> Anyone who wants to get cocaine, will get cocaine

I never thought this was a good argument against making something illegal, because there are definitely people who only-kinda want cocaine but are deterred by the law. Those people could have ended up as addicts if it was legal (and easier) to get.

Why is murder illegal? Anyone who wants to murder someone will do it. At that point why is anything illegal?

From a public policy standpoint—the point of a ban on hard drugs is to improve public health. If hardly anyone uses hard drugs as a result of the ban, then it’s effective. However, if people are using hard drugs anyway and getting punished for it, the ban is not serving its purpose—it’s failing to prevent these people from using hard drugs, and it’s also then punishing these people (which is wrong).

So you have to weigh the negative impact of the punishments and the cost of enforcement against the positive impact of reducing (not eliminating) drug use.

Just pulling random stats of the internet but, number of alcohol related deaths per year = 3 million

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/alcohol

So then it's a valid question to ask, if other drugs were made legal would they also rise to that level? AFAIK drug enforcement casualties don't come close to that number.

We have history of, for example, opium being legal and having millions addicted. Of course it's a different time period. Maybe today stuff like that wouldn't happen.

> So then it's a valid question to ask, if other drugs were made legal would they also rise to that level

Look at countries where they are legal—the answer is almost certainly NO, for most drugs and most countries.

Alcohol consumption would almost certainly be banned if (1) bans were effective at reducing consumption and (2) bans were made on the basis of public health. People in the US want to consume alcohol so badly that it will happen in great numbers despite a ban, as we see during US prohibition. That’s not to say that prohibition failed, just that it was at best a partial success.

The question is then, why is alcohol not banned if it is widely known that alcohol is more harmful and more addictive than various illegal drugs?

> We have history of, for example, opium being legal and having millions addicted.

Right, for example the very dark period in Britain's history when it supported the opium trade in China, even though it was illegal in both Britain and China at the time. If you want to understand this part of history, I’d say that the horrors of British colonialism are more explicatory than the addictive nature of opium itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War

If you thought of opium as a public health problem in China you would not be wrong, but if you thought of it as weapon used by imperialist Britain against the Chinese people then you would not be wrong either.

There are people who are turned away because they are afraid of the law, of being caught, but there are also lots of people for whom the law is more informative than threatening. If I see the speed limit drop from 80 to 25, maybe I slow down because I am afraid of a ticket but I probably slow down because I trust that there is some good reason for the lower limit. If a substance is made illegal I will be hesitant to use or purchase it because I have a degree in trust in my government. I trust that someone spent time looking at a substance and made a decision. Laws, even if never enforced, can still dissuade people.

On the other hand, if one never trusts government then every law is a problem, every ban an infringement upon liberty.

It's one thing to trust the government about something that is relatively uncontroversial, like speed limits. It's beyond naive to trust the government on a subject about which it has a very long history of questionable decisions and moralizing policy.

The difference is that cocaine use is only really harmful to the user whereas murder obviously involves a third party.

You also have to consider the impact of the policies themselves. Cocaine prohibition may reduce cocaine addiction but it also creates legal issues for cocaine users that are often more harmful than the drug itself in addition to creating the space for a criminal blackmarket to exist and thrive. On the other hand, murder prohibition reduces the number of murders and is generally considered to be worthwhile.

> The difference is that cocaine use is only really harmful to the user

Incorrect, it harms the families of addicts and the victims of crimes perpetrated to buy more cocaine, to name a couple externalities of cocaine use. This goes for alcohol, heroin, etc. I've been an addict and seen the damage that my use caused to others.

That being said, I think cocaine/heroin/meth should be legal and cheap, with drug counseling intake services offered at places that sell them.

Most things that are illegal have a victim. Murder, robbery, assault, etc. all have a responsible party and an injured party. Nobody expects that making murder illegal will stop all murders, that's a silly argument. You have to have some kind of justice, though.

This is why criminalizing drug use is such a unique and unusual case - when a person does drugs, there is no other victim, and yet the state punishes them for it anyway.

Driving Under the Influence - you may have been pulled over and caught by the state without getting in a wreck. There was no injured party--yet.

Yes, reckless endangerment is a crime.

DUI recognizes, correctly in my opinion, that there are blood alcohol levels which constitute per se endangerment of others.

> there are definitely people who only-kinda want cocaine

Perhaps, but it's pretty odd that one would accept a significant risk of catastrophic damage, but be deterred by the relatively minor risk of legal consequences. I don't think the segment you're talking about is that significant.

> Why is murder illegal?

Come on, really? Drug consumption is a victimless crime.

To the “victimless crime” comment; is it really? What about children who have addicts for parents, or people injured by someone DWI, etc?

That's a hell of a strawman, nobody is arguing DWI should be allowed in any capacity. And to think of the children is $LOCAL_VARIANT_OF_CPS's literal job description.

okay, but what about the drug users who don't have dependents? what about the people who drink, but never drive while intoxicated? who is the victim in these cases?

> What about children who have addicts for parents, or people injured by someone DWI, etc?

Whataboutism? DWI is a different crime. There are lots of potential side effects, but those aren't inherent in the drug consumption.

Someone only "kinda wanting" to do cocaine is indicative of a non-addictive personality, therefore use of cocaine is of minimal risk for these individuals.

From my understanding, this is most people.

Addiction is the problem, not the drug itself. And it will always get channeled into something destructive; ie. gambling, sex, alcohol, sugar.

You can't ban everything, but you can treat addiction.

Removing stigma, shame and punishment encourages people with addictive personalities to seek treatment, which is the only long term solution.

illegality was never really about deterrence. deterrence is just a narrative and there is not a ton of evidence suggesting its efficacy.

ie: see statistics of vehicle crashes directly linked to speeding, texting and driving, or reckless driving which includes DUI. these are top of the chart causations that are illegal, where frequency has increased over the years, not gone down -- not to be conflated with a decrease in fatalities, which appears to be more a result of better structural/impact design of vehicle models, than because people are deterred from breaking the above classes of laws.

WV used to top the charts in vehicular fatalities as a result of DUI, despite illegality during that era of its history.

also, see deterrence and the argument for capital punishment. there's not a ton of evidence here but admittedly it's been a long time since i've studied ethics.

perhaps it is one of those common sense things we understand before we prove.

with that said, regardless, illegality as a concept was designed strictly as a means to enforce accountability in the context of a free society when there exists evidence of an action: you are free to act but may be held accountable (law).

in my opinion that is all illegality should ever be: a framework of accountability.

now, what is determined to be illegal is of course the debate and subject to collective agreement within a free society.

To provide punishment and corrective action for doing it. Should people be punished for ruining their lives with cocaine?

We should think through both of those.

Take punishment. As a deterrent and or motivator to avoid future problems, punishment makes sense.

...except when it doesn't. Take someone who would be doing fine had they got got themselves into a bad place using drugs.

Just being in that bad place and coming to acceptance on it is significant.

Punishing them isn't a corrective action though. It's more like a cost, more harm to avoid doing some other harm at best. And, when it has implications, like being unable to return to that pre-drug life because of the conviction, inability to work, etc...

Corrective actions, in my view, should be the outcome.

Punishment or not, the people in trouble need help. Trouble with this side of things is they won't always accept it, and or are not in any degree of acceptance about the trouble.

In both cases, we can pour a lot of resources, money and time into all this and leave a person worse off, and maybe with fewer options for recovery and a move back into just being an ordinary person living a reasonable life.

To me, avoiding those expensive outcomes is a very solid argument for decriminalization.

There still can be punishment post criminalization too. It's just not going to be spending years in a cage. Maybe it's worth some additional thought.

We could then still punish and potentially eliminate the bad outcomes, maybe break even or even save on costs, and more people have more options more of the time.

Reaching acceptance can take multiple cycles. Use, get in a bad place, use, bad, use... If, along the way, people maintain options, have hope, and or opportunity to accept and have real reasons, their own reasons to change, more would, more of the time without falling further away from that return to normal.

I am saying we would benefit from rethinking what punishment actually is, or what it could be, and how corrective actions could mean more opportunity for people to improve.

As it is now, punishment is often harsh, and it has it's own negative impact, distancing people away from a return to normal, making it harder for them to get past a bad time, out of bad habits.

Doesn't have to be that way.

And corrective actions, once the stigma of criminality is farther off the table, could expand into more and better opportunity for people to get out of a bad place more quickly, or with lower impact to their community, family.

Lastly, judgement.

This is perhaps the biggest gain with decriminalization. I am not saying we should not judge people for bad calls, living poorly. It sucks for them and people around them.

But, consider how it could go, using racism as an example, because it's easier for me to illustrate with:

Path A: "You sir, are a racist!"

Path B: "That comes across as racist to others, is that what you intended?"

Right out of the gate, acceptance means facing, owning, and recognizing the truth of the direct personal judgment; namely, being a racist.

That's a huge friction point! People won't do it and they have a ton of reasons for not doing it. Big problem space, and personally difficult.

We have a barrier between the undesirable behavior and someone making better choices, and it's there before we even get to the better choices part!

On path B, it's different. They aren't being called a racist, not being labeled, judged as a person. It's more about what they did and how it impacts others, or is perceived.

There still is a barrier, but it's a different sort. The door is open for things like:

"yeah, bad call, let's not go there"

At the very least, they can hear that feedback, express their intent isn't to be a racist, and then simply choose to make different choices in the future. Low friction.

Decriminalization is more like Path B. Lower friction, less judgement, people have options to improve, having to accept can be more on their terms, and if they do want to own up to the trouble, they could get help without so many ugly implications.

@deadmilk3 and others

> Come on, really? Drug consumption is a victimless crime.

It is common practice to penalise the selling of drugs much heavier than the possession or usage. There you have the victim: the buyer and user of the drugs.

There is no harm in simply buying an item, and how that item is later used is not under the seller's control. There is no victim here.

If only there were a way to make it harder to get without making it illegal. Unfortunately any way I can think of would lead back to the black markets being viable.

I think the only long-term solution is cultural. Different cultures have different relationships to intoxicants, and they can change over time. Over the last 60 years in America, drunk driving "high-functioning" alcoholism has been denormalized. It's still a problem for a lot of people, but there's more "loss of face" associated.

Looking at the stoners I knew in college, you'd think that pot was a pretty destructive drug. But now, working with successful professionals who buy dispensary weed on the weekends, it seems like harmless fun. Besides any class stuff going on there, I think that hanging out with people who want to do bong rips and zone out on the couch leads you to a different relationship with THC than having friends who will look down at you if you get too high to hold a conversation.

A Peruvian friend told me that their mother served coca leaf tea to the family on a regular basis. It was traditional, it wasn't treated any differently than we'd treat coffee, and it hadn't led anyone in her extended family to seek out more refined versions.

So how would cocaine legalization look in America? Would coca tea go on the menu at Starbucks? Would people stop there, the same way that lots of folks drink a pot of coffee a day but relatively fewer take caffeine pills? Probably not, that's not how we do things here. Without regulation, bodegas would be selling single-serve bumps in little tear-open packages with Scarface on the label. We will sell you as much "here, go destroy your life" as we can.

Up to a point, regulation can tamp down the market for cheaper and more powerful intoxicants (like, alcohol prohibition was hopeless but cities can successfully prevent malt liquor and everclear sales if they think that cuts down on alcohol-related deaths) But I think that attempting to shape the culture of consumption around a drug is probably a better long term strategy than full prohibition.

I read an excellent article years ago (that I've sadly never been able to find again) that talked about how it would be possible to legalize all drugs by putting them into different levels. The lowest level would be things like caffeine where you can just buy it at the store with zero checks. Weed would be in the next level with alcohol where the only check is an age check (this was before legalization of weed had become mainstream in the US).

I forget the exact number of levels and where all the specific drugs landed but there would a level where you get a physical and prescription for a certain class and it requires regular check ins.

The final level would be for the hardest most addicting drugs where you could only use them in certain places under supervision of a nurse.

There would still be the people who get drugs illegally that are willing to go out side the system (same as there are kids willing to pay a premium to a homeless guy for beer) but it would destroy or greatly reduce the market for illegal drugs

This looks like a reasonable system. It is however a sad fact that a similar system has already failed for opiates. It’s a hard problem.

Not really. Most folks that take opiates aren't addicts, and there is a thriving black market. A number of opiates simply aren't legal either. We do give some of them out as prescription, but it isn't like you can get opiates for a fun time once in a while and that is definitely missing.

Part of having the sort of system they are talking about is having choice of drugs, some for recreational use. We can restrict the hardest to do safely (or that have a higher rate of addiction) and restrict frequency of others (we were already doing this with Sudafed in some states in the US a decade ago)- but you aren't getting addicted to opium after one night. You can take pills daily for a week or two without being addicted. Heck, we know that servicemen got addicted to heroin for years during the Vietnam war, only to come back home and go back to a normal life without addiction.

Opiates in general would need a legal way to get high off of them for the rest of the system to work, and we just don't have that and we don't have readily available, science-and-medicine based help for those that do get addicted nor a safety net to ease people's suffering to try to make sure they don't wind up in a similar place.

Final level doesn’t work. People aren’t going to go do cocaine under the supervision of a nurse... they use it to party.

You don't need cocaine to be in the final level, though. The safest use for cocaine is to make sure the person is healthy enough for it (avoid heart attacks) and to do some work to limit quantities/strengths to limit overdoses and hopefully addiction - and possibly, some education to recognize signs of addiction, though this could be told by the doctor or nurse giving a physical. You can buy it from a place trained to sell it, and have limits on how often and how much you can buy (Like sudafed was/is in some states).

Part of the reason you make it more accessible is knowing how people use it, and to try to get people to do the less harmful thing in a class of things. So, you know, try to steer people to cocaine and way from meth while recognizing that cocaine isn't alcohol or weed or caffeine.

On the other hand, you probably want anything involving needles to be administered by a nurse. Opiate pills after surgery? Prescription so you'll have enough.

And the levels present a positive dynamic here.

If getting low to moderate level drugs made more sense, why bother with the real hard stuff?

Someone wanting a couple vicodin might be happy to have that option, perhaps with the occasional oxy, and never approach Fentnyl, heroin.

Think of it like a sort of diversion. We know people will do it, and they have human reasons for it too. Copping a buzz isn't any real crime, and people know that.

The way it is now is misaligned with those basic realities. People are at odds with the whole thing, incentives are wrong, risks too high, costs too high, it's just a mess.

So, we enable them to do it and build in friction where there should be some to keep the masses in a reasonable zone where they can just be humans doing things humans do.

Final level is heroine, meth, etc, Im pretty sure cocaine was in the lowest prescription level. If anyone knows the article I'm talking about I'd really like to re read it.