I am saying there are two groups of people to look at: those who are in the habit of using substances to alter their mental state and those who make a living providing it for them. There is nothing difficult about that.
The question is whether giving in to people who want to perpetually live in an altered state would make the world safe for democracy and free from hardened criminals.
As a wise bug-themed superhero said, Bwah ha ha!
Drugs are neither the problem or a solution: it is how people see them that is the problem. People are very narrow-minded either way when it comes how they understand drugs. Neither the pro nor anti sides can be smug about their views or hold any virtuous airs because they are chained to confining habits that compel them to look for The One Rule That Explains Everything so they never have to think again, but then want everyone to walk lockstep with their ignorance so they never have to revise their thinking.
People who want them legalized or see them as good things are just as ignorant as those who see it as a monster. The pro side deifies drugs, seeing them as a God who will magically solve their problems. How many people I know thought they were getting high, never realizing they were given benign tea leaves. People believe in drugs the way they believe in God, but they don’t just want any God, but a forbidden one. The minute that Forbidden God becomes Mainstream God, they begin to lose the faith, so they up the ante to ensure there is always a forbidden element to their chosen God because they want to be more special and enlightened than everyone else and that is their venue to pretend to prove it. They can’t live without drugs…until they find a replacement that promises to offer more and bigger forbidden thrills than the last Forbidden God, but while they replace one God for another, they still think they need a power greater than they are to get by. There will always be enterprising people who profit from those who function by creating manufactured gods and the profiteers will always cheerlead the delusion because it’s easier than having to think and get a job that actually entails work. People have no interest in anything unless there is an element of exclusivity attached to it.
Those who see drugs as a devil think it’s the drugs that are bad, but it’s the expectations people have that give it power. They don’t realize it’s their emotional reaction that make it more attractive than it actually is. It’s like parents who go off their nut objecting to the neighbourhood bad boy and their daughter suddenly wants to date the guy even if he is a fugly, freeloading and disloyal abuser who she actually has no feelings for, but is exploiting to manipulate her parents’ emotions. She is not attracted to the troll, she is attracted to the idea of defying her parents and placing herself on top of the pecking order. She obsesses with her narrative that she will do anything to prove is right, and her boyfriend is just the beneficiary of her boring and unoriginal soap opera. If her parents shrugged their shoulders and said her self-absorbed narrative had no place in their active lives and she can date whoever to prove whatever point she wished because life happily goes on without her, the boyfriend will lose his attractiveness to her because he will no longer be of any use to her. Drugs may be different fodder, but the structure of thought is identical.
I have no use for bad boys or drugs. They do not intimidate me or evoke any emotional reactions in me because when it comes to them, consider me a drug atheist (and a bad boy atheist, too). Life is just too short, random, and chaotic for me to care about or have respect for the superficial, but to many people, it is their single obsession. They want to prove a point and think proving it will matter or mean something or give them some positive feeling, and when it doesn’t, they’re bitter and lost.
I neither demonize it nor glorify it, but I am not naive to think the actual drugs have anything to do with this manufactured debate: people just want to be special. They want no effort to the way to paradise. They want that forbidden God to give them both the special status and the paradise. Some people will thump a bible to get it. Some people will roll of joint or light a crack pipe for the same ends, although theses days, new God is the smart phone so people can stare at it and not have to deal with reality and maybe find the app or game that will decree them The Chosen One as it gets sent to all their enemies’ social media feeds complete with a smug emoji. It is common behaviour that keeps society in limbo. People will waste their lives debating this Silliosity, making up twisty arguments based on sophistry to keep their game alive. It is just a game that is a bigger pointless life-sink than Pokemon Go.
Let them play on that rigged board in their rabbit holes if they feel that is their safe space. Life can seem scary and not everyone has the ability to end sickness, violence, prejudice, sadness, or poverty, so we can throw them a bone to make them feel important, smart, and worldy. I do not care, but I am not blind to it, either. Drugs cannot make a person better or worse. It is not a mask, magic wand, or even an alibi or excuse you can hide behind for making bad judgements based on a flawed personality. You are who you are and you can never get away from who you really are. Your true essence overrides anything drugs can do. Drugs are the illusion, but your belief in them is what’s real.
And speaking of illusions, for anyone who still subscribes to the Fairy Princess Theory that legalizing drugs will magically make gangs and cartels vanish…
Prescription drugs are legal and there is a huge black market for them.
Over the Counter drugs are legal and there is a huge black market for them.
Alcohol and cigarettes are legal and there is a huge black market for them.
Toys are legal and there is a huge counterfeit black market for them.
Hello Kitty is legal and there is a huge counterfeit black market for them.
Cheese is legal and there is even a profitable black market for it, too.
The chances legalized drugs will make those scary people go away, dismantle their systems, or dampen their power?
Nil.
There is a black market for every benign, legal, and mundane item out there. People do not engage in criminal behaviour on that scale because they have to do it to survive: they do it because they WANT to do it. That is the structure of their thinking and they have decades of experience in honing that thinking. They get off on tricking, conning, bullying, manipulating, controlling, brainwashing, fleecing, dominating, confining, breaking, cornering, harming, destroying, and terrorizing people. It gives them superpowers. The end. They are who they are, and if suddenly no one ever wanted or needed drugs and they ceased to exist, there would be a replacement for them to keep those organized cabals alive in a heartbeat. Do not kid yourself: there is such a thing as being an unrepentant psychopath and such people will gleefully exercise their psychopathic impulses to the fullest no matter what – and see nothing wrong with doing it.
Memo to the sketchy naive who overestimate their street cred: life really is not an ABC After School Special that seemed super-profound and brilliant as you viewed it while smoking daddy’s weed. That is your inconvenient daily dose of reality – now snort that up your nose and feel it. Next!
