Hacker News Reader

Comment by rflrob | Hacker News Reader

> I'm not saying our drug laws are just or can't be reformed but the fact that heroin is illegal prevents a LOT of people from using it. How many people will then use, aided by these pronouncements that "Heroin isn't actually that addictive!" and ruin their lives?

Do you know a lot of people who have expressed to you that they would use heroin recreationally if only it were legal? My gut is that the number isn’t large.

My impression of the evidence from places that have tried decriminalization (eg Portugal) is that the number of people who use and then are able to get their lives back on the rails is higher than the extra people who use because it’s decriminalized.

View on HN

You genuinely believe that there is no large group of people curious about trying a drug that supposedly offers the most euphoric feeling imaginable "better than sex" as many have claimed?

What if people tell them it's not addictive? And now it's not illegal?

Why would illegal stop them from trying heroin if someone thought it better than sex?

What illegal does is make it far more likely to die from using heroin.

> Why would illegal stop them from trying heroin if someone thought it better than sex?

Lack of access (or not knowing how to access it) comes to mind, among many other reasons.

Illegal drugs increase addiction rates because drugs are often cut with different drugs. How many heroin addicts were created by lacing lesser drugs with more addictive ones?

Tobacco is legal, and also illegal to tell people it's not addictive, at least in any sort of marketing sense.

Also, my understanding of most drug legalization is that the intent is to legalize usage/possession, not distribution. This is done with the intent to make it easier/safer to gain treatment and decrease addiction.

Decriminalized isn't the same thing as legalized. Legalized means that you will have multinational companies promoting heroin nonstop through massive advertising campaigns. That would completely change peoples' usage patterns. Like how many people would smoke if tobacco was legal? Answer: many.

That is not necessarily true. Alcohol and tobacco are legal and there are massive restrictions on how they are aloud to be advertised. The point being made here is that not many people would by more of it if they felt that purchasing it was not going to put them in legal trouble. For example, how many people do you know that do whippets?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com