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Comment by TerminalJunkie | Hacker News Reader

If you were able to get drugs from a pharmacy or dispensary or a regulated service, there would't (hopefully) be a black market to supply the drugs which creates untold violence.

I have a completely untested theory that the number of deaths would be less with a well regulated legalization of drugs than with an unregulated black market where gangs and organized crime supply the demand for illicit substances.

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Portugal decriminalized in 2001 and guess what happened[0]

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/05/why-h...

There's already a black market for prescription drugs.

Because there's still a barrier to access, providing a way around it still provides profit.

There's a black market because most people can't just get a prescription from a doctor, they have to lie or get someone else's drugs, there isn't enough legal availability to rule it out.

>> If you were able to get drugs from a pharmacy or dispensary or a regulated service, there would't (hopefully) be a black market

Medical marijuana is legal where I live, you can buy it at a regulated service, however there are plenty of people who still buy it on the street or produce more than they are legally able to and sell the excess.

Yeah, then the black market goes from some cartel pipeline to someone in your neighborhood. There's a huge difference in regards to funding violence.

Except Joe who grows weed in his cupboard isn't really capable of producing heroin let alone the extraordinarily dangerous opium derivatives that pharmaceutical are pushing on doctors.

If Joe can grow weed in his cupboard, he absolutely can grow poppies and produce opium. The process is not complex.

The required acreage to yield opium in significant quantities is way beyond a closet (or even a basement). Not to mention that heroin is ~1% of total opium weight.

If we're talking about Joe's personal use, a single poppy plant produces multiple doses, according to this[1] reference and some anecdotal drug forum dose suggestions, on the order of tens of mg.

1.https://erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/opium.html

>produces multiple doses

Could you tell me what number "multiple" is and what a "dose" looks like?

Are we talking about raw plant material that is opium, or refined heroin/morphine/codeine? The conflation of the word drugs and plant material seems like the most absurd gorilla in the room.

Off to do some coffee...

welcome to our grim cyberpunk (near-)future: https://www.wired.com/2015/08/dont-try-home-scientists-brew-...

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