4 ms·
The ability to potentially obtain a product of better quality, and to not have to deal with such shady people to get their dose.
by 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 agoSo 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 agoA 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 agothis 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 agoWell 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 agoPure 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 agoHeroine (~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 agoThis is incorrect. Opium does not contain any "Heroin" (Diacetylmorphine). The three major alkaloids contained I opium latex are Morphine, Codeine and Thebaine.
- 3131s 9y agoElimination 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 agoExcept 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 agoSo 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 agoOpium is highly addictive regardless of who you get it from.
- ni-hil 9y agoSure, that's not my point
- duxup 9y agoIt's still a problem though.
- jrs95 9y agoSo 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 agoMuch less lethal though, look at recent spike in US opioid deaths due to black market products of questionable content and quality.