Legalizing Drugs Is a Terrible Idea
leightonwoodhouse.substack.com
leightonwoodhouse.substack.com
Suicide, sex, drugs, weird body modifications, prostitution: inalienable. As with free speech, there are undoubtedly edge cases that should be prohibited, but in general I really think society would be better off not wasting resources legislating the morality of people's consensual choices; and rather focusing strictly on practical matters regarding them when and if necessary.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
The healthcare system bears a heavy burden as a direct result of people doing whatever they want. Ask an ER doc what they spend their time doing.
How about vaccines? Is that in the class of inalienable right to do what they want, or (dis)respecting the rights of others?
These things are often interconnected and have hidden costs and/or benefits to the wider society even if it seems to only affect the individual at first glance.
And the criminal justice system bears an expensive burden by treating these activities as crimes. And I'd wager that cost is higher when compared to healthcare costs
Prison itself could really lean into redemption and reformation over grim revenge and rape.
I'm libertarian inclined, and I feel that these costs are essential to maintaining a stable, prosperous society.
Free speech is probably the right lens to view this through - all speech is not treated equally even if (in theory) none or very little is explicitly prohibited. Some speech is supported, some arouses an immediate condemnation.
I agree 100%. What is freedom if I can't do anything I want with my body? That's the most basic of freedoms. Do I know people who are alcoholics and have had their lives ruined by alcohol? Yes. I also know people who enjoy alcohol responsibly. Do I know people who smoked like a chimney and got lung cancer? Yes. I also know people who only smoke a cigarette or two a couple of times per week when enjoying a drink at a bar and don't have any problems. Do I know people who became heroin addicts and died in a span of three weeks from first using heroin? Yes. I also know people who smoke a joint every so often and are doing just fine.
Freedom has a price. Some people will use their freedom to wreck their lives. You just have to accept that, shake your head, and use it as an example to others for how not to use your freedom. At the end of the day though the choice is yours - you're free to wreck your life if you so choose. No government has the power to take that freedom away from you.
I think this article is so one-sided as to be completely invalid.
https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-13/politics/raise-the-crim...
Legalization = less users being incarcerated (probably a good thing)
There is a high correlation between violent crime and substance abuse (legal and illegal Drugs) so legalization likely increases substance abuse and hence violent crime.
The system is so complex that the implications of legalization on the “model” are just not clear to me
Consider the Mexican drug cartels, who maintain their grip on power and resources specifically because of the high profits caused by the high risk of trafficking illegal drugs. These are extremely violent criminals with lots of political and economic power, and they have murdered over 60000 people since 2006.
It's hard to imagine that even large numbers of simple abusers of even the hardest, most risky drugs would be able to pull off such a holocaust in even the worst case.
If people who use/abuse drugs only say on their couch and ate Doritos fine. But they cause (fatal) car crashes, violently rob and assault people, abuse their spouses and children, and commit homicide.
If ~1/3rd of offenses are committed under the influence that implies ~5k murders a year or ~78k since 2006 (admittedly I have no idea how many of those murders would have happened if the person was sober, but it’s worth noting the magnitude)
https://bjs.ojp.gov/drugs-and-crime-facts/drug-use-and-crime
You are referring to #2 not #1 or #3
https://bjs.ojp.gov/drugs-and-crime-facts/drug-use-and-crime
I would also be careful here because those stats are pulled from the UCR, which is far from a complete or reliable source of data.
#3…you might have to read past the first sentence…
Giving someone a criminal record for a victimless "crime" and thus making them potentially unemployable is an actual terrible idea. Rivers of ink have been spent dissecting the War on Drugs and now all that is left to do is to end it.
Decriminalised drugs are still produced and distributed by "criminals" who are not bound by laws enforcing product safety and who pay no taxes.
I personally believe that "soft" drugs with relatively good safety profiles, such as cannabis and some psychedelics should be fully legal and more harmful drugs should be decriminalised and public health measures instituted, similar to Portugal. The police should, to the largest extent possible, butt out.
Dr David Nutt is my go to: <https://www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/News%20stories/dnutt-lanc...>
We’ve created a society where, like shitty parents of disobedient children, we scold and shame addicts into temporary compliance. But the real way out is to give them the opportunity to create something not that they value more than drugs (let’s be honest, you’ll never do that), but a path that has a better ratio of anxiety to fulfillment than they currently have with drugs, or even fucking alcohol.
It’s not easy, and not always possible, and you can’t save everybody, or even most, but it’s pretty widely known that it’s the best we can do.
Without opiate prohibition, you can have honest educational programs that help people seeking opiates use them as responsibly as possible and you can provide available, nonjudgmental services for helping them reduce or stop their usage.
You should be able to know what you’re putting in your body. I’m not enthusiastic about your likely life trajectory if you want to or are compelled to put heroin in your body, and i want you to be able to get the help you need to stop. Regardless, if you want to put heroin in your body, the heroin you buy shouldn’t be fentanyl in a trenchcoat!
Legalize it, regulate its manufacture, and fund antiaddition outreach with the cash.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work.
What can you evaluate this article based on? What's the central argument? Is there any supporting evidence at all?
I think it's trying to say that legal drugs would be like the opioid crisis, but it's not remotely clear enough how or why they think that.
Personally, I think a big value to be had in some form of legalization is the redirection of funds spent on drug enforcement to treatment and recovery. The author seems to think that legalization would also make that worse, though it’s not clear why that has to be.
That's not to say that drugs don't have collateral damage. Much does.
But the interactions tend to be systemic rather than acute. And there are several legalised drugs which already cause immense harm.
The issue is how drugs are regulated, and the evidence is overwhelming that criminalising use and addiction have worked poorly.
I don’t agree with counting homicides and suicides together as “gun deaths.” But since many people do: there are about 40,000 gun deaths each year. There are 100,000 drug overdose deaths a year now, which is the result both of people’s own decisions about themselves, and people giving or selling drugs to others to get them addicted.
I deeply believe either all or nothing. As any arguments used work as well to ban such drugs as ethanol and nicotine. With specially the first one being destructive and deadly.
In this view, the horrible life effects of opioids like heroin aren't the consequence of their criminalization, they're from the rapacious toll the drugs take on the individual. The article's argument is the new criminal substances will just take the place of the now-legal and effectively up-market heroin, and make those addicts even worse off. The drug krokodile comes to mind as predators and addicts substituting away to cheaper more evil compounds to compete with more dominant established drugs.
What shakes out of the argument for me is that the main product of the addictive drug trade wasn't drugs, it was exploiting the suffering the drugs caused. Gangs used it to traffic in human victims, and governments used it as a pretext to create paramilitary global police units - they both just managed it and leveraged it, and neither have done anything to reduce it. Imo, there are no fait accompli solutions to drug and poverty problems, but we have evidence to the point of absolute certainty about what exacerbates them, and that's public policy that directly incentivises tent cities, open drug use, capital flight from cities, exploitation of undocumented people, corruption that relies on alienation and desperation, and the reinforcement of the cycles these issues create.
I'd almost guarantee that the legalization of highly addictive drugs will benefit dealers most before the benefits trickle down to the addicts they prey upon. I have other views on why they are being legalized, but there seem to be some pretty good reasons to keep them controlled, and ones worth addressing in the discourse.
To what end? Do you think addicts would prefer criminal fentanyl to drug-store pure heroin? Bathtub crack cocaine to drug-store pure coke? Mexican brickweed to drug-store craft cannabis? The only time you see raging alcoholics drink hand sanitizer is when they can’t purchase legal alcohol.
If clean drugs are available through legitimate legal sources, at a price competitive with the black market, with easy access to rehabilitation resources, many—I think most—addicts will choose the healthier, legal means.
> addiction epidemic
1. Liberals get acknowledgement that weed isn't so bad and should maybe be legal. 2. Liberals: "Legalize all drugs!" 3. Conservatives: "No." 4. --- 20 years pass and another generation is born ---
I wish nuance made it to the front page more than diatribes expounding upon, essentially, hard yes and hard no.
However, there are many jurisdictions that have legalized just cannabis. Seems pretty evident that one major group are proponents of cannabis legalization, and the other is not. No major group is a proponent of legalizing all drugs.
It is probably more accurate to say lots of liberals and conservatives want to legalize cannabis, and a non representative extreme contingent on both sides either want to decriminalize all drugs or continue to ban cannabis.
There is at least one city in the US where:
- prosecutors won't prosecute people for buying or selling drugs of any kind
- police won't arrest people for buying or selling drugs of any kind
- the government pays many buyers a monthly stipend, to do with as they wish
There's some restrictions on who can sell in which places, but that's enforced by private groups.