Should Meth/crack be legalized?

NoahFence said:
Gay marriage doesn't screw you up to the point where you can't function in everyday life.

:rule10: no it shouldn't be legalized. Pot, sure. Even that's iffy as being high impares your reflexes. So you can't drive high. Coke, meth, crack? NO WAY. May as well legalize acid.
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You just demonstrated your ignorance.

Acid (LSD) is far less dangerous than either coke, meth or crack. It is not addictive, and nobody ever died of LSD overdose. Some people ended up dying by walking out of windows (or something like that) thanks to LSD-induced hallucinations, but that's little different from drinking too much and deciding that a swim in a frozen lake is a great idea.

To answer OP -- yes, I think meth and crack should remain illegal, or at the very least selling them should remain illegal. LSD, no. Although it should be regulated.
 
HansMustermann said:
Sadly enough, yes, that was the main bogeyman in the campaign to make it illegal in the first place. Most drug scares rode on such xenophobic and/or racist scares. Opium was supposed to make the Chinese rape white women. Cocaine was supposed to do that for the blacks. Cannabis was supposed to make the Mexicans all scary and lawbreaking. I guess when peddling something to racist twits, tying it to their own prejudices and fear of some minority makes it an easier sell.
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Genetic fallacy.
 
"Alcohol is dangerous therefore we should to sell more dangerous substances".

I don't know the name for that fallacy but there should be one.
 
OK,

Interesting answers so far.

But many talk about the general issue of legalization.

Personally I'm way past that point. I'm in favor of decriminalizing drugs.
Thus saving society the cost of fighting it, generating tax revenue, robbing organised crime and terrorist organisations of income, halting the flow of money to some conflict areas, providing consumers with a legal and safer buzz etc etc.

My question is essentially a marketing question.

There are many drugs, giving many different experiences which are sought by many different consumers.
These drugs can have a widely varying levels of danger and damage.

We could lump drugs together in different niches, according to experience provided to the user:

For instance (there are overlaps):

Mellow, intense music experience:
MDMA
Cannabis

Social lubricant, inflated ego, confidence:
Alcohol
Cocaine

Total oblivion:
Meth
Heroin

From the marketing perspective, people don't buy a drug, they buy an experience.

I think most drugs should be legalized, as they would be far less harmful to users and society if they were legally available.
For instance: a heroin user can function quite normally. I've twice seen heroin users go down the drain socially and in both cases it was because they couldn't afford their habit, stole from their employer, got fired, got desperate, got into crime etc.
Before being found out, they were good employees.
This is one of the most feared and addictive drugs out there.

I think that if in each marketing niche, a relatively safe option is legally available. The market will have been obliterated for the illegal alternative.

One poster remarked that Meth actually fills the niche left by MDMA.
Holy crap, that is insane. I have personally done tons of MDMA, with very little negative impact. Hell, nearly everyone I know has done tons of MDMA. the people I hang out with are typically healthy and successful. One of my former rave-buddies owns and runs an international publishing business with offices in five countries.
People substitute MDMA with something that will lead to you injecting battery-acid residue into their neck and giving BJ's to stangers behind dumpsters? Christ!
 
@Virus:
So, do you deny that that's how those got campaigned against? Or did you just want to hear yourself say "genetic fallacy" instead of doing it for once? You can't deny reality by claiming fallacy, you know? There was no "therefore" there. That's just the fact of how those thing got campaigned against, and yes, it was racist drivel for racist twits. I know it must come as a surprise to you, but there is no magic phrase that makes reality go away if you don't like it. Not even "genetic fallacy".
 
Virus said:
"Alcohol is dangerous therefore we should to sell more dangerous substances".

I don't know the name for that fallacy but there should be one.
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I think the argument is generally that there are many substances significantly less dangerous then alcohol, which are prohibited.

Cannabis is a prime example of this.
 
Eddie Dane said:
I think the argument is generally that there are many substances significantly less dangerous then alcohol, which are prohibited.

Cannabis is a prime example of this.
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Which I've never understood. Some drugs might be less harmful than alcohol, but then that on its own does not seem like a good enough reason to legalise such drugs if the total amount of harm increases because consumption of them rises.

I think each recreational drug should be made legal for a trial period of a few years to see if harm increases or decreases.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
I think each recreational drug should be made legal for a trial period of a few years to see if harm increases or decreases.
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OMG! So far two people on this thread advocated applying scientific method to legislation! Somebody should make a law against that! :)
 
HansMustermann said:
@Virus:
So, do you deny that that's how those got campaigned against? Or did you just want to hear yourself say "genetic fallacy" instead of doing it for once? You can't deny reality by claiming fallacy, you know? There was no "therefore" there. That's just the fact of how those thing got campaigned against, and yes, it was racist drivel for racist twits. I know it must come as a surprise to you, but there is no magic phrase that makes reality go away if you don't like it. Not even "genetic fallacy".
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Doesn't make faulty logic less faulty.
 
Eddie Dane said:
One poster remarked that Meth actually fills the niche left by MDMA.
Holy crap, that is insane. I have personally done tons of MDMA, with very little negative impact. Hell, nearly everyone I know has done tons of MDMA. the people I hang out with are typically healthy and successful. One of my former rave-buddies owns and runs an international publishing business with offices in five countries.
People substitute MDMA with something that will lead to you injecting battery-acid residue into their neck and giving BJ's to stangers behind dumpsters? Christ!
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Presumably you mean me, but that's not what I meant at all. In the US and Australia, methamphetamine frequently appears in pills purported to be Ecstasy. The US DEA's Microgram bulletins (particularly the 2009 editions and earlier) frequently show this to be the case. What that means is that users looking for MDMA may end up taking methamphetamine in those jurisdictions, but that is not the same as them purposefully looking for methamphetamine instead of (unavailable) MDMA.

Nobody I know who uses MDMA would seek out methamphetamine, if they couldn't get MDMA, nor would they interested if offered it. Some are prepared to "risk" pills of unknown content without at least reagent testing, but being in the UK, the chances of them finding ones containing methamphetamine (as opposed to ketamine, cathinones, piperzines, etc.), are absolutely minimal.
 
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Mark6 said:
You just demonstrated your ignorance.

Acid (LSD) is far less dangerous than either coke, meth or crack. It is not addictive, and nobody ever died of LSD overdose.
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Well elephants did. Namely Tusko after 300mg of LSD.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
Which I've never understood. Some drugs might be less harmful than alcohol, but then that on its own does not seem like a good enough reason to legalise such drugs if the total amount of harm increases because consumption of them rises.
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Because - as already noted - most of the "harms" are related to legal status, rather than the properties of the drugs themselves. If drugs are legal and those "harms" are significantly reduced, if not eliminated, then even if consumption increases overall (and - as already noted - that's by no means certain), "the total amount of harm" will almost certainly still be less.

Let's for the sake of argument say that out of every 100 heroin addicts, 20 die as a direct or indirect result. Since the latter is almost always as a result of either contamination or variance in the strength of street heroin, it follows that free access to pharmaceutically-pure product will vastly decrease the death rate, let's say to 5 addicts out of 100. In that scenario, to numerically even just match the previous death rate, overall usage would have to increase four-fold, which simply isn't credible.
 
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L.Y.S. said:
I grew up in black neighborhoods in the early 90s when crack nearly tore our communities apart. I'm all for the legalization of drugs like marijuana which have little medical side effects or long term damaging effects, but crack and Meth are simply too destructive and I've seen the destructive potential of each. Meth in particular has more of an effect as a suburban drug, and it's nicknamed "the mom drug" because so many stay at home moms take the drug and invariably rip apart their entire families.

As I've said before, I support the integration of light drugs (marijuana, alcohol, some synthetic drugs (buzz without the negative effects)), hardcore destructive drugs however, I generally would like to keep those illegal. I think it’s worth fighting to keep drugs like that off the streets and although there will be a black market for those the social cost of keeping those types of drugs off the streets are much more beneficial than legalizing them. I can of course speak from firsthand experience on this situation. To legalize crack or meth would be a horrible idea.
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As someone who lost a 49 year-old brother to a cocaine overdose, I agree with L.Y.S

I struggled with the same addiction myself and think this is an accurate description of what occurs soon after you start using crack/cocaine/meth (I've abused all three in the past):

http://www.addictionsandrecovery.org/cocaine.htm

No drug takes you down faster or harder than crack. There are two forms of cocaine, the powdered form that you snort, and crack that you smoke.

Cocaine is so addictive that if you give a mouse a hit of cocaine every time it presses a lever, it will do nothing else but press that lever. It won't stop for a minute to take a sip of water or a bite to eat, and eventually it will die from a cocaine overdose. The only thing that prevents people from overdosing on crack is their bank account. Once people are addicted to crack, they will sell their soul for another hit.
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I'm all for decriminalizing marijuana, but I think it'd be better for society as a whole if the "harder" drugs remained illegal.
 
Information Analyst said:
Because - as already noted - most of the "harms" are related to legal status, rather than the properties of the drugs themselves. If drugs are legal and those "harms" are significantly reduced, if not eliminated, then even if consumption increases overall (and - as already noted - that's by no means certain), "the total amount of harm" will almost certainly still be less.

Let's for the sake of argument say that out of every 100 heroin addicts, 20 die as a direct or indirect result. Since the latter is almost always as a result of either contamination or variance in the strength of street heroin, it follows that free access to pharmaceutically-pure product will vastly decrease the death rate, let's say to 5 addicts out of 100. In that scenario, to numerically even just match the previous death rate, overall usage would have to increase four-fold, which simply isn't credible.
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You don't know that.
 
Eddie Dane, I notice that you have a very European approach to drugs and assume that individuals are rational enough to not OD on those drugs. I personally have too many battle scars to know that this hope is nothing more than wishful thinking.

Imagine your whole entire number rife with crime, distress, and drugs. And that is exactly the wave of crime that happened in the United States during the 80s and 90s. Crime virtually exploded over night. It has since dramatically went down, when the government started to crack down on drug dealers and prevent the sale of hardcore drugs.

As someone else mentioned in this thread, I am all for naturally made drugs that can be grown and naturally used without refinement or synthetic drugs without the side effects (Weed, cocoa leaves (without refinement), etc.). I am however, against the legalization of drugs like cocaine, meth, and heroine.

Society would not be able to control it self and communities would be destroyed. This is a firsthand personal account of what happens. I've seen friends take the drug and nearly destroy their lives. I've known family members to sale it. I know the drama that comes with it. Personal I can live without hardcore drugs being legal and paying some extra tax to pursue the would-be villains who would sale these drugs.
 
Eddie:
not a doctor, are you?

Some controlled substances are controlled for a very good reason.

Some, like E and dope, not so much.
 
Eddie Dane said:
As many of you may know I favour legalization of drugs.

As a general line, I've long thought that all drugs should be legalized.

However, I watched Meth in Montana on Youtube yesterday.
It seems that Meth is actually as bad as the government has always claimed drugs are.
Meth is thankfully rare in Europe, so I didn't know much about it.

It doesn't seem to destroy just a small percentage of users that cannot handle it, but rather all users.
Addiction comes fast, even after the first time.
The substance causes great physical deterioration, though this might be the result of impurities as the ingredients are isolated from battery acid and Drano.

So what I'm pondering is this:
Should we ever stop the war on drugs, should we legalize all drugs or keep the worst of them illegal?
Would there still be a market for them? Would a person who could buy legal cocaine still buy illegal meth?
Would keeping some substances illegal still provide a significant marketplace for criminals? Or would the availabilities of legal, superior substances kill that market (almost) entirely?
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I used meth on occasion as a teenager and later in my early twenties. I've always hated it, and finally got so disgusted with it you couldn't pay me to do it again. The person who gets addicted to this stuff trying it the first time is a person with very low impulse control. Out of all the people I've been associated with who have tried it, two of them became addicts for years. They had severely addictive personalities as well. I've never known anyone who get's addicted to something the first time they try it. Mental addiction is an arbitrary subject however.

I don't think the substance should be produced and marketed, but I think it's penalties should be treated more like a mental health issue and not one of a criminal nature.
 
Virus said:
You don't know that.
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Could you be more specific, or are you just trolling?

It is irrefutable that most heroin deaths are due to either contamination, unexpected variance in strength, or infection transmission. It has already been noted elsewhere in this thread that where users have access to pure heroin in controlled and clean conditions, deaths and infection are virtually eliminated. Experience in Portugal has shown that de-criminalising use has not lead to an increase in use, and - for other drugs - this may be corroborated with the experience with cathinones in the UK. In that context, the idea that legalisation will lead to more use and therefore more deaths has no logical basis. And even if use does increase, it would have to be to to an unreasonably massive (i.e. impossible) level to counter-act the decrease in harms.

Annecdotally, I know lots of people who - as far as they say/as I know - do not use currently illegal drugs, but I have never heard any of them suggest that situation would be diffrent if the same drugs were legalised, even when directly asked. By the same token, I know a fair few people who use MDMA, amphetamines, and/or ketamine recreationally, yet express or exhibit no desire to move on to anything harder, simply because it's (also) illegal. The idea that de-criminalisation or legalisation is some huge green light to a significant number of people who are only being held back by current illegal status is simply preposterous.
 
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