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It’s illegal to let kids drink at home. That hasn’t stopped them from drinking. In fact drinking parties are so common that they’re practically a rite of passage for teenagers. It’s not going to be easy to catch something like that, and even if you did, figuring out if the kid got if from mom, dad, older sibling, by himself with a fake ID, or from a friend isn’t easy.
The principal you're implicitly espousing here is that if something is too dangerous for children to have access to, adults shouldn't be permitted access to it either. That is not at all compatible with a free society.
I’m not saying never ever, however I think it’s an important consideration because it will very likely happen. And especially for more dangerous or addictive drugs, I think it’s prudent to at least ask the question about the harm done by the drug being available to younger children.
A twelve year old trying pot is not really that big of a deal. The addiction is more psychological than physical, the LD50 is pretty high, and beyond the general dangers associated with smoking anything, it doesn’t cause much harm to the body.
Something like Cocaine or Heroin I think would be worse in all of those ways. Both are pretty physically addictive, have a fairly low LD50, and cause damage to the body. I can’t see a case to be made that the risk of a child of 12 trying crack is outweighed by the benefits of having crack be legal in the US. I’m sure there’s a steel man somewhere, but it seems a pretty high bar.
There's no need for a steelman, the principle itself is invalid.
That's stealing a base. You're asking about the harm done by the drug being available to adults on the assumption that if the drug is available to adults, it will also be available to children. Which is at least qualitatively true. But it's also true of knives, guns, poisons, matches and accelerants, fireworks, classified information (right Hunter?), cars, sex toys, etc. Proposing to keep drugs illegal on the grounds that if adults can have it a child can get it is an isolated demand to child-proof the world.
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