I checked out the moment the author drew a kind of strained equivalency between illegal amphetamines (i.e., meth) and modafinil and caffeine.

I'm all for ending the drug war as we know it, but I don't find this kind of thing helpful. Is a very technical way, he's right: the overall picture of what drugs are and what they do and why some are judged "bad" and others not is a nuanced, historically literate view. And almost completely irrelevant.

Being high on meth is a completely different phenomenon than being stimulated into wakefulness. The former can cause people to do really stupid and dangerous things, not to mention the physical destruction it wreaks on the human body. The two are really incomparable in practice. IMO, policy arguments out to focus on the ill effects of the "drug war" itself, not the technical equivalencies between drugs to which most people will not assent (including me).

If only the divide were as strong, clear, and deep as you make it out to be. Sure, what you're saying may be true of coffee vs. cocaine and aspirin vs. heroin, but there are plenty of pharmaceutical companies establishing new markets in the vast swaths of grey that lie in between. That's the whole point here.

And it's not just the drugs themselves that are being carefully engineered, but the social contexts and suitably sanctioned delivery systems that go hand in hand with the chemicals themselves. The really interesting thing here has less to do with the drug war in particular, and more to do with the way its increasingly anachronistic qualities stand in sharp contrast to what we're becoming as a society and a species. Discussing that shift - which is the real point of this piece - goes waaay beyond eroding the support for prohibition.

Other HN readers: please don't let this nitwit who completely missed the point turn you away from something that actually really well written and well worth your time. Indeed, the Aeon is becoming a great source for some of the best writing online. If you enjoy this, please know that there's a lot more where it came from.

> Sure, what you're saying may be true of coffee vs. cocaine and aspirin vs. heroin, but there are plenty of pharmaceutical companies establishing new markets in the vast swaths of grey that lie in between. That's the whole point here.

I understood the point, which I would summarize thusly:

We can't have a law enforcement regime of prohibition against "drugs" because who can say what a "drug" is, anyway?

Was the article well researched and well-written? I don't deny it and don't need to. This, to me, is unbelievably stupid and utterly unconvincing to anyone who supports the current approach to prohibition. Call me a nitwit all you want, but this argument is exactly the wrong one to end the drug war.

I've only done meth a few times. It made me a little more edgy than caffeine. I've used cocaine WAY more times, and of course, the effect is different there as well.

While I personally get a feeling of euphoria from cocaine, but not meth or caffeine, I understand that sometimes it can be useful to group things that are different but similar together to better understand them.

Are you suggesting that caffeine, alcohol and nicotine are not also damaging to the human body? Or are you retreating into "it's legal therefore we're okay with the damage it causes" territory?

X can cause people to do really stupid and dangerous things.

This is true for all manner of X which induces feelings of alertness, happiness, and confidence. Alcohol can cause people to do really stupid and dangerous things. Caffeine can cause people to do really stupid and dangerous things.

"Being high on meth is a completely different phenomenon than being stimulated into wakefulness"

A substantially quantitative, but only slightly qualitative difference. Take enough caffeine in the right delivery method to get addiction cravings, cardiac stress, dehydration, and severe insomnia, and it will be dangerous too.

We prescribe amphetamines routinely, to children, in low doses, and view no 'really stupid and dangerous things' or 'physical destruction'. Even as a common ad-hoc recreational drug (taken in much higher/faster doses), it's not seen as particularly dangerous compared to meth - because it's of reliable formulation and known dosage, with no adulterants.

Much more common than euphoric abuse is non-prescribed use at low or moderate doses, for the same effects by people who haven't been diagnosis-shopping but want to pull an all-nighter study session. The drug war attacks this use just as much as euphoric party-drug abuse. This is also the kind of thing militaries have always used amphetamines for - and we presently trust the pilots of billion-dollar fighter jets with the effects.

Is meth a completely different phenomenon? It's prescribed by doctors under the brand name "Desoxyn" for ADHD and narcolepsy - evidently they find more value than harm in it for some patients. The negative effects of meth are probably mixed up, to an extent, with the effects of taking a "street drug" filled with toxic byproducts.

Dose and scale of usage are kind of important factors here...

If people are chewing coca leaves is that really very different from caffeine? No, probably not. So then...what if they are doing very small amounts of cocaine or amphetamines? Is that very different from caffeine?

I'm guessing most of the problem with drugs actually comes very simply from the abuse of drugs.

Excluding outright poisons (which none of the narcotics are), everything is ok in moderation. Trouble is, many things are too enticing to keep using moderately.

People's lack of self control is a big contribution.

Meth's most alarming effects are almost 100% due to it being contraband. Desperate people make it in desperate and harmful ways. This makes for lurid images so you can be sold on the idea of no-knock raids and military weapons and vehicles for police.

The real answer for addicts is treatment. The answer for the meth market and "meth labs" is legalization of "soft drug" stimulants.

The Drug War is purely on the cost side of the ledger. It does not save you from the harm of meth labs, it perpetuates that harm and multiplies the cost. That cost is increasingly manifested as a general reduction of freedom due to militarized policing. That's a very high price to maintain a simplistic morality about addicts.

And being drunk on alcohol you are far more likely to do stupid and dangerous things than someone who is stoned, and can't be bothered to move from the couch.

This is beautifully written.

"As drugs have swirled into this kaleidoscope of lifestyle and consumer choices, the identity of the ‘drug user’ has slipped out of view."

This perfectly sums up the situation in my opinion. Many people still, regrettably, automatically associate drugs with the "classical junkie", while forgetting that they themselves are drug users, of a kind or another.

Not mentioned in this piece, but I believe there exist escaping habits incredibly akin to drugs, with effects at least as damaging, or I suppose, as good too. One only needs to look at chronic social networkers, obsessed reality TV show watchers or compulsive buyers, to only name a few.

Any attempt at suppressing these behaviors therefore seems utterly pointless, push on one end and it'll come out of the other.

One might think that helping people realize self-worth and be critical, through (actual) education, would be the answer, but one may dream...

I love this: “A cup of tea is psychoactive, but we would only call it a drug if we wished to make a point.”

If people want to get high, they will find a way. For me, "Jenkem" is the ultimate argument ender

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

Fermented human waste in tupper ware in the sun for a day or two. How can you fight a war against that?

Instead try some other approach to education, management, and social state that reduces the number of people who feel driven to this in the first place perhaps.

But jenkem was a hoax, as your link tells us...

Usage in US was hoax. Jenkem isn't.