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Or maybe you could move the other way: treat addiction as a disease and provide free, pharmaceutical grade product or methadone substitutes to all that request

by yholio 5y ago

Or maybe you could move the other way: treat addiction as a disease and provide free, pharmaceutical grade product or methadone substitutes to all that request it, if they suffer from addiction. It costs essentially nothing. This will not only kill the bulk of market and force dealers out in the open to find new, high risk recreational customers as opposed to cash cow addicts; but will also give a livable life to the addicts by preventing the financial and personal ruin brought by addiction to a substance that is made artificially scarce and expensive. Most of the problems with addiction stem from this scarcity, not addiction itself: addicts take up a criminal activities to finance their consumption, lose all property and social capital, the product has high variability in potency and adulterants and is very risky to consume, they have to deal with criminals on a daily basis to get it etc. https://time.com/6108812/drug-deaths-safe-supply-opioids/ https://time.com/6108812/drug-deaths-safe-supply-opioids/

d136o 5y ago
At the heart of the opioid epidemic was a company run by medical doctors, with a sales force targeting medical doctors, and a budget to not only buy themselves positive medical literature but also the government agencies that were supposed to watch out for the public, oh and also they had enough wealth to buy themselves immunity from criminal or financial liability. I am not sure that the solution is a pharmaceutical product… And I say this as someone who has been pro-science his whole life. It’s just that training people that a pill will solve their problems is a recipe for creating addicts?
- ryan_lane 5y ago
  Note that they say a free product. It shouldn't be produced by a company, but rather be produced at a loss by the government, so there's not incentives to keep people addicted, but rather to reduce addictions.

by yholio 5y ago

d136o 5y ago

At the heart of the opioid epidemic was a company run by medical doctors, with a sales force targeting medical doctors, and a budget to not only buy themselves positive medical literature but also the government agencies that were supposed to watch out for the public, oh and also they had enough wealth to buy themselves immunity from criminal or financial liability. I am not sure that the solution is a pharmaceutical product… And I say this as someone who has been pro-science his whole life. It’s just that training people that a pill will solve their problems is a recipe for creating addicts?

ryan_lane 5y ago
Note that they say a free product. It shouldn't be produced by a company, but rather be produced at a loss by the government, so there's not incentives to keep people addicted, but rather to reduce addictions.