> Treating drug users is better than criminalizing them.
Not having them become drug users in the first place would be even better. Let's not forget that a lot of drugs really are seriously harmful
Criminalizing drug use is fucking stupid, sure, but I also really don't want to have big companies spend big advertising budgets on making people addicts.
And a lot of the ones that hurt lots of people now, predominantly harm people due to effects of the criminalisation. Even heroin is a quite safe drug (comparable to other opioids, which does not in any way make it harmless, but also not nearly as nasty as it's often portrayed) - to the extent that it's prescribed for post-op pain in .e.g the UK (under the name diamorphine).
It becomes the horrible nasty mess that people overdose on when you incentivise criminals to cut it with anything from other drugs to brick dust and sell it at all kinds of unpredictable doses because their customers have no recourse.
Give people predictable doses of clean heroin, and it's not much different than having people stay on prescription drugs like Vicodin. In fact, one of the most common gateways to heroin abuse is a dependency on prescription drugs like Vicodin - once the prescriptions are terminated people often turns to the black market due to dependencies, and gradually get nudged over to heroin because it is far cheaper.
I'm not saying we should have ads for heroin or let grocery stores sell it, but the criminalisation even of these drugs do massive amount of harm and we owe it to the people harmed to actually seriously consider whether the criminalisation is even moral.
Your concern of advertising budgets is easily prevented by outlawing advertising. Whenever I visit the US, I'm shocked at the amount of drug advertising on TV for example, as in Europe both drugs (prescription or otherwise) and alcohol advertising is strictly regulated or outright banned in a range of countries.
Likewise many European countries regulate sale of e.g. liquor heavily, including with government sales monopolies with stricter sales policies in a few countries.
Interestingly, opiate replacement therapy where heroin is the drug they choose to get you off heroin has a higher success rate than any other choice. I was lucky, Suboxone worked wonders for me, despite 6 years of addiction. I'm now fully recovered (and no long-lasting effects, such a curious side considering how horrendously addictive it was for myself; most other drugs that are as addictive cause pretty bad physical side effects from use alone) three years later and have been a productive member of society for those three years. All thanks to the government treating heroin addicts pretty well, as long as it's not the police whom are the first to find out about your problem anyway.
If the government saved a ton of money by not trying to fight the "War on Drugs" and also collected a lot of tax revenue on softer drugs like marijuana they'd have a lot more to put into education, treatment and prevention.
Even if the government would go part-way, there'd be an enormous impact. Let's say that we legalized marijuana...
The last figure that I read was that 85% of the DEA's budget was spent fighting marijuana.
If it were legalized, overnight, that would mean that the amount of money available to go after cocaine, heroin, crystal meth and prescription opiate trafficking would be increased by about 566%.
If you took only 10% of the budget and put it toward treatment and harm reduction, I believe that the problems associated with abuse would plummet. Portugal saw something like 50% decline when they decriminalized.
That's where we're heading in Uruguay with alcohol, tobacco and marijuana (all three are legal but advertising is restricted or forbidden for tobacco and marijuana, with alcohol to come soon).
I don't know how effective or practical banning advertising would be. I'm reminded of the song CoCo by O.T. Genasis [0] that proclaims the rappers love for cocaine.
That being said, drugs, including more dangerous drugs, are already very much part of our culture and glorified everywhere from music to movies. De-criminalizing them is the obvious course of path for harm-reduction and diminishing the influence of organized crime.
Interestingly if you really want to look into that song and the culture that created it, it is extremely anti cocaine use. It's all about selling and profiting from cocaine.
Done? France also ban advertisement on alcohol and cigarettes but the number of smokers isn't decreasing..
But I agree, drug use should be legalized but of course advertising for them (ANY kind of advertising) should be forbidden: note that this is problematic as many movie could be considered as a kind of advertising for alcohol, cigarettes, etc.
Add prohibiting taxes. With the added taxes, direct a large portion to projects which is intended to prevent new users and educate the population.
Ban the use in public areas. Make it social unacceptable behavior and shunned during day light.
Create regulations and complex bureaucracy for those who want to sell the product. Create state controlled monopolies if possible, which then can advertise against purchases.
For tobacco, you can have warning labels that covers most or the whole package.
Agreed that this should be the solution. Let's not repeat another century of tobacco deaths. Yet here we are with companies advertising their their food contains marijuana or that smoking marijuana is "cool" (sound familiar?).
I'm all for banning ads for drugs (alcohol is a drug) and I support plain packaging for cigs (and other drugs) but let's not compare tobacco to weed as 1:1's. Marijuana appears to have REAL medical uses unlike tobacco. I know, I know there was a time where "doctors" said tobacco was fine for you or even good for you [0] but I don't feel like it's a fair comparison to what doctors are saying today about weed. I'd like to think we've gotten better as a planet about filtering out quack-claims about things like this. No doubt there are people claiming weed to be the end-all-be-all, cure-all drug and I agree those people are crazy or seriously misinformed but I do believe there are proven, legitimate uses of marijuana in regards to medicine and the medical profession.
>> I also really don't want to have big companies spend big advertising budgets on making people addicts.
I don't want that either, but what I would really like is if we could find a way to encourage our massive pharmacological sector, in the private and public spheres, to research and produce less harmful recreational drugs.
The problem we'd have if we just de-regulated to encourage this is that there would be a market incentive to produce things that are more addictive.
Like they do now with prescription drugs of course. Seems like the solution would be to ban marketing of certain products to end consumers rather than ban the products themselves.
Not having them become drug users in the first place would be even better. Let's not forget that a lot of drugs really are seriously harmful
Criminalizing drug use is fucking stupid, sure, but I also really don't want to have big companies spend big advertising budgets on making people addicts.