Next they're going to tell us heroin dulls pain, cocaine provides mental alertness and energy, and marijuana increases your appetite.

It's time to remove government power over pharmaceuticals. Who knows better, Doctors and scientists who dedicate their lives to developing and administering the drugs, and know everything there is about them, or some politician who knows a whole lot about nothing but doesn't want people getting high? What I mean is, all drugs should be legal, at least medicinally. Imagine a world where drugs were refined and optimized to prevent detrimental side effects and overdose. Where the government (with the help of scientists) can mandate purity standards. That's about as involved as government should be when it comes to drugs. I know this is going to come across as some hippy bullshit, but it's not. The problem isn't drugs, the problem is the fact that some random dude makes the drugs in his basement in the cheapest, easiest way he can. Or manufactured by terrorists and cartels to support their criminal empires. There come problems of people overdosing because they got a batch that was way stronger than they were used to, but no way of knowing that before hand. People get sick from impurities or mixtures of unknown drugs. You might think you're getting cocaine, but you're getting a meth/cocaine/baking soda cocktail that someone through together to cut costs and increase their profits.

Whats wrong with people getting high? It's such a stigma, don't drink alcohol to get drunk, don't do drugs to get high, why not? I understand there are risks with doing even the purest drug, but with more education on it and professional administration and monitoring, it can be done so much safer. Do you think people want to go to back alley and give some random person money, hope they don't get robbed, or ripped off , then do a drug that might not be what they think it is, with the potential to kill them, all while potentially supporting a terrorist organization? No they don't, but they do it anyway because they have no choice. Might as well have a safe environment where they can buy it where they know what they're getting, and the "best" part is the government can get their precious tax money. No drug dealer is paying taxes on their drug money, but if it was legal, even if by prescription only, or even recreational (like the marijuana and alcohol model) there would be minimal downside. Most of this stuff WAS legal at some point in time. Heroin used to be over the counter, I remember reading about MDMA being used for PTSD treatment in the past, LSD used for other mental illness, etc. I'm not saying go back to that per se, but going from over the counter to outright banned is a huge flip with no in between. How about for heroin only dispense it in extreme cases, like surgeries and life or death situations. They do it for things like dilauded, morphine, and every other opiate, why not that?

I'm not saying I want to do heroin, I went off on a tangent about that specific drug, but I mean it for all drugs. There are side effects from currently prescribed anti-depressants that are WORSE than MDMA. Same goes for cocaine, and many other drugs. Tobacco is still legal and you get basically no benefit from it at all, and it is well known around the world to be cancer causing and deadly. At least with other drugs they offer real life benefits, even if short term.

There are much more dangerous, less useful drugs that are legal and prescribed on a daily basis. Time to lift these bans and at least allow for experimentation and trials, and prescribing of these other taboo drugs. They exist because they do something good, even if it's just a temporary feeling. And people self medicate because, well, it works! For all we know, meth could cure aids, but we don't know because it's not allowed to even be tested. People should have a choice what they do with their body, and as long as things like lithium and Tylenol are on the market, then there is no reason to keep these things from being legal. It just makes no sense at all. There will always be a new drug, there will always be a way around it, why not just make it safe? I saw something about kratom and how it is an unknown drug, but people have used it to get off their painkiller or heroin addictions. What does the government say? Instead of "we should look into this and see how we can help people with it, get FDA approval, and find better uses for it." they say "hey, people like this drug. We need to try to ban it." I'm just using that one for example, but that is the typical way of the government. Why, I don't know.