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The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

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Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#21

Post by tyingq »

kingkawn wrote: post #19
S_A_P wrote: post #8

This is a tough problem with no easy answer. Ive 2 friends with heroin problems that I fear may never fully stay clean. I don't think that jail is the right answer though.

If jail was structured around rehabilitation of the roots causes that led the individuals into the anti-social behavior that requires their isolation then it would be the proper place for someone who has been overcome by problems like this. Instead jail is punitive hell, meant to further isolate and devastate the individuals it consumes to intimidate the rest of the population.

And it's punitive forever. Your employment prospects once you have a felony conviction are severely limited.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#22

Post by weeksie »

Maybe I'm crazy but I feel like the US goes on this uppers/downers cycle. Of course I'm probably seeing patterns where there are none, but we had heroin in the seventies, cocaine/crack in the eighties, heroin was back in the 90s, meth in the 00s, heroin in the teens.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#23

Post by noir_lord »

tyingq wrote: post #16
meddlepal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? I understand it makes acquisition less taboo, and perhaps makes treatment a less taboo subject too, but it's not like legalization is a pancea for addiction. Booze is legal and we still have a massive alcoholism problem.

Presumably you take some of the money you were spending on the drug war and put it into programs to deal with addiction.

That and the tax revenue.

A drug lord can sustain his business with high margins because of the high price however they couldn't compete against a major corporation producing the same thing even with a higher end tax rate if it was legal.

It's the reason why tobacco and alcohol markets are largely dominated by legitimate companies, economies of scale, distribution etc are all in favour of the legal entity (which isn't to say some tobacco and alcohol aren't sold without the tax, nothing is perfect).

So legalising drugs is a double whammy, you save a massive expenditure and the war on drugs and increase your tax revenue and force drug cartels into competing with legitimate businesses they simply can't compete with.

If I was doing it I'd ring fence the revenue from taxation into treatment and education and put the savings on enforcement either back into the general tax pot or shift the focus onto things like sex trafficking.

If nothing else the War on Drugs we have now simply isn't working, it has to be worth trying something else at this point.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#24

Post by ep103 »

meddlepal wrote: post #6
diogenescynic wrote: post #3

The drug war has failed. Legalize all drugs and tax them. Spend the tax money on rehab, schools, and public universities. We are just propping up drug lords in Latin America to feed our insatiable demand for drugs.

How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? I understand it makes acquisition less taboo, and perhaps makes treatment a less taboo subject too, but it's not like legalization is a pancea for addiction. Booze is legal and we still have a massive alcoholism problem.

tl;dr: To put it one last way: if drugs were legal, the pharmaceutical industry would be free to iterate on making recreational drugs, that don't have the drawbacks of the things people currently make in back alleys.

The taboo truth is people do drugs because they are fun, and people want the drugs that are fun to do, and don't have negative health consequences. Many drugs are relatively safe to do (in small quantities) (or at least moreso than things like skydiving), provided drug purity.

Drugs that seriously harm health, are by and large things that people either get suckered into via the black market, or are things people turn to when they do not have access to safer alternatives.

And many of the negative health consequences and horrors of drug use, come from unpure drug quality, which in turn is a result of the illegal nature of drugs.

Let me put it this way: If it were legal to buy a non-addictive opiod and heroin, nearly 100% of people would choose the opiod. Out of pure self interest, people wouldn't choose the addictive substance, given a safer alternative.

Similarly, if people could choose between pure mdma, and meth, meth would nearly cease to exist.

But if you decide to use an opiod today, you're going to get a mix of heroin and all sorts of awful junk that you're going to pump into your veins. And if you buy mdma today, there's a huge chance there's going to be a lot of meth in there. Etc, etc, etc

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#25

Post by AOsborn »

mmjaa wrote: post #9
meddlepal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? I understand it makes acquisition less taboo, and perhaps makes treatment a less taboo subject too, but it's not like legalization is a pancea for addiction. Booze is legal and we still have a massive alcoholism problem.

Legalization doesn't fix addiction. It fixes the sub-culture, the underground, the dark layers in society where addicts lurk in order to be able to continue their addiction. Legalization brings these people into society, by removing the stigma associated with drug use, and makes it less of a problem to be swept under the rug. It makes it easier to contact addicts and get them into effective treatment programs. Right…

Well put.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#26

Post by Pigo »

meddlepal wrote: post #6
diogenescynic wrote: post #3

The drug war has failed. Legalize all drugs and tax them. Spend the tax money on rehab, schools, and public universities. We are just propping up drug lords in Latin America to feed our insatiable demand for drugs.

How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? I understand it makes acquisition less taboo, and perhaps makes treatment a less taboo subject too, but it's not like legalization is a pancea for addiction. Booze is legal and we still have a massive alcoholism problem.

People throw out legalization because they're used to the marijuana debate. But how do you legalize a drug like fentanyl? How do you pretend you're here to protect and serve when you legalize a drug that seems like it was designed to kill people in a single use? We need to rethink the laws, and have some effective changes lead by people who understand the problem and have nothing to gain financially. But there's never going to be carfentanil at Rite-Aid, and if there was, these cartels would compete. Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem as simple as pot.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#27

Post by api »

meddlepal wrote: post #6
diogenescynic wrote: post #3

The drug war has failed. Legalize all drugs and tax them. Spend the tax money on rehab, schools, and public universities. We are just propping up drug lords in Latin America to feed our insatiable demand for drugs.

How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? I understand it makes acquisition less taboo, and perhaps makes treatment a less taboo subject too, but it's not like legalization is a pancea for addiction. Booze is legal and we still have a massive alcoholism problem.

Improving community, social ties, and the economy reduces addictions.

The interior of the USA looks like post-Soviet-collapse Russia economically, and the way we've built cities and suburbs for the past 50 years has destroyed opportunities for beneficial community and social connection. Nothing will reduce addiction until those things are fixed. If heroin is unavailable people will go to prescription pills, alcohol, or even food, video games, etc.

Legalizing, taxing, and regulating drugs reduces crime, redirects money from criminals into law abiding enterprises and tax revenue that can be used to address the problems above, and allows the deployment of strategies to reduce the harm done by addiction.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#28

Post by tyingq »

knownothing wrote: post #15

We invaded Afghanistan--the world's largest producer of poppies for heroin and opium--in 2001. Production has also been on the rise since then. An interesting correlation.

Most sources I can find say that the vast majority of heroin in the US comes from Mexico and South America.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#29

Post by dave_sullivan »

meddlepal wrote: post #6
diogenescynic wrote: post #3

The drug war has failed. Legalize all drugs and tax them. Spend the tax money on rehab, schools, and public universities. We are just propping up drug lords in Latin America to feed our insatiable demand for drugs.

How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? I understand it makes acquisition less taboo, and perhaps makes treatment a less taboo subject too, but it's not like legalization is a pancea for addiction. Booze is legal and we still have a massive alcoholism problem.

> How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions?

It doesn't. It's partly an acknowledgement that, "It's really none of your business what people put in their own bodies."

You're implicitly saying, "I don't like the fact that you are addicted to X substance or action Y, so I think that gives me the moral justification to lock you in a literal cage for a very long time."

Legalizing drugs is about not putting people in jail for harming their own bodies and providing them with safer alternatives (IE, actual heroin instead of fentanyl, which is why we have this so-called "epidemic")

And for the record, never tried heroin, never will, it ruins lives. But I don't think we need to be putting people in jail for it. In fact, this only makes it worse.

Btw, ever wonder how much fentanyl it takes to kill you vs the amount of heroin? https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fa... That's what's driving the huge number of deaths from "heroin".

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#30

Post by Fricken »

knownothing wrote: post #15

We invaded Afghanistan--the world's largest producer of poppies for heroin and opium--in 2001. Production has also been on the rise since then. An interesting correlation.

Opium production was virtually eliminated in Afghanistan before we invaded, by the Taliban, whom we thanked for doing such great work. We also granted Afghanistan $43 million to help farmers no longer profiting off poppy fields through a drought.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on-pop...

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