I have friends who are alcoholics and definitely have negative impacts in both actions and health, but it's more of a slow boil. I've had friends that went down a very very fast spiral (1-2 years from normal to streets) when using hard drugs. Alcohol is harmful, but cocaine/meth/opiates are at least an order of magnitude worse.

Without arguing about what is worse, i think it is important to look at the stats of Alcohol damage in the US for example: https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/impaired_driving/im...

In 2016, 10,497 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for 28% of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.1

Of the 1,233 traffic deaths among children ages 0 to 14 years in 2016, 214 (17%) involved an alcohol-impaired driver.1

The victims can be total strangers, on the road for example. Also, this above citation is just regarding traffic accidents, there are of course other impacts.

Alcohol consumption is legal though. If you made hard drugs legal as well, likely consumption would increase, and thus the ill effects they cause.

In places like Portugal consumption decreased.

Alcohol is entirely legal though and is in ubiquitous use. Not sure it's a good argument for hard drugs legalization.

Alcohol is a hard drug.

It's deceptive because it's legal but it's killed more people than any other drug. It's ruined more lives than any other drug. It has one of the worst withdrawals of any drug.

>It has one of the worst withdrawals of any drug.

They don't chain up copper on job-sites because alcoholics are looking for something to steal and sell for a fix.

I don't understand your comment.

Withdrawal from alcohol can cause fits and even death. It's severe. That's why, during covid lockdowns, stores selling alcohol were often allowed to remain open.

Acquisitive crime has nothing to do with how dangerous withdrawal is. It's mostly about how expensive the drug is and how much is needed. Alcohol is dirt cheap.

Water is a dangerous drug. Sudden withdrawal of water can result in death with 3 days. Over the years, millions of people have died of withdrawal effects. Wars have been fought over it. It’s dirt cheap on the street - You could regularly find sellers hawking it for a dollar outside of sports events.

Ban water.

Water is not a drug. It's essential to life. You can live without alcohol or other drugs, you can't live without water.

A drug is defined to enhance physical or mental well being.

Water maintains physical or mental well being just like food and oxygyen.

Please find somewhere else to make Reddit-tier trolling comments, thank you.

Someone can get drunk all day for $10. The only reason dependents of criminalized drugs can't get away with $10/day is because black market pricing is so much higher. Alcoholics would be notorious for thieving too if alcohol retail prices were as dramatically inflated over production costs as they are for opioids or stimulants.

They absolutely do.

Homeless people people spend money on alcohol instead of food.

So your friends did the hard drugs anyway even though they were illegal?

I think you kind of support the case of why not make them legal.

Sorry, not intending to have my reply read as a support one way or another, just wanted to make sure to draw the distinction between alcohol and hard drug use. I see some people advocating for complete legalization claiming that alcohol use has terrible effects and is legal, so other drugs should be as well. I can only imagine those people haven't watched what a year of meth can do to a person, or that cocaine use is strongly correlated to other hard drug use as well, etc.

I've watched what ten years of meth can do to a person, it's terrible, he graduated college, built and sold his first company, now he's independently wealthy, bought a house, and is starting a second company.

And I don't mean Adderall I mean meth, he has a Desoxyn prescription and it's pure meth, not the most common prescription for ADHD but perhaps it should be.

So do you think legalizing amphetamines would improve outcomes or not? I know which side of the fence I'm on.

Speaking to the choir - I have had prescriptions to both adderall and ritalin (swap back and forth every year or two) for the last 15 years, definitely helped me start a business while going to college, crank on that business insane hours for the first 7 years.

Doesn't mean I think meth, opiates, etc legalization aren't without consequences, or that they can be honestly compared to alcohol. Personally, I go back and forth on legalization, and recently voted for decriminalization of all drugs in my state. Might as well make law reflect practice.

I don't see how is it related, I guess the point is that the situation would exist being alcohol legal or illegal (hard to prove).

To me the thing is trying to imagine alcohol industry and alcoholics dealing with it if it was illegal.

It's more comparable to cannabis, maybe worse though?

Don't think it's on the same level as cocaine.

Alcohol is a very hard, very dangerous drug indeed. And with it being legal, it's a good example of what over-availability of drugs can cause. If cocaine was made legal, sold and marketed over the counter as alcohol and now weed are, I'm convinced that the ripple effects on society would be absolutely disastrous in terms of public health.

Looking at the opioid crisis for example, we can definitely see that a high availability of a substance, backed by a legal capitalist drive of selling stronly said substances, is not something that do good for society in the long run. We're talking about more than half a million dead over the past 20 years, with many more millions whose lives are ruined.

And we're talking about a medically-sanctioned effort, with prescriptions and regulations. If opioids were marketed and sold as alcohol, legal weed or cigarettes are, can you imagine the disaster?

I think there are a lot more good people to lose to addiction than there are good people to lose to the cartels and the "war on drugs". It's a tough choice to make as a society.

You make some good points but I think overall... the war on drugs does way more damage to the world.

Alcohol is very significantly less addictive and less harmful than "hard drugs".