Anyone caught selling drugs ….shot within a week…..drugs would disappear fast…trying to get a kid straight has been on drugs since the age of 12 now 27 has to beautiful kids…clean two and a half years…but the dam stuff is everywhere..
There are functioning alcoholics and there are alcoholics who destroy their lives.
With illegal drugs part of the destruction is not the drugs themselves but the crimes addicts commit to get the drugs, the anxiety they feel about missing the next fix, the time they spend chasing the drug, the criminal record that makes it hard to find employment.
I’ve taken care of people who were addicted to legal drugs - oxycodone and benzodiazepines - who were messed up, unable to function - but I think they suffered from mental illness to begin with, and they weren’t out on the streets making life difficult for other people. They made life difficult for their parents, sure, but mental illness is going to do that anyway.
Yes, mind-altering drugs, even legal, will make some people’s lives much worse, will trigger latent psychoses in some, will cause the deaths of others.
I still think the harm to society, to our country and to our freedom, from the War on Drugs, is worse than the drugs themselves.
“Anyone caught selling drugs ….shot within a week…..drugs would disappear fast”
They have public executions in many Asian countries for dealing. Those countries are still flush with drugs. Why? Because you can make more money in one year than most people will ever make in a lifetime.
Some poor people will always risk death to be rich. When you take a dealer down, there are dozens of people who are already waiting to take their place.
The more you battle it with force, the higher the profit (and corruption) goes. The only thing that changes is how much the dealers make and how much the junkies will have to steal to get their fix.
Eventually the profit goes so high that entire nations become bought by drug cartels. Think of the power gangsters gained during alcohol prohibition and multiply the profits by several thousand.