I'm not sure it's the best idea to give a bunch of people stuck living a lonely life in the suburbs, addicted to social media, and have to pay for their own healthcare, an easier path to hard drugs like heroin. There is no doubt in my mind that decriminalization will make these types of drugs easier to obtain.
The typical death is from getting a new supply that's more concentrated than the old one, and accidentally dying from an overdose.
The other two disasters that happen is that (1) the drug costs huge amounts of money, so you have to become a prostitute and/or burglar or (2) the legal system puts you in jail for 20 years.
I'm not going to pretend that being heroin addict is a good life, but if you can get a clean drug with known strength from CVS for $2/day, it's a vastly better shitty life.
The law provides a lot of additional funding to mental health and substance abuse programs, which could actually help people in those situations.
Decriminalization has worked extremely well elsewhere (it dramatically reduced substance abuse problems); hopefully it will in the US as well.
What I worry about here is another instance of treating symptoms instead of causes. Why do people feel like they need to use drugs like heroin?
> The law provides a lot of additional funding to mental health and substance abuse programs, which could actually help people in those situations.
So if I want healthcare I should get addicted to meth? I'm being flippant here but this goes back to the earlier point about paying for your own healthcare here in this equation.
You don't need to do drugs if everything in your life is going well.
I saw this with my best friend during his divorce. We spent a lot of time together, often I'd go see him everyday after he got off work. Some days he'd drink two bottles of wine and a six pack.
Now his divorce has been finalized for several months, he rarely drinks.
Turns out when your life isn't in shambles, you don't need a chemical means to cope.
People use drugs when they have to which means criminalization does nothing or makes things worse.
Citation? I’m not particularly tempted to try heroin. What’s wrong with me?
It mostly comes to individual needs, maybe you don't fancy some heroin but you likely have experienced some alcohol, coffee or your body own drug anandamide
Heroin (if we're going to keep on this drug in particular) is currently not widely available, however the effects of the drug are far more severe and it is without a doubt more addictive than alcohol. I find it quite strange that you make the statement that: "alcohol disproportionately affects people around alcoholic through various forms of abuse". First, these are rare occurrences given the amount of alcohol sold and used on a daily bases across the planet. Aside from specific genetic mutations, it's not exactly easy to get addicted to alcohol. Casual drinking =/= addiction. Second, you're not considering how heroin affects those around the addict. People who are addicted to heroin will do nearly anything to get a fix. It's a completely different level compared to alcoholism that I've seen. You don't see a lot of functioning heroin users. There's a reason people are talking about the streets of San Francisco being littered with used needles. Why aren't they talking about the streets being littered with bottles of Jack Daniels? It's certainly worth investigating since if you compare alcohol consumption to heroin consumption, heroin is a rounding error (at the moment).
Finally, your statement that the effects of heroin being more localized to the drug user are... frankly, laughable. Do you think people are just sitting around quietly shooting up and then going about their merry day? Maybe taking a nice bike ride to Golden Gate Park or picking their kids up from school?
I honestly do not believe you have had any experience around any actual hard drugs based on what you're writing here. Obviously experience is just one data point, but when you're saying "Alcohol is a hard drug too" when we're talking about actual hard drugs like heroin or cocaine I have a hard time really trying to figure out what to make of your statement here.
I think you're vastly under estimating how easy they are to obtain now. You're probably only a few degrees away and know someone that knows someone already, if you don't then I bet you've got an idea on the sorts of people to ask. Once you've got contacts there's a massively redundant and decentralized supply chain that can deliver to your door quicker than amazon. This is especially true for more common (which varies by location) drugs.
I understand and appreciate the decriminalization aspect, but I’m worried about how things will change in the future. If it is easy to obtain now, the removal of the potential of “getting in trouble” is likely to make it even easier. I wish HN had a remind me feature so in 5 years I could come back and see this comment and find out how things have turned out. I think we are likely to see increases in usage and a public health crises in Oregon, not the Switzerland success.