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I wouldn't be so quick to label Opium legalization as 'progressive'. The Chinese experience with Opium in the 1800's was terrible and very damaging to their soc

• ep103 9y ago
  yeah, legalizing opium is an odd choice. I don't understand it. Its addictive. It would make more sense to significantly decriminalize it, but keep it illegal, so that addicts can get treatment without fear of legal repercussion. I don't understand what would be gained by legalizing it wholesale though.
  • ni-hil 9y ago
    The ability to potentially obtain a product of better quality, and to not have to deal with such shady people to get their dose.
    • meri_dian 9y ago
      So let's make it easier for people to perpetuate their addiction? No, we should be making it much harder for them to do so.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • jrs95 9y ago
        A higher quality and more consistent product means there's a larger window of time for getting them treatment. If the quality situation ends up like it is in the U.S. now, you end up with a much more lethal product and a huge rate of overdose deaths.
        • Noos 9y ago
          this is assuming an overdose death is worse societally than having said user alive, unemployable, and addicted to opium or an opium substitute for the rest of their lives. I don't mean this morally...life is precious and should be saved. But I don't know how many societies could deal with a massive addict class that only exists to siphon benefits and energy.
          • jrs95 9y ago
            Well that's assuming that they'll just siphon benefits and energy. Most of the addicts I've known are high functioning and relatively productive -- they just spend a lot of money supporting their habit. I'd imagine this would be even easier post-legalization.
      • TylerE 9y ago
        Pure opium is fairly benign, as hard drugs go. It's all the crap it gets cut with by shady dealers that kill people.
        • libertyEQ 9y ago
          Heroine (~1%), morphine(~5-13%), and codeine(~5-13%) are the active constituents in opium, which is a plant material consisting of many other benign substances. These discussions need to include factoids like these in order to be productive.
          • CynicalDio 9y ago
            This is incorrect. Opium does not contain any "Heroin" (Diacetylmorphine). The three major alkaloids contained I opium latex are Morphine, Codeine and Thebaine.
      • 3131s 9y ago
        Elimination of black markets, harm reduction through consistent unadulterated substances, and lessening of the marginalization of addicts aside, it's none of your business what other people do with their bodies. Opium may be addictive, but given its low potential for overdose it is highly preferable for addicts to use opium as opposed to oxycodone, heroin, fentanyl, carfentanyl, etc.
      • leshow 9y ago
        Except we can't. If the last 50 years has shown us anything it's that we're utterly incapable of keeping drugs away from drug users. All we are doing is locking people with substance abuse problems up. We've proven over time that 'get people to stop doing drugs' isn't a viable end game. It's not going to happen. The best we can do is harm reduction, at least in this case we can stop people getting fentanyl, thinking it's oxycodone or heroin, and OD-ing.
      • md224 9y ago
        So do you disagree with the use of heroin-assisted treatment[1] or supervised injection sites[2]? Have you considered that many of the problems associated with addiction actually stem from the efforts of people like you to make it harder for users to get the drugs they need, problems like exorbitant prices and potentially lethal adulterants? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin-assisted_treatment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin-assisted_treatment [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervised_injection_site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervised_injection_site
    • duxup 9y ago
      Opium is highly addictive regardless of who you get it from.
      • ni-hil 9y ago
        Sure, that's not my point
        • duxup 9y ago
          It's still a problem though.
      • jrs95 9y ago
        So is heroin. But the fact that heroin is illegal in the U.S. is what has lead to so many overdose deaths. Nobody really ever knows what they're taking or how much fentanyl is in it.
      • rplnt 9y ago
        Much less lethal though, look at recent spike in US opioid deaths due to black market products of questionable content and quality.
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    > yeah, legalizing opium is an odd choice. I don't understand it. Its addictive So are caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine (in increasing order of how addictive.) > It would make more sense to significantly decriminalize it, but keep it illegal, so that addicts can get treatment without fear of legal repercussion Legalizing it does that, too; “significant decriminalization” without legalization is mostly an incoherent approach that serves no policy end particularly well. > I don't understand what would be gained by legalizing it wholesale though. Greater harm reduction than mere decriminalization because of oversight and accountability for quality; greater diversion of funds out of organized crime, rogue states, and terrorist organizations and into the legal domestic economy. Greater tax revenues. Decreased demand for US foreign intervention, covert and military, to cut off the illegal supply at the source when, as consistently happens domestic law enforcement fails to adequately combat the illegal trade.
  • usrusr 9y ago
    > legalizing opium is an odd choice Only if the bill wasn't "inspired" by some group that wants to sell opium. For such a group, trying to piggyback opium on the current wave of marihuana legalization would be a once in a lifetime opportunity. But it still would not make much sense because existing opiate sellers, both legal and illegal, seem to be on the winning side of existing regulation.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• bbatha 9y ago
  > The Chinese experience with Opium in the 1800's was terrible and very damaging to their society. To play devil's advocate, China had loads of Opium pumped in by the British to pay for their tea debts. The British countered any attempt to regulate it, so they could keep their markets open. Opium is a dangerous substance, but I'd be interested to see what a well regulated opium market looks like. Unrefined opium is in the same ballpark as alcohol for addicitiveness.
  • meri_dian 9y ago
    How does regulation decrease the addictiveness though? Every one of my friends who has become addicted to opiates got started with legal, regulated prescription drugs.
    • mgbmtl 9y ago
      Quality control can help (at least in making sure that the dosage and product is what it should be). Having more resources educating people and recommending alternatives, rather than further marginalizing people, also seems also to have better effects (c.f. Portugal).
    • libertyEQ 9y ago
      We have a serious problem when we conflate plant material with synthesized, concentrated compounds. People call their pills "medication" and the 4 plants I grow every summer in my backyard "drugs."
      • opportune 9y ago
        Yet those same plants contain psychoactive drugs just as those pills do. I am all for drug decriminalization/legalization but this is seriously a stupid argument. There's no logical consistency in treating a drug differently just because you can grow it.
        • sgrove 9y ago
          I think the argument is more around the potency of a thing (although plant strains can become very potent as well). Just like naturally fermented berries have a different effect compared to distilled spirits.
• chimeracoder 9y ago
  > The Chinese experience with Opium in the 1800's was terrible and very damaging to their society. Opium was explicitly used as a tool of war by the British in order to colonize China. You can't look at what happened in the 1800s in China with opium without looking at the entire context in which it happened, how it was spread throughout society, how it was promoted, how it was sold, and how it was weaponized. Legalizing opium in modern-day society (especially given the current patterns of use) is a very different proposition from what happened during the Opium Wars.
  • meri_dian 9y ago
    I argue that it is not. The destructiveness of opiates derives from their very nature, not the context surrounding their existence in a society.
    • addicted 9y ago
      A lot of good research on addiction, including opioids, shows that societal context absolutely matters. A good example is heroin use in servicemen after the Vietnam war. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/02/144431794/what-vietnam-taught-us-about-breaking-bad-habits https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/02/1444317...
      • meri_dian 9y ago
        It's interesting research, but taking the entire heroin addicted US population on an extended vacation to try to rid them of their addiction is impractical. They would need to return home eventually too. Where they would be much more likely to relapse. The findings of the Vietnam study tell us something interesting about the particulars of Vietnam and maybe war zones in general, but I doubt they hold much relevance to the general addict population.
    • chimeracoder 9y ago
      > I argue that it is not. The destructiveness of opiates derives from their very nature, not the context surrounding their existence in a society. As someone who has both studied pharmacology and worked in drug policy, I've seen this common misconception before. Opiates, as a class, are not inherently any more destructive than any other class of drugs. It's possible to synthesize very potent forms of opiates, but it's also trivial to synthesize or distill very potent forms of other drugs as well, including drugs which are either loosely regulated or completely unregulated. Opiates are, in certain ways, less addictive than alcohol. That's not an endorsement of opiate drug use, but it does mean that we can't say that "the destructiveness of opiates derives from their very nature" without saying that "the destructiveness of alcohol derives from its very nature", and questioning the implications of what that would mean.
• dave_sullivan 9y ago
  >It's time for us to realize that the global opiate crisis is occurring precisely because opiates are more available now than they ever have been. As some have pointed out, opioid addiction is very hard to kick. I blame doctors over-prescribing opioids throughout the 2000s for the opioid crisis. More people are dying now because of Fentanyl and lack of supply to pure product (partially because doctors have gone from over prescribing to not prescribing). People who have already become addicted will mostly stay addicted. > I love Western culture, but its prioritization of instant gratification can be myopic. Their prioritization of locking humans in cages for modifying their perceptual experience is worse. Honest drug education is very important. "Opiates are extremely addictive" is honest, but locking people up for making a seemingly destructive life choice like that is medieval. And if you're not going to lock up the users, you shouldn't lock up the sellers either because there needs to be a safe supply. Legalization, education, and acceptance are the answer.
• radicaldreamer 9y ago
  The Chinese smoked opium, which is a lot more addictive, than chewed it (as was traditional in the Indian subcontinent). This bill is seems to be because in some areas of India, it is already traditional to drink Bhang (ground marijuana leaves with milk and sugar) and chew poppy pods (by day laborers etc. for pain).