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8 hours ago
Respectfully, this is a piss take.
US prohibition on alcohol and to the large extent performative "war on drugs" showed what criminalization does (empowers, finances and radicalises the criminals).
Portugal's decriminalisation, partial legalisation of weed in the Netherlands, legalisation in some American states and Canada prove legal businesses will better and safer provide the same services to the society, and the lesser societal and health cost.
And then there's the opioid addiction scandal in the US. Don't tell me it's the result of legalisation.
Legalisation of some classes of the drugs (like LSD, mushrooms, etc) would do much more good than bad.
Conversely, unrestricted LLMs are avaliable to everyone already. And prompting SOTA models to generate the most hardcore smut you can imagine is also possible today.
> Portugal's decriminalisation, partial legalisation of weed in the Netherlands, legalisation in some American states and Canada prove legal businesses will better and safer provide the same services to the society, and the lesser societal and health cost.
You’re stretching it big time. The situation in the Netherlands caused the rise of drug tourism, which isn’t exactly great for locals, nor does it stop crime or contamination.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2022/11/change-starts-here-amsterda...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/24/bacteria-pesti...
As for Portugal, decriminalisation does not mean legalisation. Drugs are still illegal, it‘s just that possession is no longer a crime and there are places where you can safely shoot up harder drugs, but the goal is still for people to leave them.
>Portugal's decriminalisation, (..) prove legal businesses will better and safer provide the same services to the society, and the lesser societal and health cost.
Portugal's success regarding drugs wasn't about the free market. It was about treating addicts like victims or patients rather than criminals, it actually took a larger investment from the state and the benefits of that framework dissolved once budgets were cut.