Hacker News Reader

Comment by fredley | Hacker News Reader

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com