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When someone has already sold all he could to buy drugs and is now resorting to theft to get a fix, it's a bit too late to intervene. Hard drugs have a very hig

When someone has already sold all he could to buy drugs and is now resorting to theft to get a fix, it's a bit too late to intervene. Hard drugs have a very high preponderance to cause detrimental behaviours, and convert a productive member of society to a welfare-consuming blob at best. Of course they should be banned.

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
This is looking at effects, not causes. Addiction is made worse by social and economic stresses. So is anti-social behaviour. If you want to fix addiction and personal violence, start by removing systemic political and economic violence and assembling a reliable social contract. Start modelling and dramatising pro-social behaviours in the media - which can be done in a gritty and relatable way, not a saccharine and patronising way. This won't end addiction, violence, and mental illness, but it will make these problems less prevalent and easier to target and manage.
- jojobas 3y ago
  Economic violence gets dumb kids hooked on meth. Warning: this is what Scientologists actually believe.
  - komali2 3y ago
    https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/poverty-homelessness-and-social-stigma-make-addiction-more-deadly-202109282602 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/poverty-homelessness-and... > But in another, critical sense, addiction does discriminate among people, in a way that is unjust and deadly, and in a way that shines a spotlight on tears in the socioeconomic web that is holding our society together. It has long been observed by clinicians that social determinants of health (SDoH) can tip the scales against people, in their already daunting quest to recover from any type of addiction. According to the World Health Organization, SDoH are defined as "the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age. These circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power, and resources at global, national, and local levels." https://stjosephinstitute.com/understanding-the-relationship-between-poverty-and-addiction/ https://stjosephinstitute.com/understanding-the-relationship... > Poverty Increases Addiction Risk Factors As they said, it's not a causal link, but it is correlative.
    - jojobas 3y ago
      The conditions of the poorest 10% have vastly improved over the last 100 years, both in relative and absolute terms, and keep improving. Wherever you draw the poverty line, both the percentage and quantity of people below the line keeps diminishing. Poor Americans of today have better healthcare than kings of 300 years ago. Somebody will inevitably be in the bottom 10% of any measure. Your reductionist approach to human agency and freedom of will is appalling.
      - komali2 3y ago
        > Your reductionist approach to human agency and freedom of will is appalling. I don't understand where this is coming from at all. I value human agency and freedom most of all. > Poor Americans of today have better healthcare than kings of 300 years ago. Yes, in the last 300 years we started using soap and also discovered penicillin, this has indeed caused enormous leaps forward in medical care. Did you mean medical access? That is still highly striated based on class, and our royalty class seems to be smaller but far more wealthy now (the difference in net worth between our top .1%, 1%, and 90% is astounding). > The conditions of the poorest 10% have vastly improved over the last 100 years, both in relative and absolute terms, and keep improving. People say this all of the time but outside of soap and penicillin I'm not exactly sure what people are talking about. The poor and starving seem to only exist in greater numbers than ever in history. Perhaps the conditions of the absolute poorest in American society are slightly better than the absolute poorest in American society 200 years ago, but at the cost of creating new poverty classes abroad in colonized places that previously had relatively low technological development but much higher happiness and quality of life than they do now.
haroldp 3y ago
Hard drugs can be extremely harmful. So you make them illegal. Now you have two problems. Most of the problems that you associate with drug abuse are exacerbated or wholly created by the prohibition rather than the addiction that it purports but entirely fails to fix. > resorting to theft to get a fix Does this pattern characterize alcohol addicts as well? Or do the vast majority of alcoholics generally just hold down jobs to buy booze? Heroin is only expensive because it is illegal. Poppies will grow pretty well in just about every state in America. It is the prohibition that forces heroin junkies to rob and steal and whore for money. It is the prohibition that creates the gangs and cartels and adds the violence. When was the last time you saw a street battle between the grocery store and the bodega over alcohol territory? 1933 is the answer. When was the last time someone died from a mis-dosed, tainted or adulterated cocktail? 1933.
- jojobas 3y ago
  It typically takes many years of irresponsible alcohol consumption to become so dependent on it as to not survive a normal working day without, and then typically liver cirrhosis will take care of you. Heroin is ludicrously more potent in that regard, in mere weeks you're either high or in withdrawal. The fact that alcohol was once also illegal doesn't make them somehow equally harmful on physiological or societal level.
  - haroldp 3y ago
    This is very silly. Highly dependent alcoholics are all around us every day, and very few of them are living on the streets. They will shorten their lives, on average, but cirrhosis isn't an assassin that comes in the night after 10 years of alcoholism. There are millions of old drunks in the world. Most of them buy their own booze with their own labor. And indeed, if you are rich enough or have enough clout to avoid police problems, you can be a heroin addict for decades. You can even stay productive. Take for instance, The Rolling Stones. I don't even feel the need to debate that the primary and secondary effects of legal alcohol addition are huge and expensive.
    - 3y ago

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago

This is looking at effects, not causes. Addiction is made worse by social and economic stresses. So is anti-social behaviour. If you want to fix addiction and personal violence, start by removing systemic political and economic violence and assembling a reliable social contract. Start modelling and dramatising pro-social behaviours in the media - which can be done in a gritty and relatable way, not a saccharine and patronising way. This won't end addiction, violence, and mental illness, but it will make these problems less prevalent and easier to target and manage.

jojobas 3y ago
Economic violence gets dumb kids hooked on meth. Warning: this is what Scientologists actually believe.
- komali2 3y ago
  https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/poverty-homelessness-and-social-stigma-make-addiction-more-deadly-202109282602 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/poverty-homelessness-and... > But in another, critical sense, addiction does discriminate among people, in a way that is unjust and deadly, and in a way that shines a spotlight on tears in the socioeconomic web that is holding our society together. It has long been observed by clinicians that social determinants of health (SDoH) can tip the scales against people, in their already daunting quest to recover from any type of addiction. According to the World Health Organization, SDoH are defined as "the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age. These circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power, and resources at global, national, and local levels." https://stjosephinstitute.com/understanding-the-relationship-between-poverty-and-addiction/ https://stjosephinstitute.com/understanding-the-relationship... > Poverty Increases Addiction Risk Factors As they said, it's not a causal link, but it is correlative.
  - jojobas 3y ago
    The conditions of the poorest 10% have vastly improved over the last 100 years, both in relative and absolute terms, and keep improving. Wherever you draw the poverty line, both the percentage and quantity of people below the line keeps diminishing. Poor Americans of today have better healthcare than kings of 300 years ago. Somebody will inevitably be in the bottom 10% of any measure. Your reductionist approach to human agency and freedom of will is appalling.
    - komali2 3y ago
      > Your reductionist approach to human agency and freedom of will is appalling. I don't understand where this is coming from at all. I value human agency and freedom most of all. > Poor Americans of today have better healthcare than kings of 300 years ago. Yes, in the last 300 years we started using soap and also discovered penicillin, this has indeed caused enormous leaps forward in medical care. Did you mean medical access? That is still highly striated based on class, and our royalty class seems to be smaller but far more wealthy now (the difference in net worth between our top .1%, 1%, and 90% is astounding). > The conditions of the poorest 10% have vastly improved over the last 100 years, both in relative and absolute terms, and keep improving. People say this all of the time but outside of soap and penicillin I'm not exactly sure what people are talking about. The poor and starving seem to only exist in greater numbers than ever in history. Perhaps the conditions of the absolute poorest in American society are slightly better than the absolute poorest in American society 200 years ago, but at the cost of creating new poverty classes abroad in colonized places that previously had relatively low technological development but much higher happiness and quality of life than they do now.

haroldp 3y ago

Hard drugs can be extremely harmful. So you make them illegal. Now you have two problems. Most of the problems that you associate with drug abuse are exacerbated or wholly created by the prohibition rather than the addiction that it purports but entirely fails to fix. > resorting to theft to get a fix Does this pattern characterize alcohol addicts as well? Or do the vast majority of alcoholics generally just hold down jobs to buy booze? Heroin is only expensive because it is illegal. Poppies will grow pretty well in just about every state in America. It is the prohibition that forces heroin junkies to rob and steal and whore for money. It is the prohibition that creates the gangs and cartels and adds the violence. When was the last time you saw a street battle between the grocery store and the bodega over alcohol territory? 1933 is the answer. When was the last time someone died from a mis-dosed, tainted or adulterated cocktail? 1933.

jojobas 3y ago
It typically takes many years of irresponsible alcohol consumption to become so dependent on it as to not survive a normal working day without, and then typically liver cirrhosis will take care of you. Heroin is ludicrously more potent in that regard, in mere weeks you're either high or in withdrawal. The fact that alcohol was once also illegal doesn't make them somehow equally harmful on physiological or societal level.
- haroldp 3y ago
  This is very silly. Highly dependent alcoholics are all around us every day, and very few of them are living on the streets. They will shorten their lives, on average, but cirrhosis isn't an assassin that comes in the night after 10 years of alcoholism. There are millions of old drunks in the world. Most of them buy their own booze with their own labor. And indeed, if you are rich enough or have enough clout to avoid police problems, you can be a heroin addict for decades. You can even stay productive. Take for instance, The Rolling Stones. I don't even feel the need to debate that the primary and secondary effects of legal alcohol addition are huge and expensive.
  - 3y ago