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Swiss cocaine so cheap and widely used they’re considering legalising it
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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People. Cocaine is not maryjanes. You can get addicted badly to cocaine. There's tons of neurological effects that will cause you to not function proplerly in society. By all means smoke your ganja but don't equate hard drugs with it.
People also confuse legalisation with general availability. The two are not synonymous.
I have a completely different problem with cocaine. Namely that it is extremely exploitive to the people who grow the coca. It takes about two acres of coca plants to produce just one kilo of cocaine. Obviously, that means the people who farm it are paid virtually nothing and live on starvation wages. If it's really cheap in Switzerland, that makes it worse.
On top of that, coca plantations are responsible for huge amounts of deforestation in an area of the world that should not be deforested.
However- hundreds of thousands of people are working in coca plantations and own small coca farms and if this all ended, they wouldn't even have the meagre wages they make from coca farming. So I don't know what the solution here is.
wouldn't legalizing it also solve that issue? It could be grown legally - much like legal marijuana.
Lots of highly addicting stuff is legal, I don't care if people do cocaine. Make it legal and safely accessible so drug addicts can participate in society and not have to fund cartels
Many mistakes are available at highly competitive prices.
The question is whether or not a legal-in-some-circumstances is more effective at reducing social damage than keeping it illegal.
The same things can be said about maryjanes as well. And about alcohol. With cocaine it is just even more likely.
Idk, it seems like a pretty big jump in addiction potential. I don't hear of too many people going into sex work to support their alcohol and cannabis habits.
I do support at least decriminalization of all drugs though. As long as it coincides with adequate education, harm reduction, and therapy resources.
Yeah it's always the same thing. "Guys, you can smoke cigarettes, but weed will fry your brains and leave you completely useless to society. Legalizing would be a disaster".
Not even close
Yes, light and legal drugs are not okay as well. They too may cause severe health (including mental health) issues, as well as addiction.
THC, alcohol, nicotine and even caffeine cause significant and measurable harm, and you'll be much better off by restricting them long-term, unless you have medical indications to consume them.
If you need any of them to relax or to have a good party or to stay productive, remember it is NOT sustainable and actively harmful and something has to be done about the way you organize your life. You can't go on like this forever, it will get you eventually
What consenting adults do with their body is their own business.
Bodily autonomy is an all or nothing thing. Whether you're talking about abortion, gender affirming surgery, taking a dick in the ass and in the mouth at the same time, or shooting meth into your dick. It's all the same thing.
I don't necessarily disagree, but this brings up the next round of tough questions:
If your bodily autonomy is absolute, fine, but what happens when your choices and their impact start to spill beyond your own personal life?
If you want to go wild with hard drugs, okay fine, whatever. But when you need medical attention because of that decision, should insurance providers or the state be obligated to spend in order to treat you?
When your addiction costs you your job and support network, should the collective taxpayer have to subsidize your poor life choices?
I don't mind the notion that individuals should have final say over what happens to their bodies, but that sort of assumption of responsibility, at some point, cuts both ways...and the flip side of some of these decisions would suggest that the individual should bear all consequences of their decisions...which seems unlikely in practice. We're not going to see an addict rushed to an ER and the hospital toss them out into the street saying, "This was your decision! Sorry!"
And the mitigation measures seem equally unlikely to fly with the "strict bodily autonomy" crowd: increased insurance premiums or exception clauses in policies in order to keep expenses reined in for the rest of the policy holders/taxpayers who aren't using their strict autonomy in a way that adversely affects others.
While it's fine to conceptually discuss these decisions in a vacuum where it only affects the individual, in real life application, these decisions have impacts outside the individual in almost every case, which fundamentally shift the discussion.
I struggle with this line of thinking because there are so many legal things people can do to increase their probability of being a burden in the national healthcare system. Alcohol, junk food, working too much, gambling too maybe. I can't wrap my head around a system that would be "fair" and not fall into a black mirror episode dystopian "good citizen" points system. I'd rather just pay more than my fair share, knowingly subsidise people who make bad choices, and not live in the dystopian society.
Theres a separate argument about the drugs increasing crime probability that I also don't buy entirely. Those crimes are crimes already, so making these other "precrimes" also crimes seems a bit weird - not to mention wildly ineffective at reducing harm or use of the substances in question. I'm sure we can identify books and films that increase future criminal probability too.
Bodily autonomy does hold some water for me as an argument, but for me it's more about finding a way to minimise societal harm while maximally hurting the businesses profiting from these dark economies we have created through prohibition. But this brings up another round of tough questions: do we do this for all substances? Forever? Is this really the path of least societal harm? (I honestly don't know)
Then you charge people with the crimes they've committed. You hold people accountable for the choices they've made. It's quite simple, in my opinion.
There are plenty of "hard drugs" you can do with very little damage to your body. Cocaine is not one of them. In fact, it's one of the worst things you can do for your heart.
Nobody is saying that people should start taking cocaine. Just that you shouldn't get your life ruined by having it / using it.
Also, knowing that what your getting isn't mixed with mdma, amphetamines, ketamine and being able to properly monitor your dosage instead of guesstimating the purity and doing brain arithmetic is very helpful.
There's a major difference in having the person who sells it to you wanting you to quit vs wanting you to consume more.
Ironically, cocaine would be safer if it were cut with those 3 drugs
You can get addicted to and fuck up your life with bud too my friend. It’s harder but it’s possible. Source, me.
Also, as the others said. Coke being illegal does nothing to stop its prevalence so what’s the point.