1, 3, and 4: you're making very good points in favor of legalization, but your tone seems to indicate it's reluctant, as if those don't count somehow. If I got it right, could you expand on why they don't count? On the face of it, of course all of the following are great upsides of legalization: 1. less arrests 3. one less incentive to seek drugs 4. more willingness to seek rehab when needed.
To answer your question, the reluctance is because I would rather we just take the criminal element out of it all by just decriminalizing it. I would much rather we not give governments any sort of incentive to introduce more 'sin taxes' essentially.
Decriminalization gives us all those benefits you bring up, without enabling our governments to be worse than they already are. I have already witnessed this on a lower level because of marijuana legalization in Canada. Hence why I bring it up at all. Paul Martin was going to decriminalize it, but it got squashed, and the more popular opinion that I am aware of is that the other powers that be didn't like they wouldn't be able to profit off of it as easily. Not like how they can now, with enacting arbitrary rules like "can only grow 4 plants per household" etc, etc.
In a group conversation, you can count on people remembering what you were talking about, but the structure of comments isn't like that. We can only expect people to know what's written in the parent comments of the tree. Remembering that can help us talk to each other instead of past each other.
I guess not. Anyways, thanks for the input. I'll keep it in mind to be more precise on what I am saying.
P.S If you look carefully, you'll see that I was merely replying mostly to people who replied to me. At least after the first few comments to others. Not sure why you needed to portray it as "arguing with people all over the place", but I wanted to make that precisely clear.
Look at all the parent comments from this one, and you will see what you have and haven't said.
Picture this: you are at a party, and told someone something on one side of the room, and expected the rest of us to have heard it. It just doesn't work that way.
Downvoting comments you disagree with is allowed in the guidelines.
Complaining about downvotes will reliably get you downvoted.
Welcome to Hacker News.
But I still don't agree with the idea that they have the right just because they managed to get 500 karma on some webpage. That's technically easily done by just saying 'just the right thing' and getting all the updoots. At that point, it's really not worth much.
But thanks for explaining.
500 karma means a user can downvote: that's ability. No one can punish a user for downvoting either: if someone can do something, and no one can stop them from doing it or punish them after, that means they've got the right.
1. Crime rates reduced: I mean, of course they did. It was not longer a crime to be using those drugs, so there was no reason to be arresting people for possessing them. I don't know about you, but that seems pretty simple to me.
2. HIV rates reduced: I remember reading something once upon a time ago that made mention about how HIV rates plummeted all around the world (except in Africa) during that same time frame. Yet the rest of the world definitely hasn't decrimed/legalized all drugs. Might be worth looking into that more and see if maybe Portugal just had a happy coincidence.
>> Link: Not what I read, but shows some of the same or similar data I remember. https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/the-glob....
3. Overdose deaths: Strangely enough with humans, once something is no longer illicit, they want it less. They are also less likely to overdose on said drugs because they aren't having to risk a bad batch from a bad dealer as much, that sort of thing. So this is a win for legalization, I must admit; but it's a pretty loose one, since the whole "can't have it, thus want it" effect is pretty strong with humanity. Not having it anymore cause they can have it could be part of this reduction. Needs more looking into. (I would hope that before downvoting, people would look into things like the reduction of marijuana use among some people because it was no longer against the law, thus 'cool' to be a user of marijuana here in Canada and I think some American states as well. This applies to basically any drug due to how human psychology operates.)
4. I think most of those reductions are going to have more to do with happy coincidences, and the conjunction of rehab use, since the use of said drugs isn't as socially stigmatized anymore, thus neither is rehab.
(Edit: Look, folks. I get it, some of you really don't like what I have to say here. That's fine. But please, give me a break. I'm a new person here, and I'm just trying to add context to the conversation. Thanks for understanding, hopefully.)