To be honest, this is one of the matters where I just can't bring myself to respect people who disagree with me unless they somehow make a really good case for themselves showing they are educated on thr issue and actually thinking critically.
The first point that must be acknowledged is this: All intoxicants are drugs. That includes the legal ones such as caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol.
Secondly: There are benefits to drug use. If there weren't, no one would be using drugs. I'm willing to bet half the people in this thread drink alcohol or coffee somewhat regularly, so you should be familiar with the reasoning behind using drugs. Weighing the benefits against the downsides must be done on an individual basis.
Thirdly: Drug use, in itself, is not a problem. Drug abuse or misuse is a problem.
The question of how we should regulate drugs is not at its core about how we should stop people from using drugs, it's about how we should stop people from abusing drugs. Some people believe drug use automatically leads to drug abuse, and sadly this view has become prevalent to the point where the discussion is largely about "how do we stop people from using drugs".
The intuitive answer to that question is "make them illegal". However, it turns out legal status is a fairly poor predictor of demand for drugs. Drug demand is mostly determined by cultural attitudes toward the drug, as can be seen in the decline of use of the legal tobacco, versus the increasing popularity of illegal cannabis. This can also be demonstrated by looking back at alcohol prohibition, which brings me to the next point.
While prohibiting the use of a drug only slightly tempers demand, it completely removes supply from the legal market. This drives the value of the drug to unnatural levels, and ensures a lucrative market for the kind of person who is willing to break the law to earn money. I'm sure we're all familiar with cartels and their horrifying activities.
In other words, the cost of prohibiting a drug is creating a criminal subset of the population, and a great incentive for more serious criminal activity to cater to this subset, funneling money into cartel pockets. In addition to removing some degree of people's right to sovereignity over their bodies.
So the question is this:
Does prohibiting the drug cause a large enough benefit to the wellbeing of the population to justify this cost?
I believe very strongly the answer to this is "NO!", and I will explain why.
As I mentioned earlier, the goal is to stop abuse, not use in itself. What this means is that (no other factors taken into consideration) any measure taken to lower the use of a drug must succeed in lowering the overall number of users while keeping the proportion of users who abuse the drug at about the same level or lower.
In the case of prohibition, this is a very unlikely outcome.
It should be quite obvious that prohibiting a drug increases the proportion of drug users who use it in an unhealthy manner, and makes it more difficult for them to get help if they struggle with addiction, as seeking help means admitting a crime.
To begin with, prohibition means there is no quality control whatsoever. Addiction aside, using heroin is actually quite safe if you have a consistent quality product and know what you are doing. Prohibition makes both these impossible. Most heroin overdoses result from a user getting a purer product than they are used to, thus they unwittingly take a far larger dose than they thought, and die.
The quality of the drugs themselves isn't the only issue. The method of use is also a factor.
Prohibition means the drugs are unnaturally expensive, and their use has to be discrete.
The price of the habit is partly to blame for heroin addicts sharing needles, and thus a lot of the disease out there.
When it comes to cannabis, smoking is often the most discrete option, as it does not require conspicuous expensive apparatuses such as vaporizing does, and it can be done outdoors so it doesn't stink up your house like making edibles does. Due to prohibition, smoking from soda cans or plastic bottles are some of the most common ways to ingest cannabis. These happen to be the absolutely least healthy ways to use this drug.
In other words, even if prohibition did reduce the amount of people who use the drugs, it would greatly amplify the health risks assosciated with drug use. In addition to this, people have to hide their use from the people close to them, who would otherwise be the ones who would pick up developing drug abuse and help them. This means it is easier to fall into abuse during prohibition, and harder to get out of it.
It is not just family users have to hide from. It is only safe to admit to one's use in the company of other users. This aspect of oneself must be hidden from general society. The only truly safe company is other users. This serves to drive drug users further away from normal society, and deeper into a culture composed of only drug users, where standards of abuse are far higher, for instance smoking cannabis every day is seen as the standard behaviour.
In this culture your status as a criminal is accepted, and more dangerous activities, such as driving under the influence and doing harder drugs than you started out with, are normalized.
On top of all this, if you are ever caught by the police, the repercussions for your life can be very dire. It may even drive you into deeper crime and actual drug abuse. Meaning a lot of people will have problems caused by their drug use, without actually having abused the drug.
And while all these effects are in place, nobody is properly educated about the effects and dangers of the drugs they're taking.
Is it really not obvious that this approach to minimizing drug abuse is completely idiotic?
Do you want to know how to minimize drug abuse?
Here are some pointers:
Educate everyone honestly about the effects of different kinds of drugs and their dangers.
Distribute pure, quality controlled, drugs in different ways depending on their effects. For instance, sell alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco alongside each other in a state controlled outlet, where all alcohol is marked with ABV, and cannabis is marked with %THC and %CBD. Perhaps place upper limits on the amount of active ingredients. Place posters around the outlet, encouraging people to eat or vaporize cannabis (and if you ask me, some encouraging people to drop the alcohol and try cannabis instead).
Amphetamines, cocaine, and similar may be obtained at pharmacies (or perhaps behind the counter at the state outlet) if you can prove you do not have a history of aggression.
Opiates, such as heroin, may be bought at the same place if you have been to the doctor and commited yourself to twice-yearly checkups, where you will be evaluated for signs of an addiction causing trouble for your life. Opiates may not be bought in amounts that make daily use possible.
Psychedelics may be bought from behind the counter if you can prove you are not at risk for mental illness.
Then, run campaigns to encourage people to use drugs sparingly. Do not allow advertisments for drugs. Highly discourage people from trying physiologically addictive substances. Keep the prices lower than the current black market, but high enough to be a luxury.
Remove the taboo from addiction, and offer extensive help to people struggling with their drug use (which, remember, should be fewer than currently).
And last but not least: remove the stigma assosciated with mental problems, and offer therapy as a part of universal healthcare. Drug abuse isn't caused by drugs. That's just a popular myth that has survived because people know very little about drugs, and it supports the current system. A completely content person leading a happy life isn't going to try heroin once and then suddenly become an addict. The people who develop problems with drugs are the ones who have had hard lives, for which drugs offer respite. These are incidentally often the people on the fringe of society who will use drugs whether they're legal or not, so addictive personalities are the ones a prohibition is least likely to deter. So much for lowering the proportion of abuse. Addictive drugs are so called because they are physiologically addictive. That is to say that if you use them frequently for a long enough time, you will experience withdrawal symptoms if you stop using them.
However, for it to get to that point, the drug has to get you psychologically addicted. This mostly only happens if you have psychological problems making the drug use so valuable to you that you'll do it frequently enough to get physiologically addicted.
This is why mental healthcare plus education about what responsible drug use is, is the best way to lower the amount of drug abusers.
Prohibition doesn't do shit but funnel all the drug money which could have gone to the state into the pockets of crooks, while making sure that people use drugs irresponsibly, and fucking with the lives of everyone who does drugs in the name of deterring people from abuse, while doing the exact opposite by disincentivizing getting help.
Fuck prohibition. It is making the world significantly worse. And I wish you poor sods who argue in favour of it would see that.
