<story><title>U.S. Legalization of Marijuana Has Hit Mexican Cartels’ Cross-Border Trade</title><url>http://time.com/3801889/us-legalization-marijuana-trade/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brazzy</author><text>&amp;gt; Treating drug users is better than criminalizing them.&lt;p&gt;Not having them become drug users in the first place would be even better. Let&amp;#x27;s not forget that a lot of drugs really are seriously harmful&lt;p&gt;Criminalizing drug &lt;i&gt;use&lt;/i&gt; is fucking stupid, sure, but I also really don&amp;#x27;t want to have big companies spend big advertising budgets on making people addicts.</text></item><item><author>acd</author><text>When will we legalize the hard drugs? Treating drug users is better than criminalizing them. I always compare drugs being illegal to the alcohol ban in the 1930s and the mafia like Alcopone that rose during that time. Legalizing all drugs is the way forward. Drug money is corrupting police and financing weapons for terror organizations.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vidarh</author><text>And a lot of them aren&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;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 &lt;i&gt;harmless&lt;/i&gt;, but also not nearly as nasty as it&amp;#x27;s often portrayed)  - to the extent that it&amp;#x27;s prescribed for post-op pain in .e.g the UK (under the name diamorphine).&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Give people predictable doses of clean heroin, and it&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;Your concern of advertising budgets is easily prevented by outlawing advertising. Whenever I visit the US, I&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;Likewise many European countries regulate sale of e.g. liquor heavily, including with government sales monopolies with stricter sales policies in a few countries.</text></comment>
<story><title>U.S. Legalization of Marijuana Has Hit Mexican Cartels’ Cross-Border Trade</title><url>http://time.com/3801889/us-legalization-marijuana-trade/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brazzy</author><text>&amp;gt; Treating drug users is better than criminalizing them.&lt;p&gt;Not having them become drug users in the first place would be even better. Let&amp;#x27;s not forget that a lot of drugs really are seriously harmful&lt;p&gt;Criminalizing drug &lt;i&gt;use&lt;/i&gt; is fucking stupid, sure, but I also really don&amp;#x27;t want to have big companies spend big advertising budgets on making people addicts.</text></item><item><author>acd</author><text>When will we legalize the hard drugs? Treating drug users is better than criminalizing them. I always compare drugs being illegal to the alcohol ban in the 1930s and the mafia like Alcopone that rose during that time. Legalizing all drugs is the way forward. Drug money is corrupting police and financing weapons for terror organizations.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>doikor</author><text>Easy solution would be something like what we have here in Finland with alcohol. Allow sales but ban all marketing. There done.</text></comment>