6 ms·

Well, how many people will see this headline and rush off to a back alley to buy a shot of heroin from some junkie?

jboog 6y ago
That's not the problem though. The issues is "drug decriminalization" people treating addictions like it's not a real problem for many people. Many of these folks want it to get to a point where you can quite easily buy heroin and suffer no legal consequences. I'm not saying our drug laws are just or can't be reformed but the fact that heroin is illegal prevents a LOT of people from using it. How many people will then use, aided by these pronouncements that "Heroin isn't actually that addictive!" and ruin their lives? We already have an opioid epidemic in this country that has destroyed communities. There's a middle ground between our terrible war on drugs and the naive "make it all legal and experiment with heroin!"
- rflrob 6y ago
  > I'm not saying our drug laws are just or can't be reformed but the fact that heroin is illegal prevents a LOT of people from using it. How many people will then use, aided by these pronouncements that "Heroin isn't actually that addictive!" and ruin their lives? Do you know a lot of people who have expressed to you that they would use heroin recreationally if only it were legal? My gut is that the number isn’t large. My impression of the evidence from places that have tried decriminalization (eg Portugal) is that the number of people who use and then are able to get their lives back on the rails is higher than the extra people who use because it’s decriminalized.
  - jboog 6y ago
    You genuinely believe that there is no large group of people curious about trying a drug that supposedly offers the most euphoric feeling imaginable "better than sex" as many have claimed? What if people tell them it's not addictive? And now it's not illegal?
    - valuearb 6y ago
      Why would illegal stop them from trying heroin if someone thought it better than sex? What illegal does is make it far more likely to die from using heroin.
      - Natsu 6y ago
        > Why would illegal stop them from trying heroin if someone thought it better than sex? Lack of access (or not knowing how to access it) comes to mind, among many other reasons.
        valuearb 6y ago
        Illegal drugs increase addiction rates because drugs are often cut with different drugs. How many heroin addicts were created by lacing lesser drugs with more addictive ones?
    - Shared404 6y ago
      Tobacco is legal, and also illegal to tell people it's not addictive, at least in any sort of marketing sense. Also, my understanding of most drug legalization is that the intent is to legalize usage/possession, not distribution. This is done with the intent to make it easier/safer to gain treatment and decrease addiction.
  - bjourne 6y ago
    Decriminalized isn't the same thing as legalized. Legalized means that you will have multinational companies promoting heroin nonstop through massive advertising campaigns. That would completely change peoples' usage patterns. Like how many people would smoke if tobacco was legal? Answer: many.
    - webkike 6y ago
      That is not necessarily true. Alcohol and tobacco are legal and there are massive restrictions on how they are aloud to be advertised. The point being made here is that not many people would by more of it if they felt that purchasing it was not going to put them in legal trouble. For example, how many people do you know that do whippets?
- woeirua 6y ago
  The decriminalization folks recognize for the most part that addiction is real. The difference is that they want to use taxes on legal drug sales to fund rehab clinics and treatment programs. The people who want to maintain the status quo want to throw users in jail and forget about them. We already know for certain that throwing people in jail does not solve addiction. So why wouldn't we at least try the alternative?
- conradev 6y ago
  The central point of the article is actually not “let’s decriminalize drugs”. It is “drug addiction is not brain disease”, which seems like a reasonable argument to me. I don’t know if you read it, but it also talks about how many deaths are from bad education (not understanding drug interactions, i.e. between two depressants), and bad drugs (i.e. lacing heroin with fentanyl) with no easy way for users to test their drugs. It further goes on to discuss that addiction treatment in the US is terrible precisely because it focuses on the drugs as a pathology and does not consider the holistic person or helping the person solve their underlying problems. Progressive drug policy isn’t “legalize it all”, it is “prevent needless deaths and treat addiction properly”. It has been for some time. Here are garden variety articles I found about these policies being implemented in the wild: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/04/allow-festivalgoers-test-illegal-drugs-before-consuming-them-some-police-forces-start-liking-idea/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/04/allow-festiv... https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/statement-continued-efforts-increase-availability-all-forms-naloxone-help-reduce-opioid-overdose https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/statemen...
- 4eor0 6y ago
  Most advocates for decriminalization I’ve encountered have a platform of using taxes for counseling and addiction services. The middle ground you seek is already defined clearly. Are you sure your perspective here is as informed as it could be?
- jfoutz 6y ago
  > There's a middle ground between our terrible war on drugs and the naive "make it all legal and experiment with heroin!" I wholeheartedly agree. a couple google searches showed buying alcohol for a minor was a $1000 fine, but heroin possession for personal use is $20000 and a year in jail. I think there's room to scale back the penalties and still be a deterrent. I think there's room to scale up addiction recovery. Hell, keep the horrible penalties, but waive them if the accused, with counseling and whatever other support makes sense, can stay clean for a year. So much of the system is about papering over problems rather than fixing the root cause.
lostgame 6y ago
Dunno about you, but I have never bought drugs from a junkie, but, of course, through dealers, who - in my experience, more often than not - do not actually use many of the substances they sell.
- Grustaf 6y ago
  I haven’t actually bought or even used any illegal drugs at all, my point was just that I don’t think a lot of people will be inspired by an article like this to try heroin, unless they were already considering it. Most people that fall into heavy addiction are probably driven there more by chaotic circumstances than intellectual considerations.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    When I was in high school I toyed with the idea of trying heroin due to how it was described in health class. Never did, though.
    - lostgame 6y ago
      High school is way too early for that, IMHO.
TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
Several years ago, I read about the significant nootropic effects of nicotine and spent time on forums that downplayed the potential negative impacts. I ended up trying it and became addicted for years. Social contagion can have significant effects on social issues like this.
- stefan_ 6y ago
  By that logic, we need to ban cooking shows - the habit reinforcing qualities of food are well known and obesity is a leading cause of health issues. It looks like you got off easy since your "drug" of choice nicotine has entirely negligible negative effects on an organism of the size of a human - it's a neurotoxin that in the quantities we use it for recreationally can't even harm insects (much like caffeine!).
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    > It looks like you got off easy since your "drug" of choice nicotine has entirely negligible negative effects on an organism of the size of a human You are right. I ended up with easily maintained hypertension and the urge to smoke that probably will never go away.(While on it, I also had significantly worse anxiety, decreased sleep quality, and bubbly urine. I definitely don't recommend trying it) But the social dynamics between it and heroin are the same. If we normalize its use and downplay its risks, more people will use it. And the physical and social harms from heroin use are far worse than nicotine.
- xibalba 6y ago
  I've experimented with nicotine (in the form of gum) myself, but haven't really observed much in the way of benefits. Did you see benefits? What form(s) were you using? How did you end up quitting? (I was turned onto this after listening to an interview with Dr. Peter Attia [haven't yet made up my mind on whether he is a huckster])
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    I personally didn't experience benefits, just side effects. I started with vaping, then moved to smoking. To quit, I switched to vaping for a few weeks, then tapered the nicotine concentration to zero over the course of a month or two. Cigarettes have MAOIs which make it more addictive which is why I switched. I was irritable for weeks and still get the urge to smoke sometimes(it's been over 5 years since I quit). I don't recommend starting.
tmp-20210218 6y ago
I mean, genuinely, i'm thinking about it right now, however i had a serious heroin habit until recently.
mrtweetyhack 6y ago
How many people are flat-earthers, anti-vaccine? Somebody will take this article, make it viral by picking out one sentence. Bam! Heroine and meth become legal.
wellthisisgreat 6y ago
people who are familiar with less dangerous drugs may easily become more inclined to try heroin after reading this
reaperducer 6y ago
Well, how many people will see this headline and rush off to a back alley to buy a shot of heroin from some junkie? How many people are going to storm a national capitol because of what they see online? It all sounds farcical and easy to dismiss until you actually put some thought into it.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
There's a balance to be struck. You can't just lie to people and tell them that everything is deadly or they're gonna question everything else you've said. That's basically what DARE was. I know a chainsaw is dangerous. But listening to every Youtuber lecture me about how I have lock out tag out to change a lightbulb my own home and every Redditor jump at the opportunity to engage in a monologue about how I should wear safety classes when I use a screwdriver sure lends a lot of legitimacy to the people who say their dad never wore PPE and retired with all his limbs so it must be fine.

That's not the problem though. The issues is "drug decriminalization" people treating addictions like it's not a real problem for many people. Many of these folks want it to get to a point where you can quite easily buy heroin and suffer no legal consequences. I'm not saying our drug laws are just or can't be reformed but the fact that heroin is illegal prevents a LOT of people from using it. How many people will then use, aided by these pronouncements that "Heroin isn't actually that addictive!" and ruin their lives? We already have an opioid epidemic in this country that has destroyed communities. There's a middle ground between our terrible war on drugs and the naive "make it all legal and experiment with heroin!"

rflrob 6y ago
> I'm not saying our drug laws are just or can't be reformed but the fact that heroin is illegal prevents a LOT of people from using it. How many people will then use, aided by these pronouncements that "Heroin isn't actually that addictive!" and ruin their lives? Do you know a lot of people who have expressed to you that they would use heroin recreationally if only it were legal? My gut is that the number isn’t large. My impression of the evidence from places that have tried decriminalization (eg Portugal) is that the number of people who use and then are able to get their lives back on the rails is higher than the extra people who use because it’s decriminalized.
- jboog 6y ago
  You genuinely believe that there is no large group of people curious about trying a drug that supposedly offers the most euphoric feeling imaginable "better than sex" as many have claimed? What if people tell them it's not addictive? And now it's not illegal?
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Why would illegal stop them from trying heroin if someone thought it better than sex? What illegal does is make it far more likely to die from using heroin.
    - Natsu 6y ago
      > Why would illegal stop them from trying heroin if someone thought it better than sex? Lack of access (or not knowing how to access it) comes to mind, among many other reasons.
      - valuearb 6y ago
        Illegal drugs increase addiction rates because drugs are often cut with different drugs. How many heroin addicts were created by lacing lesser drugs with more addictive ones?
  - Shared404 6y ago
    Tobacco is legal, and also illegal to tell people it's not addictive, at least in any sort of marketing sense. Also, my understanding of most drug legalization is that the intent is to legalize usage/possession, not distribution. This is done with the intent to make it easier/safer to gain treatment and decrease addiction.
- bjourne 6y ago
  Decriminalized isn't the same thing as legalized. Legalized means that you will have multinational companies promoting heroin nonstop through massive advertising campaigns. That would completely change peoples' usage patterns. Like how many people would smoke if tobacco was legal? Answer: many.
  - webkike 6y ago
    That is not necessarily true. Alcohol and tobacco are legal and there are massive restrictions on how they are aloud to be advertised. The point being made here is that not many people would by more of it if they felt that purchasing it was not going to put them in legal trouble. For example, how many people do you know that do whippets?
woeirua 6y ago
The decriminalization folks recognize for the most part that addiction is real. The difference is that they want to use taxes on legal drug sales to fund rehab clinics and treatment programs. The people who want to maintain the status quo want to throw users in jail and forget about them. We already know for certain that throwing people in jail does not solve addiction. So why wouldn't we at least try the alternative?
conradev 6y ago
The central point of the article is actually not “let’s decriminalize drugs”. It is “drug addiction is not brain disease”, which seems like a reasonable argument to me. I don’t know if you read it, but it also talks about how many deaths are from bad education (not understanding drug interactions, i.e. between two depressants), and bad drugs (i.e. lacing heroin with fentanyl) with no easy way for users to test their drugs. It further goes on to discuss that addiction treatment in the US is terrible precisely because it focuses on the drugs as a pathology and does not consider the holistic person or helping the person solve their underlying problems. Progressive drug policy isn’t “legalize it all”, it is “prevent needless deaths and treat addiction properly”. It has been for some time. Here are garden variety articles I found about these policies being implemented in the wild: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/04/allow-festivalgoers-test-illegal-drugs-before-consuming-them-some-police-forces-start-liking-idea/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/04/allow-festiv... https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/statement-continued-efforts-increase-availability-all-forms-naloxone-help-reduce-opioid-overdose https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/statemen...
4eor0 6y ago
Most advocates for decriminalization I’ve encountered have a platform of using taxes for counseling and addiction services. The middle ground you seek is already defined clearly. Are you sure your perspective here is as informed as it could be?
jfoutz 6y ago
> There's a middle ground between our terrible war on drugs and the naive "make it all legal and experiment with heroin!" I wholeheartedly agree. a couple google searches showed buying alcohol for a minor was a $1000 fine, but heroin possession for personal use is $20000 and a year in jail. I think there's room to scale back the penalties and still be a deterrent. I think there's room to scale up addiction recovery. Hell, keep the horrible penalties, but waive them if the accused, with counseling and whatever other support makes sense, can stay clean for a year. So much of the system is about papering over problems rather than fixing the root cause.

lostgame 6y ago

Dunno about you, but I have never bought drugs from a junkie, but, of course, through dealers, who - in my experience, more often than not - do not actually use many of the substances they sell.

Grustaf 6y ago
I haven’t actually bought or even used any illegal drugs at all, my point was just that I don’t think a lot of people will be inspired by an article like this to try heroin, unless they were already considering it. Most people that fall into heavy addiction are probably driven there more by chaotic circumstances than intellectual considerations.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  When I was in high school I toyed with the idea of trying heroin due to how it was described in health class. Never did, though.
  - lostgame 6y ago
    High school is way too early for that, IMHO.

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago

Several years ago, I read about the significant nootropic effects of nicotine and spent time on forums that downplayed the potential negative impacts. I ended up trying it and became addicted for years. Social contagion can have significant effects on social issues like this.

stefan_ 6y ago
By that logic, we need to ban cooking shows - the habit reinforcing qualities of food are well known and obesity is a leading cause of health issues. It looks like you got off easy since your "drug" of choice nicotine has entirely negligible negative effects on an organism of the size of a human - it's a neurotoxin that in the quantities we use it for recreationally can't even harm insects (much like caffeine!).
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  > It looks like you got off easy since your "drug" of choice nicotine has entirely negligible negative effects on an organism of the size of a human You are right. I ended up with easily maintained hypertension and the urge to smoke that probably will never go away.(While on it, I also had significantly worse anxiety, decreased sleep quality, and bubbly urine. I definitely don't recommend trying it) But the social dynamics between it and heroin are the same. If we normalize its use and downplay its risks, more people will use it. And the physical and social harms from heroin use are far worse than nicotine.
xibalba 6y ago
I've experimented with nicotine (in the form of gum) myself, but haven't really observed much in the way of benefits. Did you see benefits? What form(s) were you using? How did you end up quitting? (I was turned onto this after listening to an interview with Dr. Peter Attia [haven't yet made up my mind on whether he is a huckster])
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  I personally didn't experience benefits, just side effects. I started with vaping, then moved to smoking. To quit, I switched to vaping for a few weeks, then tapered the nicotine concentration to zero over the course of a month or two. Cigarettes have MAOIs which make it more addictive which is why I switched. I was irritable for weeks and still get the urge to smoke sometimes(it's been over 5 years since I quit). I don't recommend starting.

tmp-20210218 6y ago

I mean, genuinely, i'm thinking about it right now, however i had a serious heroin habit until recently.

mrtweetyhack 6y ago

How many people are flat-earthers, anti-vaccine? Somebody will take this article, make it viral by picking out one sentence. Bam! Heroine and meth become legal.

wellthisisgreat 6y ago

people who are familiar with less dangerous drugs may easily become more inclined to try heroin after reading this

reaperducer 6y ago

Well, how many people will see this headline and rush off to a back alley to buy a shot of heroin from some junkie? How many people are going to storm a national capitol because of what they see online? It all sounds farcical and easy to dismiss until you actually put some thought into it.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

There's a balance to be struck. You can't just lie to people and tell them that everything is deadly or they're gonna question everything else you've said. That's basically what DARE was. I know a chainsaw is dangerous. But listening to every Youtuber lecture me about how I have lock out tag out to change a lightbulb my own home and every Redditor jump at the opportunity to engage in a monologue about how I should wear safety classes when I use a screwdriver sure lends a lot of legitimacy to the people who say their dad never wore PPE and retired with all his limbs so it must be fine.