Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 195 posts

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#141

Post by pixl97 »

mgce wrote: post #119
ep103 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 quantiti…

> The taboo truth is people do drugs because they are fun I don't agree with this. This is true for some cases, yes. But it's just as common if not more common for people to take drugs to mask pain. It's not about the drug being fun, but about the overwhelming pain of life being temporarily numbed. Some drugs start off as fun before becoming something more severe. Others are never fun - they're just coping mechanisms…

Err, you mean you only partially agree with this.

Of course my views my be slight jaded by the BS programs like D.A.R.E spouted off during the 80s. "Drugs are bad" "Use drugs once and die" "This is your brain on drugs". This propaganda pretty much ended any realistic talk about legal and illegal drug use. Some drugs are fun. Some people have to cope with massive amounts of pain in their life. Others do drugs because of a genetic predisposition to addiction.

Now we're just left with a massive mess with bad outcomes for everybody.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#142

Post by mywittyname »

mgce wrote: post #125
krapp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Legalize and tax/regulate production, purity, etc. Outlaw all marketing. Why outlaw marketing? If all drugs are legal and regulated, there should be no issue with advertising them like any other legal and regulated product. The US already allows advertising for pharmaceuticals, it should allow advertising for every other drug. And why should drug companies have to invest their profits in the programs you describe?…

I firmly believe alcohol marketing is a major contributor toward alcohol continuing to be one of the most destructive drugs in our society. It's glamorized in a a savvy and well-funded way that puts an incessant haze in our understanding of it as a a powerful, poisonous, and potentially debilitating substance. You can find billboards that make bottles of liquor look like royal treasure passed down from the gods. It's…

People have been writing about the disastrous effects of alcohol abuse since long before billboards existed. Cultures throughout history made laws against drunkenness. In fact, abuse used to be so pervasive that 100 years ago the USA passed a constitutional amendment banning it!

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#143

Post by conanbatt »

toymachiner62 wrote: post #138

Maybe i'm an insensitive Mofo, but let the dumbasses OD and educate how dangerous these drugs are. Then maybe the next generation will be smarter.

I think im way more selfish than you are. I much rather having them working to do things i will consume. If they die early, how am i to enjoy the produce of their work?

I certainly dont want to sacrifice my quality of life for the profits of a drugs salesman

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#144

Post by pixl97 »

SurrealSoul wrote: post #18

Cincinnati was my home town, and its bad. People joke about it but I know at least 3 people on my friendslist that overdosed. I'm glad the punishment for selling the drug is so high, often even sometimes receiving murder sentences for people that overdose but that isn't going to prevent people from buying / selling

If you go on the theory that your friends were going to use no matter what (I mean it's already illegal, so the law isn't stopping them), that the state is the cause of your friends death. They cannot buy any safe product of known quantities and thereby use an unsafe one.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#145

Post by Zak »

pixl97 wrote: post #137
mgce wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to agree with you, and I think I mostly do. Unfortunately your comment also reminds me how enormous the barriers remain toward people recognizing alcoholism and having the will to treat it. There's an enormous amount of shame, stigma, and denial toward alcoholism, to the point that most who suffer from it still choose to hide that reality as much as they possibly can. Even worse, the legality of it promotes a…

>I don't think making alcohol illegal would help. We already tried this experiment once. Making alcohol illegal did two things. It actually reduced consumption and alcoholism. It greatly increased the amount of black market crime, and it drastically changed how it was consumed. Harm in vice will always occur. We just have to decide if we want it in the form of overdose, or the form of black market versus police state…

Prohibition can also increase adverse events like overdose.

Heroin addicts usually know how much of their usual dealer's heroin, cut to a particular purity to take to get high without dying. If they take the same dose of a more pure drug, they overdose. If they take what they think is heroin, but is actually fentanyl, they overdose.

Likewise, during alcohol prohibition, liquor containing methanol was a common risk for poisoning when drinking black market alcohol. Even the cheapest grain alcohol at a college liquor store today will not contain a dangerous amount of methanol. Legal heroin would reduce this kind of risk in the same way; it would contain what it says it contains, in the concentration on the label and would not contain other harmful substances.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#146

Post by pixl97 »

jostmey wrote: post #112

Isn't it possible to create poison genes using CRISPR that are always dominant and will lead to a species extinction? Why not apply this technology to completely eliminate Opioid plants? P.S. I am sure there are many reasons why this won't work, but let's think big, okay?

Um, you're not thinking big enough, and there is a large number of failures of imagination you are experiencing.

First, opioids are actually really good when you don't abuse them. Just go break your leg and you'll see why.

Second, you are suffering from the sci-fy show "use space age technology yet still have modern problems" thing you see. If you can 'extinct' poppies, I can just as easily use CRISPR to stick those genes in anything else. It's not corn, it's my cash crop!

If you have supertechnology don't fix plants, fix people.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#147

Post by mgce »

pixl97 wrote: post #137
mgce wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to agree with you, and I think I mostly do. Unfortunately your comment also reminds me how enormous the barriers remain toward people recognizing alcoholism and having the will to treat it. There's an enormous amount of shame, stigma, and denial toward alcoholism, to the point that most who suffer from it still choose to hide that reality as much as they possibly can. Even worse, the legality of it promotes a…

>I don't think making alcohol illegal would help. We already tried this experiment once. Making alcohol illegal did two things. It actually reduced consumption and alcoholism. It greatly increased the amount of black market crime, and it drastically changed how it was consumed. Harm in vice will always occur. We just have to decide if we want it in the form of overdose, or the form of black market versus police state…

> Harm in vice will always occur. We just have to decide if we want it in the form of overdose, or the form of black market versus police state violence.

I think this is one of the key insights. Although, thankfully, I think it's more than a binary choice (either a) legal or b) illegal).

Regulated legality combined with heavy restrictions on marketing and sustained support for rehab / support / education seems to me the best of all worlds. Still keep things accessible enough to cut out the motivation for the black market. But don't let the less scrupulous side of legal society run amok and actively exploit that.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#148

Post by pixl97 »

egwynn wrote: post #82

I generally hear people saying two things: 1. “The gov't isn’t/wasn’t able to competently police big pharma, so addiction will only get worse if we legalize drugs.” 2. “The gov’t is policing citizens too much, so addicts’ lives will get ruined if we don’t legalize drugs.” I’d like everyone to consider the very real possibility that we’ll need to fix both problems before we reach a good place.

Or you should realize both problems cannot be fixed and we need to choose the option that will do the least harm. Reducing the abusive police state and treating increased numbers of abusers is likely a much better problem than the one we are currently experiencing.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#149

Post by eternalvision »

senorjazz wrote: post #97
SCAQTony wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pot would alleviate much of the heroin problem but with great advantages comes equal disadvantages. I suspect we will see these issues soon. Point number two: Marijuana is addictive and individuals with marijuana addiction entering voluntary rehab is increasing:( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2797098/ ) Theory: The reason one does not get physical withdraws is that it is oil based, stored in the fat an…

Cannabis addiction (and I agree it exists) is not in the same league as opioid addiction. Heavy smokers may feel different when stopping, may have a few sleepless nights due to dreams returning, may be irritable, feel bored, but it is not at all comparable to those coming off a heavy opioid addiction. There is no equal disadvantage. If all heroin addicts were to magically over night turn into cannabis addicts and no…

Marijuana absolutely can and does cause far more significant withdrawal than just a few sleepless nights. Under certain circumstances, the withdrawal can persist for much, much longer.

It's irresponsible to assume that marijuana is harmless and non-addictive or only mildly addictive, and too easy to justify as being benign, when juxtaposed wth the withdrawal process of harder drugs.

Re: The Heroin Business Is Booming in America

#150

Post by MarkLowenstein »

toymachiner62 wrote: post #138

Maybe i'm an insensitive Mofo, but let the dumbasses OD and educate how dangerous these drugs are. Then maybe the next generation will be smarter.

This. Look at this HN discussion: so much hand-wringing of "we should do this! The government should do that! The government shouldn't do this!" And the problem continues no matter what all these people try. Now ask yourself, what is the one idea that no one will listen to or accept? It's this guy's. Think about it.
Post reply on HN