What would happen if all drugs were legalized?

[Devin]

How would it play out?

[Danioover9000]

@Devin

2 minutes ago, Devin said:

How would it play out?

   I would imagine chaotic at first, but other time regulations would be passed, enforced, and soon enough society could manage teaching the theory and safe practices of psychedelics, assuming you mean psychedelics.

[Leo Gura]

Portugal and Spain have decriminalized all drugs. Their results have been really healthy.

There is a problem if drugs are legalized to the point where capitalists can shamelessly market them. That is not a good thing. I feel like weed is way overmarketed nowadays.

[Blackhawk]

Disaster in every imaginable way.

They aren't illegal just because it's fun to make things illegal. They are illegal for a very good reason.

But of course all the drug lovers will disagree. They want easy access to their drugs.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Blackhawk

[BlueOak]

6 hours ago, Devin said:

How would it play out?

Like many addictions, drugs are often taken to fill a void, and loneliness is a common void. By reducing the stigma and social outcasting that goes on less people stay addicted to drugs. The worst thing you can do if you want someone off drugs is cut them off from human contact or label them as different, unwanted, criminals etc.

With a lot less people on criminal records, so they can if they want to improve their lives.

With a lot less stigma for being associated with rehab, my brother has been fired a few times for having a drug-related past, or visiting the clinic that allows him smaller doses of a blocker to keep him off drugs. Guess what that does, puts him in a place mentally that its easier to take drugs. This happened as his last job too, and he's close to 40 now so its ever present. Thankfully he bounced back fairly fast this time.

There would be a small upturn in drug use, that's proven out over the countries that have legalized it.

We should mention that just decriminalizing it and removing some of the stigma associated with drug taking is a great stepfoward. In not only researching them in depth for the drawbacks/benfits but also not isolating drug users. If something is honest and open that generates trust, at the moment with the lack of transparency people don't trust those telling them certain substances are bad for them, because 1) Not enough research is being done publicly, 2) All substances get tarred with the same brush and 3) Well because its 'cool' for kids to rebel against authority and 4) An entire subculture separate from society arises in drug users that are isolated from that society. - All of these would be integrated and removed if drugs were publicly researched in more detail and de-criminalized or socially more acceptable.

We won't see as many people living two lives. I can tell you the worst thing about living with an addict is that they lie ALL THE TIME. Everything is in secrecy everything is considered bad/wrong so they can't talk about it. It shapes their entire persona around everything. This leads to a lot of trauma for the family, because you are constantly gaslighted in every interaction, and you can barely talk to anyone outside the family about it. Aside from them stealing or seeing your brother's head beaten in with a baseball bat because he couldn't get enough money together for example, or being present but too weak to stop your brother ending up in hospital and living with that guilt. 

The whole way we look at this needs to be untangled from an unhelpful knot. Drugs need to carry no criminal convictions because its the person's own body they are abusing if they do so. Those people selling heroin, meth etc need to be in jail for life, because that's what they take from others. When it comes to weed or DMT for example, its ridiculous to even put them in the same sentence, let alone line of thinking.

It'd also be a hit to organized crime which is never a bad thing.

[Devin]

9 hours ago, Blackhawk said:

Disaster in every imaginable way.

They aren't illegal just because it's fun to make things illegal. They are illegal for a very good reason.

But of course all the drug lovers will disagree. They want easy access to their drugs.

In the long run?

I don't do drugs, and not because they're illegal.

Why are they illegal? I think just like someone being a helicopter parent, if you don't allow free will you retard people into staying in a prepubescent mindset of not thinking for themselves.

[Danioover9000]

@Devin

1 hour ago, Devin said:

In the long run?

I don't do drugs, and not because they're illegal.

Why are they illegal? I think just like someone being a helicopter parent, if you don't allow free will you retard people into staying in a prepubescent mindset of not thinking for themselves.

   What do you mean when you say drugs? Do you mean hard core drugs like cocaine and heroin, or psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms? Do you mean synthetic drugs, like methamphetamine or LSD?

[Devin]

1 hour ago, Danioover9000 said:

@Devin

   What do you mean when you say drugs? Do you mean hard core drugs like cocaine and heroin, or psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms? Do you mean synthetic drugs, like methamphetamine or LSD?

All drugs

[zurew]

Here is an article on this issue :https://drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-decriminalization

Overall there are strong arguments in favour of decriminalization.

Quote

A common fear is that decriminalizing drugs would lead to more drug dependency and crime. There is no indication this is true. Data from the U.S. and around the world suggest that treating problematic drug use as a health issue, instead of a criminal one, is a more successful model for keeping communities healthy and safe.

Quote

Portugal decriminalized drug possession in 2001. More than a decade later, drug use has remained about the same – but arrests, incarceration, disease, overdose and other harms are all down:

• Portugal’s drug use rates remain below the European average and far lower than rates of drug use in the U.S.
• Between 1998 and 2011, the number of people in drug treatment increased by more than 60%.
• The number of new HIV diagnoses dropped dramatically – from 1,575 cases in 2000 to 78 cases in 2013 – and the number of new AIDS cases decreased from 626 in 2000 to 74 cases in 2013.
• Drug overdose fatalities also dropped from about 80 in 2001 to just 16 in 2012.
• The number of people arrested and sent to criminal courts for drug offenses annually declined by more than 60% following decriminalization.
• The percentage of people behind bars in Portugal for drug law violations also decreased dramatically, from 44% in 1999 to 24% in 2013.

 

Here is a different article on this topic: https://www.tpoftampa.com/latest-on-the-decriminalization-of-drugs/

Quote

Statistics from countries that have reduced or abolished criminal penalties for drug possession underscore three important findings:

• The rate of drug use or crime did not increase
• The rate of addiction, overdoses, and HIV/AIDS sharply decreased
• More people entered drug treatment programs

Quote

Decriminalization would have a positive financial impact:

Imprisoning people for drug-related crimes costs billions of dollars each year. For example, Oregon spent about $375 million dollars in 2016 to arrest, prosecute and imprison drug offenders. Drug decriminalization will allow the state to use a portion of the money saved to fund new drug prevention and treatment centers.

 

Three Lessons the Netherlands Learned After Decades of Evolving Its Drug Policy:

https://drugpolicy.org/blog/america-take-note-three-lessons-holland-learned-after-decades-evolving-its-drug-policy

Quote

Conclusions:

•  Decriminalization doesn’t increase drug use.
• You can successfully separate drug markets
• Commitment to public health-driven drug policy contributes to reduction of drug-related harm.

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by zurew

[Danioover9000]

@zurew

45 minutes ago, zurew said:

Here is an article on this issue :https://drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-decriminalization

Overall there are strong arguments in favour of decriminalization.

 

Here is a different article on this topic: https://www.tpoftampa.com/latest-on-the-decriminalization-of-drugs/

 

Three Lessons the Netherlands Learned After Decades of Evolving Its Drug Policy:

https://drugpolicy.org/blog/america-take-note-three-lessons-holland-learned-after-decades-evolving-its-drug-policy

 

   That's amazing, to think decriminalization of drugs would have such positive effects.

   I guess we all should reduce or abolish all criminalization, and see what happens. So counter intuitive.

[Carl-Richard]

We would have different alternatives to alcohol.

[Devin]

And my original question includes legalizing distribution by the way.

[Devin]

29 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

Legalizing distribution would be stupid at our current stage of development. It's like handing a loaded gun to a toddler. Most people are still to unconscious to allow them this level of freedom, unless you care more about their freedoms than creating a safe environment for your average person.

Decriminalization works, but that's different from a full on distribution.

I think criminalizing distribution, all laws like that anyway, not just drugs, retards development.

It use to be legal to distribute all of them, they criminalized all sorts of things for the industrial revolution workforce and now most people don't mature past 11 years old.

If legalizing use doesn't increase use, why would distribution, marketing yes but only short term

Look at the development caused by the obesity epidemic, people now know they are easily brainwashed into buying things that harm them

Edited July 18, 2022 by Devin

[ArcticGong]

19 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Portugal and Spain have decriminalized all drugs. Their results have been really healthy.

There is a problem if drugs are legalized to the point where capitalists can shamelessly market them. That is not a good thing. I feel like weed is way overmarketed nowadays.

Decriminalisation is the way forward. At our current point doesn’t the market have enough matureness to handle legalisation. 
 

If Weed and alcohol would be legal, it better be distributed and sold in a government run store, which isn’t incentivised for profit. The Dutch model of coffee shops. 

[Devin]

59 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

@Devin How so? I'd rather say that laws are a reflection a society's collective stage of development. Reform happens as societies develop. Laws emerge out of necessity. Once a society outlives said necessity its laws will change. I think we're currently hitting the limits of the war on drugs, but I'd say that we're still far away from legalizing distribution. The problem is that these laws are just a symptom of a much broader issue, which is mental health. Legalizing distribution won't actually address the fact that we're unable to properly address mental health issues within society. If we're going to deconstruct these laws we'll need better alternatives for handling drug addiction.

I think these laws cause mental health issues, you treat someone like a child all their life they're not going to develop into an adult

I think a developed society would not have laws, it would be "governed" by ethics, morality, and respect. I'm not suggesting we do this, let's just start with weed and shrooms, and apparently menthol.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Devin

[Devin]

1 hour ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

@Devin I agree with the basic premise, in that people shouldn't be controlled through fear of persecution, but through love. This love however must be developed over time. This is what spiral dynamic is about: Developing more love. A more loving society is a more developed society. But you can't force people to be loving! They must arrive at it for themselves for it to be true love. The only thing you can do is to love them unapologetically and to be a living example for them.

This kind of change we're talking about, which is a big shift from our current relationship to drugs, has to be developed over time. You can't force such cultural reform. You can't force people to wake up. Forcing them too much into any direction will cause them to revolt against your ideas, even if the ideas themselves are good.

Also, society IS already governed by ethics and morals. People just have different notions of what ethical and moral means. Hitler GENIUNELY believed that he was doing the right thing. He was guided by HIS morals and HIS ethics. People hold all sorts of values which conflict with each other. This conflict creates wars, murder, theft, genocides and so on. The war on drugs is in fact a result of conflicting values. Some people actually think that it's moral to lock addicts up. The point I'm making is that laws are a result of people imposing their morals onto others. It's not that we're not guided by morality, but that we need to develop better ways to resolve conflict. There are more conscious ways of dealing with this problem, but we can't push people towards this level of consciousness. You have to teach a child how to swim step by step. If you just throw it into a river it might drown.

So I agree that we could start with something like weed or shrooms, I mean they're already legal in the Netherlands (though you can only get magic truffles there). But depending on the country you're from this could be a little difficult. A different approach would be to slowly introduce them into society by allowing them for medical use first. You can use them in therapy for example. Introducing them into a professional environment will warm people up to the idea of psychedelics. This might allow us to do more controlled studies too, which would make psychedelics much more credible too. That's how it started with weed in California.

Yeah, I don't mean forcing others to comply with your ethics, I mean you abiding by yours.

I think the only necessity of these laws were for functioning cogs in the Carnegie, Chase, Vanderbilt, ... machine during the early 1900s

I don't think they were ever a positive thing for society. And I don't think people will pick up heroin like Cheerios because it's legal, and if they do I don't think it's a bad thing in the end, they'll die don't get me wrong but collectively understanding something is wrong is better than laws, even if the means is people dying so long as it is of their own free will.

Our culture is developed enough for this and has been for thousands of years this stuff has only recently been criminalized but it's prehistoric.

I don't believe in spiral dynamics.

Edited July 19, 2022 by Devin

[Devin]

7 hours ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

@Devin I must disagree. The existence of these laws tells me that we're not developed enough as a collective. We're getting there, but don't see it working out anywhere in the near future.

Bit if you use that logic, then we were developed enough for the last more than thousand years while these drugs including opioids were legal, in use, and actually used as medicine.

Edited July 19, 2022 by Devin

[integral]

They already are, prescription medication is every unhealthy garbage legalized and backed by bullshit studies. The reason some medication have been made illegal is because they became too popular in unregulated circles and used for recreational use. they had to control the unregulated businesses built on those drugs exploiting people for profit and addicting them. but cigarettes and alcohol those are fine! lol

What's the difference between a antidepressant and microdosing daily with mdma? They're essentially the same thing. what's the difference between heroin and morphine? Non besides cultural stigma. Micro dosing with psychedelics is now on the rise and will soon be made legalized and prescribable by doctors. The cultural view is changing and THC and things like it are legalized with it.

GHB what a shame that it became to popular out side of regulation, its useful. we need a better way to deal with recreational use, it made no sense that they removed it from prescription because people abused it.

Why aren't people abusing morphine like they do heroin? Because it's regulated. Maybe it's harder to manufacture morphine than it does heroin.

if all drugs became unregulated and legal I would put it in all the food that I manufacture and sell at the grocery store and addicted people to my food, exactly what cigarettes do with their product.

True freedom is regulated, naïve freedom is anarchy.

Edited July 19, 2022 by integral

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, integral said:

if all drugs became unregulated and legal I would put it in all the food that I manufacture and sell at the grocery store

Obviously no one is gonna allow you to put drugs in food. This is an absurd idea.

[Devin]

And look at the collective turning away from those addictive cigarettes

That's progress that banning would have retarded

Individuals know hard drugs are bad, they didn't tobacco, it was romanticized.

Edited July 19, 2022 by Devin