> It’s why I profoundly dislike the line of thinking that easier access to drugs means social progress.

While that framing might change the aperture for people to support decriminalization efforts, "helping people who have addiction means social progress" is the greater good here.

Unfortunately, at least from a USian perspective, we only got so far as the decriminalizing part, and we did it while actually cutting a lot of the social services, health care access, and safety net that actually help people with addiction function in society.

I had a parent with schizophrenia. I can tell you what a privilege it is to have my cannabis use be the primary risk factor I have to worry about, and not the financial stress and eventual homelessness, untreated health issues, and lack of mental health support my father faced.

I'm all for getting illicit drug users out of jail, that's social progress. There needs to be more education and attempt at shoring up mental health in the public sector and not just kicking everyone into a room and calling it a day, like the problem is solved.

There is pretty much zero barrier for accessing any drug. Even being busted by police or border guards for drugs don't make it a permanent problem. The real problem is advertisement. Cities have drug advertisements everywhere and it's legal. Banning all types drug ads, including ads of brands selling drug products, would be a genuinely great step towards limiting their impact.

> It’s rather a shedding off of an inconvenience for those that have no (direct) problems of functioning (eg risk of developing addiction, psychosis, etc) at the heavy costs payed by those that are more vulnerable.

And what about those who have a "direct problem of functioning" (like anxiety, depression, ptsd, whatever) and get no real help from the medical profession, but do get help from the drugs?