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Comment by bumholio | Hacker News Reader

I cannot but wonder if North Americans feel responsible in the least for what their voracious appetite for drugs is doing south of the US border. Mexico has become almost ungovernable, the drug trade being one of the main factors driving the decline.

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The appetite for drugs or the criminalization that creates the black market? Heavy drug users have more immediate concerns than second and third order effects of their lifestyle choices. The politicians and lobbyists responsible for maintaining the status quo on the other hand, should probably pull their heads out of their asses.

I am sure a widescale decriminalization of hard drugs south of the US border will be applauded in Washington. It would solve a large part of the drug crime problems in these countries, while raining down industrial quantities of pharmaceutical grade heroin on the US streets.

I had a ex-friend(went to middle school with him) die recently from a drug overdose, and when I was talking with his parents on the way to the burial site his dad said that he could take him to any town in the U.S. and he could find heroin, get back to the hotel, and get high in under an hour.

I don't think supply is limiting the amount of drugs that abusers are doing.

It was tried, was a success, and wasn't applauded.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17608261

It's been effective in the countries that have tried it since. Overdose is the failure of dose management. Harm reduction is less profitable than addiction. Wars create jobs and huge profits. Collateral damage is the human cost. Success wasn't the goal.

I think a large number of those drug overdoses are legal drugs that come from big pharma. The abusers of those drugs certainly don't feel anything about the Meican drug trade.

Read the article?

"Analysts pointed to two major reasons for the increase: A growing number of Americans are using opioids, and drugs are becoming more deadly. It is the second factor that most likely explains the bulk of the increased number of overdoses last year."

And they are becoming more deadly because the street drugs are being laced with fentanyl.

"...drugs are becoming more deadly." I guess they are referring to street drugs(?) which are becoming more deadly for the reason you pointed out.

At the same time the news is constantly full of stories about a rise in opioid overdoses.

Street heroin is an Opioid.

I certainly think that removing the funds from the gangs should be among the primary motivations for trying other policies in the US.

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