Legalization of hard drugs

[Kowani]

Decriminalize everything. You’ll drop the number of people dying from ODing, and you’ll see organized crime syndicates start dying. This will also help save lives.

[Nakena]

Decriminalize everything. You’ll drop the number of people dying from ODing, and you’ll see organized crime syndicates start dying. This will also help save lives.

The kowanite approach worked somewhat out in Portugal.

[Kowani]

Decriminalize everything. You’ll drop the number of people dying from ODing, and you’ll see organized crime syndicates start dying. This will also help save lives.

The kowanite approach worked somewhat out in Portugal.

I do actually pay attention to the real world.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

I think first things first is to give legalization of weed a try and see if that serves as a pied piper leading people away from harder drugs.

Heh... piper...

[Rojava Free State]

I think first things first is to give legalization of weed a try and see if that serves as a pied piper leading people away from harder drugs.

Heh... piper...

I'm so glad they legalized weed in my state. Now my friends and i can get high and go out in public and not give a fuck

[Ankenland]

It's a claim that can be empirically proven if true. He just needs to demonstrate that suicidal action is the result of specific impairments in the brain regions associated with decision making. He made a comparison to alcohol. Alcohol's effects on reason can be empirically proven by imaging the brain. If suicide is necessarily irrational then it must have an observable cause in biology.

Well, to use your example, alcohol intoxication correlates positively with suicide, as does hard drug addiction, and most suicide is the result of depression, which has empirical brain imaging behind it (supposedly), and correlates to reduced cognitive function and to all sorts of anti-selfpreservative decision making.

So, in most cases, he can demonstrate what you asked for. There are just two problems:

1. Suicide is a choice, and the only way it could be always irrational is if living was always rational. Based on the very reasonable motivations of people who commit suicide because of terminal illness or in kamakazi or jihadi suicide bombing attacks (which are as reasonable as any self-risking act of war) we can see that that would not be the case, but more importantly,

2. Self-preservation is not rational. It is something that most people want to do, but there is not and could not ever be any logical defense for wanting anything as a means unto itself. Desires are axioms, and logic or rationality is used to relate them to actions. For example, "I want sexual contact, therefore I will try to make money to increase my social status and purchasing power of prostitutes" is a rational statement, because the proposed actions would satisfy the want. However, "I want sexual contact" is not a rational or irrational statement, and neither is "I want to die."

For anyone who wants to receive more pleasure and less pain, and whose life is painful and unpleasant and can be reasonably expected to continue in that way, suicide is a rational strategy to get what they want. For society, the meta-subject of this forum, there are large swaths of the population such as geriatrics and men over age 30 with no skills, who objectively should kill themselves if they want to make society a better place.

This is why I support the legalization of opiates.

[Kubra]

I'm actually not cool with hard drugs. Sketchy RC's that make you see the rice fields of your ancestors well that's different, but coke and opioids well there's a reason that shits addictive. Folks don't exactly "choose" addiction in these cases.
Certainly current drug policies don't work, decriminalization is a good start, but full on over the counter availability is just looking to replace cartels with folks you can buy stocks in, all that changes is the misery is taxable.

[Des-Bal]

I'm actually not cool with hard drugs. Sketchy RC's that make you see the rice fields of your ancestors well that's different, but coke and opioids well there's a reason that shits addictive. Folks don't exactly "choose" addiction in these cases.
Certainly current drug policies don't work, decriminalization is a good start, but full on over the counter availability is just looking to replace cartels with folks you can buy stocks in, all that changes is the misery is taxable.

The drugs are addictive for chemical reasons, nobody chooses addiction in the same sense nobody chooses diabetes. Also the product's purity and additives are known and controllable, also CVS and Walgreens don't settle disputes by shooting each other, also all the other differences. I don't see why the cost benefit of drug use should be weighed by any but the party involved.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

The drugs are addictive for chemical reasons, nobody chooses addiction in the same sense nobody chooses diabetes.

False equivalence. People choose to do drugs in the first place.

[Des-Bal]

False equivalence. People choose to do drugs in the first place.

That's not a false equivalence you're making the same fucking point I was.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Conflicted on this. Many hard drugs can result in years of hardcore addiction and eventual death for many. I really don’t know.

It's important to consider to what degree the addiction is a result of prohibition. Barring having your own laboratory equipment there's no way to know how potent the drug you're about to take is. This is strictly a result of prohibition and is a major, perhaps the main, factor in recreational drug overdoses and accidental death.

Then there's the organized crime syndicates. The harm they cause goes beyond the users and their families. They can and do compromise the welfare and security of entire nations.

After a good rest, I think I can admit that if it’s a matter of minimizing death rates regarding addiction to hard drugs and thwarting crime syndicates, legalizing their acquisition is the better thing to do.

[Proletariatets Demokrati Syndicate]

legalize and regulate them, people will always use drugs (just look at alcohol and tobacco) so the best action to take is to understand that a lot of deaths are due to addicts getting laced drugs off the black market.

[The Emerald Legion]

I mean. Duterte has been pretty successful. And his method is literally the opposite of legalization.

[WikiPlay]

All stuff that is good for the economy is banned in Europe : steroids are banned, dextro-amphetamine is banned meanwhile the life quality and the economic benefits of smoking tabacco, and the alcohol are not beneficial to our economy and wellbeing.

That's something that I don't understand. Maybe someone is smarter then me but...

[Ankenland]

I mean. Duterte has been pretty successful. And his method is literally the opposite of legalization.

I don't think we have good data from anyone but Duterte's government about how successful he has actually been, and even if that data could be trusted, it is usually impossible for a government to measure unreported crime because if they could measure it they could stop it and it wouldn't happen.

Secondly, the viability of Duterte-ism really depends on what kind of country you have, and want to have. China, for example, has near-zero illegal drug use rates compared to the West, but they have very few imports for the size of their country, harsh penalties and surveillance that would be considered invasive in the west. They also have better organized top-down control of organized crime. Also, they have a civil society which strongly rejects all of this, much like Japan.

As much as some of us would like the West to have a very different kind of society, that goes far beyond the scope of this issue, and drug policy must be considered for the society we live in, not the one some of us would like to live in.

[The Snazzylands]

All stuff that is good for the economy is banned in Europe : steroids are banned, dextro-amphetamine is banned meanwhile the life quality and the economic benefits of smoking tabacco, and the alcohol are not beneficial to our economy and wellbeing.

That's something that I don't understand. Maybe someone is smarter then me but...

Alcohol is ancient and so well-integrated into practically every society that people generally don't recognize it as a dangerous drug, even though alcoholics develop chemical dependence to it, similar to the effects of addiction to other hard drugs. Our cultures just don't have that same kind of relationship with any other substance.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

False equivalence. People choose to do drugs in the first place.

That's not a false equivalence you're making the same fucking point I was.

Okay... let's take a step back here... what precisely did you mean by "nobody chooses addiction in the same sense nobody chooses diabetes"? Which specific aspects of addiction did you intend to compare to which specific aspects of diabetes?

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

I mean. Duterte has been pretty successful. And his method is literally the opposite of legalization.

I don't think we have good data from anyone but Duterte's government about how successful he has actually been, and even if that data could be trusted, it is usually impossible for a government to measure unreported crime because if they could measure it they could stop it and it wouldn't happen.

Secondly, the viability of Duterte-ism really depends on what kind of country you have, and want to have. China, for example, has near-zero illegal drug use rates compared to the West, but they have very few imports for the size of their country, harsh penalties and surveillance that would be considered invasive in the west. They also have better organized top-down control of organized crime. Also, they have a civil society which strongly rejects all of this, much like Japan.

As much as some of us would like the West to have a very different kind of society, that goes far beyond the scope of this issue, and drug policy must be considered for the society we live in, not the one some of us would like to live in.

It's not remotely worth it to execute people over drugs. Also, the difference between Chinese surveillance and British surveillance is not a difference of degree but of kind. British surveillance acts on behalf of the voting public. Chinese surveillance does not.

[Des-Bal]

Okay... let's take a step back here... what precisely did you mean by "nobody chooses addiction in the same sense nobody chooses diabetes"? Which specific aspects of addiction did you intend to compare to which specific aspects of diabetes?

People choose behaviors which lead to the condition not the condition.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

Okay... let's take a step back here... what precisely did you mean by "nobody chooses addiction in the same sense nobody chooses diabetes"? Which specific aspects of addiction did you intend to compare to which specific aspects of diabetes?

People choose behaviors which lead to the condition not the condition.

Are you calling diabetes a product of "behaviours?"

[The Emerald Legion]

I don't think we have good data from anyone but Duterte's government about how successful he has actually been, and even if that data could be trusted, it is usually impossible for a government to measure unreported crime because if they could measure it they could stop it and it wouldn't happen.

Secondly, the viability of Duterte-ism really depends on what kind of country you have, and want to have. China, for example, has near-zero illegal drug use rates compared to the West, but they have very few imports for the size of their country, harsh penalties and surveillance that would be considered invasive in the west. They also have better organized top-down control of organized crime. Also, they have a civil society which strongly rejects all of this, much like Japan.

As much as some of us would like the West to have a very different kind of society, that goes far beyond the scope of this issue, and drug policy must be considered for the society we live in, not the one some of us would like to live in.

It's not remotely worth it to execute people over drugs. Also, the difference between Chinese surveillance and British surveillance is not a difference of degree but of kind. British surveillance acts on behalf of the voting public. Chinese surveillance does not.

Why not? I also don't see how Chinese or British surveillance is relevant to the Philippines as an example of how to win a drug war.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

It's not remotely worth it to execute people over drugs. Also, the difference between Chinese surveillance and British surveillance is not a difference of degree but of kind. British surveillance acts on behalf of the voting public. Chinese surveillance does not.

Why not? I also don't see how Chinese or British surveillance is relevant to the Philippines as an example of how to win a drug war.

Execution should be reserved for acts that are either coercive (eg. murder, maybe rape) or severely deceptive . (Eg. Madoff-level ponzi schemes.) Drug dealing is a consensual transaction. If the warnings about the risk of addiction have failed to deter people from doing harder drugs, take it up with those who cried wolf about weed. They're the reason people aren't convinced.

[The Emerald Legion]

Why not? I also don't see how Chinese or British surveillance is relevant to the Philippines as an example of how to win a drug war.

Execution should be reserved for acts that are either coercive (eg. murder, maybe rape) or severely deceptive . (Eg. Madoff-level ponzi schemes.) Drug dealing is a consensual transaction. If the warnings about the risk of addiction have failed to deter people from doing harder drugs, take it up with those who cried wolf about weed. They're the reason people aren't convinced.

We don't excuse murderers because their victims were too stupid to realize getting killed kills you. Drug dealing is murder.

[Xianders]

I think this is complete nonsense.

[Gunyria]

Decriminalize everything. You’ll drop the number of people dying from ODing, and you’ll see organized crime syndicates start dying. This will also help save lives.

The kowanite approach worked somewhat out in Portugal.

Yeah. I totally agree with that