There’s reasonable balances between free and total access to liquor stores on every corner and locking up every bathtub moonshiner.

A good part of the reason prohibition failed was 10,000 years of societal dependence with no alternatives. Humans aren’t built for the sedentary lifestyle and structured civilization we’ve built up and we really do need something to compensate.

We now have the technology and medical knowledge to reliably treat mental and physical ailments, we don’t need ethanol as our cure-all. If I could snap my fingers and swap professional treatment and healthy recreational norms for traditional drugs I’d do it in a heartbeat.

with crystal meth the statistics say, that only a few percent (we’re talking 1-2%) get addicted.

Couldn’t find the numbers on meth specifically but I’m highly skeptical.

70% of users who try an illegal drug before age 13 develop a substance abuse disorder within the next 7 years compared to 27% of those who try an illegal drug after age 17.

25.4% of illegal drug users have a drug disorder.

I’d argue that any form of self medication is inherently unhealthy, and free access to legal substances doesn’t fix that. Some people are able to navigate it responsibly but it’s not possible for most people.

The human brain is a complex soup of chemicals and electrical impulses, altering it with a substance won’t result in an objective self assessment of the effects.

Taking your example, plenty of normal and reasonably happy people get addicted to opiods. The first experiences are on such a different scale to regular chemical pleasure your brain generates that it alters your perception of normal feelings.

If you ask someone to compare that high to normal life before or after, they’ll tell you they never experienced “true” happiness before.

There are real, observable, permanent changes to brain structure from drug use. I don’t think that type of change should be taken lightly with personal experimentation. It should have the same scrutiny and medical guardrails that we give other permanent body choices.

For anyone interested, some reading on heroin’s impact on the brain

Deal 🤝

I’m of the opinion that unless it’s regulated in some way, people will be systemically/individually exploited. An addict can’t be trusted to keep doses safe, be sure they’re using in a safe place, or properly prioritize their personal wellness.

Just recognize it’s something that’s going to happen and take reasonable efforts to set limits without glamourizing it. Controlling ease of access is a simple way to do that (look at the bump in gambling problems since the 2018 SCOTUS ruling). You don’t have to kick in the doors of everyone with a personal grow or basement home brewing setup.

If these substances could be handled universally with education and social mores, total abstinence would have already worked. No amount of taboo can make crippling addiction sexy.

I don’t care about health benefits/dangers of any vice as much as I hate how ingrained vices are in our daily lives. I’m sick of beer ads, I hate online sports betting sponsoring every event (and rapidly turning a lot of friends into gamblers), my recently weed-legal state is already flooded with local ads and shitty shops.

I dream of a utopia where no vices are sold in a store or advertised. If you want to indulge you go to the equivalent of a Native American casino on steroids. It’s a massive temple to hedonism, zoning for it is very restricted. You can do any drug you want there, everything carefully dosed and tested. There’s complimentary trip-sitters and emergency services on call.

Things that aren’t an immediate threat to yourself/others (mushrooms, lsd, mj, low abv drinks, etc…) can be sold for private personal consumption off-prem with a reasonable limit per person. You can’t partake in public and can be asked for proof of purchase during transit.

There’s no perverse vice tax that leeches money from addicts who can’t afford it, the government’s best financial interest is to keep people clean and spending money elsewhere. If you need something to routinely “take the edge off” you get easy access to medical services (mental/physical/otherwise) and a prescription from a real doctor.

Any time I hear arguments for full legalization of anything in the USA I just have nightmares of inane Budweiser-style weed/cocaine/heroin commercials.

I might be alone on this but the freezing point of water is almost irrelevant in daily life. Any precipitation from 30°F (-1°C) to 35°F (1.5°C) results in some mix of snow/slush. Less than that and it’s snow/ice.

However if you live somewhere where they use salt as a de-icer, knowing the freezing point of saltwater (0°F, -17.7°C) is very, very important.