Comment by i_am_proteus
5 years ago
Not directly, but addicted people sometimes turn to violent crime to raise funds, and that violent crime certainly can put you in the ICU.
5 years ago
Not directly, but addicted people sometimes turn to violent crime to raise funds, and that violent crime certainly can put you in the ICU.
Meth is definitely one of the drugs that becomes a public nuisance, since people do become erratic and violent while using. Meth users are the only people that worry me when walking through our city since it can make people who are already unstable become unpredictably violent. I wonder if other drugs were legal would people still do meth?
Meth was legal until the 70s, society functioned. The current problem is another side effect of the war on drugs
https://www.history.com/topics/crime/history-of-meth
According to period newspapers, it very much was a problem almost immediately after public introduction in the late 40s and early 50s. Here's an example from Australia, which banned it by 1955:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/71874426?searchTe...
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This is very much false, and completely contrary to the actual history. War on drugs only happened because of greatly increased social dysfunction due to drugs, not the other way around. It enjoyed wide social support at the time it was started, precisely because people saw how damaging the drugs are to their communities. The idea that drug-related social dysfunction is an effect of war on drugs is yet another of those "wet streets cause rain" ideas.
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Society functions while people have access to guns too, yet there are still consequences to that choice. I am pro legalization of most drugs, but meth does give me pause. No one smoking a joint or tripped out on opioids has ever attacked me while screaming at ghosts in the street, I don't know enough about the role of meth in those kinds of instabilities but anecdotally meth, and alcohol too, sure seem to cause a whole lot of trouble in my city.
Other drugs already are legal. Alcohol is legal, and marijuana is effectively legal in Seattle, where people apparently do a lot of meth.
While true neither of those drugs would replace meth. Alcohol probably causes more social misconduct than meth anyway.
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Angry people can turn violent and put you in the ICU, too. To be fair, the list of things that can put you in the ICU is very very long, and many of us avoid it for the majority of our lives.
Like angry people, the vast majority of folks don't turn to violent crime, especially if other avenues exist. Society can provide this if necessary and we already have laws concerning violent crime that we can use.
I'll note that most of us pass addicted people every day when we leave the house. Most of them, you simply won't know they are addicted and if you are normal, you'll probably assume a person or two is addicted, yet they are not.
You can apply that logic to almost anything people use as a vice or get physically/psychologically addicted to