[sneak]

It bothers me that this needs to be done piecemeal, substance by substance.

Our bodies are our own to build - they are own to destroy (or alter, or any other damn thing). The whole point of the war on drugs was to imprison minorities. The whole concept of drug prohibition should be done away with.

Millions of people are sitting in prison in the US simply because they did something entirely consensual and nonviolent, engaging in a willing transaction with an adult, and victimized no one.

The idea that you can't put whatever you want into your own body is diametrically opposed to the desire for personal liberty for which the US is known.

[viraptor]

They could be our own to destroy if that didn't impact people around you. It's the same with DUI - causing a crash doesn't only destroy your life. Or getting addicted to the point you can't care for your children.

[sneak]

Your response illustrates my point nicely:

Drunk driving is illegal; alcohol possession and sale is not, nor should it be.

Child abuse and neglect is already illegal, regardless of drug laws.

[viraptor]

We don't have a good comparison right now... because allowing a good computation is considered a bad idea. Selling alcohol to people who obviously are going to drink and drive, people who are aggressive and drink is restricted in some places though.

The issue is that we expect most people to have a drink once in a whole and continue with their lives as usual. We can't realistically expect recreational heroin use with no long term issues.

[sneak]

We also can't realistically expect recreational alcohol use with no long-term issues either: alcohol kills about 100k people per year in the USA.

That's not a reason to ban it. The issues are caused by the user, to the user. If users are causing issues to others (violence, theft, drunk driving, et c), those are separate and already-illegal things that can and should be enforced. Arresting people for possession is basically like arresting them for pre-crime: "some other people who possessed similar things later went on to commit actual crimes, so you go to jail out of fear" is not a sane approach.

The possession and use of substances for the human body is plainly the wrong place to legislate: the war on drugs in the US has been a costly, racist, unmitigated disaster.

[nathanaldensr]

Probabilities matter. Cost-benefit matters. You can't just dismiss it with "well, some people don't commit crimes, therefore it's immoral to restrict freedoms." It's a gradient, and the people on the whole reserve the right to determine where the hard line is. This is one of the beautiful things about the fact the US has many states--each state gets to decide where they draw that hard line. If you don't like it you can find another state that draws the line elsewhere.

[sneak]

> It's a gradient, and the people on the whole reserve the right to determine where the hard line is.

Yeah, except when those hard lines intersect the bodies of others. Nobody has the right to tell me what can or can't go in my body: that's exclusively my decision.

[viraptor]

> The issues are caused by the user, to the user.

For alcohol? I dare you to say that to the face of someone with alcohol addiction in family. It's a simplistic black and white view. We negotiated thresholds where alcohol is restricted (age, distribution, setting) while not banning it completely. Neither unrestricted access nor prohibition were the answer.

[sneak]

The answer hasn't been found, as there is still a gigantic unsolved societal disease in the USA regarding alcohol. Tobacco too.

Whatever you think is working (stopping sales at 2am or whatever) isn't. It's farce. Humans can't handle drugs, generally speaking, and permitting some whole ruining lives over others is the peak of ineffective ridiculousness.

The fact that humans can't generally handle drugs (alcohol included) is not a reason to waste time and money and imprison millions of people in a misguided attempt to address the problem. (Not that that was what the war on drugs was even for, mind you.)

[TheAdamAndChe]

Agree. Some drugs like meth, heroin, fentanyl, PCP can cause permanent brain damage at common recreational doses and hurt society overall. Those shouldn't be legal IMO

[sneak]

Society has no claim over whether or not I (or anyone else) choose to cause permanent brain damage to myself.

That's the point: drug prohibition is inherently immoral because it denies an adult human being agency over their own body. It's mine to destroy if I see fit; it's mine to build it I see fit.

There is no victim, for example, if I decide to cut off my finger. No one has been wronged, and no crime has occurred.

[paxys]

Society is still responsible for your medical bills. And there's zero chance that someone who has wrecked their body/mind through hard drug use will be able to survive on their own without affecting the lives of others in any way. It doesn't take long for this individual freedom to turn into a widespread public health problem – see the streets of San Francisco for example.

[nathanaldensr]

You are incredibly naive. Have you seen a family member fall to addiction? Have you seen what it does to those around them who love them? We aren't just floating brain vessels in space; we live in a complex society of interdependencies and close biological bonds. Your choices nearly always affect others, especially with something like addiction.

[sneak]

We're not talking about addiction. We're talking about criminal penalties for the possession of drugs, which is entirely orthogonal to addiction, and which was initially deployed on a large scale specifically to jail and resume enslaving nonwhite people in the USA into forced labor camps. (To this end it has worked rather well.)

If you think drugs should be illegal "because addiction", then at least be consistent and go after tobacco and alcohol. Tobacco kills 10x more than opiates in the USA, and alcohol 6x, but somehow it's the opiate epidemic that makes the news.

Once we can agree that a) the law should be fair and consistent and b) adults should be allowed to drink alcohol if they want, we can get to c) people should be allowed to drink any damn thing they like and it's nobody else's business.