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

Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 217 posts

Re: Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017

#201

Post by dionidium »

shady-lady wrote: post #170
dionidium wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bourgeois line on drugs, believed exclusively by people who haven't spent much time around crack and heroin addicts [0], prolonged exposure to whom eliminates the comfortable fiction that what people put into their body is their own business . [0] Or severe alcoholics, for that matter.

I'm not sure if you're being downvoted for your viewpoint or your usage of "This is the bourgeois line on drugs".

I suppose that's a risk one takes when using that word in modern conversation, but I literally mean it in the dictionary-definition sense (i.e. "of or characteristic of the middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes").

Feel free to substitute "middle-class" for "bourgeois" if it sounds less political or inflammatory to your ears.

Re: Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017

#202

Post by perl4ever »

pitaj wrote: post #187
perl4ever wrote: post #142

It seems like the term "overdoses" is obscuring the problem which is more "toxic (lethal) stuff is increasingly being mixed into illicit drugs of all kinds".

There's a simple solution: legalize all drugs. All of them. Let people get what they want. Then, if the government must do something, pump all that money they were spending on the drug war into treatment centers.

I can't see how eliminating regulation of drugs is going to solve the problem of people getting substances that are harmful or ineffective. There is no simple solution, only the obvious complicated one of regulating correctly.

Re: Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017

#203

Post by ssijak »

dionidium wrote: post #115
ssijak wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very hypocritical for some politician to tell me what I can and what I can`t put into my body. Recently in UK they enacted a law that criminalize any substance that changes how you feel, but with the following remark "The ban is so wide-ranging that a long list of substances such as alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, food and medical products will have to be given special exemptions." When you thought that you reached…

This is the bourgeois line on drugs, believed exclusively by people who haven't spent much time around crack and heroin addicts [0], prolonged exposure to whom eliminates the comfortable fiction that what people put into their body is their own business . [0] Or severe alcoholics, for that matter.

Hint : Look at Portugal.

Re: Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017

#204

Post by Nursie »

austincheney wrote: post #195
Nursie wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that section in wikipedia, or the paper it comes from, says what you think it says. It certainly doesn't claim that a single use is addictive, only gives the rates of continued use (to the point of dependency) a certain number of years after the first dose. I imagine one could come up with similar numbers for opiates. Further, you've contradicted your own point in your spiel about nicotine. I really don…

> Further, you've contradicted your own point in your spiel about nicotine. How so? I stated that it isn't the nicotine or its addictive effects that make cigarettes addictive even though research indicates nicotine is universally addictive. A cigarette is not nicotine. > I really don't think your ideas are supportable. There is sufficient medical research to dictate whether or not these ideas are valid. The question…

You started out declaring that 'depressants' are not physically addictive in the same way stimulants are which is a huge, huge generalisation across many disaparate chemical families with different types of actions. Then you said a particular stimulant is not physically addictive without additional behaviours, contradicting your earlier point. You also made some weird claims about cocaine.

> The question I am trying to raise is to what degree behavioral medicine is more a factor in this than physical medicine,

Well that didn't come across at all in your earlier posts, and I think you probably have a lot more reading to do.

Re: Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017

#205

Post by dionidium »

ssijak wrote: post #203
dionidium wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bourgeois line on drugs, believed exclusively by people who haven't spent much time around crack and heroin addicts [0], prolonged exposure to whom eliminates the comfortable fiction that what people put into their body is their own business . [0] Or severe alcoholics, for that matter.

Hint : Look at Portugal.

It's a sign of abject dysfunction that you think a passing allusion to Portugal is any kind of response to what I said above. The sentiment I'm pushing against is the feel-good, free-love notion that what you put into your body is your own damn business. Recognizing the absurdity of that claim isn't a vote for criminalization or mass incarceration.

Indeed, Portugal has invested massively in the kind of healthcare and drug-treatment infrastructure that's required to effectively handle the inevitable results of decriminalisation.

Whatever you want to say about drugs or drug policy, the people who do them aren't just minding their own business. One way or the other, the rest of us have to respond to it. Complaints about the "hypocrisy" of attempts to reduce use simply are not serious.

And, as I said above, it's a position that rarely survives prolonged interaction with actual addicts.

Re: Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017

#206

Post by DanBC »

dionidium wrote: post #205
ssijak wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hint : Look at Portugal.

It's a sign of abject dysfunction that you think a passing allusion to Portugal is any kind of response to what I said above. The sentiment I'm pushing against is the feel-good, free-love notion that what you put into your body is your own damn business. Recognizing the absurdity of that claim isn't a vote for criminalization or mass incarceration. Indeed, Portugal has invested massively in the kind of healthcare and…

> Indeed, Portugal has invested massively in the kind of healthcare and drug-treatment infrastructure that's required to effectively handle the inevitable results of decriminalisation.

No,, Portugal has invested massively in the healthcare and drug treatment programmes that you need whether drugs are legal or not.

The US could implement all of those tomorrow and still keep drugs illegal.

Re: Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017

#207

Post by dionidium »

DanBC wrote: post #206
dionidium wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a sign of abject dysfunction that you think a passing allusion to Portugal is any kind of response to what I said above. The sentiment I'm pushing against is the feel-good, free-love notion that what you put into your body is your own damn business. Recognizing the absurdity of that claim isn't a vote for criminalization or mass incarceration. Indeed, Portugal has invested massively in the kind of healthcare and…

> Indeed, Portugal has invested massively in the kind of healthcare and drug-treatment infrastructure that's required to effectively handle the inevitable results of decriminalisation. No,, Portugal has invested massively in the healthcare and drug treatment programmes that you need whether drugs are legal or not. The US could implement all of those tomorrow and still keep drugs illegal.

Yes. Poorly stated on my end.

Re: Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017

#208

Post by jwhitlark »

graphitezepp wrote: post #177
rndmize wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds exactly right to me. In discussions with a religious friend of mine some years ago, I noticed that she had a tendency to conflate law and morality, when they really have nothing to do with each other. Further, she seemed to think that because it was illegal or bad to do something, it was reasonable to expect that people wouldn't do that thing as a result. I found (and find) this ridiculous - in large enou…

The legal = moral line of thought is one of my most hated things to come across. It correlating with the highly religious makes sense, but it's by no means limited to them. It's incredibly wide spread in American culture to have at least a small degree of that, people always feel naughty when they break the law. I too find it ridiculous.

I wonder sometimes if legal = moral is just a labor saving device for most of the population.

Re: Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017

#209

Post by austincheney »

Nursie wrote: post #204
austincheney wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Further, you've contradicted your own point in your spiel about nicotine. How so? I stated that it isn't the nicotine or its addictive effects that make cigarettes addictive even though research indicates nicotine is universally addictive. A cigarette is not nicotine. > I really don't think your ideas are supportable. There is sufficient medical research to dictate whether or not these ideas are valid. The question…

You started out declaring that 'depressants' are not physically addictive in the same way stimulants are which is a huge, huge generalisation across many disaparate chemical families with different types of actions. Then you said a particular stimulant is not physically addictive without additional behaviours, contradicting your earlier point. You also made some weird claims about cocaine. > The question I am trying…

> Then you said a particular stimulant is not physically addictive without additional behaviours

I very clearly did not say that and expounded on it in pretty good detail. Again, cigarettes are not nicotine.

Re: Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017

#210

Post by Nursie »

austincheney wrote: post #209
Nursie wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You started out declaring that 'depressants' are not physically addictive in the same way stimulants are which is a huge, huge generalisation across many disaparate chemical families with different types of actions. Then you said a particular stimulant is not physically addictive without additional behaviours, contradicting your earlier point. You also made some weird claims about cocaine. > The question I am trying…

> Then you said a particular stimulant is not physically addictive without additional behaviours I very clearly did not say that and expounded on it in pretty good detail. Again, cigarettes are not nicotine.

> I very clearly did not say that and expounded on it in pretty good detail. Again, cigarettes are not nicotine.

But that is the main addictive chemical within them, and you tried to make some sort of distinction that it was unusual that addiction was dependent on circumstance for cigarettes and nicotine as compared to other things you consider, wrongly, to be immediately addictive. You also said this -

> it isn't the nicotine or its addictive effects that make cigarettes addictive

Which is just bollocks.

I'm not disputing that there are behavioural and personal differences in drug response, that much is immediately obvious in that some people get addicted while others don't, and that people have preferences for different drugs.

It's your wide categorising and weird ideas about addiction that are unsupported.

Honestly I think I'm done here. You've got some very strange views which really aren't valid.

Post reply on HN