6 ms·

Would providing free and clean heroin in safe, monitored sites be a solution? Starve the black market of clients, give people support and safety when they need

Would providing free and clean heroin in safe, monitored sites be a solution? Starve the black market of clients, give people support and safety when they need it, as well as the time required to get their life back together enough to take a leap.

codr7 5y ago
Decriminalizing use is the only sane solution; using and/or being addicted to a substance is not a crime, period.
- nostromo 5y ago
  I used to believe that — before I lived in a city that effectively decriminalized all drugs. The result has been a disaster. People on meth run around the streets at night causing chaos. Homeless people on heroin leave needles everywhere. People avoid transit and parks now because there is regularly someone losing his or her mind nearby. Long sentences aren’t the answer of course. But I do think that sending someone to a Nordic-style prison for a few weeks would be better for these folks than just letting them run free. By the way, free mental healthcare doesn’t actually work because many of these folks don’t want help and won’t seek it willingly. There needs to be a way to forcefully separate them from the addictive substance for a time, stabilize their drug crisis, and then help them find long term care.
  - jakeinspace 5y ago
    I understand that, although it's difficult to say whether that experiment is indicative of what a nationwide relaxation of drug laws would do. Cities which have decriminalized drugs (removed enforcement) are going to attract a disproportionate number of problematic or homeless addicts from other parts of the country. Cities with a more hospitable climate (in the sense of weather) already have this problem, so I imagine for San Francisco it's a double whammy.
    - iammisc 5y ago
      What utter nonsense. Portland has an incredibly inhospitable climate (I mean I live in a lovely house and I find it overbearing). And yet we have more than enough people willing to tough it out in the torrential downpours.
      - jakeinspace 5y ago
        This doesn't contradict what I said. I don't know much about Portland's homelessness problem, but I'd guess that being the largest city in the state, and having famously left-wing laws, might attract people on the margins to come. There are probably a lot of reasons.
      - fiestaman 5y ago
        Portland has moderate weather like the rest of the northwest. Have you tried living in New York during the winter?
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    I see the same in London, where everything is illegal. I think it's unrelated to whether drugs are a crime or not - homeless and drug users in general will find a way to get it. It's a sad reflection on the state of society and our cities. Personally, after a terrible experience in Paris, I decided I will avoid all big cities. I think we should do something about it and forcefully throw homeless and drug users out of cities, but it's not a very popular (or easily enforceable, for that matter) point of view.
    - s5300 5y ago
      > I think we should do something about it and forcefully throw homeless and drug users out of cities, but it's not a very popular (or easily enforceable, for that matter) point of view. Do you also think that we should forcefully push the Sacklers & all of their paid off politicians out of the nation for what they've done?
    - hpoe 5y ago
      If you don't mind me asking what incident let to you to taking to such a hardline stance? I don't necessarily disagree or agree I just would love to hear that kind of perspective?
      - chimpansteve 5y ago
        As someone else from the UK, at the start of the pandemic lockdown measures several cities tried to give every homeless person a bed. In every case, the majority ended up leaving the accommodation offered due to the rules around drugs, smoking, antisocial behaviour, whatever. I'm not sure I agree with the above poster about their solutions to the problem, but "solving" homelessness, or addiction, is a lot harder than making some broad brush laws about decriminilisation. My cousin is a heroin addict, 12 years running at this point. He's in Dundee, the smack capital of the UK and quite possibly western Europe. Methadone is the worst idea possible for him, because he swaps it with the cancer patients for diazepam and then makes himself a happy cocktail. He's from a genuinely loving, supportive family, but still breaks into their house to steal stuff to pawn for smack money. The only thing that would probably "help" him is full decriminalisation, but that would not help his victims, or his family, or the already overstressed health service in general, because the whole point of these measures is an expectation that addicts will suddenly "see the error of their ways", rather than thinking "wahay, free smack". And back to the original point, when you have people actively preferring the street to the fully serviced hotel rooms, then you've probably got a severe structural problem. At which point it's easy to understand the above point of view, especially if you have a home and a family in close proximity to the inevitable social disorder (and I've also lived in Portugal. It is far from the free drug liberal paradise that some imagine it as)
  - baby 5y ago
    What city?
  - yulaow 5y ago
    Of course you shouldn't only decriminalized, you must in parallel fund social services and clinics to help drug abusers. Else it's just useless
    - drran 5y ago
      > it's just useless Why? Cannabis market thrive is US. More and more people use cannabis every day, making profits for sellers. Some people will switch to hard drugs and die, of course, but car incidents are not stopping car sales.
      - yulaow 5y ago
        Cannabis is very very VERY different from heroin and coke in term of dependency creation. Abusers need a totally different level of support from the health system and social services
        drran 5y ago
        Yep. My classmates, which started to smoke cannabis in school, died because they switched to opiates.
  - s5300 5y ago
    I've never met somebody informed and for decriminalization that isn't aware that the first few years, perhaps even decades, especially when just in a small region and not an entire nation, are going to be a bit of a shitshow. Things take time to get better, and as others have mentioned, most places that have decriminalized haven't exactly bolstered all other services that need to be around once decriminalization happens. It's sort of like the amount of people who are pissed about how Chinese tourists act. Their nation has just recently entered a point in which they're able to be tourists. Americans have had decades to learn how to act and are often still shitty tourists. Things take time.
  - trevyn 5y ago
    So, to clarify, these people are not forcing you to do anything, but you want to force them to do something?
    - dazilcher 5y ago
      I, too, agree that we should leave unvaccinated people alone.
  - swearwolf 5y ago
    I feel the same way. I was so excited to see a decriminalization measure on the ballot. A year after it took effect, our drug problems are worse than ever. It turns out that for the Portugal model to work correctly, there needs to be carrot and stick, but Portland only opted to implement the carrot, and the quality of life here has gotten much, much worse in a very short amount of time.
  - notJim 5y ago
    > By the way, free mental healthcare doesn’t actually work because many of these folks don’t want help and won’t seek it willingly. There needs to be a way to forcefully separate them from the addictive substance for a time, stabilize their drug crisis, and then help them find long term care This is an inconsistent statement. In once sentence you say that free mental healthcare doesn't work, then in the next you posit that imprisoning them, then providing free mental healthcare is the answer. I think at the end of the day, people need to want to stop using drugs and have the help they need to do so. I don't think prison is the magic bullet for bringing about that change that you imagine it to be. > People on meth run around the streets at night causing chaos. Homeless people on heroin leave needles everywhere. People avoid transit and parks now because there is regularly someone losing his or her mind nearby. It's not realistic to expect only legalizing drugs to solve all your social problems. Why are there homeless people? Why are people having mental health crises on the street, and the only options are to ignore them, or put them in prison? I'm not sure what is meant by "causing chaos", but if they are committing non-drug crimes, why are they not being arrested?
    - kyleee 5y ago
      Not inconsistent; many will refuse treatment if simply asked, but with forced treatment / detox may come through the woods a bit and make a different decision. It's the same freedom vs. detention debate and we've swung towards full freedom option in the US since the shutdown of mental health prisons and we've offloaded the care for the most difficult cases to police, ER, health workers, and they live on the streets. It's high time the pendulum swung back a bit with some (hopefully humanely administered) compulsory treatment options which is was the other commenter may have been getting at
      - ghufran_syed 5y ago
        I work in the ER in a high drug use area - I estimate around 80% of patients who start outpatient "medication assisted treatment" in the ER (outpatient buprenorphine-naloxone to treat the withdrawal symptoms) are there because the judge in their criminal case tells them it's that or go to prison. Some people definitely can't make good decisions for themselves and need to be "forced" to get treatment - and are later often grateful for having been forced to do so if they stay clean.
  - derbOac 5y ago
    There's yet another model, which is to think of compulsory actions not in terms of crime, but in terms of competency to make decisions. So, you deregulate drugs, but for those who fall into addiction, you evaluate their competency to decide whether or not to take drugs, and if someone(s) decide they're not competent (a panel, psychiatrist, psychologist, whatever), you force them into treatment, take away their drugs, etc and so forth. If a drug dealer provides them with drugs, then they're breaking the law for a different reason. Part of the problem is this "one size fits all" with drugs, and with criminalizing use rather than treating it as a disease. Call it what it is: someone not being competent to make decisions about drug use, period.
  - codr7 5y ago
    Sounds like any city where it's still illegal to me, the change won't happen overnight and I don't doubt it could get even worse initially.
tyingq 5y ago
I imagine it would help with the fentanyl issue. I don't think that anyone would buy fentanyl if they had access to known real heroin that wasn't expensive.
- klyrs 5y ago
  I wish this was true. Fentanyl has demand, both all on its own, and cut into other substances for the extra kick. I'm reluctantly convinced that a free clinic should have it on the menu.
  - yholio 5y ago
    It's not a menu, it's a place where you go to get a clean, safe fix for your opioid addiction. You get what you get, the best opioid or analogue that the doctors decide to give you, possibly with a slow release mechanism that avoids the rush but allows you function throughout the day, hold a job, not stick the first AIDS-infected needle in your vein etc.
    - oaktrout 5y ago
      But how do we get people to choose the slow release over the rush? Buprenorphine and methadone are the slow release analogs you speak of, we already have those, and they are helpful for some. Still, there is a fraction of the addicted that are not interested in slow release. Anecdotally, a close friend of mine sold his buprenorphine so that he could afford to purchase heroin.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      Look, I'm sure you mean well, but it doesn't sound like you understand the behavior of drug users. So let's re-phrase that: I'm going to out-compete the liquor scene with free but watered-down beer. If you want to help people, you need to meet them where they're at. The moralizing "you get what you get" approach is only going to tide people over for when they can't afford to score the potent stuff.
      - 5y ago
SkittyDog 5y ago
Given what we have observed with alcohol, cannibis, and prescription drugs, I think it's safe I expect that decriminalization, legal suppliers, and free drugs would probably not reduce recreational use & abuse of opiates in America... If anything, I would expect usage to increase. Don't get me wrong: I am absolutely in favor of decriminalization, as well as other radical changes in our society's relationships with drugs, mental health, and addiction. But it would be catastrophically naive to suggest that legalized/decriminalized opiates are some kind of panacea. If heroin didn't exist, these people would probably plain old alcoholics. The damage caused by an alcoholic is pretty similar to the wake of a heroin addict... It's not identical, but the overlap in causes & effects of abuse is pretty similar between the two drugs. Ultimately, the problem is that some people reach young adulthood without having developed a robust set of emotional coping mechanisms for handling the stresses of their lives. These folks are a LOT more likely to fall into the larger patterns of self-destructive behavior that drive them back toward drugs, over and over again.
- gaganyaan 5y ago
  I think legalization is the only real solution, but you bring up a good point about alcohol. The best approach there is preventative, and do things like strictly ban all advertising of all drugs, before there's a strong lobby to prevent that from being enacted. We should really ban advertising of alcohol and prescription drugs too, but there's unfortunately vested interests that make that a hard task. I think the ideal system is some sort of government-run one that is not out to profit, and keep on suggesting that maybe you don't need any drugs, but will give you some if you insist and are willing to watch a safety video.
  - SkittyDog 5y ago
    There is a big problem with your first sentence, possibly semantic. You said: "I think legalization is the only real solution..." Legalization alone is NOT a solution, and it WILL result in increased rates of abuse, addiction, death, and human misery if other changes are not implemented concurrently with legalization. I understand why people want to focus on legalization of drugs. It's a simple idea, with precedent in th US and many other countries, and it doesn't require expanding goverment spending or power. But it's just too simplistic to be useful. We cannot limit the harms caused by addictive behavior with pure Libertarian self-interest, because addiction IS a self-interested response to larger problems that the addict lacks the capability to handle, emotionally. If we want to truly reduce the addiction, death, and suffering, we need to develop real, effective social services that help families and individuals on many, many levels. We need to plug the gaps in our children's emotional upbringings, which means permanently repairing the jagged indifference of our society that inflicts so much harm, in the first place. In short, we need to let go of our fear of collective social welfare programs, and start truly giving a shit about each other.
notJim 5y ago
I think it would be better if there was a little more of a barrier, like you had to get a prescription from a doctor or addiction counselor, but it was free. I think we should allow people already addicted to use clean/safe drugs in safe places, but we should be careful about lowering the barrier for those who are not already using.
abraxas 5y ago
It would help for sure. My cousin died not because of overdose but because he shared needles and contracted hepatitis which turned into hepatoma. If safe injection sites had been available he might still be alive.
- MisterMower 5y ago
  “My cousin died because he made a choice to try heroin, got hooked on it and made a choice to share needles, contracted hepatitis, which turned into hepatoma.” Fixed that for you. Truly sorry for your loss, but people make choices, and those choices have consequences. Can we hold these two things to be true at the same time: 1. No one is forcing people to take these drugs. The choice to start is theirs. They are ultimately responsible for their choice to become addicted. 2. We should view an addict’s behavior through the lens of addiction, not the lens of a rational person making destructive choices. Addicts won’t respond to incentives like a normal person will. We need to find ways to make it extraordinarily costly to start using drugs. This is how you prevent the crisis we’re in currently. That means prison time for users. Heroin and fentanyl pour across the border due to demand for it. New users dabble in it because the perceived cost is low. If people understand that possessing or using means automatic and significant jail time if caught, then people are much less likely to even dabble. Ultimately, people will still try it regardless, get hooked, and eventually get caught and sent to prison. And that’s a good thing. That means there are less users who are on a path to homelessness, overdose, and dependency on family, friends, and government programs. It also means less users out there to persuade others to start using. If we’re not going to run mental health hospitals with involuntary commitments, then prison time is what you’re left with. Prison terms for using are five times as long as it takes to get users clean. Once they get out, if they’re caught again, the sentence is ten times as long as it takes to get clean. Each consecutive offense ratchets upward. The result is twofold: users have ample opportunity to get clean and stay clean in prison, but most importantly, we create a society in which we simply do not tolerate drug use. It’s really that simple. We are going to have as much drug addiction and use as we’re willing to pay for. If you lower the cost of using, you get more usage. Free usage sites with free needles and less risk will, and already has, resulted in more usage. The fact that people won’t recognize this is mind boggling.
jimmytucson 5y ago
The problem with heroine is not that it isn’t “clean”. It’s that it consumes the person addicted to it, becomes the sole driver of every waking behavior, like food, only more important. It happens with prescription pain medication obtained legally as well, and with alcohol to a segment of the population with a particular disposition towards it. For a drug that ensnares every fourth person who uses it once, it’s hard to imagine making it more available solving the problem.

codr7 5y ago

Decriminalizing use is the only sane solution; using and/or being addicted to a substance is not a crime, period.

nostromo 5y ago
I used to believe that — before I lived in a city that effectively decriminalized all drugs. The result has been a disaster. People on meth run around the streets at night causing chaos. Homeless people on heroin leave needles everywhere. People avoid transit and parks now because there is regularly someone losing his or her mind nearby. Long sentences aren’t the answer of course. But I do think that sending someone to a Nordic-style prison for a few weeks would be better for these folks than just letting them run free. By the way, free mental healthcare doesn’t actually work because many of these folks don’t want help and won’t seek it willingly. There needs to be a way to forcefully separate them from the addictive substance for a time, stabilize their drug crisis, and then help them find long term care.
- jakeinspace 5y ago
  I understand that, although it's difficult to say whether that experiment is indicative of what a nationwide relaxation of drug laws would do. Cities which have decriminalized drugs (removed enforcement) are going to attract a disproportionate number of problematic or homeless addicts from other parts of the country. Cities with a more hospitable climate (in the sense of weather) already have this problem, so I imagine for San Francisco it's a double whammy.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    What utter nonsense. Portland has an incredibly inhospitable climate (I mean I live in a lovely house and I find it overbearing). And yet we have more than enough people willing to tough it out in the torrential downpours.
    - jakeinspace 5y ago
      This doesn't contradict what I said. I don't know much about Portland's homelessness problem, but I'd guess that being the largest city in the state, and having famously left-wing laws, might attract people on the margins to come. There are probably a lot of reasons.
    - fiestaman 5y ago
      Portland has moderate weather like the rest of the northwest. Have you tried living in New York during the winter?
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  I see the same in London, where everything is illegal. I think it's unrelated to whether drugs are a crime or not - homeless and drug users in general will find a way to get it. It's a sad reflection on the state of society and our cities. Personally, after a terrible experience in Paris, I decided I will avoid all big cities. I think we should do something about it and forcefully throw homeless and drug users out of cities, but it's not a very popular (or easily enforceable, for that matter) point of view.
  - s5300 5y ago
    > I think we should do something about it and forcefully throw homeless and drug users out of cities, but it's not a very popular (or easily enforceable, for that matter) point of view. Do you also think that we should forcefully push the Sacklers & all of their paid off politicians out of the nation for what they've done?
  - hpoe 5y ago
    If you don't mind me asking what incident let to you to taking to such a hardline stance? I don't necessarily disagree or agree I just would love to hear that kind of perspective?
    - chimpansteve 5y ago
      As someone else from the UK, at the start of the pandemic lockdown measures several cities tried to give every homeless person a bed. In every case, the majority ended up leaving the accommodation offered due to the rules around drugs, smoking, antisocial behaviour, whatever. I'm not sure I agree with the above poster about their solutions to the problem, but "solving" homelessness, or addiction, is a lot harder than making some broad brush laws about decriminilisation. My cousin is a heroin addict, 12 years running at this point. He's in Dundee, the smack capital of the UK and quite possibly western Europe. Methadone is the worst idea possible for him, because he swaps it with the cancer patients for diazepam and then makes himself a happy cocktail. He's from a genuinely loving, supportive family, but still breaks into their house to steal stuff to pawn for smack money. The only thing that would probably "help" him is full decriminalisation, but that would not help his victims, or his family, or the already overstressed health service in general, because the whole point of these measures is an expectation that addicts will suddenly "see the error of their ways", rather than thinking "wahay, free smack". And back to the original point, when you have people actively preferring the street to the fully serviced hotel rooms, then you've probably got a severe structural problem. At which point it's easy to understand the above point of view, especially if you have a home and a family in close proximity to the inevitable social disorder (and I've also lived in Portugal. It is far from the free drug liberal paradise that some imagine it as)
- baby 5y ago
  What city?
- yulaow 5y ago
  Of course you shouldn't only decriminalized, you must in parallel fund social services and clinics to help drug abusers. Else it's just useless
  - drran 5y ago
    > it's just useless Why? Cannabis market thrive is US. More and more people use cannabis every day, making profits for sellers. Some people will switch to hard drugs and die, of course, but car incidents are not stopping car sales.
    - yulaow 5y ago
      Cannabis is very very VERY different from heroin and coke in term of dependency creation. Abusers need a totally different level of support from the health system and social services
      - drran 5y ago
        Yep. My classmates, which started to smoke cannabis in school, died because they switched to opiates.
- s5300 5y ago
  I've never met somebody informed and for decriminalization that isn't aware that the first few years, perhaps even decades, especially when just in a small region and not an entire nation, are going to be a bit of a shitshow. Things take time to get better, and as others have mentioned, most places that have decriminalized haven't exactly bolstered all other services that need to be around once decriminalization happens. It's sort of like the amount of people who are pissed about how Chinese tourists act. Their nation has just recently entered a point in which they're able to be tourists. Americans have had decades to learn how to act and are often still shitty tourists. Things take time.
- trevyn 5y ago
  So, to clarify, these people are not forcing you to do anything, but you want to force them to do something?
  - dazilcher 5y ago
    I, too, agree that we should leave unvaccinated people alone.
- swearwolf 5y ago
  I feel the same way. I was so excited to see a decriminalization measure on the ballot. A year after it took effect, our drug problems are worse than ever. It turns out that for the Portugal model to work correctly, there needs to be carrot and stick, but Portland only opted to implement the carrot, and the quality of life here has gotten much, much worse in a very short amount of time.
- notJim 5y ago
  > By the way, free mental healthcare doesn’t actually work because many of these folks don’t want help and won’t seek it willingly. There needs to be a way to forcefully separate them from the addictive substance for a time, stabilize their drug crisis, and then help them find long term care This is an inconsistent statement. In once sentence you say that free mental healthcare doesn't work, then in the next you posit that imprisoning them, then providing free mental healthcare is the answer. I think at the end of the day, people need to want to stop using drugs and have the help they need to do so. I don't think prison is the magic bullet for bringing about that change that you imagine it to be. > People on meth run around the streets at night causing chaos. Homeless people on heroin leave needles everywhere. People avoid transit and parks now because there is regularly someone losing his or her mind nearby. It's not realistic to expect only legalizing drugs to solve all your social problems. Why are there homeless people? Why are people having mental health crises on the street, and the only options are to ignore them, or put them in prison? I'm not sure what is meant by "causing chaos", but if they are committing non-drug crimes, why are they not being arrested?
  - kyleee 5y ago
    Not inconsistent; many will refuse treatment if simply asked, but with forced treatment / detox may come through the woods a bit and make a different decision. It's the same freedom vs. detention debate and we've swung towards full freedom option in the US since the shutdown of mental health prisons and we've offloaded the care for the most difficult cases to police, ER, health workers, and they live on the streets. It's high time the pendulum swung back a bit with some (hopefully humanely administered) compulsory treatment options which is was the other commenter may have been getting at
    - ghufran_syed 5y ago
      I work in the ER in a high drug use area - I estimate around 80% of patients who start outpatient "medication assisted treatment" in the ER (outpatient buprenorphine-naloxone to treat the withdrawal symptoms) are there because the judge in their criminal case tells them it's that or go to prison. Some people definitely can't make good decisions for themselves and need to be "forced" to get treatment - and are later often grateful for having been forced to do so if they stay clean.
- derbOac 5y ago
  There's yet another model, which is to think of compulsory actions not in terms of crime, but in terms of competency to make decisions. So, you deregulate drugs, but for those who fall into addiction, you evaluate their competency to decide whether or not to take drugs, and if someone(s) decide they're not competent (a panel, psychiatrist, psychologist, whatever), you force them into treatment, take away their drugs, etc and so forth. If a drug dealer provides them with drugs, then they're breaking the law for a different reason. Part of the problem is this "one size fits all" with drugs, and with criminalizing use rather than treating it as a disease. Call it what it is: someone not being competent to make decisions about drug use, period.
- codr7 5y ago
  Sounds like any city where it's still illegal to me, the change won't happen overnight and I don't doubt it could get even worse initially.

tyingq 5y ago

I imagine it would help with the fentanyl issue. I don't think that anyone would buy fentanyl if they had access to known real heroin that wasn't expensive.

klyrs 5y ago
I wish this was true. Fentanyl has demand, both all on its own, and cut into other substances for the extra kick. I'm reluctantly convinced that a free clinic should have it on the menu.
- yholio 5y ago
  It's not a menu, it's a place where you go to get a clean, safe fix for your opioid addiction. You get what you get, the best opioid or analogue that the doctors decide to give you, possibly with a slow release mechanism that avoids the rush but allows you function throughout the day, hold a job, not stick the first AIDS-infected needle in your vein etc.
  - oaktrout 5y ago
    But how do we get people to choose the slow release over the rush? Buprenorphine and methadone are the slow release analogs you speak of, we already have those, and they are helpful for some. Still, there is a fraction of the addicted that are not interested in slow release. Anecdotally, a close friend of mine sold his buprenorphine so that he could afford to purchase heroin.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Look, I'm sure you mean well, but it doesn't sound like you understand the behavior of drug users. So let's re-phrase that: I'm going to out-compete the liquor scene with free but watered-down beer. If you want to help people, you need to meet them where they're at. The moralizing "you get what you get" approach is only going to tide people over for when they can't afford to score the potent stuff.
    - 5y ago

SkittyDog 5y ago

Given what we have observed with alcohol, cannibis, and prescription drugs, I think it's safe I expect that decriminalization, legal suppliers, and free drugs would probably not reduce recreational use & abuse of opiates in America... If anything, I would expect usage to increase. Don't get me wrong: I am absolutely in favor of decriminalization, as well as other radical changes in our society's relationships with drugs, mental health, and addiction. But it would be catastrophically naive to suggest that legalized/decriminalized opiates are some kind of panacea. If heroin didn't exist, these people would probably plain old alcoholics. The damage caused by an alcoholic is pretty similar to the wake of a heroin addict... It's not identical, but the overlap in causes & effects of abuse is pretty similar between the two drugs. Ultimately, the problem is that some people reach young adulthood without having developed a robust set of emotional coping mechanisms for handling the stresses of their lives. These folks are a LOT more likely to fall into the larger patterns of self-destructive behavior that drive them back toward drugs, over and over again.

gaganyaan 5y ago
I think legalization is the only real solution, but you bring up a good point about alcohol. The best approach there is preventative, and do things like strictly ban all advertising of all drugs, before there's a strong lobby to prevent that from being enacted. We should really ban advertising of alcohol and prescription drugs too, but there's unfortunately vested interests that make that a hard task. I think the ideal system is some sort of government-run one that is not out to profit, and keep on suggesting that maybe you don't need any drugs, but will give you some if you insist and are willing to watch a safety video.
- SkittyDog 5y ago
  There is a big problem with your first sentence, possibly semantic. You said: "I think legalization is the only real solution..." Legalization alone is NOT a solution, and it WILL result in increased rates of abuse, addiction, death, and human misery if other changes are not implemented concurrently with legalization. I understand why people want to focus on legalization of drugs. It's a simple idea, with precedent in th US and many other countries, and it doesn't require expanding goverment spending or power. But it's just too simplistic to be useful. We cannot limit the harms caused by addictive behavior with pure Libertarian self-interest, because addiction IS a self-interested response to larger problems that the addict lacks the capability to handle, emotionally. If we want to truly reduce the addiction, death, and suffering, we need to develop real, effective social services that help families and individuals on many, many levels. We need to plug the gaps in our children's emotional upbringings, which means permanently repairing the jagged indifference of our society that inflicts so much harm, in the first place. In short, we need to let go of our fear of collective social welfare programs, and start truly giving a shit about each other.

notJim 5y ago

I think it would be better if there was a little more of a barrier, like you had to get a prescription from a doctor or addiction counselor, but it was free. I think we should allow people already addicted to use clean/safe drugs in safe places, but we should be careful about lowering the barrier for those who are not already using.

abraxas 5y ago

It would help for sure. My cousin died not because of overdose but because he shared needles and contracted hepatitis which turned into hepatoma. If safe injection sites had been available he might still be alive.

MisterMower 5y ago
“My cousin died because he made a choice to try heroin, got hooked on it and made a choice to share needles, contracted hepatitis, which turned into hepatoma.” Fixed that for you. Truly sorry for your loss, but people make choices, and those choices have consequences. Can we hold these two things to be true at the same time: 1. No one is forcing people to take these drugs. The choice to start is theirs. They are ultimately responsible for their choice to become addicted. 2. We should view an addict’s behavior through the lens of addiction, not the lens of a rational person making destructive choices. Addicts won’t respond to incentives like a normal person will. We need to find ways to make it extraordinarily costly to start using drugs. This is how you prevent the crisis we’re in currently. That means prison time for users. Heroin and fentanyl pour across the border due to demand for it. New users dabble in it because the perceived cost is low. If people understand that possessing or using means automatic and significant jail time if caught, then people are much less likely to even dabble. Ultimately, people will still try it regardless, get hooked, and eventually get caught and sent to prison. And that’s a good thing. That means there are less users who are on a path to homelessness, overdose, and dependency on family, friends, and government programs. It also means less users out there to persuade others to start using. If we’re not going to run mental health hospitals with involuntary commitments, then prison time is what you’re left with. Prison terms for using are five times as long as it takes to get users clean. Once they get out, if they’re caught again, the sentence is ten times as long as it takes to get clean. Each consecutive offense ratchets upward. The result is twofold: users have ample opportunity to get clean and stay clean in prison, but most importantly, we create a society in which we simply do not tolerate drug use. It’s really that simple. We are going to have as much drug addiction and use as we’re willing to pay for. If you lower the cost of using, you get more usage. Free usage sites with free needles and less risk will, and already has, resulted in more usage. The fact that people won’t recognize this is mind boggling.

jimmytucson 5y ago

The problem with heroine is not that it isn’t “clean”. It’s that it consumes the person addicted to it, becomes the sole driver of every waking behavior, like food, only more important. It happens with prescription pain medication obtained legally as well, and with alcohol to a segment of the population with a particular disposition towards it. For a drug that ensnares every fourth person who uses it once, it’s hard to imagine making it more available solving the problem.