UNPOPULAR OPINION: popular opinion
Not always, sometimes it's the second most popular opinion
Kinda but you would need to limit corporations abusing addiction for profit like they already do with things like nicotine
Portugal. They've essentially been doing this for years.
Drugs are decriminalised and in themselves legal.
It's still technically a crime to use them but generally you are treated as a patient with addiction. Not a criminal.
There's still a massive body of criminal law around supplying, and producing them.
So they are not dismantling controls on drugs but targeting the issues drugs cause instead of criminalising users needlessly.
Not perfect there but certainly lessons to be learnt.
People need education not prohibition..
All the "just say no" stuff didn't count as education.
D.A.R.E. was objectively a massive failure.
Turns out when you tell kids that weed is just as bad as crack, they start wondering "what else did they lie about" when they figure out weed is fine.
It's all based on lies though. You tell them weed is as bad as other drugs then they try weed and it's fine you can imagine the conclusion drawn from that.
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Sure. Would Walmart start selling fentanyl? Would people buy it?
You do understand how small amount of that can kill right? The massive problem that it is already?
Again I'm all for decriminalization. These people shouldn't be being locked up because they have a problem. But the more crazy drugs like that? We shouldn't make access even easier.
I'm all for legalization of a lot of them. But all? That would lead to literally thousands upon thousands of deaths just with fentanyl alone.
Yes and yes
I think 30 years ago or so before a bunch of countries proved this worked for many drugs, this would have been an unpopular opinion.
Now, I'm not so sure.
Especially here
Shouldn't be all that unpopular. Drugs have existed for most of human history, and plenty of them have origins in religious/healing purposes.
More effort should have always been on the treatment of addiction side than enforcement.
There are several entire countries that give the death penalty for just possessing small amounts of certain drugs.
The whole drug system should exist in its own perpetual economy.
Sell drugs legally, all profits go towards treatment and prevention.
Make all illegal drugs legal and nationalize all pharmaceuticals, then keep making money on all of it but use the profit to change all drug use into an actual benefit to humanity rather than another way to monetize abusing people and profiteering from their misery.
The way civilisation views both legal and illegal drugs is to think of it as a business and money maker, rather than a product to help people.
Drugs have existed for hundreds of thousands, potentially millions, of years before humans. Peyote, poppies, cannabis, mushrooms, coco, and many hundreds of other plants just happen to have chemicals that make monkeys feel good.
Meh, having everything instantly legal would be too much especially without the funding for care centers where addicts can get help. As well as preventative systems for addicts.
Decriminalization is a step better but it doesn't solve the problems of dealers lacing fentanyl into things people dont expect.
That said, it's absurd to not already have things like psychedelics/weed/kratom decriminalization and small amounts of party drugs. The fact that the punishment for doing drugs far more harmful than the dugs themselves is mind boggling.
Not really unpopular. Most Scientists and even some politicians agree that the war on drugs only made things worse and that prohibition is not working.
Actual unpopular opinion: people obsess over legalization models for everything because they have bad enforcement models to base their data off of
Law enforcement in the US distributes drugs. Corruption has turned "informants" into a system where the police are essentially gangs which monopolize both criminal activity and the law. Our air force got caught cooking MDMA on a nuclear base in the Netherlands. We have a base here in Texas that changed names because they keep having suicides mass shootings and sweeping SA allegations under the rug. Two of the soldiers got caught with a middle schooler man. There's so many goddamn drugs
Anyways my point is sociologists studying the US actions will assume it is impossible to make anything illegal without causing havoc.
There are ways to eliminate issues like prostitution and drug abuse without locking up prositutes or giving people possession charges or locking up street dealers making less than minimum wage. That kind of criminalization does absolutely nothing other than ruin lives
Which ways, can you detail them?
You go after the pimps and distributors, to begin with. Help get low level members of these orgs out and back into society. Genuine rehabilitation is not the goal of our prison system, just slavery. To state the obvious you prolly know.
I am not a huge fan of the Nordic model but it is miles better than trying to get the UN orgs to call pimps "sex workers" ugh
But what about all the shareholders who have a stake in the prison-industrial complex?
They can go to rehab for money addiction.
I think we should legalize and hand off distribution and production to major colleges. Have a lot of the profits go toward lowering tuition that way we can elevate our citizens to a higher standard where we can eventually lessen the use of drugs for escapism.
Checking in for the struggling sober. Controlled access and decriminalisation need to go hand in hand with
he ded rip
Yeah kinda my point we cant just consider the criminal impact like OP is doing with blinders on
I think most people would agree on the surface but the devil's in the details: that statement could mean anything from making schedule 1 drugs available at detox centers to removing prescription requirements on antibiotics to grabbing a bag of ricin at the corner store on your way to work
To clarify strictly, I mean recreational drugs. Drugs that have been used for recreational and medicinal purposes that have been legally restricted in some way.
Very libertarian point of view and one that I've held for years. Not unpopular.
I am genuinely surprised that AI has not already been used to discover countless drugs all with chemical properties that are different and not illegal. It will come of course at some point likely before the end of the decade but who knows. I suspect that there will be some pretty awesome drugs that have e lower side effects and or there will be counter measures discovered to offset negatives etc.
We don't need AI, we've had those chemicals for decades. They're called Research Chemicals and some countries (like the UK I think) preemptively ban them, while in others they have to be explicitly banned. It's an ongoing cat and mouse game, but if you asked me I'd rather take a well known compound and not some random crap that was invented last year and like 6 people took.
The awesome drugs with lower side effects are the well known ones, like LSD.
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I do not disagree that there are already designer drugs as they have been in the news for over a decade or more. I am more meaning that AI has the ability to instantly discover a whole lot more. I only say this as I have read several papers now where researchers used AI to discover new chemicals (not drugs per se) and they have found more with AI than all the traditional research to date. It is really opening the doors as discoveries are tedious and time consuming which are two areas that AI excels at. I am certain we are going to see a flood of designer drugs that are on another level. I agree though, I would not personally touch them at all as who knows the long term impacts. That said, we are all encountering countless chemicals in the environment that are new and also not well tested so even if you do not do the latest designer drugs, you are still consuming unknown chemicals. That is the harsh reality.
Of the drugs are free then it's a problem that solves itself.
Poisonings and overdoses skyrocket.
Edit: Not to mention antibiotic resistance.
Because right now everything is dandy, right?
By treating addicted users as criminals instead of people in need of help, they don't get the help they need and it creates a taboo around the issue, just like it was a few years ago for mental health or sexual orientation.
At the strict minimum, decriminalize and controlled access is a good stop gap.
And those people get proper medical care instead of revolving door prisons.
If drugs are produced with the same requirements as pharmaceuticals poisonings go down massively. That is usually due to it being cut with other shit.
I was talking to OP’s opinion, which is different from yours.
I get what you're going for here, but I don't know that it would actually work in practice. How many people in the world have never tried heroin or meth only because it's illegal? I feel like a lot of people would become drug addicts specifically because it would be legal, which in their minds would mean it can't be that bad.
It's legal to drink bleach, but everyone seems to understand that it's that bad and avoid it anyway...
I mean, I know how addictive and dangerous heroin and meth are. I'm not avoiding them just bcz they are illegal.
I would counter that, and say, look how many people have done it despite it being illegal. You can't stop people from doing drugs with a law.
What you can do is give them safe access to clean needles and drugs that aren't laced with other stuff. And then we can also have programs to help people who are addicted to these drugs, instead of demonizing them.
Wild idea, but maybe we could treat drug addiction like the disease it is, instead of treating people like they're garbage human beings for doing drugs.
In places where drugs have been decriminalised across the board the opposite happened.
You have no idea about how addiction works. I never mentioned my opinion would ever "work". What do you even mean by "work"?
This user is just on a roll with stupid takes.
