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Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug

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Re: Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug

#251

Post by cbd1984 »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #230
cbd1984 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Libertarians like free markets, right? Has anyone tried applying free market principles to drug use? In a completely free market, there are no labeling laws, and no way to enforce purity until after someone has died or been harmed by a bad product and has an estate or next-of-kin capable of suing the producer. And that, of course, assumes the producer is both still in business and is going to be dissuaded from maki…

Free markets in no way preclude torts. If your ... snake-oil medicine kills somebody, that's a tort. Taken properly, this means you won't just lose one lawsuit, you'll enjoy the legal equivalent of being bombed back to the stone age. Free markets only work if there is good and efficient law. Indeed, David Friedman has written extensively on this very subject. His "Machineries of Freedom" is excellent.

> Free markets in no way preclude torts.

I just said they allowed torts. I also explained why torts alone are insufficient.

Re: Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug

#252

Post by Zigurd »

rayiner wrote: post #110
krschultz wrote: post #15

I've never taken an illegal drug in my life. I've smoked a cigarette about 5 times. I drank in college but lately I've cut that out of my life as well. I had a security clearance with drug testing requirements for a while and now I just don't like the feeling of a hangover from alcohol or the risk of ingesting random plants/chemicals made by shady people. In short: I'm the most vanilla, square, anti-drug person you c…

> Yet I can not for the life of me understand why drugs are illegal. Criminal laws create self-enforcing social norms to discourage undesirable behavior. Making something illegal is one way of society condemning that activity. Ideally, the social norm itself drives compliance, not enforcement. E.g. it's the social norm that keeps people from stealing, not the threat of getting caught. If people started ignoring the s…

Restricting eating and drinking on the Metro is a conditional prohibition, with a condition of place that's very narrow, and of time that's very short. That's very different from making something illegal in general, in private, at all times and all circumstances.

The first is easy to accept because the limitation is easy to escape. The second is much harder to accept because the law is reaching far into private spaces and private aspects of our lives, all day, every day. And with that comes the purported justification for monstrosities like dynamic entry raids. That purported justification is very circular: Because you could have drugs only in your private space, you might be able to destroy them before they can be seized. And that drives malign legal philosophies that claim that supposedly valid warrants can reach anywhere. Without a Drug War we would not have 90%+ of the SWAT teams, routine dynamic entry raids, police militarization, and super-aggressive plea-bargain driven "justice." Nor might we have questions about whether we should have reliably private communication and data storage.

You are not counting the extent to which drugs have rotted the law from the inside. Never mind the anti-freedom thing, the Hobbesians ought to try and hang the narcs for poisoning Leviathan herself.

Re: Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug

#253

Post by cbd1984 »

nickff wrote: post #237
cbd1984 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Libertarians like free markets, right? Has anyone tried applying free market principles to drug use? In a completely free market, there are no labeling laws, and no way to enforce purity until after someone has died or been harmed by a bad product and has an estate or next-of-kin capable of suing the producer. And that, of course, assumes the producer is both still in business and is going to be dissuaded from maki…

This is plainly wrong. Free markets allow for testing and approval agencies which do not need to be run by the government. Think of companies like UL which test products before they go to market, and companies like Consumer Reports which test them afterwards. These companies and more can operate to ensure safe goods and services, probably at a much lower cost, and with higher quality than the government. Do not forge…

> This is plainly wrong. Free markets allow for testing and approval agencies which do not need to be run by the government.

Yes, they allow multiple competing agencies, each of which approves a different list of products, none of which is obligated in the slightest to reveal who pays for what.

Libertarians love to rail about regulatory capture, then they propose a system where companies can literally secretly own private regulatory agencies.

> Do not forget that there have been drug and food safety issues under the FDA's watch, and each time, there has been little to no accountability.

You have very little idea how bad it was prior to the FDA, in the snake oil era, and how much the FDA does to ensure safe and effective medications and foods.

Yes, it's imperfect. The solution to imperfection isn't to tear it down and start over. It's to fix what's wrong, to invest the time and mental effort to improve things. Yes, this is harder than just letting the businesses run the whole shop. However, we tried that, during the Gilded Age, and it didn't work, so now we have to improve a system we know works better.

Re: Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug

#254

Post by cornstalks »

atom-morgan wrote: post #106
justsaysmthng wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your addiction is also your wife's problem, your parent's problem, your company's problem. Addiction affects more than just the addict. And addicts are in need of help - while it is easy to think that "they like being high, it's their choice", in fact the addicts hate their habit more than anything, yet they can't stop using without external help. Would you help a person with a broken leg ? Why ? Well, that's…

You could realistically make a case that someone's addiction, like nearly any other choice, affects everyone to some extent.

I don't want to jump in this debate, but I want to point out that that's the opposite argument that many people use for trying to get drugs legalized: "It's not hurting/affecting anyone else besides me; why do people care that I want to use drug X/Y/Z in my home in my personal time?"

I hope people don't argue that drugs should be legalized because it's a personal life choice that doesn't affect anyone else, and then turn around and argue that more support for addicts is needed because their personal issues do affect others.

I know your comment doesn't have this logical contradiction, but I wanted to point this out in case any readers read your comment and silently nod their heads in agreement despite them also holding onto an obviously contradictory opinion.

Re: Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug

#255

Post by gozur88 »

herge wrote: post #146
leeleelee wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another interesting thing about the war on drugs is that during prohibition, the constitution was amended for the government to legally be able stop the sale of alcohol. On the other hand, for other "hard" drugs, there is nothing in the constitution that supports the criminalization of drugs. Unless I am missing something. Completely aside from that fact, I do agree that it should be treated as a public health issue.…

There's nothing in the U.S. constitution about airplanes either, and yet the FAA still exists. However, the U.S. constitution does talk at length about both congress who can write laws (like the laws banning hard drugs), and the judicial branch who can overturn laws that contravene the constitution. The 18th amendment was added to the constitution not by some legislative need, but to make a politicized statement wher…

>However, the U.S. constitution does talk at length about both congress who can write laws (like the laws banning hard drugs)

No. This is all the constitution has to say on the subject of regulating commerce:

"The Congress shall have Power... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"

The constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. It does not give Congress the power to regulate anything within a state's borders, which was why alcohol could not have been banned without the 18th amendment.

The reason we have federal drug laws is the courts have been willing to simply ignore the text of the document for political expediency. But this didn't start happening (in the case of the commerce clause, anyway) until 1942 with Wickard v Filburn.

Re: Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug

#256

Post by gozur88 »

cbd1984 wrote: post #253
nickff wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is plainly wrong. Free markets allow for testing and approval agencies which do not need to be run by the government. Think of companies like UL which test products before they go to market, and companies like Consumer Reports which test them afterwards. These companies and more can operate to ensure safe goods and services, probably at a much lower cost, and with higher quality than the government. Do not forge…

> This is plainly wrong. Free markets allow for testing and approval agencies which do not need to be run by the government. Yes, they allow multiple competing agencies, each of which approves a different list of products, none of which is obligated in the slightest to reveal who pays for what. Libertarians love to rail about regulatory capture, then they propose a system where companies can literally secretly own pr…

>Yes, they allow multiple competing agencies, each of which approves a different list of products, none of which is obligated in the slightest to reveal who pays for what.

"Agencies" is probably the wrong word. "Companies", maybe. In any event, and organization like that lives and dies on its reputation, so I doubt it would be any less rigorous than the FDA. Probably more.

>You have very little idea how bad it was prior to the FDA...

And you do? You're looking at what the FDA has prevented (thalidomide being probably the biggest win), but how many people have died as the drugs they need remain mired in the FDA's bureaucracy?

Re: Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug

#257

Post by mindcrime »

vectorjohn wrote: post #244
rubicon33 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that's where we disagree. I do consider myself a good judge. If you don't feel you have a sharp rational thought, an ability to consider a wide range of factors, including a dose of fair human compassion, then yes you probably should just help out everyone by default. That's a good default position to take, and one I do commend. Myself on the other hand, I believe in my own ability to be fair in judgement, to…

It's not just arrogant and cruel, it's also logically inconsistent. Everything libertarian leads to an everyone for themselves hellscape. But this in particular would indicate you shouldn't help someone in a car accident because of driving in bad weather, or really driving at all. They took the risk, the risk was well known, so screw them while they bleed to death in the car, right?

Everything libertarian leads to an everyone for themselves hellscape

How in the world do you arrive at that conclusion? Personally, I can't imagine anything being further from the truth...

Re: Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug

#258

Post by 67726e »

elipsey wrote: post #223
massysett wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it's not helping anyone except the sprawling profession of drug-warriors, and the black market gangsters High prices are reducing drug usage. That's basic economics. Food is cheap, so people eat a lot and get fat. Alcohol is cheap, so people drink a lot and destroy themselves. It's not hard to deduce what cheap heroin would do.

This sounds reasonable, but is oversimplified. OD deaths are up by a factor of three since the feds cracked down on cheap vicodin and oxy. The drug war has also killed huge numbers of people in other countries, harmed civil liberties at home, and cost a lot of actual dollars. I think it doesn't look like agood deal unless you omit some of those costs. Friedman addresses this point better than I can. You might enjoy t…

Heroin is cheap, pills are high in price. Folks move from pills to heroin and OD. Your point supports the parent claim perfectly.

Re: Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug

#259

Post by mindcrime »

robbiep wrote: post #240
twblalock wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should your drug use, or anyone else's, create obligations for other people to support you, treat you, and help you overcome addiction? The libertarian case for legalizing drugs falls apart if society has to take responsibility for providing support systems as a reaction to the actions of individual drug users. Frankly, most people would rather continue to ban drugs than pay for treatment for people who abuse the…

Your argument is (in my opinion) naively individualistic. You argue that someone's actions should not create any obligations for support. But that denies the interconnected nature of society. If someone gets injured and is unable to work, and has the misfortune of living in the United States (as opposed to Canada or Australia) then he cost of fixing them may be unbearable, meaning that a potential useful human life h…

Thus we have a responsibility to provide safety nets to restore them to health and a functional member of society.

It may turn out to just be quibbling over the meaning of "responsibility", but I don't see how that follows. I can see saying that it would be beneficial / nice / good / useful /etc. to "provide safety nets to restore them to health and a functional member of society". But saying "responsiblity" - to me - suggests a degree of obligation that I don't accept.

Re: Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug

#260

Post by elipsey »

67726e wrote: post #258
elipsey wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds reasonable, but is oversimplified. OD deaths are up by a factor of three since the feds cracked down on cheap vicodin and oxy. The drug war has also killed huge numbers of people in other countries, harmed civil liberties at home, and cost a lot of actual dollars. I think it doesn't look like agood deal unless you omit some of those costs. Friedman addresses this point better than I can. You might enjoy t…

Heroin is cheap, pills are high in price. Folks move from pills to heroin and OD. Your point supports the parent claim perfectly.

>>Folks move from pills to heroin and OD

I think you have that backwards, and most people go the other direction.

Here's a pretty good documentary in which users describe their experiences: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/chasing-heroin/

It seems to be quite common to become addicted to legally perscribed opiod analgesics, and move to black market drugs when access is limited.

Also, pills are cheap when you get them from a doctor. Heroin is cheap compared to black market pills. Which comparison are we making?

I think demand for opiods from addicts is somewhat inelastic; this is why so many people start by getting addicted to inexpensive legally perscribed pills, and then end up doing crime to pay for herion, which I believe costs $200/gram or something similar (depending on location, dilution, etc.), where a serious user can easily do a gram a day. If simply making the price go up was going to help that person, we wouldn't have this problem.

If anything, this is an argument for making people who aren't addicts yet pay a huge amount out of pocket for legally perscribed pain killers, which is an interesting, but probably infeasible idea.

Returning to the big picture though, we're making black market opiods expensive as hard as we can, and OD deaths have still trippled in the last few years. It's not working, and even if it were, I don't think the external costs are this are morally acceptable.

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