4 ms·

" I would say nearly all the harm comes from the fact it's not legal" Wow, you're not using your imagination well enough to recognize how ubiquitously widespre

by jariel 6y ago

" I would say nearly all the harm comes from the fact it's not legal" Wow, you're not using your imagination well enough to recognize how ubiquitously widespread opioid addiction would be were it integrated into our coffee, soft-drinks, an aperatif with dinner etc.. It would be a massive, ongoing public health crisis. Combined with the fact that the effect quickly erodes, that users want ever more aggressive substitutes like Fentanyl, it almost guarantees the inevitable OD. Blaming the 'harm' on systems literally trying to stop the promulgation of what arguably is actually poison ... is a leap in logic. Tobacco is similarly additive, but it obviously has a completely different set of health effects. Finally - if Tobacco is really in the same category of addictivity, then ironically, you've made an argument that we really should shut down the opioid industry hard, because while quitting smoking is difficult, it's not existentially hard and the resulting withdrawal does not require medical attention or anything on the scale of 'Trainspotting withdrawal'. An acquaintance in Prison indicated they call the heroin addicts zombies, because they bang on the doors and yell 3 times a day as they receive their poison, which is slowly killing them. I'd argue that incarcerating people and slowly killing them is a strange punishment for those wanting to 'reduce harm' whereupon the logical thing for their health would be to make sure they had absolutely no access and an opportunity to dry out. I hope that in 50 year we look back on 'free heroin' like lobotomies or shock therapy. Humans have some control of our faculties and must overcome impulses of all kind - facilitating the total degradation of that control system by administering poison is definitely a form of torture. I'd rather be waterboarded.

that_guy_iain 6y ago
> Wow, you're not using your imagination well enough to recognize how ubiquitously widespread opioid addiction would be were it integrated into our coffee, soft-drinks, an aperatif with dinner etc.. It would be a massive, ongoing public health crisis. That would never happen. People literally wouldn't buy the products enmass because they don't want to sit around drooping all day. > Finally - if Tobacco is really in the same category of addictivity, then ironically, you've made an argument that we really should shut down the opioid industry hard, because while quitting smoking is difficult, it's not existentially hard and the resulting withdrawal does not require medical attention or anything on the scale of 'Trainspotting withdrawal'. Everyone seems to be thinking about how bad the withdrawal is and not how long the addiction lasts. The addiction to heroin and many other substances is over in days and weeks. Tobacco as any former smoker who has successful quit will tell you, you have cravings for months, not constant but enough that it's a thing for quite a while. > An acquaintance in Prison indicated they call the heroin addicts zombies, because they bang on the doors and yell 3 times a day as they receive their poison, which is slowly killing them. I'd argue that incarcerating people and slowly killing them is a strange punishment for those wanting to 'reduce harm' whereupon the logical thing for their health would be to make sure they had absolutely no access and an opportunity to dry out. I hope that in 50 year we look back on 'free heroin' like lobotomies or shock therapy. You should look into how Portugal has dealt with the drug problem. The free heroin isn't the issue, it's the lack of other support systems to get them off the heroin. Prison is not a place for support.
- jariel 6y ago
  "wouldn't buy the products the products enmass because they don't want to sit around drooping all day." Yes they would (!) and we already know why: it's extremely addictive. We have ample evidence from the ongoing Opioid Crisis that people who get 'too many pills' from an operation can and do become very addicted and 'do it all day'. Have a look here [1] from the Economist. What does that look like? It looks like 'COVID explosion' doesn't it? And consider that we already have restrictions in place for Heroin, what would that 'R0/R1' (aka transmissible social disease) look like without restrictions? It would look like COVID 'without social distancing' aka disaster. This is happening to Soccer Moms and Patent Lawyers. And you must be aware that this isn't about 'being high' it's 'addiction servicing' whereby they need the fix to maintain a degree of normalcy. 'Opioids at the Gas Station Checkout' would devolve any society into 'World War Z' within a few months. Only a small fraction of the population affected would overwhelm the medical system. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/07/america-has-yet-to-turn-a-corner-on-its-opioid-crisis https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/07/america-...
  - that_guy_iain 6y ago
    > We have ample evidence from the ongoing Opioid Crisis that people who get 'too many pills' from an operation can and do become very addicted and 'do it all day'. That's kind of different. So that's people who start taking them for medical reasons and become addicted during the course of taking them for medical reasons. This wasn't they decided to start taking them for fun. This also seems to be mainly an issue in the US as other countries doctors don't hand out these pills that often due to nature of them. To understand what heroin usage is like you can watch a few seconds of this video that I have at the correct time https://youtu.be/17TbF6n4jI0?t=459 https://youtu.be/17TbF6n4jI0?t=459. While it's Valium and not heroin trust me that is how heroin addicts act while on heoroin too. Heroin has been legal repeatedly throughout time. It never brought the world down before.
  - pksebben 6y ago
    The thing that caused the opioid crisis was doctors and Purdue pharma. Some folks are bad at handling addictive substances, and they were prescribed these things.

by jariel 6y ago

that_guy_iain 6y ago

> Wow, you're not using your imagination well enough to recognize how ubiquitously widespread opioid addiction would be were it integrated into our coffee, soft-drinks, an aperatif with dinner etc.. It would be a massive, ongoing public health crisis. That would never happen. People literally wouldn't buy the products enmass because they don't want to sit around drooping all day. > Finally - if Tobacco is really in the same category of addictivity, then ironically, you've made an argument that we really should shut down the opioid industry hard, because while quitting smoking is difficult, it's not existentially hard and the resulting withdrawal does not require medical attention or anything on the scale of 'Trainspotting withdrawal'. Everyone seems to be thinking about how bad the withdrawal is and not how long the addiction lasts. The addiction to heroin and many other substances is over in days and weeks. Tobacco as any former smoker who has successful quit will tell you, you have cravings for months, not constant but enough that it's a thing for quite a while. > An acquaintance in Prison indicated they call the heroin addicts zombies, because they bang on the doors and yell 3 times a day as they receive their poison, which is slowly killing them. I'd argue that incarcerating people and slowly killing them is a strange punishment for those wanting to 'reduce harm' whereupon the logical thing for their health would be to make sure they had absolutely no access and an opportunity to dry out. I hope that in 50 year we look back on 'free heroin' like lobotomies or shock therapy. You should look into how Portugal has dealt with the drug problem. The free heroin isn't the issue, it's the lack of other support systems to get them off the heroin. Prison is not a place for support.

jariel 6y ago
"wouldn't buy the products the products enmass because they don't want to sit around drooping all day." Yes they would (!) and we already know why: it's extremely addictive. We have ample evidence from the ongoing Opioid Crisis that people who get 'too many pills' from an operation can and do become very addicted and 'do it all day'. Have a look here [1] from the Economist. What does that look like? It looks like 'COVID explosion' doesn't it? And consider that we already have restrictions in place for Heroin, what would that 'R0/R1' (aka transmissible social disease) look like without restrictions? It would look like COVID 'without social distancing' aka disaster. This is happening to Soccer Moms and Patent Lawyers. And you must be aware that this isn't about 'being high' it's 'addiction servicing' whereby they need the fix to maintain a degree of normalcy. 'Opioids at the Gas Station Checkout' would devolve any society into 'World War Z' within a few months. Only a small fraction of the population affected would overwhelm the medical system. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/07/america-has-yet-to-turn-a-corner-on-its-opioid-crisis https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/07/america-...
- that_guy_iain 6y ago
  > We have ample evidence from the ongoing Opioid Crisis that people who get 'too many pills' from an operation can and do become very addicted and 'do it all day'. That's kind of different. So that's people who start taking them for medical reasons and become addicted during the course of taking them for medical reasons. This wasn't they decided to start taking them for fun. This also seems to be mainly an issue in the US as other countries doctors don't hand out these pills that often due to nature of them. To understand what heroin usage is like you can watch a few seconds of this video that I have at the correct time https://youtu.be/17TbF6n4jI0?t=459 https://youtu.be/17TbF6n4jI0?t=459. While it's Valium and not heroin trust me that is how heroin addicts act while on heoroin too. Heroin has been legal repeatedly throughout time. It never brought the world down before.
- pksebben 6y ago
  The thing that caused the opioid crisis was doctors and Purdue pharma. Some folks are bad at handling addictive substances, and they were prescribed these things.