[WildUtah]

"a place where methamphetamine is legal and freely available is a scary place"

Like the USA in the 1960's? Benzedrine was sold over the counter to children and widely used throughout the country.

Now benzedrine is probably less dangerous than methamphetamine because it's slightly less hydrophobic, which often makes addiction less trouble. Meth showed up as the very similar black market substitute when benzedrine was made prescription only. It turned out methamphetamine was easier to make with household solvents in trailers; users would probably prefer benzedrine.

Both methamphetamine and benzedrine are available with a prescription. Benzedrine is the active substance in Adderall; in fact, Adderall is only a hair's breadth different from methamphetamine.

The difference is that today it's only black market customers that use methamphetamine. If we re-legalized dexedrine or benzedrine over the counter, the trouble would mostly go away.

[fnordfnordfnord]

>If we re-legalized dexedrine or benzedrine over the counter, the trouble would mostly go away.

We'd have:

Rehab for getting women off of diet pills.

Same thing for truckers, just for a different reason.

And we'd read about students abusing diet pills to study with.

[WildUtah]

Yes, we'd have the same issues with diet and study pills that we have today, but somewhat more of them. You can already get those if you have a pliable doctor and plenty of money, you know.

But we'd also shut down a violent black market industry that gets $50 billion a year and kills 25,000-50,000 people in the USA and Latin America each year. That's most of the trouble. Skinny ladies with diet pill issues are small time in the face of mass death. We'd eventually defund most of the expanding police state, too.

[fnordfnordfnord]

>But we'd also shut down a violent black market industry that gets $50 billion a year and kills 25,000-50,000 people in the USA and Latin America each year.

Yup.

>That's most of the trouble. Skinny ladies with diet pill issues are small time in the face of mass death.

Eaxctly.

>We'd eventually defund most of the expanding police state, too.

I'd love to be able to pry back the Castle Doctrine. I may be crazy but I honestly fear a wrong-address or otherwise mistaken police raid more than hostile activity from illegal drug smugglers/sellers.

[rhizome]

You mean the same kinds of medical management we have right now for tapering off certain anti-depressants and maintaining pain and sleep-aid prescriptions for people with money and/or good insurance. Not to mention the problems associated with Big Mac abuse.

The frameworks we would desire in a legalized environment are already here, but for some reason truckers and women make it an insurmountable challenge. Something about tattoos and/or menstruation? I'm not sure I follow the logic at work here.

Basically, a portion of the money currently going to prisons would be redirected to medical assistance, which is not the worst result emerging from recent history that I can imagine.

[fnordfnordfnord]

>You mean the same kinds of medical management we have right now for tapering off certain anti-depressants and maintaining pain and sleep-aid prescriptions for people with money and/or good insurance. Not to mention the problems associated with Big Mac abuse.

Yes, almost nothing would change WRT abuse of drugs.

>I'm not sure I follow the logic at work here.

Logic? In the War on Drugs?

>Basically, a portion of the money currently going to prisons would be redirected to medical assistance, which is not the worst result emerging from recent history that I can imagine.

Hopefully a lot of money would be diverted from law enforcement to mental health treatment.