Originally Posted by
gimmick
War on drugs just doesn't really do anything positive. The amount of people that don't do drugs is negligible because they are illegal compared them being legal. There's a small bump after legalization, but on the long run it's a wash or slightly negative.
The biggest difference is that illegal drugs cost more compared to non retarded legalization models. And you get rid of class related issues. After a certain tax bracket you can get wasted with no personal risk. Shopping doctors and all that jazz.
I personally am in favor of legalizing every commonly used drug for recreational use. They are common because of minimal risk. Even fentanyl is very safe when properly administered and packaged/prepared. People die of it because of cement mixers aren't precise and the drug in question requires precision. Grant total of not a single person has died of it in a hospital setting. Medical grade ampules of fentanyl are very precise for a reason.
Benzos are amazingly safe. The reality of illegal trade is that fentanyl/carfentanyl is cheaper than dirt cheap alprazolam. Better know as Xanax. You will literally never die from that. Your best bet is to try to choke yourself, but you will like pass out before that. On the other hand a single pill of counterfeit Xanax can kill you.
People simply almost never die of a drug overdose in hospital setting. It has less to do with better knowledge vs everything being what it says in the tin.
The War on Drugs is a huge boom to politicians and those in the justice and law enforcement systems who are opportunistic, albeit naively or cravenly, in making careers out of “fighting drug abuse”.
Other than that, it is an absolute disaster for the communities where people are more likely to abuse recreational drugs to escape the emotional toil of their circumstances, such as the poor and marginalized. The rich and politically connected who fall into drug abuse most likely can avoid the harsh criminal law consequences of a illicit drug arrest, and that’s even assuming that police are actively investigating such crimes given the political heat they would get from arresting a lot of people who can afford good attorneys.
The other insidious consequence of criminalizing drug use is that it fosters an adversarial relationship between the police and drug users who are otherwise law abiding citizens. This motivates the users to avoid the police, as well as seeking treatment and counseling for their drug use/habit, as well as motivates the police to treat people in lower income communities as likely criminals given the much lower likelihood of political fallout for routinely abusing their power in such communities.
Portugal, which decriminalized small-level drug possession in 2001, has essentially eliminated that adversarial relationship between the police and drug users, which has resulted in a dramatic decline in drug addiction, drug overdoses and drug-related crime. At a minimum, the US should follow Portugal’s lead.