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Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts

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Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts

#151

Post by egopulsus »

trome wrote: post #57
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #2

I live in Seattle and regularly see needles on the street, and occasionally see paramedics tending to OD'ing addicts. This is a great development but should've happened years ago.

Definitely, as a Seattlite I'm all for it, less needles in parks, under I-5, and on the streets are good. Having users all in one place where they can be monitored, attended to and offered services much more effectively and at a lower cost to the taxpayer is also a huge win!

If you think this will bring LESS needles then you are gravely mistaken. Go take a stroll up to Vancouver to the safe-injection site they are modeling this after and you'll discover destitute conditions in a large radius.

Seattle's homeless problem is possibly one of the worst in the nation, likely due in part to the friendly & enabling atmosphere the city and it's citizens have provided. By denying these people hitting their bottoms, they will never have a chance at cleaning up and returning to society.

Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts

#152

Post by ahoka »

ryanlol wrote: post #147
solipsism wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like asking, "Does that mean you don't believe in responsible knife juggling?" One is going to kill you a lot more surely and quickly than the other, but neither is a good idea. To say heroin and alcohol/tobacco are equivalent would be stupid. To say an addition to heroin has no similarities to an addition to alcohol/tobacco would also be stupid.

>To say heroin and alcohol/tobacco are equivalent would be stupid. Indeed, with proper dosage long term recreational use of heroin is far less likely to cause lasting damage than alcohol or tobacco.

I hope you are not serious...

Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts

#153

Post by JshWright »

general_ai wrote: post #108
tomsthumb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except homeless people dying of aids in county hospitals is expensive.

Sure would help if they went through rehab to kick the addiction, and not get AIDS then.

Which is why programs like this are important. Keep them alive and healthy long enough to seek help...

Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts

#154

Post by xorxornop »

ahoka wrote: post #152
ryanlol wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To say heroin and alcohol/tobacco are equivalent would be stupid. Indeed, with proper dosage long term recreational use of heroin is far less likely to cause lasting damage than alcohol or tobacco.

I hope you are not serious...

No, because it's completely true. Repeated use of either tobacco or alcohol cause definite harm - cancer for tobacco (note, not nicotine...), brain and liver damage for alcohol. Heroin doesn't. Long term opioid use can cause hyperalgesia for _some_ people, but by no means all, and that's really if you take them every day at high doses (and heroin is actually not so bad for this - it differs from opioid to opioid), which is a little weird since morphine is quite the opposite - I suspect this is because the active metabolite responsible for the primary effects (heroin is really a prodrug) is morphine-6-glucoronide (M6G), not actually morphine as many would expect.

Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts

#155

Post by xorxornop »

pauljaworski wrote: post #109
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between powder and black-tar heroin?

In addition to what the others have said, black tar is essentially heroin that is made by skipping a few of the steps in the "standard" heroin synthesis process. Whichever cartel controls West Coast distribution decided that was good enough for them, and customers would buy it regardless. I'm actually curious as to why the other cartels bother producing powder heroin at all.

Presumably because it packs to a higher density and is purer, and since sentencing is done by weight irrespective of how much active drug it actually contains, it winds up being essentially a forcing function toward making the strongest substance you can. Such laws therefore are almost entirely responsible for why drugs have gotten stronger and stronger over the years, with the increased risk this brings.

Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts

#156

Post by xorxornop »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #86

See Vancouver's Insite program for proof it works. It's been a huge economic and social success, allowing timely intervention to help drug users get clean, reducing the rate of HIV and HepC amongst intravenous drug users and helping numerous people get a fresh start at life.

New Zealand, where I live, also has a harm reduction program. Needles are cheap and easily available. It's been a huge success. MASSIVE drops in HIV/AIDS, Hep C, etc, as well as related things like infection and so on, in combination with reduced family harms like.

Also instituted were our opioid substitution programs, allowing people to choose from methadone or buprenorphine (aka Suboxone, Subutex) at the dose they want. This, too, resulted in massive drops in overdoses and crime.

There is literally no valid reason to oppose these programs supported by evidence. Not only are they the ethical thing to do... they also just work.

Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts

#157

Post by xorxornop »

edblarney wrote: post #133
zkms wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opioid use is not inherently dangerous (indeed, long-term pharmaceutical-grade opioid use is remarkably safe does not cause organ damage, unlike alcohol). There are several actual circumstances where opioid use gets dangerous to life and they are: 1) Dosage/concentration uncertainty 2) Contamination of a lower strength opioid (say, morphine or heroin) with a much higher strength one (fentanyl or fentanyl analogues) 3…

"Opioid use is not inherently dangerous" Yes, it is. It's extremely addictive, and is very well known to destroy lives.

They most certainly can - but the majority of the harms actually result from our treatment of the issue, not the issue itself. I think we simply have to accept that people are going to want to use these substances, and make it as safe as possible for them to do so. If the first step of a plan says something like "1) First, change fundamental human nature", the plan really needs a rethink.

Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts

#158

Post by forgetsusername »

solipsism wrote: post #140
baddox wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean you don't believe that responsible alcohol or tobacco use is possible? What about prescription pain medication?

That's like asking, "Does that mean you don't believe in responsible knife juggling?" One is going to kill you a lot more surely and quickly than the other, but neither is a good idea. To say heroin and alcohol/tobacco are equivalent would be stupid. To say an addition to heroin has no similarities to an addition to alcohol/tobacco would also be stupid.

>To say heroin and alcohol/tobacco are equivalent would be stupid.

It doesn't sound like you have any experience with drugs or medicine outside of what you learned in D.A.R.E.

Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts

#159

Post by xorxornop »

edblarney wrote: post #135
paulmd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, do you have an alcohol problem or addictive personality that is driving this fear? If not, what keeps you from drinking yourself to sleep on the sidewalk every night? When it comes down to it, not all drugs are equal. Heroin isn't "alcohol but worse". People who drink tend to get pretty nasty sometimes, and that's a social harm that someone who's nodding doesn't perpetrate. And in terms of physical h…

" People who drink tend to get pretty nasty sometimes, and that's a social harm that someone who's nodding doesn't perpetrate." If everyone did heroin today - instead of drinking - the world would fall apart. Can you imagine 50 000 people at a Football game, all doing smack? Sure, it would be a fun game. Within days, 10% of them would be full on addicts. Within weeks maybe 50% of them would. Those people would go thr…

I've met plenty of addicts, and they're perfectly fine people when they haven't been pushed to the brink by restricting their access. People can end up pretty nasty this way, the same way that people can end up career criminals - but they almost certainly didn't start that way.

Your perspective seems very out of touch with the reality of things, and I question whether you've actually really talked to any of them at all, and instead are simply arguing in respect to some caricature of one.

Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts

#160

Post by pixelbill »

ryanlol wrote: post #147
solipsism wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like asking, "Does that mean you don't believe in responsible knife juggling?" One is going to kill you a lot more surely and quickly than the other, but neither is a good idea. To say heroin and alcohol/tobacco are equivalent would be stupid. To say an addition to heroin has no similarities to an addition to alcohol/tobacco would also be stupid.

>To say heroin and alcohol/tobacco are equivalent would be stupid. Indeed, with proper dosage long term recreational use of heroin is far less likely to cause lasting damage than alcohol or tobacco.

Heroin is already safer than tobacco and alcohol.

Deaths per year from Heroin: 13,000

Deaths per year from Alcohol: 88,000

Deaths per year from Tobacco: 440,000

Hmm...

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