4 ms·

Destigmatizing Drug Use Has Been a Profound Mistake

49 points by loughnane 3y ago

kubanczyk 3y ago
http://archive.today/1Bdf4 http://archive.today/1Bdf4
- gedy 3y ago
  Is there an alternative to archive for these type of links that doesn't have an issue with cloudflare users?
  - kubanczyk 3y ago
    https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fideas%2Farchive%2F2023%2F12%2Fdestigmatizing-drug-use-mistake-opioid-crisis%2F676292%2F https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%... ...but the url is quite a mouthful. My intuition is not to put stress on our mothership (also known as archive.org), am I right in this?
throwboatyface 3y ago
This is just an op-ed complaining about your average culture wars stuff. "Taboos exist for a reason" is such a thought-terminating cliche, and it seems like it should be anathema to free thinking startup folks.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  > Taboos exist for a reason Except the article gives plenty of reasons why these taboos exist, and details some of the real harms associated with the lack of these taboos. On the contrary, your comment seems to be the one to want to hand wave away the concerns expressed in the article.
- blackhaz 3y ago
  That "do it with friends" billboard is such a dumb move at the very least. Harm reductionists... Jesus.
  - cthalupa 3y ago
    If you are going to use opioids it is unquestionably safer to do it with other people while at least some of them are sober-ish. You can't narcan yourself in a solo overdose situation.
    - blackhaz 3y ago
      And I agree with that. What I don't agree with is that this knowledge should be disseminated in the way it is done on that billboard, with a bunch of people shown having great fun. That is promoting drug use. That sends the wrong message to the kids. You'll have the whole generation growing up thinking any drugs are OK and just part of having fun together. This is horrible.
      - cthalupa 3y ago
        At the same time the text makes it fairly clear that it is dangerous to use. There's a reason it talks about having narcan and people checking on you, or doing it as a group - my takeaway from the billboard on the whole is that opioids are a scary thing to do with very real risk. It doesn't make me more likely to do fentanyl, but less. I wouldn't have used that picture myself, but I also am not convinced it by itself is going to lead people to believe that doing fentanyl is a fun activity.
- FredPret 3y ago
  But they do exist for a reason. We evolved many extremely useful taboos, and this is one of them. The value of culture is 1) the material prosperity it creates, 2) the emotional fulfilment it generates, and 3) how well it self-propagates. Hard drugs destroy the first two, and by killing the user and innocent bystanders early, it interferes with the third. Much of America’s falling life expectancy can be blamed on drugs.
- ReptileMan 3y ago
  And yet it seems that there aren't many places where decriminalization, destigmatization and lack of efforts to limit supply have brought paradise on earth. Weed and tobacco takes years to fuck you properly, people seem to be able to drop and get clean from coke, alcohol, laughing gas and heroin. But fentanyl seems to be way more of a one way street.
- aa-jv 3y ago
  >cliche >taboo >anathema Yes, these all describe the same phenomena. Your anathema/taboo/cliché, is mine too. Probably.
- jsbisviewtiful 3y ago
  The Atlantic has really fallen off and dove straight into the conservative culture wars in the last 2-3 years. It's really too bad as I used to really enjoy their publication for its thoughtful and culturally rich posts. I recently unfollowed them on instagram after the 127th clearly culture war fanning article lowered my brain cell count just from reading the headline.
taylodl 3y ago
Destigmatize? The point was to decriminalize. Those are not the same thing. If we were destigmatizing drug use then we'd be encouraging its use, which we are not. Even with legalized marijuana we're not encouraging people to consume it. We just don't see how it's humane to increase the profits of our private corrections system by criminalizing a health issue.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >Destigmatize? The point was to decriminalize. Those are not the same thing Given the extent to which many people stigmatize criminality in and of itself, they're not entirely separate things.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  But the whole point of the article is many advocates and policy makers are going beyond decriminalization to destigmatization. "Do it with friends" sure sounds like destigmatization to me.
  - stormcode 3y ago
    It sure does. That was an uncomfortable read. Lots of implications in that statement. Many of them ungood.
  - cthalupa 3y ago
    It is a safety issue. The billboard's whole point is you warning that if you do this stuff solo you are more likely to die. Which is unquestionably true - you are not going to be in a position to use narcan to stop the overdose if you're by yourself. If you have 5 people who are going to use opioids, you want them to be together when they do it and you want narcan or similar available to them, if you do truly care about saving lives.
- blackhaz 3y ago
  That billboard and "harm reductionists" is destigmatizing, not decriminalizing. I also think the possession of some subset of drugs should remain a criminal offense. Decriminalizing heroin and fentanyl doesn't sound like a good idea at all.
empath-nirvana 3y ago
I think drug use is a spectrum from caffeine and alcohol and pot on one side, and meth and cocaine and heroin on the other side, and in the middle there are a whole lot of drugs that are potentially dangerous or problematic if misused, but could offer benefits if used responsibly. I don't think we necessarily need a strong social stigma against pot or drinking (within reason), but we probably need one against using meth and opiates recreationally -- and I think there _is_ one that has never gone away. People even today keep that kind of drug use on the down low if they aren't deep into drug culture or an out of control addict. A random coworker might talk to you about some new strain of pot they found, but they definitely aren't going to talk to you about heroin they shot up last weekend that they bought on a street corner.
oneplane 3y ago
Article seems a bit hollow, it first assigns all sorts of values that do not appear to be consistent with the (sparse) references, and then it points out how the problem isn't with the drug policy concepts but with the drugs themselves. Well duh. Stigma on its own has never brought anything positive, any progression or any 'fixes' for problems. All it does is introduce friction in discourse, and that is never the solution. It's just so people can not only ignore problems or pretend they don't exist, but try to make it society-wide means everyone else isn't allowed to talk about it either. Perhaps if the author didn't try the cover-up route but instead went the "talk about it, but don't use or encourage it" way, there would have been a point to it all. But just trying to deaden public awareness, that's the worst of all options. Not involving yourself is a choice, but trying to make everyone else also not get involved, that's just human failure.
rightlane 3y ago
I used to be a libertarian on drug use. Fentanyl changed my mind. It isn't a letting people have autonomy over their bodies problem anymore. The issue now is that the drugs are so deadly, getting involved in any illegal drug is like playing Russian roulette. I don't have any answers but a hard line on dealers involved with fentanyl seems like the minimum we as a society need to do.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >The issue now is that the drugs are so deadly, getting involved in any illegal drug is like playing Russian roulette. But wouldn't that issue largely go away if there were regulated legal avenues for obtaining drugs?
  - tivert 3y ago
    >> The issue now is that the drugs are so deadly, getting involved in any illegal drug is like playing Russian roulette. > But wouldn't that issue largely go away if there were regulated legal avenues for obtaining drugs? No. If a drug is too powerful to be used responsibly, legal access won't make that issue go way.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Legally procured heroin presumably wouldn't be laced with undisclosed quantities of more potent drugs.
    - cthalupa 3y ago
      There are people who function normally in life while using opioids. Both prescription pills, and street drugs. Obviously, long term impact from opioid use is bad, but we allow people to do all sorts of things to themselves that kill them over the long run. One of the biggest we market to kids from a young age - sugar. The biggest acute risks from drug use are largely overdose related. Having ready access to narcan solves some of it. But issues with actual potency being incredibly unreliable are another huge risk factor that kills a lot of people, and regulated and tested drugs solves that. Legalization makes huge headway on the acute overdose related risks. It doesn't solve all of the issues, but neither has criminalization and prosecution. I am skeptical of societal taboos doing it either, because I have seen people in my life fall into opioid addiction, and all of them were ashamed about it. I have spoken to people on the street about it, and they're ashamed to be living in tents with any money they come into going straight into more drugs. It's anecdotal, obviously, but it has been so universal that I find it incredibly unlikely that piling more shame on top of people who are already deeply ashamed of their current state in life is going to force any significant number to suddenly clean up their act.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
And yet, not as bad as criminalizing it. It turns out that when you threaten people with prison for drugs, sometimes they shoot at cops. And sometimes, when shooting at cops, they accidentally hit bystanders. And when you tell heroin users they can't scrub toilets for minimum wage, despite your inability to detect that they use heroin without a piss test, they steal copper wiring out of empty houses and otherwise generally make a nuisance of themselves. And the people who make these drugs, make the absolute worst possible version of them, like, does anyone believe that if the typical drugs (heroin, cocaine, meth, pot, lsd) were legal that you'd have jackasses huffing gasoline and paint and whatnot?
- empath-nirvana 3y ago
  In a lot of ways "decriminalizing" drug use is worse than fully legalizing it or arguably worse than keeping drug use illegal, because the people _selling_ it are still technically criminals, and decriminalizing basically just increases demand and sends more money flowing into criminal organizations. They'd be better off just fully legalizing it and regulating it.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    I've upvoted you. I completely agree. Decrim is worse than either, and for the reasons you say. Please keep in mind that legalization alone doesn't fix everything, we must also ban piss tests for all occupations where it isn't critical.
- FredPret 3y ago
  The nuisance drug users become is due to the fact that they are high and operating on damaged hardware. No matter how pure, hard drug abuse is in itself the problem.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    I don't disagree that drug use isn't a problem. But when the junkie buys his heroin at the liquor store, he's not sending billions of dollars out of the country for cartels so they can buy weapons to murder people with. Drug use isn't *the* problem, it's just *a* problem, and a tiny one compared to prohibition. When there's a crackhouse in your neighborhood, that's because no one can buy this at the liquor store.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
FredPret 3y ago
I used to think all drugs should be 100% legalized. This was back in 2018. I first heard about it from late night comedy hosts who, at the time, took ten seconds out of their day to stop going on about Trump to talk about this. Boy was I wrong.
DeathArrow 3y ago
Destigmatizing can work. Drug addicts might disappear more quickly and once dealers have no market, they will disappear, too.
glonq 3y ago
Vancouver resident here, so I found it interesting that the article called out BC as an example of failed/ineffective policy. And I can't exactly disagree with that sentiment -- politicians have spent decades promising then failing to solve the problem. Our city currently boasts of having a 'four pillars' drug strategy https://vancouver.ca/people-programs/four-pillars-drug-strategy.aspx https://vancouver.ca/people-programs/four-pillars-drug-strat... ...but then really only built maybe two and a half of those pillars. We built a wobbly chair and then wonder why people keep falling off of it.
- Whoppertime 3y ago
  It just seems like the policy incentives in Vancouver are designed to erode the middle class. Allowing open air drug use and homelessness which creates a permanent underclass. More than half of VPD files in shoplifting crackdown did not result in charges, so petty theft and vandalism reduce the profitability of middle class business owners. And neither the poor nor middle class can afford to buy property in the city, making it a city that appeals to the very rich and desperately poor and squeezes the life out of anyone in between
1970-01-01 3y ago
Another long-winded piece from the Atlantic? These should be off HN. It fits the off-topic guidelines.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I thought this was a good article, and together with the article about Portland last week, highlights a change a lot of those "on the left" (myself included) are coming to: there are significant negative side effects to decriminalization that are worse than many expected. Personally, as someone who was strongly in favor of decriminalization, my mind changed a bit a couple years ago when I went through the pedestrian mall in downtown Denver. I have nothing against weed use, but walking down there was like "zombieland": tons of people walking around completely stoned out of their minds. This doesn't mean I'm for "recriminalization", but public use was never legalized (at least in CO), but those rules are now all but completely ignored.
- enterprise_cog 3y ago
  How could you possibly know they were stoned?
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Is this a serious question? Smoking a joint was just one of the clues...
cthalupa 3y ago
The article outright acknowledges that outcomes are not better in areas where criminal enforcement is the primary factor vs. harm reduction. So, at most, it's not been any more of a mistake than a primarily enforcement focused efforts, and the proposed solution seems to be... everyone should just make drug users feel ashamed? I think shame is a useful and necessary human emotion, but the opioid addicts I've met over my life are already plenty ashamed of the fact they're using.
mgarfias 3y ago
I just can’t understand the people I see in downtown Portland getting blasted out of their gourds on a public sidewalk. My sense of self preservation is just too high to alter my state of consciousness in an unsafe environment
Ekaros 3y ago
Stigmatization has been proven to work with tobacco. I don't see any reason why branding those that use meth, heroin or ethanol as absolute losers and stupid uncool people wouldn't work either.
- ReptileMan 3y ago
  Well ethanol in the right doses actually makes you cool - introverts do need couple of beers to get in touch with their social daredevil. Also alcohol is tasty.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    And that is exactly the sort of picture that we should as society to aim to destroy. It might take a generation or two. But I believe with hard work we could get there.
    - cthalupa 3y ago
      Why do you have this particular crusade against alcohol? If you're wanting to curb ingestion of things that cause harm to the human body, sugar is a far bigger killer in the western world than booze.
      - Ekaros 3y ago
        Because I hate hypocrisy. Either ban nothing or ban it all. Not this stupid in between. Either prohibition works perfectly and we can also ban ethanol, or it does not work at all and we should just go ahead and legalize everything and treat everything equally.
        cthalupa 3y ago
        I am of the opinion that legalization is one of the steps needed to really solve the drug problem. I think it's not the only one because it only truly solves certain parts of the issue, on the harm reduction front. Just having public health facilities available for users doesn't do anything either if they're not going to them. Extended, proactive, pervasive engagement with those users in a way that helps them climb out of the hole they've ended up in is also key.
wanderingbit 3y ago
I went in to this article hoping for some evidence on why harm reduction isn't always the right choice. Instead it is tone-deaf (as if fentanyl users and heroin users are in the same category as those who choose to use alcohol or pot!) and filled with correlation-implies-causation assertions. If anyone has some credible evidence for where harm reduction doesn't work, please reply!
- canada613 3y ago
  [flagged]
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
The billboard with an image that they complain about, which features a group of young people and perhaps could be considered glamorous if presented without context, is next to giant words spelling out the fact that if you do the drug alone you will probably die. And that this risk is so great that they give out free training so that people who do the drug can be potentially saved from death. That all seems fairly fact based and scary to me, as someone who has no experience with fentanyl, and whose desire to try it is in no way enhanced by this giant warning of death.
cowboyscott 3y ago
If I'm reading this correctly, the author is at least partially aiming at public health campaigns designed to prevent deaths, on the margin, stemming from the US opioid crisis. Only in the second to last paragraph does the author make passing reference to synthetic opioids being pushed excessively by drug companies. Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family are not mentioned. The Sacklers are currently before the Supreme Court, negotiating a deal that will shield them from further civil action by paying a $6 billion dollar fine (leaving them a few billion ahead)[1]. While I don't think we can extract justice from punishing one responsible entity, articles like these give cover to people, companies, and systems that created this crisis. 1: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-sackler-family-bankruptcy/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-sac...
zingababba 3y ago
Take away the safety nets, bring back personal responsibility
johnea 3y ago
People should use Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, like the little baby jesus intended...
baerrie 3y ago
Shame does not make you do less drugs. This is a terrible take on the drug crisis. People turn to drugs because it is the only thing that gives them a tiny bit of relief in their hellish state. The less shameful tactics have already been tried or rendered ineffective by the severity of the users pain. But sure try the less shameful drugs of alcohol, weed, prescribed drugs, unhealthy food, thrill seeking behavior, and let us know if it solves the core suffering. It usually does not and the presence or absence of shame has nothing to do with it
- Whoppertime 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt%E2%80%93shame%E2%80%93fear_spectrum_of_cultures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt%E2%80%93shame%E2%80%93fe... Shame reduces drug use in China and Japan
  - Lockal 3y ago
    There is no mention in Wikipedia how exactly shame reduces (or not reduces) drug use. Additionally, China and Japan have capital punishment for drug traders. So I wouldn't be so definitive about what is the cause and what is the effect.

49 points by loughnane 3y ago

kubanczyk 3y ago

http://archive.today/1Bdf4 http://archive.today/1Bdf4

gedy 3y ago
Is there an alternative to archive for these type of links that doesn't have an issue with cloudflare users?
- kubanczyk 3y ago
  https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fideas%2Farchive%2F2023%2F12%2Fdestigmatizing-drug-use-mistake-opioid-crisis%2F676292%2F https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%... ...but the url is quite a mouthful. My intuition is not to put stress on our mothership (also known as archive.org), am I right in this?

throwboatyface 3y ago

This is just an op-ed complaining about your average culture wars stuff. "Taboos exist for a reason" is such a thought-terminating cliche, and it seems like it should be anathema to free thinking startup folks.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> Taboos exist for a reason Except the article gives plenty of reasons why these taboos exist, and details some of the real harms associated with the lack of these taboos. On the contrary, your comment seems to be the one to want to hand wave away the concerns expressed in the article.
blackhaz 3y ago
That "do it with friends" billboard is such a dumb move at the very least. Harm reductionists... Jesus.
- cthalupa 3y ago
  If you are going to use opioids it is unquestionably safer to do it with other people while at least some of them are sober-ish. You can't narcan yourself in a solo overdose situation.
  - blackhaz 3y ago
    And I agree with that. What I don't agree with is that this knowledge should be disseminated in the way it is done on that billboard, with a bunch of people shown having great fun. That is promoting drug use. That sends the wrong message to the kids. You'll have the whole generation growing up thinking any drugs are OK and just part of having fun together. This is horrible.
    - cthalupa 3y ago
      At the same time the text makes it fairly clear that it is dangerous to use. There's a reason it talks about having narcan and people checking on you, or doing it as a group - my takeaway from the billboard on the whole is that opioids are a scary thing to do with very real risk. It doesn't make me more likely to do fentanyl, but less. I wouldn't have used that picture myself, but I also am not convinced it by itself is going to lead people to believe that doing fentanyl is a fun activity.
FredPret 3y ago
But they do exist for a reason. We evolved many extremely useful taboos, and this is one of them. The value of culture is 1) the material prosperity it creates, 2) the emotional fulfilment it generates, and 3) how well it self-propagates. Hard drugs destroy the first two, and by killing the user and innocent bystanders early, it interferes with the third. Much of America’s falling life expectancy can be blamed on drugs.
ReptileMan 3y ago
And yet it seems that there aren't many places where decriminalization, destigmatization and lack of efforts to limit supply have brought paradise on earth. Weed and tobacco takes years to fuck you properly, people seem to be able to drop and get clean from coke, alcohol, laughing gas and heroin. But fentanyl seems to be way more of a one way street.
aa-jv 3y ago
>cliche >taboo >anathema Yes, these all describe the same phenomena. Your anathema/taboo/cliché, is mine too. Probably.
jsbisviewtiful 3y ago
The Atlantic has really fallen off and dove straight into the conservative culture wars in the last 2-3 years. It's really too bad as I used to really enjoy their publication for its thoughtful and culturally rich posts. I recently unfollowed them on instagram after the 127th clearly culture war fanning article lowered my brain cell count just from reading the headline.

taylodl 3y ago

Destigmatize? The point was to decriminalize. Those are not the same thing. If we were destigmatizing drug use then we'd be encouraging its use, which we are not. Even with legalized marijuana we're not encouraging people to consume it. We just don't see how it's humane to increase the profits of our private corrections system by criminalizing a health issue.

thfuran 3y ago
>Destigmatize? The point was to decriminalize. Those are not the same thing Given the extent to which many people stigmatize criminality in and of itself, they're not entirely separate things.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
But the whole point of the article is many advocates and policy makers are going beyond decriminalization to destigmatization. "Do it with friends" sure sounds like destigmatization to me.
- stormcode 3y ago
  It sure does. That was an uncomfortable read. Lots of implications in that statement. Many of them ungood.
- cthalupa 3y ago
  It is a safety issue. The billboard's whole point is you warning that if you do this stuff solo you are more likely to die. Which is unquestionably true - you are not going to be in a position to use narcan to stop the overdose if you're by yourself. If you have 5 people who are going to use opioids, you want them to be together when they do it and you want narcan or similar available to them, if you do truly care about saving lives.
blackhaz 3y ago
That billboard and "harm reductionists" is destigmatizing, not decriminalizing. I also think the possession of some subset of drugs should remain a criminal offense. Decriminalizing heroin and fentanyl doesn't sound like a good idea at all.

empath-nirvana 3y ago

I think drug use is a spectrum from caffeine and alcohol and pot on one side, and meth and cocaine and heroin on the other side, and in the middle there are a whole lot of drugs that are potentially dangerous or problematic if misused, but could offer benefits if used responsibly. I don't think we necessarily need a strong social stigma against pot or drinking (within reason), but we probably need one against using meth and opiates recreationally -- and I think there _is_ one that has never gone away. People even today keep that kind of drug use on the down low if they aren't deep into drug culture or an out of control addict. A random coworker might talk to you about some new strain of pot they found, but they definitely aren't going to talk to you about heroin they shot up last weekend that they bought on a street corner.

oneplane 3y ago

Article seems a bit hollow, it first assigns all sorts of values that do not appear to be consistent with the (sparse) references, and then it points out how the problem isn't with the drug policy concepts but with the drugs themselves. Well duh. Stigma on its own has never brought anything positive, any progression or any 'fixes' for problems. All it does is introduce friction in discourse, and that is never the solution. It's just so people can not only ignore problems or pretend they don't exist, but try to make it society-wide means everyone else isn't allowed to talk about it either. Perhaps if the author didn't try the cover-up route but instead went the "talk about it, but don't use or encourage it" way, there would have been a point to it all. But just trying to deaden public awareness, that's the worst of all options. Not involving yourself is a choice, but trying to make everyone else also not get involved, that's just human failure.

rightlane 3y ago

I used to be a libertarian on drug use. Fentanyl changed my mind. It isn't a letting people have autonomy over their bodies problem anymore. The issue now is that the drugs are so deadly, getting involved in any illegal drug is like playing Russian roulette. I don't have any answers but a hard line on dealers involved with fentanyl seems like the minimum we as a society need to do.

thfuran 3y ago
>The issue now is that the drugs are so deadly, getting involved in any illegal drug is like playing Russian roulette. But wouldn't that issue largely go away if there were regulated legal avenues for obtaining drugs?
- tivert 3y ago
  >> The issue now is that the drugs are so deadly, getting involved in any illegal drug is like playing Russian roulette. > But wouldn't that issue largely go away if there were regulated legal avenues for obtaining drugs? No. If a drug is too powerful to be used responsibly, legal access won't make that issue go way.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Legally procured heroin presumably wouldn't be laced with undisclosed quantities of more potent drugs.
  - cthalupa 3y ago
    There are people who function normally in life while using opioids. Both prescription pills, and street drugs. Obviously, long term impact from opioid use is bad, but we allow people to do all sorts of things to themselves that kill them over the long run. One of the biggest we market to kids from a young age - sugar. The biggest acute risks from drug use are largely overdose related. Having ready access to narcan solves some of it. But issues with actual potency being incredibly unreliable are another huge risk factor that kills a lot of people, and regulated and tested drugs solves that. Legalization makes huge headway on the acute overdose related risks. It doesn't solve all of the issues, but neither has criminalization and prosecution. I am skeptical of societal taboos doing it either, because I have seen people in my life fall into opioid addiction, and all of them were ashamed about it. I have spoken to people on the street about it, and they're ashamed to be living in tents with any money they come into going straight into more drugs. It's anecdotal, obviously, but it has been so universal that I find it incredibly unlikely that piling more shame on top of people who are already deeply ashamed of their current state in life is going to force any significant number to suddenly clean up their act.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

And yet, not as bad as criminalizing it. It turns out that when you threaten people with prison for drugs, sometimes they shoot at cops. And sometimes, when shooting at cops, they accidentally hit bystanders. And when you tell heroin users they can't scrub toilets for minimum wage, despite your inability to detect that they use heroin without a piss test, they steal copper wiring out of empty houses and otherwise generally make a nuisance of themselves. And the people who make these drugs, make the absolute worst possible version of them, like, does anyone believe that if the typical drugs (heroin, cocaine, meth, pot, lsd) were legal that you'd have jackasses huffing gasoline and paint and whatnot?

empath-nirvana 3y ago
In a lot of ways "decriminalizing" drug use is worse than fully legalizing it or arguably worse than keeping drug use illegal, because the people _selling_ it are still technically criminals, and decriminalizing basically just increases demand and sends more money flowing into criminal organizations. They'd be better off just fully legalizing it and regulating it.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  I've upvoted you. I completely agree. Decrim is worse than either, and for the reasons you say. Please keep in mind that legalization alone doesn't fix everything, we must also ban piss tests for all occupations where it isn't critical.
FredPret 3y ago
The nuisance drug users become is due to the fact that they are high and operating on damaged hardware. No matter how pure, hard drug abuse is in itself the problem.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  I don't disagree that drug use isn't a problem. But when the junkie buys his heroin at the liquor store, he's not sending billions of dollars out of the country for cartels so they can buy weapons to murder people with. Drug use isn't *the* problem, it's just *a* problem, and a tiny one compared to prohibition. When there's a crackhouse in your neighborhood, that's because no one can buy this at the liquor store.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

FredPret 3y ago

I used to think all drugs should be 100% legalized. This was back in 2018. I first heard about it from late night comedy hosts who, at the time, took ten seconds out of their day to stop going on about Trump to talk about this. Boy was I wrong.

DeathArrow 3y ago

Destigmatizing can work. Drug addicts might disappear more quickly and once dealers have no market, they will disappear, too.

glonq 3y ago

Vancouver resident here, so I found it interesting that the article called out BC as an example of failed/ineffective policy. And I can't exactly disagree with that sentiment -- politicians have spent decades promising then failing to solve the problem. Our city currently boasts of having a 'four pillars' drug strategy https://vancouver.ca/people-programs/four-pillars-drug-strategy.aspx https://vancouver.ca/people-programs/four-pillars-drug-strat... ...but then really only built maybe two and a half of those pillars. We built a wobbly chair and then wonder why people keep falling off of it.

Whoppertime 3y ago
It just seems like the policy incentives in Vancouver are designed to erode the middle class. Allowing open air drug use and homelessness which creates a permanent underclass. More than half of VPD files in shoplifting crackdown did not result in charges, so petty theft and vandalism reduce the profitability of middle class business owners. And neither the poor nor middle class can afford to buy property in the city, making it a city that appeals to the very rich and desperately poor and squeezes the life out of anyone in between

1970-01-01 3y ago

Another long-winded piece from the Atlantic? These should be off HN. It fits the off-topic guidelines.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

I thought this was a good article, and together with the article about Portland last week, highlights a change a lot of those "on the left" (myself included) are coming to: there are significant negative side effects to decriminalization that are worse than many expected. Personally, as someone who was strongly in favor of decriminalization, my mind changed a bit a couple years ago when I went through the pedestrian mall in downtown Denver. I have nothing against weed use, but walking down there was like "zombieland": tons of people walking around completely stoned out of their minds. This doesn't mean I'm for "recriminalization", but public use was never legalized (at least in CO), but those rules are now all but completely ignored.

enterprise_cog 3y ago
How could you possibly know they were stoned?
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Is this a serious question? Smoking a joint was just one of the clues...

cthalupa 3y ago

The article outright acknowledges that outcomes are not better in areas where criminal enforcement is the primary factor vs. harm reduction. So, at most, it's not been any more of a mistake than a primarily enforcement focused efforts, and the proposed solution seems to be... everyone should just make drug users feel ashamed? I think shame is a useful and necessary human emotion, but the opioid addicts I've met over my life are already plenty ashamed of the fact they're using.

mgarfias 3y ago

I just can’t understand the people I see in downtown Portland getting blasted out of their gourds on a public sidewalk. My sense of self preservation is just too high to alter my state of consciousness in an unsafe environment

Ekaros 3y ago

Stigmatization has been proven to work with tobacco. I don't see any reason why branding those that use meth, heroin or ethanol as absolute losers and stupid uncool people wouldn't work either.

ReptileMan 3y ago
Well ethanol in the right doses actually makes you cool - introverts do need couple of beers to get in touch with their social daredevil. Also alcohol is tasty.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  And that is exactly the sort of picture that we should as society to aim to destroy. It might take a generation or two. But I believe with hard work we could get there.
  - cthalupa 3y ago
    Why do you have this particular crusade against alcohol? If you're wanting to curb ingestion of things that cause harm to the human body, sugar is a far bigger killer in the western world than booze.
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      Because I hate hypocrisy. Either ban nothing or ban it all. Not this stupid in between. Either prohibition works perfectly and we can also ban ethanol, or it does not work at all and we should just go ahead and legalize everything and treat everything equally.
      - cthalupa 3y ago
        I am of the opinion that legalization is one of the steps needed to really solve the drug problem. I think it's not the only one because it only truly solves certain parts of the issue, on the harm reduction front. Just having public health facilities available for users doesn't do anything either if they're not going to them. Extended, proactive, pervasive engagement with those users in a way that helps them climb out of the hole they've ended up in is also key.

wanderingbit 3y ago

I went in to this article hoping for some evidence on why harm reduction isn't always the right choice. Instead it is tone-deaf (as if fentanyl users and heroin users are in the same category as those who choose to use alcohol or pot!) and filled with correlation-implies-causation assertions. If anyone has some credible evidence for where harm reduction doesn't work, please reply!

canada613 3y ago
[flagged]

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

The billboard with an image that they complain about, which features a group of young people and perhaps could be considered glamorous if presented without context, is next to giant words spelling out the fact that if you do the drug alone you will probably die. And that this risk is so great that they give out free training so that people who do the drug can be potentially saved from death. That all seems fairly fact based and scary to me, as someone who has no experience with fentanyl, and whose desire to try it is in no way enhanced by this giant warning of death.

cowboyscott 3y ago

If I'm reading this correctly, the author is at least partially aiming at public health campaigns designed to prevent deaths, on the margin, stemming from the US opioid crisis. Only in the second to last paragraph does the author make passing reference to synthetic opioids being pushed excessively by drug companies. Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family are not mentioned. The Sacklers are currently before the Supreme Court, negotiating a deal that will shield them from further civil action by paying a $6 billion dollar fine (leaving them a few billion ahead)[1]. While I don't think we can extract justice from punishing one responsible entity, articles like these give cover to people, companies, and systems that created this crisis. 1: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-sackler-family-bankruptcy/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-sac...

zingababba 3y ago

Take away the safety nets, bring back personal responsibility

johnea 3y ago

People should use Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, like the little baby jesus intended...

baerrie 3y ago

Shame does not make you do less drugs. This is a terrible take on the drug crisis. People turn to drugs because it is the only thing that gives them a tiny bit of relief in their hellish state. The less shameful tactics have already been tried or rendered ineffective by the severity of the users pain. But sure try the less shameful drugs of alcohol, weed, prescribed drugs, unhealthy food, thrill seeking behavior, and let us know if it solves the core suffering. It usually does not and the presence or absence of shame has nothing to do with it

Whoppertime 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt%E2%80%93shame%E2%80%93fear_spectrum_of_cultures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt%E2%80%93shame%E2%80%93fe... Shame reduces drug use in China and Japan
- Lockal 3y ago
  There is no mention in Wikipedia how exactly shame reduces (or not reduces) drug use. Additionally, China and Japan have capital punishment for drug traders. So I wouldn't be so definitive about what is the cause and what is the effect.