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IMO this will not work. Serious drugs are absolutely a public health issue, and some public health issues have to be solved through civil and criminal laws. D

IMO this will not work. Serious drugs are absolutely a public health issue, and some public health issues have to be solved through civil and criminal laws. Drugs have to be approved by the FDA to be allowed to be sold, and the ultimate enforcement for this is civil and criminal law. If we regulated fentanyl and meth like alcohol, we would have an absolutely enormous population of addicts, and even in a legal, regulated market, those addicts would resort to crime to pay for drugs. Perhaps there is a better solution, but the best solution I know if is simply to much more aggressively enforce drug laws. Dealers of serious drugs should be facing major jail time, and even personal possession should be punished with significant jail time.

mplewis9z 3y ago
Ah yes, the “trust me, this time the war on drugs will totally work” response.
- thegrim33 3y ago
  How do you explain all of the first world asian countries where drugs are insanely illegal, there very much have a massive war on drugs, and yet they have an amazing quality of life there without meth head zombies roaming the streets? Where it's apparent their war on drugs has very much worked?
  - jjav 3y ago
    > Where it's apparent their war on drugs has very much worked? I'd bet (but hopefully someone can link to research) that there are many contributing factors for why vast hordes of people don't feel the need to numb themselves to death with drugs in those locations? Very few people voluntarily want to become addicts if they are having a happy fulfilling life. So why are there so many people in the US who see no other road to take?
    - cameldrv 3y ago
      There are plenty of people in these countries that have very difficult lives that might be prone to drug addiction if drugs were available, but they're not, so they aren't.
      - jjav 3y ago
        > if drugs were available, but they're not That's wishful thinking, it can't be done. No human society has ever been able to supress something for which there is a huge amount of inelastic demand. It can't be done. It's raw capitalism at its finest (maybe not finest, but most raw). If there is a huge demand, the supply will happen no matter what. It's simplistic to think of the drug trade in terms of the good guys who are pure and looking to stop it and the bad guys trying to create and sell it. When there are billions of dollars involved, these groups infiltrate each other constantly and are quite intertwined. You can find endless stories of how trafficking is done by the police themselves. No better way to avoid detection than by being there. One random recent example. https://abcnews.go.com/US/bay-area-police-union-leader-allegedly-smuggled-fentanyl/story?id=98271260 https://abcnews.go.com/US/bay-area-police-union-leader-alleg... If you want to stop drug trade, the one and only way is to eliminate (or at least reduce to inconsequential levels) the demand for it.
cj 3y ago
How about we de-stigmatize its use so that an addict is able to tell their family members and friends rather than being silent about their addiction? My best friend (and angel investor / VC) died of fentanyl in SF in 2018. At first I thought it was suicide because I had no idea he was on drugs. What ended up happening is he was prescribed legal opioids for legitimate reasons (he had brain cancer including surgeries), and then never got un-addicted to them when the refills ended, so he resorted to street drugs to avoid going into withdrawal. (and then "oops, fentanyl...") And he couldn't tell anyone or share that he was going through this with anyone because he was extremely high functioning VC / angel investor. At a minimum, we need to create a society where "an addict" doesn't immediately conjure an image of a homeless person with no teeth. Or come up with some new "branding" for it (for lack of better terminology). We need to normalize the concept of addiction so it can be discussed more openly and broadly.
- cameldrv 3y ago
  Your friend's death is a tragedy. Preventing as many deaths like this as possible is what I hope for the future. Suppose your friend were in a country like Singapore, where drug punishments are extremely harsh. When his prescription ran out, he would have been faced with the choice to either kick opioids or engage in serious criminal activity. Finding a dealer would be very hard, because dealers are executed if caught. Even if he found a dealer, he would know that, if caught, he would be facing jail time. There's a very good chance that someone in your friend's position would decide to go through the extremely difficult process of kicking. In SF, even for someone who is trying to kick, it is so easy in a moment of weakness to just to go down to the Tenderloin and buy fentanyl, like your friend did. Buying fentanyl there is pretty easy, not too expensive, everyone knows where to go, and there is zero chance of being arrested. The only problem is that you might get more than you bargained for and overdose and die. I also have a friend who got addicted to stimulants and was going insane from them. I tried hard but ultimately wasn't able to help him. I talked to a lot of people who deal with addiction professionally, and what I kept hearing was that in this situation someone has to hit rock bottom before they can start to recover. In the end, he was arrested for forging prescriptions and had to spend some time in jail, where he didn't have access to drugs. He would say that this was the first step towards his recovery and the best thing that ever happened to him. He got clean and went on to get a master's degree, get married, and now has a good job and a couple of kids. Rock bottom in San Francisco though isn't a jail cell, it's overdosing on the sidewalk and dying.

mplewis9z 3y ago

Ah yes, the “trust me, this time the war on drugs will totally work” response.

thegrim33 3y ago
How do you explain all of the first world asian countries where drugs are insanely illegal, there very much have a massive war on drugs, and yet they have an amazing quality of life there without meth head zombies roaming the streets? Where it's apparent their war on drugs has very much worked?
- jjav 3y ago
  > Where it's apparent their war on drugs has very much worked? I'd bet (but hopefully someone can link to research) that there are many contributing factors for why vast hordes of people don't feel the need to numb themselves to death with drugs in those locations? Very few people voluntarily want to become addicts if they are having a happy fulfilling life. So why are there so many people in the US who see no other road to take?
  - cameldrv 3y ago
    There are plenty of people in these countries that have very difficult lives that might be prone to drug addiction if drugs were available, but they're not, so they aren't.
    - jjav 3y ago
      > if drugs were available, but they're not That's wishful thinking, it can't be done. No human society has ever been able to supress something for which there is a huge amount of inelastic demand. It can't be done. It's raw capitalism at its finest (maybe not finest, but most raw). If there is a huge demand, the supply will happen no matter what. It's simplistic to think of the drug trade in terms of the good guys who are pure and looking to stop it and the bad guys trying to create and sell it. When there are billions of dollars involved, these groups infiltrate each other constantly and are quite intertwined. You can find endless stories of how trafficking is done by the police themselves. No better way to avoid detection than by being there. One random recent example. https://abcnews.go.com/US/bay-area-police-union-leader-allegedly-smuggled-fentanyl/story?id=98271260 https://abcnews.go.com/US/bay-area-police-union-leader-alleg... If you want to stop drug trade, the one and only way is to eliminate (or at least reduce to inconsequential levels) the demand for it.

cj 3y ago

How about we de-stigmatize its use so that an addict is able to tell their family members and friends rather than being silent about their addiction? My best friend (and angel investor / VC) died of fentanyl in SF in 2018. At first I thought it was suicide because I had no idea he was on drugs. What ended up happening is he was prescribed legal opioids for legitimate reasons (he had brain cancer including surgeries), and then never got un-addicted to them when the refills ended, so he resorted to street drugs to avoid going into withdrawal. (and then "oops, fentanyl...") And he couldn't tell anyone or share that he was going through this with anyone because he was extremely high functioning VC / angel investor. At a minimum, we need to create a society where "an addict" doesn't immediately conjure an image of a homeless person with no teeth. Or come up with some new "branding" for it (for lack of better terminology). We need to normalize the concept of addiction so it can be discussed more openly and broadly.

cameldrv 3y ago
Your friend's death is a tragedy. Preventing as many deaths like this as possible is what I hope for the future. Suppose your friend were in a country like Singapore, where drug punishments are extremely harsh. When his prescription ran out, he would have been faced with the choice to either kick opioids or engage in serious criminal activity. Finding a dealer would be very hard, because dealers are executed if caught. Even if he found a dealer, he would know that, if caught, he would be facing jail time. There's a very good chance that someone in your friend's position would decide to go through the extremely difficult process of kicking. In SF, even for someone who is trying to kick, it is so easy in a moment of weakness to just to go down to the Tenderloin and buy fentanyl, like your friend did. Buying fentanyl there is pretty easy, not too expensive, everyone knows where to go, and there is zero chance of being arrested. The only problem is that you might get more than you bargained for and overdose and die. I also have a friend who got addicted to stimulants and was going insane from them. I tried hard but ultimately wasn't able to help him. I talked to a lot of people who deal with addiction professionally, and what I kept hearing was that in this situation someone has to hit rock bottom before they can start to recover. In the end, he was arrested for forging prescriptions and had to spend some time in jail, where he didn't have access to drugs. He would say that this was the first step towards his recovery and the best thing that ever happened to him. He got clean and went on to get a master's degree, get married, and now has a good job and a couple of kids. Rock bottom in San Francisco though isn't a jail cell, it's overdosing on the sidewalk and dying.