For many people, what you're describing all comes down to the law of love. It is not loving to give a person more of the thing that is destroying them.
Perhaps free methadone would be a better option?
EDIT: care to comment? I'd like to know why people disagree.
But removing prohibition is a far cry from providing free heroin to addicts... I understand the argument about removing the black market, but after seeing San Francisco in person it's hard to agree that free drugs and paraphernalia makes things better overall.
If my friend became a heroin addict, out of care for him or her I would not provide them with heroin even if I could afford it. Why should I treat other fellow humans worse?
Why is it different when we're speaking at a societal level? Love for neighbors should increase, not invert, when the number of individuals concerned increases.
Giving meth addicts forms of meth that are produced more cleanly would reduce the level of psychosis and would further reduce the price of meth to a point where it may not be profitable to produce (it's already cheap to the point where it's nearly unprofitable - it requires massive volume).
Giving addicts access to clean drugs provides you an opportunity to help them, a place to keep them away from others while they're using, a way to ensure they don't die while using, reduces funding to organized crime, and removes their need to commit crimes to fund their habits.
You may see it as treating them poorly, but ultimately, you're doing them and the rest of society a benefit.
Learn some history. We tried this. It failed spectacularly, as if in slow motion, for decade after decade.
Which is not to say there aren't humane reasons to fix these problems, especially if they aren't effective at reducing drug use anyway. But yeah, drugs actually are a huge problem and would be even if they were legal and free for all.
I'm pointing out that alcohol causes immense harms despite being legal, so likely other drugs too would still cause considerable harms when legal (even though yes, it's likely some, like cannabis, would be less harmful than alcohol almost no matter what total consumption settles on under legalization).
I was not arguing about why things are legal or not, only challenging the assertion that drugs aren't very harmful when legal.
It's really the abstinence only attitude I was talking about: why is it a big deal to give someone medication for the rest of their live if we know it will keep them alive, healthy, and allow them to live a fulfilled life? Addiction is just like any other disease, and it turns out medication assisted therapy is very effective.
Methadone works, and so do other medications, but it's only a partial solution. We need a rapid and massive expansion of these programs. We also need programs and medications to target people who go on Methadone, but keep going off. Why not give them Herion, if we can do it safely? What about if there is evidence they can become productive members of society?
Again, it's my view that although people OD from drugs, it's really the prohibition of drugs that are killing people through the incredibly unsafe and unreliable drugs people get. Supervised opiates are not dangerous, and unlike other drugs, cocaine, meth, benzos, you can safely be on them for years at a time nearly no long term effects. At least the long term effects of staying on them pale in comparison to the consequences of an OD.
60,000 people OD per year. What we are doing isn't working!
It's writing people off as lost cases. And many addicts WANT to be written off as lost cases, because a) they already did so themselves, but feel guilty about it, an official confirmation would be nice and b) it will give them access to painkillers.
Which is why I'm very skeptical of involving doctors in the first place in free methadone programs, if such programs should exist. It shouldn't be anyone's job to validate you if you say you're a lost cause.
And a pride that is essentially about avoiding shame; shame being the primary currency of those with an authoritarian bent.
That has nothing to do with my rationale... I'm curious where you got that.
If I give heroin to an addict, the only shame involved to me would be the personal feeling of shame from having caused harm to another human...
So I think this response is a straw man that doesn't address my point.