Should all drugs including marijuana, hashish, cocaine, and heroin be legalized?
Absolutely not. Do you really want your kids bus driver to whip out a crack pipe on the job?
I feel your pain and understand your fear but I think the scenario you present is unlikely.
That's going to be illegal regardless. Alcohol is legal, but drinking while driving isn't. Sheez.
@MollyBell Drinking and driving is also illegal, but booze is legal and stupid people do it.
@ArthurPhillips So how many ppl do you think are driving around off their face?
No.
Maybe safe ones decriminalised.
Heroin, meth and such, should we make it easier for people to get? Give the impression that it is not so bad?
I'm pretty sure if they were legalised the results would speak for themselves. At least meth heads might get the option to use in a safe space.
@girlwithsmiles Not sure, I lived in our worst town for all sorts of drugs, there was high tolerance, injecting rooms,free methadone and needles. The users we had are the lowest members of society, each morning myself and others would go through the schools grounds and kindergartens in the area to collect all the discarded used syringes. I know people can over come addictions and improve, but ......................... my tolerance levels went way down after 10 years of dealing with them.
Yes, many of the users need to go through counselling several times to get better. It's a long and expensive journey. Of course some never do and continue to use or OD. But not spreading Hep and other blood bourne issues and not having the issue as something criminalised and underground seems like a good thing to me. Nottingham UK and Melbourne Aus. both had facilities for drug and alcohol users, I found it an improvement on places that didn't. I have the most issues with the crims around users rather than the users myself.
Well, I heard Portugal is giving it a try.
Portugal and Switzerland have legalized all drugs.
Marijuana would be the only one. Don't know if any medicinal benefits for Hashish. Coke and heroin can damage your heart-no.
As an adult, I have liberty, meaning: I own myself. I can do to myself whatever I want. This includes taking drugs of any kind. Drug laws tell us that the government knows what is better for us than us. This comes straight from Judeo- Christian paternalism. All drug laws are morally suspect. If you sit on a jury in a drug case that does not involve minors, consider jury nullification. Google it.
Make it all legal, easily available with same restrictions as tobacco and alcohol and supplied by manufacturers with guaranteed purity.
There will be an initial die off of Darwin Award candidates and then the rest will stop as it is no longer trendy. All the crime related to gaining money for next hit will be gone. All those shitty little bastard dealers destroying everyones neighbourhood will be gone. All the hellish places around the world controlled by viscious cartels will become better places to live.
Addicted people can be helped a lot easier.
Better life for those of us not stupid and a better life for the stupid.
Here, here.
Not the addictive drugs.
Well that's coffee out then
Yes. And we need free addiction programs. But I'm all about Darwinism sorting stuff out
Darwin was wrong about the survival of the fittest. You survive if you either are in power or protected by it due to your servitude and the homage you pay to it, which is directly proportional to your ignorance. Bottom line, ignorance is the blessed way to survival.
Joke aside, at his time they did not have the means to prove his theory, but it became popular because of its social implications, it gave a scientific (and moral) support to colonialism. In an era of humanitarian views a scientific prove that other races and people were inferior, because of their technologically less advanced social development was a pretty handy tool to have.
Today, we have the technology to experimentally prove him right, so it has become highly unpopular because of its social implications.
But you are right about them being naturally eliminated by the harmful effects of their addiction.
Along with those calling for its legalization and/or decriminalization, and treat is as a health issue I would like to add a measure proven to be very effective - educated the people, the major factor in the decline of tobacco consumption. No more public advertising, health warnings, hight taxation, higher insurence premium, limited accessibility, etc. All those little nudges that over the years have make people walk away from it
But look at the demographic who still smoke. It is the poor, the mentally ill. Life is such a struggle they cannot get over the addiction. The middle class, can get their patches, get a trainer and go on a fitness fad.
What keeps me up at night is thinking what do I need/have to do to make sure my kids won't get caught up in that loop. Every parent environment is different therefore requires different measures. However the ultimate goal is all the same. Keep them away from using drugs.
hahahaha good luck with that. All four of my sons have tried a variety of drugs though they aren't addicts and rarely indulge. I have the occasional cone and think I should be able to grow it in my back yard.
Legalize and regulate all drugs.
Addendum: Everyone has probably heard that marijuana is legal in Colorado, but what you probably haven’t heard about is how the crime rates in that state have sharply increased, how child protective services has been swamped with cases and how graduation rates have plummeted.
You haven’t heard about those things because they didn’t happen.
Yes. The most destructive drug by far is alcohol. We know how prohibition worked out. It turned the Mafia into the giant it became. It is the same with drug cartels. We have a way of creating much more crime with our archaic drug laws, and it costs the tax payers a whole lot more money than if we handled it ad a health issue for people who find themselves addicted.
I guess legalize it. Most people won't use it as much if it is legal.
My quick answer is yes to all drugs that can be foraged, grown or transformed easily at home. When you really think about it, mind altering drugs are only expensive because of the underground illegal trade of it. Most source plants for drugs are as cheap as growing your own fruits and vegetables even cheaper when the material can be foraged. I would agree that the practice of chewing coca leaves or steeping it as tea should be legal but not a meth-lab for example. According to OP examples above canabis can be legal but not pure cocaine or heroin according to the logic I propose. Opium would be legal in it's raw resin form though.
Yes. Yes, they should. A lot of the crime that results because of drugs stem directly from their illegality. But it'll never happen because too many republicans hate black and brown people too much.
Yes, they should. Other countries that have done it have lower use. Y'all can Google it if you want to know more.
Yes. Legalize, tax, and regulate. This would drastically decrease the opioid epidemic, it would make the drug cartels almost powerless (since the end of prohibition finally crippled the influence of the mafia, which had risen to power in the 1920s as a result of prohibition), and we need to release and pardon all non-violent drug "offenders" (our prison population would dramatically decrease overnight, especially our minority prison population). Despite the fact that black people and white people use drugs at the same rate (with some studies indicating that white people use drugs at a slightly higher rate), black people are 40% more likely to be locked up for the same drug "crime".
In 2001, Portugal simply decriminalized all drugs, and their deaths from opioids have DRASTICALLY decreased, crime has gone down significantly, and the people who are addicted (I believe it's only about 10-15% of drug users who are actually addicts, according to neuroscientist Dr. Carl Hart, who specializes in drug addiction) can receive medical treatment instead of harsh punishment.
We obviously need to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana (a substance FAR less dangerous than alcoholic beverages), since that would be such a huge boost to our economy and would create so many jobs. For harder drugs, we need to legalize, tax, and regulate them so people will be able to know their limits with them, just like most people who drink know their alcohol limits. This also kills the black market for drugs, in which a lot of people don't know what they're doing when they make the drugs. With regulated drugs, these would be drugs made by chemists and other scientists (i.e., people who actually know what they're doing); for instance, we would make certain that heroin isn't laced with phentanyl (the stuff in unregulated heroin that causes so many users to overdose and die). We obviously wouldn't have the flesh-eating drug krokodil or crystal meth being available.
And for the people who ARE addicted, we should treat the addiction like a medical issue and treat those people with compassion instead of punishment. Switzerland did harm reduction during their heroin epidemic in the 80s. In the FREE harm-reduction centers, heroin addicts were given warm showers, nice beds, safe injection rooms, clean needles, were supplied with regulated heroin of the highest quality, made by people who actually knew what they were doing, and had 24/7 medical supervision to help them out in case anything bad happened; and social workers helped them find housing and deal with other problems.
The results? A sharp drop in drug-related crimes, HIV rates have dropped drastically, deaths from heroin drug overdoses have gone down by 50%, 2/3 of the people who have received medical treatment and compassion have been able to have regular jobs after treatment, since they can actually focus on getting better instead of financing their addictions, and drug-related street sex work has dramatically decreased.
We've wasted over 1 TRILLION DOLLARS on our useless, disastrous War on Drugs, and we've locked up way too many people (particularly minorities) for things that shouldn't be crimes. More people use drugs now than they did before the War on Drugs had begun. The aforementioned methods employed by Portugal and Switzerland, along with what I'd do, are far cheaper, would make us more money, they treat people who need help with compassion and dignity, and they actually work, rather than creating more problems. Instead of bulldozing human rights and causing abject misery, we should move on to something far better.
*THESE VIDEOS ON LEGALIZING/DECRIMINALIZING DRUGS ARE AMAZING AND HIGHLY INFORMATIVE