[ausvisaissues]

You are wrong: it is a big moral failing. Why is it impossible for Westerners not to use drugs, while the Japanese manage not to use it fairly well?

Should we set the bar for behaviour so low?

Even if drugs were legalized, the cost for treatment would be high (and presumably be bourne by the tax payer).

[3131s]

The moral failure is on your part for desiring to restrict the freedom of others. It's people like you who don't really care that millions have been imprisoned over a personal choice. You are an authoritarian, which is fine, but some of us don't take that kind of thing laying down.

[ausvisaissues]

> It's people like you who don't really care that millions have been imprisoned over a personal choice.

Japan imprisons a very small percentage of people compared to the USA.

Furthermore,it is a personal choice only if the other individual's choice does not have negative externalities.

Yet, a casual stroll through San Francisco 's mission district would tell you that this is not the case.

Who would have thought that drug use by the mentally unstable would result in a bad outcome...

> You are an authoritarian,

Perhaps. But when I compare the outcomes of Japan/ Singapore to that of the US, it is simple to see which model is the best.

[3131s]

> Furthermore,it is a personal choice only if the other individual's choice does not have negative externalities.

So we should ban every personal choice with negative externalities? There goes alcohol, twinkies, contact sports, driving, etc. It's a personal choice as much as anything else, so just estimate the cost of any negative externalities and cover that through taxation.

> Yet, a casual stroll through San Francisco 's mission district would tell you that this is not the case.

Of course you don't know any of those people and can't say for sure whether drug abuse is what lead them to the behavior that you disapprove of.

> But when I compare the outcomes of Japan/ Singapore to that of the US, it is simple to see which model is the best.

The model of inhumane prisons and death sentences? Actually the US has a pretty similar model to that already, so I'm not sure what your point is.

[ausvisaissues]

> whether drug abuse is what lead them to the behavior that you disapprove of.

I am pretty sure the needles on the sidewalk is just there because everyone suffers from diabetes, right?

I think that, fortunately for most IT people like us, we can live in nice neighborhoods, where none of the social ills of drug-ridden neighbortlhoods affect us. So, we can support drug legalization, without being affected by the consequences.

> The model of inhumane prisons and death sentences?

Japan/Singapore imprisons much less people for drug crimes than the US - due to the USA's lenient laws on drugs (grey line vs. red line). The ill effects of drug use in japan is virtually non-existent.

You can moralize all you want, but it is a better system with less actual harm.

[vixen99]

Society is predicated on some restriction of freedom. That's a moral failure? For an alternative view on drug legalization which you will no doubt want to contest - https://www.city-journal.org/html/don%E2%80%99t-legalize-dru...

The author is a ex-prison doctor who's spent his career working with the convicted and the mentally ill.

[Nursie]

>> Why is it impossible for Westerners not to use drugs, while the Japanese manage not to use it fairly well?

Japanese people drink. Japanese people also are major users of over the counter drugs which we in the west can't get hold of, notably benzodiazepines like flutazolam and flutoprazepam are available to buy there.

[ausvisaissues]

Yes, Japanese people drink a lot, and it is a social issue. But there are a lot of functional alcoholics in Japan.

> Japanese people also are major users of over the counter drugs

Japan is much stricter with medicine than US. Several medicibes that are OTC in US are illegal in Japan: https://jp.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/local-resource...

I am sure that there are abuse of prescription drugs. But I have not heard anything about a systematic, widespread problem (comparable to prescription drug abuse in US).

A cursory reading of the WP says that the legal status of the drugs you mentioned is more or less the same as the US:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine

[Nursie]

This is not the impression I have, where it comes to benzodiazepines such as the ones mentioned. It may not be as systematic and widespread as prescription opiate dependency in the US, but it does seem to be a problem, and potentially one that is not fully acknowledged by the medical establishment over there.