[Lurker]

“But heroin? You seriously wanna take a stab at arguing the benefits of legalizing heroin?”

Sure thing. Here’s the benefits:

The drug gangs no longer control the product. No more turf wars over heroin. Safeway and Costco fight over market share.

Purity goes up to pharma grade. Much more potent stuff kills addicts quicker.

Price goes down. No more robbing grandma for her money.

Reduced access to minors. It’s easier to get heroin than it is to get beer for kids these days.

Billions saved by ending the DEA.

4th and 5th Amendments restored to their former glory.

Corrupt cops have to find some other way to make side money.

Not much downside to it if you apply a bit of logic.

L

[Responsibility2nd]

And the health benefits to the user?

You forgot to mention those.

Suppose I thread hijack for a moment and ask for the benefits of child porn. I bet you could list 10-15 good reasons to legalize that in just 60 seconds.

[outpostinmass2]

This has essentially been done with methadone. It doesn’t kill as fast as heroin just turns people into zombies. The zombies still want the lethal stuff so they buy heroin from dealers to bring death more quickly. Nothing has changed and your solution won’t get rid of the heroin dealers.

[apoliticalone]

I agree.

The war on drugs (and war on terror for that matter) have become a major profit center for DHS and DOJ etc. and serve as a means to change policy and take away rights that would never be tolerated by the people.

We tried the WOD for 50 years and it hasn’t worked. Time to start looking for new solutions. The government always jumps off the deep end with their BS incompetent comprehensive solutions. They need to implement pilot programs as businesses do and then start refining what works.

Hollywood and media are experts at propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom They rigged the system to convince women to smoke through their “torches of freedom”. Except most of their propaganda has destroyed family values and society. But given their power to convince they could easily make drugs not cool, especially to youth.

[DiogenesLamp]

Not much downside to it if you apply a bit of logic.

And a hell of a lot of wishful thinking and Fantasy. You are using the same sort of logic that all the Liberal utopians use to explain how their communism will work out great for everyone.

But just like with communism, we have REAL WORLD EXAMPLES of what happens when your ideas are tried in practice. This is what happened when you idea was tried in Switzerland.

“The strange scene has been a fixture in Zurich for several years, tolerated by city officials who are convinced that drug use should be regarded as a sickness rather than a crime. Social and medical workers estimate that about 300 to 400 heavy drug users live in the park without shelter, toilets or showers, and that as many as 3,000 others pass through daily to buy and use drugs………..the midway of the grotesque carnival is a concrete path along the edge of the Limmat River, lined with makeshift counters covered with neatly arranged spoons, bottles of water and paper cups bristling with slender, disposable syringes. The crowd thickens as night falls and drug hustlers work their way through the sea of bodies clogging the path, calling out ''Sugar, sugar, fine sugar!'' when they mean heroin, and ''Cokay, cokay!'' for cocaine……..the other night, three men crouched under a park lamppost, dividing a white powdery pancake of heroin with a Swiss Army knife. Next to them, a woman lay in the dirt in a stupor. Four or five men were intensely working needles into their arms. A woman in a striped sweater probed for veins in one hand, blood streaming down her fingers, as a woman in leather pants and stained blouse wobbled past, a bloody syringe dangling from her neck.”

It was an utter disaster. Switzerland called it off.