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Personally in this era of fentanyl and other absurdities I'd much rather live in a society with zero tolerance for drugs (and thereby mitigate junkie random encounters substantially) than take on the externalities of recreational drug use. I'm living in an affluent Western society presently, and the vast majority of my perceived threat from my fellow citizens is from drug users.
Why, why, why is anyone still talking like 'drugs' is a useful, let alone coherent, category? You don't mean zero tolerance for drugs. You mean zero tolerance for a much smaller, much more specifically-defined subset. Why not just amend that subset?
This is an excellent and underappreciated point. Oregon legalized cannabis to basically no ill effect whatsoever (actually the worst outcome has been that credit card processors won't do business with pot shops, so the pot shops only deal in cash, so they get robbed a lot). Oregon legalized all drugs and it has been an absolute disaster because "all drugs" included meth and opiates.
Even within that, I don't think I've ever met anyone who wants coffee, tea, coca cola, aspirin, or cough syrup banned. And that's before we get to prescription drugs.
Actually, most people seem to be fine with most drugs being legal. Like you I've come to the conclusion that the problem is opiates and meth, and maybe to a smaller degree a couple others, but... really, it's opiates and meth that are the problems. And if there's a third member of that set it's alcohol, which I don't want banned either.
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