Politicians constantly talk about stopping the illegal immigrants that are coming from Mexico, but putting a wall has never and will never be a solution since the reason why so many displaced keep coming across the border is mostly to escape the crime, corruption, inequality, and violence of they have to live in their home...
No. Regulate and offer known recreational drugs pure.
Very few people take fentanyl on its own or intentionally. Even tranq (which I hadn’t heard of but just looked up) is primarily harmful because it’s often tainted with fentanyl or other potent yet potentially fatal additives. Fentanyl does not need to be legally sold, because there is no real market for it.
Hell, even fucking weed is tainted, primarily with silica-based desccants, in countries where it’s still illegal (cough UK cough).
However if people could get pure, laboratory tested recreational drugs then these issues could disappear overnight. Heroin is bad when you fall deep into addiction, but most heroin users wouldn’t get into that state if they could take the drug legally without taboo or victimisation of illicit dealers. 100 years ago opium dens were a thing, and there were some people deep in the poppy - but there were also people just as deep in their alcohol suffering worse. Alcohol is less of a problem today, and back in the 90s there was a study funded by DARE (and subsequently unpublished because they didn’t like the results) that determined most heroin users were in fact business men and women earning large salaries with enough income to support their habit with high quality product.
Just like digital piracy is a service problem, drug addiction is a societal mental health problem, and criminalising it only allows the problem to fester to extremes.
Decriminalise possession, keep supply of the most fatally harmful drugs illegal, legitimise and tax known recreational drugs.
That’s exactly true, I can only imagine it isn’t widely published because the GOP would rather rant and rave about TEH IMMAGRINTS!! and take any opportunity to say the government isn’t making things better. Meanwhile, a Republican President (you know which one) would rather sell even more production to China with no checks whatsover in exchange for a very cheap bribe.
I think you’re referring to the Controlled Substances Act, which details all the shit.
Fun fact, all the links I found at the top of a search about this law seem to have “DEA” in the URL, rather than any regular link to actual legislation. It’s almost as if they’re monitoring them. Most of them were broken lmao.
The thing is, a law needs to exist, it just needs to be written by people who don’t chew crayons. I’m not talking about those tasty ones the Marines gnaw on, but the dodgy import ones that the DEA think make them look classy.
In all seriousness, we don’t need to remove the law (which has a pretty solid name) we just need to reclassify all the drugs and change the penalties to be appropriate for the good of society. Possession of anything in general should not be a crime, except for possession of a significant amount of a potentially fatal drug, as such possession could only reasonably point to intent to supply. Supply of fatal drugs (eg fentanyl, maybe certain bath salts or whatever) should remain illegal. Beyond that, recreational drugs would be better legitimised such that any issues with them can be faced in daylight, instead of dark alleyways. Even the worst of the major recreational drugs wouldn’t be all that harmful if people had support around them - certainly no more harmful than alcohol.
However drug policing is literally the DEA’s bread and butter, they’re not going to give up their job for the greater good.
I dunno, I think it’s more complicated than that. First off, there are some things that should be prohibited - it’s illegal to privately own nuclear weapons, for the most extreme example. Second, many of these truly harmful drugs have tiny markets, and these markets are in fact propped up by other, more conventional drugs being illegal. If heroin were legal, very few if any people would even consider fentanyl, such that fentanyl could be prohibited entirely without having an out of control illegal market.
In some sense, though, we do already have a controlled legitimate market for these prohibited things. Even cannabis, even during the prohibition, had some legal purchase avenues for the purpose of research. Even nuclear, that’s manufactured by private businesses with permission from the government. That works for the vast majority of drugs, it only fails with popular, relatively low harm recreational drugs where the law just isn’t reasonable against the potential harm.
I think possession of any drug should be legal. However, the intent behind its use can still be illegal. If you have fentanyl and can demonstrate you only have it for some genuine use, and aren’t looking to cause harm with it, then that shouldn’t be a problem. Supplying fentanyl is much more likely to be a harmful circumstance, and its supply should be controlled.
What can the US do to help Mexico finally stop the cartels?
Politicians constantly talk about stopping the illegal immigrants that are coming from Mexico, but putting a wall has never and will never be a solution since the reason why so many displaced keep coming across the border is mostly to escape the crime, corruption, inequality, and violence of they have to live in their home...
Cookie experiments (i.pinimg.com)
PSA for the winter. (lemmy.world)