[LawTalkingGuy]

> Nobody starts using because they have a great life but they’re just curious what a bit of meth feels like and then accidentally get hooked.

No, I know people who've been hooked meth and heroin (all different people) who not only tried them for the high, but used them "safely" for years before they lost control.

EDIT: Here's a post from an HN user who followed exactly this path - no intention of self harm at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36965442

This single anecdote disproves your "nobody starts" claim.

> They do it because there’s no better life path open to them. It’s really a form of suicide.

No, less than one in twenty at most wants to die or has circumstances that would make the average person want to be dead if they had the addiction treated. (Which with modern drug-based methods is actually pretty easy.)

> Criminalizing will make the suicide process faster and less visible to you.

It's not suicide though, that's just want you're saying. It's your opinion. Given that most people recognize this isn't suicide, and most users did not and do not want to die, it should not be treated flippantly and the responses shouldn't be denigrated.

Banning hard drugs is like banning unsafe food or medical products - it's what we expect our government to do.

> Making it illegal would be like criminalizing sugar because of the obesity epidemic.

That would work and would save a lot of lives. And fwiw, the argument isn't if we should criminalize sugar which we already do in many goods and forms, it's about at what point the FDA should set the allowed value.