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.