Inside the Deep Web Drug Lab
medium.com
medium.com
1. Drugs are frequently adulterated because of lack of any regulation. Adulterants are responsible for most of the side effects of heroin use. The only side effect of pure heroin is constipation.
2. Again, purity of drugs varies a lot, so there is no proper information available about dosages. This leads to overdoses.
3. Drug users are denied jobs and treatment, so they cannot get their lives on track even if they want to.
4. Money from drug sales is entirely in black, and is used to fuel further illegal activity.
5. Drug users don't have access to clean needles and safe paraphernalia, which leads to spread of blood-borne diseases and injuries.
All of these problems simply go away with legalization and regulation.
Also, drug education that is more rational and nuanced than "drugs are evil and will ruin your life" will go a long way in preventing the kinds you problems you talk about.
1. http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/overdose/facts....
Not sure that's true. Look at all the deaths due to overdoses of prescription opiates. These drugs are pure, the exact dose, etc and people still take too much and die.
* Drugs are addictive and expensive. Not all of this expense is due to costs of avoiding enforcement. This can and does drive users to poverty, which has its own correlation with crime outside of drug enforcement itself
* Not all overdosing is due to "no proper information available about dosages". I'd wager that few overdoses are from first-time users, so the overdoser has some information about their own previous dosages at the very least.
> Drug users are denied jobs and treatment, so they cannot get their lives on track even if they want to.
If the only problem with drugs is that they are illegal, why do they need treatment? Can we agree that an addict that wants treatment would need it whether the drug is legal or not? And that some people don't do it, or can't afford it, regardless of its legality (see: alcohol)?
I'm pro-legalisation, but you're hardly making a good case here by picking strawmen and showing how easy it is to beat them down.
The purity of drugs varies a lot, and a couple of missed steps of dilution and adulteration can easily lead to overdoses.
> If the only problem with drugs is that they are illegal, why do they need treatment? Can we agree that an addict that wants treatment would need it whether the drug is legal or not? And that some people don't do it, or can't afford it, regardless of its legality (see: alcohol)?
I didn't say all, I said "most" of the problem with drugs is that they are illegal.
The problem is that the current system does absolutely nothing to combat the problems both you and I mention. It is a huge waste of money, time, life and resources. Sticking addicts who need treatment in jail does nothing to solve the problem.
Legalization, harm-reduction and proper education seems to be the way to go. Current "abstinence-only" drug education simply doesn't cut it. Informing users about both the risks and benefits of drug use in an unbiased, non-judgemental way would be much more effective.
All this doesn't even take into account the philosophical argument that an adult should be free to put whatever they want into their own bodies. You can't stop people from making poor life decisions.
I'd love to see something like this in the UK, and ideally it would be a bit cheaper.
Ideally such services should be ran by governments, which could also help to ensure that items mailed to their addresses are not seized.
Funding is always going to be an issue for NGOs though.
By that definition, the black market is a free market. You could argue about the word 'unrestricted' but I doubt you'd change my mind.
The bakery competition is limited to people who want to run a bakery. The beer store market is limited to people who want to run beer stores.
Breaking the law obviously isn't an issue for people in drug industry.
I'm not advocating getting rid of all testing and standards bodies... I can't speak for anyone else.
Politicians are very sensitive to being seen to be 'running a drug dealer QA lab', despite the obvious harm reduction benefits, so they try to cover themselves with various constraints.
http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/calgary/8-alberta-deaths-lin...
http://www.deepdotweb.com/2015/03/18/interview-with-nswgreat...
- users who have an interest in promoting one of the vendors providing them with positive reviews, while other vendors receive negative reviews
- users who are known for reviewing samples receiving higher-quality orders
Surely there's a way to keep the vendors honest in a more long-term way, as well as gauge the consistency of each, but it eludes me right now.
The first problem is harder.
Seems like they used the term correctly.
It's kinda silly semantics now though, most people seem to use it to talk about illicit hidden stuff. It's like saying, that's not a Hoover it's a vacuume cleaner.
This particular article is a bit annoying though because the writer is either confused, trolling, or avoiding describing technical specifics for ethical raisins. Best kind of raisin.
But yes I agree if someone is going to put harmful chemicals in their body they might as well prevent any further damage to their body and reduce risk of complications.