[pille]

I think that argument falls apart as soon as you consider alcohol. Alcohol certainly qualifies as a hard drug, based on its impact for both users and bystanders (especially in your example with driving). We tried to ban it and that made things worse.

Also, isn't imprisoning people a huge cost itself?

[belorn]

Governments did indeed try that and would likely still want to do it, but there were way too much cultural values embedded in alcohol and production is also too easy that controlling it is not possible.

Alcohol is however generally not defined as a hard drug. Soft drugs would be alcohol, marijuana, sleeping pills and sedatives, while hard drugs includes heroin and cocaine. Netherlands has a very strict line between the two in both enforcement and punishment. Netherlands has a war on hard drugs, but is celebrated for not having one for soft drugs.

When it comes to alcohol and driving, Sweden for example uses a system that directly punish that circumstance. Driving licenses are very expensive to get and take a lot of time. Getting hit by a DUI not only mean you have to retake the tests and pay for a new license, but you are also likely to get a ban for up to 3 years. For many that is a very harsh punishment and one enough to discourage drunk driving. For sever DUI with blood values over 1.0 you also risk jail sentences up to 2 years. Any DUI involving other drugs than alcohol is regulated under the harsher rules. You do not need to trigger an accident for this to happen.

Drug laws does not need to be all or nothing. Scientists could/do define the risk profiles for different drugs in different circumstances and law makers can make more lenient or strict laws depending on those risk profiles. Sadly culture do play a role in permitting some high risk over other, but that doesn't mean risk management is bad explanation for why laws exist that punish non-violent drug user. It only make them inconsistent.

[pille]

> Alcohol is however generally not defined as a hard drug

> Scientists could/do define the risk profiles for different drugs

The scientific risk profiles I've read have alcohol right up there on the top of the ranking for hardest, most damaging drugs. Sometimes it's at #1, but it's always right there in the big 4 with cocaine, heroin, and meth.

"Not defined as a hard drug" is a policy choice, almost entirely because of cultural/historic reasons, as you point out. Prohibition didn't work for alcohol, and it's not working for other drugs.

DUIs, on the other hand... harsh prosecution of DUIs is fine because they're crimes with victims, where other people are put into serious and immediate danger. That's a better approach than the overly broad, costly, and ineffective policy of simply incarcerating everyone for drug use.

[belorn]

Cultural and historical reasons do play a huge role, but we can see similar cost-saving argument for a drug that is distinctly less harmful than all the other drugs: Tobacco. My country is likely to start banning it sometimes in the few decades, and the argument being used is one dominated by costs and risks. Smokers are seen as a drain on the health care system, a health risk to other people in terms of second hand smoking, a major problem with littering, and irritating to people in public spaces. A lot of apartment owners and spaces around them are already trying to forbid it.

It will hopefully never end up as bad that people go to jail for it, but as culture is changing and public opinion about smoking goes more negative, tobacco as an accept social drug are loosing acceptance. In theory they could change it so that smokers loose access to public health care but I doubt such solution is preferable over simply making smoking illegal.

Last year they even made an half-attempt at making smoking illegal during a very dry period under the argument that smoking was a major risk for causing fire.

[intotheabyss]

Alcohol is more deadly than cocaine (by far) and even heroin. By that definition, it's certainly a hard drug.