(NOTE: In this theoretical scenario some restrictions would still apply. Some drugs would only be available on prescription, and all would carry an age limit, with health warnings being attached to the products sold. However, no drugs would be completely illegal.)
In the UK (I can't speak for anywhere else) there's been a bit of a kerfuffle in recent years over 'legal highs'. For those not in the know, these are legal, presumably relatively mild, drugs, that were seen until recently as a good way to get a buzz at a festival or in a club without anywhere near the same health risks as, say, cocaine or ecstasy. However, when deaths started being linked to some of these drugs, the most recent of which being Benzo Fury, a lot of people started calling for their legal status to be reevaluated. The government, ever eager to appeal to public opinion, even went against the recommendations of their own Specialist Health Adviser in one of these cases to reclassify a drug as illegal, then firing him when he publicly dissented. While there's no doubt that all substances that are designed to alter your body's chemistry in some way will carry some level of risk to your health, all this fuss got me thinking...
Would it really be so bad to just make all drugs legal?
When I first asked myself this question I envisioned apocalyptic scenes of society implosion, with everyone's kids addicted to smack, and people getting mowed down on the roads every day because the driver was tripping balls. However, now I'm not so sure. In fact, I now think the presumed downsides to legalising drugs are vastly overestimated by many, and that their change in status would actually significantly improve things overall.
We already have some very addictive and very harmful drugs available with relatively little restrictions (alcohol and tobacco predominantly) that are only legal today because they were discovered, and became ingrained in our culture long before the concept of drugs being harmful occurred to us. If they were discovered today you bet these two would be Class B illegal at least. I'm willing to bet even caffeine would be a Class C. Yet, despite nicotine being so potently addictive, were not all hooked on cigarettes, far from it. Nor are we all waiting for a liver transplant due to alcoholism. Even in the cases of the people that are, we blame the idiots who shovel excessive amounts of this stuff into their bodies despite how widely known the health implications are, not the substances or the people who sell them. Why would this be any different for, say, meth? So long as it carries an age limit of 18, can only be sold at licensed premises, and the information of just what kind of harm this stuff can do to you is widely known and readily available, then why is this not just another judgement call on the part of the person taking it? I think it's foolish to assume that we'd all just instantly start getting high on anything and everything so long as it was legal.
Besides, what good has outright banning a substance ever really done? It was shown, was it not, in the US back almost a century ago now that prohibition just doesn't work,and yet we are still following that same principle today. The issue of serious drug addiction, and it's consequences, particularly among young people, is consistently a major problem. If people are just going to do it anyway, then what was the point of banning it. So you can let organised crime handle the supply, which then funds half of the violent crime in places like Mexico, and the stuff gets cut with rat poison and asbestos for the sake of a quick profit? So addicts are forced to steal to fund their habit? So our prison system can get clogged up with youngsters doing time for cannabis possession, only to get hooked on the harder stuff inside and forced to deal to survive, all coming together to form this perpetuating cycle of chaos and suffering? What?
I also know from people who have had problems with drugs before, that much of the motivation to first take something dangerous or addictive enough to be classified as Class C or above in the UK (before you get hooked obviously), is the idea of it being rebellious, one of the last taboo's we have. The fact that it is illegal is half the bloody reason why people start doing it in the first place. You take away that motivation, make drug orderly and mundane, and the idea of rolling that spliff or snorting that line just won't seem all that fun anymore for your average rebellious teen. We might even see the phenomenon of drug use actually going down as the result of legalisation.
So here we have a list of possible pros for legalisation as I see it:
- Prison overcrowding vanishes.
- Organised crime as we know it plummets.
- Crime as a means to fund drug habits drops dramatically.
- Boost to the economy due to drug sales and taxation.
- Drugs made safer. No longer cut with poisonous substances. Users properly tracked by the system, therefore help (if needed) available earlier. Drop in spread of diseases from needle sharing.
- Possible drop in drug use from lack of taboo nature, clearer and more wide reaching health warnings, as well as proper regulation.
That's a lot of benefits there, and I think that the possible downsides (increased cases of addiction and health problems, leading to more strain on the health service etc.) would be, if not entirely unfounded, vastly less serious than many would predict.
I hope this isn't a TL;DR scenario, it's just there are a lot of points that I wanted to make. So anyway, am I on to something here, or am I talking out of my arse? You decide.
In the UK (I can't speak for anywhere else) there's been a bit of a kerfuffle in recent years over 'legal highs'. For those not in the know, these are legal, presumably relatively mild, drugs, that were seen until recently as a good way to get a buzz at a festival or in a club without anywhere near the same health risks as, say, cocaine or ecstasy. However, when deaths started being linked to some of these drugs, the most recent of which being Benzo Fury, a lot of people started calling for their legal status to be reevaluated. The government, ever eager to appeal to public opinion, even went against the recommendations of their own Specialist Health Adviser in one of these cases to reclassify a drug as illegal, then firing him when he publicly dissented. While there's no doubt that all substances that are designed to alter your body's chemistry in some way will carry some level of risk to your health, all this fuss got me thinking...
Would it really be so bad to just make all drugs legal?
When I first asked myself this question I envisioned apocalyptic scenes of society implosion, with everyone's kids addicted to smack, and people getting mowed down on the roads every day because the driver was tripping balls. However, now I'm not so sure. In fact, I now think the presumed downsides to legalising drugs are vastly overestimated by many, and that their change in status would actually significantly improve things overall.
We already have some very addictive and very harmful drugs available with relatively little restrictions (alcohol and tobacco predominantly) that are only legal today because they were discovered, and became ingrained in our culture long before the concept of drugs being harmful occurred to us. If they were discovered today you bet these two would be Class B illegal at least. I'm willing to bet even caffeine would be a Class C. Yet, despite nicotine being so potently addictive, were not all hooked on cigarettes, far from it. Nor are we all waiting for a liver transplant due to alcoholism. Even in the cases of the people that are, we blame the idiots who shovel excessive amounts of this stuff into their bodies despite how widely known the health implications are, not the substances or the people who sell them. Why would this be any different for, say, meth? So long as it carries an age limit of 18, can only be sold at licensed premises, and the information of just what kind of harm this stuff can do to you is widely known and readily available, then why is this not just another judgement call on the part of the person taking it? I think it's foolish to assume that we'd all just instantly start getting high on anything and everything so long as it was legal.
Besides, what good has outright banning a substance ever really done? It was shown, was it not, in the US back almost a century ago now that prohibition just doesn't work,and yet we are still following that same principle today. The issue of serious drug addiction, and it's consequences, particularly among young people, is consistently a major problem. If people are just going to do it anyway, then what was the point of banning it. So you can let organised crime handle the supply, which then funds half of the violent crime in places like Mexico, and the stuff gets cut with rat poison and asbestos for the sake of a quick profit? So addicts are forced to steal to fund their habit? So our prison system can get clogged up with youngsters doing time for cannabis possession, only to get hooked on the harder stuff inside and forced to deal to survive, all coming together to form this perpetuating cycle of chaos and suffering? What?
I also know from people who have had problems with drugs before, that much of the motivation to first take something dangerous or addictive enough to be classified as Class C or above in the UK (before you get hooked obviously), is the idea of it being rebellious, one of the last taboo's we have. The fact that it is illegal is half the bloody reason why people start doing it in the first place. You take away that motivation, make drug orderly and mundane, and the idea of rolling that spliff or snorting that line just won't seem all that fun anymore for your average rebellious teen. We might even see the phenomenon of drug use actually going down as the result of legalisation.
So here we have a list of possible pros for legalisation as I see it:
- Prison overcrowding vanishes.
- Organised crime as we know it plummets.
- Crime as a means to fund drug habits drops dramatically.
- Boost to the economy due to drug sales and taxation.
- Drugs made safer. No longer cut with poisonous substances. Users properly tracked by the system, therefore help (if needed) available earlier. Drop in spread of diseases from needle sharing.
- Possible drop in drug use from lack of taboo nature, clearer and more wide reaching health warnings, as well as proper regulation.
That's a lot of benefits there, and I think that the possible downsides (increased cases of addiction and health problems, leading to more strain on the health service etc.) would be, if not entirely unfounded, vastly less serious than many would predict.
I hope this isn't a TL;DR scenario, it's just there are a lot of points that I wanted to make. So anyway, am I on to something here, or am I talking out of my arse? You decide.
