With that said, meth undoubtedly has a higher potential for abuse and addiction than marijuana and is worse for the health when abused. But evaluating just how much of a difference is near impossible while it remains illegal and while there is an huge and profitable government funded industry around the war on drugs.
In our society, we look out for each other, if somebody is in distress, e.g. hurt on the side of the road, we help him, call an ambulance, he gets medical help.
The fact that society makes huge efforts to save and cure people requiring medical attention, is at the root of the taboo on substances (or behaviors) that are unhealthy. Otherwise that would be a pure waste of resources for the society.
At least that was the theory. In practice, you are free to drink booze until you pass out...
People in the Netherlands don't get stoned everyday just because they can.
I understand punishing sellers, but I think the punishments for drug charges (and most charges in the US), are so draconian. 1 Year in prison for this guy should be enough. From what I've heard, prison is terrible, people do not want to spend 1 day in prison.
There is absolutely nothing he will learn in year 3, or year 4, or year 5, that will make him a better person when he comes out.
"Tough on crime" and "war on drugs" are just two huge mistakes we have made that we cannot retract, because it is politically unpopular to do so.
Hopefully there's a satisfactory middle ground between "locked up in harsh conditions for years" and "ain't nobody's business if you do".
More time in prison, more people in prison, more lobbying dollars to encourage the use of the prison system. We have 2.5 million people in jail/prison.
Obviously, you must balance the harm of the intervention itself with the harm that the intervention is trying to mitigate.
In fact many of your measures are already in place. Civilized society does control your diet, through food regulation. It controls what you watch to some extent - you'll have to go a bit out of your way to find sex and violence. Alcohol is indeed a restricted substance, and many injury-prone sports have been discontinued or modified to be safer, although some (like boxing) continue despite solid evidence of terrible cumulative injury - to great controversy. I'm not sure what you're going for with the pre-crime thing...
There's no need to equate "my business" with "draconian control".
No they don't. I can grow my own food and it is perfectly legal and loads of people do exactly that.
> you'll have to go a bit out of your way to find sex and violence.
Hardly. It's all over the internet. Even teens easily find it.
> Alcohol is indeed a restricted substance
Not for adults though, which is what we are talking about here, right?
> any injury-prone sports have been discontinued or modified to be safer
Only commercially. I can engage in the vast majority of the more dangerous version of those sports in my own free time any time I want. Play American football without helmets in my own backyard? Who is going to stop me?
So no, none of the things you mentioned are controlled to the point of being illegal. And even in rare cases where they are illegal (buying raw milk for example), no one gets thrown in jail for five years for doing it, and people do continue to do it and take those risks, and society does continue to pay when things go wrong.
> Obviously, you must balance the harm of the intervention itself with the harm that the intervention is trying to mitigate.
Who decides that? Because I find it difficult to put a measure on the cost of removing so many freedoms trying to make life risk free. It's not a society I would want to live in. I will temper that by saying I'm fully in favor of requiring people to wear masks in public. But only because it's a public emergency and in unusual circumstances I'm flexible. But what you are suggesting is long term and permanent policy.
That being said, there is an epidemic of childhood diabetes and _newborn_ obesity, which is entirely due to mother's high sugar & processed foods diets. It's a serious matter.
Also, it's possible to be a long-time user (obviously not a abuser) of heroin or meth (I know it's not exactly comparable but consider people taking adhd meds).
I'd take that over abusing sugar, which will cause fatty liver, diabetes, and cancer.
With the realities as they are coca-coal is probably safer, but because it’s cheaper, won’t have unexpected adulterants, and you won’t have to invest much time or effort in finding a new supply if your favorite vending machine breaks down.
I like that you spelled Coca-Cola "coca coal" :)
"Having a high BMI during pregnancy has been linked to an increased risk of various health problems for a baby, including:
Birth defects
Being significantly larger than average (fetal macrosomia)
Impaired growth
Childhood asthma
Childhood obesity[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-...
I’ll grant you that sugar has a higher total social cost, because more people are addicted to it.
Diabetes is far more dangerous than legal and medically supervised heroin. So you got that wrong. What else did you get wrong?
Alcohol addiction is worse than sugar addiction without a doubt, I can agree with that.
Diabetes is a very serious disease. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out a cocaine addiction is safer long term. You would really need to back up your claim with stats instead of just continuing to insist.
I don’t feel like my claims are controversial at all. Take cocaine. It’s use often leads to psychosis. Snorting cocaine damages the nose significantly. Injecting cocaine is probably the worse drug for the number of punctures a person will do because of the short high and incredible addictive nature of the drug. Cocaine damages the cardiovascular system. It leads to ulcers. It decreases appetite so strongly it often leads to malnutrition. Cocaine increases the risk for seizures and strokes. Cognitive impairment often occurs after long heavy use. This is completely ignoring the social costs of cocaine use, which are significantly higher than being diabetic. The cartels don’t profit from insulin.
I’d rather be diabetic than have years of heavy cocaine use behind me. I’ve been close to people with type 2 diabetes and people that went through cocaine addiction.
Well yes, and a thread about why recreational drugs should be legalized to reduce harm. But either way we should not be comparing the legal use of one substance to the illegal use of another. It's a mostly useless comparison when it comes to the nature of the substances and mostly useful to talk about the risks of prohibition.
As far as your other claims, I already said "You would really need to back up your claim with stats instead of just continuing to insist."
Anecdotal evidence about your friends and which addiction you would prefer don't do anything to move the conversation forward, so lacking stats and evidence about your claims, I'll stop here.
The hypothesized causes of meth mouth are a combination of MA side effects and lifestyle factors which may be present in users:
Dry mouth (xerostomia)
Clenching and grinding of the teeth (bruxism)
Infrequent oral hygiene
Frequent consumption of sugary, fizzy drinks
Caustic nature of methamphetamine (less likely: “Meth mouth is generally most severe in users who inject the drug, rather than those who smoke, ingest or inhale it.”)
"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
Education and positive incentives are the better solution.
It may sound cold but at least you don't have to steal money from all the people who actually create value and you don't have to pay for bureaucracy
Bob dies and the company goes under. A few of his customers can't find alternate suppliers and go under as well. Some products cease to exist; others become more expensive. A huge loss to the market.
We all pay for others' mistakes and misfortunes.
When someone creates hundreds of millions of dollars in pollution and they have far less in the bank or in profits, who pays for the cleanup costs? You will. Your "simple solution" only fixes small cases of mistakes or misfortune, the easily affordable ones.
And while you might be happy living in a society where you watch someone die on the sidewalk because they should "pay for their mistakes or misfortunes" I think the vast majority of us don't want anything to do with that kind of society. We aren't here to serve the economy, it's here to serve us.
He's still a felon carrying a gun which is bad, but it's not worse than any other gun.
I would like to point out that I used the word lots and not many, not most, not all. I specifically used the word lots. So counter statements like yours couldn't be used.
And if we're going to be pedantic, I guess it's my turn.
> Other types of crime require crimes against people.
There area many crimes where you don't commit it againit a person. Selling counterfeit goods, the victim is a company. Creating fake currency. Selling illegal weapons. Smuggling people in to countries (many do commit crimes againist people, but it is not required, just taking money and getting someone across a border hurts no-one). Shoplifting. Insurance fraud. The list goes on and on.
Your logic is fallacious. You know what has a 100% correlation with dealing drugs and committing those other crimes? Breathing. Drinking water. Eating. Correlation tells us little. Perhaps it does hint that a disregard for authority exists.
Also I'd say most of those crimes are not victimless...
Let's be serious, you and I both know, I meant a high percentile. This is just a bad faith argument made after using an anedote of knowing 12 drug dealers to say a statement about a high percentile of drug dealers would commit other crimes to make money if drugs were legal. Despite the fact that a high percentile of current drug dealers commit other crime. The reason I'm not using an exact number is because I don't want someone like you saying "Well the in the US 26% don't do that" when I found a stat for differnt country. We both know what is meant.
> Your logic is fallacious. You know what has a 100% correlation with dealing drugs and committing those other crimes? Breathing. Drinking water. Eating. Correlation tells us little. Perhaps it does hint that a disregard for authority exists.
My logic is: Someone who got into selling drugs to make a profit because the barrier to entry is low would move into another area of criminality to make money because the barrier to entry is low.
Your logic is: ???
Is it that they would still sell drugs? Why don't they sell something that is legal? Is it because the barrier to entry is higher? That they just wouldn't try and make money anymore?
> Also I'd say most of those crimes are not victimless...
Drugs is not a victimless crime either. Drug users are often victims of shoddy drugs being sold with dangerous chemicals in them. And I never said they weren't victimless, I just said they weren't against a person. A company is not a person.
Selling drugs is cheap, profitable, easy, and relatively low risk if you’re somewhere weed has been decriminalized but not legalized. You think smuggling people and selling weapons to felons is low risk and easy? You think insurance fraud is low risk and easy? That’s an absurd argument to make.
You know what they’ll move into? Selling literally anything else. I’ve seen it a dozen times. “Oh dealing drugs makes good money but it turns out selling artisanal chocolate/soda/nude pics/clothing makes even more money.”
I’ve got to say it seems like this argument comes from a lack of real world experience and a strict adherence to the reports and theories of law enforcement agencies. Contrary to your belief, non-drug crimes do not suddenly spike in areas where drugs are legalized. See: Europe, American states where weed is legal.
I'm assuming you're counting people who sold drugs to a friend as a drug dealer?
And trust me, most drug dealers are not college kids. Those are edge case drug dealers. Even the small time ones who sell say 100 pills/an oz of coke a month.
> I’ve got to say it seems like this argument comes from a lack of real world experience and a strict adherence to the reports and theories of law enforcement agencies. Contrary to your belief, non-drug crimes do not suddenly spike in areas where drugs are legalized. See: Europe, American states where weed is legal.
I think the difference is, I had experience with a lot more drug dealers than you. Ranging from school kids selling a hundred bucks of weed a week, to people selling to pay for their weed, to folk selling because they got into drug debts, to people who supplied the entire town with a specific drug. You seem to know only small time folk selling weed.
> Contrary to your belief, non-drug crimes do not suddenly spike in areas where drugs are legalized. See: Europe, American states where weed is legal.
Weed? That's not where the money makers are. Very few people sell weed to make money, there is no money in weed. Heroin, cocaine, crack, meth are what people sell when they want to make money. These drugs not not legal in any country, in Portugal it is treated as a health issue but it is as far as I know, still illegal to sell the drugs.