[cygnus_a]

This is one of the main reasons I support legalization and/or decriminalization of all drugs. Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy.

I think it's still necessary to focus on reducing demand (through education and self-help, not punishment).

[jqm]

I'm of the opinion people should be able to do what they want. And certainly drugs being illegal causes more problems than it solves. That being said, here is a case to think about.

When I was in my early 20's (20 years ago) I got a job in Phoenix AZ working on a concrete crew. We were building poured in place buildings (something like big box store size). First we would pour the floor. Then the walls on top of the floor and pull them up into place with a crane. It was extremely demanding work and the company beat the crap out of everyone. Very often we would get to work at 3 AM so we could pour before the sun to prevent the mud drying so fast. Lunch time was around 10 minutes and there weren't breaks. If you didn't run at all times... going to get a shovel...run, go for a drink of water, run you got yelled at. If you still didn't run a second time you were fired just like that.

My first day there were 7 or 8 new people. At the end of the day they had fired all the new people except me and one other guy. This went on for a couple of weeks until they had the crew they wanted. I needed the job and it paid pretty well (at the time) so I ran and busted ass like you wouldn't believe. After a couple of months I got let go as well and was very OK with it. It was completely nuts and I'm sure illegal as hell but no one appeared to complain and I'm not sure the state at the time and place would have listened anyway.

The point being... almost everyone on the job site was doing meth. Except me and maybe a couple of other people. I've never been a fan of meth and find it completely disgusting even though I'm not "anti-drug" and I damn sure wasn't about to do it out there. It was expected. The pace was set by meth. When you finally burnt out, you were thrown away and left with mental/health problems. But the building was up and the company owner made money.

That is my fear about legal drugs. Expectations. End results. Even social expectations like booze is now in many places. I want to do what I want to do... not be expected to do anything.

It's a complex problem. I don't know the answer. Maybe part of the answer is to invent better/less harmful drugs that are less easy to abuse and legalize those.

[wildmusings]

Here's how I look at it: it's a trade-off like any other. There are people with unsustainable work practices in every job. It could be long hours, little sleep, performance enhancing drugs, etc. If it makes them deliver better work, they'll get rewarded for it in their career, but they're most certainly suffering consequences elsewhere. Family strain, health problems, emotional drain, loneliness.

The temptation is strong to ban other people from making different trade-offs than us, because it keeps them from besting us in competition and challenging our value systems. But what right do we have to dictate what other people should value and what trade-offs they're allowed to make with their own lives? My sweat, blood, and tears are mine and mine alone to give and withhold.

[pille]

If I can try to paraphrase: Criminalization has been so ineffective that you were simply expected to use meth at this one job you had, because everyone else was doing it.

And you think this might argue in favor of continued criminalization?

[golergka]

I don't think that meth is the point of this story. There are a lot of ways to trade off your health for higher productivity, not necessarily with illegal drugs. Professional athletes do this with extensive training and accepting injury rates. Salarymen do it with 80 hour workweeks.

The point is, they make this decision themselves. I don't think that your colleagues were somehow oblivious to the fact that meth is bad. I also doubt that your employer gave them meth disguised as "work-enhancing vitamins" or something. When people do things like that, they see the downsides, and they make this decision regardless.

Is it a bad decision, a mistake, for a person to trade his health and long-term well-being and health for his job? Personally, I think that it is. But I also think that people have fundamental human right to do this kind of mistake, that they should be free to decide it for themselves.

Would you die of hunger if you didn't take this job? I don't think so. Could you and your colleagues find a more relaxed job that would put roof over your head and food on your table? I don't know your situation, but somehow I think that yes, you could. So, you didn't take this job just because it was necessary to physically survive, which would be a different situation.

So, if a person doesn't have to sacrifice his health to survive for his job, but does it because he wants something more — should we stop him from it?

[Mz]

Have an upvote, but I don't think the solution to resolving the kind of problem you describe is criminalization of substances. In fact, I think the crazy controlling environment you describe fits hand in glove with criminalization. They both essentially grow out of a mindset that one person has some inherent right to control another in highly invasive, fundamental ways. A "live and let live" attitude would create laws and effective means to protect employees from abusive employers of the type you describe while not caring what drugs you choose to take, so long as you can behave. "Your right to swing your fist stops where my face begins" and all that.

[losvedir]

Huh, have an upvote for bringing up a genuinely new point to me, thanks.

I've heard similar stories about how cooks abusing cocaine to keep up with the pace.

But I'd never made the connection that if it's legal, employers could expect performance-enhancing levels of productivity (more than I guess some restaurants and construction crews already do).

This is also an issue in professional sports and the olympics with athletes taking banned (but legal!) performance enhancing drugs. Similarly in colleges you see people abusing adderall or modafinil to study.

[dominotw]

>Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy.

would this apply to gun ownership too?

[pcmaffey]

Yes. And it's always humorous (sad) when people use ideological reasoning to defend their right to x (e.g. guns). But then are blind to how it applies to y (e.g drugs).

[Archio]

Of course. Unfortunately the main issue there is that people disagree on exactly how much gun ownership should be regulated.

[edoceo]

In WA and CO (and others) cannabis is more regulated than guns.

[jacobolus]

Absolutely, a regulated market would be better than a black market.

If every gun and every bullet were marked, all sales (or losses e.g. to theft) required registration with a central registry with the new owner requiring a proper license (including criminal background check, etc.), and distributors/manufacturers/registered owners were held liable for damages in the case of improper use, and with potential for their ownership/distribution license to be revoked, guns would become a lot safer. (Exactly what breakdown of liability is up for debate, but currently there is none whatsoever.)

Almost nobody has a problem with “gun ownership” in the abstract, and some type of gun ownership is legal in most parts of the world. The problems are with e.g. semiautomatic rifles being purchased on the black market and then used to shoot up schools, criminals trivially and untraceably getting their hands on as many guns as they want, people leaving guns lying around in places where children can play with them, or huge numbers of untraceable guns getting smuggled across the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

[citizensixteen]

>This is one of the main reasons I support legalization and/or decriminalization of all drugs. Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy.

Nobel economist Milton Friedman said, "The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill Said in the middle of the 19th century in 'On Liberty.' is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual’s own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it’s in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they’ll do you harm, why isn’t it all right to say you must not eat too much because you’ll do harm? Why isn’t it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you’re likely to die? Why isn’t it all right to say, “Oh, skiing, that’s no good, that’s a very dangerous sport, you’ll hurt yourself”? Where do you draw the line? If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.”

Milton Friedman interview from 1991 on America’s War on Drugs

https://www.aei.org/publication/milton-friedman-interview-fr...