People already get sick.

Tax payers already pickup their healthcare bills.

Think about it from an investment perspective. The addict has typically had some semblance of public education. That cost tax payers money. Let’s call it $40k over 18 years (12 grades). That investment needs to be recouped by society for it to pay off.

Now this person has gotten addicted to drugs. We could do nothing and they might commit crimes to fund their habit and hurt innocent people but then we have to imprison them at great cost to society and we lose more potential tax revenue and productivity from the potential loss of life of victims. We could leave the addicts alone and hope they die peacefully from their addiction, knowing we lose the investment (not to mention it calls into question our morality for letting someone die when we have the resources to save them). In reality though addicts get more desperate as they get more addicted and are more likely to turn to crime. We could be proactive and imprison them at great cost to society for being addicts. During which time they gain an education of criminal behavior that helps them fall deeper into criminal activity to support their addiction.

Or we could realize that we just need to treat addicts as medical patients who can be rehabilitated if given proper treatment. This costs society money up front but helps rehabilitate addicts so they can become productive citizens again. This is not revolutionary.

This problem pretty much only exists in America. Because you can literally write fake prescriptions and get them filled, or buy them off gumtree.

The drug war is Jim Crow 2.0 and has failed to do anything than further degrade the economic perspective of minority populations while simultaneously costing tax payers a fortune. It’s a shameful and disgusting set of policy that needs to be terminated.

America is terrible at tracking anything. It doesn't even have a central marriage registry. It is literally the only country in the world where you cannot request for a certificate of impediment for marriage.

Doctor's write prescriptions for non-existent symptoms and get paid under the table by patients to do so. And filling in prescriptions doesn't require additional checks from a pharmacy.

America, like always, fights the wrong battles. Instead of fixing the system, it tries to patch it at either end. No one tries to resolve problems in America. It's no different from the abysmal education system & health care system.

But they'll at least get treatment. Which we can also charge for.

Apparently I've angered the libertarians who can't concieve of Any bad consequences to anything. Look I Live in Seattle and don't see any bad side to the mj legalization currently. I also think we should have heroin treatment in many areas. And opioid. Doesn't mean I think you should be able to buy h when you hit 18. I know plenty of people who use alcohol and mj responsibly. Many who don't. I have anecdotal data on opiods and lots only know one person who used h personally and that didn't go well. More for meth, most had some pretty severe problems before or because of it.

But apparently I can't disagree with you, only the pure ideals are acceptable.

What "intoxicating amount" would that be?

A single beer might get a teetotaler drunk, while it might take a six pack or more to get an alcoholic drunk. The same goes for smoking cannabis. One hit might get someone with no tolerance high, but someone with a high tolerance might need much more. That doesn't even begin to take in to account all of the different varieties of cannabis or different types of alcohol, which could have quite varied potencies.

You can actually kind of compare different alcohols by the percentage of pure ethanol in them, and with cannabis you can compare the percentage of THC, but there are so many other compounds in cannabis that can have an effect on your intoxication that they're really difficult to compare in a standardized way.

Even when sticking to one particular alcohol or cannabis variety prices vary tremendously based on brand and where they're bought (ex: a beer at the grocery store will cost much less than one at some trendy bar, a mass-produced generic beer vs some hand-made microbrew, etc).

When I hear such comparisons I really have to question what they're actually comparing and why they're comparing it and not something completely different. For alcohol vs cannabis prices, I struggle to understand how there can be any comparison.

"So let's get everyone hooked and in debt"

How many people go in to debt buying legal cannabis? If money's such a problem for them, it's trivial to just grow your own for free: it's a weed.

Anyway, if your goal is to keep people from going in to debt, the last thing you should be for is prohibition, which astronomically increases the cost of drugs far past their legal price.

"Doesn't mean I think you should be able to buy h when you hit 18."

Well, whether you think you should be able to or not, you can. Making drugs illegal has flatly failed to stop their availability. Like it or not, if you want them, it's not hard to get them.

The question is whether the state should continue to spend billions ruining people's lives by throwing them in jail or outright killing them during raids, breaking up families, propping up organized crime with illegal drug profits, corrupting the judicial and political system, etc.

To me it doesn't make sense, especially as it's so ineffective or even counterproductive (as people are drawn to the forbidden) in preventing drug use.

I'm a Seattle resident. No way that's correct. The pot is way, way cheaper.

Using fairly "middle class" products, percentage of a $15-20 gram that has intoxicating value is lower in dollar value than a draft beer ($6).

Even focusing strictly on value products, there's no single-unit alcohol product (40oz, tall boy, etc) that can compete against the common $3 preroll.