Comment by titanix2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by titanix2 | Hacker News Reader

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I which it isn’t. I’ve seen a high school friend falling into that gradually: he started speaking about cannabis to the point it became its only topic of conversation. Then of course he hanged only with people with similar interest. He became weird during the breaks and needed to smoke something, anything. After that when I went to the university he became a small dealer. He got enough money from that activity to rent an apartment and buy all the newest gaming consoles. So he didn’t project himself into the future: no studies, no saving. He finally got into debt because of his girlfriend not paying her part of the rent. Sad story because it was not a dumb guy but the addiction makes him made very bad life choices.

On the macro-scale, cannabis and others drugs are a big factor that fuels France suburb separatism and in some case finance terror attacks. Sorhere is a need for a real prohibition or for a legalization to stop this underground economy.

I see the same happening with Alcohol. Should it also be illegal? Or should we not patronize people in general and help those that seek to escape life via any mind altering substances to the point that they interfere with the rest of society?

I understand the sentiment, but in practical, not ideological terms, is prohibition going to help? Multiple examples, from US alcohol Prohibition era, to the War on Drugs raging for over 30 years now, to inner city hellholes like Baltimore or Chicago, and on the reverse, to success examples of decriminalization like Portugal, do we not have enough empirical evidence that prohibition simply doesn't work?

Same story with a friend of mine.

But I see similar patterns with alcohol, food, video games or TV. Even books. People look for something to cope with life, and as long as we, as a society, don't provide a sufficient support for each others, anything that can be abused will be.

Would making it illegal have prevented this?

I'm Canadian and I think legalization is the right choice, but I think there is some dishonesty on both sides, which is doing everyone a disservice.

The anti-cannabis people will say it's a "gateway drug" and that it will destroy your life, while some elements on the the pro-cannabis side would have you believe it's some sort of panacea. The reality is that it can cause intense anxiety and paranoia in some people, and some people do get addicted to it. As with every other drug, you should tread carefully and have some amount of self-awareness when using it.

PS: I hope that mushrooms will be made legal at some point. They show a lot of promise for use as antidepressants.

Absolutely - this is an example case where the legal status of the drug I don't think would have made a difference, the drug clearly had a profound effect on this individual. Cannabis is by no means a safe drug (no drugs are 100% safe), but it does tend to get painted as either black or white by either side. The politicisation of the issue makes it hard to have a rational discussion around drug risks, and harms, especially in relation to each other (e.g. cannabis is much safer than alcohol by most measures, especially when not smoked). Almost all drugs also have benefits too, including alcohol and even heroin - which has therapeutic benefit for the terminally ill in extreme pain, for example.

Sadly we're a very long way away from a truly rational approach to drug use, not least because we've spent the best part of a century making it a moral issue.

(Mushrooms - one of the safest drugs - were legal in the UK, but were made illegal a few years ago - amid moral panic).

The UK drug laws are, generally speaking, an absolute disgrace. I think if you wanted an example of the ways not to go about it then the UK would be a fine place to study (but not live).

The apex was the dismissing of Professor David Nutt (great name for fans of nominative determinism, by the way) for speaking truth to power.

> but were made illegal a few years ago - amid moral panic).

Everyone started to take the piss which didn't help. Big signs up in shops "MAGIC MUSHROOMS FOR SALE". For years they had been available, under the counter with no problems, but when it became blatant, the end was sure to come.

Which just underlines the way that drug classification decisions are made in the UK: not because there was an uptick in harm, but because it became noticeable.

I agree, but I understand the strategy that was being employed by the pro-legalization crowd to a certain extent. Cannabis had been demonized so thoroughly and for so long that you could say "cannabis is a generally safe substance that should be legal but can have some negative effects" would it would be filtered out to the average non-partaking American ear as "cannabis is dangerous and has negative effects!!!!!"

Are mushrooms illegal? I had no idea.

Correlation != causation. Your anecdote could just as well be about surfing (or anything really). I've known people who started surfing and got so into it that they started traveling in a van and talking about surfing all the time, not working or saving money. Should we ban surfboards to prevent this terrible fate?

> On the macro-scale, cannabis and others drugs are a big factor that fuels France suburb separatism

Do you have a citation for that?

It's immensely frustrating when people deny any possible harm that cannabis can cause. We _know_ that cannabis can cause psychotic illness; that cannabis can surface an underlying illness that wouldn't have been a problem with cannabis use; that cannabis can make existing illness worse; that it can be addictive; that it can make violent people perpetrate acts of violence.

Importantly, this denial is counter-productive. It works against efforts to legalise drugs.

Campaigners need to be honest about the negative aspects of drug use, and provide solutions for these - because there are solutions for all of them.

I agree, but I understand where the "speak no evil" tactic sprung from. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17356507

The parent comment I was replying to seemed to be basing his position on one piece of anecdata and little else, thus my comment. I don't see what in my comment elicited your response but I do agree with your general thesis, with the caveat that I see it as a potentially-necessary response to counteract extensive demonization/fear-mongering by the state and temperance league style organizations. That said, the time for that tactic I feel is over, as the public is now beyond the "reefer madness"-style knee-jerk anti-cannabis bias.

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