Cocaine

There was a very good comment made on r/Ireland on this same topic the other day actually, here's a link

"All day I've been hearing the argument that people who buy drugs are to blame for all this, how we just need to wage the War on Drugs harder and it really boils my piss. This utterly parochial mindset betrays an ignorance of the history and reality of the War on Drugs. I've found it is typically paired with an obstinance and wilful disregard for critical thought on drug use and its prohibition. A phony, conservative, moralizing egotism that seeks to gratify itself by finger wagging at those who like to use drugs, disparaged as immoral reprobates, junkies and low-lives.

These people are the sort of hypocritical ***** who tut and roll their eyes when its pointed out that they too use dangerous drugs in their consumption of alcohol or how they too are or have been addicted to nicotine or caffeine. Instead of soberly (rimshot) analyzing the situation and how best to manage it, they also love to indulge a latent, pathological cruelty by calling for draconian, impractical punishments and lengthy prison sentences. They are happy to endlessly waste huge sums of public money treating drugs as a criminal issue but are loathe to see any spent on treating it as a public health issue. The sort of ***** to complain about "my tax dollars" (ugh) subsidizing those they view as inferior. Criminalize them - yes; help them - no.

All this in spite of the fact that they will often be familiar with the Prohibition of Alcohol in 1920s America, its consequences and its failure. Due to their own use of alcohol, they often have an instinctive opposition to it as not only futile, but an unjustifiable violation of individual autonomy. It infuriates me they often will still fail to see (or refuse to see) the parallels between it and the current War on Drugs, viewing it instead as a remote quirk of a bygone era, from which nothing is to be learned, amused by the pop culture artifacts of gangster movies, the fun aesthetics of speakeasies, flappers, ragtime and tommy guns.

There are countries all over the world with resources available to their law enforcement that the guards couldn't even imagine, where the War on Drugs is quite literally a militarized war, with prison conditions that would make Irish prisons look like a hotel in comparison and where people are regularly sentenced to public shaming, corporal punishment and death for violation of drug laws AND EVEN STILL they can't stop the drug trade.
There are no conditions of prohibition you could create in society that would eliminate the demand for and supply of drugs, the fact that they cannot even be kept out of prisons is a testament to this. To even attempt to do so would necessitate the creation of a police state not seen since the fascist and communist regimes of the 20th century.

The demand for drugs predates their prohibition and will never be sated or stymied, so if those who fund the drug trade are to bear responsibility for its violence, and this violence is caused by its illegality and the money to be made as a result, then surely blame must also fall at the feet of those who support a continuation the status quo and the conditions and incentives which create it: prohibition."

For people who advocate legalisation and decriminalisation, how will that work in a country like Ireland that can’t produce drugs like Cocaine?

Cocaine has to be imported from South America (Southeast Asia??), I don’t think there are any states in those areas where it can be grown that make it legal to do so and thus legal to export to here.

So, considering the immense difficulties in acquiring Cocaine, it would have to be produced here, as a synthetic compound, who will do this, a pharmaceutical company?

I doubt there will be many big pharma companies who want to get involved with the production of a drug that is illegal across much of the western world. And then throw in the possibility of that company being sued (much the same way tobacco companies were and are sued) by users who have suffered health effects, addiction, who have been victims of users under the effects of the drug etc.

Mixing coke and drink produces cocaethylene in your system which has serious health implications. In a country where binge drinking is prevalent and having a line on a night out is becoming the norm, that’s the type of thing that even Monsanto would want to avoid being caught up in legally.

Legalisation then starts to look only suitable to drugs that can be grown in country (weed, magic mushrooms) and are safe - well aware that when I say that, people drive stoned and crash, people with underlying mental health conditions try to jump out of windows on magic mushrooms - but at least from a biological standpoint combinations of those drugs don’t produce toxins in the body like cocaethylene.

Decriminalisation leaves the supply chain in place. The drugs still come in, the gangs increase business. It would be inevitable that the drug gangs would profit enormously from such a situation. Even if the average individual is just consuming their own small amount, it has to be obtained from someone.

How do you feel about this opinion?