31–40 of 193 posts
They should also sell heroin in pharmacies so people can inject an accurate dosage. This would greatly reduce overdoses and drug trafficking.
We've had this in Australia for some time and I think it's abominable. Western civilisation is founded on the rule of law. Obey the law and you do fine, break the law and you get punished. When you start saying to people "Hey guys, we know you're breaking the law, but go ahead and fucking do it in this room, we don't mind, you won't get arrested or punished" Here's a better approach to drug users: catch them, sentenc…
We've had this in Australia for some time and I think it's abominable. Western civilisation is founded on the rule of law. Obey the law and you do fine, break the law and you get punished. When you start saying to people "Hey guys, we know you're breaking the law, but go ahead and fucking do it in this room, we don't mind, you won't get arrested or punished" Here's a better approach to drug users: catch them, sentenc…
Treating drug use as a criminal justice problem rather than a public health problem is more expensive and gives worse results.
I think it's weird to ask tax payers to fund a very much more expensive programme (of police officers catching heroin users; of courts prosecuting them; of prisons holding them) especially when that programme has provably worse results (more harm to drug users; more harm to society; more cost to society) than treating drug use as a public health problem and providing harm reduction measures.
They should also sell heroin in pharmacies so people can inject an accurate dosage. This would greatly reduce overdoses and drug trafficking.
I am not convinced that that it will reduce overdose or trafficking. It depends on the drug's economics and pharmacodynamics, ease of production, addictiveness, LD50, etc. What's better? More people using high-grade heroin in a controlled, safe environment, or less people using low quality heroin in an uncontrolled, dangerous environment? If the LD50 is very easy to arrive at in everyday usage, then I don't see this…
Wikipedia gives the overdose level at 75-600mg[2], and Erowid reports the recreational dose at 5mg[3] (both for "opiate-naive" individuals, i.e. no tolerance). >10x is a high safety margin; alcohol is of the order of 10x for reference.
The piece you're missing here is that the primary risk of accidental overdose is greatly increased with illicit heroin where the purity is unknown, and can fluctuate wildly as it always cut to some extent, but seldom predictably so.
In the case of heroin, most of the harm from usage is directly caused by prohibition.
[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11705488 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin#Overdose [3]: https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/heroin/heroin_dose1.shtml
We've had this in Australia for some time and I think it's abominable. Western civilisation is founded on the rule of law. Obey the law and you do fine, break the law and you get punished. When you start saying to people "Hey guys, we know you're breaking the law, but go ahead and fucking do it in this room, we don't mind, you won't get arrested or punished" Here's a better approach to drug users: catch them, sentenc…
What are you going to do when they start taking drugs again and die? Or kill someone? Pass down some moral judgment?
Shrug my shoulders. Those things are banned because they're dangerous, and if people die while using them it's not like we didn't give them enough fucking warning.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Would it bet better for everyone to have a safe, controlled dependency on heroin, or for 5% of people to have an unsafe, uncontrolled dependency on heroin? For an answer, you can just look at alcohol, which is typically assessed as having roughly similar social harm to heroin (although it varies by source). Were things better during prohibition, or today?
I can't accept that heroin and alcohol are equal in that sense. I would be very skeptical about any sources claiming this equality. Ease of production, pharmacodynamics, etc. Edit: Ideally, humans wouldn't be consuming poison? But, what is poison? It's a lot more complicated than "alcohol is bad" or "heroin is bad". Maybe you are right, letting down the flood gates will surely kill people who don't have control, and…
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_caus...
We've had this in Australia for some time and I think it's abominable. Western civilisation is founded on the rule of law. Obey the law and you do fine, break the law and you get punished. When you start saying to people "Hey guys, we know you're breaking the law, but go ahead and fucking do it in this room, we don't mind, you won't get arrested or punished" Here's a better approach to drug users: catch them, sentenc…
We've had this in Australia for some time and I think it's abominable. Western civilisation is founded on the rule of law. Obey the law and you do fine, break the law and you get punished. When you start saying to people "Hey guys, we know you're breaking the law, but go ahead and fucking do it in this room, we don't mind, you won't get arrested or punished" Here's a better approach to drug users: catch them, sentenc…
However, from my POV, drug use is not just about a substance, but a life-style and emotional dependence. You can't just remove drugs and expect things to improve for a person, you need to provide holistic support - and let's face it, drug usage is an incredibly complex personal choice.