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Comment by Symmetry | Hacker News Reader

Honestly the cure seems worse than the disease here, if what they were saying about Subutex is true (I'd never heard of it before this article). Heroin is horrible stuff that can easily kill you. For that matter so is alcohol. I really don't see the point of cracking down on something that is displacing far more dangerous drugs.

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Going cold turkey on alcohol is extraordinarily dangerous: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens

However I am not familiar with opiate withdrawal killing people without other medical things going on.

It wasn't displacing heroin. Heroin didn't make a resurgence. Krododil did, but its use was not nearly as prevalent as the use of Subutex was. The point is that the society got a lot safer and more productive after the Subutex problem was fixed.

The only concrete improvement I see cited is solving their needle disposal problem. Surely there are less drastic alternatives that could have accomplished that.

"Krokodil" (which just by the way, barely creates trace amounts of Desomorphine; the chemistry just isn't correct. No-one really knows WHAT it creates) is guaranteed to kill you. Suboxone (while possible) generally didn't have that sort of guarantee. I'm not sure which is better.

Yes

Note to readers: don't google pictures of Krokodil effects.

Unless you want to see rotten flesh and exposed bones

Opiate withdrawal can't kill you. It feels like you're dying, though.

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