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Originally Posted by Igbutton
Well I wouldn't care if pot was legalized, I think it smells like crap so it's just as disgusting as cigarettes to me.
But for 'harder' drugs I just can't imagine a system that allows their use that wouldn't result in abuse and many more stories like Mike's. Certainly people exist that can keep their shit together and snort coke, but even if the ratio of 'Mikes' to level-headed druggies was 1 to 1 (I think the number of Mikes would outweigh the other by a landslide) it would still be too many.
So I think the drug war while ripe with corruption and profiling like Odjn/(Fifth?) implied it's still better than complete freedom of choice and I don't believe there is a middle ground that leave us any better off.
Of course, complete legalization would probably result in a higher imprisonment and overdose percentage than we currently have, and thusly the number of fucked up druggies would, in theory, decrease to a much more acceptable level over time. In a big picture way that's a good thing but I think the shit that would happen during that decrease would be unacceptable.
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Gotta disagree with you here at least in part. If those drugs were legal but regulated, the government could control how much of each substance is in whatever is sold, how pure the substance is, make sure there's no unintended chemicals in whatever's sold (with manmade drugs like meth, a large portion of the health risk is simply that it's very easy to make it wrong and make something worse for your health, so although that's hardly the only problem with meth, legalization would make it less risky). Also, many people who have drug problems have trouble coming forward about them, especially if they're in the lower class and/or have no connections to the right people, because trying to find help for your addiction can land you in jail if that addiction is illegal. If those drugs were legal, they could come forward for help without the fear of jail time.
And anyway, I have met people who do coke from time to time whose lives don't get totally fucked up by it. Not my drug of choice, but you have to think, anyone who's doing coke regularly has to get the money to do it from somewhere, most long-time users have found ways to hold stable jobs, the people I've met who do use it are careful only to use it after work when they don't have work the next day. Some people let their lives get screwed up by drugs, just like some people let their lives get screwed up by alcohol, or gambling, or any number of other non-chemical obsessions and addictions. However, for each of these things there are some people who have the responsibility to indulge in them with restraint, only to the point they can handle. In order for a drug to remain commercially viable over the long term, a significant portion of its consumers would have to be able to maintain a stable life in order to continue purchasing the drug. Those illegal drugs which are both so addictive and so damaging that the majority of their users can't hold a job and use the drug generally don't see wide use because people who see what the drug does and don't want their lives ruined by it stay away from it. In my opinion, marijuana is so popular because it's both so unaddictive and does so little damage to a person that the vast majority of its users hold stable jobs, get educations, and go on to lead productive lives.
That said, I think it's perfectly reasonable to make a drug illegal if causes a user to lose control of their actions in a way that causes a significant risk to other people. PCP is a good example. In the case of drugs that can be risky depending on what you attempt to do while using them, like drinking/toking/etc. and driving, it should only be illegal to do things that are risky to others while using the drug.