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There may be health benefits from moderate consumption of wine, so I'm inclined to wait for further information. Alcoholism can be a very serious problem though - look at Russia during the 1980s and 1990s. Context is important.
But you pay a price for enforcing property rights. How many extra policemen do you need to keep people's catalytic converters from being taken? What if the police are too busy to prevent you being robbed or murdered by people who are out of their minds? In a civilized society, people shouldn't need to carry firearms to protect themselves in major urban centres.
The lady from San Francisco begs to differ, as do those who flee from these deteriorating areas.
There are drugs and there are drugs. Caffeine gives you a bit more energy but nobody is worried about people on their fifth cup of coffee going on a coffee-fuelled rampage. Certain quantities of THC can really mess you up but lesser amounts aren't too bad. I want to target people who sell serious, damaging drugs, hence my initial qualifying phrase 'Drug dealers (by which I mean fentanyl and the like) are a net malus for society,'. Biochemistry only improves with time, we need to lock things down now before we get new and worse drugs.
And there is a cost to enforce the ban on the drug trade too.
It would be cheaper to have places where people can get free fentanyl as long as they agree to stay inside the facility for a period of time so that the out of control people can overdose instead of doing violent attacks.
They would not need to even if drugs were completely legal. As long as hired patrolmen are allowed to beat up hostile people on the streets.
That's because those deteriorating areas allow aggressive people to loiter around and bother people, they should not allow that and this problem would be diminished.
It is frustratingly difficult for me to find information online about the percent of potent drug users that are violent, but I would imagine that one of the factors behind the correlation is that violence and drug use are both associated with impulsivity and that many of the violent drug users would still be violent even if they were not drug addicts.
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