[babymode]

agreed that the discussion about how you measure or even define social stability is probably what's really at stake in this discussion. Policing and the concept of criminality provide a kind of 'stability' in the form of social control to governments. On the other hand, those same forces can be incredibly destabilising to the social lives of everyone who is criminalised, their families and friends, especially given that criminalisation for so many people is often a death sentence.

The other thing I'd like to just bring up is that the either/or between criminalising/not criminalising drugs can sometimes miss that there are many creative, diverse and humanising responses to problematic drug use that don't depend on control via the threat of punishment