Canadian province experiments with decriminalising hard drugs

[Toni]

Because a lot of medications can do great harm if not taken correctly, and sometimes under medical supervision.

That's fair. However in the state of Florida a small-but-detectable amount of any controlled substance except marijuana, carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000 for drug dealers while practicing medicine without a license is a $1,000 fine and a minimum mandatory period of incarceration of 1 year. Why the discrepancy? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't think we should criminalize drug possession. I'm sorry if that was not clear.

I do have big qualms about legalization simply because I think more people will use. That's it: full stop. I don't want to increase inappropriate use or addiction or increased use of drugs.

I respect that, however is there anything that was once illegal that has been made legal that as a result of it becoming legal usage was increased?

Alcohol.

US drinking more now than just before Prohibition

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans are drinking more now than when Prohibition was enacted. What’s more, it’s been rising for two decades, and it’s not clear when it will fall again.

apnews.com

I think you were regetting to alcohol and as it turns out, alcohol consumption in the US exceeds the rate of consumption before prohibition.

Prohibition decreased alcohol consumption dramatically. It’s since rebounded.

Again, my concern is not about the morality of using recreational anything. My concern is about the damage done. I know a lot more people who have had a lot of damage done to their lives by someone else’s drug use than by other people’s alcohol use. Not their own use: someone else’s.

Legalization won’t make drugs less addictive.

I don’t want anyone to go to jail because they use drugs.

Very few people who use any mood altering substance believe that they will become dependent or will experience any harm from their use. Very few think about potential harm to others if they use. But the harm can be very great.

 

[bilby]

Prohibition decreased alcohol consumption dramatically

Well, it did at the very beginning.

But consumption rebounded rapidly to pre-prohibition levels, and the amount of alcohol consumed by Americans (and by Europeans, who had no prohibition) was on a generally falling trend throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Pre-industrial alcohol consumption in both Europe and North America was astoundingly high; The biggest factor in reduced consumption appears to have been industrialisation in the 19th century, and then the massive increase in private vehicle use in the 20th.

Prohibition barely made a blip in these broader trends, which followed similar trajectories in both the US and Europe.

The peak of alcohol consumption in the US was around 7.1galEtOH/year per capita, in 1830. Today that figure is around 2.3galEtOH/year, less than a third of the pre-industrial level.

Basically, before operating heavy machinery was a thing, pretty much everybody was pretty much drunk, most of their waking lives.

And don't get me started on the absurd (but incredibly popular) presentism "people drank beer because it was safer than water" trope - nobody knew that beer was safer than water until the germ theory of disease was developed in the 1870s. People drank beer because they preferred it.

 

[Oleg]

Legalization won’t make drugs less addictive.

I don’t want anyone to go to jail because they use drugs.

Very few people who use any mood altering substance believe that they will become dependent or will experience any harm from their use. Very few think about potential harm to others if they use. But the harm can be very great.

Ditto. Which is why any policy that encourages or abets hard drug use should be avoided.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

One thing for certain that I can't wrap my mind around is the difference between an illegal drug being sold by that black guy at the corner store vs that black guy with an MD next to his name prescribing the same drug. It's either a legal drug or it's not folks. It's as if the only true separation is the collection of tax.

Maybe if drug dealers made it a thing to pay Taxes on their earnings they can lobby like the legal drug industry for politicians to leave them alone.

There's a big difference--the doctor is using it to help and knows how to do so much more safely than the average druggie.

(That being said, I think at a minimum addiction should be a valid reason for a prescription. The drug war causes far more harm than the drugs and the harm from the drug war is far more likely to fall on the innocent.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I understand the argument that recreational drugs should be available for those who want to take them. Ok, but there are people who absolutely will believe that they can get a better high off the illicit stuff. I mean, how else do you explain bath salts?? I knew someone from when he was a kid and liked to play GI Joe in my basement like that. Wrecked up his life and did a lot of damage to his family as well, all before he was 25. Bright kid, well liked, good student, good family who loved him. Drugs made him batshit crazy.

No one is an island. Messing yourself up on whatever to the point you don’t function as a member of society hurts a lot more than just you.

Bath salts are a direct result of the drug war, they would not exist in a legal realm. Users will take what they can get, safe or not. However, in a realm where they aren't in a Hobson's choice situation they'll choose the safer high over the more dangerous high.

 

[Jarhyn]

Not really that silly to discuses the probability of decriminalization's success when you have the end of Prohibition to use as an example. Just sayin

Right, and we have the Portugal example. At some point, the hand wringing over legalization is going to appear blatantly foolish, unless some disaster befalls one of the countries or provinces that decriminalized drugs, as a result of that action. So far, not happening.

Well, it could end up being one of those things that fails because certain groups don't want it to work, a Tinkerbell effect similar to the spirit of "starve the beast".

Sabotage by those interested in having an enemy to fight and people to pass judgement on for something they can push taboo at is also a factor here.

At some point we need to realize that conservative elements will injure themselves for the sake of bad faith claims against efficacy of progressive measures.

There are a lot of people whose political power is in part founded on the ability to arbitrarily arrest folks, and I expect that they will kick it up to fever pitch rather than let their power disappear just like that.

"Drugs" are one of the primary political levers that exist against the poor, a d taking that beatstick away is going to be tough because we are up against an opponent who is not afraid to take all of society hostage one way or another to get what they want.

 

[James Brown]

“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

John Ehrlichman , White House counsel to Richard Nixon

 

[Toni]

I understand the argument that recreational drugs should be available for those who want to take them. Ok, but there are people who absolutely will believe that they can get a better high off the illicit stuff. I mean, how else do you explain bath salts?? I knew someone from when he was a kid and liked to play GI Joe in my basement like that. Wrecked up his life and did a lot of damage to his family as well, all before he was 25. Bright kid, well liked, good student, good family who loved him. Drugs made him batshit crazy.

No one is an island. Messing yourself up on whatever to the point you don’t function as a member of society hurts a lot more than just you.

Bath salts are a direct result of the drug war, they would not exist in a legal realm. Users will take what they can get, safe or not. However, in a realm where they aren't in a Hobson's choice situation they'll choose the safer high over the more dangerous high.

Bath salts exist because of a demand. Drug naive people do not typically start out on bath salts.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I respect that, however is there anything that was once illegal that has been made legal that as a result of it becoming legal usage was increased?

Amsterdam, marijuana use went up when they permitted advertising. It went back down when they prohibited it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I understand the argument that recreational drugs should be available for those who want to take them. Ok, but there are people who absolutely will believe that they can get a better high off the illicit stuff. I mean, how else do you explain bath salts?? I knew someone from when he was a kid and liked to play GI Joe in my basement like that. Wrecked up his life and did a lot of damage to his family as well, all before he was 25. Bright kid, well liked, good student, good family who loved him. Drugs made him batshit crazy.

No one is an island. Messing yourself up on whatever to the point you don’t function as a member of society hurts a lot more than just you.

Bath salts are a direct result of the drug war, they would not exist in a legal realm. Users will take what they can get, safe or not. However, in a realm where they aren't in a Hobson's choice situation they'll choose the safer high over the more dangerous high.

Bath salts exist because of a demand. Drug naive people do not typically start out on bath salts.

That's not a rebuttal.

Bath salts exist because of a demand for a high, people use them when they can't get their preferred high.

 

[Gospel]

I respect that, however is there anything that was once illegal that has been made legal that as a result of it becoming legal usage was increased?

Amsterdam, marijuana use went up when they permitted advertising. It went back down when they prohibited it.

Then advertisements caused the increase not the legalization itself especially since usage decreased when the advertisements stopped.

 

[Elixir]

I respect that, however is there anything that was once illegal that has been made legal that as a result of it becoming legal usage was increased?

Amsterdam, marijuana use went up when they permitted advertising. It went back down when they prohibited it.

Then advertisements caused the increase not the legalization itself especially since usage decreased when the advertisements stopped.

Meh. Who cares if pot use increases? If it only takes one drunk driver off the roads, wouldn’t it be worth it?

 

[Toni]

I respect that, however is there anything that was once illegal that has been made legal that as a result of it becoming legal usage was increased?

Amsterdam, marijuana use went up when they permitted advertising. It went back down when they prohibited it.

Then advertisements caused the increase not the legalization itself especially since usage decreased when the advertisements stopped.

Meh. Who cares if pot use increases? If it only takes one drunk driver off the roads, wouldn’t it be worth it?

I dunno. Is driving stoned any less dangerous than driving drunk?

 

[Toni]

I understand the argument that recreational drugs should be available for those who want to take them. Ok, but there are people who absolutely will believe that they can get a better high off the illicit stuff. I mean, how else do you explain bath salts?? I knew someone from when he was a kid and liked to play GI Joe in my basement like that. Wrecked up his life and did a lot of damage to his family as well, all before he was 25. Bright kid, well liked, good student, good family who loved him. Drugs made him batshit crazy.

No one is an island. Messing yourself up on whatever to the point you don’t function as a member of society hurts a lot more than just you.

Bath salts are a direct result of the drug war, they would not exist in a legal realm. Users will take what they can get, safe or not. However, in a realm where they aren't in a Hobson's choice situation they'll choose the safer high over the more dangerous high.

Bath salts exist because of a demand. Drug naive people do not typically start out on bath salts.

That's not a rebuttal.

Bath salts exist because of a demand for a high, people use them when they can't get their preferred high.

People also use them because they are looking for a new or different t high.

There will always be a demand for whatever is novel or forbidden, no matter how valid the laws forbidding. Indeed, that’s part of the appeal.

 

[Bomb#20]

I respect that, however is there anything that was once illegal that has been made legal that as a result of it becoming legal usage was increased?

Condoms.

 

[Elixir]

Is driving stoned any less dangerous than driving drunk?

Yes. Far far less dangerous.

 

[TomC]

Is driving stoned any less dangerous than driving drunk?

Yes. Far far less dangerous.

Without going into details of my long and checkered past.

I can speak from experience. It's not that simple.
Tom

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I respect that, however is there anything that was once illegal that has been made legal that as a result of it becoming legal usage was increased?

Amsterdam, marijuana use went up when they permitted advertising. It went back down when they prohibited it.

Then advertisements caused the increase not the legalization itself especially since usage decreased when the advertisements stopped.

Meh. Who cares if pot use increases? If it only takes one drunk driver off the roads, wouldn’t it be worth it?

I dunno. Is driving stoned any less dangerous than driving drunk?

Yes. The stoned driver generally realizes they are impaired and drives slowly. Accidents are usually low speed and thus not too bad. Alcohol lowers inhibitions, they tend to drive recklessly.

 

[Elixir]

Speaking from my own physiology, I would rather have to drive across the country on unfamiliar back roads stoned than down my own driveway drunk. I HAVE done one of those things, and would never do the other.
YMMV