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Comment by pooooka | Hacker News Reader

The US did this dance with the devil in the pale moonlight before anyone, way back in the 19th century. Tens of thousands (millions) of wounded soldiers came back from the civil war in chronic pain and addicted to morphine. They put them on "lists" and prescribed them dope and it spiraled out of control. It got so bad that they engineered Heroin to be a safer alternative. And people forget, but the temperance movement wasn't just focused on alcohol. They were the primary forces behind the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. And these people weren't bible thumping crusaders, many were like early feminists that lost children\husbands to drugs and alcohol. I think Europe eventually comes around to this same conclusion when enough damage has been done. Metering out hard drugs has always been a road to ruin.

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This seems only partially correct. If by "they" you mean Germans then yes, Heroin was engineered by them, or at least first made commercially available by Bayers. The US government had nothing to do with it. It was marketed as a less addictive alternative to morphine although I highly doubt anyone who made it actually believed it was safer. I have no source for this but I think it is a safe assumption to make.

The temperance movement was mainly related to alcohol. There were groups who wanted abstinence from everything but that was not its primary focus. They may have played a part in said act but I don't know. They were definitely not the driving force behind it though. Racism played a bigger role than the temperance movement. The government was also aware there was a very real problem with drug addiction.

> I see Europe eventually coming to this same conclusion when enough damage has been done.

I'm curious about this sentence -- to what are you referring, and where specifically in Europe?

Portugal decriminalize d all drugs a little while ago

Notice the word „decriminalize“, not „legalize“. It’s about not throwing people already struggling with addiction in jail but rather offering safe alternatives (counseling, safer use, etc.).

The government‘s not passing out drugs in the street, like US media likes to suggest.

And they have very low drug mortality rates. Opiates are prescribed _way_ less than in the US. This really feels like a strawman comparison.

Nowadays they're just given methadone or Buprenorphine (other opioids). Having known family members that worked in the clinic, there is no plan to get most of them off of it. It is like other opiate addicts, ~most of them take it until they are dead unless they are just dead set on getting off and willing to live with the fact they might never quite feel 'right' again, although at least it is safer.

Is that such a bad thing? Plenty of people will take medications for the rest of their life -- statins, antipsychotics, antidepressants, ADHD meds, antiretrovirals. The stigma of chronic medicine use needs to go away.

I don't know it's a bad thing, just pointing out, the US does just prescribe opiate addicts more opiates basically for life without a plan to stop it. Responding to "They put them on lists and prescribed them dope and it spiraled out of control ... metering out hard drugs has always been a road to ruin" with the facts that's what we're already doing writ large. The thing many people argue shouldn't become the case is already the case and many are oblivious to it (thinking that it was just a thing in the past we stopped).

It isn't the same drug as fentanyl, but it never really stopped being the plan that we will take people from 'the list' and just keep metering opiates out indefinitely. GGP posted this in a way that seemed to allude this was not currently the case.

If only there was anything different between 125 years ago and now!

People haven't changed

Can enforce sales limits with IDs and computers

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