[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.