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How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? I understand it makes acquisition less taboo, and perhaps makes treatment a less taboo subject too, but it's not l

How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? I understand it makes acquisition less taboo, and perhaps makes treatment a less taboo subject too, but it's not like legalization is a pancea for addiction. Booze is legal and we still have a massive alcoholism problem.

jacquesm 9y ago
It doesn't but neither does criminalizing fix or reduce addictions. Addictions are a health problem and quite possibly a mental issue but rarely a criminal problem.
mmjaa 9y ago
Legalization doesn't fix addiction. It fixes the sub-culture, the underground, the dark layers in society where addicts lurk in order to be able to continue their addiction. Legalization brings these people into society, by removing the stigma associated with drug use, and makes it less of a problem to be swept under the rug. It makes it easier to contact addicts and get them into effective treatment programs. Right now, there is a huge wall between addicts and treatment: that wall is an entirely fictitious legal construct.
- AOsborn 9y ago
  Well put.
- pm90 9y ago
  Just to add one more thing to this excellent comment: legalization also makes it much easier to undertake scientific studies/research of the effect of (currently) illicit drugs, which might actually help us understand them better. e.g. we know very well exactly how much alcohol is considered "safe" or causing least damage; but we still don't know about the long term effects of e.g. MJ.
  - kogepathic 9y ago
    > legalization also makes it much easier to undertake scientific studies/research of the effect of (currently) illicit drugs Isn't this already possible in other countries? I would have thought this would already be possible in Portugal. [0] [0] http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,0...
  - graphitezepp 9y ago
    Psychology of drug use is rare and hard to find. We need to do a better job studying these dangerous drugs to learn to help addicts better.
- kogepathic 9y ago
  > It makes it easier to contact addicts and get them into effective treatment programs. Who do you expect will fund these treatment programs? I seriously doubt most addicts are equipped to pay for it. You're talking about a country where a major political party actively works to remove funds from women's healthcare. [0] I fully agree that these substances should be legalised for the reasons you mentioned, but I think it's laughable to think present-day politicians give a shit about these people. If anything, they'd probably face substantial lobby from police unions concerned legalisation would lead to job cuts. [0] http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article145926149.html http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article145926149...
  - eberkund 9y ago
    >Who do you expect will fund these treatment programs? I seriously doubt most addicts are equipped to pay for it. Taxes on the drugs themselves would probably more than cover it.
    - kogepathic 9y ago
      > Taxes on the drugs themselves would probably more than cover it. And you seriously think politicians will use this new revenue source for the treatment of addicts? I predict they'll push another tax cut that benefits their major donors.
      - logfromblammo 9y ago
        Perhaps we require that our legislators eat a cannabis cookie before opening any session of congress? I have no idea what they would spent the tax revenues on, other than a Strategic Doritos Stockpile, but it couldn't be any worse than the budget they are likely to pass this year.
  - prbuckley 9y ago
    You know who cares about these addicts, their families, who are the voting constituents of these politicians. The heroin epidemic is the worst in many traditionally republican states. I think you may find there is more bipartisan support for fixing the heroin problem than there is consensus around hot button topics like abortion.
- mgce 9y ago
  I want to agree with you, and I think I mostly do. Unfortunately your comment also reminds me how enormous the barriers remain toward people recognizing alcoholism and having the will to treat it. There's an enormous amount of shame, stigma, and denial toward alcoholism, to the point that most who suffer from it still choose to hide that reality as much as they possibly can. Even worse, the legality of it promotes a culture of celebration (advertising, fancy and elaborate liquor branding, snazzy bars, nightlife culture, bottle service, etc. etc) that is in so many ways uniquely destructive in its own right. Like everyone should be able to find joy in drinking, and those who struggle have something horribly wrong in them that carries the risk of denying them the good life, friends, social opportunities, cultural connection, and so on (suddenly mundane invitations to bars, cocktail parties, weddings, shows, dinner at a friend's home, drinks with co-workers, etc. become awkward and potentially dangerous). There's a whole culture built around it: mainstream culture. And someone facing their problems with this particular drug face the prospect of losing access to the culture of their entire society. That's just daunting. I don't think making alcohol illegal would help. But it's no walk in the park even legal. And poses some of its own unique challenges.
  - kazagistar 9y ago
    We've done work on tobacco. Sure there is still a culture around smoking and whatnot, but its generally accepted to be unhealthy and something that is a problem.
  - pixl97 9y ago
    >I don't think making alcohol illegal would help. We already tried this experiment once. Making alcohol illegal did two things. It actually reduced consumption and alcoholism. It greatly increased the amount of black market crime, and it drastically changed how it was consumed. Harm in vice will always occur. We just have to decide if we want it in the form of overdose, or the form of black market versus police state violence.
    - Zak 9y ago
      Prohibition can also increase adverse events like overdose. Heroin addicts usually know how much of their usual dealer's heroin, cut to a particular purity to take to get high without dying. If they take the same dose of a more pure drug, they overdose. If they take what they think is heroin, but is actually fentanyl, they overdose. Likewise, during alcohol prohibition, liquor containing methanol was a common risk for poisoning when drinking black market alcohol. Even the cheapest grain alcohol at a college liquor store today will not contain a dangerous amount of methanol. Legal heroin would reduce this kind of risk in the same way; it would contain what it says it contains, in the concentration on the label and would not contain other harmful substances.
danielbln 9y ago
And if we were to re-introduce alcohol prohibition we would still have a massive alcoholism problem _in addition_ to a massive crime problem, a massive tax evasion problem, an even worse health problem due to lack of production oversight and a massive enforcement overhead. Legalisation and regulation doesn't fix the addiction problem, but prohibition makes everything so much worse.
kingkawn 9y ago
True! The alcoholism is, like the drug use, a way to emotionally resolve a problem that feels otherwise unsolvable. But to know this openly, and then to try to find solutions, is the only way out. To stigmatize and punish turning to this desperate measure only increases the desperation and does nothing to address the underlying problem. If each person is both an individual but also a representative sample of some portion of the population, it is imperative to address their issues with open-minded efforts at problem solving so that when the circumstance arises in another person we are more prepared to help them find another way out.
tyingq 9y ago
Presumably you take some of the money you were spending on the drug war and put it into programs to deal with addiction.
- noir_lord 9y ago
  That and the tax revenue. A drug lord can sustain his business with high margins because of the high price however they couldn't compete against a major corporation producing the same thing even with a higher end tax rate if it was legal. It's the reason why tobacco and alcohol markets are largely dominated by legitimate companies, economies of scale, distribution etc are all in favour of the legal entity (which isn't to say some tobacco and alcohol aren't sold without the tax, nothing is perfect). So legalising drugs is a double whammy, you save a massive expenditure and the war on drugs and increase your tax revenue and force drug cartels into competing with legitimate businesses they simply can't compete with. If I was doing it I'd ring fence the revenue from taxation into treatment and education and put the savings on enforcement either back into the general tax pot or shift the focus onto things like sex trafficking. If nothing else the War on Drugs we have now simply isn't working, it has to be worth trying something else at this point.
ep103 9y ago
tl;dr: To put it one last way: if drugs were legal, the pharmaceutical industry would be free to iterate on making recreational drugs, that don't have the drawbacks of the things people currently make in back alleys. The taboo truth is people do drugs because they are fun, and people want the drugs that are fun to do, and don't have negative health consequences. Many drugs are relatively safe to do (in small quantities) (or at least moreso than things like skydiving), provided drug purity. Drugs that seriously harm health, are by and large things that people either get suckered into via the black market, or are things people turn to when they do not have access to safer alternatives. And many of the negative health consequences and horrors of drug use, come from unpure drug quality, which in turn is a result of the illegal nature of drugs. Let me put it this way: If it were legal to buy a non-addictive opiod and heroin, nearly 100% of people would choose the opiod. Out of pure self interest, people wouldn't choose the addictive substance, given a safer alternative. Similarly, if people could choose between pure mdma, and meth, meth would nearly cease to exist. But if you decide to use an opiod today, you're going to get a mix of heroin and all sorts of awful junk that you're going to pump into your veins. And if you buy mdma today, there's a huge chance there's going to be a lot of meth in there. Etc, etc, etc
- shmolyneaux 9y ago
  Skydiving is actually fairly safe, see http://www.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety http://www.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety for stats. There were 0.0061 fatalities per 1000 jumps in 2015 .
  - pm90 9y ago
    Yeah and there is very little risk of getting addicted to skydiving :). At least for most people.
    - base698 9y ago
      The people that get into it usually lose years of their life to skydiving. Many quit their other hobbies and stop hanging around friends from their old life and even quit their jobs. More similar than you'd think :)
Pigo 9y ago
People throw out legalization because they're used to the marijuana debate. But how do you legalize a drug like fentanyl? How do you pretend you're here to protect and serve when you legalize a drug that seems like it was designed to kill people in a single use? We need to rethink the laws, and have some effective changes lead by people who understand the problem and have nothing to gain financially. But there's never going to be carfentanil at Rite-Aid, and if there was, these cartels would compete. Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem as simple as pot.
- tonyarkles 9y ago
  This all ties back to the underground shoddy manufacturing. Yes, there's piles of stories about people dying from illicit fentanyl. The problem with fentanyl is the dosing; an effective dose is measured in micrograms. What doesn't get reported with the same sensationalism is that fentanyl is actually used medically, quite successfully. My father had knee surgery a few years ago and was prescribed slow-release fentanyl patches. I'm hazy on the details, but I think it was something like 16ug released over 12 hours. It worked just fine. I remember hearing recently about some fentanyl deaths in Vancouver that were traced back to a poorly manufactured batch of underground pills. The problem wasn't the average dose in the pills, it was that the fentanyl and filler and binder hadn't been mixed very well before being pressed. The result was that some of the pills had a bunch of fentanyl and some didn't. While I'm not necessarily in favour of legalizing everything, being able to freely purchase pharmaceutical grade fentanyl pills would go a long way in preventing situations like this.
- xiaoma 9y ago
  >"How do you pretend you're here to protect and serve when you legalize a drug that seems like it was designed to kill people in a single use?" This is a different, adjacent issue. However, it's not impossible to make a case for allowing people to purchase lethal substances. On the contrary, there are compelling arguments that people should have the freedom to choose death rather than be forced to continue living.
- dave_sullivan 9y ago
  > But how do you legalize a drug like fentanyl? No one is doing fentanyl by choice. People are doing fentanyl on accident because it's in the heroin they're buying on the street. This really drove it home for me: https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fatal-doses/ https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fa... That being said, I still don't think we should put people in jail for using it. Fentanyl is known to kill you. So is rat poison. Buyer beware.
api 9y ago
Improving community, social ties, and the economy reduces addictions. The interior of the USA looks like post-Soviet-collapse Russia economically, and the way we've built cities and suburbs for the past 50 years has destroyed opportunities for beneficial community and social connection. Nothing will reduce addiction until those things are fixed. If heroin is unavailable people will go to prescription pills, alcohol, or even food, video games, etc. Legalizing, taxing, and regulating drugs reduces crime, redirects money from criminals into law abiding enterprises and tax revenue that can be used to address the problems above, and allows the deployment of strategies to reduce the harm done by addiction.
dave_sullivan 9y ago
> How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? It doesn't. It's partly an acknowledgement that, "It's really none of your business what people put in their own bodies." You're implicitly saying, "I don't like the fact that you are addicted to X substance or action Y, so I think that gives me the moral justification to lock you in a literal cage for a very long time." Legalizing drugs is about not putting people in jail for harming their own bodies and providing them with safer alternatives (IE, actual heroin instead of fentanyl, which is why we have this so-called "epidemic") And for the record, never tried heroin, never will, it ruins lives. But I don't think we need to be putting people in jail for it. In fact, this only makes it worse. Btw, ever wonder how much fentanyl it takes to kill you vs the amount of heroin? https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fatal-doses/ https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fa... That's what's driving the huge number of deaths from "heroin".
- padobson 9y ago
  Legalization benefits addicts in other ways - like safer environments for consumption[0]. Addicts that are presently shooting up in basements and bathroom stalls and under bridges can go to a place where they can receive an injection of a known dosage under supervision of medical professionals. I'm all for fighting addiction, but that's a complicated and expensive fight. Fighting the crime and fighting overdoses, equally destructive problems to addiction, are much simpler fixes: legalize it. [0]http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/safe-injection-sites-get-ok-from-king-county-health-board/ http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/safe-injecti...
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  > Btw, ever wonder how much fentanyl it takes to kill you vs the amount of heroin? https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fa.. https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fa.... That's what's driving the huge number of deaths from "heroin". Fentanyl is definitely a problem, but you can't point just to potency and say "this is why". Fentanyl is much more potent than most other painkillers, but it's also more expensive. 5 patches of 12 hour release 25mcg/hr fentanyl will cost $145 on prescription, before any street markup. That's about half what you see in that vial there (assuming your recovery method is 100% effective, no-one cuts it, etc, etc).
enraged_camel 9y ago
I think you only have to compare the Prohibition America with today's America to understand why the current system is much more preferable to former. When alcohol was illegal, we had gangsters like Al Capone. They built their empires and profited massively from illicit activity (not just smuggling but also violent crimes) at the expense of the American government and people. They also didn't pay a single dime in taxes despite all the profit they made. The parallel to that is today's war on drugs and the drug lords it has given rise to.
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  It is pretty disturbing to me we as a society have yet to learn the prohibition lesson. I believe that sensationalize of Al Capone and gangster culture in media leads people to not thinking the same stuff is happening today because they don't see shootouts and police chases in the street.
iamacynic 9y ago
it doesn't. it simply saves trillions of dollars of spending and turns it into revenue.
lawpoop 9y ago
In the early 1900s, when you could buy morphine at the corner drugstore, addicts took morphine daily and went about their lives, living out a normal lifespan. Because of the iron law of prohibition, under prohibition, only the most potent, dangerous forms of the drug are available, so addicts use them, overdose, die, etc. Look at the problems with lack of beer and wine during prohibition, and the availability of moonshine and methanol
Taylor_OD 9y ago
There's also a massive support group for alcoholics. I'd bet that if you discover someone stopped drinking because they were/are a alcoholic you wouldnt bat a eye. If you found out they were addicted to heroin you would have a very different view of them.
prbuckley 9y ago
Part of the problem of prohibition is that it drives up the potency of drugs which leads to the situation where you get fentanyl instead of heroin. This effect was coined the "iron law of prohibition" by economist Richard Cowan. More powerful drugs lead to stronger addictions and more accidental over doses. Reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition
simonswords82 9y ago
Please watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8yYJ_oV6xk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8yYJ_oV6xk (Retired Police Captain demolishes the War on Drugs)
diogenescynic 9y ago
>How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? It doesn't directly, but instead of ineffectively spending billions on law enforcement and incarceration you could use that money and the new tax revenue to fund treatment and prevention programs.
FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
This has probably been beaten to death, but I've found the tv series The Wire to be one of the best portrayals of the actual costs, both acute and diffuse, of waging war against your own people. You are right in your hunch that it makes treatment a much less taboo subject. The real difference in outcomes comes from treating it as a health issue and not a criminal violation.

jacquesm 9y ago

It doesn't but neither does criminalizing fix or reduce addictions. Addictions are a health problem and quite possibly a mental issue but rarely a criminal problem.

mmjaa 9y ago

Legalization doesn't fix addiction. It fixes the sub-culture, the underground, the dark layers in society where addicts lurk in order to be able to continue their addiction. Legalization brings these people into society, by removing the stigma associated with drug use, and makes it less of a problem to be swept under the rug. It makes it easier to contact addicts and get them into effective treatment programs. Right now, there is a huge wall between addicts and treatment: that wall is an entirely fictitious legal construct.

AOsborn 9y ago
Well put.
pm90 9y ago
Just to add one more thing to this excellent comment: legalization also makes it much easier to undertake scientific studies/research of the effect of (currently) illicit drugs, which might actually help us understand them better. e.g. we know very well exactly how much alcohol is considered "safe" or causing least damage; but we still don't know about the long term effects of e.g. MJ.
- kogepathic 9y ago
  > legalization also makes it much easier to undertake scientific studies/research of the effect of (currently) illicit drugs Isn't this already possible in other countries? I would have thought this would already be possible in Portugal. [0] [0] http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,0...
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  Psychology of drug use is rare and hard to find. We need to do a better job studying these dangerous drugs to learn to help addicts better.
kogepathic 9y ago
> It makes it easier to contact addicts and get them into effective treatment programs. Who do you expect will fund these treatment programs? I seriously doubt most addicts are equipped to pay for it. You're talking about a country where a major political party actively works to remove funds from women's healthcare. [0] I fully agree that these substances should be legalised for the reasons you mentioned, but I think it's laughable to think present-day politicians give a shit about these people. If anything, they'd probably face substantial lobby from police unions concerned legalisation would lead to job cuts. [0] http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article145926149.html http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article145926149...
- eberkund 9y ago
  >Who do you expect will fund these treatment programs? I seriously doubt most addicts are equipped to pay for it. Taxes on the drugs themselves would probably more than cover it.
  - kogepathic 9y ago
    > Taxes on the drugs themselves would probably more than cover it. And you seriously think politicians will use this new revenue source for the treatment of addicts? I predict they'll push another tax cut that benefits their major donors.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      Perhaps we require that our legislators eat a cannabis cookie before opening any session of congress? I have no idea what they would spent the tax revenues on, other than a Strategic Doritos Stockpile, but it couldn't be any worse than the budget they are likely to pass this year.
- prbuckley 9y ago
  You know who cares about these addicts, their families, who are the voting constituents of these politicians. The heroin epidemic is the worst in many traditionally republican states. I think you may find there is more bipartisan support for fixing the heroin problem than there is consensus around hot button topics like abortion.
mgce 9y ago
I want to agree with you, and I think I mostly do. Unfortunately your comment also reminds me how enormous the barriers remain toward people recognizing alcoholism and having the will to treat it. There's an enormous amount of shame, stigma, and denial toward alcoholism, to the point that most who suffer from it still choose to hide that reality as much as they possibly can. Even worse, the legality of it promotes a culture of celebration (advertising, fancy and elaborate liquor branding, snazzy bars, nightlife culture, bottle service, etc. etc) that is in so many ways uniquely destructive in its own right. Like everyone should be able to find joy in drinking, and those who struggle have something horribly wrong in them that carries the risk of denying them the good life, friends, social opportunities, cultural connection, and so on (suddenly mundane invitations to bars, cocktail parties, weddings, shows, dinner at a friend's home, drinks with co-workers, etc. become awkward and potentially dangerous). There's a whole culture built around it: mainstream culture. And someone facing their problems with this particular drug face the prospect of losing access to the culture of their entire society. That's just daunting. I don't think making alcohol illegal would help. But it's no walk in the park even legal. And poses some of its own unique challenges.
- kazagistar 9y ago
  We've done work on tobacco. Sure there is still a culture around smoking and whatnot, but its generally accepted to be unhealthy and something that is a problem.
- pixl97 9y ago
  >I don't think making alcohol illegal would help. We already tried this experiment once. Making alcohol illegal did two things. It actually reduced consumption and alcoholism. It greatly increased the amount of black market crime, and it drastically changed how it was consumed. Harm in vice will always occur. We just have to decide if we want it in the form of overdose, or the form of black market versus police state violence.
  - Zak 9y ago
    Prohibition can also increase adverse events like overdose. Heroin addicts usually know how much of their usual dealer's heroin, cut to a particular purity to take to get high without dying. If they take the same dose of a more pure drug, they overdose. If they take what they think is heroin, but is actually fentanyl, they overdose. Likewise, during alcohol prohibition, liquor containing methanol was a common risk for poisoning when drinking black market alcohol. Even the cheapest grain alcohol at a college liquor store today will not contain a dangerous amount of methanol. Legal heroin would reduce this kind of risk in the same way; it would contain what it says it contains, in the concentration on the label and would not contain other harmful substances.

danielbln 9y ago

And if we were to re-introduce alcohol prohibition we would still have a massive alcoholism problem _in addition_ to a massive crime problem, a massive tax evasion problem, an even worse health problem due to lack of production oversight and a massive enforcement overhead. Legalisation and regulation doesn't fix the addiction problem, but prohibition makes everything so much worse.

kingkawn 9y ago

True! The alcoholism is, like the drug use, a way to emotionally resolve a problem that feels otherwise unsolvable. But to know this openly, and then to try to find solutions, is the only way out. To stigmatize and punish turning to this desperate measure only increases the desperation and does nothing to address the underlying problem. If each person is both an individual but also a representative sample of some portion of the population, it is imperative to address their issues with open-minded efforts at problem solving so that when the circumstance arises in another person we are more prepared to help them find another way out.

tyingq 9y ago

Presumably you take some of the money you were spending on the drug war and put it into programs to deal with addiction.

noir_lord 9y ago
That and the tax revenue. A drug lord can sustain his business with high margins because of the high price however they couldn't compete against a major corporation producing the same thing even with a higher end tax rate if it was legal. It's the reason why tobacco and alcohol markets are largely dominated by legitimate companies, economies of scale, distribution etc are all in favour of the legal entity (which isn't to say some tobacco and alcohol aren't sold without the tax, nothing is perfect). So legalising drugs is a double whammy, you save a massive expenditure and the war on drugs and increase your tax revenue and force drug cartels into competing with legitimate businesses they simply can't compete with. If I was doing it I'd ring fence the revenue from taxation into treatment and education and put the savings on enforcement either back into the general tax pot or shift the focus onto things like sex trafficking. If nothing else the War on Drugs we have now simply isn't working, it has to be worth trying something else at this point.

ep103 9y ago

tl;dr: To put it one last way: if drugs were legal, the pharmaceutical industry would be free to iterate on making recreational drugs, that don't have the drawbacks of the things people currently make in back alleys. The taboo truth is people do drugs because they are fun, and people want the drugs that are fun to do, and don't have negative health consequences. Many drugs are relatively safe to do (in small quantities) (or at least moreso than things like skydiving), provided drug purity. Drugs that seriously harm health, are by and large things that people either get suckered into via the black market, or are things people turn to when they do not have access to safer alternatives. And many of the negative health consequences and horrors of drug use, come from unpure drug quality, which in turn is a result of the illegal nature of drugs. Let me put it this way: If it were legal to buy a non-addictive opiod and heroin, nearly 100% of people would choose the opiod. Out of pure self interest, people wouldn't choose the addictive substance, given a safer alternative. Similarly, if people could choose between pure mdma, and meth, meth would nearly cease to exist. But if you decide to use an opiod today, you're going to get a mix of heroin and all sorts of awful junk that you're going to pump into your veins. And if you buy mdma today, there's a huge chance there's going to be a lot of meth in there. Etc, etc, etc

shmolyneaux 9y ago
Skydiving is actually fairly safe, see http://www.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety http://www.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety for stats. There were 0.0061 fatalities per 1000 jumps in 2015 .
- pm90 9y ago
  Yeah and there is very little risk of getting addicted to skydiving :). At least for most people.
  - base698 9y ago
    The people that get into it usually lose years of their life to skydiving. Many quit their other hobbies and stop hanging around friends from their old life and even quit their jobs. More similar than you'd think :)

Pigo 9y ago

People throw out legalization because they're used to the marijuana debate. But how do you legalize a drug like fentanyl? How do you pretend you're here to protect and serve when you legalize a drug that seems like it was designed to kill people in a single use? We need to rethink the laws, and have some effective changes lead by people who understand the problem and have nothing to gain financially. But there's never going to be carfentanil at Rite-Aid, and if there was, these cartels would compete. Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem as simple as pot.

tonyarkles 9y ago
This all ties back to the underground shoddy manufacturing. Yes, there's piles of stories about people dying from illicit fentanyl. The problem with fentanyl is the dosing; an effective dose is measured in micrograms. What doesn't get reported with the same sensationalism is that fentanyl is actually used medically, quite successfully. My father had knee surgery a few years ago and was prescribed slow-release fentanyl patches. I'm hazy on the details, but I think it was something like 16ug released over 12 hours. It worked just fine. I remember hearing recently about some fentanyl deaths in Vancouver that were traced back to a poorly manufactured batch of underground pills. The problem wasn't the average dose in the pills, it was that the fentanyl and filler and binder hadn't been mixed very well before being pressed. The result was that some of the pills had a bunch of fentanyl and some didn't. While I'm not necessarily in favour of legalizing everything, being able to freely purchase pharmaceutical grade fentanyl pills would go a long way in preventing situations like this.
xiaoma 9y ago
>"How do you pretend you're here to protect and serve when you legalize a drug that seems like it was designed to kill people in a single use?" This is a different, adjacent issue. However, it's not impossible to make a case for allowing people to purchase lethal substances. On the contrary, there are compelling arguments that people should have the freedom to choose death rather than be forced to continue living.
dave_sullivan 9y ago
> But how do you legalize a drug like fentanyl? No one is doing fentanyl by choice. People are doing fentanyl on accident because it's in the heroin they're buying on the street. This really drove it home for me: https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fatal-doses/ https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fa... That being said, I still don't think we should put people in jail for using it. Fentanyl is known to kill you. So is rat poison. Buyer beware.

api 9y ago

Improving community, social ties, and the economy reduces addictions. The interior of the USA looks like post-Soviet-collapse Russia economically, and the way we've built cities and suburbs for the past 50 years has destroyed opportunities for beneficial community and social connection. Nothing will reduce addiction until those things are fixed. If heroin is unavailable people will go to prescription pills, alcohol, or even food, video games, etc. Legalizing, taxing, and regulating drugs reduces crime, redirects money from criminals into law abiding enterprises and tax revenue that can be used to address the problems above, and allows the deployment of strategies to reduce the harm done by addiction.

dave_sullivan 9y ago

> How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? It doesn't. It's partly an acknowledgement that, "It's really none of your business what people put in their own bodies." You're implicitly saying, "I don't like the fact that you are addicted to X substance or action Y, so I think that gives me the moral justification to lock you in a literal cage for a very long time." Legalizing drugs is about not putting people in jail for harming their own bodies and providing them with safer alternatives (IE, actual heroin instead of fentanyl, which is why we have this so-called "epidemic") And for the record, never tried heroin, never will, it ruins lives. But I don't think we need to be putting people in jail for it. In fact, this only makes it worse. Btw, ever wonder how much fentanyl it takes to kill you vs the amount of heroin? https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fatal-doses/ https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fa... That's what's driving the huge number of deaths from "heroin".

padobson 9y ago
Legalization benefits addicts in other ways - like safer environments for consumption[0]. Addicts that are presently shooting up in basements and bathroom stalls and under bridges can go to a place where they can receive an injection of a known dosage under supervision of medical professionals. I'm all for fighting addiction, but that's a complicated and expensive fight. Fighting the crime and fighting overdoses, equally destructive problems to addiction, are much simpler fixes: legalize it. [0]http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/safe-injection-sites-get-ok-from-king-county-health-board/ http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/safe-injecti...
FireBeyond 9y ago
> Btw, ever wonder how much fentanyl it takes to kill you vs the amount of heroin? https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fa.. https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fa.... That's what's driving the huge number of deaths from "heroin". Fentanyl is definitely a problem, but you can't point just to potency and say "this is why". Fentanyl is much more potent than most other painkillers, but it's also more expensive. 5 patches of 12 hour release 25mcg/hr fentanyl will cost $145 on prescription, before any street markup. That's about half what you see in that vial there (assuming your recovery method is 100% effective, no-one cuts it, etc, etc).

enraged_camel 9y ago

I think you only have to compare the Prohibition America with today's America to understand why the current system is much more preferable to former. When alcohol was illegal, we had gangsters like Al Capone. They built their empires and profited massively from illicit activity (not just smuggling but also violent crimes) at the expense of the American government and people. They also didn't pay a single dime in taxes despite all the profit they made. The parallel to that is today's war on drugs and the drug lords it has given rise to.

graphitezepp 9y ago
It is pretty disturbing to me we as a society have yet to learn the prohibition lesson. I believe that sensationalize of Al Capone and gangster culture in media leads people to not thinking the same stuff is happening today because they don't see shootouts and police chases in the street.

iamacynic 9y ago

it doesn't. it simply saves trillions of dollars of spending and turns it into revenue.

lawpoop 9y ago

In the early 1900s, when you could buy morphine at the corner drugstore, addicts took morphine daily and went about their lives, living out a normal lifespan. Because of the iron law of prohibition, under prohibition, only the most potent, dangerous forms of the drug are available, so addicts use them, overdose, die, etc. Look at the problems with lack of beer and wine during prohibition, and the availability of moonshine and methanol

Taylor_OD 9y ago

There's also a massive support group for alcoholics. I'd bet that if you discover someone stopped drinking because they were/are a alcoholic you wouldnt bat a eye. If you found out they were addicted to heroin you would have a very different view of them.

prbuckley 9y ago

Part of the problem of prohibition is that it drives up the potency of drugs which leads to the situation where you get fentanyl instead of heroin. This effect was coined the "iron law of prohibition" by economist Richard Cowan. More powerful drugs lead to stronger addictions and more accidental over doses. Reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition

simonswords82 9y ago

Please watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8yYJ_oV6xk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8yYJ_oV6xk (Retired Police Captain demolishes the War on Drugs)

diogenescynic 9y ago

>How does legalizing fix or reduce addictions? It doesn't directly, but instead of ineffectively spending billions on law enforcement and incarceration you could use that money and the new tax revenue to fund treatment and prevention programs.

FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago

This has probably been beaten to death, but I've found the tv series The Wire to be one of the best portrayals of the actual costs, both acute and diffuse, of waging war against your own people. You are right in your hunch that it makes treatment a much less taboo subject. The real difference in outcomes comes from treating it as a health issue and not a criminal violation.