US drug overdose deaths hit record high in 2022
opb.org
opb.org
China calls it the century of humiliation, what should we call it?
However, after fentanyl became a thing and china was implicated, they were quicker than the us to ban the precursors than the usa
Heroin’s Hidden Ingredient, Courtesy of a U.S. Company [1].
Cynicaly, that requires empathy and helping other people so we'll just increase enforcement and crack down harshly and keep failing lol
Whether this is moral is arguable, but it certainly has been effective - drug deaths per capita in Singapore are about 100 times lower than in the US.
And if you include the executed drug traffickers in the count, the total is still 80 times lower.
If investors decided tomorrow that they like pot, Singapore will go ahead and legalize it.
This has nothing to do with investors and everything with the founding generation having seen the impact of opium dens (there were a lot here) and acting hard and fast on it.
The country has no natural resources, all the investments they do go into their people, especially though education. Drugs disable a part of that investment, they won’t have it. It’s not magical caring either, You just don’t get to do things that deprive the country of your labor. We just about decriminalized suicide here.
And because of the island with 5 points of entry situation, they actually can make it work for them.
People need to go light on chatgpt, it just mimics humans in their hallucinations
Sale of chewing/bubble gum is still banned - possession isn’t a problem though.
Frankly, if pot was so profitable that the gov want a slice of it, they would carve out special areas just for it and restrict access by locals to those areas.
That’s kind of what they did with gambling. There is a legal casino but as a local you have to pay a $150 daily entry fee to enter the casino - although I heard there is also a $2000 annual entry fee.* You have lost money before you even start gambling. LOL
* And if they feel there are too many problem gamblers still, they will probably rise the fee further.
Alcohol has no medically redeeming values and is the cause of a lot of death and suffering. This will keep us safe, right?
~480,000 deaths annually from tobacco
~140,000 deaths annually from alcohol
~109,680 deaths in 2022 from drug overdose
*Data is exclusively taken from the USA
Let's also remember that a lot of people (watch the interviews of people on YT) start using fenty because they want something stronger/cheaper than what they were previously using, like alcohol.
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-to...
WHO has 3 million deaths linked to alcohol [1] vs .5 million for narcotics.
[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/alcohol [2] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/opioid-over...
And it's not just the deaths, it's destroyed so many lives in so many ways, from car accidents to domestic violence. It's a dangerous drug and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous at best.
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-to....
And a paper showing that alcohol is more dangerous than heroin: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21665157/
Yes of course. Why do you even ask, I thought this much was totally clear from my original post.
It's barbaric what those countries do becasue someone wants to use a substance.
Singapore has so much different then the US that you can't compare. Maybe they don't use drugs culturally? It's a small country, with tons of social safety nets for it's citizens. People might not hit the same lows. It's also a city on an island. You need to isolate the variables before saying executing is effective
It’s a deterrent. Whether it’s life in prison or an execution, it drastically reduces the expected value of being a drug dealer.
Don't @ me with "appeal to authority", I admit it gladly. I don't worship at the altar of scientism (EDIT: scientism doesn't seem to be the correct word, it's not negative like I thought. I'm criticizing the "I Hecking Love Science (TM)" mentality that treat crappy non-reproducible soft-science studies as something that somehow has more value than common sense.)
You want to convince me, create better societies that are safer to live in than Singapore.
Do you want to reconsider that statement?
> if a significant number of people start doing it.
There are far more people illegally growing pot right now - than there would ever be people growing poppies.
The War on Drugs has failed miserably except for its original purpose: as a tool to oppress the drug users.
Why is nobody really asking why our society is so broken that everyone is looking for an escape, even now knowing they may die, and how we even begin to address that?
But, I mean, I'm a big fat nobody. (Shrug)
My impression is heroin is treatment for parasitic infection, something US doctors tend to not look for "because it's a third world problem."
It seems abundantly clear to me(and probably you) that something is deeply wrong with our society. I've known people who made good money and in large houses just OD and die out of (seemingly) nowhere. Why is everyone so unhappy? Or is it that we've always been, and now we just have the means to act on it?
I'm not an expert, or a drug user. But I -feel- like fentanyl has been in the news so much that users have to know the risks, and yet keep on keeping on. So any thoughts as to the why are welcomed.