No, it's because as a stimulant it has a combination of relatively low addictive properties and is easy to withdraw from when compared to more "hardcore" substances [1]

[1] http://www.drugsense.org/tfy/addictvn.htm

All of those things, except "stimulant" technically, can be said of pot too. Hell, caffeine is physically addictive (not to even get into the lifestyles you can build around it that lead to less 'medical' forms of addiction...) while pot is not.

You ever caffeine withdrawal? Yeah, during that week-long vacation last year when you stopped going to Starbucks every morning. Most of us have gone through that; it is a bitch and lasts longer than most hangovers.

You ever get pot withdrawal? Yeah, me neither.

Whatever, lets say for the sake of argument that pot and caffeine are on par with each other despite the obvious discrepancies. It is undeniable that pot prohibition is harmful to society; why would caffeine prohibition not be?

I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing for continued criminalization of marijuana.

I know, that is why I used marijuana as my example.

@whyleyc is asserting that drug "hardness", not drug prohibition, is the cause of the societal harm associated with drugs. I am pointing out that we see similar harm with marijuana, which everyone here accepts as not "hard", but which is prohibited.

It therefore stands to reason that if prohibition can cause harm to society with a "non-hard" drug like marijuana, it would cause harm to society with a "non-hard" drug like caffeine.

But this doesn't demonstrate that it doesn't prevent greater harm with a "hard" drug, which was the point at issue as I read things.

Well, if I wanted to argue that point I would just point out that I am pretty sure drunk fathers kept on beating their children during the 1920s.

I mean, that is the sort of shit that spawned the temperance movement, but when prohibition came into effect, did the temperance movement actually see the sort of social change that they anticipated? I doubt that the 1920s were some sort of utopia for battered children and spouses...

My understanding is that overall consumption of alcohol did decline slightly under prohibition, so "drunk fathers kept on beating their children during the 1920s" needs a citation - and, in particular, that they kept doing so at the same rate. The problem with prohibition wasn't that it did no good in any way ever - the problem was that the harm overwhelmingly outweighed the good. Likewise with the current war on drugs.

How about nicotine? Granted, there have probably been people who steal cigarettes are steal other things to buy cigarettes, but I think it's a much smaller problem than with illegal drugs.

If COPS is representative of real life, there are plenty of people willing to rob convenience stores of cigarettes. I have little doubt that this would turn much uglier if nicotine was banned.

> If COPS is representative of real life

Its not. Its representative of what its producers think will appeal to its target market.

Of course. In reality 50% of all corner store robberies don't end with the shop owner beating the crooks ass with a broom. ;)

I've worked in an in an institution where cigarettes were prohibited for certain patients and not for others. Cigarette theft was very, very common.

If crack was dirt cheap, people would still rob to get the money for it, because they couldn't hold down a decent job while using it.

That's simply not true.

I don't have any stats for crack cocaine, but look up the effectiveness of diacetylmorphine maintenance programs in Switzerland and the UK - these are government-run programs in which heroin users are given access to pure, unadulterated heroin so that they can have steady day jobs.

Spoiler: These programs have been proven time and again to be effective in reducing crime.

Crack cocaine is biochemically identical to powder cocaine (the main difference is the means of ingestion, not the chemical compound). And I can assure you that many cocaine users hold very steady, very high-paying jobs (in certain industries more than others).

If the percentage of crack users who could both hold a steady job to pay for their addiction and also not significantly drag down those around them was > 90% (e.g. workplace accidents, parenting), then I could support ending the war on crack.

People hold down professional, successful, white-collar careers for YEARS while doing cocaine. If it was legal why would anyone do crack?

If it was legal, it would probably be vastly safer to acquire and use recreationally, so even if the amount of use stayed the same, the actual negative effects would probably decrease.

There are many factors that go into this, sure.

One of them is the drug itself, and since I am not familiar with crack (thank god), I would consider alcohol a good example. It's legal, "dirt cheap", and can utterly destroy lives with a completeness few drugs seem to be able to match. Everybody knows what alcohol can do, yet it still happens a lot (to put it mildly). So yes, making stuff legal and having information instead of disinformation is not a magical solution.

But that doesn't mean illegality and misinformation cannot make things even worse. Legality does affect price and safety, I think it's very hard to deny this or show otherwise (feel free to try). If a dealer sells rat poison instead of Ecstasy, it's not like the buyers can go to the cops about it, for example... and I'm not saying Ecstasy if safe no matter how it's used, I'm saying rat poison is harmful in all cases. And dealers are operating in the underground anyway, so they have little reason to care about adding on top of that. I'm not sure about "gateway drugs", but I am pretty sure about "gateway criminality" being a real thing, and it also applies to addicts, not just dealers.