note that the videos run time is 4:20

This post is serious I'm guessing? When you say they changed their minds, do you mean they changed their minds that alcohol didn't have societal costs or just that they wanted to use them in spite of that?

Draw the line at LSD.

What is it with you people?

prohibition of drugs, a child's idea of morality.

But can't we reduce the societal costs of the drugs in some way other than this very costly war on drugs?

makes sense - except no one will get caught.

Most dealers only get caught because of people snitching. And snitches don't deserve their freedom.

Legalization on the other hand curbs the violence associated with the drug trade. The money once spent on going after traffickers can be shifted toward rehab.

Private corporations have no incentive to intervene, yes, but I'm talking about the shifting of public dollars meant for fighting drug "crime" towards public health.

If you support the current policies you are supporting the policies of both the government AND the criminals. That should be all that you need to know.

Obviously I meant that society decided that prohibition was worse than alcohol being legal.

Of course. It just annoys me that in every one of these drug threads the pro-legalization crowd acts like legalizing drugs is some free lunch. I think the situation is much more about choosing the least bad of several available options.

Use != addiction

And as the above data shows multiple times, there are drugs such as LSD and ecstasy that the public has been fed horror stories about that aren't actually addictive or particularly dangerous. There is zero reason at all to do anything to either the users or the dealers of such drugs.

But even with something like cocaine, the average user is no more an addict than the average alcohol user. Some are, but most are not.

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I haven't come across a drug dealer who want's drugs to be legalized...

That was Howard's point. Legalizing drugs will cut into dryg dealer's profits and give them more competition.

Really? Sure there are societal costs that comes with illegal drug use, but a lot of those are due to the very fact that they are illegal. People get addicted to cocaine and steal/rob to support their habits. Sure, they'll still do as much if cocaine were legal. The same can be said about alcohol addicts before and after prohibition.

Legalize drugs and there will be less drug-related violence. People won't be robbing street dealers or dealers killing people who steal their stash. An addict will be less likely to rob a state run store as opposed to a street level dealer.

Also, at least when it comes to marijuana, most people don't want it to be illegal.

This.

Also Jay, I asked because the way you phrased that made it sound like you thought there was a good reason why society stopped alcohol prohibition but not drug prohibition. Maybe I misinterpreted you. Surely alcohol has societal costs, greater than some currently banned drugs I'd argue.

Personally I think the negative societal effects need to be more direct to warrant banning. Yes drug use is bad for society, but so are other unhealthy lifestyle choices that most wouldn't even think of banning.

If there were a drug that was shown to induce violent behavior or something and was linked to assaults and homicides, I'd be in favor of banning it I think since its a direct threat to the safety of others. I suppose you could actually say that alcohol has caused a lot of deaths, from people getting into drunken rages or losing their judgment and driving drunk, so that's an interesting dilemma. On the other hand, the vast majority of times people drink or results in nobody getting hurt.

That chart is being misused. It's not which drugs are more harmful, it's which drugs are more harmful as they're currently used in our society:

If you were so inclined, you could read that as an endorsement of prohibition. Other drugs cause less harm because they are prohibited and therefore less widely used. Yay prohibition!

Ultimately it doesn't make sense to try to score drugs on a single axis of harm because the risks are so different and can be mitigated to a greater or lesser extent. For instance in this graph GHB is ranked higher on the "harm to users" scale than Ecstasy.

This is because it's very easy to kill yourself with a GHB overdose and there is also slight addiction possibility, with withdrawal being potentially life threatening (as with alcohol). That sort of harm could easily be mitigated with the ending of prohibition and education about proper use. When used with due care, GHB is one of the least harmful recreational drugs out there.

OTOH, Ecstasy is a neurotoxic drug and brain damage to users will persist basically no matter what (although it can certainly be mitigated).

So which is the more harmful drug, GHB or Ecstasy? It's not a question that really makes sense, it depends on the context in which they are taken.

because our freedom is an illusion

well said. I suppose you have to fight for freedom - but how?

It's not a matter of 'freedom', imo, we are lacking in plenty of that in other areas. It's just the usual suspects doing the usual things. We are at the beginnings of a national dialogue about the drug war. An obvious failure w/ a horrendous cost in blood and money can't just go on forever unchallenged.

You are just perpetuating a myth about xtc. All current research shows that if you stop using xtc your brain returns to normal. Every paper that claims otherwise has been shown to have serious faults in its methods. The most famous one is based on an experiment with rats that were regularly given amounts that we would consider serious overdoses in humans.

I am not saying xtc is a harmless drug and there might be long term consequences but so far none have been found in recreational users.

Meh. I used to be kind of an expert but that was ~7 years ago, I just had a look at what has come out in the meantime and there seems to be a lot more doubt than there was back then. Most studies still show cognitive deficits in users even after a period of not using, though frequently only in heavy users. Doing epidemiological studies on ecstasy is absurdly difficult due to sample sizes, polydrug use, differences in drug-using and non-using cohorts which predate drug use, etc etc.

Studies in baboons at a high but not ludicrously high dose showed permanent neurotoxicity. In humans SERT density appears to gradually return to normal after MDMA use, however this does not prove the brain has "returned to normal". Damaged axons may regrow completely differently.

Given that the drug is proved to be neurotoxic at a high enough dose and that ex-MDMA users exhibit cognitive deficiencies in most studies, I think the claim that it has been proven that the brain "returns to normal" is probably more dubious than the claim that it has been proven that MDMA is neurotoxic. But it looks like neurotoxicity is much more dubious than it was thought to be ~7 years ago.

In any case, I know from personal experience that MDMA can do serious damage to your mental health regardless of whether it damages the brain. GHB can't (unless you're dumb enough to get addicted to it). The harm GHB can do and the harm MDMA can do are totally different and are difficult to compare.

Another highly effective anti-drug tool.