What would happen if Crystal Meth was legal? [View all]

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Tue May 29, 2012, 06:28 PM - Edit history (1)

What would happen if Crystal Meth was legal?

This kind of question distorts drug debates because it has two very different answers.

If Meth, and only meth, was legalized tomorrow it would really suck. A lot of people would be taking meth, which makes people pretty evil and crazy.

On the other hand, if all drugs were legal and available at the (aptly named) drug store very few people would use crystal meth. Why would they? IIt is an unusually bad drug, and most people take it because it's cheaper and more available to them than comparable high-powered stimulants.

All people who take meth to stay awake working two jobs (they are real in the heartland) would stop taking meth on the spot. Most would use, say, adderall or Dexedrine. And some of them would have serious problems abusing those drugs, just like people do today, though the problems would be a tiny bit less operatic (meth is an amazingly fucked up drug). Others of them would pop a moderate dose of adderall at the beginning of the work day the way I drink one or two or six cups of coffee, and not have a problem.

A lot of people do take drugs illegally without having a problem. They do not make headlines, however, and are thus somewhat overlooked. (I say take drugs illegally instead of take illegal drugs to include the vast secondary market in perscription pills.) Not everyone who does or would like drugs is a born drug addict. (In the same way some people really do have only two or three beers.)

Someone who wanted to be fucked-up speedy buzzed would use cocaine... a pretty dangerous and crazy-making drug but not quite as bad as meth. Would they smoke that cocaine? Snort that cocaine off a mirror? No, probably not. They would squirt that cocaine in their nose in a mist dissolved in distilled water, just like they were taking Afrin.

If things were legal they would be made by drug companies, pure and reliably dosed.

And half the drugs we have heard of would fade away quickly. Most street drugs are used because they can be made easily, not because they are the funnest possible drugs, and certainly with no eye toward safety. The drug companies would come up with more enjoyable, and safer, and more reliably dosed drugs overnight. (Dead customers cut into repeat business.)

Nobody really wants to take "bath salts" or huff spray paint. They just want to get fucked up. These perverse poisons that come along every few weeks are all about legality and availability.

Heroin addicts would mostly switch to dilaudid. Not a great improvement, but better. Some people who drink at lunch would switch to xanax. Not saying that's better, but it is different.

Could big RecPharma develop a safe form of ecstasy? Maybe so. From watching people it seems like a lovely drug that makes everyone want to hug. Unfortunately it leaves you short of dopamine and chronically depressed. And it can kill you if you drink to much fluids while on it. (I mention that as a PSA.) Would a safer, less psychiatrically disabling form of ecstasy be a good thing or a bad thing? That's a complex question. (Personally, I reject all "the danger is good for public morality" arguments because I saw that first-hand with AIDS in the 1980s.)

Anyway, none of this means that drug legalization would necessarily be good. It would, however, be different in complex ways. It would change everything, not just one or two variables. Maybe it would be worse, but it cannot be analyzed by simply extrapolating illegal drugs and criminal drug use.

Some people probably oppose drug legalization because it would empower the crack-dealer on the corner who is destroying their neighborhood. But it wouldn't empower him. It would make him disappear. There would be almost no street drugs in a drug-legalized world, and almost no drug-dealers. Except CVS and Walgreens. What about "crack whores"? (A very real phenomenon.) Is there a price point for crack below which one could be a crack panhandler without having to have sexual intercourse with a crack dealer's dog for the entertainment of his friends? It's a straightforward economic question.

Very complex questions with a lot of interdependent moving parts.