Sometimes the prohibition can make obtaining illegal things more difficult and risky, and many of us are too lazy or risk avoidant to push through that. Sometimes accessing a prohibited things requires social contacts not everyone has access to. Sometimes people will just straight up respect the law and not obtain the illegal thing even if it is easy or avoid providing it. Prohibitions can be very effective in reducing the incidence of some thing, especially if enforcement is draconian
Prohibitions can have negative effects, obviously especially for those who like the thing that is being prohibited, but it just seems dishonest to try to pretend like prohibitions don't change behavior whenever that happens to suit some political preference
I could buy whatever substances I wanted, no questions asked, just by knowing the right places to look.
To buy alcohol, I needed to have an older friend or family member buy it for me.
At least for me, and my situation, prohibition completely and utterly failed at making access to illegal drugs difficult. If they would have been regulated I most likely would not have managed to access stimulants until I was of legal age, or only had small amounts like I did with alcohol.
prohibition as a concept works, and prohibition when implemented has an effect, but that effect might be small compared to society's overall demand changes.
yes, of course, draconian measures have significant effects, usually the side-effects are bigger though
> A 2012 study suggested that belief in hell decreases crime rates, while belief in heaven increases them, and indicated that these correlations were stronger than other correlates like national wealth or income inequality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlates_of_crime
I live in Turkey, probably the most heavily and forcefully secularized muslim country in the world. (Ataturk killed half a million people for his secular reforms, Islamic alphabet got abolished, European dress code literally became law, religious clothing got prohibited, religion schools closed, scholars executed & prosecuted and Islamic prayer call was banned for 18 years).
It's free to drink here, but drugs are banned. Only a very small minority drinks alcohol in my region, I have no relatives I know of that ever drank. Drugs/weed/marijuana are horrible things no one ever wants in my entire social circle, I don't think I have ever seen a user of such substances in my entire life IRL. Western and some coastal cities drink more and there's more drug activity too (they're less religious too).
From here, it’s hilarious to see Westerners thinking prohibition is impossible and preaching against it.
Drugs are never going to be safer. If FDA approved painkillers can get you addicted, I am not sure how much safer can Fentanyl get. And making them cheaper is only going to create more problems.
Prohibition doesn’t prevent people from accessing drugs. But that doesn’t mean we make it easily accessible. Theft is illegal, but it doesn’t stop people from stealing. That doesn’t mean we legalize it. Because if we do, we’ll have a free for all like we have in SF and other parts of California.
[1] https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/06/california-illicit...
Proper labeling/packaging would make it easier to know what dose you're taking. I believe many overdose deaths were blamed on fentanyl added to heroin, where the user was expecting just heroin.
(I don't know how true my memory is of those initial news articles about fentanyl overdoses in the early 10s)
Not just with other opiates like Heroin, but all other drugs, period. People are dying from fentanyl when they thought they took a relatively safe party drug like MDMA or Ketamine. Much of that would disappear for people who actually knew what they were getting.
There are generally just not enough rehab spots, therapists, psychiatrists, etc. to address the unmet need. There are not enough of them in the health system because we don't pay for them enough.
There are also not really resources in the prison system either. A lot of the prison-reform movement was actually supported initially by conservatives, because low-tax governments cannot afford to lock large numbers of people up for petty crime.
No matter what the solution is, it requires spending money.
