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so, once upon a time i was for the legalization of all drugs. i regarded prohibition as a thoroughly failed endeavor. i thought that adults should be able to monitor what they put in their own bodies, and that rational adults wouldn't shoot heroin in the first place.

today, i still think some drugs should be legalized, and i definitely think the war on drugs approach is a failure. but i am honestly not sure about legalizing all drugs. originally it was hard drugs like crack, meth, heroin that gave me pause. and they still do, to an extent.

but even more than that... the recent synthetic drugs highlight (to me) the potential for a catastrophe, if we embraced the idea of across the board legalization. they're coming up with drugs that are so overwhelming in their effect that you could be a rational person before you take a hit, and afterwards not so much. meaning you only have to make that one irrational move to try it in the first place. and i think we can all agree that even rational people act irrationally from time to time. and honestly i felt this way about crack, meth, & heroin as well....but the new synthetic drugs are just upping the ante. i'll put it like this... you might actually come across the occasional "recreational user" of meth or heroin who isn't a straight up fiend.... can you say the same for flakka?

so i dunno... to me it is still an open question.... but i would be interested to hear your thoughts. below are a series of videos on the synthetic drug that prompted me to make this thread... flakka. which is a reinvention of "bathsalts." but the thread isn't just about flakka. i'm more interested in discussing how to approach the war on drugs in general... and whether there are in fact some substances that we need to ban. and if so... how to effectively do so.


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Make no mistake there are certain drugs that should be illegal. Like heroin is addictive and harmful. But something like weed isn't and yet people try to lump weed in with all the other drugs.

Or if you point out "well booze and cigs are legal" they say "well why would you wanna add more to that?" and they say this with an actual straight face.

The war on drugs has also failed in part because our government lies to us about drugs. Go watch Reefer Madness, it is funny and silly right? Until you realize these tools in the government were *dead* serious about it. They weren't ironically saying "a marijuana addict..killed his own family with an ax". They were delivering this stuff as if it was fact.

So then if you try weed and realize oh gee these people are full of shit..you then don't trust what they say about any drugs. If they are too stupid to grasp the lack of danger with weed then why should we believe what they say about crack or anything else?

Just like flakka, why should we trust what they say? What have they done to earn our trust? Lying to people and manipulating them isn't a very trustworthy action.

Yeah weed and LSD are two drugs I think should be legalized.

Impossible. There's just too many drug cartels/syndicates making billions out of the black market. The mafia bosses are in cahoots, if not partly controls, with the high-ranked US government officials. These guys would run into trouble with the drug cartels. And we all know what happens when you cross paths and mess with Mexican/Latin American/Asian drug cartels. I have no doubt people in legislation (non-gov't. citizens moreso) actually fear these cartels.

Ah yes therein lies the problem, most of the people in power in this country are greedy little assholes. But we'll sure pretend like this is the land of the "free" and all that nonsense people tell themselves.

Harmless and more casual stuff like marijuana, LSD, and shrooms should be legalized but harder drugs should remain illegal.

Prisons and government make a lot of money by keeping harmless drugs illegal though so I don't think this stuff is going to be legalized across the country anytime soon.

If the government is too stupid to figure out how to profit off making these things legal then they need to step aside and let a grown up begin making the decisions.

well, the reason why i bring this up is because one of the main arguments in favor of legalization is that prohibition doesn't work and that it is propping up the cartels and gangs.

but if we only legalize certain drugs like marijuana and lsd, we aren't going to actually solve this problem. we only remove one source of revenue for them - similar to what happened when we repealed the prohibition of booze. it killed (for the most part) the black market for bootlegged liquor. but organized crime still thrives on the sale of other drugs.

don't get me wrong: i still agree with legalizing certain drugs like weed. that's not really my question, though. my question is that if legalization isn't an option for other drugs (which the cartels and gangs will continue to prosper from), then what is our solution for these drugs? we can't just fall back on rhetoric about ending the war on drugs. because the war on drugs will inevitably continue so long as we are banning certain drugs.

I'm all for the legalization of all drugs. I feel that the main reason people don't use hard drugs like meth and cocaine isn't because they are illegal (many people are fine using pot) but rather the negative effects of using said drugs. Money that is made of taxing drugs and that is saved from having a far smaller DEA could then be used to fund better prevention and rehab programs.

Originally posted by ares834
I feel that the main reason people don't use hard drugs like meth and cocaine isn't because they are illegal (many people are fine using pot) but rather the negative effects of using said drugs. i used to use this same point... now i'm not so sure. say cocaine is legal and has top corporations marketing it. combine that with the fact that legalization would inevitably drive down prices. i have a hard time believing that cocaine use wouldn't increase as a result.

that's not to say there wouldn't be benefits to legalization. but there could also be adverse effects. to me, it really is an open question as to whether or not the result would be a net negative or a net positive. for example... you could argue that with legal cocaine, people wouldn't have to resort to synthetic drugs like flakka or bathsalts. but we don't necessary know that this is true. for all we know, these synthetic drugs might just be inherently cheaper to make and distribute. and they might provide even more intense effects. so there still could be an incentive for people to do them, even with legal coke. just like people do crack even if they have access to coke in some cases.. because the effects are just much more intense.

I think legalisation of hard drugs should not be subject to a free market economy. It should be legal to obtain through certified, perhaps government run, outlets, that can also offer help for addicts and things like that.

that's an interesting idea... care to speculate on some of the specific details of how you picture that working?

for example... would they distribute all types of hard drugs (crack, meth, heroin, synthetic subtitutes, etc) or only certain ones? would they charge or would it be free? if they charge, would they drive down prices to make it extremely cheap so they kill any potential for black market competitors? would anyone who wants these drugs be able to get them, or would there be some sort of red tape involved? limits on the amount one person can get in a specific period of time? etc.

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Originally posted by red g jacks
that's an interesting idea... care to speculate on some of the specific details of how you picture that working?

for example... would they distribute all types of hard drugs (crack, meth, heroin, synthetic subtitutes, etc) or only certain ones? would they charge or would it be free? if they charge, would they drive down prices to make it extremely cheap so they kill any potential for black market competitors? would anyone who wants these drugs be able to get them, or would there be some sort of red tape involved? limits on the amount one person can get in a specific period of time? etc.

Imma be like presidential candidates and say I have no plan to announce at this time.

But for multiple of these questions different things seem feasible. Like I assume they'd only have a certain selection of hard drugs, they should probably exclude the most hard and awful ones like you describe, maybe it'd have to go through your doctor, personally I think everyone should be able to get them perhaps with some simple hoops (like a registry, free consultation with a doctor, etc.), I'd favour them being free, but they could also be sold at cost, probably adults only, I'd favour limits of course what the registry would be needed for as well).

Now, the one argument against it, that we don't know about, like you said, is that this could increase consumption, and granted, I don't know. However I think a large part of why a lot of people start taking drugs is the coolness associated with them, the counter culture part, that would evaporate if they were government sanctioned drugs, so I could imagine that it could even have a negative effect. Additionally there would be less or no incentive for drug dealers to get people hooked, and there would be some level of quality. My gut feeling is that the upsides would far, far outweigh the downsides, if there are any.

At any rate, consumption should surely be decriminalised.

You would still need to regulate the usage of such drugs. Jobs will not hire you if they are in your system or fire you if they appear in random drug screenings. MJ can stay in your system a while. As a truck driver, I could never use these drugs. We get random tested all the time.

Originally posted by Tattoos N Scars
You would still need to regulate the usage of such drugs. Jobs will not hire you if they are in your system or fire you if they appear in random drug screenings. MJ can stay in your system a while. As a truck driver, I could never use these drugs. We get random tested all the time.

Well, the drug screening policies likely would change to a degree if there's such a fundamental shift in how to deal with drugs. But sure, driving under influence needs to be regulated, etc. But we already do that with alcohol anyways.

Originally posted by ArtificialGlory
gwIRoxI2mlM If that's actually pcp then it's angel dust and should be forever illegal like heroin. Angel dust causes more deaths per year than heroin by a good margin iirc. That video is also messed up, dude looks like he about to start munching on people's faces.

Originally posted by TheTyrant
If that's actually pcp then it's angel dust and should be forever illegal like heroin. Angel dust causes more deaths per year than heroin by a good margin iirc. That video is also messed up, dude looks like he about to start munching on people's faces.

Yeah, PCP is scary as all shit.

Originally posted by Bardock42
Imma be like presidential candidates and say I have no plan to announce at this time.

But for multiple of these questions different things seem feasible. Like I assume they'd only have a certain selection of hard drugs, they should probably exclude the most hard and awful ones like you describe, maybe it'd have to go through your doctor, personally I think everyone should be able to get them perhaps with some simple hoops (like a registry, free consultation with a doctor, etc.), I'd favour them being free, but they could also be sold at cost, probably adults only, I'd favour limits of course what the registry would be needed for as well).

Now, the one argument against it, that we don't know about, like you said, is that this could increase consumption, and granted, I don't know. However I think a large part of why a lot of people start taking drugs is the coolness associated with them, the counter culture part, that would evaporate if they were government sanctioned drugs, so I could imagine that it could even have a negative effect. Additionally there would be less or no incentive for drug dealers to get people hooked, and there would be some level of quality. My gut feeling is that the upsides would far, far outweigh the downsides, if there are any.like i said, i think it's an interesting idea and i won't say it wouldn't work

my instincts are somewhat skeptical... the ways i could see it falling short are as follows:

if you give people unlimited access to free drugs, they are more likely to become drug addicts because you remove a major cost (namely the financial burden) in the cost-benefit analysis of being a drug addict.

so in short, a world where you can get as much cocaine as you want from the govt is a world with more coke addicts, most likely. the fact that you can also get access to rehab type services is a nice idea, but ultimately people are probably even less likely to want rehab when their coke habit is made easier to maintain by govt subsidies. and on top of this, there would be little to no political will for this sort of thing in america. we have political backlash over the prospect of our tax money funding other people's healthcare, let alone other people's coke habit.

you could then perhaps counter that instead you only provide limited access to cocaine instead of unlimited access. this then chips away at the profit margin of the illicit drug trade, but it doesn't eliminate the black market in general. because basically you're going to give a coke user x amount of free cocaine a month... and once they use up that amount and want more cocaine they are going to have the incentive to go score on the street. which means the organized crime syndicates are still going to benefit from the drug trade. you might only reduce their profits somewhat... or you might actually not reduce them at all or even increase them, if more people become addicts as a result and thus there are more people who have an incentive to score on the street once their govt funded supply runs out.

so this is the basic dilemma as i see it. if you go all in and give people unlimited access, you will most likely increase consumption and addiction. if you hold back and try to impose limits, then the potential for a black market reemerges. and either one of these scenarios will provide proponents of the drug war and prohibition with a potent source of political rhetoric.

this, i do definitely agree with...and i see this more as a problem with law enforcement strategies than anything else

this would help with stuff like incarceration rates and make the system less abusive to drug users... but once again i don't think this would do much to hurt the illicit drug trade... which remains a separate issue from treating addicts with more compassion

I mean I see the potential for increased use, and I definitely agree that the political climate makes the whole idea currently impossible, but let me ask you personally, would you go and try heroin if it was freely available in a government run store? What if you had to go to your doctor or a consultation first? And what if your name is on a government register?

Personally I don't think I would.

maybe not heroin... cocaine? maybe so. i've tried it before... it's pretty fun tbh

but you really can't assume that if you are responsible and make good decisions, that most people are going to do so. we've seen drug epidemics take over entire communities in this country.. so the idea that people will abstain even if the drugs are freely available and plentiful is pretty silly to me. i also saw you mentioned that people do them cause it's "cool" because it's illegal. however, there's evidence to the contrary in places where drugs are legal. pot use has hardly become less prevalent in colorado, for example.

and then there's shit like this...
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Originally posted by red g jacks
maybe not heroin... cocaine? maybe so. i've tried it before... it's pretty fun tbh

but you really can't assume that if you are responsible and make good decisions, that most people are going to do so. we've seen drug epidemics take over entire communities in this country.. so the idea that people will abstain even if the drugs are freely available and plentiful is pretty silly to me. i also saw you mentioned that people do them cause it's "cool" because it's illegal. however, there's evidence to the contrary in places where drugs are legal. pot use has hardly become less prevalent in colorado, for example.

and then there's shit like this...
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I don't think the shocking drug epidemics that have taken over entire communities under the war on drugs is a very good argument against legalisation. Basically it's a "maybe it will be as bad under drug legalization" vs. "it's definitely this bad under the war on drugs".

I would also say that Marijuana is a special case. A drug that is less harmful than both alcohol and tobacco, if anything there is a very good chance that it would decrease the use of these other, more dangerous, drugs instead.

At any rate, I have seen conflicting evidence about whether legalization increases or decreases use. Do you have some links to the case of Colorado? I mean three important aspects that a study on legalization has to consider is "did we know the dark number of usage before legalization?", "has legalization decreased the use of other legal drugs?", "has legalization decreased the usage of harder, not-legal drugs?"...again I have seen conflicting evidence for all of these.

Originally posted by Bardock42
I don't think the shocking drug epidemics that have taken over entire communities under the war on drugs is a very good argument against legalisation. Basically it's a "maybe it will be as bad under drug legalization" vs. "it's definitely this bad under the war on drugs". i'm talking about whether people are willing to try hard drugs. to suggest you can't use examples from when drugs are illegal (which is basically the only recent examples we have, since these drugs have been illegal for a very long time) is to presume that there is something about illegal drugs that are more appealing to use than legal drugs... which once again seems silly to me.

but if you go back far enough, people were certainly willing to use opium back before it was illegal. and many people today are willing to abuse prescription opiates, which are also often obtained legally.

i know more than one person who picked up heroin after having started out just taking oxy, for example. so the "would you try heroin, as a rational person" argument is not very compelling to me. maybe it is because i have grown up and been around a lot of people who have indeed tried and eventually thrown their lives away on drugs like crack, heroin and meth. maybe your experiences have been different.


i agree with the unbolded part... not so sure about the bolded part. marijuana is no substitute for harder drugs imo... depending on your tastes. if you have any data that suggests otherwise, i'll take it into consideration. but just based on instinct.... i disagree.

no... i was basing it on the fact that the legal weed business is being touted as a new booming industry in colorado... where as (as far as i know) colorado was never really known for a robust weed market when it was illegal. cali, on the other hand, was.

but in any case i don't see any evidence for the idea that people use illegal drugs more than legal ones.... and if you have any direct evidence for this then i will once again take it into consideration. i would once again consider things like the K2 video i posted and the fact that alcohol is widely used (perhaps moreso than any illegal drug) as evidence that people just like taking drugs because drugs are fun... whether they are legal or not.