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.
At any rate, consumption should surely be decriminalised.
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