Drug war continues to be an enormous amount of waste and human suffering for no clear public benefit
The only "scandal" here is that an adult can't go buy adderall at a grocery store if they need or want it. There is no reason for cops to be involved in this sort of personal decision, and doctors are better suited to an advisory role in it than their current position as de facto legal enforcers
if they need it, they can go to a doctor, who'll prescribe it to them. there's a reason to limit drugs that have an enormous dependency potential that a lot of humans cannot deal with, obviously.
currently this is the way, and even through this way adderall and other drugs like opiates are getting in the hand of vulnerable people way too often - so getting rid of the restrictions isn't the way to go. if there wouldn't be and limits, these people would not suddenly think "ohhh so this is my responsibility now? okay, i just quit then." but "oh so this is available for like a dollar in walmart? i'll get it, i'm a bit down today and can't focus". and guess what, there will never be a day where they'll be able to focus without it anymore.
Sure, and tons of people think they can't sleep without melatonin, wake up without caffeine, handle pollen without zirtec, handle stress without nicotine, relax without alcohol, etc
Doctors can give good advice about all these things. They don't legally get to make the decision for you. Doctors are also stretched thin, and making them responsible for making the vast overwhelming majority of personal decisions about what drugs someone can use is a huge part of that. Also, sending cops after people clearly isn't making addicts stop wanting drugs, as you point out, nor is it helping those addicts. It is, however, creating a vastly powerful police state with a constant justification for surveillance, more and more every time someone sees a drug problem and somehow nonsensically thinks despite trying this for 50 years the answer is still more enforcement
Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs anyone takes. It's incredibly habit-forming, often the standard against which psychopharmacological analysis compares addictiveness of other drugs. Withdrawal symptoms hit quickly, and include extreme cravings, brain fog, and irritability. Still, you only see the kind of desperation and violence around it you see with other drugs in places where it's not readily available, like prisons and warzones. Sure, people struggle with addiction. I have. I no longer use nicotine, despite finding it a very useful drug, and the process of quitting was greatly aided by being able to ask my doctor and various people around me for support and advice. I still will tell people close to me if I'm thinking of buying a vape, and often they'll help talk me out of it. Stigma and fear of legal reprisal prevents many addicts from seeking help from these avenues when the drug is illegal
The carceral approach to drugs does zero good and lots of harm to regular citizens, both in individual and systemic ways. It is entirely for the profit of police, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies
given the explosion in popularity of vaping and nicotine pouches (like Zyn) since this article was written, I think we now know this is false. Tons of people have become addicted to pure nicotine without ever touching tobacco.
Fair. I think how the nicotine is delivered is essential as well. Although I tried vaping for 3 months and it didn't take at all which I found interesting.
There are lots of very addictive drugs I could never get addicted to. For example, I find most kinds of painkillers range from kind of annoying to godawful for me. Opiates especially make me nauseous. Like can't even keep down food on morphine and codeine isn't much better. When prescribed them I've had to get off them quickly, well before I run out or sometimes even before the doctor thinks I should. And it's not just stuff I hate either. I have good memories of drinking and enjoy alcohol socially occasionally, but I'm never really inclined to drink to excess or even half the days of the week, as some people consider fairly normal. On the other hand, I've had really bad caffeine habits at various times and had a real struggle quiting nicotine. I think people vary a lot in how they respond to different stuff. I'm sure some people have tried lots of addictive stuff and never had it take, and some people try weed once and then smoke it every day, despite it being less habit-forming on average than nicotine. When I say nicotine's among the most addictive drugs, that's referring to a really broad aggregate, over which the individual variance is quite high and the combinatoric space of factors is staggering
If doctors are to play a role in this process shouldn’t it be in treating or helping that small group who has a problem?
You’re making the same argument that alcohol and tobacco prohibitionists do. I can also make the same argument to ban this website or tiktok or all social media or all of the internet.
Absolutely. It's actually hard to disentangle drug enforcement regimes in their current form from pressure exerted by the US, but even if they arrived at doing government overreach independently I would consider it government overreach. Also disparities in what substances are considered dangerous is evidence against this all being grounded in reality, not for it
Absolutely. People should be able to buy and use products they want, and have some reasonable assurances they're getting what the packaging says they're getting, and they can access adequate information to make an informed decision about it. The drug war impedes all these things for no benefit
"Obvious" is a concept that only makes sense when there is significant shared context. When it is applied to the idea that is directly in dispute, it is about as compelling an argument as "because I said so"
Perhaps that seems obvious to you. I don't view it as obvious that anyone's individual health decisions should ever be made and enforced by the state. It is obvious to me that trying to "regulate" these choices through a prohibition framework is not only ineffective, but does massive harm. However, since we're arguing about that very question, I don't feel it sufficient to merely say "it's obvious" and leave it at that.
The Volstead act didn't save us from the evils of alcohol, but it did put a lot of people in jail, strengthen organized crime, and create a reactionary push for more draconian police powers. The difference now is that the Controlled Substances Act and its international equivalents are backed by more technologically powerful governments, and cover more substances. Even in the early 20th century, prohibition policies created powerful criminal cartels and draconian police states. The controlled substances act has created both in spades, and the downstream consequences are so vast that they have arguably defined the society we live in, with its mass-incarceration, constant surveillance, and at least in the US, an incredibly punishing, byzantine, and costly healthcare system
I’m not going to comment on the second part because I don’t live in the US and I have no idea what the situation is in your corner of the world on that front.
As for the first part, you said you don’t agree about the state having a say in your health but the original problem was related to selling all sorts of drugs openly.
Do we both agree that at some point some limitation has to be put in place otherwise some people would just abuse such a system? Or do you think we should just let people do whatever and then the role of a society is to help those who end up abusing those drugs?
Because it’s happening already, people are already abusing all sorts of drugs even with some restrictions in place.
And mind you, I’m not arguing for criminalization. I’m just arguing for adding at least some regulation like requiring a prescription. I see that as a good middle ground.
But maybe it’s just me being raised here that makes me see things differently than you, that’s always a possibility.
I don't think there's any productive place to put restrictions on what drugs adults are allowed to buy of their own volition. It's not the government's job to make sure I'm making the best decisions for my health, and by and large it doesn't in any other context. I really do think people should talk to their doctor and get their expert advice on what drugs to use, when to use them, and what to look out for. I think a lot of the time a doctor should say "No, you really ought to avoid that drug. Here's why". Creating a situation where this has legal weight and can wind you up in jail, no matter how you frame it (Like what's the penalty for getting a drug without a prescription?) is doing harm.
Even without the jailtime, if we assume some people need certain drugs, and they just can't afford to talk to a doctor, or can't get an appointment for 6 months, and at best can hope to go through a process of needing to circumlocute to avoid seeming "drug-seeking" while trying to ask advice about a particular drug and get legal permission to buy it, that restriction is harming those people. I don't think a doctor telling you not to try a drug should mean you can't make that decision for yourself. I don't think more people taking adderall should trigger an investigation into doctors that decides that too many of them gave their patients that clearly wanted adderall the permission they needed to buy it. This pits doctors against their patients inherently
We absolutely should use the government to regulate sellers of drugs. We should crack down significantly on false advertising, doctors being paid to push drugs, and poor quality control practices within manufacturing operations. This is something we do inadequately under the current regime. We absolutely can't do it for black market operations. People who want drugs that are illegal currently don't have an option they can really trust to the level of things government health agencies vet. Creating demand for black market drugs by locking people out of regulated ones causes any effort the government makes regulating the sales/manufacturing side of drugs to be useless for those people
If we aren't regulated then anti-drug laws shouldn't exist. A government made up of it's people cannot regulate it's people by virtue of having a superior self control or wisdom. How can there be liberty without this?
Those are private properties or privileged activities. Eating poison, in your private home being regulated means your home is not truly yours and you have no liberty.
I’m not sure about the others in this discussion but I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t be able to eat poison at home.
I’m saying as a society we should want to try avoid selling poison freely if we know a non negligible number of people would, in fact, eat it at home and die as a result.
And again, I’m not arguing for criminalizing the people who do get poison and eat it. I’m not arguing for criminalizing anyone actually. I’m arguing for sensible checks in place. Which is what we’re already doing with things like drivers licenses and medical prescriptions.
So long as those people are adults who are functional (can care for themselves), it isn't society's business to protect them from self-harm. Your sensible checks are violations of liberty. A person's right and authority over themselves being infringed is a loss of liberty. Society gets involved when their actions affect non-consenting members of society.
Yes and the point you’re trying to make is? That as a society we allow some things that might be risky and not others? Isn’t that obvious? We try to find a balance. Or are you suggesting that since we allow people to drive cars we should also give people easy access to all drugs?
Since you missed it, the vast majority of people can regulate their behaviour just fine and we deal with people who don’t without banning activities except for special medical exceptions.
The vast majority of people grew up in a society with regulations.
You telling me you’d be happy to let people drive a car without a drivers license? How about a plane? Should we just trust people to not drive if they’re not capable?
Nonsense. Humans do fine at regulating themselves the vast overwhelming majority of the time, and edge cases worth intervening on generally involve more than one human
Again, “humans do fine” it’s in the context of societies with already regulations in place. Do you have an example of a society with no regulations where humans do indeed “do fine”?
For many substances we consider "obviously" illegal now, yes. Most famously, Coca-Cola used to use cocaine instead of the caffeine it currently has. Even for the "prescription-only" enforcement level, this used to be the purview of the FDA and the people subject to enforcement were the ones operating pharmacies, not their customers, or people who got stuff through side channels. Maybe cops still used the excuse of drug intoxication to deal with people more harshly, but they couldn't stop and search someone merely on the suspicion that they had contraband
Drug enforcement should work like industry regulation and consumer protections, not operate on individuals as criminal penalties
> Drug war continues to be an enormous amount of waste and human suffering for no clear public benefit
I know this has been the line for years, but now that we've taken our foot off the gas we have grocery stores, maternity wards, and highways that smell like pot and we have a astronomical number of fentanyl poisonings.
So your line is "Marijuana aesthetically displeases me and we're no longer jailing people for it, therefore drug war is good"?
Or is it "Fentanyl deaths exploding has happened despite it still not being legal to purchase, therefore somehow we need more drug war despite it having not prevented this outcome in any way"?
Somehow no matter what actually happens, it supports doing drug war harder. This doesn't sound like a very principled argument to me
Some drugs are probably not a great idea for most people. No drug is for everyone. Also, the state arresting people for what drugs they take adds a ton of problems without solving any, not the least of which being a fairly draconian police state that harms people who aren't even doing drugs, and we have decades of evidence that this is the case
> So your line is "Marijuana aesthetically displeases me and we're no longer jailing people for it, therefore drug war is good"?
Nowhere did I mention aesthetics.
> Or is it "Fentanyl deaths exploding has happened despite it still not being legal to purchase, therefore somehow we need more drug war despite it having not prevented this outcome in any way"?
Enforcement procedures have changed at all levels, regardless of classification.
> Somehow no matter what actually happens, it supports doing drug war harder. This doesn't sound like a very principled argument to me
Yes, I'm positing that drug enforcement has benefits and my statements are consistent.
> Some drugs are probably not a great idea for most people. No drug is for everyone.
Agreed.
> Also, the state arresting people for what drugs they take adds a ton of problems without solving any, not the least of which being a fairly draconian police state that harms people who aren't even doing drugs, and we have decades of evidence that this is the case
You mentioned, without further commentary, that you could smell marijuana various places, in the context of harms of the very limited relaxations in drug enforcement that have happened in some states in the US. Not only is it unclear to me that this is a direct consequence of that (Where I live, you could smell weed a lot of these places well before the state legalized recreational use), but the harm this causes is left unstated, which is why I call it an aesthetic objection
> Enforcement procedures have changed at all levels, regardless of classification.
Vague and also nonsense. Throughout the era of drug prohibition we've had a constant stream of these "crises" where a drug becomes popular for some reason, people die because they're using it unsafely, and the news squawks about it for months. Every version of drug policy has failed to prevent this problem, and yet people keep trying to pretend if we just throw more cops at the problem it will magically start working. It won't
> Yes, I'm positing that drug enforcement has benefits and my statements are consistent.
They're not. In one case, you name the fact that you notice a drug that's increasingly being legalized in various places as evidence that relaxing enforcement is a problem. In the other, you name a drug that's still actively quite illegal, that the DEA busts labs for making, doctors for overprescribing, and individuals for possessing, and say that the fact that it's the subject of the current well-known drug crisis is evidence that enforcement is too lax. What level of enforcement do you think will solve the problem? It really seems like whatever outcome we see from what policies, as long as someone, somewhere still uses a drug you think they shouldn't, your conclusion will be that this is evidence of inadequate cop involvement
> This is a false choice, filled with cliches.
This is the reality we currently occupy. Police stop and search people, break into their homes, confiscate their belongings, on the assumption that they might have drugs, or have made money selling drugs. They shoot people on the assumption that they can't be reasoned with because they might be on drugs. We ruin millions of people's lives by throwing them in jail for merely posessing drugs, which if anything exacerbates those individuals' propensity to buy black market drugs. This is all a direct downstream consequence of drug policy
Actually, I used the meaning of the word to arrive at the conclusion I did, whereas your objection seems to be to the fact that you didn't use that specific word
> You're changing your argument here.
Nope, same argument the whole time: Drug prohibition doesn't work, and it also causes harm. Perhaps it's confusing when I take time to respond to what you're saying specifically?
> You've forgotten what you're trying to prove and you've misunderstood in what sense I'm saying that my statements are consistent.
What a lovely little gotcha this would be if it referred to anything that actually happened.
> You're restating the same false choice.
Nope, I'm describing reality under the status quo of drug enforcement. I'm not talking in hypotheticals, I'm talking about what happened and continues to happen
> It's been real. I'm gonna leave it here. Consider that a win.
I know it's a trite idiom but nothing about this is "real." You, like many on this website, seem to think debate consists of acting smug and trying to find little "gotchas" while making no case whatsoever for your own beliefs. I understand that trying to define, let alone justify, exactly what it is what you believe is pretty hard. Perhaps that's why you'd like state actors to be empowered to make more decisions for people. Maybe people would have better discussions if they didn't think about it in terms of "winning"
Most drugs affected by fentanyl are illegal drugs, the government overprescribing has been around before the "legalize it". I believe its up to the consumer to discern whether a drug is for them. A drug user that's not desperate to get it by any means necessary will be less likely to encounter poor illegal drug production quality assurance. I don't believe legalizing it will reduce drug use, but it will mostly enable a Marley of safer drug production as far as immediate harmful effects. I'm not convinced legalizing drugs is long term beneficial to human mental health, but it would have the coeffect of people thinking Kore purely about what it is to be free and responsible
Wow you'd throw them in prison? Seems a bit much. I'd probably recommend one of a thousand other mechanisms of enforcement. At any rate, glad you conceded the other points. We found common ground and agree that the drug war was doing some good. I don't think I'll be eating any food that you've cooked though. I can't imagine what would happen if I sent you to the store for a ripe pineapple.
The only "scandal" here is that an adult can't go buy adderall at a grocery store if they need or want it. There is no reason for cops to be involved in this sort of personal decision, and doctors are better suited to an advisory role in it than their current position as de facto legal enforcers