Evert Rauwendaal
@EvertRauwendaal
Join me. Together we can give the policy of drug prohibition a helpful push on the road to oblivion.
Thomas Szasz described the problem at @harvardmed in 1992:
‘Nicotine is highly addictive and that means vaping is highly addictive’. Does that make sense to you @JonathanFoulds? Does make sense to anyone? It doesn’t make sense to me and I’ve studied tobacco at the post graduate level and worked at Quitline for 15 years.
Nicotine is highly addictive and that means vaping is highly addictive. Youth vaping rates in Australia doubled between 2016 and 2019. We must get on top of this. My advice to anyone considering taking up the habit is that you might not be able to stop. theguardian.com/australia-news…
Some people believe that certain drugs are ‘illegal’ and should remain ‘illegal’. Other people believe that some drugs are illegal but ought to be ‘legalised’. Both perspectives rest on the flawed assumption that drugs exist solely in one of two states—either legal or illegal.
Using language meant for describing conduct to describe ‘drugs’ reinforces the falsehood that prohibitionists rely on to demonise drugs & PWUD. Namely, that drugs have an intrinsic legality which can (but shouldn’t) be toggled from one state (illegal) to another (legal).
You cannot wage war on ‘illegal drugs’ because they don’t exist. Nor do ‘legal drugs’ for that matter. Drugs are inanimate, morally neutral objects with no agency. They have no intrinsic legality & can’t be assigned one. Only conduct can be deemed illegal in legal philosophy.
What’s the case for making weed legal or booze illegal? Neither question makes sense. Drugs cannot be deemed legal or illegal, only conduct, rendering debates over what they should ‘be’ (legal/illegal) utterly pointless. Their ‘legality’ will never change because they have none.
There is no need to ‘make illegal drugs legal’ or argue for or against this position for the simple reason that only CONDUCT can be deemed illegal, not substances themselves.
It’s crucial to clarify that the end of National Prohibition didn’t involve “legalizing alcohol”—it wasn’t illegal in the first place. Similarly, what many think of as “illegal drugs” are not illegal either. Drugs aren’t criminalised, only types of conduct related to them are.
Inside Pakistan's morphine crisis Cheap and effective opioid painkillers like morphine are usually not available for patients receiving cancer treatment and end-of-life care in Pakistan. Why is the medication hard to come by?
I tell you this refusal to tax & regulate the sale of cannabis, cocaine, opium, mushrooms etc is leaving some serious revenue 💰 on the table. If creating a black market for booze was a mistake why is having a black market for nicotine products, like snus + vapes, so desirable?
When someone fully transitions from smoking tobacco to using snus, it’s a victory for both the individual, their family and healthcare system.
Give them more nicotine dammit! The idea is to extinguish the fire quickly, to prevent the smoke from causing more damage, so all that remains is a manageable chemical dependence with relatively minor health risks.
Most people overcome intense, often harmful relationships with drugs by deciding they've had enough & choosing to move on. We should emphasize that change is possible, even if it takes multiple tries. Why label those striving for change as having a "disease" called “addiction”?
The solution to problems like moonshine blindness and Al Capone was to amend the law so adults could buy and sell alcohol at licensed venues without a prescription. It was NOT simply to “legalize alcohol.”
I wouldn’t want to be punished for buying alcohol, so why would I want anyone to be punished for buying other drugs?
"More often than not, the effective treatment of pain requires neither clinics nor doctors, but only a free market in drugs. However, such pharmaceutical freedom would make our highly paid pain researchers and pain clinicians unnecessary and unemployed." --Thomas Szasz
"The therapeutic state... prevents sane adults from taking the drugs they want, and insane adults from rejecting the drugs they do not want." --Thomas Szasz, from Our Right to Drugs, p. 132
There’s no compelling reason to criminalize the sale of substances like LSD, cocaine, methamphetamine, GHB, ketamine, or opium when sold in clearly labeled doses with warning labels and age limits.