This is one of many indirect yet significant costs of the War on Drugs. The only way to address this is to legalize, tax, and regulate drugs.
Estonia (with fentanyl) and Switzerland (with heroin) only worked because over time the state became the only source of these drugs. They rooted out most dealers and sources of the drugs.
As long as it is available on the streets cheaply, people will defect and return to illicit purchasing. Estonia and Switzerland have basically eliminated new illicit opioid users from the population. In much of the US, suggesting this is a positive aim is tantamount to “hating” addicts.
If no, it’s a straw man argument.
You also have the DULF distributing medicinal grade heroin with the tacit support of local government.
There is a serious opioid problem in the rural Midwest and Appalachia but most users there are housed because housing is affordable. Many also have roots like family in the area. Makes treatment way easier if people are safe and off the street already.
How do you get off the street when, at least in SF, the poverty line is upwards of $100k/year? You could leave but that’s a big leap for someone battling addiction with no resources and a very small world.
Don’t know.. it just seems like other places in the world have decriminalized to better effect and something else is wrong in West Coast cities. The cost of housing seems like one possibility.
Edit: could also be cultural. I know Vancouver has a deeply rooted opiate culture. Just go listen to some 90s industrial from that place. Every song is about smack or trying to kick smack or being back on smack. Good music though. There’s a whole thing about heroin and good music. Too bad it’s so addictive and toxic.
It sounds like once you are in that lifestyle the incentive is very much to stay there. So no wonder.
Of course the high cost of real housing doesn’t help. Makes it that much harder to get truly out of poverty. It also makes a life off the street look unattainable. It’s telling a mentally ill addict there is no hope for them to truly get off the street unless they can somehow produce an engineering degree or gain equivalent experience.
I have used opioids since the mid-2000s. I am on a low enough dose today that it treats my cancer/Crohns pain but I feel no noticeable psychological effects. I can and do easily taper off multiple times a year for tolerance resets.
Further, every year a number of people in my programme finally taper off methadone for good; the relapse rate is in the low single digits. This is similarly the case for patients in Switzerland’s heroin assisted treatment programme. (I live in Estonia and am on their methadone equivalent.)
Yes, the cartels diversify, yes, they can make money from other things, but no, the profits of these other revenue sources will simply not match the backbone of support and systematic, prolonged institutional corrupting power that the illegal drug market provides in the long run.
Half-baked and half applied legalization7decriminalization models are not the answer, and when they very sparsely get applied, full of regulatory hurdles (never mind the outright global prohibition that still exists for the sale of most hard drugs and even marijuana) you simply can't make a fair argument for how any existing policy has failed at legalization and that thus the only answer is some variation of continuing the immensely destructive prohibitionist model that has spent decades bringing things to their present state.
How stupid, intellectually dishonest or bloody-minded does one have to be to continue advocating for anything except complete legalization and regulation in a practical, broadly-applied, responsible way?
I’m an opioid addict and formerly homeless person who has spent thousands of hours advocating for, and working with, the unhoused. I am the furthest thing from a 1980s drug warrior.
In fact, I have always argued that American drug policies are an unequivocal failure. All I have stated, and continue to believe, is that one cannot emulate successes such as those in Estonia, Switzerland, Portugal and other jurisdictions by picking only the policies that are most politically feasible or attractive. These are holistic approaches that require changing the incentives of all agents interacting in the illicit drug economy.
If one only focuses on a single element of the trade (say, the users, as has been done in many American metropoles) then the policy is bound to fail.
I agree, a holistic approach is a good idea, but at least in my assessment, it absolutely needs to include a serious move towards practical legalization while investing in support for addiction problems among users. The latter is important, but the formar is the very major missing piece. Multinational drug trafficking organizations will diversify, but without that huge central source of revenue, they'll be walking on a much weaker path in their attempts to dominate entire regions and national governments.
Thank you so much for speaking up. The necessary changes in this space are only going to happen with continued pressure to abdicate the status quo.
Let the people have their drugs. Try to minimize consumption and abuse (and profit motive), and treat such abuse as a health issue, not a criminal one. That is the only sensible and humane way. Easier said than done, of course.
At the risk of redundancy, I want to include that proper discussion of the subject requires an understanding of the origins and intentions of these laws. The current system fails in every way except in satisfying those original intentions (hint: not benign).
The solution to cartels is a strong and effective state. Think Singapore, or what Bukele is doing in El Salvador now, or NYC vs the mob.
But that doesn't change the fact that the the laws are flawed and don't make things better.
If you do the research, you'll find that drug prohibition has been based on the oppression of minorities and "undesirables", and that only in that regard has it been an overwhelming success.
The best way to have less people use drugs is probably to make it illegal to use and buy drugs.
The best way to have less people drinking alcohol is probably to make it illegal to use and buy alcohol.
I think we have proven this to be incorrect.
In fact, making it illegal to use and buy drugs has the effect of locking people into a counter-culture and making it a major life decision to use drugs instead of a daily decision like it should be.
If I want to take time off of work to waste a day of my life doing drugs for fun and pick up where I left off the next day, that shouldn't be a life destroying decision.
You basically spell it out yourself. Making it legal and accepted to use drugs makes more people use it. If more people use it there will be more drugs being sold.
People think that by making it legal the drug dealers will go away (and all other drug related problems) and serious companies will take over. But this is very unlikely so as the illegal sellers will always be able to undercut the legal sellers on price as well as service (24/7 etc). Same with legal producers vs illegal producers etc.
In addition, making it legal and thus having more people use drugs increases those side effects as well (such as you say "waste a day of my life doing drugs" or maybe waste your whole life or your spouses life or your kids life).
I don't think I said that at all. Just because it is made to be a major life decision does not mean that the decision is made with proper due diligence or even with a rational mind.
In fact, these decisions are usually made by very young people. This has the unfortunate side effect of locking a lot of people into a way of life because they decided to try drugs as a teen.
It is possible to try some drugs and walk away like smoking a little weed as a college kid, but a lot of times drugs are used as an escape. At a young age that escape can be tempting and you can develop a habit. Now, if drug use were legalized and normalized, you could seek help and not otherwise impact your life, but as it stands it is more likely that a habit would result in a conviction which will follow them around for life making it harder to find a well paying job, decent housing etc. The cycle reinforces itself over the course of a lifetime.
Now as far as numbers go, the current policies ensure that a drugs retention rate is as high as possible. If policies forced more churn, then the number of simultanious users at any one time could be lower. They could be higher, but we havent had the oportunity to see.
The best way to to have people use less drugs is to have them live happy lives that they don't feel compelled to escape.
This is just kicking the can down the road. The cartels won't vanish into thin air if you do this.
Avocado’s are legal yet there’s still a lot of cartel interference in the Mexican avocado business.
Now I live in the UAE. Drugs are very illegal and violent crime is practically non-existent.
We need am army from outside to come and squash all the major violent criminals (cartels with grenade launchers and ak47s). We need a ruthless justice system like the Arab ones that cuts people hands and puts criminal dogs to sleep.
People that live outside of Mexico dont get it.. in here, the police is part of the criminals, judges are bought by crime, the politicians and rich people give money and space to the criminals. It's a real cesspool.
And I say this as some who was born here in Mexico, all my family is here, and have lived here for a long time.
BIG citation needed (and the US at the federal level has not legalized marijuana, I guess you mean some states)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...
Legalisation solves certain problems. But doesn't make bad/broken beasts suddenly good.
Legalizing all recreational drugs isn't "harm reduction", it's creating a bigger drug addiction pandemic. Successful Harm reduction models like in Portugal have legalized no recreational drugs.
And why? Those who want drugs, can get (any) drugs today, just with bad quality and the dark sides of crime involved. Who do stuff like adding other drugs that have a higher addiction potential.
If you legalize it, all the dark sides of cartels and co vanishes and you can spend all the police money on education and therapy to fight the actual bad sides of drugs. And preventing the reasons for people to do (hard) drugs in the first place.
(But not necessarily more than other countries).
So I see a need to do further harm reduction.
Harm reduction is a series of publicly funded social and rehabilitation/substitution programs that has absolutely nothing to do with legalizing any sort of drugs. Legalization is an entire different question, just don't try to make "harm reduction" yet another buzzword for legalization.
Currently junkies need the dealers to get their supplies. So they have to support crime, to meet their needs. And they get bad quality with usually extra poisenous additives. Legalizing would immmediately reduce or remove those 2 harms.
But I agree that we should not stop there, but rather help them stop being junkies at all, with various help programms. I just happen to think it is easier to reach people in legal ways, than criminalize them. But you seem to disagree here?
Harm from drugs in the current system goes well beyond the individual user.
If you want a true analog take a look at Afghanistan where something like 20-30% of the population may be users. Or Native American reservations where banning alcohol has drastic reductions in crime and domestic abuse rates. Or Singapore that essentially has no junkies.
(Portugal is an example of this approach, generally considered a success)
But Portugal hasn't legalized, taxed anything. (illegal) Recreational drugs are still illegal. There is no need to legalize any drug to do harm reduction. Not even Cannabis is legal in Portugal.
People can be functional heroin addicts (same as functional alcoholics).
Not that it’s a good or desirable thing.
Most heroin overdoses come from cut drugs, or from using at similar level after a break, often caused by prison stints. Both direct consequences of them being illegal.
If that is what victory looks like, I am not sure I wanna win.