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Let's not forget that while you added marijuana as an example of this, it's both not currently entirely allowed, and for a very long time was classified as highly dangerous. It's a good example of not only how the government can get this wrong, but how it is also is susceptible to being swayed by politics (both as a constituency wants something whether justified or not, and as a scapegoat for political ends). In that respect, alcohol is actually a counter-example to some degree as well, since it arguably causes quite a large harm to others every year through drunk driving, yet it's politically untenable to ban it (again).

In that respect, alcohol is actually a counter-example to some degree as well, since it arguably causes quite a large harm to others every year through drunk driving, yet it's politically untenable to ban it (again).

The difference between alcohol and the other drugs is that alcohol makes other activities dangerous, but the onus is ultimately on the individual. The other drugs simply make the person dangerous, due to hallucinations, violent/uncontrollable urges, etc. They also have permanent physiological effects on the brain even at low doses and only a few uses, whereas alcohol would require substantial amounts of consumption to have significant or permanent effects. Not even remotely the same thing.

> The other drugs simply make the person dangerous, due to hallucinations, violent/uncontrollable urges, etc.

Are you making the case that alcohol doesn't sometimes cause people to act violent or dangerous?

I'm not really a fan of anything more than caffeine and the occasional alcoholic beverage, but let's be realistic, there's plenty of violence that happens because people are under the influence of alcohol that wouldn't happen if they were not. I'm sure there's thousands of people in prison right now for that reason. Any drug that lowers inhibitions has a chance to cause someone to act on a violent urge they wouldn't otherwise.

> The difference between alcohol and the other drugs ... They also have permanent physiological effects on the brain even at low doses and only a few uses, whereas alcohol would require substantial amounts of consumption to have significant or permanent effects.

So, your evidence is that you can pick a drug that is worse than alcohol, thus alcohol is better than "other drugs"? That's not how logic works.

> many drugs are illegal not because of the harm they cause to the user but because of the harm the user causes to others, and it's not feasible to make a "safer" dose because the nature of these drugs encourages addicts to use larger or stronger doses over time.

I'm interested in how making them illegal abates this? It seems like a non-sequitur to me. Further, even after making many natural drugs in categories that did this, we legalized tons of opioids made by US manufacturers, so that doesn't even follow with the actual law in the US.

Further, using alcohol regularly has a similar effect, and I'll bet you it's far more dangerous over time.

I will suggest instead that drugs are illegal for two reasons: Moralization, which is basically randomness applied to ethics; and because it allows our justice system to pick and choose who to imprison.

A third reason is that generally speaking, they cause a lot of pain and suffering. I’m against prohibition, but dismissing it entirely as moralizing and social control misses the very real dangers of drug abuse, and their attendant social costs. It’s just that the only thing worse than the harm caused by drugs, is the harm caused by drugs and their prohibition. Legalizing drugs is just step 1 though. Step 2 has to be a massive overhaul of treatment for addicts and the mentally ill.

Moralization is not random, the action is usually any behavior to protect your offspring at all cost in all scenarios. Millions of parents vote for anti drug and war on drug policies, to increase the chances of theire kids having grandkids. And it's a understandable goal, e even though it's heresy for a libertarian.

> they cause a lot of pain and suffering

Nothing compared to the US prison system, which is where we send people. It is entirely moralizing. Our prison system is the way that it is because of a specific morality in the US, just as so many laws and political positions that exist. There is nothing ethical about it.

If you want people who are addicted to drugs to be able to free themselves from the cycle in a country with a prison system like ours designed to cause fear, you must make the drugs legal, so that coming forward isn't a permanent personal threat.

The pain and suffering is also shouldered by people around the substance abuser. While I don't disagree with you about prison, if much of innocent parties' pain can be abated by taking the abuser out of the system, then it is not just moralizing.

I agree with most of what you say, but it's not true that "we legalized tons of opioids made by US manufacturers" - being a prescription drug is far from being legal. Recall that fentanyl, morphine, amphetamines, and even meth are available from doctors, while being quite distinctly illegal in any other context.

If anything, this reinforces your point about moralization and selective criminalization. The same chemical can be a medicine or a crime, and most of the difference comes down to money and class.

Alcohol also has the self-limiting property of consumption being marginally reversible. I can throw up a stomach full of vodka, but I can't throw up a vein full of heroin. Certainly alcohol poisoning deaths still occur, but far fewer of them occur than if throwing up weren't possible.

Even so, I think more regulation, not less, of the alcohol industry is a good idea. Hitting the alcohol industry with advertising bans as harsh as the tobacco industry has would probably do a lot of good. Regulations requiring plain packaging might also do some good.

Alcohol is also a true physical addiction. You might want to die from heroin withdrawal, but it won't kill you if you quit cold turkey. The same cannot be said of high level alcoholism.

Yes, that's right. DT can kill, a property alcohol addiction shares only with benzos to my knowledge.

There is something to be said however about the relative addictiveness of alcohol and opiods. Most consumers of alcohol don't experience any negative symptoms at all when they go weeks without drinking, because most people who drink alcohol do it with insufficient intensity and frequency to develop an addiction. Most people never experience the side effects of cannabis withdrawal for the same reason (which are physiologically terrifying but not physically dangerous.)

I know some people claim to be casual consumers of heroin. But I also know from personal experience that opiod addicts are liars. I've known one person killed by alcohol (a drunk driver, not DT) but three who were proscribed pain killers (two for workplace injuries, the other because his morbid obesity was causing back pain...) Before they wound up dead, each of these people turned into lying manipulators seeking more and more drug as their tolerance grew.

The medical industry needs a lot more regulation. A fat person never should have been prescribed opium derivatives to treat pain caused by the strain his obesity was putting on his skeleton. That man got himself into medical trouble in the first place by having very poor self control, and instead of treating that psychological deficiency or treating his weight gain, the doctor gives him powerful addictive pain killers to mask the pain? That doctor belongs in prison. I know three people who took doctor prescribed doses for no more than a few weeks and got hooked and eventually killed. The alcohol industry is bad, but it's not that bad. The pharma/medical industry is getting away with murder and few are critical of it.

EDIT:

> "The alcohol industry is bad, but it's not that bad."

I regret that phrasing. I believe on an individual level that opiods are more addictive than alcohol, but the alcohol and tobacco industries are scum on par with the painkiller industry and I would love to see them punished with very harsh regulation. Banning alcohol from television/radio/billboards would be a great start. I believe some countries also restrict tobacco to plain packaging, white cartons with black lettering. I'd like to see that brought to America and applied to the alcohol industry as well.

The corporate lobbying against such regulation would be intense, but I think it would be worth the fight.

>>The pharma/medical industry is getting away with murder and few are critical of it.

I think many people are critical of it. The president is even putting out initiatives to combat it. I agree that it should have happened sooner, and the response should probably be more severe, but it does seem like the culture of "you broke your toe, he's some oxy" is starting to fade.

As for the alcohol industry being "not that bad"...eh, maybe? I think there's a lot less stigma around alcohol abuse because of how much normal, healthy consumption is a part of many cultures. There's a lot of problems with the alcohol industry and it's toll on society, and I would say it seems that US culture's lax attitude towards that is more troubling.

I don't understand why alcohol and prescription drugs can be advertised on TV while cigarettes are banned. I'm pretty strongly in the "do whatever you want, but we don't need to advertise vice" category. Advertising the products equates to direct cultural approval of these things which helps encourage abuse. I'm not saying take away the drugs and booze and smokes, just don't let them put ads everywhere if you feel they're a societal problem.

Alcohol slowly destroys your liver even without poisoning.

Harsher regulation of alcohol advertising would address this problem as well. Alcohol advertisements normalize the over-consumption of alcohol and the habitual consumption of alcohol, both of which are hazardous.

The reason I mentioned alcohol poisoning and not long term organ damage is because I consider that to be a less severe issue even if the bodycount is higher. Elderly people living to be slightly less elderly than they otherwise would concerns me a lot less than people dying young. A teenager dying from alcohol poisoning (or a DUI) is a greater tragedy than a grandpa dying at 70 from pickling his liver (rather living a few more years to be killed by all the fried food he eats for breakfast every morning.)

Counterpoint: the long term effects of alcohol lead to a decreased quality of life. Sad teen DUI is absolutely sad, but 15 years of bleeding ulcers and the pain caused by liver/kidney problems due to alcoholism isn't exactly sunshine and smiles.

That's not even getting into the links between dementia and alcohol abuse, because I personally find nothing more terrifying than being a shell of my former self as my mind fades out.

As far as I'm concerned, a young person dying peacefully in their sleep is more tragic than an elderly person dying slowly and painfully. The math on this one seems pretty straight forward to me, but I appreciate that some people may find attitude cold or cynical. Most people probably wouldn't be willing to throw that proverbial trolley switch, but I would without hesitation.

Without going too far down the moral philosophy hole, I think we can both agree that there's pros and cons to either side of this one, and just part on good terms. This is classic "maximizing joy" vs "minimizing suffering" axis stuff.

The biggest harm those drugs cause is to the wallet of the user, to the point that a lot decide to become dealers (or sex workers) themselves so that they can cut the drug with brick dust and USE the clean share for themselves, which causes major health issues (e.g. abscesses at the injection point) downstream that are then attributed to the drug rather than the additives.

If those "drug addicts" have access to cheap, uncontaminated drugs and the dosage is controlled by their doctors then all of the problems that are commonly associated with "hard" drug use disappear.

However most people get jealous of those "cured" people who live a normal life but still have their doctor treat them with the drug that made them addicted in the first place. Usually it's along these lines: "What?? My tax money is used so someone else can stay addicted?" When the clinic was shutdown around 70 people became homeless because they cannot afford street drugs and 6 died from overdoses. Of course the reaction was something like "If after decades of treatment people are still addicted, then maybe the clinic wasn't so successful after all."

Have you ever spent time with long term meth/ice/coke/crack users? The problems don't disappear if you give someone clean drugs. These drugs are simply nasty.

If those "drug addicts" have access to cheap, uncontaminated drugs and the dosage is controlled by their doctors then all of the problems that are commonly associated with "hard" drug use disappear.

No, these drugs literally destroy the brain at a physiological level. Meth, Ecstasy, cocaine, etc. have permanent effects on the user. One use doesn't usually cause noticeable damage, but regular use does.

Alcohol is an unusual case because it's so much easier to make than any other drug. You can even make it by accident, e.g. by leaving fruit juice out uncovered. When prisoners sometimes make "prison wine" without getting caught, you have little hope of enforcing a ban in the general population.

You can even make it inside of yourself, potentially by accident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-brewery_syndrome

I would think that making them illegal probably increases the harm these users cause other people. Say a drug addict is using something very potent and illegal, a large aspect of their life revolves around a criminal act, using, purchasing, and carrying the drug they crave.

Wouldn't their logic then be, "I'm already committing potentially felony level crimes each day, so what difference does robbing someone make? Just another crime to my list of crimes." By othering them through making their daily routines a crime, I would argue that it encourages them to branch out into other crimes.

Contrast this image with the working addicts you often see in other countries with decriminalization. They often are able to function in society as a normal person, go to work, run a household, and they might use at the end of the day as maintenance for their addiction or might use a small dose in their car on their lunch break or whatever. Not arguing that this is good for the drug user, but at the very least their entire life isn't in a complete shambles due to being labelled a dangerous criminal.

Wouldn't their logic then be, "I'm already committing potentially felony level crimes each day, so what difference does robbing someone make? Just another crime to my list of crimes."

No, you assume they are acting logically. Someone high on meth is not acting logically. They're hallucinating, acting impulsively, etc. Logic has nothing to do with it.

By othering them through making their daily routines a crime, I would argue that it encourages them to branch out into other crimes.

That's simply not true. They branch out into other crimes not because they're already committing one crime but to support their growing drug habit. (And speaking of the "original" crime, the penalty for drug use crimes is usually just mandatory rehab for the first or second offense, as states no longer have the money to pay to incarcerate drug users.)

I would argue that Marijuana has become why more potent over the years. My 70 year old Aunt was visiting CA from TX last year and she and my mother used to smoke a small bit of pot in the 80s. We visited a friend that has some (not my cup of tea) and she wanted to try it. She said it kicked her ass. That is antidotal, but it has been repeated over and over by various people over the years.

You reply on a post arguing that control can increase safety by saying illegal drugs are unsafe because they are uncontrolled. Putting your circular reasoning aside, there are so many illegal drugs that are safer for the user and the population than alcohol. It shows you have no idea what you are talking about.

My reasoning is not circular, I'm simply not explaining everything in that post.

Those other drugs aren't unsafe because they're uncontrolled. They're unsafe because they're unsafe: they cause permanent physiological changes to the body even at small doses and even after only a few uses. (Contra alcohol and marijuana which requires truly staggering use before causing permanent physiological harm.)

It shows you have no idea what you are talking about.

My degree is in cognitive science and I've probably represented more drug users than you have. I'm well versed in the science and policy of controlled substances, and it's pretty clear that if you think that their are "so many illegal drugs that are safer for the user and the population than alcohol" than you have no idea what you're talking about. Marijuana aside, the drugs on the controlled substances list earned their spots on that list.

Arguing from authority won't help your point. My argument was not by the way that other substances are harmless, but merely that the ratio of victims/users is higher for alcohol than a lot of scheduled substances. I do believe you have a lot of negative experience, but you have to interact solely with those cases that acted suspiciously in the eye of the law which will leave a bias.