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Comment by dist-epoch | Hacker News Reader

Drugs should be sold at the grocery store, no question asked. They should be cheap too. That would solve the drug problem.

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Have you seen how much San Francisco and Seattle have improved with drug tolerant policies?

This is the new "but that was not TRUE communism". The more tolerant places are overrun with drug users and homeless camps yet their supporters online will say "but if we provided more money for housing and decriminalized all drugs, now that would solve the issue".

Why should the least responsible drug users be the standard measurement?

There's a debate to be had on that for sure. I'm not for prohibition, I voted to legalize cannabis (even though I don't consume it) because it didn't seem much worse than alcohol and realistically once 50%+ of you population has tried it, that ship has sailed. Some people claim it helps them relax, sleep, etc...

Now with that said, crack, meth and heroin are not "social drugs" and are not compatible with a healthy society. They are strongly addictive and cause permanent damage. You might disagree (and that's fine), but I don't see how making those legally available outside of addiction treatment facility will lead to favourable societal outcomes in any meaningful way.

> it didn't seem much worse than alcohol

Honestly, I don't think anyone can seriously claim it is anywhere near as bad as alcohol, other than in two regards: smoking isn't great for you (but that's a method problem, not a substance one) and the smell in public (which is a minor issue and, again, one that can be mitigated).

By any other measure - addiction, short-term and long-term harms, indirect harm to third-parties - alcohol is worse.

Because they are the ones who cause the most trouble.

Or the person you're responding to is being sarcastic

I don't know about them, but it is a real argument. It's roughly based on Prohibition vs being able to buy alcohol in stores.

Wait you can buy drugs at the grocery store in those cities?

Have you seen how many people are being left behind everyday by the economy, leaving them nothing else to feel good about except maybe some drugs?

What makes you think that drug use has anything much to do at all with drug policy? People take drugs because society is shit, not because of the rule of law.

This goes both ways.

Society also becomes shit because people take drugs.

It always trips me out reading early 20th century novels where the protagonist will stop in a drug store, buy a pint of whiskey, some cocaine or other now schedule 1 drug, and then sit down at the soda fountain counter and have lunch. Talk about one stop shopping.

On a related tangent, Heroin is actually a former trademark. Not a lapsed one, but one that was specifically revoked to punish Bayer during the war. Aspirin was another one. And that's why you see generic "aspirin" but no generic explicitly marketed as "xerox" or "kleenex." The kleenex mark is weakened, but not dead like aspirin and heroin.

Regulation and treatment. If adults can buy cigarettes and alcohol, might as well regulate weed and slightly harder stuff in limited/maintenance amounts. Certainly people can huff glue and make other poor choices, but the elimination of street-sold drugs should be a goal because they are unregulated, untested, and often contain toxic cutting adulterants.

The amount of people I want consuming recreational PCP around me is 0.

Why should your preference impact my right to my body and what I put into it? That is downright psychotic. You mean to tell me that if someone simply takes PCP near you and does not in any way harm you, you would like for their fundamental human privileges violently stripped from them? Now, if someone takes PCP and is then a public nuisance, that should be dealt with. But it should be dealt with because they are being a public nuisance, not because you disagree with what they have put into their body.

There exists a lag between becoming a public nuisance and being dealt with, within which damage can be incurred by those experiencing the nuisance. The probability and severity of the damage dictates whether or not society decides to allow it.

As an uncontroversial example, maybe someone is well qualified to manipulate explosives in their garage. But society would still say the risk is not worth it, because by the time the “nuisance” is dealt with, there would be unacceptable losses.

The relevant measures to be discussed are what is the probability of someone using PCP and not being a nuisance, and if they did use PCP, what severity would the nuisance be?

Do you have any high-quality studies towards these relevant measures? Because your proposition is: "I think this man might be on PCP. He is otherwise doing nothing wrong. He should be imprisoned." That is ridiculous. A sober person is equally as capable of becoming a nuisance. So your actual proposition is to jail people on your presumptions, values, and opinions.

Your argument would apply equally to a drunk driver who didn’t happen to crash that night.

The problem is that taking pcp significantly raises the probability the user will commit an act of violence, by which point it’s too late.

I don't believe this to be a necessary truth. Do you have any high quality studies that PCP, itself as a substance, does indeed raise the probability of someone doing something untoward? Might it not, in fact, be a problem with the people using PCP? In which case, why should it be restricted for people who would not become a nuisance? Further, why should people who do not become a problem on it have their rights taken away for the simple fact of imbibing?

> Why should your preference impact my right

A little thing called democracy. Perhaps you've heard of it.

Either you're just trolling or you haven't spent enough time on the internet to realise that it's impossible for us to tell if you're trolling or sincere.

It was the case in Weimar Germany, as a result drug use and antisocial behavior exploded.

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