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Drug legalization is probably the best bet if preventing deaths is one of the priorities of "policy makers." In my state, I can walk into an actual shop with a

• dymk 4y ago
  Do you think all drugs should be available to anybody without a doctor gating access? Surely there should be some regulation to accessing something like fentanyl or heroin, both of which will probably kill the user at some point. Weed, on the other hand, kills fewer people than alcohol ever has. I think that's an argument in favor of regulating access to alcohol, not against regulating access to drugs in general, based on relative risk of harm.
  • kodyo 4y ago
    Yes, all drugs should be available to everybody. I don't trust the medical establishment to do this right, I don't trust regulators, and people have a right to die if they choose to. I understand my opinion is outside of the mainstream.
    • kalkr 4y ago
      This entire issue stems from the lack of regulation in underground drug distribution.
      • thatguy0900 4y ago
        I assume he means he doesn't trust doctors to proscribed things? Can't imagine he means he doesn't trust pharmacies to sell good quality heroin or something like that
        • kodyo 4y ago
          I don't believe doctors should be the gatekeepers to determine how high you should get.
          • dymk 4y ago
            I'd agree with this, if we required people to sign a document that said "You now waive your right to any state care you'd otherwise be entitled to receive, because you're about to become a heroin addict". With the exception of (mandatory) rehab as a state provided service, of course.
            • kodyo 4y ago
              The dumbest aspect of state run healthcare is that people like you think you get to vote on what kind of health care other people "need."
      • kodyo 4y ago
        More accurately, the current paradigm drives the drug trade into the hands of degenerate street criminals.
    • astrange 4y ago
      If you don't trust regulators how do you even know you're getting the drugs you paid for?
      • kodyo 4y ago
        As opposed to right now, when I'd have to buy it from a street dealer? Think through the question before you ask it.
        • dymk 4y ago
          Why do you have to go buy heroin at all?
          • kodyo 4y ago
            Ask a heroin user. They clearly want to, and right now they have to deal with some unsavory characters and products.
    • prirun 4y ago
      I agree with you and think that all recreational drugs, including the hard ones, should be distributed through liquor stores. Pharmacies are already overloaded and don't do age verification, which liquor stores already handle. If you're 18 or over, buy anything you want. If pharmaceutical companies were making drugs instead of criminals, there would be consistency of product and tax revenue instead of addicts ingesting crazy chemicals made by criminals. But I doubt it will ever happen because the US prison system, including police, are too invested in the drug war. It makes way too much money for them to let go of it.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • tantalor 4y ago
    Drug overdose are caused by drugs tainted with something the user did not expect. Legalization would prevent that because you can buy the drug in a pharmacy instead of from some guy.
    • nobleach 4y ago
      This is assuming the user is only taking the correct amount. Even completely clean/pure drugs, when taken in too high of a quantity, (the definition of "over dose") can be lethal. So it's not simply about tainting.
      • wyre 4y ago
        Afaik overdosing on pure heroin is rare and generally only happens when the user relapses and goes back to the same dose before they quit, instead of starting with a smaller dose.
  • nivenkos 4y ago
    In Norway and Sweden you can only buy alcohol from the government monopoly, and they have a national ID system so they can monitor consumption (I don't think either of them still do this since the days of ration cards though). So you could do something like that - it's available but consumption is monitored. The main benefit would be taking all the money away from gangs.
  • schnitzelstoat 4y ago
    My understanding was that people use Fentanyl due to the expense and difficulty in obtaining other drugs due to their illegal nature. If they could easily obtain legal heroin of known purity and concentration then it would presumably lead to less deaths as they would be less likely to overdose and less likely to use more dangerous chemicals such as Fentanyl as a substitute.
    • rs999gti 4y ago
      > obtain legal heroin From what I have read, addicts don't want the hard stuff like heroin and fentanyl, they are pushed into it. They initially had debilitating pain and were put on prescription opioids, but either for legal or medical reasons the script ran out, and since the pain management was not addressed, the addicts turned to hard drugs to manage their pain. I think if there easier to obtain, legal opioids, then we would not see heroin or fentanyl abuse. Will there be addicts and abusers? Sure, but that situation has to be less worse than the current opioid crisis.
  • shubb 4y ago
    Here in the UK, a lot of things that are available without prescription in the US or are easily prescribed are very hard to get. I buy melatonin and buproprion from dodgy websites. In the US I could just go the pharmacy or my doctor respectively. Here we see that there is some level of harm from any drug restriction which must be balanced against the benefit. In the US you can buy lidocaine cream over the counter. My wife is experiencing some post pregnancy problems involving really extreme pain that could be mitigated effectively with lidocaine. Because we need an authorisation issued to a specific pharmacy and we can't get another doctors appointment after the first pharmacy was out of stock, I watch her curled up crying again, I wonder how huge this benefit has to be to be worth it.
    • theGnuMe 4y ago
      I thought bupropion in the UK was available via a private doctor? NHS won’t issue it but a private doctor could?
      • shubb 4y ago
        It's not licenced for depression in the UK only smoking cessation, so the doctor is criminaly culpable if you suicides while taking it for instance. However if you pay enough money in sure you can get anything prescribed. More pragmatically there are websites where you fill out a form saying you are quiting smoking a doctor at the website signs it off based on the form. However, these are hacks for a bad system right? The harm is, there are a lot of brits suffering poor sleep when they could just pop a melatonin for 20 cents in the US. Gating it behind a £200 medical appointment creates the harm.
    • Fatnino 4y ago
      In the US lidocaine patches without a prescription are like 4% while prescription lidocaine patches are 5% Those numbers might not be exact as it's been a couple years since I dealt with this, but it was definitely a tiny difference.
      • moistly 4y ago
  • tomjen3 4y ago
    Heroin is not really that bad when it is pure: arguably less terrible than alcohol. Getting it pure from a legal point of sale would ruin the drug market and would remove any interest in growing the market. This would effectively end the drug system.
• newsclues 4y ago
  Legalization requires social support systems exist and function. I am all for legalization of drugs, but without also massive investments in housing, mental health, and addiction recovery, it won't accomplish the goals. We also need a functioning police and judicial system. If drugs are legal, and people are antisocial homeless people who support their addiction with crime, those people need jail, rehab, and help getting back on track. What we want to avoid is productive citizens having their lives ruined for a joint or a bit of coke on the weekend. The legal future of drugs is being able to occasionally buy very expensive but pure cocaine at a club, not enabling addicts to happily get high in tents at the expense of society at large.
  • rs999gti 4y ago
    > not enabling addicts to happily get high in tents at the expense of society at large. A truly free society should allow people to throw their lives away, practice harmful habits, etc. Otherwise, is your life yours or the state's?
    • DougN7 4y ago
      That’s an interesting question. If you didn’t have parents, spouses, children, etc who would be crushed by your own destruction I’d agree. But being part of a family, and even part of a friend structure, neighborhood, society necessitates not being completely selfish. So your life never really is 100% your own in my opinion.
  • tomjen3 4y ago
    >If drugs are legal, and people are antisocial homeless people who support their addiction with crime They wouldn't need to do that if it was sold at free market prices. Even better, i they were anti-social to the point of causing trouble we could lock them up for a couple weeks now that we didn't need so many prisons to hold non-violent drug offenders.
  • kodyo 4y ago
    >I am all for legalization of drugs, but without also massive investments in housing, mental health, and addiction recovery, it won't accomplish the goals. We also need a functioning police and judicial system. You would probably argue that you'd need those things when drugs are illegal, too, so I'm not sure what your disagreement is.
• theGnuMe 4y ago
  But you can buy as many unregulated adulterated supplements as you want!
• midoridensha 4y ago
  Here in Japan, drugs (including MJ) are not legalized at all, and drug laws are in fact extremely strict, as some American tourists have found out the hard way even when they had tiny amounts of MJ accidentally left in their luggage. Yet virtually no one dies from drug overdoses here, and drug-related crime really doesn't exist in any significant amount. Of course, the society has other similar problems, namely alcohol and cigarettes. Smoking is really on the decline though, since it's mostly been banned or restricted indoors recently, and alcohol consumption among young people is down too for various reasons (cost is probably a big one). But drinking to excess (and then passing out in the street even) is still a big problem.