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Comment by Aerroon | Hacker News Reader

I wonder where most of the harm is coming from with opioids. Do the opioids themselves cause more harm than society does by making them illegal?

The cases I've mostly heard about seemed to be that people hot addicted to opioids and the only way to keep it going was to break the law. That eventually got them in trouble. For some drugs it does seem like the government trying to protect you from the drugs do more harm than what the drugs themselves do. Are opioids among them?

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Prof Nutt made and published a universal harm scale which accounts for multi dimensional harm of drugs, and potentially allows comparisons to be made between them https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6109763/#B29. This work got him sacked from his lead advisory role to the UK govt, as it undermined the policy and caused embarrassment. Nutt still works in Imperial College researching psychedelics as novel therapeutics. The money shot is this https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overall-weighted-scores-...

A recent article which contextualises the work is here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6109763/

Wow this is awesome. I’ve pondered the need for exactly this sort of thing for a while as the obvious desired basis for drug policy. Shouldn’t be surprised the Nutt has done it!

Obviously it’s lossy to reduce something with this much complexity down to a single dimension but it’s still a helpful tool nonetheless.

They need to let people take whatever they want to take and then educate everyone about how addictive some opiates are.

In the past, I've tried a lot of recreational drugs, including some opioids, and without trying to, I can't see how I could get myself addicted to opioids or benzodiazepines, but I know a LOT of people would.

As far as I remember, only 10% of people who ever used heroin get addicted to it. But that still leaves 10% at a very high risk, because of their neurochemistry and life circumstances.

So I don't think ALL drugs should be legal.

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