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Comment by idiot_stick | Hacker News Reader

>She's got the money for the dope, and heroin don't care.

So you what do you propose as a solution for this (likely unrepresentative) anecdote? Lock her up?

from OP, > chooses heroin over treatment instead

Until people realise that this is a rational and sensical decision there won't be any solutions for these problems and these cases.

The US drug "treatment" / "rehab" industry is notoriously awful and is dominated by pseudo-religious ideologues obsessed with abstinence (to the point that "cult" is often an accurate, non-hyperbolic term) and whose practices are not based on any medical evidence of what reduces deaths. It's a fucked up industry that loves to use degradation, isolation, and humiliation on its "patients", loves to make people withdraw suddenly from their drug use and force them to endure the withdrawal symptoms, and isn't even particularly good at helping people not die from heroin/opioid use.

Given the current state of the rehab industry, and given how ineffective the "treatments" it offers are, it can alas be a rational decision to avoid it.

here's some reading that is relevant: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irr... http://theinfluence.org/the-rehab-industry-badly-needs-to-cl... http://www.salon.com/2012/08/28/do_12_step_programs_lead_to_... http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/dying-to-be-free-heroin-t...

So why give them the choice in the first place?

So the rehab industry is shit, and your response is literally "make people go through it anyways"?

Well give them an option. Cold turkey in isolation block in jail or rehab. Guess which they'll pick.

I don't have a solution, but my point was that not all addicts are victims. For some, it's a conscious decision about choosing heroin over life (insert Trainspotting ending here).

Unless the US adopts some sort of ASBO laws, there's not much you can do about forced treatment for someone who doesn't choose treatment.

Also, you could substitute heroin here with any other equally damaging substance like alcohol and the situation wouldn't change.

> Also, you could substitute heroin here with any other equally damaging substance

Desk jobs and fast food? As long as we have public healthcare I reserve the right to smack that bag of chips out of your chubby fingers. /end of rant

Even if ASBO laws were effective, I'd rather have a few drug abusers than ASBO laws. I don't want the government to be able to use force against people for being "anti-social", however that happens to be defined or interpreted. I've seen some ridiculous cases of punishment for "anti-social behavior" out of the UK, including what essentially amounts to outlawing particular unsavory political beliefs.

I encourage everyone to read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order which has a list of things the government was allowed to punish you for, including "rudeness" and "xenophobia". The most recent ASBO legislation is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Social_Behaviour,_Crime... which I am not familiar with.

This is the problem with the HackerNews libertarian streak. You're in favor of legalized drugs, prostitution, etc. But no one wants their daughter to grow up and be a crackwhore.

I'd rather take the risk that my daughter would grow up to be a crack whore than leave anti-drug busybodies the kind of power they've managed to accrue.

How about we just let addicts be addicts while we figure the rest out. That's certainly better than today's situation where we make extra sure we ruin their lives to, ya know, protect them from themselves.

Because that has worked historically.

The problem is they create a wake of destruction in their path of addiction.

The cost of a free society.

Keep that ASBO trash on the other side of the pond.

How about charging them for their public costs? If you get rescued by helicopter because you went skiing out of bounds at a resort and got lost, don't they send you a bill? How about that for people with money who abuse the system while abusing other things?

Like how the Japanese will send a bill to the family of someone who commits suicide on a train line?

I prefer my government to absorb the cost of human despair rather than bill for it. Don't write policy based on outliers.

Sending the bill to the family is dumb but there's sense in sending the person responsible for damages bills. I think we already mostly do that though, they just don't always pay the bill.

> absorb

You are very good at using language. The reality is that government doesn't 'absorb' anything. Other people, some of whom can't afford to, pay for it.

All economics are redistribution, it's simply the details that change with the methods. It is unrealistic to want a world where each person pays exactly for what they consume or are liable for.

Maybe you are right but I cannot understand or agree with this idea that has taken hold among some on the internet that we should be happy to pay taxes because the government will go and solve problems with that money. Beyond the fact that the government is horrible at allocating resources and using them efficiently, every tax is a dollar being taken from the economy that could have gone to people that produce things of value not what some bureaucrat decided was of value.

every tax is a dollar being taken from the economy

Government turns around and spends those dollars in the economy. They are reallocated, not removed.

Individuals are significantly better at allocating resources than a central authority.

Three arguments in favor of governments and taxes: 1) Taxes are what makes a currency valuable (if you don't believe me, try printing your own money, or using Monopoly money, to pay for something) 2) Governments provide currency (also, see above). Look for the lowest interest rates on financial instruments, and you'll find governments. 3) Governments enforce property rights.

No taxes, no currency, no economy to speak of (see: anywhere without a functioning government).

I don't get how some on the internet live and breathe in a government-sponsored property and currency regime and rail against the government part of it, but want to keep the property and currency.

Why not? Make "having taken these drugs in the past and tested positive for them in your system" a crime.

Then just systematically lock all addicts up and ship them off to freshly constructed prisons in Alaska.

Um, Poe's law?

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