Ending the war on drugs entirely would be a huge step.
The degree to which drug-profits propel corruption on a global scale is vast, hard to describe - entire countries wind-up destroyed by this (Mexico, Afghanistan, etc).
Let's not forget the millions and millions of American lives totally destroyed by this, too: often the most vulnerable people in our society, most in need of care and protection.
America imprisons its ethnic minorities in inhumane conditions at a rate 17x greater than China, per capita, even counting China's 1M+ re-education camps. (China has A LOT of people, but the war on drugs has imprisoned a WHOLE LOT of American minorities.)
What’s more, having for-profit prisons is a nice boost to the economy. Just think how many jobs are created by the “need” to round up, prosecute, and incarcerate people. Then charge them (or rather their loved ones) obscene rates for phone calls (look this up; it’s truly awful).
We could reassign money to do community outreach, pay for jobs that provide mental health services, etc. But there are a lot of people who currently have a financial interest in maintaining the status quo.
>What’s more, having for-profit prisons is a nice boost to the economy.
No, they are economically inefficient the same way slavery is inefficient or how tying HIB to employers is inefficient. By putting a "leash" on people you prevent them from doing the most productive work they could have done without the leash. Paying a ward to reduce the economic output of an individual who merely needs rehabilitation is a pure waste of money. It's a net loss for the economy.
I wouldn't agree that 8.4% of the prison population is "tiny".
"Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice show that, as of 2013, there were 133,000 state and federal prisoners housed in privately owned prisons in the U.S., constituting 8.4% of the overall U.S. prison population. Broken down to prison type, 19.1% of the federal prison population in the United States is housed in private prisons and 6.8% of the U.S. state prison population is housed in private prisons. While 2013 represented a slight decline in private prison population over 2012, the overall trend over the preceding decade had been a slow increase." [0]
8.4% of the American prison population is comparable to the total prison population for a european country. finnish are 53 folks per 100k, americans are 655 per 100k...
US's prison system is a human rights catastrophe. China rightly gets lots of criticism for their prison system, and they only have 121 per 100k [0]. Really puts things in perspective. Or look at the total numbers: In china, 1.7 million people are in prison. In the US it is 2.1 million [1]. Yet China has 4.3 times the population of the US...
Yeah, it absolutely blows my mind that you can watch Jim Belushi growing weed on the Discovery Channel, meanwhile people are still being arrested and their lives ruined for growing and smoking it. Those people are skewed minority. NJ citizens have voted to legalize weed and people there are still being arrested there for it. It's insanity, and it needs to end.
The decriminalization wave helped me find minds like Paul Stamets, Hamilton Morris, and Will Hall. Then I started asking more questions and found writers like Johan Harri, Michael Pollan, and Robert Whitaker. Following Whitaker's work after reading his Anatomy of an Epidemic, I also suggest watching the "Medicating Normal" movie.
'“People should not be going to jail for possessing or using drugs,” Wiener told the Guardian. “It’s a health issue, not a criminal issue, and I hope that we get all the way there.”
Unfortunately California's homeless population is absolutely exploding in size, and many of the tent dwellers are openly being dealt (decriminalized) and using drugs of all types. This is not a viable social situation for anyone.
If you want to make sure there are no homeless people then you simply give everyone a home. Shelters don't count because they are designed for homeless people. If you are in a shelter you are homeless, if you are not homeless you aren't in a shelter.
How would 'simply give everyone a home' work? California is the most expensive real estate in America. The state is spending 13 billion a year on triaging itinerants, many of whom refuse sobriety rules that may put them on the path to free housing.
There is a giant homeless industrial complex siphoning out money intended for the homeless on management, top price union labor to modify motels bought with tax payer funds at way over valuation price that will 'house' a few dozen people in former hotel rooms.
What would you do to house anyone who wants a home?
The difference is they will be using the same substances but potentially much more harmful and you will have more people needlessly in prison. I don't see the positive to your argument.
There is no positive. It's a massive humanitarian crisis. Half the US homeless are in California, which spends 13 billion a year with no measurement, goals, metrics or evidence of positive results. Add in the opioid crisis, economic depression and housing shortages and you have a squalid pressure cooker of tents , crime and sanitation dangers.
> Very sensible initiative, but nothing about whether it has any chance of becoming law.
It has already happened in two cities. I live in Oakland and didn’t even realize. I already loved my city, but I’m really proud to have learned about this. From TFA:
> Scott Wiener, the state senator who authored the bill, hopes that in following the lead of places such as Oakland, Santa Cruz
Change usually happens slowly. But California is inching towards what I hope is inevitable.
Nothing that states do with respect to drug decriminalization is very important, in my view, as operating any business in that space is painting a target on your back for federal enforcement.
Operating a business committing federal felonies is not my idea of a sane or safe undertaking.
One wrong statement to piss off the wrong people, and they can put you, your entire staff, and your entire bank account on ice for hundreds of years.
I live in one of California's Marijuana production centers. The Feds aren't crawling around here harassing people or anything.
Marijuana is effectively legal in California - sad we don't have Amsterdam style bars but that's not the main thing. Supply meets demand, easily and production is local. Sure, it's not a great business but that's not the main thing.
The issue is not whether or not they are enforcing. The fact that they can, at any time, for any arbitrary reason (including political speech, which would otherwise be protected) is the issue.
Doing something routinely and openly that is an unenforced federal felony is to voluntarily surrender your constitutional rights under the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and probably others. (Breaking the law openly like this means they can instantly jail you for speech, for protesting, for being inconvenient, for carrying, and obtain a search warrant at any time.)
It is not "effectively legal", any more than driving 9mph over the limit is. It's just not enforced: it's still a huge felony.
As much as I hate to admit it, this is a solid argument.
I like that I can go to a cannabis dispensary if I want to (even though it’s not my thing). But I remember the outrage I felt learning about federal agents destroying a place some years back. They didn’t just arrest people; they deliberately trashed everything they could.
That said, you gotta start somewhere. People have to take risks to effect change and progress. The civil rights movement wouldn’t have led to change if people weren’t willing to put themselves at risk of being arrested.
The California cannabis industry is $4.4 billion in size.[1] While your argument is technically plausible, the size of the industry means that you have more and more lobbyists and lawyers working full time to make it politically less practical every day.
Nice race bait/comic book. My favorite grower is owned/operated by an east Asian couple btw. If you know anything about California, the idea of an all-white cannabis cabal is absurd. But that may be hard to recognize from Berlin, I don't know. Okay, that's enough HN for a bit.
Still means it is perfectly legal for the feds to deploy troops and arrest people from the streets in California whenever they feel like it. It would be way uglier than what happened in Portland.
It's secondary (even if I'd indirectly benefit from this).
Having cultivation and consumption not harassed by law enforcement is primary. Eliminating the war on drugs overall would be a huge win (and I certainly wouldn't take it as a given).
I don't think you would hear about the entrepreneurs or investors that choose not to touch anything federally illegal.
I know many investors that are "no way, no how, absolutely not" on anything that remains a federal felony, such as the entirety of the cannabis industry.
>Wiener did not include peyote as one of the substances because of a shortage of the drug among indigenous practitioners, he said. Peyote is a sacred plant for many indigenous tribes, and at the behest of the native community, the bill will not decriminalize peyote, or mescaline when it is sourced from peyote.
One of the things about decriminalization is that it gives people one less thing to worry about. People who are addicts are often desperately wanting off the drugs and the fact that they need to hide their use complicates their effort to get clean, an effort that is typically already enormously challenging.
I'm not sure criminalization is the answer but there should be some controls on stuff like LSD - I've seen a few people mucked up by it. Maybe only supplied by licensed suppliers who have some responsibility for the results perhaps.
I think a lot of people who want all drugs to be legalized haven’t spent time in a place where they functionally are. It’s not a pretty sight.
Try parts of the Midwest and Appalachia. Industrial jobs went abroad and never came back, leaving large swaths of the population in poverty and without any real career outlook beyond low end retail. Enter fentanyl. It only made most of these problems worse.
Decriminalization, not legalization, seems like a far better path to me for seriously addictive things like heroin. If it’s not combined with serious economic plans to help the unfortunate, you’ll just be further embedding an already disadvantaged underclass. Against billion dollar advertising campaigns (which will happen with full legalization), the average person doesn’t stand a chance.
Drugs are not “functionally legal” in the area you’ve pointed out, and the issue you point to is economic in origin not drug related. This is not a coherent argument.
Now the argument you’re getting to is somewhat coherent, which is it could be dangerous to let advertisers loose with severely dangerous and addictive drugs like heroine. But the answer to this is rather easy, you don’t. The same way tobacco advertising is regulated, you regulate drug advertising and provide outreach for those who are addicted.
>I think a lot of people who want all drugs to be legalized haven’t spent time in a place where they functionally are. It’s not a pretty sight.
>Try parts of the Midwest and Appalachia. Industrial jobs went abroad and never came back, leaving large swaths of the population in poverty and without any real career outlook beyond low end retail. Enter fentanyl. It only made most of these problems worse.
That's why you let the government provide clean drugs at cost and let professionals administer the drugs. This saves on healthcare costs because cutting agents (such as brick dust in combination with a something stronger e.g. substitutes such as fentanyl) cause 99% of the health risks associated with drugs. The other 1% are caused by overdoses directly leading to death or mental decline. None of them will happen when you have professionals taking care of your dosage and tapering it off over time to reduce chemical dependence. Since people no longer have to engage in prostitution and theft to pay for drugs they are financially better off and you will see a reduction in crime at the same time.
I think you’ve completely missed the point of my comment. These people are on drugs because their livelihoods have been destroyed. Making their drug use less dangerous doesn’t make it any less of a tragedy and economic problem.
Prostitution and theft are also not really an issue in the mentioned areas.
If life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness doesn't include willingly and responsibly putting whatever you want in your own mouth for whatever reason you want then I don't even want a country.
The main problem with drugs is when companies in pursuit of wealth and power sells highly addictive drugs to kids ruining their lives. Imagine if instead of putting sugar in everything they put addictive drugs in everything, that is what full legalization would result in.
Harsh punishments for personal use are nonsense, USA are just insane on that, but I don't think making everything legal is reasonable.
A substance legal for adults will be used by most kids. Every kid knows how to get alcohol or cigarettes, just ask some random homeless dude to get it for you in the nearest store for a dollar and there, done.
Grade A fear mongering, go for the kids. High schools are full of all kinds of illicit drugs. Regulating them and creating outreach would actually get a better handle of that. The additive argument is utterly absurd. Again legalization means regulation, which would prevent such a thing.
Making a chemical legal doesn’t preclude disallowing it becoming a food additive. And food regulation is a very serious matter, that can, and is, being strongly enforced.
If that’s the only reason you’re against legalisation, I have good news for you! You needed worry about it, at all.
There is a quite wide range of reasonable options on this. I don't think it is unreasonable for drugs to be mostly legal in many cases, no, but I don't think that small fines for personal use is unreasonable either.
A good explanation is driving above the speed limit on roads. An unreasonable system would put people behind bars for years for any kind of speeding. That is roughly what you have today in USA with respect to drugs and I understand why you'd want to remove it. However removing speed limits is not reasonable either, even if you personally can handle it we can clearly see that deaths increase significantly with higher limits so in this case we care about their lives above your freedom.
If making a particular drugs more legal to use causes a lot of deaths then I don't think it should be legal to use, no matter how much you think that your liberty gets violated if you aren't free to use it. I value their lives above your freedom. Cannabis doesn't kill people so I don't care much about it, but harder drugs often do.
Edit: As an example we can see how making opium more available to people (prescribed via doctor) killed a hundred thousand people in USA the past 10 years. Making it easily accessible even without prescription would likely be worse. I don't think that properly regulating the substance and saving that many people is unreasonable.
Aren’t consumption of alcohol and cigarettes (and advertising for them) much higher among the poor? Is there a reason why other drugs would be any different?
Imagine if we created family-friendly policies and parents actually cared about their children, spent time with them and raised them well and taught the kids the value of saying 'Oh, up yours!' to most of the world, knowing full well most of the world doesn't care about you and isn't doing what it is doing to make your life better.
Children are vulnerable when there are no adults actually looking out for their welfare in earnest. When there are adults looking out for them, children aren't anywhere near as vulnerable as we routinely paint them.
Buying alcohol and cigarettes is illegal for kids, yet in school 15 year old kids were still out smoking cigarettes every recess and every party had tons of alcohol. Their parents didn't get them that, they just ask random people to buy it for them at a local store, so their parents have no control over their substance use.
Controlling kids and empowering kids aren't the same thing.
You seem to assume "X substances are bad" plus "kids shouldn't have certain choices available to them, ever."
Life isn't as simple as "x substances are bad." Kids are best served by an approach other than simply seeking to control them per se, which generally doesn't work and is typically counterproductive.
Ok, so lets assume that is true, we can create a society with good parents everywhere. But until we have actually created that society we have to work with what we got today, and parents today aren't like that.
Today sucks. Continuing to create policies rooted in the fact that "today sucks" tends to be a path towards tomorrow sucking as well.
I do realize that creating good policies during a transition phase is especially challenging. But you tend to not get there from here if you don't bother to try to go in that direction at all.
Decrimilaziation is a good step in the right direction. Yes, there will be some pitfalls of taking it. We can and should work those and bringing up such concerns is a valuable part of that process, so thank you for doing that.
But it's not a good reason to take a good step. It just means "We also need to be concerned about unintended consequences for vulnerable populations." That's always a good thing to have your eye on, whether those vulnerable populations are children, women, people of color, the LGBTQ crowd or cis het white males with money.
Problem with you who are used to USA is that to you making drugs illegal means putting random people into prison for years. For me it means the kids who go out to smoke weed maybe get caught once every few years and gets a slap on the wrist and a small fine. I see how the first creates more problem than having things legal, I don't see how the second creates problems for society and I'd suggest you try that before you progress further.
You are not a US citizen nor living in the US. But you would like me -- an American citizen who is living in the US and spent many years living in California -- to defer to your personal opinions about how best to manage the problems in my country.
I'll pass, thanks.
We have a several hundred year history in this country of crapping all over Natives and people of color and they tend to be the ones ending up in our prisons for years and years on end on BS excuses and to my mind this is a vastly more serious problem than some kid no longer living in fear if he tries mushrooms or something that it will leave him with a criminal record, which may not stop him from trying them and may, instead, begin his descent into a life of crime as he gradually figures out how to get away with more crap in a system that he knows for a fact is out to get him.
> We have a several hundred year history in this country of crapping all over Natives and people of color and they tend to be the ones ending up in our prisons for years and years on end on BS excuses
Those problems would mostly go away by just reducing the sentence from years in prison to a small fine. Viewing this as choosing between punishing them with years in prison or making it legal is ignorant.
> You are not a US citizen nor living in the US. But you would like me -- an American citizen who is living in the US and spent many years living in California -- to defer to your personal opinions about how best to manage the problems in my country.
This is a discussion, not me trying to force your country to enact some specific law. If you only discuss with Americans then you are ignorant and ignore the diversity of views and experiences from the rest of the world.
I think the argument was that drugs should be illegal the same way speeding is illegal. A strike system where most of the time you get away with a small fee. However, in my opinion this is missing rehabilitation based on reducing dosages every month, which is absolutely necessary to quit drugs that cause chemical dependence.
The tar and other additives in cigarettes cause chemical dependencies. Vaping removes the additives and replaces them with a controllable amount of nicotine. Over time you reduce your exposure to nicotine and at some point you just quit entirely when the dosage is very low.
It's always inherently problematic to try to figure out what will work well for a community you are not actually a part of and have no first-hand experience with.
The US desperately needs more family-friendly policies. If we don't successfully address that, a lot of our efforts simply won't be very effective.
You need fertile ground to grow something good. We lack that because we lack some basic essentials in terms of nurturing our people.
I'd say more generally, it's about control and having something police / government can hold over almost anyone, or any demographic, if convenient for whatever reason. That is the danger of these kinds of laws, they are a shortcut around other rules that are supposed to keep police power in check. And as pointed out elsewhere, local decriminalization doesn't really change this. It's a step in the right direction, but what it really needed is an explicit relinquishing of the power over people that these laws afford (in the US, perhaps an amendment even?) Until that happens, drug laws will still serve their purpose
This, in my opinion, is closest to the truth - not to discount the issues of race that have historically propagated downward through the system and continue to affect people today.
From John Ehrlichman, a Nixon associate:
> You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
Note: the veracity of this particular quote has been contested, but the story it purports to tell is compelling in my opinion regardless.
So wrong. Marijuana and heroin were both illegal long before Nixon took office, largely due to laws passed by Democrats.
Now that drug laws have become unpopular, there's an effort to rewrite history and blame it all on the Republicans, especially Nixon. It's surprising that this effort is so successful when the correct history is so easy to find:
Opium, coca, and their derivatives (including heroin) were made controlled substances by the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1915 [1], a law sponsored by a Democrat and signed by Woodrow Wilson (a Democrat).
Marijuana was made a controlled substance by the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 [2], likewise introduced in Congress by a Democrat and signed by Roosevelt, another Democrat. Roosevelt also publicly urged the states to legislate against "the narcotic drug evil." [3]
The Boggs Act of 1951 [4] introduced mandatory sentences for possession or distribution of both drugs. It was, you guessed it, also sponsored by (and named for) a Democrat in Congress, and was signed by Truman (D).
And even the relevant legislation passed during Nixon's term in office, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 [5], was again introduced by a Democrat and passed a Democrat controlled Congress with bipartisan support. This law merely continued the prohibitions introduced by the previous laws after they were successfully challenged in Leary v. United States in 1969 [6].
Well, you've successfully constructed a hell of a strawman! My comment was to express my support for the following statement:
> I'd say more generally, it's about control and having something police / government can hold over almost anyone, or any demographic, if convenient for whatever reason.
I didn't say anything about Democrats or Republicans. I happened to use a quote that touched on Nixon in support of my claim.
I would also note, for people not well-versed in American history, that up until around the 1960s, the concept of a Southern Democrat still existed - people mostly identified with opposing desegregation in the American south. Some of these politicians, including Strom Thurmond, who voted against civil rights and for the Controlled Substances Act, later became Republican figureheads. Party ideals shift over time.
With that said, I don't think the current state of drug laws in the US are an issue of party. It's a lack of evidence-based policy, and it's extremely problematic.
One might not blame politicians for looking at the effects of narcotics and their relation to organized crime in the mid-20th century in America and say: "we need to legislate this, because the problem is ballooning and we don't have any other tools at our disposal." Addiction science didn't exist yet.
One might even forgive the Controlled Substances Act as an extension of this reaction, were it not for the fact that through the subsequent creation of the DEA and the scheduling system, the effects of drugs and addiction became significantly more difficult to research in the US. This happened under Nixon, and I think that's why he receives a significant portion of the blame for the current state of affairs (rightly or wrongly).
The DEA has also simply failed in its remit. They've shown themselves to be completely incapable of assessing the medical utility and controlling the abuse potential of drugs (marijuana on the one hand, prescription opioids on the other). This, combined with the fact that the CSA and the DEA's existence prevent us as a country from evaluating other approaches to the drug problem, make for a lose-lose situation.
> I happened to use a quote that touched on Nixon in support of my claim.
A quote that claimed "what [the drug war] was really all about" was disrupting black communities and the anti-war left.
If Ehrlichman did say that (as you pointed out, even that is disputed) it's quite absurd. The prohibition of drugs started decades before the Vietnam War or the Civil Rights movement, and it was an international effort, in response to real dangers. It's not tenable to argue that it was all about control, nor that Nixon's motives (if those were his motives) were even relevant to the passage of the CSA with only 6 opposing votes in Congress.
That said, I agree that time has shown that prohibition has failed and can be as harmful as the drugs themselves. I just think the Ehrlichman quote adds far more heat than light to the discussion.
> If Ehrlichman did say that (as you pointed out, even that is disputed) it's quite absurd. The prohibition of drugs started decades before the Vietnam War or the Civil Rights movement, and it was an international effort, in response to real dangers. It's not tenable to argue that it was all about control, nor that Nixon's motives (if those were his motives) were even relevant to the passage of the CSA with only 6 opposing votes in Congress.
Nominally, perhaps. But nobody can argue against the fact that widespread enforcement efforts stepped up drastically in the late 60s and 70s, with drugs being a particular focus after Nixon declared war on them explicitly. Just look at any chart documenting the incarceration rates [1], not to mention the literal creation of agency with (in modern times) a multi-billion dollar budget dedicated exclusively to drug enforcement.
The US collectively (cite, state, and federal) spends over $100B per year on policing. The DEA and its $3B budget isn't driving the incarceration rates.
> I'd say more generally, it's about control and having something police / government can hold over almost anyone, or any demographic, if convenient for whatever reason.
That statement glosses over the fact that such restrictive policies frequently come about as a result of trying to control minorities and never the dominant race. After all, if you do that, you'll get voted out of office.
For example, in California, gun control was brought about as a result of Black people carrying guns in public. When white people did it, it was totally fine, but once Black people started utilizing their 2nd amendment rights, the state government curtailed it.
Opium (as well as many other addictive drugs) are illegal in nearly every country on the planet, so I have a very difficult time pinning this policy decision on racism.
Again, all hard addictive drugs (opium, heroin, cocaine) are illegal in pretty much every country on the planet (save the recent notable exception of Portugal). Many of these countries have never had a sizable Chinese immigrant community. Is your rationale that they were all somehow biased against the Chinese? Of course, opium is still quite illegal in China today.
I think psychedelics will ruin the minds of many teenagers. They should never be legalized. Anyone who has spent time around people who used them in their youth knows this, we don’t understand how they affect brains
I used them judiciously when I was a teenager and in my early 20s. Use is one thing, abuse is another.
Your comment about how "we don't understand how they (psychedelics) affect brains" holds true for pretty much anything we put in our bodies, so there's no real reason to draw the line at psychedelics. That said, it's not entirely true to say we don't understand _any_ of the action, because we do. If you want to know the answer to deeper questions like the effect on long-term development and so on, lower the barrier to studying the effects, and go from there.
I can't think of any good reason why psychedelics cannot be prescribed, but Oxycontin or Adderall or whatever can, and you can go buy alcohol and cigarettes at the store.
Consider that teenagers can already acquire psychedelics regardless of legal status. More kids are killed by alcohol every year and it's a legal drug. Changing the legal status of psychedelics will help research into these amazing materials and hopefully change the world we collectively experience in real and meaningful ways.
Ha! I lived in a small town in WI, and LSD was more available than any drug. Not only available, but available in exotic forms: microdots, gel tabs, fancy printed blotter. Sometimes I wonder if it was a government experiment, that's how remarkably available it was relative to other drugs. Consider for a moment it is pretty easy to grow mushrooms or pot, and then consider that a bunch of small-town kids in WI had easier access to a difficult-to-synthesize psychedelic. Wild.
In high school in Australia, it was easy to find alcohol. Don't think there was much LSD going around (some marijuana and MDMA).
I think one difference is when you have 18 as the legal drinking age, a significant chunk of kids turn 18 while still in year 12. They could then legally buy it and then (illegally) on-sell it to their school friends who weren't of legal age yet.
In some cases parents would even buy alcohol for their teenage children. Parents supplying other drugs to their children is not totally unheard of but far less common.
Probably for the best, but I'm not sure what it means. I would think Utah would be unusually difficult to get alcohol, since (most) kids couldn't just raid their parents' liquor cabinets. Not sure how Utah's rather unique culture would affect availability of LSD.
> I have some stoner friends from high school who were really smart and gave up in college and now work mediocre dead end jobs and live in really low cost of living areas.
> They're happy. They're far from dead. But that potential they had is completely gone at this point.
What entitles you to their potential?
People may want to change the world, or may just want an entry level job that keeps them fed and housed while spending their time on drugs/videogames/what-the-hell-they-damn-want-its-not-my-problem
If really smart people decide that working in construction and smoking weed is their call, who am I to say otherwise?
You'd be hard pressed to find anyone that supports decriminalization and thinks people should be getting high at work, especially people who do dangerous work.
The same could be said about alcohol. It’s none of my business what people do in their free time at home, as long as they can safely and effectively do their job when they’re on the clock.
Anecdotally, as a college student in a state where marijuana is still extremely illegal, it is comically easy to obtain it while alcohol, a legal drug, is significantly more difficult to obtain (though still easy).
Following this pattern, from what I've seen psychedelics are relatively simple to get (albeit harder than weed), therefore legalization might actually make them more difficult to illegally obtain because dealers will be replaced by controlled medical practices in many markets.
Decriminalization will also open doors for people to study _how_ they affect the brain.
Illegal drug dealers have very little incentive not to sell to underage kids, while legal ones have a license and livelihood that could be taken away.
Of course legal drugs always have “cool” adults willing to be straw purchasers for underage kids. It’s complicated, and the relationship between the law and underage usage are non linear.
It'll probably remain at least slightly easier to get drugs than alcohol even if/when both are legal to 21+ just because drugs are so much smaller and easier to deal with. A trunk full of Alcohol isn't much but a trunk of any drug is a lot.
I have spent time around many young and old people who used and continue using psychedelics. These are absolutely normal people.
In addition, there is ton of research into the effects of these substances on the human brain, just look it up.
People will always find ways to get drugs one way or another, even just to experiment once or twice. It being illegal has an allure of its own. It's better if they can acquire it legally, and try it out with friends in a safe environment and don't have to hide it.
Making it legal also helps remove stigma, lowering the barrier for people to seek help and care.
> Anyone who has spent time around people who used them in their youth knows this,
No actually, not anyone. I have plenty of friends that have experimented with various psychedelics during different stages of their lives. They're perfectly healthy and productive members of society.
It's also perfectly possible to make something not be illegal, and still not sell it to teenagers.
This is predictably getting downvoted but the available science is tentatively supportive of this view.
Marijuana usage as a child or teenager is significantly correlated with declines in IQ by adulthood. Whether it's causal is up for debate, but avoiding it as a teenager is a good idea given extant knowledge.
This is a bit of a tangent. The issue at hand is the use of psilocybin, MDMA, and LSD, among others, by adults -- especially for healing and self-betterment. I'm not sure if you have seen the incredible research results that have been piling up. These substances are capable of relieving immense suffering and greatly improving people's lives. Of course, they are quite powerful and should be used with great care.
Look into the research that MAPS (and others) is doing with MDMA. Amazing results with people who are suffering from severe PTSD.
I expect it will be a powerful tool that can help people suffering from a wide variety of traumas. Side note, but we don’t understand nearly enough about trauma. Unresolved trauma is an enormous driver of human suffering. I think it may far more widespread and take many more forms than what the textbooks say.
I find trauma to be quite interesting. I believe it's real and significant, but what I'm trying to figure out is why, evolutionarily speaking. People were routinely exposed to very traumatic, violent things in our ancestral history, much more often than in present society. How would it have been adaptive to then respond to those events with trauma, which would seem to reduce our genetic fitness?
That is a really good question. I’ve wondered about that too. It may have provided some protection, as it may increase avoidance of future dangerous situations. It could also partially be a side effect of other useful emotional expressions. Or perhaps human behavior grew in complexity (more ways to hurt each other) faster than evolution could improve our emotional processing capabilities. It’s hard to say.
Relatedly, maybe humans had better ways of coping with trauma in the past, through communal bonds, more strongly shared world views, rituals, and so on.
I'd be interested to see the data on this, because I suspect occasional use (i.e. less than once every 2 weeks to one month) is not as damaging, if at all.
Occasional use is very different from the "wake and bake" style of using marijuana every hour or so. I fell into the former category, as did some friends of mine, but I knew many who were in the latter. The differences a few years on are quite profound.
you do realise alcohol is legalized, but teenagers don't have easy access to it, right?
Legalization is not the same as free distribution. It is not like you would see Psychedelics available in every store for everyone to buy, regardless of age or without prescription.
> I think psychedelics will ruin the minds of many teenagers. They should never be legalized. Anyone who has spent time around people who used them in their youth knows this, we don’t understand how they affect brains
Funny how I took huge amounts of LSD and mushrooms as a youth and then made a successful living as a productive member of society. People are surprised to learn that aspect of my past because when it comes up. If anything, my world view and appreciation for differing viewpoints is broader because of it.
We don’t understand the effects because of the stigma around their illegality. Only recently has progress been made there, and further understanding from legality could only be a good thing. Use is already happening and will continue to happen. Increasing our understanding of the effects and regulating production and distribution accordingly are the path to safety.
The degree to which drug-profits propel corruption on a global scale is vast, hard to describe - entire countries wind-up destroyed by this (Mexico, Afghanistan, etc).