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Vermont Quits War on Drugs to Treat Heroin Abuse as Health Issue

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Re: Vermont Quits War on Drugs to Treat Heroin Abuse as Health Issue

#31

Post by blueking »

I wonder why the government needs to force everyone to hit a collective rock bottom before considering a new strategy. Throwing everyone involved in jail was a bad idea from day 1.

What they need to do is manufacture and sell the drugs at cost to registered addicts. This way you destroy the business of the drug cartels and you insure your citizens are at least using pure drugs.

Regardless of the legality of the use of the drug it is a health issue that the drugs your citizens consume are pure. The safety of your people should come first and a government that has taken this long to realize something that basic is simply incompetent.

Prioritizing law enforcement before public safety is a revealing and meaningful sign of incompetence or even corruption.

Re: Vermont Quits War on Drugs to Treat Heroin Abuse as Health Issue

#32

Post by [deleted] »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #24
baddox wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are Democrats more likely to oppose the war on drugs?

No, nor have they historically been more likely to oppose mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. See http://www.amazon.com/First-Civil-Right-Political-Developmen... Also, big disclaimer, the author of the aforementioned book and I dated for four years.

[deleted]

Re: Vermont Quits War on Drugs to Treat Heroin Abuse as Health Issue

#33

Post by VMG »

baddox wrote: post #17
kynikos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a resident and commnications director/volunteer for a couple of campaigns, I've learned a Republican in Vermont is almost always like a Democrat in any other state.

Are Democrats more likely to oppose the war on drugs?

They are responsible for minimum sentencing laws:

http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/04/a-timeline-of-the-ri...

> June 19, 1986: College basketball player Len Bias dies of a cocaine overdose, which highly politicized the drug debate during a mid-term election year, as Frontline explains. In 1999, Eric Sterling, a former lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee would go on to explain to This American Life how Democrats, in an effort to recover from their soft on crime reputation, pushed through a drug bill that introduced mandatory minimum sentences.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/143/s...

Re: Vermont Quits War on Drugs to Treat Heroin Abuse as Health Issue

#34

Post by eru »

awjr wrote: post #26

"War on drugs" is a terrible world affliction. Prohibition neither works nor is conducive to a better society. Governments should just tax and sell the drugs to the general public. Alcohol is considered to be the most harmful drug but is legal because it can be taxed, controlled, and makes money. ( http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_caus... ) Governments should also support people that want drugs…

> Alcohol is considered to be the most harmful drug [...]

Only because of the wide spread of use.

Re: Vermont Quits War on Drugs to Treat Heroin Abuse as Health Issue

#35

Post by Xylakant »

eru wrote: post #34
awjr wrote: post #26

"War on drugs" is a terrible world affliction. Prohibition neither works nor is conducive to a better society. Governments should just tax and sell the drugs to the general public. Alcohol is considered to be the most harmful drug but is legal because it can be taxed, controlled, and makes money. ( http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_caus... ) Governments should also support people that want drugs…

> Alcohol is considered to be the most harmful drug [...] Only because of the wide spread of use.

No, actually not. Alcohol is a potent poison and kills cells - hence the use as desinfectant. The physical damage caused by alcohol abuse rival and surpass most illegal substances.

Re: Vermont Quits War on Drugs to Treat Heroin Abuse as Health Issue

#36

Post by thaumasiotes »

Xylakant wrote: post #35
eru wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alcohol is considered to be the most harmful drug [...] Only because of the wide spread of use.

No, actually not. Alcohol is a potent poison and kills cells - hence the use as desinfectant. The physical damage caused by alcohol abuse rival and surpass most illegal substances.

Alcohol is also one of a very small number of drugs where the physical symptoms of withdrawal can be fatal. That doesn't mean being an alcoholic is worse than being addicted to some other drug (salt withdrawal is invariably fatal, but nobody's out there saying "salt ruins lives"), but it's potentially an argument for alcohol being especially nasty to the body.

Re: Vermont Quits War on Drugs to Treat Heroin Abuse as Health Issue

#37

Post by awildone »

Xylakant wrote: post #35
eru wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alcohol is considered to be the most harmful drug [...] Only because of the wide spread of use.

No, actually not. Alcohol is a potent poison and kills cells - hence the use as desinfectant. The physical damage caused by alcohol abuse rival and surpass most illegal substances.

And it get's worse. Because your not really tripping but rather fighting poisoning, it effectively cuts the connection to the better part of who you are. If it wasn't for alcohol, a lot of the trouble we see in society simply wouldn't exist.

Re: Vermont Quits War on Drugs to Treat Heroin Abuse as Health Issue

#38

Post by lifeisstillgood »

codeshaman wrote: post #27

Just back from Boom Festival in Portugal, where personal drug use is decriminalized. There was almost no police/security at the gates or inside the festival, although selling drugs was not tolerated (eg. people selling on the festival grounds were kindly asked to leave). There were 42.000 people from 152 countries and most of them used some kind of substance or plant there (marijuana being the most abundantly and ope…

Yes ... But absolutely everything you say could apply to alcohol during say Prohibition. Look people taking the moonshine to be tested, people enjoying booze sensibly ...

We have a legalised and fairly sane alcohol policy in most countries, we can hardly hope to have a better policy and set up for any other drug, and yet alcohol is still a devastating blight on many lives.

Yes, stop this crazy war on drugs, but don't expect some nirvana to appear - people with a variety of mental and personality problems are not going to "grow up". They still need to be dealt with - and we are unforgiving of mental illness and have barely moved past the "cut it off and cauterise the wound" phase of treatment.

The war on drugs is mostly masking a war on mental health.

Re: Vermont Quits War on Drugs to Treat Heroin Abuse as Health Issue

#39

Post by awildone »

sehr wrote: post #28
bramgg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am looking forward to the rest of the world following suit. It's more like the opposite.

I'm not so sure, the world exists outside of Europe and the US. There are some seriously draconian drug laws in Asia for example

Sweden is fucked up as well, and I'd expect Norway to be the same or worse. Sweden jumped on the war on drugs-train head-first and tried to do it better than the US. And I don't think they got the other memo about the whole approach being a complete failure. It doesn't help that the famous German bitch we insist on keeping with "food" and "shelter" is running her own No Drugs-campaign with religious overtones. Or that the politicians in charge believe that overdosing on Cannabis is like overdosing on Heroin.

Re: Vermont Quits War on Drugs to Treat Heroin Abuse as Health Issue

#40

Post by amykhar »

The demographics of Vermont makes me curious. Many people say that the war on drugs is racially motivated in that more blacks and hispanics are prosecuted than whites. Vermont is 95% Caucasian. I wonder if this fact influenced the new policy in any way.
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