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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

There's historical precedent for legalized heroin - it's the opium dens of the mid/late 19th century. I don't think that's a world that many people want to go back to.

Most of the time when people talk about drug legalization, they mean things like marijuana, LSD, or ecstasy.

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> opium dens

The modern equivalent is spending hours watching reality TV and eating fast food.

Not trying to be snarky. I mean it.

So if I'm eating fast food and watching a non-reality TV program, I've left the opium den, right?

> I don't think that's a world that many people want to go back to.

Not knowing much about this, could I ask why?

why not to legalize something that hurts just the one who takes it? The same logic would require us to delegalize alcohol. Remember, we had booze dealers with machine guns terrorizing whole cities, like Chicago, before we came back to our senses and legalized it.

Can you see Corona dealers fighting with Coors dealers for a territory to sell beer? Why not? This is the EXACT reality of 1920s in this country.

I don't care if some idiots are going to kill themselves. As if we didn't have enough economic issues and ways to spend money, to spend so much on prisons, police force and all this other BS to deal with somebody's addiction.

I will tell you what will happen. As 1929 crash forced us to legalize alcohol, the same way 2008 forced us to legalize weed. Hopefully next crash will force us to legalize rest of it and start making money on it to find education vs. taking money from education to keep juvenile institutions staffed with guards.

You don't have to be in favour of the current war on drugs to be in favour of heroin being illegal - and this is key selling heroin being illegal. Even Portugal, held up as the example of decriminalization only decriminalized possession not distribution.

Being a heroin addict should be treated as a social/medical problem and people given all the help they can to get clean, but we absolutely shouldn't be encouraging people to take it up. Especially heroin which is responsible for a very high percentage of all drug related deaths.

I think you've struck upon the fundamental issue when it comes to substance legalization: we've made the U.S. government the arbiter of safety. People think, "If it's legal, it must be safe."

That isn't a true statement even now, but it's the mindset people bring to discussions about decriminalization.

Legalization does not need to mean "encouraging people to take it up." If we want to end the war on drugs, we need to all accept responsibility for determining what is safe for ourselves. The government's role should be in providing information and support.

Don't forget marketing. Alcohol is marketed extensively by the industry despite the associated problems. A legal heroin industry would have a huge incentive to market heroin.

I have fairly extreme views on marketing in general, but I don't think its existence contradicts anything I said above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_...

Heroin + other drugs combined are responsible for a high percentage of all drug related deaths. You can make the argument that there's not much difference, because people are dumb, and I'd probably agree with you though.

Best i recall, the major reason for heroin deaths are that people overdose.

This either because they don't know the purity of the substance, or they have tried to get clean on their own and are relapsing.

The latter is particularly insidious, as the person will set up the dosage based on habit while their body has lost its resistance to the drug.

of course, you just want to make sure that Al Capone still has his stream of income. And how exactly does it make it better for society at large?

From what I understand, heroin when injected is so addictive that using it even once can put you on a path you never would have gone anywhere near. It takes rational thought out of the occasion, changes your personality and your goals - your life becomes about getting your next fix and you'll do anything to get it.

Beer, weed, ecstacy, etc don't have that same steep addictive power, so aren't dangerous in that way. So it can't be so easily compared to alcohol since alcohol has a much more gradual addiction curve whereas heroin is much much steeper.

That's utter nonsense. Do you realize heroin is a fancy name for diacetylmorphine, an analgesic commonly used to treat chronic and post-surgical pain?

In other words, thousands of people around the world received that 'one shot' today and if you didn't tell them, probably wouldn't even know they just had a hit of h (and none of them suddenly loses their ability for rational thought or their life's goals).

Thousands of people are given heroin-like (or actually heroin in your case) pain killers for chronic and post-surgical pain and move onto illegal forms like heroin after because they're addicted. Like the dude in the article.

"One shot" is an exaggeration, apologies. My point was that heroin and it's analogues are highly addictive substances, in an aggressive way that beer weed and ecstacy aren't. You can't directly compare and equate beer with heroin for the sake of argument for legalization. Drugs aren't equal and the addictive properties of one are different from another. They have to be considered on a case by case basis.

It's also worth watching episode 7 of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown where he goes back home to Massachusetts. A large portion of the episode is focused on this.

You have kids in high school who are injured in sports, are prescribed painkillers by their doctors which eventually gets them on heroin. The addicts didn't wake up one day thinking, "You know what? I think I'm going to try heroin today." It was legal pharmaceuticals with falsely advertised addiction rates that got them onto it.

> From what I understand, heroin when injected is so addictive that using it even once can put you on a path you never would have gone anywhere near

Entirely incorrect. You'll need to take it daily for at least a month or so for withdrawals to even begin to effect you.

There are good arguments against heroin. We don't need to use propaganda and falsehoods to do so, in my opinion.

Interesting. I did some googling and found quite a few anecdotes saying similar things. Thanks for enlightening me.

A single dose is unlikely to lead to physical dependence. Powerful opiates are often administered through an IV for things like oral surgery (my recollection of the sedation I had when I had my wisdom teeth out definitely includes euphoria in the moments before I fell asleep).

The issue is probably mostly that many of the people at a point where the first dose seems like a good idea are going to also think the second dose is a good idea.

> From what I understand, heroin when injected is so addictive that using it even once can put you on a path you never would have gone anywhere near. It takes rational thought out of the occasion, changes your personality and your goals - your life becomes about getting your next fix and you'll do anything to get it.

All bullshit. The vast majority of people who try heroin (even multiple times) do not get addicted.

I'd be interested to see some stats on IV heroin use and rate of addiction if you've got some

Me too, but unfortunately it seems to be almost impossible to find unbiased information (almost everything I found was blatant drug-war propaganda with absolutely no science backing it up)

I did find 1 interesting paper on occasional and controlled heroin use: http://www.jrf.org.uk/system/files/1859354254.pdf

why would the route of administration have anything to do with that? it's the same substance hitting the same receptors.

every single addiction takes effort and time to develope, even heroin. anyway, google 'heroin + medical use' and be very suprised.

The likelihood that someone will become addicted to a substance is actually much more affected by the route of administration than the substance itself. Addiction primarily happens as a result of people linking an action (e.g. taking a drug) with a reward, and the less time there is in between taking the drug and it taking effect, the more powerful that connection.

In terms of addictive potential for any given drug:

smoking > injecting > snorting > eating > topical

If you were to actually compare drinking crack with drinking coffee, the addictiveness of both would be identical.

Route of administration changes how quickly, how hard and in what way drugs hit you. For example, someone could rub some coke on their gums and have a numb mouth and be slightly more alert, or snort the same amount and get a rush.

I think you're mistaken. While the first part is certainly true - I remain doubtful about the implication for addictive potential of a drug - the second part is a rather bad example:

Both in your nose and in your mouth the drug is absorbed into the bloodstream via a mucous membrane. The reason you don't see a lot of people putting large doses of cocaine on their gums is largely practical... same thing for mdma for example, just the other way around.

/edit The coke-numbs-your-gums part is supposed to be a test for the quality of the product, easily faked though.

You're focussing on physical addiction. A drug hitting you nearly instantly (IV use) vs over a period of time is definitely more psychologically addictive. There's really no argument there..

>Both in your nose and in your mouth the drug is absorbed into the bloodstream via a mucous membrane. The reason you don't see a lot of people putting large doses of cocaine on their gums is largely practical... same thing for mdma for example, just the other way around.

It's more practical to put it in your gums though - you don't need to lay it out, crush it up, line it up into lines, find/roll a tube etc. You just stick your finger into the packet and rub it on your gums. Do a little research - snorting affects you in a more intense way.

> /edit The coke-numbs-your-gums part is supposed to be a test for the quality of the product, easily faked though.

Cocaine was used by dentists to numb gums. It acts as an anaesthetic. Drug dealers play on this and add numbing agents to other drugs and pass it off as coke.

I find myself wondering how someone would go directly form clean to "lets stick this needled in my arm". Likely by that time the person is already craving it after having had it several times via other means.

Give me some real science here instead of BS propaganda of people interested in keeping it illegal, like law enforcement and their budget, like mafia and their income.

I heard exactly the same form school teacher about marijuana. I heard the same about alcohol and native American Indians. This is all BS. Give me science, solid proofs, not scary stories for 6 year olds.

And then again. Even if it is true. How is that your business? Somebody hurting themselves and you decide it is illegal for them at the same time buying a gun that can hurt others and you. This all complete nonsense, not based on our freedoms , Constitution, tradition, but some middle ages hysteria witch a bunch of ladies screaming delegalize alcohol because it is destroying my family.

We had it, this is BS, this doesnt work and first of all is none of your business what chemicals other people take in their time using their money. Unless you have a vested interest in keeping it illegal, like you are in a gang, you are a dealer or law enforcement. There is no logical reason to support drugs delegalization except for these two: dealing it or catching dealers. Because dealing and catching would be extinct without proginition the same way you don't buy Corona on a corner of a street from armed gangster.

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