I would guess the natural stuff. So, yeah. Opium and Heroin come from the same plant. Cocaine comes from a different plant. Meth is a chemical, similar to the prescription amphetimines they give kids like Ritalin.
If they passed Prop 19 for the opium plant and the coca plant, the results would be interesting. Legal to possess opium legal in small amounts, legal to possess the coca leaf in small amounts. Legal to grow the opium plant and the coca plant in small amounts. Legal to keep the product of your grow around your house.
But don’t make the manufactured product legal, just the natural product. So, opium would be legal, but not codeine, heroin or morphine. Coca leaf would be legal but not cocaine.
Let the locality decide about the sales of coca leaf and opium.
What would happen? Wouldn’t have much immediate effect on possession. Opium is rare and coca leaf is even more rare.
Minimal effect on the supply of coke and heroin. Coca plants don’t grow well outside of South America. It takes
a lot of coca plants to make cocaine. It takes a lot of opium plants to make heroin. And a lot of advanced knowledge. People would not be using their grow plots for plants designed to be converted into harder drugs.
There would be an interesting treatment of addiction here - “medical” opium or “medical” coca. Instead of methodone, give heroin addicts opium, or just let them grow it. Coke addicts could be given coca leaves.
On the negative side, there is the possibility that legalizing these physically addictive substances could lead to addiction, and a graduating up to the more potent form. If it ever is considered, that is certainly a real factor.
On the n
Morphine and codeine is a result of separation of opium; heroin a result of transformation of morphine.
As a quasi libertarian on the issue, I do not partake of any current street drug myself and would be unlikely to under looser regulations, but would like to see the issue medicalized (in a non-Bummercare, private system) along with other drugs that the FDA deems too risky to mainstream like the new female Flibbertygibbet or whatever it was called. If certain physicians establish a bond or insurance bloc such that they can be financially responsible for any permanent ill effect of the drug, then those physicians can prescribe anything but suicide medications and pharmacies can lawfully provide it.