Redpill on me drug/alcohol control. Should the government protect its people from their poor choices...

Redpill on me drug/alcohol control. Should the government protect its people from their poor choices? I don't see 'muh personal freedom' working here. Most people understand the horrible consequences of drug/alcohol consumption, but so what? They still have no will to resist, and this is why the government has to intervene and tell the people 'you don't need to touch this shit'.

I'd rather drug money go to legit businesses and the government through taxes than to criminal organisations desu.

>the government has to intervene and tell the people 'you don't need to touch this shit'.

How's that working out? Last I checked you could get virtually any illegal drug you wanted anywhere you want in the US for reasonable prices.

Read up on the impact of prohibition in the USA

All drugs should be legal and taxed/regulated like alcohol

The war on drugs is literally prohibition 2.0

We cannot cater to the weakest in our society unless we wish to create a weak society. These laws that are created for our safety remove an important selection process and weaken our gene pool.

Eventually what we see as weak today will be strong tomorrow and weakness tomorrow will be what we see as invalid today. And there will be no end to laws and regulations to protect retards from hurting themselves until we are all living in padded rooms with diapers.

Drugs should be legalized. It is addiction and degeneracy that should be harshly punished. In either case you are taking away freedoms but take them from degenerates not everyone or you will see society degenerate

People should have the freedom to fuck their lives up.

Where it gets complicated is the fact that the state is already too far involved in the lives of private citizens and is liable for their poor decisions. In a direct way, tax payer money is wasted on healthcare for those who have ruined their bodies. To a lesser extent, the economy also suffers when productivity goes down due to rampant alcoholism, FAS, and broken homes.

For the 'sin' companies and cartels, there is short term gain in the profits of selling alcohol and other drugs. In some cases this is particularly boosted by the artificial scarcity created by the government. Its a tough situation for moralists when regulation increases profitability and deregulation increases spread.

Personally, I think a good way to handle it would be to decriminalize drugs and regulate the market of both currently legal and illegal drugs by heavily taxing them. This is one case where I see taxes as more of a penance than outright theft and could help to lower taxes on other businesses.

Would be really curious to hear how a libertarian or anarcho-capitalist society would deal with drugs like opiods or future designer drugs that are cheap, addictive, and unhealthy.

How would you punish addiction?

people are going to do drugs no matter what. public policy doesn't seem to understand that.

treat it like a public health problem and forget about going after dealers, except for the big distributors. it worked in portugal (about the only thing that works in portugal)

Of course you'll never eliminate drug use, but you can reduce it making it less accessible. As you said, you can get any illegal drug, but what does it take? You need to know a dealer; for an average person, this is already deterring because you don't wanna have any business with criminals. People point out to the fact that there still are junkies despite the drug laws, but how many people are deterred from doing drugs? I think it kind of works.

The well-being of potential drug addicts and their relatives could be saved if they would just have no access to drugs. We are not playing eugenics.

>Where it gets complicated is the fact that the state is already too far involved in the lives of private citizens and is liable for their poor decisions. In a direct way, tax payer money is wasted on healthcare for those who have ruined their bodies. To a lesser extent, the economy also suffers when productivity goes down due to rampant alcoholism, FAS, and broken homes.

You pay for these problems either way. Either you're absorbing the cost of a certain number of unhealthy drug users, or you're doing that, paying to put them in prison, and vainly attempting to keep people from selling or using drugs.

Providing basic addiction treatment/harm reduction seems like a much cheaper and effective option to me. I don't think this has to be provided by the government, but it'd probably be helpful if it was.

>Last I checked you could get virtually any illegal drug you wanted anywhere you want in the US for reasonable prices.

By design. The intelligence agencies control the drug trade. Marijuana is controlled opposition / subversion.

I do what I want, moralfaggots can get fucked.
This property is mine to command and control, not yours.

I don't care about you or your safety. Neither does the government.

Most drugs are astoundingly cheap and easy to produce. Costs come more from distribution and government regulation.

Good point. So best option is

>decriminalization
>regulation and taxation
>treatment and education

Why isn't this being done? Moralists?

>decriminalization
>regulation and taxation

Because better accessibility would increase the number of addicts. We don't need more junkies. Less junkies is better than more junkies.

>Of course you'll never eliminate drug use, but you can reduce it making it less accessible. As you said, you can get any illegal drug, but what does it take? You need to know a dealer; for an average person, this is already deterring because you don't wanna have any business with criminals. People point out to the fact that there still are junkies despite the drug laws, but how many people are deterred from doing drugs? I think it kind of works.

Yeah, probably to an extent, but the costs are unacceptable. Prohibition has created vast violent criminal enterprises and costs us an absurd amount of money to "enforce" with the benefit of making it very slightly harder for someone to buy heroin.

Heroin being slightly harder to buy is no deterrent to a heroin addict. I wouldn't be shocked if the thrill of hunting and finding the drug was part of the addiction.
>Why isn't this being done? Moralists?
My theory is that drug prohibition is such a safe political position to take. Addicts and dealer are not sympathetic characters. There will always be a "drug crisis" so they don't have to worry about solving the problem, but solving the problem always seems urgent. The laws generally don't affect the rich as much because they can afford attorneys, and have access to higher quality and "safer" drugs. It's also easy to show superficial results on the local news. Police officers with masks and ar15s standing over a few bales of weed and stacks of money is a good dramatic image.

Good arguments. Also add that the state rarely has any reason to truly want to reduce its reach once it is established. Additionally, the prison industry lobby is quite influential

This is why, when you do drugs, do them quietly.
The cops are fucktards. If you have even a bit of intelligence it's not too hard to buy and use meth to your heart's content(and beating at 200+bpm)

bump

>government
>criminal organisation
>doesn't see the paradox

All you do is create the new crime of tax evasion. Which at the end will not decriminalize drugs. Criminal organisations will still compete with the (highly) taxed legal market. And you still employ the drug cops and dogs. Just now not for a moral crime, but for their revenue loss.

And I don't get it. When I talk with people about drug legalization (mainly marijuana) here in Switzerland, from the muh-weed kid up to the conservative-pro-marijuana person, everybody wants to give the fucking government money. Like by this action, they get a moral absolution for using a drug and being a degenerate.

>everybody wants to give the fucking government money
Government is the most destructive non-criminal criminal to ever exist, and the main reason this is so is because he uses fear to make people think he's the good guy.

More forced rehab programs. The kind where you're inpatient for a few months at a time, and have a lot of focus on self-improvement and physical exercise. IF you leave, then you get sent back to jail to do the rest of your time.

Neuroplasticity is the key to treating addiction; change the way you think, change the way your brain works, change the way you act.

What about drug use that isn't addiction-caused(most drug use falls into this category BTW)?
What's actually WRONG with my recreational stim or psychedelic use?

Nothing, really. The majority of the population can use soft drugs and walk away. There's only a very small percentage that are "real addicts" whose brains just can't handle it.

You can "make" yourself an addict, though. Shoot heroin or snort coke for a while and I promise you you'll get hooked eventually.

I never use anything habitually.
Breaks are vital. More time sober than riding the wave.

You at least seem to be intelligent about this. Good on ya.

I actually am sort of an addict. To the internet. If I lose my connection, I get antsy and pissed off, and I need a few days without the net to get into a state where I'm okay with not having it.
This behavior is a sign of a mild addiction, so even I am afflicted in a way.

It can be very difficult in life to avoid all addiction. With drugs it's easy for me to avoid the problem, as my normal brain chemistry is stable. I don't have mental illness issues anymore. My base state is content and a positive, albeit kinda twisted outlook. I have optimism for the future, but OH SHIT is it gonna be a nasty ride for society.

>why the government has to intervene and tell the people 'you don't need to touch this shit'
Because the people are too stupid and touch the shit anyway. And it's hard to have a cohesive state when half of your population is rotting alive from drinking moonshine and injecting krokodil all day long.

>And it's hard to have a cohesive state when half of your population is rotting alive from drinking moonshine and injecting krokodil all day long.

The drugs aren't the problem here.
Find out why half of your society is self destructing. Banning drugs doesn't stop that self-destruction because the root cause is still in effect.