Are you for legalization, regulation, or criminalization of all drugs? Poll?

[nightdrot]

Voted B, illegal, but with the caveat that the question presumably means "Is the recreational use of drugs (morally/philosophically) wrong?" Since drugs per se can be used for good or ill and when used to cure disease and relieve suffering can be quite good. Their use or misuse is the point. After all, a hammer used to pound a nail is quite useful but when used to bash someone's skull in it takes on a different character.

As to law, that is confusing cause and effect. The law is an expression of the society's collective moral judgments about what is sufficiently important to warrant enforcement and sanction. The law is the effect of morality and not the cause, although there is a bit of an interactive process at work.

The society shapes the law and the law then helps to shape society. By giving something approval or disapproval in law, the society will tend to be habituated to it and thereby think of it instinctively as authoritatively right or wrong. Authorization becomes habituation of mind and action.

As to the question of the use of drugs for recreational purposes, its immorality is judged by its consequences to the individual and the group. To cite but one example, more people will have died prematurely due to opioid use than will die from the coronavirus that currently has the nation in hysterical fits.

However, that is not the sole cost. These addicts will have left behind families that have been torn apart by the presence of an addict in the home. A source of security and comfort not only taken away by death, but undermined by the trauma and behavioral problems that came with addiction before that death. (These include abuse of children, inadequate incomes, etc.)

In that connection, as a personal aside, my girlfriend works in family law and policy and she once took me into a neo-natal ward where children had been born to drug addicted mothers. Often these children were born to single mothers with no father in the home. They were born with all sorts of deformities, mental incapacities and their little bodies shook in convulsions as they experienced withdrawal symptoms.

It also to be added that these children will likely be incapacitated for the rest of their lives. Impaired physically and academically, apt not to find gainful employment nor to be able to live independently. It was a soul searing experience.

There are also broader legal and economic costs as well. These including caring for poor children in broken families, lost productivity and the expanded apparatus of government - with all the costs that entails - to the rest of society.

Opioids are of course the most lurid example. The fashion of the moment is marijuana. To save space I address that in my answer to this question - the answer appearing under my "Nightdrot" nom de guerre - Should marijuana be legal?

To be sure, society has judged alcohol and tobacco worth the costs and these things are measured judgments. However, even there, the costs have not been small.

The bottom line though is that a society that is lax about the recreational use of drugs is apt to pay a brutal price - not least by those who are most vulnerable and innocent. That thereby defining, by their result, the degree of their immorality. As the 18th century British statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke put it, "The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do as they please. We ought see what it will please them to do before we risk congratulations."

[AncientWisdom]

I’ve been around a long time. I was a little boy when “Tricky Dicky” (Richard Nixon to you youngsters. ) initiated the war on drugs. I wonder how many of you know why?
The war on drugs was initially a distraction to get peoples minds on drugs , and all those “uncouth hippies” , and bikers and lowlifes or considered so by mainstream society. (This to scare the bejeezus out of regular folks to worry about their children)
So Young people smoked weed and did a little coke it was actually pretty mild as compared to today. You had hard core Herion addicts mostly caused by the Vietnam war and then the domestic bleed over from the military into minority populations. “Tricky Dickey “ initiated this war on drugs to go after the hippies and bikers, Hispanics and Black Americans who used these substances.


They were by no means mainstream yet. If you got caught smoking a doobie you was going to hell. (I found out I was going to hell when I got caught smoking some of the first “sinsamilla “ which just means seedless.) and “oh my lord in the land of goshen !!!” anything else you was already lost in my strict Babtist upbringing. ( I’m no longer involved in organized religion.)
So here’s my opinion. Yes drugs should be legalized and provided to addicts by the government clean facilities and materials and drugs. The Government should also get out of the dope business. Many US soldiers can tell you that the spooks (CIA) are just as big if not bigger then the cartels when it comes to the dope game. Yes ! We can stop the dope into this country whenever we are ready , but they won’t to much money in it. Some would get in but it would be to expensive to buy. This would be cheaper by billions then the institutions of incarceration we have in America. Corrections as they call it.. is a huge business in America. It’s actually modern day slavery protected by the constitution.

What would happen is it would lose its allure. Many people would just stop or get tired of it , and unfortunately many would just die off. They would serve as a cautionary tale. This would cause a bigger majority to not ever bother with it. So between the government supplying the addicts and stopping the industry it would die out.


It will not if ever happen though. To much money is generated. The criminal justice systems lobby for harsher laws because they make money. Correctional officer unions do the same thing. Lawyers , prosecutors , judges , police , correctional officers prison officials , parole officers , counselors, AA, NA, all the support services, half way houses. All of this creates jobs and enormous amounts of money all at the victimization of people who choose to get high. Not to mention the people who make jail supplies, slides, mats , sheets , combs , little hygiene items. Clear everything see through tvs , radios , coffee pots.
There are whole industries built up around incarceration. All the contract companies that from those who contract whole jails to just feeding them , to health contractors , commissary contractors these are billion dollar businesses built up around incarcerated Americans. Most who haven’t done anything that bad mostly non violent stuff. All created by Dicks war on drugs. The drug war is just a way for rich folks to get richer.

[Aerissa_Jade]

I am more concerned about what people do while high on drugs, than the actual drugs. People do stupid illegal stuff and hurt others.

Typically I'd say they should all be legal, but the current penalties for laws like driving under the influence need to be like a 100 times more severe.

Right now people who kill someone while texting or DUI, barely get a slap on the hand. We would have thousands more deaths if they were legal, the penalty should be more like life in prison without parole so that person can never harm another and being high on drugs is not a excuse to get off.

You kill or harm someone while high the penalty should be 100 times that if you were not high.

Otherwise, maybe they could be rationed out in a place of business, where you got to get high and you cannot check out until you can pass a drug test.

Regardless of legal or not though, good luck passing a drug test to get a job.

[Cherry234]

You can't just make all drugs illegal. There are drugs like painkillers (as long as people are not misusing them) and medicinal drugs that people need to take and should have access to. I use Tylenol when I need to. It really depends on the type of drug and how it's used.

[Wraith_Cemetery]

Have to fix society before any kind of improvement will happen. Insufficient medical care, weak mental health care, and familial disorder all lead to drug abuse. Criminalization of drugs won't make any of these issues better nor worse. Society has to get to the root of the problem first.

For example, criminalizing alcohol in the USA only made matters worse because the USA is/was dependent on alcohol intake. They weren't ready for the criminalization of alcohol so when the governments initiated the Prohibition Era cities fell to the mob who were empowered by it.

That was the 1920's. What is going on today? The same bloody thing and now they have Fentanyl and other hardcore drugs added on top. North America as a whole is fragmented so there won't be any improvements simply by criminalizing or lifting restrictions. War vets are screaming for help, child protective services and the adoption system aren't helping youth, and the mental health facilities are only making matters worse for those struggling with severe disorders like Schizophrenia or Bi-Polar.

[Diodoro]

There's a case to be made for either. By legalizing it you add rules for how it can be used and what's considered misuse there's a level of safety in that. Fewer shady characters involved.

If someone who wanted to do drugs can go to a licensed place that provides safe goods and meets the guidelines they know they're not about to ingest something that'll kill them.

If something bad does happen that business had a name and a face attached that puts the business under and sends some people to jail for negligence. They have motivation to make sure it's safe and only in the hands of those legally able to attain it.

Other non legal dealers would lose a large chunk of the market and forced to compete by having the lowest prices. So the only people really wanting to buy would be kids too young to get it legally, and people with little money.

That behavior would be looked down upon even amongst people who do that drug. Would you want to be the one idiot that took a risk because you couldn't pay the extra cash?

More people openly using it would be evidence to others on why the drugs are bad in the first place but also show people who can do so functionally. So more people who do use it will be more capable to responsibly do drugs.

I don't think there's a lot of reasons to say legalizing would longterm be better. Potentially bad short term because the industry would have to build up the infrastructure to start and then compete with dealers who will have lower prices. The selling point Wouldn't be they're the best. The selling point would be we're safe and legal. Tough sell for many but many would also buy.

[Oigit]

I am all for what one would consider soft drugs like weed being legal. But hard drugs like Meth and Crack for example need to stay illegal. My reasoning comes from life experience and it's pretty easy to say hard drugs should be legal when you have not seen or experienced the negative effects of them first hand.

My mother, younger brother and I live in the upper floor of a duplex for a short time when I was growing up. The people that where living below us had to move out in a hurry so the landlord moved a couple in quickly without knowing much about them. The couple where serious meth heads. They where up fighting nearly 24/7 and it did get physical a lot of the times.

One night the woman pulled some scissors on her boy friend and they continued to fight. The boyfriend wound up banging on our front door in the middle of the night. His girlfriend stabbed him several times in the gut. My mother rushed out of her room and I was right behind her. She got the guy inside and sat him down at the kitchen table. As we where waiting for the cops to come, his fucking girlfriend was banging on our front door with the scissors in her hand. She was clearly tweaked and demanding that she be let in.

[ManOnFire]

When you criminalize something, it usually makes people want it more or find ways to get it. Although I kinda wish weed was never legalized, and even the whole thing about using it for medicinal purposes is abused by people getting a cannabis card for recreation and not really medical reasons. Don't get me wrong, I fully support it for true medicinal purposes and I'm a big believer in natural medicine, but smoking weed just for getting high is so utterly overdone in the United States. It smells awful and it seems to make people dumb.

I think I would put a high tax on marijuana consumption. If you want to make yourself poor just to get a smelly high, that's your business. And I definitely would still keep hard drugs illegal because they truly are dangerous and make people do dangerous things. Some people have tried to blame the Mexican drug lords for drug use in the U. S. but even the cartel workers have said that Americans know drugs are wrong, it's their choice, they don't have to buy what we give them.

[MrKinktastic]

They should all be at minimum decriminalized so that those with addiction can get help instead of prison time and a permanent handicap on their career and future life. This model has worked better everywhere it’s been tried so far and there’s no real argument against it other than the old generation of drug warriors disliking the idea.


Legalization is a bit more complex for hard drugs like cocaine, barbiturates, amphetamines and heroin but it would prevent just about all the overdose deaths as they’re usually from taking a drug of unknown potency/concentration.

[Kaneki05]

All should be legalised like alcohol and then all the money goes to Public services and other things for the people therefore everyone wins.
People who do drugs are gonna do them anyway cut out the fact the drug money it goes to someone who probably works with slave trades and all other crimes.
Do you think a person who does drugs thinks ah there illegal i won't do them? Nah lol.

The only thing them been illegal does is allow drug dealers to make lots of money and get involved with other crimes. Like murder, stealing etc. Do you see people murdering people for cigs? not really.
aka legalise drugs.

[Lynx122]

I would legalize all the drugs that are like the standard ones with regulations. But some of the more dangerous drugs like krokodil or fentanyl I would probably not legalize them but then there would probably be some people who'd do those drugs just because they're illegal so that's kinda stupid but I think I'd still not legalize them.

[Anonymous]

Anyone who is all for the legalization and decriminalization of all drugs, should really look at families who have been affected by drug use. Parents who have had to have their children taken away from them for their safety, people so dug in with drugs, they've sold everything to the point of homelessness just to get them, the physical toll on these people's bodies, women and men selling themselves for another hit, people who have killed people while high out of their minds behind a wheel, look at the "lucky" people in the hospital who have overdosed and managed to come back...none of this is anything we want to legalize.

[Luopio27]

Big Pharma should create drugs that give you the high effects but won't damage the body. They shiuld have special facilities for the users.


Oh wsit, they already have mentsl hospitals, except their drugs are also dangerous for the user.


All drugs, including alcohol should be banned.

[TallAnon]

Anything less harmful than Alcohol should be legal, if we're going to draw a line, we already have a pretty high one.
For example: Weed is less damaging, less addictive and you can't overdose on smoking weed, meanwhile you can literally drink alcohol to death.
Hard drugs should be illegal, just look at the opium wars for the reason.

[888theGreat]

Why I am for it?

1) It puts drug lords out of business (drug lords would rather risk arrest and keep it illegal)
2) You know who is on drugs and know not to hire them
3) If alcohol is legal and if doctors are going to push drugs on everyone anyway, so should they.

Why am I against it?

1) It kills people
2) When you get cancer , drugs will be unable to help with pain prior to death
3) As a Christian , I don;t want to see people go to hell using them

[Daniela1982]

We got enough dumb asses in society without adding pot heads and crack heads to the morons we already have in government. Then they all would be stumbling around and not knowing what they are doing like Biden. I can see it now in missile control when the doped up president calls them and says fire missiles! and they all go "Far out man! Pass me a joint!"

[katiesmuff]

I picked D and let those who want to partake and well we all pretty much know what happens to them eventually. With them legal these massive cartels would be out of business.

[exitseven]

I do not think it is a good idea to legalize mine altering substances. I grew up in the 70s and 80s when all kinds of drugs were being used and I never saw them do anyone any good. It was mostly the opposite.
If you talk to any county sheriff who is in charge of jails they will tell you most of the people behind bars are there for drug offenses and 90% of the heroin addicts started smoking pot.

[Cubus]

I would say recreational drugs should not be legal, and only ones who serve for medical reasons should be legal. Drugs are something you can become addicted to and spend all your money for this. And it is artificial.

[lovedejj_xo]

Just putting it out there's a 13 year old child that died in my school district this weekend 3 students were taken to the hospital in critical condition. There were 40 bags of Fentanyl found at the middle school so we’re all mourning. And we are literally in a opioid epidemic with children dying left and right. No I don’t think this should be legal.

[Citizenkirk]

Criminalization of all drugs would put M. D. s out of business, as well as pharmaceutical corporations, which may not necessarily be a bad thing.

[hellacray]

Well there will be a lot less drug dealers on the streets.

But... My fear is that these scumbags would just start commiting more violent crime.

[Jamie05rhs]

Not just criminalization. All out WAR. People talk about ending the war on drugs, but I say we should do the opposite. Go hard on these people and fucking annihilate them! We have RICO statutes for a reason. Also, as long as the Patriot Act is still in place,... fuck it- use that, too!

[slatyb]

That's a difficult question. I live in Seattle and we have a large population of drug-addicted homeless. I certainly would not favor the general legalization of opioids. People are tempted to take them in low moments, and many ruin their lives.