🚀 go-pugleaf

`There had to be consequences`

I am posting this ideas because the simple mention of drugs is enough
to stigmatize you. It doesn't have to be true, is just a matter of
someone spreading the rumor. I suffered in high school because of this
and I only learned years later. And the sheer fact is you cannot
defend yourself against drugs. Are you sure nobody mixed amphetamines
in the bread flour, for instance?
Ironically, if sellers want to generate more income, they need dugs to
be legalized, hough very probably ot os them and the supporters of the
ban who will send the leprechauns, their secret police, to cause bad
effects in your life. There are bad effects of using durgs, but the
big problem is a society that strips you of your quality as a person
just because somebody accuses you of beings drugs. The fact is, many
consequences of using drugs are NOT NECESSARY. They don't follow from
the usage but from the hysteric (devoid of reason) acts of people
afraid of drugs...
Responsible recreative drug use is possible, but governments, the
judiciary, law enforcers and narcotic bands will get sure that drug
use have adverse side effects in an individual`s life in order to
exemplify and sustain the ban and its extraordinary economic benefits.

So the ban is a source for international and internal corruption and a
danger to individuals given the easiness with which incrimination and
stigma can be attached to a person, even as a political weapon in
democratic countries. The drug ban effectively turns the forces of
good into sources of evil in order to show that they are right.

There are many reasons why modern societies banned drugs despite their
common historical use, but the main reason is undoubtedly the
extraordinary economic benefits derived from the black market.

Simplifying, drugs are banned as a way to protect society on the
assumption that drug users are irresponsible and a danger toward non
users and to themselves. Drugs are the modern stigma, the permanent
tag that automatically distinguishes decent people from `the rest`.
Drug users are ipso facto dangerous and lose any sense of right and
wrong, being able to do the biggest monstrosities under the influx of
the substances...

The problem with this position is that it leaves the individuals
unprotected against the vested interests of the ban. There
_must_be_side_effects_, so even the most innocent contact with the
drugs world is enough to put the individual in danger of being
incriminated. There is a vested interest both by law enforcers and
drug cartels to prove that using drugs is *bad*, that there is no such
thing as a successful life and drug intake. If somebody proves this
assumption otherwise wrong, the vested interests will jump to `put
things in order`. So law enforcers will be more severe if drugs are
mentioned than if drugs are not mentioned, while drug bands will be
interested in making the life of the individual miserable to preserve
the ban. Of course, law corps and the army benefit from the ban by
receiving huge budgets, while drug cartels and sellers benefit from
artificially high prices and the power tht comes with them. The losers
are of course the people who uses drugs and in general the whole of
society. This also introduces a shared interest among police corps of
different countries that is an open door to corruption and abuse. And
the fact is that it is very easy to incriminate anybody with drug use,
further leaving the individual unprotected and open to discredit, a
weapon open against political opponents even in democratic countries.

It should be evident that a modern liberal State should have no voice
about the internal states of individuals; giving enough information
about the effects of drugs should be enough to let individuals make
their own decision. That drug users might pose a threat to others is a
good reason, but then alcohol *is* a risk to others and it was shown
that banning it is short of impossible; also many drugs make the
individual withdraw in themselves, making then even less of a threat.
It is also cited that drug users are casualties when it comes to lead
productive lives, though some users use drugs *precisely* to lead even
more active lives than they could possibly do without drugs. Consumer
countries should by now be ruined if this were the case. It is also
cited that drugs are a health risk to non users, though again that is
easily controlled by designating special places to use them, like the
smokers` sections.

So the main reason to ban drugs remains the economics benefits it
generates. Should drugs be decriminalized this world would suffer less
violence and the monies would be more usefully spent in research and
damage control.

For instance, you are quite happy with your life, but one of your
associates happens to be related to drugs, somehow. He depends on you,
so if you fail him he will have trouble. And then you have it: when
you least expect it something goes *really* wrong. You suffer an
accident, your office is burglared, you fall unexpectedly ill, or at a
critical moment there is a twig in your car`s lock, you are involved
in a crash or whatever. You suffer consequences, but your friend
suffers consequences too, you fail him and now he is a little bit
worse than before, or a lot worse and that is what counts. Maybe not
the best example but even having nothing to do with drugs can turn you
into a side effect. Exactly what can happened depends on the
circumstances, but with the kind of money drugs move aroud you can
easily expect a paid think tank looking for `side effects`.

In the most extreme case you may end up in a tomb... as the side
effects of somebody else. In fact, the more successful somebody is or
may become, the bigger the side effects should be, otherwise that
person would prove that you can use drugs without having repercusions.

Now, using drugs *has* effects and side effects, but then everything
has side effects; every coin has two faces. But that doesn`t mean that
the effects are the same for all drugs nor for all people. Foremost,
drugs do have an effect on the person that uses them, otherwise there
is no point in using them. And at least while the effect lasts there
can be side effects, but the same can be said of clinical drugs, like
in those legends that warn against driving while taking a cough syrup.
You can cause an accident if you are slowed for taking a drug while
driving and that will be a side effect, though if you don`t drive at
the same time there shouldn`t be side effects. If you take a syrup the
night before and next day you crash, would you blame the syrup? Very
unlikely, though if instead of a syrup it was dope, people would tend
to blame your crash on the fact that you were doped last night, even
if you already feel clean.

Drugs also have an effect on your health. Besides the actual
experience, whatever it may be, you can expect concomitant effect,
both short and long term. Commonly your heart rate changes while you
are under the effect of drugs, a short term effect. For most drugs you
wouldn`t expect a heart attack, even though you can experience sudden
death if you take extasis, but then the same can happen if you take
viagra; in that respect both are equal, though one`s illegal while the
other`s legal. You can die of an overdose, of course, but I know at
least one case were sudden death came after taking somebody else`s
legal medication.

In the long term you can expect an effect in your health. Steroids
reduce your virility and the size of testicles, for instance, but long
term effects are expected from tobacco and alcohol, both legal. Not
all drugs have the same addictive power nor will cause an addiction in
all people. As far as I can remember tobacco is by far the most
addictive of substances, even more than heroin, and it is still legal.
You will also experiment long term effects from food, cholesterol and
obesity being the most common perhaps. So the real question is how
compulsive is the habit, if that particular person does develop a
habit. Given the enormous diversity of people, you must find people
who don`t develop addictions and people who get addicted right away.

This willingness to protect people against themselves is one of the
main reasons behind the ban; Father Government takes care of his
irresponsible children by banning what hurts them, a priori. But the
sheer fact that people is *very* diverse and exhibits different
degrees of responsibility makes necessary to force the existence of
side effects. This doesn`t necessarily mean that government per se
engages in criminal acts to keep the banning in force, it is only
necessary that some powerful sectors believe the ban must be uphold to
command the resources to create side effects when necessary, without
forgetting there are whole countries, like Mexico and Colombia, who
get huge quantitites of money by selling drugs (on the assumed fact
that price is kept above normal market clearing prices). Drug capos
certainly have the resources and the mafias necessary to cause side
effects even to powerful people, like well known artists.

Current common wisdom states that drugs are habit forming and bring
about compulsion, but again it depends on the person. There are
addictive personalities that become addicted to almost everything, and
if using drugs end up as multidrug users, but that`s a personality
trait, not the norm. Other people must exhibit different degrees of
addiction as well as different levels of control during drug intake.
It cannot be assumed as a general rule that all people get addicted
with a single drug intake nor that all people would become killers
under the influence of drugs if that inclination is not already in
their character. Also the levels of compulsion are different, if at
all present, depending on the individual`s metabolism and psychology.
It is a myth that all drug users must become thieves or assassins if
they lack drug, and it only speaks of a shallow understanding of the
human nature and individual differences. A few people would kill and
rob if they don`t have drug for the next day, while a few others may
be exposed to different drugs without  even noticing. Most people lies
within both extremes.