This is fantastic work, thanks for all the effort and thought that went into these posts. Your overall case seems solid to me—or at minimum, I think yours is ‘the argument to beat’.
One thought that I had while reading:
Drug policy reform may also allow us to better understand current pain medications and develop new treatments and uses.
Your focus here is on decriminalizing existing drugs such as psilocybin, opioids, and MDMA, because you believe (with substantial evidence) that these drugs have nontrivial therapeutic potential, despite their sometimes substantial drawbacks. This seems reasonable, especially in the case of drugs with fairly benign risk profiles (e.g. psilocybin).
I do worry about some of the long-term side-effects associated with certain drugs, however, and it seems to me an interesting ‘unknown unknown’ here is if it’s possible to develop new substances, or novel brain stimulation modalities, that allow us access to the upsides of such drugs, without suffering from the downsides.
E.g., in the case of MDMA, the not-uncommon long-term effects of chronic use include heightened anxiety & cognitive impairment, which seem very serious. But at the same time, there doesn’t seem to be any ‘law of the universe’ mandating that the pleasant feelings of love & trust elicited by MDMA that are so therapeutically useful for PTSD must be unavoidably linked to brain damage.
I’m not completely sure how this observation interacts with your arguments, but I suspect it generally supports your case, since decriminalization could lower barriers for research into even better & safer options. Quite possibly, this could be one of the major reasons why decriminalization could lead to a better future.
On the other hand, the sword of innovation cuts both ways, as there seem to be a lot of very dangerous, toxic variants of drugs coming from overseas labs that are even less safe than current options (Fentanyl, Captagon, etc). Perhaps this is a case of “Banning dangerous substances as a precautionary principle can have perverse effects if it causes people to take a more dangerous drugs instead,” and decriminalization would help mitigate this phenomenon. But I must admit to some uncertainty & worry here as to second-order effects.
Anyway, I think this is worth pursuing further. OpenPhil might be interested? I think probably Nick Beckstead might be a good contact there.
I agree with you there isn’t any law of the universe here, although, for whatever reasons, many people actually do seem to believe drugs that make you feel good now must make you feel bad later, and the later badness is at least equal to the goodness experience. Maybe this is borne out by people’s experiences of hangovers, not sure. But yeah, there’s no obvious reason for this to be true. If there is, we should look for a neurological and evolutionary explanation.
Nor does it seem it is true: i’m fairly confident the odd pint increases my well-being overall and than i’ve taken painkillers that have removed unhappiness without making me feel worse again later.
On precautionary principles, my thought is we should look at the evidence before collapsing into a moral panic. It’s not like we’re uncertain about fentanyl’s safety, we know it’s pretty potent (used to be an elephant tranquiliser, etc.). And we should consider the counterfactuals, too. I don’t have a line on exactly what should be legalised and i think it’s worth thinking through.
I hadn’t occurred to me to pitch this directly of OPP. My plan was to put it up here so others could see if/where I’d gone wrong as the first step.
Hi Michael,
This is fantastic work, thanks for all the effort and thought that went into these posts. Your overall case seems solid to me—or at minimum, I think yours is ‘the argument to beat’.
One thought that I had while reading:
I do worry about some of the long-term side-effects associated with certain drugs, however, and it seems to me an interesting ‘unknown unknown’ here is if it’s possible to develop new substances, or novel brain stimulation modalities, that allow us access to the upsides of such drugs, without suffering from the downsides.
E.g., in the case of MDMA, the not-uncommon long-term effects of chronic use include heightened anxiety & cognitive impairment, which seem very serious. But at the same time, there doesn’t seem to be any ‘law of the universe’ mandating that the pleasant feelings of love & trust elicited by MDMA that are so therapeutically useful for PTSD must be unavoidably linked to brain damage.
I’m not completely sure how this observation interacts with your arguments, but I suspect it generally supports your case, since decriminalization could lower barriers for research into even better & safer options. Quite possibly, this could be one of the major reasons why decriminalization could lead to a better future.
On the other hand, the sword of innovation cuts both ways, as there seem to be a lot of very dangerous, toxic variants of drugs coming from overseas labs that are even less safe than current options (Fentanyl, Captagon, etc). Perhaps this is a case of “Banning dangerous substances as a precautionary principle can have perverse effects if it causes people to take a more dangerous drugs instead,” and decriminalization would help mitigate this phenomenon. But I must admit to some uncertainty & worry here as to second-order effects.
Anyway, I think this is worth pursuing further. OpenPhil might be interested? I think probably Nick Beckstead might be a good contact there.
Hello, and thanks!
I agree with you there isn’t any law of the universe here, although, for whatever reasons, many people actually do seem to believe drugs that make you feel good now must make you feel bad later, and the later badness is at least equal to the goodness experience. Maybe this is borne out by people’s experiences of hangovers, not sure. But yeah, there’s no obvious reason for this to be true. If there is, we should look for a neurological and evolutionary explanation.
Nor does it seem it is true: i’m fairly confident the odd pint increases my well-being overall and than i’ve taken painkillers that have removed unhappiness without making me feel worse again later.
On precautionary principles, my thought is we should look at the evidence before collapsing into a moral panic. It’s not like we’re uncertain about fentanyl’s safety, we know it’s pretty potent (used to be an elephant tranquiliser, etc.). And we should consider the counterfactuals, too. I don’t have a line on exactly what should be legalised and i think it’s worth thinking through.
I hadn’t occurred to me to pitch this directly of OPP. My plan was to put it up here so others could see if/where I’d gone wrong as the first step.