Legalizing All Drugs

[TV and credit cards]

California is already experimenting with the idea. And it's a disaster. Los Angeles and San Francisco streets are littered with drug addled homeless people shitting in the street where they stand.

Could this be a correlation != causation thing? Doesn't San Francisco have a severe housing crisis?

No, not really. It has a problem with junkies and mental cases wandering the street and petty crime.

I can’t imagine there are any more “junkies” than there were before the decriminalization in 2014. It’s likely a combination of gentrification of spaces they used to frequent and if I know California, they addressed half the problem. They decriminalized but didn’t have enough money for treatment. They should at least make safe spaces throughout the city for people to do their drugs off the public streets.

 

[J842P]

Maybe a sense of hopelessness drives them to take drugs in the first place, then it becomes a downward spiral?

This is definitely true. It is well understood that drug addiction and feelings of hopelessness are highly correlated.

There was a famous experiment done with rats that showed when given the choice between food and cocaine, the rats would choose cocaine until they perished. This was widely publicized during the 80s.

Later experiments showed that simply putting a running-wheel and some toys in the cage and the rats would choose the food.

It is no surprise that our opioid epidemic came on the heels of an economic depression that large swaths of the country have never recovered from.

 

[J842P]

No, not really. It has a problem with junkies and mental cases wandering the street and petty crime.

I can’t imagine there are any more “junkies” than there were before the decriminalization in 2014. It’s likely a combination of gentrification of spaces they used to frequent and if I know California, they addressed half the problem. They decriminalized but didn’t have enough money for treatment. They should at least make safe spaces throughout the city for people to do their drugs off the public streets.

You really have to do more than this. Again, most opioid addicts can live functional lives. Indeed, they can even be highly productive, like surgeons etc (many surgeons used to get addicted to opiates and cocaine back in the day).

That becomes impossible when opioids become expensive due to the black market.

Addicts need to be directed towards treatment, but it is hopelessly naive to think that treatment is going to work even in most cases. Harm reduction, for them and society, requires access to controlled dosages with clean needles. It could be provided at cost to people who have medically diagnosed addictions. There's no reason anyone needs to be selling their souls and committing property crimes for some poppy.

 

[TSwizzle]

No, not really. It has a problem with junkies and mental cases wandering the street and petty crime.

I can’t imagine there are any more “junkies” than there were before the decriminalization in 2014. It’s likely a combination of gentrification of spaces they used to frequent and if I know California, they addressed half the problem. They decriminalized but didn’t have enough money for treatment. They should at least make safe spaces throughout the city for people to do their drugs off the public streets.

This has already been done. Not only can the junkies take their drugs wherever they like, safe in the knowledge that the police will turn a blind eye, they can shit in the gutter too. Short of syringes ? No problem, some cities will provide you free ones. They can also pitch a tent on the sidewalk, creating mini tent communities and the police won't bother them. If they want to park their broken down RV or other vehicle in the street, that's fine too. And in order to feed their insatiable appetite for drugs, they can make a living stealing from wherever they like providing they keep the theft below $950 or something like that so as not to attract the attention of the law. And yes, there are far more junkies and the number keeps on going up.

 

[steve_bank]

Part of it is hopelessness. Recent reports suicide is up teems to 20s. Increasing use of anti anxiety drugs.

Part of it is the culture itself. Starting in the 60s drugs became normalized. Before that it was common to the arts. Music, art, Hollywood. Pot was considered a minority vice.

When I saw the Grateful Dead in 71 it was an open drug market. Drugs were popularized as cool. Cheech and Chong.

I was there. I used to go to the Fillmore East in NYC. Looking back it was all wasted time. It led nowhere and delayed my getting on with things.

Drug metaphors are today common. Bummer, what have you been smoking, are you high or something.

If you want to legalize drugs, fine. If you choose drugs have a rule that you arte on your own for all consequences. No Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance to cover it.

If you are pro legalizing all drugs a question. Your significant other says to you guess what honey I started using heroin. Or your kid comes home from college and says I am using heroin, isn't that great!

 

[J842P]

Part of it is hopelessness. Recent reports suicide is up teems to 20s. Increasing use of anti anxiety drugs.

Part of it is the culture itself. Starting in the 60s drugs became normalized. Before that it was common to the arts. Music, art, Hollywood. Pot was considered a minority vice.

This is just ahistorical. Drugs have always featured heavily in the American experience. Prior to the early 1900s, most drugs were freely available, and the use of opioids, stimulants like cocaine etc were widespread. Most commonly prescribed medicines were basically just mixtures of various opioids. If anything, the 1950's were the aberration historically.

If you want to legalize drugs, fine. If you choose drugs have a rule that you arte on your own for all consequences. No Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance to cover it.

Why? That would be counter productive. Why do you insist on using the same failed policies and ignoring the mountains of empircal evidence for harm-reduction strategies that actually work.

If you are pro legalizing all drugs a question. Your significant other says to you guess what honey I started using heroin. Or your kid comes home from college and says I am using heroin, isn't that great!

This isn't a question. But I would respond the same way as if the drugs were as illegal as they are today: that is a bad idea for various reasons.


I've leave aside that this scenario is completely unrealistic, no one, no one decides to use hard drugs because they are suddenly legal. It's not like their legality stops you from purchasing them right now.

 

[Elixir]

If you are pro legalizing all drugs a question. Your significant other says to you guess what honey I started using heroin. Or your kid comes home from college and says I am using heroin, isn't that great!

This isn't a question. But I would respond the same way as if the drugs were as illegal as they are today: that is a bad idea for various reasons.

At least your SO and kid aren't raiding your bank accounts to pay some South American cartel for the heroin.

 

[Elixir]

The good old days

"During the nineteenth century there was virtually no effective regulation of narcotics in the United States. Various preparations and derivatives of opium were freely available and widely used. Several states had statutes governing the sale of narcotics, and many municipalities forbade opium smoking, but these laws were only sporadically enforced. In practice just about anyone could secure pure drugs with little bother and at modest cost." [link]

What? Freely available low cost drugs and little or no law enforcement? Why, pure havoc MUST have ensued!
Obviously it must have been a vastly embarrassing, humiliating outcome for the entire society, which is why there is absolutely no indication in the records from the nineteenth century that drugs were a widespread social problem, legal problem or economic problem in the US. Certainly there was no military drug issue for the US. The British did get in a spat with China over opium, but hey - they got that Hong Kong deal out of it...
Anyhow, it is stunning that instead of acknowledging that drugs are a manufactured "problem" and agreeing to take the known steps to stopping the creation of the problem, we just argue about whether which drugs should be how legal for whom, and what penalties should be paid by whom for what infractions.
A certain definition of insanity comes to mind.

 

[steve_bank]

This is just ahistorical. Drugs have always featured heavily in the American experience. Prior to the early 1900s, most drugs were freely available, and the use of opioids, stimulants like cocaine etc were widespread. Most commonly prescribed medicines were basically just mixtures of various opioids. If anything, the 1950's were the aberration historically.


Why? That would be counter productive. Why do you insist on using the same failed policies and ignoring the mountains of empircal evidence for harm-reduction strategies that actually work.

If you are pro legalizing all drugs a question. Your significant other says to you guess what honey I started using heroin. Or your kid comes home from college and says I am using heroin, isn't that great!

This isn't a question. But I would respond the same way as if the drugs were as illegal as they are today: that is a bad idea for various reasons.


I've leave aside that this scenario is completely unrealistic, no one, no one decides to use hard drugs because they are suddenly legal. It's not like their legality stops you from purchasing them right now.

The standard fallback position is there has always been drugs, but not anything like what started the 60s. Ever here of Owsley and Owsley acid? It was synonomous with quality LSD. Along with Sandoz pharmaceutical LSD.

He was the traveling chemist with the Grateful Dead. A blast from the past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanl

Stanley was the first known private individual to manufacture mass quantities of LSD.[2][3][4] By his own account, between 1965 and 1967, Stanley produced no less than 500 grams of LSD, amounting to a little more than five million doses.[5

]

It is metastasized in the culture. History will record what happens. There is no longer any social stigma associated with narcotics. Watch the old movies Man With The Golden Arm and Money On My Back. The issue of narcotic addiction has always been there. The difference is it has spread to middle America.

I will restate. If you choose to use tobacco, alcohol, pot, or recreational drugs you should have to buy a higher cost insurance lan to spare everybody else the medical costs.

As an analogy I doubt any insurance company will insure somebody who free climbs. Rock climbing without any protections. If they did it would have a very high premium.

 

[steve_bank]

"During the nineteenth century there was virtually no effective regulation of narcotics in the United States. Various preparations and derivatives of opium were freely available and widely used. Several states had statutes governing the sale of narcotics, and many municipalities forbade opium smoking, but these laws were only sporadically enforced. In practice just about anyone could secure pure drugs with little bother and at modest cost." [link]

What? Freely available low cost drugs and little or no law enforcement? Why, pure havoc MUST have ensued!
Obviously it must have been a vastly embarrassing, humiliating outcome for the entire society, which is why there is absolutely no indication in the records from the nineteenth century that drugs were a widespread social problem, legal problem or economic problem in the US. Certainly there was no military drug issue for the US. The British did get in a spat with China over opium, but hey - they got that Hong Kong deal out of it...
Anyhow, it is stunning that instead of acknowledging that drugs are a manufactured "problem" and agreeing to take the known steps to stopping the creation of the problem, we just argue about whether which drugs should be how legal for whom, and what penalties should be paid by whom for what infractions.
A certain definition of insanity comes to mind.

It was a health crisis, not just narcotics alcohol as well. Charities and institutions were overwhelmed. Problems with employment. People dead in the street. The Temperance Movement did not spring up out of nowhere. Neiter did the rise of regulation of drugs.

An old folk song goes 'they say cokes for horses not for men, they say it will kill me but they won't tell me when'. Cocaine was used for doping race horses.

 

[TSwizzle]

The *median* home price in San Francisco is 1.4 million dollars. Yes there is a severe housing crisis.

Again, not really. You have a lot of people in SF that simply can’t afford to live there. If they are looking for more affordable houses, try Idaho or something.

It's still the best area in the country for my work, although, Austin is looking better every day. I may end up just moving to New York.

Sounds like a plan.

Me, I can’t wait for my kid to graduate and get away from this third world shithole that is Los Angeles and probably CA.

 

[J842P]

The *median* home price in San Francisco is 1.4 million dollars. Yes there is a severe housing crisis.

Again, not really. You have a lot of people in SF that simply can’t afford to live there. If they are looking for more affordable houses, try Idaho or something.

It's still the best area in the country for my work, although, Austin is looking better every day. I may end up just moving to New York.

Sounds like a plan.

Me, I can’t wait for my kid to graduate and get away from this third world shithole that is Los Angeles and probably CA.

LA is quite a shit hole, and I've found little about redeeming. Except the weather.

Nevertheless, I quite like San Francisco.

In any case, what you described, too many people who cannot afford to live here, is what a housing crisis means. You seem to be saying move from an area with a housing crisis to an area without one. And while that may be good advice, it doesn't change the fact that there is indeed a housing crisis in this city. Unless you just mean to deny such a thing can exist. Which seems like a pointless semantic argument.

 

[TSwizzle]

LA is quite a shit hole, and I've found little about redeeming. Except the weather.

Well there some nice areas of LA. Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, etc.

Nevertheless, I quite like San Francisco.

In any case, what you described, too many people who cannot afford to live here, is what a housing crisis means. You seem to be saying move from an area with a housing crisis to an area without one. And while that may be good advice, it doesn't change the fact that there is indeed a housing crisis in this city. Unless you just mean to deny such a thing can exist. Which seems like a pointless semantic argument.

Nonsense on stilts. I’d love to live in Beverly Hills but there seems to be a housing crisis there because I can’t afford a house there ?

 

[Smoker]

If I want to go pick and eat mind enhancing mushrooms that grow on cow shit, why shouldn't I be able to as long as I'm not hurting anybody else? If I want to make my own LSD from chemicals that I can find around the garden, why shouldn't I?

 

[Smoker]

As long as I'm not hurting anybody else, let me chase my psyconaut adventures

 

[DBT]

LA is quite a shit hole, and I've found little about redeeming. Except the weather.

Well there some nice areas of LA. Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, etc.

Nevertheless, I quite like San Francisco.

In any case, what you described, too many people who cannot afford to live here, is what a housing crisis means. You seem to be saying move from an area with a housing crisis to an area without one. And while that may be good advice, it doesn't change the fact that there is indeed a housing crisis in this city. Unless you just mean to deny such a thing can exist. Which seems like a pointless semantic argument.

Nonsense on stilts. I’d love to live in Beverly Hills but there seems to be a housing crisis there because I can’t afford a house there ?

Some cities have may have jobs, but the cost of housing is too high for the people who want to work and live there but cannot afford to. Other cities may have reasonable or even cheap housing but little or no prospect of them getting work. A catch 22 situation for many of those in a low to medium income bracket.

 

[Jarhyn]

Well there some nice areas of LA. Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, etc.



Nonsense on stilts. I’d love to live in Beverly Hills but there seems to be a housing crisis there because I can’t afford a house there ?

Some cities have may have jobs, but the cost of housing is too high for the people who want to work and live there but cannot afford to. Other cities may have reasonable or even cheap housing but little or no prospect of them getting work. A catch 22 situation for many of those in a low to medium income bracket.

And even moving to a "more affordable" place, especially one with dangerous weather, is even less wise for someone who would get run out of town and/or denied access to work. Then, when winter rolls around, they die of exposure, an animal attack, or starvation.

The fact is, cities have resources that the people society casts off need to continue living. That's why they stay there.

 

[Gun Nut]

If you want to legalize drugs, fine. If you choose drugs have a rule that you arte on your own for all consequences. No Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance to cover it.

.. and if you choose fast food for lunch, then no insurance either, right?
.. and if you smoke cigarettes?
.. and if you are religious, then no legal aid or police? you have prayer - way better
.. if you choose to have children, then no financial aide of any kind.. you chose that... etc..

 

[TSwizzle]

Some cities have may have jobs, but the cost of housing is too high for the people who want to work and live there but cannot afford to. Other cities may have reasonable or even cheap housing but little or no prospect of them getting work. A catch 22 situation for many of those in a low to medium income bracket.

Indeed. But the meth heads, junkies and chronically homeless are incapable of keeping a job and most of them don't want a job anyway.

 

[DBT]

Some cities have may have jobs, but the cost of housing is too high for the people who want to work and live there but cannot afford to. Other cities may have reasonable or even cheap housing but little or no prospect of them getting work. A catch 22 situation for many of those in a low to medium income bracket.

Indeed. But the meth heads, junkies and chronically homeless are incapable of keeping a job and most of them don't want a job anyway.

There are reasons why there are so many turning to drugs. Perhaps it may be a sense of hopelessness related to a perception of lack of opportunities, high cost of housing, etc, that drives drug addiction in the first instance. People are not generally born drug addicts and dropouts. There must be some sort of failure in the system to produce this a degree of social problems.