Yes. I have family members whose brains were damaged from methamphetamine abuse. I had another family member who died from opioid addiction.

Not all drugs are equal.

I have a friend whos a raging alcoholic who's almost died from alcohol intoxication, and I have a cousin who has overdosed on prescription pain killers. I also know a few acquaintances who have died from prescription fentanyl.

The answer here isn't to make alcohol illegal, or to ban prescription pain killers, because that would surely exacerbate the problem.

I don't know why Americans seem to think that banning substances and jailing people who use them is the answer to this problem.

It's not an American thing. It's an authoritarian thing. Authoritarians the world over love criminalizing people. It just so happens that drugs are a great way to go about it because so much of the population does this or that drug and so few people are gonna step up and defend the addicts.

It's not criminalizing people. It's criminalizing behavior that is very detrimental to society.

Making harmful drug dealing illegal while providing support to those addicted would be a good way to handle it IMO. I DO NOT want opioids or meth legalized, they are entirely too harmful to the user and those around them.

You realize opioids are required and necessary medicine in many cases? You can't really ban them, without making millions suffer excruciating debilitating pain. And this whole situation of having them via badly-designed prescription process got US where its now.

Your approach looks like naive one - this bad, I want this banned. You for sure must understand the world is more complex than that?

I consider tobacco and alcohol harmful substances. They should be outright banned, people should go to jail for trafficking and consuming that vile liquid/plant which destroyed tens of millions of lives. But somehow, world doesn't revolve around my personal wishes, does it. Because there are other views in society on those

Alcohol is such an underrated substance it's ridiculous. Its health destroying properties are right under heroin's imo.

Heavily addictive, while there are several great alternatives to it when it comes to recreation and relaxation, which are ironically either heavily regulated or illegal.

I don't understand how you interpreted my comment like that. I'm arguing against legalizing it like tobacco, I'm not arguing for banning it completely. Opioids are already used in the medical system.

I'm very anti-prohibition and I also agree. I've tried very hard to come up with a justification to allow unbounded access to the "nasty ones": meth, fent, heroin, and possibly coke/crack and xanax. What sets these apart? Their rapid delivery and extreme affinity for hitting reward pathways makes them chemically addicting almost by their nature. Further, they have narrow pharmacological windows, making overdose common. Ironically, if you look at the data blinded, without knowing the drug associated with the data point, alcohol _squarely_ belongs in this group.

However there are plenty of entries safer than these drugs, that are far easier targets for legalization first.

And all this happened while those substances were highly illegal, and any possession/manufacture was relatively severely punishable. Yet they got so much of it for such a long time that they damaged their health.

Drugs are like prostitution - they will exist and people will want them no matter what. The idea that you can ban it from existence is laughable and sad at the same time, something about unability to grasp reality of who we humans are.

There are no easy solutions to complex problems like that. What might work better is give addicts controlled safe environment, and a lot of counseling help with getting back on their feet. Not everybody will make it, that part is hard to accept but that's how life is.

Meth and opioid abuse causes permanent brain changes that affect their capacity to feel pleasure. Teenagers are stupid and their brains primed for novelty seeking. Because of this, legalization would drastically increase the volume of drugs available, and thus would most likely increase the number of young people exposed to these drugs, affecting them for life.

I really don't understand the recent push for legalization of all drugs. Meth is not like marijuana and absolutely should not be legalized.