system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Anyone who supports drug prohibition has not thought the issue through to its logical conclusion. CMV

"Drugs are bad, so they should be illegal" just doesn't cut it. That's not thinking things through. You have to examine all the various consequences, effects, and repercussions. For a law to be just, it must prevent more harm than it causes; anything but legalization of all drugs (not just decriminalization) fails that test.

Possibly the most popular argument for drug prohibition is due to the social harm caused by drug addiction. Certainly drug addiction does cause social harm, but that harm pales in comparison to what is caused by imprisoning vast swaths of society. Separating families and saddling users and sellers with a permanent black mark that destroys most opportunity for gainful employment and being a productive, contributing member of society is vastly destructive. In short, "drugs will ruin your life, so we'll punish you for using drugs by ruining your life" just fails at logic.

Then there's the argument that buying drugs funds criminals and terrorists. Well, no shit, genius. If you don't allow legitimate businesses to sell it, it's going to be the criminals. This gives rise to the black market, which is the source of the vast majority of "drug related" crime (only a small portion is comprised of actual intoxication-induced misbehavior). Legalization of the drug trade takes the money out of the hands of gangs and terrorists, and eliminates the black market and its associated crime; this is why mere decriminalization for users is not adequate.

Let's also look at effectiveness. Essentially, there isn't any. Prohibition does not decrease usage rates, which is the primary goal. I've heard the argument that "at least it increases street prices," but this is a terrible argument. Increased prices don't deter use, they just make addiction more financially devastating for addicts (thus increasing, not decreasing harm), and the increased profits just add incentive for criminals to produce/traffic/sell more - and use violence to protect their profits. In short, when you consider the total lack of effectiveness alongside all of the collateral social damage, drug prohibition doesn't actually *do* anything except harm society.

All in all, any opinion supporting prohibition, or even decriminalization instead of legalization, hasn't been thought through to its conclusion, fails to take into account all consequences, and is basically just wrong.

It would be nice if I didn't have to feel frustrated at the current state of affairs, or think less of certain friends and family for what I see as poorly-reasoned, illogical views. So, I challenge you to Change My View.

*(As a side note, I am not interested in discussing ulterior motives for prohibition, such as private prison profiteering, political fear-mongering, and racial oppression. I only want to discuss the viewpoint of actually thinking drugs should be prohibited.)*
gpt
Let's consider legal crack for a second.

We have a pretty good record of opiates being relatively easy to manage in a controlled environment, both from war vets and various schemes in Holland/Switzerland, but we have no evidence *whatsoever* that the most powerful stimulants can be managed by medical schemes.

No one nods out on crack, no one decides to call it a day, you just keep going for as long as you can as fast as you can until you crash, run out or die. There is no sufficient prescription that can be given for this. It's not like heroin or alcohol and other physically addictive drugs - you don't need to cover the amount someone needs to nod/not feel sick, you literally have to prescribe people close to an infinite number of doses to ever satisfy them. How do we ever reconcile this point with the Hippocratic oath, the basics of supply and demand or the costs involved to society? Are we seriously going to ask doctors to prescribe overdose levels of crack? For society to take money from healthcare and the elderly to pay for a 20 year old's crack habit/someone lying to the doctor who just wants to sell it?

If we can't prescribe crack, the only option is to allow legal sales of it. What price can we ever put on something that people need an infinite amount of and will trade their net worth for even the smallest amount? There is no downward limit on crack that will make it cheap enough for sensible use. Even at a hugely state subsidised 1c a hit, people will still rob and steal to get enough - it will just be on a much smaller (and possibly more visible/common) scale than it is now. 

Not only this, but the number of people trying one of the most addictive drugs known to man will be much larger with legal sales. Most people in a major metropolis can track down crack easily enough, but we are talking about the full mobilisation of the entire small town/rural world to this substance if we were to sell crack without prescription. 

Add on to all of this that we are talking about a drug that basically makes all mid to long term users mentally ill and unable to work/look after a family/themselves/pay tax/fulfill the social contract blah blah blah, many within the space of just a few years, and you are talking about enormous additional burdens to the the state infrastructure. Imagine if alcohol turned the vast majority of users crazy in <5 years how bad a problem we would have with a substance that is already a huge problem for society (you don't even have to imagine - go and visit an aboriginal reservation to see what happens to societies confronted by unlimited legal drugs the majority can't handle).

The grim reality of human beings is there is a vast cocktail of substances and behaviors out there that have no simple answer to how to deal with them. Sure, banning crack causes huge problems -  no one sane advocating drug bans disagrees with this point. It's about working out what the viable alternatives are when dealing with products that people will not only literally trade everything they own for, but that also turn them into psychotic mad men in the process. 

Prohibition failed for alcohol because humans are actually pretty good at dealing with alcohol as a group. A small number develop problems, most don't. Prohibition most likely works for substances where humans are pretty bad at dealing with something as a group - there is no large number of social crack users able to stay on top of their use - the destroyed minority is the majority.