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Comment by henearkr | Hacker News Reader

Okay I am going to contradict myself a little bit now... actually, today the state is also healing people when they are sick, using tax money for that. So, just letting people make themselves sick and then suck up tax money to get back on their feet is very counterproductive... which is why "prevention" is so important, and why so many substances are regulated or forbidden.

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The state is not a business and does not have to make decisions based on the cost/benefit analysis from a monetary or tax collecting perspective. In the US for example, LSD and psilocybin are illegal even though there is zero chance for chemical addiction or dependence. In Canada and the US you can get a prescription for Klonopin, which sounds roughly as addictive as cocaine. People have gone to rehab for Klonopin addiction--for a prescription anti-anxiolytic!

But it has to be somewhere in the lawmaking process. Imagine there is a perfect but very costly cure for Alzheimer, imagine the price to cure one person is equivalent to the GDP of the whole country.

On the other hand, you cannot let people harm themselves and then do everything to save them. What is the cost to repair somebody who went out of his way to cut his hand in a very dirty way, such that it would take hundred of hours of surgery?

In democratic countries the politicians care about how the expenditure looks to the public. People think that 5 billion dollars in welfare is a lot of money, so it's hard to spend more welfare. People do not think that 5 trillion dollars on "defense" is a lot of money, so it's easy to spend more money on defense even though it has at best dubious return on investment.

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