To believe that all drugs should be legalised?

[TheWaryOchreRobin]

If alcohol and cigarettes are legal, why not regulate and tax everything else instead of letting criminal gangs profit?

But I would create the ability to get them on prescription.

What would be the criteria for receiving a prescription? Would doctors be obliged to give out prescriptions if the patient decided he/she needed one?

OldJohn · Yesterday 18:37
I studied drugs and alcohol as a post grad student and tobacco is the most dangerous with virtually zero positive benefits.

Yes, tobacco is very bad for the health of the smoker and for those around him/her, and is generally antisocial, but it doesn’t change people’s personality or produce the behaviour that makes living with an alcoholic or an addict such a nightmare.

How successful is like say Saudi Arabia at banning these products?

And taxed, OP.

Legalised and taxed.

Whilst there are very strong cases for the legalisation of marijuana, surely this is not the same for chemical drugs? For the former though, it would help a lot of people with a range of conditions from ADHD to MS. It would break down the county lines and the supply lines by breaking the chain between relatively harmess cannabis and more damaging drugs and channel money into more useful areas.

Me neither.
But I would not be quite so confident that my 14 year old DS would not try it if all his friends were.

Gdmdnsnad · Today 10:25
How successful is like say Saudi Arabia at banning these products?

I don’t know about Saudi Arabia, but certainly some countries in the Far East such as South Korea, Japan and Singapore have draconian drug laws and do not have the sort of problems that America and to a lesser extent Britain have.

But in this new golden age, presumably fentanyl would also be decriminalised? Or are you drawing the line somewhere?

You're more likely to get a blowjob from your gp than a prescription for temazepam. That's one of the reasons why the counterfeit market for it is so strong. God help me I bought some once and it was not the real thing, in fact it was a terrifying experience that saw me in A&E before I felt safe enough to go home.

This country will ever tax and sell drugs like benzos, hypnotics etc. I would happily buy them at any price but so would countless addicts.

I think they should be available in a pharmacy and you should have some sort of photo ID card so there's a system to keep a track on who is buying what. I'd like to think that handing over photo ID and getting handed a pill in a corporate-looking box, in the cold light of day, by a middle-aged pharmacist might de-glamourise the process a bit.

No. The drugs that are legal, alcohol and OTC codeine cause enough problems and ruin many lives of people who wouldn't dream of doing anything illegal. I really don't think we need to add more lanes on the highway to addiction and health problems.

ah now, wise up!

It's not my line to draw! Although if we're decriminalising personal possession for reasons of harm reduction I'm guessing fentanyl would be treated the same as all others. From a harm-reduction point of view you would eliminate the risk of taking fentanyl (astronomical powerful opioid) by accident when you thought you were taking heroin (or indeed just about anything else), which would certainly save lives.

Sound advice.

Healthcare professional here. Heroin is definitely multiple times worse...

I understand that you're writing from a healthcare perspective, but detailed research suggests that alcohol is considerably worse (indeed the worst) if you take into account the wider social harms it causes.
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Edited to add: this graph might be helpful (research was by David Nutt, Imperial College):

images.app.goo.gl/68GYYXZT7GXbCAxc9

Could you link to some research on this please?
I can't believe that heroin would not be worse if taken on the same scale/numbers as those drinking alcohol, but perhaps I have a skewed view on the harms of Class A drugs.

Yes, sorry, I've just edited the post to add a graph. You can find the original research online in the Lancet.

Again, an edit to add a non-paywall link for anyone interested:
www.imperial.ac.uk/news/94042/alcohol-most-harmful-drug-based-multicriteria/

Weed is legal where I live. The downsides are that there is a really strong weed smell everywhere, including in cars that pass you. The upside is it's great to be able to walk into a dispensary and buy edibles.

Thanks and actually I just found this myself on google.

I guess I just don't believe it.
I am sure society would be in a worse state if everyone was shooting up heroin Friday and Saturday night instead of having a few pints.
I don't doubt that alcohol causes loads of harm to many, I just would have expected proportionally more heroin users to be badly affected than this seems to suggest.

@TheWaryOchreRobin
I see you've not come back to expand on your viewpoint?

You would get the shock of your life if you knew how many people who's idea of a good weekend involves a few lines of coke. It is absolutely everywhere in every walk of life.

I guess I just don't believe it.

I mean it was a team of highly-qualified, peer-reviewed scientists who spent a very long time working on the multi-criteria analysis and weighing the evidence (who were incidentally entirely ignored by policy makers, and Nutt was sacked by the government as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs because the result of the research was not what they wanted to hear!) I would say that part of the reason we're in a mess over drugs policy (and much else in public life) is because we don't listen to evidence and experts.

Maybe I am being naive here but I guess the idea of heroin is so abhorrent I can’t imagine many people actually want to seek it out. I see your point though and I definitely wouldn’t want to gamble with teen impulsiveness.

But I would not be quite so confident that my 14 year old DS would not try it if all his friends were.

I was given morphine after an operation - I loved it and was quite disappointed when they stopped giving it to me.

Unfortunately I can imagine if I was in pain and it was readily available, I might easily pop down the chemist and buy some.