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Comment by geogra4 | Hacker News Reader

College students are surrounded by drugs. They flow so freely that it seems like prohibition isn't really working. People who want drugs can get them. I don't do them either, nor do I have the desire but it just seems like only the poor and disadvantaged drug users go to jail.

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Exactly. If people want drugs, they can get it, but not everyone does. We've already reached equilibrium drug consumption, which is why it's ludicrous to believe that drug use will skyrocket once it is legalized. The current drug policy only serves to fill up jails with those not in the middle class.

In Canada, the statistics for illicit drug use almost mirror the statistics for tobacco use; a legal substance. At this point, it is not even clear what we are attempting to solve by the legislation.

I support legalization for ideaological reasons, but that doesn't at all sound accurate to me

Drug use will almost definitely sky rocket if drugs are legalized, at least initially. We can't really say what will happen, say, 5-10 years after, because legalization in this country is unprecedented.

But ask most users if they'd use more if it was legal, and you'll get your answer. Ask some fence sitters who are too scared to try drugs if they'd use currently illicit drugs if it was legal, and you'll get your answer

There are also drug addicts who would like to stop, if more money (that's currently spent on prevention) was being spent on treatment.

Read up on Portugal, they legalised all drugs, just over ten years ago, and the reports released a few months ago (after ten years of it) showed that there are less people using the drugs that previously were illegal (from weed up to heroine), and a higher percentage of those using drugs are in treatment to stop.

I think they in Portugal have not legalized, but decriminalized drugs, these are two different things.

Not sure about how easy it would be for an out-of-college, non-US person, with no social circle experimenting with such substances get hold of, say, LSD.

Part of the non-legalization problem is that if forces you to go down dark alleys which are certainly not compatible with the all-is-good, geek experimentation philosophy. If forces potential users to associate with the hardcore underground, with all the risks that might entail. On top of that, you will never know what you bought. Testing kits aside, and the futility of trying to scam people on dirt-cheap to produce substances, I would have trouble swallowing anything I wasn't confident I knew it was what it said it was.

Probably you could just ask your kids, or ask around at a college campus, or google it, or check on craigslist (people sell weed on craigslist these days), or ask at a headshop. Also, I'm quite confident that someone you know, even in an extremely sober social circle would know someone who would now.

I won't go into details about why each solution you present is not optimal, because I have a better proposal.

Make LSD and other drugs of similar effect legal. Have the government regulate the distribution. Put an exorbitant price tag on them and disallow buying-in-bulk. Make me sign that I am wholly responsible for what happens to me by using them (even though nothing adverse as lung cancer will, I'm sure). Give me a piece of paper that says the LSD I carry is legal. Done.

Where i'm getting at is that I (for various definitions of I) would gladly pay, say, 1.000 USD/EUR for a "trip" if I knew I wasn't illegal or about to get poisoned. Heck, it's even cheaper than non-spiritual trips.

This doesn't prevent, but in fact encourages, the black market. Either pay the gov $1000 or the guy in the van $5 (whatever market price is). You already see this with cigarettes in the US, where the price difference between taxed and illegally sold (untaxed) cigarettes are much, much smaller.

Additionally, you'd likely create a black market for whatever piece of paper says the LSD is legal.

I never said I wanted to prevent the black market. I merely stated a scheme under which I would be comfortable acquiring such substances, and the trade-offs likely to be involved (high prices). As for the piece of paper, it was just a figure of speech; passing a law amounts to the same effect.

Why an exorbitant price tag? That will just fuel the black market that is in turn fueling the drug wars (read: with bullets and machetes and thousands of dead people) in Central America.

How about a reasonable price tag?

Or how about blanket legalization of cultivation, possession, and use? I can get a tube of spores for "magic mushrooms" for about $10 and grow my own indefinitely. But for some reason this activity (the growing and using part) is currently highly illegal.

I don't need a license to brew beer and drink it myself or give it away. Why should it be any different for plants and fungi?

> I don't need a license to brew beer and drink it myself or give it away

In the US you do

Actually it's per-state and per-county. Where I live, there's nothing stopping anyone over 21 from brewing their own beer (up to some rather large amount).

> people sell weed on craigslist these days

Very dumb people. That's almost sure to earn you a visit from the least harried law enforcement group in your local area.

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