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people gamble their money away and its plenty legal. The free market won't solve everything. I also have a bit of a hard time imagining that someone having eve

by rtpg 9y ago

people gamble their money away and its plenty legal. The free market won't solve everything. I also have a bit of a hard time imagining that someone having even easier access to, say, meth will thus be able to hold onto a job more easily. Personally I can't show up drunk to work. Though I agree with things like gang violence, I do worry about the effects on public health. Cigarettes and alcohol mess up society a lot already

Nursie 9y ago
I'm not claiming it's going to be 100% solution, only that it would be much better, and cut out some of the profit motives at the gang level, and need for vast amounts of cash at the addict level. >> I also have a bit of a hard time imagining that someone having even easier access to, say, meth will thus be able to hold onto a job more easily. Personally I can't show up drunk to work Me neither. And I honestly don't know how this stuff might apply to a substance like meth. I know that studies tend to show that when opiate addicts are given easy and cheap/free access to maintenance doses and counselling, they have a much easier time returning to something like a normal life, and many can hold down jobs while either continuing the maintenance indefinitely or slowly tapering. The constant search for money and the insecurity about the next dose both make the effects of the addiction on their lives much, much worse. And it's not like heroin is all that expensive to make. This isn't, as I said above, necessarily an argument for a totally free market in heroin, but it is to show that a different approach may reduce the harm to the individual and reduce the harm done to society by both those individuals and the black market profit-making organisation above them. Not to mention the hell that gets rained on producer-countries. >> Cigarettes and alcohol mess up society a lot already Objectively, scientifically, these are two of the worst and most harmful drugs we know of.

by rtpg 9y ago

Nursie 9y ago

I'm not claiming it's going to be 100% solution, only that it would be much better, and cut out some of the profit motives at the gang level, and need for vast amounts of cash at the addict level. >> I also have a bit of a hard time imagining that someone having even easier access to, say, meth will thus be able to hold onto a job more easily. Personally I can't show up drunk to work Me neither. And I honestly don't know how this stuff might apply to a substance like meth. I know that studies tend to show that when opiate addicts are given easy and cheap/free access to maintenance doses and counselling, they have a much easier time returning to something like a normal life, and many can hold down jobs while either continuing the maintenance indefinitely or slowly tapering. The constant search for money and the insecurity about the next dose both make the effects of the addiction on their lives much, much worse. And it's not like heroin is all that expensive to make. This isn't, as I said above, necessarily an argument for a totally free market in heroin, but it is to show that a different approach may reduce the harm to the individual and reduce the harm done to society by both those individuals and the black market profit-making organisation above them. Not to mention the hell that gets rained on producer-countries. >> Cigarettes and alcohol mess up society a lot already Objectively, scientifically, these are two of the worst and most harmful drugs we know of.