I've used and abused mephedrone and nothing too bad happened. I did 5+ grams in about 30 hours. I felt tired and more depressed than usual for a couple of days afterwards and there was a pulsating transparent blob in the center of my visual field for maybe 4 or 5 days. That kind of scared me, but it went away. I never felt I was in any physical or mental danger while on it. It is hard for me to control my usage of it, constantly wanting to do just a little more. I would have been able to stop myself if using more would get in the way of obligations or college, but it was a 3 day weekend so I didn't have to stop. It was a lot of fun.
I don't think any chemical should be banned. I should have the right to put any chemical I want into my body. I should be able to snort a line of cyanide if that is what I wanted to do.
All drugs should be legal. I know some of them have very harmful effects. Just sell the drug with a pamphlet describing the positive and negative effects, side effects, the addiction potential, death statistics, and some pharmacological information. Then the user will be fully aware of the possible consequences and able to make up their own minds about what to do with their minds and bodies.
Lets not forget that alcohol is known to cause brain damage with long term heavy use and can cause severe liver damage much faster, I have heard of people in their 20s needing liver transplants from alcohol induced damage. Also, compared to most other drugs, alcohol users are belligerent and violent, committing assaults, property crime, and thousands of murders every year as well as tens of thousands of fatal vehicular accidents annually.
You rarely hear of anyone on weed, mdma(or similar substances), opiates, or psychedelics committing murders or serious assaults or killing with their vehicle, perhaps because they are more aware of their inebriation and are less likely to drive.
There are about 50,000 people dying from alcohol use every year in the USA, exceeded only by the 250,000 or so who die from tobacco use. No other drugs come close. Some illegal drugs kill no one at all, like weed and LSD. This disparity in numbers of deaths can partly be accounted for by the fact that illegal drugs are used by fewer people. I have done the math, and that is not enough to account for the difference. A majority of deaths listed as opiate related also include alcohol. Opiates as a whole were less likely to kill than alcohol even including alcohol and other opiate combos. I believe only heroin was more likely to kill the user than alcohol. This included incidents of fentanyl being passed as heroin and causing overdoses.
Two out of the three most dangerous drugs are the two legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
The #2 most likely to cause death, heroin, would be probably at least an order of magnitude safer if it was legal because users would always have the strength listed on the bottle and they'd never be given fentanyl or anything else instead. It could be sold in vials with the amount of heroin per ml listed, so that it would be much harder to overdose. The seller would be required to remind the buyer about accidental overdoses after a period of abstinence if they were to use their old dose.
Having heroin sold at a known purity in solution with no possibility of it being another drug would probably cut the number of non-suicide deaths by 90% or more. Naloxone could also be sold and users should be encouraged to shoot up when someone else is near in the unlikely event of an overdose requiring the naloxone which is readily available.
I don't believe any drug should be illegal. I might make exceptions for those that are significantly neurotoxic with normal usage and maybe for those that are extremely toxic to other vital organs. Cocaine is toxic to the heart but not nearly to the level that I am talking about. I mean something where a few months or less of use(unless very heavy use) results in major organ damage. If it took very heavy use for at least a month to cause the damage then I would not ban it, unless it was shown that just occasional use over a longer period of time produces the same kind of damage. Paracetamol is very safe when used at normal doses, but swallowing the whole bottle will kill your liver, and taking 2 or 3 times the maximum recommended dose for a long time might seriously damage the liver. Drugs that have a safety profile like Paracetamol would be legal even though misuse could have dire consequences.
I think that what I wrote would be a good way to do things. It would screen out drugs that are truly very dangerous and leave all others legal, it would provide users with information about any drug they want to use, and it would ensure an exact purity (reducing OD chances). People would be able to come out in the open about their drug use. They would no longer have to hide it. They may decide to dose in the presence of others, further reducing the chance of fatal overdoses. They would no longer feel ashamed any more than an alcohol user(I feel no shame, but I know some do)
It would take hundreds of thousands out of prison, saving lots of money and making for a freer society, It costs about $30,000 per year to keep a person in prison. It would bring in billions in taxes. It would save many more billions in wasted money fighting the drug war.
The violence in Mexico is directly caused by drug prohibition. If drugs were legalized and grown/synthesized by corporations the violent cartels would be put out of business quickly. Thousands of lives lost for nothing just south of my state. It would not be happening without prohibition,