Yeah, prohibition is a terrible policy for everyone except the cops, jailers (including private, for-profit jailers), government spooks, smugglers, arms dealers, hitmen, chain and shackle manufacturers, etc. who make a living from it. I'm taxed to pay some of the world's most odious people to stop a small percentage of the supply of these drugs. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the supply makes it through and causes untold suffering for addicts, often thanks to other (or the same) taxpayer-funded bad guys and an onramp provided by the legal pharmaceutical industry. In the impoverished countries where the supply comes from, all this revenue funds hellish slave/feudal economies where a small violent elite terrorize, torture, and kill working people. Even in the developed world, addicts are weaponized by others for all kinds of violence (drug gangs, human trafficking rings, etc.) and net-negative property crime (stripping copper from abandoned houses, stealing catalytic converters, etc.).
In short, banning hard drugs is very very obviously a losing policy that serves only to enrich the world's worst people at the expense of everyone else.
Yes, many intelligent people DO think we should not ban any drugs/substances and that the best way to deal with them is instead regulate and set up societal structures and frameworks that support the issues around abuse.
The science tends to back these ideas up. Banning does not stop people from doing what they want.
Education and guard rails are always better than hard control.
Why should something not be banned just because it's a design pattern?
In fact hard drugs are a pattern. There's no molecular fragment that makes something a hard drug. It's a label we apply based on patterns. Not design patterns though since drugs are discovered not designed.
In fact we do ban design patterns of drugs. There used to be an industry of slightly altering an illegal drug so it would have the same effect without being the banned chemical. They banned this by banning design patterns: no tryptamines with psychedelic effects, etc.
Yeah, prohibition is a terrible policy for everyone except the cops, jailers (including private, for-profit jailers), government spooks, smugglers, arms dealers, hitmen, chain and shackle manufacturers, etc. who make a living from it. I'm taxed to pay some of the world's most odious people to stop a small percentage of the supply of these drugs. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the supply makes it through and causes untold suffering for addicts, often thanks to other (or the same) taxpayer-funded bad guys and an onramp provided by the legal pharmaceutical industry. In the impoverished countries where the supply comes from, all this revenue funds hellish slave/feudal economies where a small violent elite terrorize, torture, and kill working people. Even in the developed world, addicts are weaponized by others for all kinds of violence (drug gangs, human trafficking rings, etc.) and net-negative property crime (stripping copper from abandoned houses, stealing catalytic converters, etc.).
In short, banning hard drugs is very very obviously a losing policy that serves only to enrich the world's worst people at the expense of everyone else.
> So, we should also not ban hard-drugs then?
Is this a serious question? Have you been asleep since 70s and are not aware on how the War on Drugs has been going?
There is a gulf of difference between banning hard drugs and criminalizing their use
Possession and use should not be illegal. If you believe in regulation of this style, only dealing should be illegal.
Yes, many intelligent people DO think we should not ban any drugs/substances and that the best way to deal with them is instead regulate and set up societal structures and frameworks that support the issues around abuse.
The science tends to back these ideas up. Banning does not stop people from doing what they want.
Education and guard rails are always better than hard control.
are hard-drugs a design pattern?
Why should something not be banned just because it's a design pattern?
In fact hard drugs are a pattern. There's no molecular fragment that makes something a hard drug. It's a label we apply based on patterns. Not design patterns though since drugs are discovered not designed.
In fact we do ban design patterns of drugs. There used to be an industry of slightly altering an illegal drug so it would have the same effect without being the banned chemical. They banned this by banning design patterns: no tryptamines with psychedelic effects, etc.