The drugs seem to be in the Bay Area water supply (metaphorically or literally? no one really knows for sure), that is another reason to move somewhere else sooner rather than later. In Bay Area, you probably can’t avoid meeting junkies every day, this shifts your “Overton window”
In a bunch of comments on this post, people are giving opinions about “drugs.” I think this is the wrong level of abstraction, sorta like having an opinion about whether food is good or bad.
No offense, but the article you linked is quite terrible because it compares total deaths while completely disregarding the base rates of use. By the same logic, cycling is more dangerous than base jumping.
This said, yes, some drugs are more dangerous than others, but good policies need to be simple, unambiguous and easy to enforce. A policy of “no illegal drugs” satisfies these criteria, while a policy of “do your own research and use your own judgment” in practice means “junkies welcome”.
On the meta level, this “hey, not all drugs are bad, I can find some research online, and decide which ones are safe” way of thinking seems like what gave us the problem.
I think something like Jim’s point of overcorrecting from a coarse view of “all drugs are bad” to a coarse view of “hey, the authorities lied to us about drugs and they’re probably okay to use casually” is closer to what gave us the problem.
In a bunch of comments on this post, people are giving opinions about “drugs.” I think this is the wrong level of abstraction, sorta like having an opinion about whether food is good or bad.
Different drugs have wildly different effect and risk profiles – it doesn’t make sense to lump them all together into one category.
No offense, but the article you linked is quite terrible because it compares total deaths while completely disregarding the base rates of use. By the same logic, cycling is more dangerous than base jumping.
This said, yes, some drugs are more dangerous than others, but good policies need to be simple, unambiguous and easy to enforce. A policy of “no illegal drugs” satisfies these criteria, while a policy of “do your own research and use your own judgment” in practice means “junkies welcome”.
Technically, yes.
On the meta level, this “hey, not all drugs are bad, I can find some research online, and decide which ones are safe” way of thinking seems like what gave us the problem.
I think something like Jim’s point of overcorrecting from a coarse view of “all drugs are bad” to a coarse view of “hey, the authorities lied to us about drugs and they’re probably okay to use casually” is closer to what gave us the problem.