You're already living in it, killer. Caffeine, for example, is a pretty powerful stimulant. Ditto for nicotine.
Alcohol is everywhere. Alcohol consumption correlates heavily, like crazy heavily, with assaults, rape, murder, domestic violence, accidents, and serious or fatal car crashes.
Weed is now legal or legal-ish in many places, essentially all of the big population centers in N. America. Edibles and vapes mean you don't even have to smell it.
And let's not forget all of those articles about SV wunderkunds "micro-dosing".
The addicts that the OP was discussing have serious withdrawal issues and are, compared to things like booze or marijuana, trivial in terms of overall population.
They're already doing it. At least this way they won't have as many horrible skin ulcers. The situation is inhumane.
Consider the principles from another perspective. The leading causes of death in the US are diabetes, heart disease and obesity related conditions. Should we prohibit fast-food franchises, TV dinners and sedentary lifestyles?
As you said, "Do you want to live in an obese society?"
Logically, opposing prohibition isn't the same as endorsing obesity or drug abuse. There is an important distinction here.
It's the world we already live in. Continuation of the war on drugs mentality just leads to horrific outcomes like the one being discussed. And those outcomes have a wildly outsized impact on people who were born into unfortunate circumstances.
It impacts us all as members of society. Adulterated drugs are killing US addicts in record numbers.
There is a direct social cost in terms of health care, law enforcement, crimes committed to obtain drugs, fallout from broken families resulting in further dysfunction and more.
Then there is also the unseen cost of lost productivity. If users, deceased users, imprisoned users, distributors, deceased distributors, imprisoned distributors, and law enforcement personnel were not engaged in these activities, their efforts could be focused on more productive areas of the economy. We all pay for this policy socially and economically.
Same concerns about anti-depressants, which commonly make you unable to cry, have sex and are associated with increase frequency of mass shootings and suicide?
Why would they be cheaper? Lab quality would require lab grade testing and safety, and lab grade ingredients, not to mention taxes on recreational drugs are usually astronomical.
And I doubt it would be easier to get either since they're unlikely to hand out an unlimited quantity to anyone who pays for it even if it were legal.
1. You can buy shopping carts full of alcohol at one time if you want. I've watched people purchase thousands of cigarettes in one purchase. Having essentially unlimited access to addictive drugs wouldn't be out of the social norm.
2. I think some drugs would become cheaper, and other drugs would become more expensive. Drugs with limited supply would become cheaper as more production/supply chains open up. Think cocaine, heroin, and some pharmaceuticals without large overseas labs. There are inefficiencies in the illegal drug trade that legal trade could smooth over as well: better payment methods, more open price negotiations, legal settlement for disputes, reduced employee churn from violence/arrest, reduced bribes/corruption related charges.
3. Regardless of the price of drugs, the overall price would be smaller, as illegal drug use has huge externalized costs. Everything from corrupt governments to increased health care utilization to wasted law enforcement resources to destroyed human capital.
4. The existence of an available quality tested market would force the black market to compete more on quality.
You do know that xylazine is an adulterant? It is put in there because it is tough to get cheap heroin and fentanyl tends to kill their client base a lot faster than tranq.
Tranq is cheaper because it is available for animals, and not 'seizing and destroying something while putting the people who possess it in prison' is a great market force for lowering prices.
Ergo, don't criminalize heroin and tranq stops appearing in it.
Industrial small-molecule chemistry is extremely efficient. All of these drugs could be produced by the kiloton for small amounts of money if that was the objective. It would not require anything special.
We already see this with alcohol. Most liquor is tarted-up industrial ethanol, delivered by train tankers to the bottling plants, with some marketing and branding wrapped around it. Industrial ethanol is very inexpensive to produce, around $1/liter; the price of consumption alcohol is downstream of excise taxes and branding.
Cost is not a relevant factor. We can produce all of these chemicals for so little that it is a rounding error. This is a matter of policy.
