I think a careful balance needs to be found somehow.
Speaking only from my own experience: I have never touched C, and that is undoubtedly because of its legal status…while I smoked for more than half my life, undoubtedly because of the tobacco industry’s highly effective influence through the 20th Century.
I remember when cigarette brands were ubiquitous at sports events and media. Race cars, movie stars, sport stars, soldiers…pubs, clubs, planes, trains and automobiles. It was everywhere - killing people in horrificly slow and painful ways, making everything and everyone stink, staining our hands, clothes, walls, teeth and facial hair, littering our town centres and countrysides alike. And this was all happening with our eyes wide open - it wasn’t ignorance. It’s only through decades of government intervention through health campaigns, law changes and huge taxation that the tobacco industry’s grip finally weakened enough for us all to realise the horror we had walked into with our eyes open. Slowly, some parts of the world have managed to walk it back and smoking is now in the minority, but you only have to look at vaping to see how ready corporate greed is to take advantage of our influential children.
I’m not saying the above to scare people into thinking legalising cocaine would be the same - I am just highlighting what happens when the corporate world is allowed to act with impunity. I don’t think it’d be long before cocaine was back in coca cola.
On the other hand, “the war on drugs” seems to do more harm than good.
So can we trust governments to properly litigate and control legal and responsible distribution? I don’t know the answer, and I have no solutions…but the stakes are high - and so while I hope for change, I am also wary of it.
I think a careful balance needs to be found somehow.
Speaking only from my own experience: I have never touched C, and that is undoubtedly because of its legal status…while I smoked for more than half my life, undoubtedly because of the tobacco industry’s highly effective influence through the 20th Century.
I remember when cigarette brands were ubiquitous at sports events and media. Race cars, movie stars, sport stars, soldiers…pubs, clubs, planes, trains and automobiles. It was everywhere - killing people in horrificly slow and painful ways, making everything and everyone stink, staining our hands, clothes, walls, teeth and facial hair, littering our town centres and countrysides alike. And this was all happening with our eyes wide open - it wasn’t ignorance. It’s only through decades of government intervention through health campaigns, law changes and huge taxation that the tobacco industry’s grip finally weakened enough for us all to realise the horror we had walked into with our eyes open. Slowly, some parts of the world have managed to walk it back and smoking is now in the minority, but you only have to look at vaping to see how ready corporate greed is to take advantage of our influential children.
I’m not saying the above to scare people into thinking legalising cocaine would be the same - I am just highlighting what happens when the corporate world is allowed to act with impunity. I don’t think it’d be long before cocaine was back in coca cola.
On the other hand, “the war on drugs” seems to do more harm than good.
So can we trust governments to properly litigate and control legal and responsible distribution? I don’t know the answer, and I have no solutions…but the stakes are high - and so while I hope for change, I am also wary of it.