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Comment by DantesKite | Hacker News Reader

Decriminalisation doesn’t seem to be working in San Francisco.

Decrim without legalization or free supply to addicts doesn't do a lot for the poverty side of things. People are still going to spend every cent they can scrape together on their drug. We could supply the entire country's heroin/fent supply for probably 1/1000 what the average street user is paying for their doses, and we could prevent overdoses since there would be a chemically pure version of the drug with a labeled dosage available.

Until we, as a society, get over our desire to punish people for getting inebriated, addicts will continue to dwell in abject poverty while funding violent drug distribution organizations. This is a choice that we have made, and we're going to live with the consequences until we reverse course.

Why would we want to accept normal people taking drugs which will fry their brains? Yes, only homeless addicts use these drugs because normal working people don't want to destroy their lives for a minor bit of fun.

This is a very misguided view. Majority of drug users are all around you, regular people who have families and hold jobs - your friends, your relatives, your coworkers. Just like majority of people who drink alcohol aren't alcoholics, majority of drug users aren't addicts.

Somehow I doubt that majority of drug users are from healthy families with kids.

Just considering it, it seems unlikely that the incredible economic volume of the hard-drugs industry is drivem by homeless people collecting change and redeeming cans.

Anecdotally, I know (or knew if they died) several people from PhD programs adjacent to my own who were habitual users of heroin (or stuff branded as such). I have significant experience with it (originating with friends in academia!!!), and it is very nice, but it just so happens that I like pooping more than I like opioids, which apparently is a stroke of luck

Most drug user I've seen were in private clubs in Paris or Nice/Monaco where the entry ticket was north of 150 euros

I also saw about 12 different heroin addicts in the streets next to my home, but tbh they were a lot less loud, aggressive and/or obnoxious than the alcoholics.

That could be because you probably assume that any drug use leads to addiction and despair. More often than not, despair leads to drug use as means for temporary escape and relief.

No, I assume most drug use leads to addiction except maybe "try once" cases, which I wouldn't call "use" like I don't call people who tried smoking once in their lifetime "smokers".

Despair is not even in the picture. Too bad you paint it as a viable excuse for making yourself even more stupid than usual.

Taking drugs doesn't make you stupid. However, ignorance is a powerful contributor.

https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-and-geniuses-who-...

Free supply won’t really be a solution and I can’t imagine why it would. Would making junk food and soda free food end the obesity epidemic?

Making it free will only make that area a hub for people seeking to get high. Portland, Seattle, and SF are already hot spots where people actively come because they know they can get high easily. Making it completely free is just an even bigger invitation.

I think one of America’s greatest successes has been with tobacco. For the most part, Americans don’t want to smoke and find the idea disgusting—that’s a massive turnaround from a couple decades ago and even completely different from many countries in Europe or Asia. It’s also getting harder and harder to purchase tobacco in many places, but what kept me and much of my generation from ever touching a cigarette was media campaigns in the 90s that depicted cigarette smokers as vile, disgusting people. Other anti-drug programs try fear mongering with saying one dose of weed will kill you or whatever and people saw through that. But telling kids that they’re gross losers who everyone hates if they use a substance? That has a bit more effect.

But for people who are active addicts, treatment is hard. There are countless interviews with addicts on YouTube, and the conclusion every single one of them presents is “I could’ve gotten help, but I didn’t want it.” You need to make people want to overcome their addiction. Feeding it won’t do anything.

I don't think GP was arguing for free drugs (that would indeed be crazy). I think they were making a point about how our current policy is an intentional choice to drive drug users into poverty by making drugs wildly expensive.

I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of distributing it totally free of cost, along with needle exchanges, etc. But yeah, I was speaking more about difference between what an addict pays for fentanyl and the actual cost to produce it.

Making it free keeps people from needing to break everyone's windows to get their next fix. It also allows them to use their money on food/rent/etc so they are less likely to wind up homeless. It also means that they congregate in one area, so it's easier to provide resources if they decide to seek help.

It also prevents, you know, fentanyl from getting into the supply, having people get more addicted to a stronger drug.

There’s also the reality that people who don’t want to go through the shame and trouble of finding a person who could give them a solid hookup and so never try heroin in the first place.

Drugs are partly an issue of convenience. An 18-21 year old who isn’t thinking much about the future and figures “why not” is more likely to try something if it’s free and “safe” due to being distributed by someone reputable than they are to try a grimy baggy that could have anything inside.

When people know they can get a good, pure LSD hookup, they’re more likely to try it. People are more concerned about trying random research chemicals because the effects are unknown—that keeps quite a few people from ever trying LSD or psychedelics as a whole. If people could drop by a volunteer-operated free distribution center, I’m pretty sure we’d have loads more people trying LSD. (Not that I’m saying LSD is deadly like heroin, but the fear of danger is keeping people away from it)

Yeah, no one is advocating for a punch bowl of drugs on every streetcorner. Places that give away free drugs limit them to addicts.

This is not as simple as labelled doses. This would reduce some overdoses but not all of them.

> We could supply the entire country's heroin/fent supply for probably 1/1000 what the average street user is paying for their doses

Nonsense. It's not that cheap to manufacture (under regulated conditions) and distribute opioids like that. 1/1000th of the price? Even the cheapest, most easily manufactured commercial opioid medications aren't coming anywhere near that after decades of optimization the manufacturing processes.

This is the worst sort of hn pedantry, but I have to agree. The security premium paid by cartels down through street dealers is indeed real, but QC and regulatory compliance would eat a lot of that savings. And the executive tax at cartels is probably similar to public firms.

Fentanyl is dirt cheap to manufacture, and people on the street are paying tens of thousands of dollars per gram of it, given that a dose for an equivalent amount of heroin can be much lower than a milligram. The actual cost to manufacture that much would be several orders of magnitude less than what it drug users are paying for it.

So now the government has to buy people their drugs? We don't do that for alcoholics. There's a very strong moral hazard argument against doing that, but it's just plain cruel to the very population you think you are helping.

> So now the government has to buy people their drugs? We don't do that for alcoholics.

GP said “legalization or free supply”, and for alcohol we have legalization. So, yes, we do what the GP actually suggested, though not your strawman, for alcoholics.

We do create a safe supply of drugs and a safe, monitored use site for alcoholics. We call them bars.

We don't provide this for other drugs.

There's a handful of safe injection sites for drugs in some cities around the world (such as Vancouver) but the drugs are still toxic. It's good that people are on hand to handle the inevitable overdoses and other issues. This saves lives.

The further necessary solution however is a safe supply of drugs, so that people can actually know what they're using. This is the core problem that is driving so many deaths.

Imagine if there was no such thing as legal liquor or bars and alcoholics just drank some stuff that some guy made. There'd be a lot more deaths and poisonings from this.

Decriminalization is part of solution, but there's a lot more that needs to be done.

Probably a lot more than two issues here, but two significant ones are that:

1) the real problem is that the drugs are toxic and no one knows what they're taking. Maybe the dose is wrong or maybe it's not even fentanyl, and just a bunch of crazy shit (eg. benzos). The drugs aren't what people expect and people die. The fastest way to end deaths would be to create a safe supply of drugs so people know what they're taking.

2) "Decriminalization" doesn't necessarily mean and end to police harassment, drug confiscation, and related issues that all make life hard for drug users and create barriers to them getting the real help they need.

While under decriminalization you may not end up in jail for having drugs, you are still able to have them confiscated and get a ticket (or summons to some thing), and then you're back at square one, needing to find more money to get drugs again. No wonder petty theft is such an issue in some places.

High policing and confiscation of drugs from drug users just helps the dealers sell more illegal product.

Circling back to point one again, a real safe supply of prescribed drugs handles this issue well in dealing with the money issue. But beyond this if we're going to allow people to have a safe supply of drugs, we also need to let people hold drugs too and not be harassed by police.

Ideally there's not just a safe supply of drugs but also a safe use site as well where medical staff can monitor and help people. These sorts of sites can be touch points where people can build relationships and help people when they're ready to move to some further stage of recovery.

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