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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess

Just because someone is using legal drugs/substances does NOT make it any easier PHYSICALLY to break the chemical dependency.

Are you talking about access to services?? I am not aware of any rehab institution/doctor/other services that will NOT treat you if you are dependent on illegal drugs?? People who use cocaine, heroin, etc. are still welcome to pursue rehab. Who prohibits them based not the legality of the drug they are addicted to?

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ORIGINAL: Zonie63

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess

Just because someone is using legal drugs/substances does NOT make it any easier PHYSICALLY to break the chemical dependency.

Are you talking about access to services?? I am not aware of any rehab institution/doctor/other services that will NOT treat you if you are dependent on illegal drugs?? People who use cocaine, heroin, etc. are still welcome to pursue rehab. Who prohibits them based not the legality of the drug they are addicted to?

I can see TheHeretic's point here. I think it's the stigma of being a "criminal" and outside the law, consorting with drug dealers, low-lifes - as opposed to just buying one's drug of choice from the corner store and consuming it legally. The damage to one's reputation in the community is greater merely because of its illegality. The whole idea of "illegal drugs" has existed on the periphery of society, anti-establishment and underground, whereas alcoholism is seen as semi "normal" from a societal point of view. It's a blatant double-standard which society has embraced for quite some time, and it also explains why alcohol is legal while these other substances are not.

My late father had been in AA for several decades, and he told me that there were some AA groups which were very resistant to anyone coming in identifying as an "addict." Some saw their mission as dealing strictly with alcoholism and only alcoholism, not with any other kind of addiction. I think that's since changed in recent years, as they're more tolerant of addicts now. In some smaller areas, treatment and support systems were mainly geared towards alcoholics, although that seems to be changing now, too (depending on the funding, which is another matter).

I don't think the legality or illegality of a substance has anything to do with the physiological effects of addiction, although not all addictions are the same either. But the legality of something might influence society's overall view of the substance and its users, as well as availability of services for those who are in need of help with their addiction. Legalization may or may not make it any easier for people to ask for and get the help they need, but it would keep the problem in the medical realm where it can be dealt with on that level.

It doesn't change the physical effects of the addiction, but it might decrease the overall damage to society from the problem at hand. I don't think sending them to prison does anything, unless they're being sent to intensive drug treatment centers. Eradicating the substance itself is impossible, but even if society could eliminate all heroin, cocaine, etc., people will just find some other way of altering/numbing their perceptions.

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

From The Atlantic:

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NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Christopher Beach was trying to defend keeping marijuana illegal to a roomful of conservatives, and it was not going well.

When Beach insisted the drug war has not been a complete failure, laughter rippled through the crowd.

When he said governments sometimes have to protect people from themselves, there were groans and boos.
One after another, audience members stood to quibble with his statistics and accuse him of bad faith. As the discussion drew to a close with yet another hostile blast in his direction, Beach mumbled into his microphone, "This is just getting more fun."

Beach's panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference, titled "Rocky Mountain High: Does Legalized Pot Mean Society's Going Up In Smoke?," was ostensibly a debate. I attended expecting to find conservatives divided on the question, which seems to pit Republican cultural conservatism against the party's ascendant libertarian strain.

But the discussion—which pitted Beach, a producer for the Morning in America radio show hosted by former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, against Mary Katharine Ham, a conservative blogger and Fox News contributor—turned out to be surprisingly one-sided.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/the-republican-partys-pot-dilemma/284289/


I've been an active proponent of drug legalization a lot longer than my voter registration has said Republican. If there is anything that could turn me into a single-issue voter, this would be it. How the federal government will proceed with the legalizing states is the next giant hurdle to ending the horrific failed program of prohibition.

My gut says the party is going to get it wrong for 2016. My question will be whether the candidate will get it right anyway.

I'll also be watching the Democrat candidate. I certainly expect to hear the right noises from them, but there are a lot of government jobs on the line here. Obama was going to close Gitmo in '08, and the House Democrats were going to end that pesky war in Iraq in 2006. Hearing them say it, and believing they'll do it are very different things.

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
My previous comments were all directed specifically at the physiological effects (so we are in agreement on that). For some reason other posters seem to think I am speaking of other things but I am not.

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In cities like New York, LA, people who quit cocaine regularly attend AA meetings.

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Many have attended private rehab centers where again, the legality of the drugs is not at issue. So my perspective is based on what I see in the larger cities. I can't vouch for what it is like in other places. So in a city like New York, my personal observation is that there is ZERO connection between legality and how easy it is to overcome the physiological effects of addiction. There is only the issue of overcoming one's personal demons. And the legality of the drug has very little to do with that.