Rising GOP support for the U.S. taking unilateral military action in Mexico against drug cartels is increasingly rattling people on both sides of the border who worry talk of an attack is getting normalized.
Wednesday’s Republican presidential primary debate featured high-stakes policy disagreements on a range of issues from abortion to the environment — but found near-unanimous consensus on the idea of using American military force to fight drug smuggling and migration.
Are you serious? We’re talking about coke and opiates! Not some weed and shrooms.
You cannot trust yourself to use those substances “recreationally and in safe way”, no matter how smart you are. Ask any user of it.
And by the way: I don’t support war intervention. My point is that legalisation of these drugs won’t make cartels disappear, but will cause immense harm.
I just think what it takes to forcefully keep these drugs from everyone is worse than the problems the drugs themselves create. I can get opiates if I wanted but I choose not to. Pretty sure people get addicted to illegal opiates mostly after a painful medical situation or from living in a desperate hopeless situation. Healthy people with opportunity don’t very often decide to risk their lives to get high when there are safer alternatives available.
I’ve done coke at parties with friends or in Vegas or whatever several times over the decades since I was young, never been addicted and my life was not ruined and I could say the same for many of my friends who have gone on to have families and jobs etc. But my life very much could’ve been ruined had I been arrested for it.
There’s also the issue of some people being more likely to get addicted than others.
Say, with the way addictions to tea, sugar, little portions of alcohol, ahem, porn, internet news, kinds of music, whatever else take me personally for long periods of time, I’d never voluntarily try something that serious in effect.
Maybe there’s a way to measure the reaction, I don’t know? Like with guns you need a medical examination, with heavy drugs it wouldn’t be that bad to have one. So that legally getting them would require at least that.
Alcohol addiction is honestly a much bigger problem than most other drug addiction simply because of the potentially lethal withdrawal of you try to quit without help.
I’m not excluding alcohol.
Anecdotes are irrelevant with problem of such a scale.
I, for example, have used cocaine once with my friend. I found that I’m not a fan of effect. My friend, on the other hand, went wild and do it every weekend if he has any money.
But again, anecdotes are irrelevant. Let’s believe medical professionals.
Would your life have been better had you been arrested that one time you did coke?