5 ms·

There would be far, far fewer deaths from overdose if all drugs were legal. There may be more addicts if they were legal, I don't know - but there would be a lo

by bdavisx 10y ago

There would be far, far fewer deaths from overdose if all drugs were legal. There may be more addicts if they were legal, I don't know - but there would be a lot fewer deaths.

ergothus 10y ago
I'm not against legalization, but have you done the research to back this up? We have plenty of alcohol-related deaths (both indirect (traffic, etc), and direct (alcohol poisoning).
- pizza 10y ago
  http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/abstract http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67... > Overall, alcohol was the most harmful drug (overall harm score 72), with heroin (55) and crack cocaine (54) in second and third places.
  - danbruc 10y ago
    This study comes up time and again but is really not founded very well. I couple of members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs - whatever exactly that is - sat together and scored a selection of drugs on a selected set of criteria. That's it, there is really no data behind this study other than the opinions of those people. Those opinions might be correct but they may as well be biased or even totally wrong.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      Yes. From the abstract: >Members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, including two invited specialists, met in a 1-day interactive workshop to score 20 drugs on 16 criteria: nine related to the harms that a drug produces in the individual and seven to the harms to others. Drugs were scored out of 100 points, and the criteria were weighted to indicate their relative importance. You could make the scores come out however you wanted based on the people you chose for the "1-day interactive workshop" and the criteria you used as the basis for the analysis. This isn't something you'd ever want to use as a basis for policy.
- celticninja 10y ago
  Have a look at the figures for Portugal pre and post 2001.the Cato Institute did a pretty good write up a few years ago.
- Archio 10y ago
  We do have tons of alcohol deaths. But the idea here is that no one dies from alcohol today because their alcohol dealer slips in unknown amounts of toxic potentiators to cut costs (which is effectively what is happening with heroin et al. today).
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    That's not "strictly" overdose, but contamination. The original point still stands, re alcohol overdose.
  - anotheryou 10y ago
    There was a nice article about how you survive addiction by growing it out. Addiction has also to do with the circumstance and the personality, not just with the drug itself. If alcohol was illegal the death toll might be even higher. People might shift to something with more bang for the buck and have an even shittier and shorter life than dying with 64 from liver failure.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Yeah the increase from heroin to fent would be like drinking a wine cooler (2%) that's actually everclear (95%). I don't know any user of any substance that would say "well 1 unit is likely to get me off a bit, so I think I'll take 20 just to be sure".
- loverofcode 10y ago
  It is hard to get true data, when the only supposedly creditable source (CDC), mixes its data to include all prescription drugs including SSRI's and illicit fentanyl from china. Opioids can be used in VERY high doses as a person becomes more dependent. What is clear is that people are use to heroin and then take the higher dose without knowing and OD. This is the current trend. It is cheaper to get the Fent from Ch than the H from Afgan.
  - shams93 10y ago
    You could take a look at the results in Portugal: https://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening#.MNdTXLhE0 https://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decr...
    - d0mine 10y ago
      The "Drug-induced deaths" plot from the link is very telling.
      - loverofcode 10y ago
        it is.
    - loverofcode 10y ago
      wow. very good info. saved link.
    - slavik81 10y ago
      The statistics are interesting, but they kind of miss the GGP's point. Decriminalization is not legalization. If you just decriminalize, drug users still have to buy their drugs from sketchy black-market suppliers. That's very dangerous compared to buying from a legal, regulated industry. For example, alcohol is predictable and pure today but in the prohibition era, when all suppliers were criminals, it wasn't [1][2]. [1] http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1864521_1864524_1864626,00.html http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288... [2] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...
- loverofcode 10y ago
  i mean look at this statement "A study showed patients prescribed high dosages of opioids long-term (>90 days) had 122 times the risk of opioid use disorder compared to patients not prescribed opioids" from the cdc to drs here http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdf/guideline_infographic-a.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdf/guideline_infographic-a.... So people taking opioids have are at more risk of opioid use disorder than people who dont take them. -YA THINK. And finally look at how they garble the data here http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6450a3.htm http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6450a3.htm they are finally getting to where they can see the drugs are from illegal sources and not dr regulated rxs.
- duaneb 10y ago
  The Swiss have had a program legalizing medical heroin, I believe. That's a starting point.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Already legal in NL and UK.
- exDM69 10y ago
  In the case of alcohol, there was a period of prohibition that did not decrease the death count nor reduce harm to individuals or the society. Granted it was a long time ago. Better data about drug policy and harm reduction can be found by looking at results from Portugal or other countries with permissive policies. None of them supports the claim that prohibition reduces use or harm caused.
searine 10y ago
>There would be far, far fewer deaths from overdose if all drugs were legal. 2/3rds of all overdoses are opiate related. The biggest impactor to preventing overdose death is the drug Naloxone which is an opioid blocker. Putting naloxone in the hands of at risk drug users, and as standard kit for police officers/EMTS, is the most effective way to save lives.
- pizza 10y ago
  Many (if not like more than half, I forget the statistic..) of those overdose deaths result from combining a GABAergic like alcohol or especially benzodiazepines with an opioid.
  - rmac 10y ago
    I wonder why mixing cns depressants is so common? Is it because opioids are so expensive / hard to get, and benzos/alcohol easier to get and cheaper? Or is it simply a better feeling mixing them...
    - pizza 10y ago
      Both, and 3. throwing caution/life to the wind.. oh, and 4. combining a stimulant with a larger/more euphoric dose of the CNS depressants so if the respiratory stimulating effects of the stimulant run out first, respiratory depression ensues
      - rmac 10y ago
        In my experience doing a heroic amount of opioids was enough to not care, uppers mixed in as anti-nod. I didn't understand why people mixed in benzos, unless to curb withdrawals.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      There's also no literature on the subject. So if you need benzos and opiates, there's zero guidance on what's safe. Just "we don't know, we don't measure, don't do it". In other words, abstinence. Some people take them to increase the nod. Others might have insomnia and don't want to take so much opiates to really sleep. Edit: And there's obviously some information on this, somewhere because e.g. IV opiate+midazolam is quite a common thing. [In a 3rd world pharmacy, I was actually offered liquid midazolam as a sleep aid when I complained long-lasting benzos were too long-lasting and asked for a medium-duration sleep aid.]

by bdavisx 10y ago

There would be far, far fewer deaths from overdose if all drugs were legal. There may be more addicts if they were legal, I don't know - but there would be a lot fewer deaths.

ergothus 10y ago

I'm not against legalization, but have you done the research to back this up? We have plenty of alcohol-related deaths (both indirect (traffic, etc), and direct (alcohol poisoning).

pizza 10y ago
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/abstract http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67... > Overall, alcohol was the most harmful drug (overall harm score 72), with heroin (55) and crack cocaine (54) in second and third places.
- danbruc 10y ago
  This study comes up time and again but is really not founded very well. I couple of members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs - whatever exactly that is - sat together and scored a selection of drugs on a selected set of criteria. That's it, there is really no data behind this study other than the opinions of those people. Those opinions might be correct but they may as well be biased or even totally wrong.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    Yes. From the abstract: >Members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, including two invited specialists, met in a 1-day interactive workshop to score 20 drugs on 16 criteria: nine related to the harms that a drug produces in the individual and seven to the harms to others. Drugs were scored out of 100 points, and the criteria were weighted to indicate their relative importance. You could make the scores come out however you wanted based on the people you chose for the "1-day interactive workshop" and the criteria you used as the basis for the analysis. This isn't something you'd ever want to use as a basis for policy.
celticninja 10y ago
Have a look at the figures for Portugal pre and post 2001.the Cato Institute did a pretty good write up a few years ago.
Archio 10y ago
We do have tons of alcohol deaths. But the idea here is that no one dies from alcohol today because their alcohol dealer slips in unknown amounts of toxic potentiators to cut costs (which is effectively what is happening with heroin et al. today).
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  That's not "strictly" overdose, but contamination. The original point still stands, re alcohol overdose.
- anotheryou 10y ago
  There was a nice article about how you survive addiction by growing it out. Addiction has also to do with the circumstance and the personality, not just with the drug itself. If alcohol was illegal the death toll might be even higher. People might shift to something with more bang for the buck and have an even shittier and shorter life than dying with 64 from liver failure.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Yeah the increase from heroin to fent would be like drinking a wine cooler (2%) that's actually everclear (95%). I don't know any user of any substance that would say "well 1 unit is likely to get me off a bit, so I think I'll take 20 just to be sure".
loverofcode 10y ago
It is hard to get true data, when the only supposedly creditable source (CDC), mixes its data to include all prescription drugs including SSRI's and illicit fentanyl from china. Opioids can be used in VERY high doses as a person becomes more dependent. What is clear is that people are use to heroin and then take the higher dose without knowing and OD. This is the current trend. It is cheaper to get the Fent from Ch than the H from Afgan.
- shams93 10y ago
  You could take a look at the results in Portugal: https://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening#.MNdTXLhE0 https://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decr...
  - d0mine 10y ago
    The "Drug-induced deaths" plot from the link is very telling.
    - loverofcode 10y ago
      it is.
  - loverofcode 10y ago
    wow. very good info. saved link.
  - slavik81 10y ago
    The statistics are interesting, but they kind of miss the GGP's point. Decriminalization is not legalization. If you just decriminalize, drug users still have to buy their drugs from sketchy black-market suppliers. That's very dangerous compared to buying from a legal, regulated industry. For example, alcohol is predictable and pure today but in the prohibition era, when all suppliers were criminals, it wasn't [1][2]. [1] http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1864521_1864524_1864626,00.html http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288... [2] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...
loverofcode 10y ago
i mean look at this statement "A study showed patients prescribed high dosages of opioids long-term (>90 days) had 122 times the risk of opioid use disorder compared to patients not prescribed opioids" from the cdc to drs here http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdf/guideline_infographic-a.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdf/guideline_infographic-a.... So people taking opioids have are at more risk of opioid use disorder than people who dont take them. -YA THINK. And finally look at how they garble the data here http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6450a3.htm http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6450a3.htm they are finally getting to where they can see the drugs are from illegal sources and not dr regulated rxs.
duaneb 10y ago
The Swiss have had a program legalizing medical heroin, I believe. That's a starting point.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Already legal in NL and UK.
exDM69 10y ago
In the case of alcohol, there was a period of prohibition that did not decrease the death count nor reduce harm to individuals or the society. Granted it was a long time ago. Better data about drug policy and harm reduction can be found by looking at results from Portugal or other countries with permissive policies. None of them supports the claim that prohibition reduces use or harm caused.

searine 10y ago

>There would be far, far fewer deaths from overdose if all drugs were legal. 2/3rds of all overdoses are opiate related. The biggest impactor to preventing overdose death is the drug Naloxone which is an opioid blocker. Putting naloxone in the hands of at risk drug users, and as standard kit for police officers/EMTS, is the most effective way to save lives.

pizza 10y ago
Many (if not like more than half, I forget the statistic..) of those overdose deaths result from combining a GABAergic like alcohol or especially benzodiazepines with an opioid.
- rmac 10y ago
  I wonder why mixing cns depressants is so common? Is it because opioids are so expensive / hard to get, and benzos/alcohol easier to get and cheaper? Or is it simply a better feeling mixing them...
  - pizza 10y ago
    Both, and 3. throwing caution/life to the wind.. oh, and 4. combining a stimulant with a larger/more euphoric dose of the CNS depressants so if the respiratory stimulating effects of the stimulant run out first, respiratory depression ensues
    - rmac 10y ago
      In my experience doing a heroic amount of opioids was enough to not care, uppers mixed in as anti-nod. I didn't understand why people mixed in benzos, unless to curb withdrawals.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    There's also no literature on the subject. So if you need benzos and opiates, there's zero guidance on what's safe. Just "we don't know, we don't measure, don't do it". In other words, abstinence. Some people take them to increase the nod. Others might have insomnia and don't want to take so much opiates to really sleep. Edit: And there's obviously some information on this, somewhere because e.g. IV opiate+midazolam is quite a common thing. [In a 3rd world pharmacy, I was actually offered liquid midazolam as a sleep aid when I complained long-lasting benzos were too long-lasting and asked for a medium-duration sleep aid.]