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This looks like a reasonable system. It is however a sad fact that a similar system has already failed for opiates. It’s a hard problem.
by occamrazor 6y ago
This looks like a reasonable system. It is however a sad fact that a similar system has already failed for opiates. It’s a hard problem.
- Broken_Hippo 6y agoNot really. Most folks that take opiates aren't addicts, and there is a thriving black market. A number of opiates simply aren't legal either. We do give some of them out as prescription, but it isn't like you can get opiates for a fun time once in a while and that is definitely missing. Part of having the sort of system they are talking about is having choice of drugs, some for recreational use. We can restrict the hardest to do safely (or that have a higher rate of addiction) and restrict frequency of others (we were already doing this with Sudafed in some states in the US a decade ago)- but you aren't getting addicted to opium after one night. You can take pills daily for a week or two without being addicted. Heck, we know that servicemen got addicted to heroin for years during the Vietnam war, only to come back home and go back to a normal life without addiction. Opiates in general would need a legal way to get high off of them for the rest of the system to work, and we just don't have that and we don't have readily available, science-and-medicine based help for those that do get addicted nor a safety net to ease people's suffering to try to make sure they don't wind up in a similar place.