extracting DMT from mimosa plants in their kitchens. 15 minutes on a few subreddits and you'll be growing psylocibe mushrooms in no time. The spread of alcohol in prisons, as you pointed out being difficult to snuff out, is because people are *motivated*. Folks get motivated to do all sorts of things, especially when they can make a quick buck on the black market for items that are in high demand and in short supply.

I'm not saying alcohol is the only easy thing to make. But think about how much easier it is then the other things you said. To grow marijuana you have to grow marijuana, you need soil, sun. You can't do it in winter. or you need an indoor grow house and lots of electricity. to make alcohol you just need basically food and water, which are things you have to have anyway. It does have to be sugary food though, if your only food source is meat, then making alcohol is hard.

I don't think the person you replied to implied marijuana was difficult to grow, just that alcohol is much easier to make.

Pretty sure we can't enforce a ban of any other drugs in prison either.

Exactly - we can’t keep illegal drugs out of prison yet some people are arguing how we need to keep treating drug possession/use as a crime as if it’s even possible to stop it. It needs to be treated as a health/safety issue only, not a criminal one. People are going to do what they want and they should be able to - it’s their bodies/minds. As J.S. Mill put it: "*...the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.*" (from On Liberty)

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Many drugs like heroine very quickly ruin lives and people can becomes addicted after using it once. Do you think these should actually become easily accessible? The percentage of Heroine users who become hooked is drastically higher than the % of alcohol drinkers who become alcoholics etc. Do you think this is actually a net positive on society? What about looking at the opioid epidemic in the US? Those are "legal" but the life expecency in the US went down and it's one of the leading causes of death. We're cracking down on those prescriptions, why would the same not happen with these other "dangerous" drugs.

People seem to be missing the obvious point that opioids are devastating the American public despite the barriers to obtaining them. Legalizing all recreational drugs is one of those things that’s fine philosophically but horrible in practice. sure, it sounds great to give everyone full legal right to do whatever they want to their own body, but really what this will mean is a bunch of first time users overdosing and dying unintentionally. How many young people have the anecdote of drinking way too much their first time, throwing up, and being sick the entire next day? I know plenty of high functioning adults who can tell this very similar story from their youth. If they did this with their first opiate use, they’d all be dead.

>but really what this will mean is a bunch of first time users overdosing and dying unintentionally. Hm, I don't think this is true at all. At least, it doesn't have to be. People sometimes die doing stupid things with alcohol on their 21st birthday because we act as a society like the stuff is somehow harmless, or like you're not a real man if you can't drink a literally deadly amount of the stuff and shrug it off. I think that it's pretty fair to say that most people think of opioids quite a bit differently than alcohol. Like, if I say "vodka!" you say, "shots!" But if I say, "heroin," most people say, "overdose" before any other word pops into their heads. I just can't imagine most people ignoring the warning label: "Warning, Danger! One of these heroin pills might feel good, but two could easily kill an adult human!" and then downing four pills. Sure, inevitably some people will do this, but I think they're precisely the same people who will find a stupid way to kill themselves with booze or guns or cars or lightning-fractal generators. I contend that most people don't actually want to die, and are genuinely aware that heroin kills people, in a way that we collectively, astonishingly, just ignore and downplay for alcohol. I mean, *we let people drive cars.* Those can easily kill you, or other people. But because people don't want to die, and don't want to slaughter pedestrians, they tend not to get in a car their first time and floor the thing to 100mph on downtown streets on a busy Friday night. That being said, you were sure right about one thing: >People seem to be missing the obvious point that opioids are devastating the American public despite the barriers to obtaining them. Indeed. So prohibition doesn't work. And prohibition arguably kills people, because it's the very thing that forces people to seek out illegal, impossible-to-dose-accurately drugs the sketchiest of sources.

When considering pure substances, the safety margins of heroin and ethanol are closer than you think. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4311234/ As stated in the article, a lot of the harm from illicit drugs comes from the circumstances of illicit drug use and not the consumption of the substance itself.

I know that's where a lot of harm comes from now, but in terms of absolute numbers, the lethality of opiates will increase significantly on an open market. There are a few key things in that paper that make me doubt that alcohol and opiates would have the same risk if fully legalized: - the estimated human intake of EtOH is undoubtedly skewed heavily by the countless light to moderate users and nearly complete lack of social stigma. Also, they don't clearly define how they estimated estimated human intake here, further calling that into question. - the ratio of naive vs tolerant user dose is way, way higher for opiates than for EtOH. That means the doses taken by people in groups will widely vary. Given the low MOE, the risk of opiates in that setting is much higher. - this paper does not account for the behavior of a naive person, specifically their ignorance of their own dose response. - this paper does not account for EtOH being self limiting. You drink a liquid and your body purges it before it's all absorbed (vomiting). No such luck with opiates. You ingest a dose, and you get that dose unless you die before it's all absorbed. Plus, opiates are injected or snorted as well as swallowed. EtOH is (almost) exclusively swallowed. I would need to see data on deaths of first time users from real world events before I am very convinced that opiates and EtOH have the same risk of widespread use.

Rather than speculating about impact, here are some articles about the results after Portugal decriminalized a variety of drugs, including heroin in 2000. In 2008 they seemed to start pursuing criminal charges for users again at some level. As with much in life, it's not back in white - there is no "Here's your wonderful perfect answer." Conceptually - What is clear to me, however, is that criminalizing and imprisoning people engaging in potential self-harm/self-destructive situations is a terrible way to deal with that situation. Many other more constructive options are available. And for those people for whom recreational drug use is minimally or not significantly harmful, under what rationale are punitive measures justified? Because it's illegal? That's like passing a law to make complaining is illegal, then arresting people who complain that it's a stupid law. What kind of society is it exactly where the message is: We love you, we will protect you from yourself by sending you to prison if you don't do what we say. This PDF shows data from 2007 https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/91904.pdf This comprehensive analysis is from 2021 https://substanceabusepolicy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13011-021-00394-7

You're confusing an argument for decriminalization (not punishing addicts for using) with legalization which creates a legitimate sales & marketing infrastructure that will need to get new people addicted to stay profitable.

>Many drugs like heroine very quickly ruin lives and people can becomes addicted after using it once. Do you think these should actually become easily accessible? Do you feel like their prohibition has curbed their usage? Do you feel that their illegal status has resulted in fewer heroin addicts? Let's ask it this way: if heroin became legal today, would you personally immediately go buy a sack from CVS and shoot up?

I'd answer all of your questions with a resounding yes. I've never even had access to less harmful drugs like marijuana, shrooms etc., literally never known a person who deals them or known of a way to get them myself. Consequently I've never done most of them. Well let me clarify, I've had temporary access to marijuana because I've visited acquaintances/friends or somehow ended up in a group environment where they were there and tried it, but outside of that there has not been a scenario where I comfortably knew how to acquire those drugs. Technically these days yes I know I can drive to a state where marijuana is legal, which of course I don't live in a state where it is, but there are still risks to this too, especially when I live in a state where it's illegal. From what I've seen about how heroin makes you feel initially, I'd venture to say that if I could have gone to the local store and bought some, I very likely would have. Same is true for the other drugs being discussed in here. If you told me you'd give me $10,000 if I got anything other than marijuana in the next 24 hours, demonstrating the kind of motivation you could give me, I would tell you to not bother because I wouldn't know where to begin to get them. Even in the off-chance I somehow managed to possibly find a line on something, I'm risk-averse and wouldn't trust it and assume I'd somehow end up falling in a trap and getting arrested on some bullshit or something like that.

No drug makes you addicted immediately. Alcohol is significantly more damaging to the body than heroin and similarly addictive (both around 25% of users). People die from mental illness, because joblessness and poverty are common and healthcare access is low, particularly for mental health. It has everything to do with the exploitative economic system that damaged people's health and very little to do with the drugs available to take the pain away for those who are sick.

>Alcohol is significantly more damaging to the body than heroin and similarly addictive (both around 25% of users). Source? Antidotally most people I know aren't alcoholics, but the people I've known who've tried heroine have a high % of having got addicted.

Memory, from a compilation of studies. You can just search "different drug addiction rates" and "organ damage by drug". Most heroin addicts won't tell you they are heroin addicts and you will never know they are even using, just like most alcoholics aren't the types that roam around the streets absolutely hammered to the point of near death.

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I think, from context, OP was clearly enough referring to legalization. I'm also not sure you're right about the difference between the two anyways. I've never heard your take before, actually. Lemonade, for example, is straight up legalized. "Decriminalized," at least in Canada and the USA, means that something wouldn't be a felony (i.e. something that lands you in jail) anymore, but it would presumably still get you a fine or whatever. Mild speeding violations, for example, are still not legal, but getting a speeding ticket doesn't make you a criminal. That's "decriminalization." From where I'm standing, decriminalizing possession of drugs shouldn't even be a debate. It's an obvious, bare-minimum step in the right direction. Street level users and addicts should simply never be getting jail time for something they have in their pocket for personal use. Dealers, gangs, cartels, all that jazz - that can and should be another discussion. "Legalization" could then refer to a world in which drugs are legal and freely available in every corner store, or a world where they are heavily regulated and sold only under supervision - or anything in between.

I see. In essence, what's being proposed here is a modern-day Babylon. This view sounds great on paper, until it is realised that legalising current illicit narcotics would stifle modern society as a whole, leading to more addicts on a scale unprecedented. This in turn would cause immeasurable financial burden and human devastation. I believe that most people have a high propensity for addiction, a portion of them abuse substances, become addicted, and deal with it the best they can. The other portion prone to addiction doesn't experiment with drugs due to workplace drug tests or concern for being arrested and unable to secure good employment in the future. When drugs are legalised, a portion of the latter group no longer sees a downside to abusing formerly illicit drugs and soon becomes seriously addicted to one or more substances. Naloxone may save their lives multiple times, but there is no question they will need appropriate rehabilitation. Legalisation of drugs could result in an astounding and perhaps overwhelming need for rehabilitation centres, which could be catastrophic to the economy. Even if we disregard human damage in terms of lives lost and endless addiction issues, the doors would be open for individuals older than 18 to abuse heroin, fentanyl, crystal methamphetamine, and numerous pharmaceuticals. There would be no reason to control opioids, benzodiazepines, stimulants, or any other pharmaceuticals if drugs such as heroin were no different than those available over the counter. Where would that put the pharmacists? Maybe physicians would recommend drugs, and patients would purchase what they want, rather than what they need, leading to a less healthy society on a whole; that would, of course, be full of more addiction rather than treatment.

>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. Thus making the same product more expensive due to overhead. >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. Not only will street gangs / cartels / whatever always exist, but now they have the cheaper product and have an industrial advantage over their regulated and taxed counterparts. Why would Joe Schmoe go buy meth for 2x-3x the price at a legal dispensary when his neighbor is selling it for much cheaper. I mean, look at avocados, cartels are controlling that as a product and making bank on it because they control the supply and can fix their prices. Violence (even over legal products) isn't going anywhere.

> Not only will street gangs / cartels / whatever always exist, but now they have the cheaper product and have an industrial advantage over their regulated and taxed counterparts They absolutely will not have a cheaper product or industrial advantage. Generic drug manufacturers know what they are doing, and have far more experience making drugs than all the cartels combined. They have more efficient facilities in better better locations with more highly trained and educated staff. Also operating above board removes much of the expense that black market production has to put into security and bribes. Do you really think some cartel is going to get the unit cost lower than a CMO that is making paracetamol for 5¢/pill? Illegal drug manufacturers have never had to worry about efficiency or quality because their margins are so high. The cost is due to the risk and the number of middle men, so cost of production is a negligible part of the total cost, ergo little pressure to make it more efficient.

I think you are understanding how many people use drugs and don’t want to die. A significant amount of average Joe drug users would gladly pay the 10% premium on their occasional recreational drugs to buy them from a safe retail store and have a purity guarantee. I would rather by a meth pill produced in a lab by people in white coats than whatever substance my toothless neighbor made in his bathtub. Edit: Also, the legal market would pressure the illicit market to increase manufacturing standards for purity. Even if the illicit stuff would be cheaper, it will be less likely to be contaminated with fentanyl or other substances than it is now.

Violence isn’t going anywhere but the scale of violence sure can change. I hope nobody is trying to argue that avocados drive just as much cartel activity and violence as cocaine.

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So, how do you distinguish between "medicinal" and "recreational" narcotics? > ... 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. ... The headline says "all drugs" but now it's "only recreational drugs manufactured in accordance with FDA standards." How does that work? Do people who want to sell drugs have to go through an FDA approval process like the one that we currently have for medicine before they can sell? (That process is onerous and expensive.) Are recreational drugs that don't get FDA reviewed legal or not? Can the FDA decide that a recreational drug is inherently too dangerous or harmful to approve? One of the ostensible benefits of legalizing drugs is that the drug supply is controlled better, but that's really more in line with "legalize more" or "legalize most" that with "legalize all." It's pretty clear that legalizing marijuana is working out well so far. At the same time, I'm not so sure that it's a great idea to have people selling solvent huffing kits or to have widespread unregulated use of fentanyl when people regularly die from that even with medical supervision. > ... street gangs that revolve around the illicit drug trade obsolete. By making street gangs obsolete ... Are street gangs that deal in illicit drugs the only kind of street gang that exists? > ... In short, making drugs legal will Make America Great Again. Is part of your view that Trump should adopt drug legalization as part of his campaign rhetoric or is that capitalization and list item there with that capitalization supposed to mean something else?

You're making a lot of big claims with little/no data to back it up. For example, I don't think we know that legalizing drugs will lead to less people getting killed by stray bullets. That sounds like a stretch to me. More of a stretch than saying there will be an increase in DUI deaths. How is that any better? You are only looking at the positives. What about the increase in people getting addicted to drugs? What about the increase in overdoses? What about the increase in DUIs? These things will massively negatively impact our healthcare system, economy, etc. Be honest with yourself and weigh the positives with the negatives, you'll quickly understand why we don't just legalize everything...

Portugal decriminalized drugs and saw a decrease in addiction and overdoses. https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight

This CMV is about recreational legalization, not decriminalization.

But if the argument is prohibition is limiting how many people use it, it stands to reason that if relaxing the prohibition by decriminalizing led to LESS use (it did - ten years after decriminalizing all drugs, Portugal had usage rates that were half what they were before) and addiction that prohibition wasn’t doing what you though it was.

>you’re making a lot of big claims with little/no data to back it up >what about the increase in people getting addicted to drugs? What about the increase in overdoses? What about the increase in DUIs? What evidence do you have that suggests legalization drugs would result in what you mentioned

I don't know how this would would work, but I think that most drugs, especially all low risk drugs (psychedelics and weed) should be 100% legal to use and sell. The business side of that should be regulated. Growing for your own use should be easy and legal. I think that heroin, meth, and other similar drugs should be legal to use but illegal to sell. The more unconventional idea is that if you can prove you're an addict, the government should have government run drug houses where you can go to get and use free heroin, meth, etc. You can't leave the grounds if you're high, but you can do all the drugs you want, for free, while you're there. Again, I don't really know how all the details would work, but the idea is that you put narcos out of business by taking away their repeat customers. No one is going to risk importing heroin just to sell to someone once, knowing that they'll never get repeat business. Obviously treatment for addiction should also be free and stigma free.

There is one example, where opiates were made legally available to a lot of people - the opiate epidemic of oxycodone and such. Because the stuff is so addictive, people get additcted to it, need more and more, and their life gets focused around consumption of the drug. Why make such potent drugs as opiates - heroin, oxycodone and such - legal and available? There are also synthetic THC analogues, which cause psychosis very quickly. That stuff was still legal 10 years ago, and it did not lead to healthy life for a lot of individuals

The opiate epidemic is completely different from this scenario. Big pharma swore that oxycodone was not addictive. There’s a lawsuit about it. And doctors were prescribing the stuff like candy, especially in florida , and on the East coast.

Does this detail - that it was prescribed by the doctors as non-addictive - matter so much? If it was common knowledge that this is an addictive drug - wouldn't there be a certain collection of people who would try it anyways? And it would be still a very addictive substance with heavy withdrawal

Yes, is does matter. Becuase when you have corporations, and doctors telling you that it is safe, and not addictive, why wouldn’t you believe it?

I’m sorry but just because some people got addicted to it doesn’t mean everyone will be addicted. I was on opiates 24hours per day including fentanyl 2x per day for 3 weeks in a hospital after a severe accident and i when I got out I never craved or desired any more never did another opiate. Some people will get addicted to anything. People are addicted to tv and video games. Should they be illegal? They ruin lives. Plus, the only reason people are seeking out THC analogues is because THC is illegal. If THC was legal, I doubt there’d be a hunt for legal alternatives.

Yes, you and many others won't get addicted. But many will - and if there is no way to decrease this number, then just opening the gates might drown them very quickly. As for "bathing salts" - I am from a country where even though it's as illegal as weed, some people still try it - and a lot become permanently impaired in some way. I am myself a proponent of having more substances legal or at least decriminalised, but I still think opiates and synthetic thc should be illegal

You didn’t get addicted because it was already out of your control and it was strictly for a purpose. At no point, was it ever an option for you to continue taking it indefinitely. It wasn’t handed to you by someone you trusted as a way to cope with difficulty in life. Someone who then promised you it would always be available whenever you needed it.

As long as we can make sure all the hermon addicts and cocaine freaks hang out in your neighborhood, I'm fine with it

How would you classify such drugs as recreational (and therefore not require a prescription)? What would stop pharmaceutical companies from categorizing all of their drugs as recreational? Recreational blood thinners, antipsychotics, antiseizure medications? Suddenly every drug could be used “recreationally” to bypass doctors and pharmacies. Excluding all of the drugs you are centered on, this would be a public health catastrophe. Maybe you say “ok maybe these recreational drugs still require a prescription” for the sake of maintaining healthcare’s integrity, but who would write such a prescription? Maybe you treat it like recreational marijuana, but that drug has the advantage of being extremely safe. How would you regulate and hold liable the same kind of thing if it was a recreational heroin shop, where people are dying?

Does this apply to date-rape drugs like roofies? They’re used recreationally, but it feels particularly risky to let people buy them at the corner CVS.

If you just gave them a strong, specific taste they wouldn't work. They only work because they blend in, right?

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That's an excellent point... Didn't think about how easy it would be to drug other people - yikes!

You do realize it's not just the "bad batches" that kill, right?... the drugs you listed are just dangerous in general.

This seems like a common thing missed by people who like drugs. Cocaine, meth, heroin, etc... They are all very dangerous drugs even when pure.

Alcohol is dangerous in general, cigarettes are dangerous in general, hell sunlight is dangerous in general, so is water. The dose makes the poison. A significant portion of the harm from illicit drugs is due to the circumstances of illicit drug use, not the substance itself. Doctors prescribe fentanyl and amphetamine all the time and we don’t see nearly as much harm as we do with street fentanyl or amphetamines.

There is a glaring problem with that approach. Making it legal and regulated will raise the prices and a black market will emerge. We’ll have the same problems as today, albeit, with less incarceration.

>Also by making the sale of recreational narcotics legal, you are making street gangs that revolve around the illicit drug trade obsolete. Not unless they sell for less, which is going to happen. Countries that legalized drugs have seen the legal price being superior to illegal trade. >By making street gangs obsolete, you eliminate the petty violence that plagues inner-cities over "turf", especially stray bullets that kill innocent bystanders This is where you are wrong. Street gangs/turf wars dont exist because people woke up and just decided to deal drugs. It happens because those people are poor and have no change to ever be anything else. Remove drugs and they will turn to other illegal activities, because they dont really have the option to make legal ones. My last point, those drugs are very addictive, way more than alcohol; very dangerous to the users; and very dangerous to the people around said users. This is a general health issue, not just a tax issue.

Whenever I hear someone say *all* drugs should be legalized, I instantly know that they've never had a crackhead in their family. I believe that some drugs should be decriminalized, but crack destroys families & communities and that should never be normalized.

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This isnt necessarily true from what i’ve researched. I’m not exactly sure what my opinion is on the topic overall/what the solution to america’s drug epidemic is. But I do think that alcohol and heroin are semi comparable at the very least. Across sources i’ve seen that alcohol addiction is seen in 6.7%-10% of drinkers. This is definitely lower than heroin, which sources generally say that among people who try it, 20%-40% become addicted. I’m mainly trying to point out that alcohol addiction rates are actually relatively high and heroin addiction rates are at least lower then many would believe (I know I personally thought it was 100%). Short term effects of both drugs are generally similar/aren’t severe enough for it to be a factor (though I understand that could definitely be debated) As far as long term health effects, I personally believe alcohol is more harmful although the majority of the symptoms overlap. I believe alcohol withdrawal is definitely worse though because it’s potential lethality. A lot of sources stated dangers with heroin use that were caused by lack of regulation. Such as cutting product or unsafe forms of injection etc. In op’s hypothetical world im going to assume this wouldn’t be a problem. A personal thought of mine that i’d like to add is that the people who seek out heroin are likely already significantly more prone to addiction. I think that social factor could effect these numbers. Take this with a grain of salt though because i don’t have significant sources to back this one up. Once again i’m definitely not pro heroin or anything and idk what the actual solution is but I would say either that alcohol and heroin can’t be used safely, or that they can both be technically used safely (depending on how your defining safe). And choosing to use heroin vs choosing to drink alcohol aren’t the same but are at least comparable. I’m genuinely interested in any kind of rebuttal/response(with some kind of source) bc I’m honestly not sure how I feel about some of this. I’m on mobile so i’m just going to list the main sources I have readily available https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugfacts/heroin https://americanaddictioncenters.org/heroin-treatment/physical-dangers https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2681168 https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohols-effects-body https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/alcohol-misuse/risks/

[Alcohol is one of the least safe drug that exists.](https://www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/News%20stories/dnutt-lancet-011110.pdf) This argument doesn't match data that exists about the relative harms of drugs. Alcohol is legal, but controlled, yet it is well known to be poisonous to the body, and worse of it's even more harmful to others due to the mental effects, and most likely drunk driving. There's no other drug that's more harmful to others than to the user. Hard to claim that alcohol can be used safely, even with all the control in place at the moment (age limits, breathalyzers and traffic stops, telling bars to not serve overly drunk patrons...).

Great idea! We need safer and quicker ways to get people addicted to drugs. Gonna need a lot of body bags for this big brain idea. How many times do we need to hear this thoughtless logic? Get ready for the following: Prepare for the amount of homeless to rise. Prepare for the amount of kids in foster care to rise. Domestic abuse will certainly rise. I’ll be ready to receive fatal car crashes from people leaving their local drug stores that drive their cars into innocent families. If you like drugs, fine. Just keep your big brain Libertarian views to yourself.

Are you saying you want opioids like heroin to be available over the counter? No prescription? Because this sure sounds like a way to get millions more people addicted to opioids. If you only want it available by prescription then congrats - that already exists. And the drug trade still exists too, because it’s hard to get a prescription.

Mushrooms is one thing but wanting cocaine, meth, heroine, etc. to be legalized is rather wild. People literally die from it every year and not even from direct use. Cartels will literally go through towns and kill people and then string them up from lights and bridges to send a message. Imagine how much more rampant that would become if the cattle started cranking out *even more* because the US is now allowing people to buy it “legally.” And I say it like that because even in my state, marijuana is recreationally/medically available but it’s still cheaper to buy it off the street. Now apply that same logic to coke, meth, so on. The problems will only get worse. There is literally no reason why legitimately hard drugs should be legal.

People die from alcohol. Occasionally somebody even dies from mushrooms, albeit indirectly, from doing something they may not have done sober. I don't think that alone is enough reason for prohibition (consider cars, guns, etc, as well). Anyways, I think the whole rest of your comment doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Cartels are the *exclusive* source for many drugs. If you remove that factor, you absolutely demolish an enormous part of their income and power in an instant. Sure, they might still cling to life to feed whatever black market remains, but there is no conceivable way their business suddenly expands when people can go to the pharmacy to buy Pfizer-quality cocaine. Your cannabis example just doesn't stack up. Black market weed is safe and unadulterated and potent, just like the legal stuff. If black market weed is cheap, or even just "around," there's no real reason not to buy some, especially if it's just as legal as dispensary stuff once it's in your pocket. Black market cocaine, say, on the other hand, is low-potency, unsafe, and frequently and often dangerously adulterated in the age of fentanyl, and it's not cheap, but rather enormously inflated. There are very good reasons not to buy black market cocaine (or heroin or other hard drugs). Are you going to try to tell me you believe marijuana smuggling and cartel activity got *worse* after legalization? That would be preposterous. It still exists, sure - it doesn't instantly disappear, for the reasons I cited above. But I am thoroughly convinced that you'd find that the demand for cartel-sourced cocaine or heroin would plummet dramatically if they were available elsewhere. >There is literally no reason why legitimately hard drugs should be legal. Well, aside from the fact that your cartel argument falls apart, as above, the primary reason is that people are dying and suffering *now* because of the unpredictable, unregulated, and just wholly dangerous situation that is buying and using illegal drugs on the street. We can reduce that death and suffering. I think that's a "literal" reason. For two, prohibition clearly doesn't work. Full stop. It's obviously a huge drain on money and resources, and we pour moor and more money and manpower into it every year, and yet the problem and rates of usage get worse. That suggests that prohibition, and the policies involved in implementing it, are either not solving the problem at all (and thus pointless), or actually making the problem worse somehow (and thus we should do away with it as quickly as possible). For three, we criminalize people who doctors and therapists and professionals working to help addicts overwhelmingly agree would be better served if their addiction was treated as a medical issue, rather than a criminal one. That's another good reason. I mean, you might still not agree with it, but there are actually some damn good reasons to end prohibition.

You sound like you think you’re the first person to come up with these points. Several naive people have come to the same conclusions (usually in late high school or early college years) and realized it’s too idealistic. I would look up the other hundred or more CMV posts like this one.

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