Submitted by eatertal in AskRaddle

my thought process is that someone would be selling the drugs people want anyway so it wouldn't make a difference to them if they bought it from me or someone else... but on the other hand i could be supplying addicts. i also consider that the money would be going towards my survival and activism as opposed to living a lavish lifestyle like perhaps what the other dealer might be using the money for.

i honestly cant decide if it is morally neutral or morally bad to sell addictive drugs so i would love some opinions on both sides.

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NOISEBOB wrote

I think the main question is where the drugs are from. The big suppliers often also deal in human trafficking and immoral shit like that....

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celebratedrecluse wrote

how dare you go to the grocery store, i'll have you know you are treating in absolutely immoral commerce and you are hereby cancelled on behalf of anarchy

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Majrelende wrote (edited )

It is exploitation, and while the arguments for it make sense, it would still be participation in an exploitative system and market, so I would strongly discourage it, personally. And it might work to lower prices, since more sellers presumably means more competition, according to traditional economics, making it more widely accessible.

People do not have to become addicted from prescriptions, either— I vaguely remember a story about someone taking addictive drugs after being lead there from some unrecognised troubles.

Do you have any wild psilocybes nearby, or could you grow them? I think I would rather sell those if I had to pick, since they are, as far as I know, non-addictive, beneficial, even.

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eatertal OP wrote

Do you have any wild psilocybes nearby, or could you grow them? I think I would rather sell those if I had to pick, since they are, as far as I know, non-addictive, beneficial, even.

im thinking about selling psychedelics like LSD and shrooms for that reason, but where i am the punishment for selling psychedelics is actually worse than selling xans. i might just stick to LSD because as far as i know, it’s not addictive, but then i also risk longer sentences. im white and if i get a good attorney i might be able to get off easy, i dont know... but that’s where im at.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

anything can be abused, addiction is an underlying sociopsychological problem. You'll do better to be alert for signs of compulsive or self-destructive behavior regardless of what you sell, because those people are the ones who are going to get themselves arrested or in the hospital.

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eatertal OP wrote

yes anything can be abused, my point was that people don't have chemical dependencies on LSD like they would on xanax. of course, anyone can be addicted to anything. LSD, burgers, wood, games, etc.

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existential1 wrote (edited )

There really isn't a way to properly frame an answer to this that can deal with the uniqueness of situations folks are in that puts them in a position to sell these products or consume them.

In my experience, which is that of Black America, the drugs are made outside of the community, which enriches capitalists (black market ones) at the expense of the producers (depending on the drug in question). Then once in the community, local capitalists get wealthy using the same logic of worker insecurity for the drug pushers that other capitalists use for other workers. So the pusher inherits significantly more risk than their share of the profit in consideration of the major network players.

Then is there consideration of the agency of the addict. Is it a person or persons that have meaningful options to rehabilitate if they so choose? There are pimps, human traffickers, and other folks who buy drugs wholesale to keep their "human capital" addicted...and that's if they're not shrewd businesspeople (cuz if they are shrewd, they make their people buy the drugs themselves and have to assume the risk of being arrested for purchasing). IMO, there's a massive difference between a white addict lawyer who uses in the bathroom and gets to generally operate in society and the black addict who cannot hang onto a job, cannot meaningfully participate as a family or community member, and is constantly in and out of jail because of the over-policing of black communities. Then there's the question of the availability of work for the pusher. In many communities, the drug game is one of the only viable means of accruing enough resources to get yourself out of the neighborhood you grew up in (assuming you survive and/or don't get locked-up for a long term bid).

Idk, I feel slightly triggered by the premise of the question because it seems to imply a lot externalities don't exist. But again, I don't have the luxury of thinking about drug use or drug commerce outside of the context of how it was used to criminalize my community. So if I were to just do a thought experiment about it, maybe I'd say if i were white, and in a suburb or some other white community and there was no real risk of destroying multiple peoples lives by exposing someone to more state violence because of my sale, and the client had the agency to make their own choice in the matter, then its a lot closer to a neutral thing. But I don't get to live that calculation. Maybe you do.

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vandemic wrote (edited )

I used to date a woman in her 30s who got into GHB. A middle class woman with a career. Well, it was making her black out in public and generally act super fucked up including but not limited to attempting to open the doors to random peoples houses at night for no reason.

Hurts me to tell the whole story, so I won't. But I'll say this: at some point she realized this shit was ruining everything and so she went to the dealer and his gf to return her stash (30$) and what did they do? Push on her and pressure her. Telling her everything was fine. That I didn't know "what he [I] was talking about". That GHB is completely harmless. That blacking out on GHB unexpectedly in public was nothing to be worried about, etc.

They weren't just dealers, they were pushers. Pushers who wouldn't fuck off even when their addict told them she wanted to quit.

If this is you? Fuck you. That's all I can say. Idk how else to convey that feeling through a screen without saying something that'll probably get the cops knocking at my door. But seriously if this is you, I wish you the worst that Life and Death can offer.

Be ethical, and don't push. That's all I can say.

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eatertal OP wrote (edited )

yeah, a lot of "criminals" are actually assholes who just care about money. im perfectly fine with breaking the law and hurting the rich, so long as im not actually harming poor/working people. id agree, pushers are scum of the earth. i have no idea how you can push addicts or try to pick up clients at rehab groups and go to sleep at night.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

i honestly cant decide if it is morally neutral or morally bad to sell addictive drugs so i would love some opinions on both sides.

It's neither. It isn't "good" either. Morality is an authoritative system and is used to police others on what is and what isn't acceptable behavior. It's also a flawed concept to begin with; if it's absolute, then it's often contradictory. Let's take the act of taking another life as an example, such a thing is considered wrong when it's called murder (the unlawful killing of another human) but acceptable or even good if you take away the words "unlawful" or "human": cops killing someone for breaking the law is considered "good", killing an animal for meat is "good", military personnel brutalizing "enemy populations" is "justified", me shooting a cop makes me "evil", a woman killing her abusive husband is...well that one actually depends on location, but you get the jist: morality has many factors and double standards and even if a moralist says that an act is inherently good or evil, there are situations and factors that will alter how one with the capacity to feel guilt feels about the act. If morality is relative or nonexistent, then pondering it is a waste of time; in the case of the former, then there are too many factors and perspectives to be considered a valid argument for or against anything. Ironically enough, many people who are considered "evil" are perfectly moral people; they know their values and try their hardest to spread them around and kill or imprison anyone that goes against those values: White supremacists are moral, cops are moral, Christians are moral, Communists are moral, nation states are moral, and so on.

TLDR; morality doesn't matter. If you feel bad about selling drugs, then it's bad to sell drugs; if you don't, it's not.

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eatertal OP wrote (edited )

TLDR; morality doesn't matter. If you feel bad about selling drugs, then it's bad to sell drugs; if you don't, it's not.

i definitely get your point. i think many people's ethics revolve around minimizing suffering and death while maximizing happiness, pleasure, and life. setting that as a standard i would then ask my original question again to determine whether or not this is an ethical thing to do.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Then I'll reiterate that it's isn't good/bad/neutral; if you're going to set your moral compass based on utilitarianism/ethical hedonism, then the act of selling addictive drugs isn't a grey area so much as one that has too many factors to reasonably calculate. If you sell to a willing buyer, then you've guaranteed at least 2 people short term happiness (yourself in that you've gotten money, and your buyer who has received the product); but there are factors within the other person's life that you aren't and/or couldn't possibly be immediately aware of: you don't know why they're using drugs, you don't know where they get the money from, nor do you know if anyone they're immediately associated with is affected by their drug use. Think about the absolute worst case scenario for each of those factors and ask yourself if you'd feel bad if any of those things were true (but that's just guesswork, the best case scenario is just as likely to happen). You and/or your buyer could also be arrested, but I'm guessing that you're already aware of that; still, that mean's that you end up with a "net negative" on your moral compass in a utilitarian sense.

Trying to guess the moral ramifications of selling drugs on an individual basis is just as vexing...and probably not a good business model: selling to someone who seems like they'd be happier with using the drugs, but refusing to sell them to someone who doesn't seems arbitrarily discriminatory.

TLDR; your chosen code of ethics makes the moral consequences of selling drugs quantifiable on a general basis impossible; you can't "calculate" happiness, you don't have the absolute insight into a how your actions affect others. You can't do it on an individual basis either; you'd be trying to multiply something that can't be quantified.

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SqueekyMouse wrote

Depends on the drug. If I knew the person was going to be diligent about the risk then I have no problem. But if some rando wants Fentanyl they can get bent.

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Huatau wrote

Why is it immoral for someone to make money from drugs when you are fine with state banking off the same drugs to exploit vulnerable people?

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a_perfect_map wrote

This relationship you describe is the purest, more literal form of capitalism.

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