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Comment by tomwalker | Hacker News Reader

I am a doctor in a Scottish hospital.

For every productive member of society using drugs there must be at least 2 -3 that drain from society

I rarely see anyone use methadone long term and rehabilitate themselves back to productive members of society. They end up being permanently high. My opinion is not isolated amongst my colleagues.

Spend a couple of hours in a hospital that provides free health care and see the devastation caused by all drugs.

Alcohol and smoking cause the largest volume of problems but many of the users have jobs.

Heroin produces real life zombies!

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>For every productive member of society using drugs there must be at least 2 -3 that drain from society

On what grounds do you make this claim?

Perhaps for every user that makes it to your hospital there are 2-3 that don't and are relatively adjusted. Drugs certainly have their hazards but it's fallacious to extrapolate the big picture from the perspective you are presenting.

Also:

Deaths due to overdose of opiates, for example, accounted for 9% of deaths in young Australian adults under the age of 50 in 1998 and for more than 10% in several European cities despite the fact that they were used by less than 1% of adults in any year.

572kg of methadone, which is not the only heroin substitute, is prescribed each year. The cost of the medical staff, the supervised consumption, security around it etc is enormous. That is for a population of 5 million people in the whole of Scotland.

No evidence exists of any sustained heroin shortage or reduction in the number of heroin users in the UK over the study period. In fact, all indices of the availability and use of heroin, including deaths due to heroin overdose, rose steadily during the study period,41 as did the number of heroin dependent people being treated by methadone maintenance.

http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4851.full

>The cost of the medical staff, the supervised consumption, security around it etc is enormous. That is for a population of 5 million people in the whole of Scotland.

How does that compare to the cost of running drug enforcement agencies, prisons, or treating preventable drug related diseases?

Here is a paper http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7529/1352

"A total of 1 486 800 prescriptions for methadone were issued in 2003" and "A total of 1 486 800 prescriptions for methadone were issued in 2003"

These are both methadone substitutes.

I have done time in community psychiatry and addiction psychiatry.

My best friend is a psychiatrist that spends a lot of time with drug addicts.

I have seen the results, and the HUGE costs, with my own eyes.

>I have done time in community psychiatry and addiction psychiatry.

I'm not arguing against the dangers of drugs. My point is if your only interaction with drug users is through people who have hit rock bottom then you are operating under a selection bias.

>I have seen the results, and the HUGE costs, with my own eyes.

How many of these costs are a result of the drugs being illegal? Lack of access to clean needles and clean drugs is what causes the spread of diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C. Artificial scarcity of drugs is the leading reason why addicts turn to crime.

In Scotland they have access to needles. They can pick them up for free with methadone.

Anyone on methadone needs to see a doc first to get a prescription. Ifmedical professionals are seeing the tip then it is a huge iceberg.

I did a stint of general practice in my training in a poor neighbouhood. I was doing checks on pregnant and new mothers. 50% were drug addicts, average age 16. I went on to a well of f area after. Same checks and maybe 10% were addicts. The addicts were mostly under 20.

Opiates cannot be used on a population scale safely. when someone is having renal colic, said by many to be the worst pain possible, we give morphine as it alters the brains perception of your senses that much!

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