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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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"When I'm Dictator for Life..." is very relatable sentiment.
Sadly, between the failure of prohibition and the spectacular failure of the 'war on drugs', we've pretty conclusively demonstrated that a different approach is needed (preferably one that works instead of one that ruins society across half a continent...). I hold the theory that decriminalizing / dispensing some drugs (the safer ones) would greatly decrease the demand for the more destructive drugs (heroin, coke) and help to destigmatize drug use, improving treatment and safety all around.
To live in a world where something good might actually happen... Sigh. Probably not worth speculating about.
Putting certain drugs behind a prescription wall is not the same as the war on drugs. Those drugs, unlike heroin, cannabis, etc. are still legal. They just require a doctor's supervision.
In my opinion, any drug that has the potential to knock someone unconscious or even kill them without them even having known they were given that drug is not safe enough a drug to be available OTC at your nearby Walgreens.
Fair enough! My 'war' point was more about enforcement of the prescription-only status and how we've seen that restricting recreational drugs via state violence just doesn't work. But pleasantly, we're finding that things like safe injection sites and injection instruction work really well. It's not quite doctor overseen administration but with purity testing and informed dosing, it's damn close!
Restricting drugs on their anesthetic or toxic properties is pretty pointless, though a good idea on the surface. A quick browse through my garage will net you dozens of odorless chemicals in various degrees of lethality (er... I admit my garage may be a bit of an outlier here) and off the top of my head I can think of five different weeds in my yard that can be easily reduced to what most would call a 'date rape' drug (and one that can be refined down to a weapon of mass destruction).
The sad truth is that restricting access won't deter anyone. Rape has been a constant throughout human history, long before we had anesthetics, and it will be a disgusting staple of society long into the future. We don't need drugs to rape people, we just need a big wooden club and societal acceptance. The harm we do to recreational users by demonizing drug use like this far outweighs the potential benefits of strictly restricting their use, even in the hypothetical world where prescription laws aren't casually circumvented like they are today.
I do understand where you're coming from though. IMO, the best solution I've heard is a registry for 'dangerous' recreational drugs that all dispensaries are required to use. Obviously there's some flaws with that, but that + marker DNA to trace batches would go a very long way to preventing casual roofie-ing. Though the most effective thing in preventing drug-aided assault has been, predictably, education.
The specific issue with a drug like ketamine, unlike, say, ether, is that it is tasteless, colorless and odorless. If someone spikes your drink with ketamine, even if it isn't alcohol, you won't know. That is super dangerous. Much more so than plying someone with alcohol or using something like ether or chloroform that you can buy without a prescription.
I suppose you could legislate some sort of odor or taste or something to be added to ketamine, but I imagine it doesn't have them for a reason.
What would be the point of doing that, though? As soon as you mandate it for Ketamine, they'll just move to using something else (tbh theh probably won't be using it in the first place, ketamine really isn't a date rape drug). And then you're stuck constantly hunting down each new drug and mandating that one now be added to the list. You're constantly playing catchup, punishing the non-rapists and doing nothing to prevent the monsters from being monsters. And thats even aside from the DIY drug production or aforementioned 'big stick', which would still have no taste or odor (well, I suppose the stick might).
It's not a winning solution, its just the same cruel stalemate the US has been stuck in for the last sixty-plus years. We need a better system, desperately. Weed dispensaries have been shown to almost eliminate illicit weed production, even when they have higher prices. Implementation of a similar system for 'hard' drugs doesn't solve all the problems, but I'm not convinced there's a perfect solution at all. This is just one thing that might reduce the harm done, which is all we realistically can ever hope to achieve.
What odorless, colorless, tasteless general anesthetic would they move on to? Because I think it would be pretty easy to put all of those specific drugs behind a prescription wall.
Unfortunately for us all, you're very wrong. While all drugs are not truly tasteless, there's only a few that the taste can't be easily covered up by soda or similar. And the drugs that can be used as a date rape drug are so astoundingly numerous that nobody has a complete list. New recreational drugs are discovered all the time, too, and each one is potentially usable in that application. Strong psychedelics, which the most popular ones literally grow on trees, are effective. Certain popular children's toys, when consumed, metabolize into a GHB-related compound with similar effects (yes they know, no they don't care).
If this was possible, don't you think the most heavily policed country in the world would have even slightly been able to pull this off? When I say it's an impossible task, I'm not trying to be dramatic. It's simply too easy to get around any restrictions, and enforcement would require a truly omnipotent police force to be effective.