I truly believe that there would be fewer addicts and fewer overdoses if you could buy regulated heroin.
Making it legal we could have things sold over the counter in pharmacies with proper age checks, we could even require further checks like before you can purchase heroin you need to go through a process where it is explained how it works, what a reasonable dose is, what side effects are, how addictive it is etc.
Same with other stuff. Most drugs are quite safe and harmless if done by people who know what they're doing. Of course self destructive people and morons would still harm themselves but honestly I'm not too worried about that. They will always find ways to harm themselves.
At least drug users wouldn't be funding cartels and warlords etc.
It’s a balance sheet and you can’t just look at the debits and not the credits.
There is a reason why heroine used to be sold as cough syrup and over time became illegal. I know we want to say the war on drugs was all a war on minorities (and with pot it was), but have you looked into the history of people turning into junkies?
Prohibition does not stop the sale, use and abuse of substances. This is indisputable. The question then is whether or not legalization actually reduces the harm caused by these substances. I believe it does. Both by weakening the black market, ensuring people actually get what they think they're buying rather than whatever the dealer happens to give them, controlling who can purchase things, providing opportunities to educate people before they are able to purchase etc.
All these things are already widely and easily available. Legalization doesn't really change anything in that regard. And most illegal drugs aren't as bad as people are led to believe either. Most of them can be used responsibly with hardly any negative effects, certainly no more than alcohol. The worst part about them is that we don't know what we're getting. We don't know the concentration and we don't even know whether it is what we think it is at all.
There's also the tax revenue we would collect from the legal sale of drugs which could be used to provide education and help those who are struggling.
Also we didn’t just try that with gambling (48 states have had some legal form of it forever) we just tried it with online sports books, which turn out to be a particularly virulent form of gambling. And we haven’t really begun to sensibly regulate that, a lot of harm may be reduced in the near future as we do.
Now they do; make it legal and in two generations it won't be viewed that way because, after all, it's legal!
Get your first dose for free! Refer a friend and get more free shots! Every tenth shot for free!
Also Coca-Cola should be allowed to use a real coke extract. I doubt they will as they cannot even use a real sugar in USA anymore.
They do. It's bought from a Peruvian state-owned company and the cocaine is extracted for medical use.
Some countries don’t even allow advertising legal and OTC pharmaceuticals.
In the last case gambling is pretty much everywhere in all developed societies.
These are pure gamblimg, the skill part is thinly weiled excuse having little to do with the reality. Even if it was skilled, it would still be gambling, but for the most part it is not skilled.
> or gambling as in trading?
Yeah many small investors treat it as a pure gambling. But investing has more regulations and somewhat saner culture. The companies are not intentionally trying to identify and hook addicts deeper and deeper.
Which "sports" literally do.
"Games of skill" in this context essentially always refers to poker, which is demonstrably not "pure gambling".
>Yeah many small investors treat it as a pure gambling. But investing has more regulations and somewhat saner culture. The companies are not intentionally trying to identify and hook addicts deeper and deeper.
>Which "sports" literally do.
This was perhaps largely true in the pre-robinhood era, now it's hard to draw any meaningful distinction between sports gambling and daytrading.
Its also a society openly xenophobic for immigration to any ethnicity not being part of original mix of population (not race, not language but properly ethnicity, ie tamils from south india big NO, malay tamils YES). White westerners not welcomed, only toleracted for specific set of high flying positions, and only for specific time while they keep economy running.
Its a very interesting place to observe some sort of south east asian version of Switzerland (sans most freedoms), but there are hardly any lessons for the west. Sort of like what ideal China could be, but probably never will. If you want to see proper western-possible high point, that Switzerland IMHO is top spot. They have some drug addicts, but have rather sensible approach to them.
I found this draconian policy jarring at first (never a drug user, but casual cocaine / pot use was everywhere in both London and NY, and the usual cocktail of whatever was fashionable too).
You get used to these policies pretty quickly, and in exchange there are no (visible) drug users and no (visible) homelessness; I don't think in the West we are willing to sacrifice the freedom to do these things, or impose the death penalty for importing drugs (we have abolished it for nearly every other crime apart from murder in most jurisdictions).
I say that not making a value judgement (I cherish and in some cases miss western freedoms, and believe we do all too little to defend them at home), rather observing from nearly 40 years in western society and <12 months in the East.
It's worth remembering that much of Asia went through terrible drug addiction epidemics in the 20th century [0], and they decided to take drastic action, which probably took 25 years to fully bear fruit.
I also don't believe this policy, in isolation, is the whole answer. Asia (and particularly Singapore) focuses on society, community and other values which attenuate the factors which lead to, and are exacerbated by, drug use (violence, theft, vagrancy, unemployment, under-employment).
You give up a lot of freedom, but you get order in return. For some of us, that is acceptable. For others, this is not (and that is ultimately a matter for voters in each polity).
[0] https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bu...
Perhaps it's because they weren't experiencing enough pain at the time. I think most people fall into drugs circumstantially, I'm not sure it often presents as a conscious lifestyle decision.
> I truly believe that there would be fewer addicts and fewer overdoses if you could buy regulated heroin.
I believe that there would be less drug use overall if our economic system wasn't as rapacious as it currently is.
This has a dual effect - addicts get clean drugs and take them under medical supervision, reducing deaths, helping funnel some towards programs that will eventually get them clean etc. With this sort of support it turns out that people no longer steal to get their fix either, and can usually even hold down employment pretty well.
But also the young folk get to see these tired, worn out, older people queuing outside the clinic in the morning to get their fix and realise hey, maybe that isn't so cool and edgy after all...
Seems like a good plan to me, the problem is (as ever) puritans and their politicians, it's an easy thing to screech about. All it would take to kill it dead in a lot of countries would be someone standing up to shout "The opposition party want to spend YOUR tax money giving DRUGS to filthy JUNKIES!"
How many people do you approximately know of that have had the thought “I’d try heroin”?
> I truly believe that there would be fewer addicts and fewer overdoses if you could buy regulated heroin.
How many people do you approximately know of that have had the thought “I’d try heroin but only because I cannot buy regulated heroin”?
The whole context was "regulated heroin would be safer", but we've had a whole crisis of overprescribed (but still regulated) opiates that very much disagrees with the notion that regulated heroin is safer.
Reading my comment as "all opioid addiction is only due to regulated drugs (and that one commercial)" is misguided, at best.
>Also... isn't the whole opioid addiction crisis basically because people were in fact buying regulated ~heroin?
Of course not, this is a ridiculous comment. People have been addicted to opiates for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Blaming oxycontin is passé
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9261968/
The first wave of the opioid crisis began in the 1990s when the long-acting opioid OxyContin and other high potency opioids were employed for an extremely wide array of patients.
As if I meant that every single opioid addiction in history is because of "regulated heroin"?
You think that's a reasonable read?
People aren't mind readers. If you mean some, don't say whole and you'll probably avoid confusing people.
And overprescribed pain meds are seen as a large cause of it / aggravating factor.
So yeah, "that whole thing". It's not an unusual expression, that I know of.
IME most people dont want to be addicted, theyre just in a rut or life took them a certain way and just need support to get through the other side.
People who dont use drugs are way to hysterical about drug use though to ever see real improvement.