Subu Must Die: How a nation of junkies went cold turkey (2013)

newrepublic.com

46 points·gwern··6 comments

Interesting. The detour at the end about weed is also kind of weird. Not sure how I feel about it.

Sure, addiction of any kind is something we should probably investigate and help treat.

It's still weird to hear what amounts to a "Reefer Madness lite" scare at the end given that what I took from the article. That is, widespread drug abuse is almost assuredly a symptom of other problems (unemployment/dim prospects in the case of Georgia), and that banning harmless drugs (e.g. Subu) will just lead people to seek dangerous alternatives (e.g. Krokodil).

If the author's point is that we should look from a high level at why widespread drug usage occurs and how we can make beneficial steps towards reducing that (like increasing social mobility, as nebulous as that phrase is) then I'm on board. If it's that we should be concerned about legalized marijuana because it'll lead to glass pipes littering our parks, I'm less convinced.

The article doesn't really say much about it, but what were the problems with Subutex that made Georgia start the drug war rampage?

Apparently there was a syringe-litter problem.

Right or Wrong the Nation of Georgia didn't like being known as a nation of drug addicts. They were concerned about their international reputation.

When you think about it that reputation does have some pretty far ranging effects on your relations with other countries so it was a valid concern. The root cause of the problem wasn't addressed though. They were fixing the wrong problem.

It clarified for me why tourists were recently arrested and imprisoned for having a few codeine pain relievers in their suitcase.

Yeah - as a guy named Subu, that was not a good title to read :)

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