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IMO the battle is won in stages, and the first step in the legalization of Marijuana at the Federal level. The next step is when we recognize the victims of th

IMO the battle is won in stages, and the first step in the legalization of Marijuana at the Federal level. The next step is when we recognize the victims of the War on Drugs, specifically persons who were sent to jail because of Marijuana. You expand the affected to be people who've committed all non-violent crimes, and advocate for reform from that angle. I don't care what the law really has to say regarding Heroin, as long as victims/addicts get helped instead of aggregated and exploited by a pseudo-warrior class.

pstuart 13y ago
I care what the law has to say regarding heroin. Legalize it, regulate it just like alcohol. Being illegal didn't keep my brother from becoming addicted and dying from it. If it was legal and pure he might have had a chance. But on the other hand, nobody is trying to outlaw tobacco and alcohol, which are the biggest killers of all. Thats what did my mom in. So yes, legalize it and keep it pure. Educate people on proper drug use and spend money on health resources for those who need it rather than jail.
- mildtrepidation 13y ago
  Without judging the sentiment, "legalize it and keep it pure" does not mesh at all with tobacco and alcohol, which are legal (and 'pure,' at least in the case of alcohol), being "the biggest killers of all" as an argument for legalization. Discussion on legalization of controlled substances like heroin is fraught with bias and misinformation. It's a discussion worth having, but clouding it with contradictions makes an already difficult topic that much harder to address.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Uh, pure alcohol does kill, but poisoned alcohol is worse and much more effective (as the US government knew[1]). There's nothing contradictory about it. pstuart didn't say if heroin had been pure that everything would be fine, just that the user might have a chance. And you definitively have a greater chance of surviving alcohol addition if you don't die from a single bottle[2]. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... [2] http://www.ibtimes.com/last-call-poor-indians-continue-die-alcohol-poisoning-liquor-laced-industrial-chemicals-1434038 http://www.ibtimes.com/last-call-poor-indians-continue-die-a...
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    Alcohol and tobacco are bigger killers than heroin because A: They're obviously much more widely used and B: heroin has very little health side effects. While alcohol and tobacco might have a larger "therapeutic index" then heroin, regular use can and does damage many peoples' bodies. Regular use of opiates causes constipation and a few other minor side effects. They aren't really comparable. The main reason for overdoses on opiates is related to mixing with other drugs (alcohol and benzos). After that is the dosage amount. If patients always knew exactly how much they were using, like they would less likely accidentally use too much. Another cause for overdoses is when a patient discontinues the medication, then resumes usage assuming their previous tolerance levels. If these medicines were legal, far fewer people would need to stop using in the first place, further reducing accidents. The other health issues with opiates are a result of unhygienic IV use. If needles were readily available, and medicines pure, there would be less health issues arising. Instead, people reuse their needles many, many times, and users may often end up injecting all sorts of materials into their blood.
    - lewaldman 13y ago
      The best and maybe the only approach for drugs like Heroin or Crack is (IMHO) the Swiss one: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-12-19/swiss-drug-addicts-given-free-heroin/1184806 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-12-19/swiss-drug-addicts-giv...
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  >> "nobody is trying to outlaw tobacco" They aren't trying to outlaw tobacco but they are trying to stop it's use in a different way. Banning smoking in public places (which I agree with), health warnings on packaging, and the latest thing they are trying to do is ban branding on packaging (i.e. cigarettes can only be sold in plain white boxes). In many places they also can't be on display (displays are covered) and the age at which it's legal to buy cigarettes has risen in many places over the last 5 years or so. I agree with your main point. Recently where I'm from there were news reports about several deaths from a 'bad' batch of ecstasy. Police informed people what to look out for on the news (what the bad pills looked like) but the main message was drugs kill, don't use them. The problem wasn't the drugs it was a poison being cut with them. If they were legal and regulated we wouldn't have this problem.
  - declan 13y ago
    "They aren't trying to outlaw tobacco but they are trying to stop it's use in a different way" Yep. Also through taxes. In the U.S., taxes on a single pack of cigarettes can be as high as $5.36, depending on where you live.
    - hfsktr 13y ago
      I might be completely off here but it almost seems like they don't actually want people to quit. They just want the tax money. I know when I smoked I could get a 2 week supply of patches OR gum (at the time) but that just wasn't enough to actually get to the point I needed. Maybe for some people it works but the success rates aren't that great, if I recall. EDIT: I just wanted to mention that, I feel this, is completely the wrong use for taxes. They should be for raising revenue not for changing behavior. I don't have a great solution so I won't even attempt to go there.
      - k-mcgrady 13y ago
        Raising the price through taxes is likely to put off new young smokers who will find it incredibly difficult to afford. It probably won't deter as many adults who can afford the price increase even if it does piss them off. I've also known some people who have switched to cheaper, lower quality cigarettes because of the price increases rather than quitting. In other words raising the prices has caused them to seek a worse alternative for their health.
- ambler0 13y ago
  I'm sorry to hear about your brother. My younger brother is also a heroin addict. I watched him change from one of the sweetest people I knew and the best man at my wedding into an awful excuse for a human being. I am not so sure I would support the legalization of heroin. At times I have expressed support for the Gore Vidal approach, i.e. legalize all drugs and provide them at cost. In any case, I fully agree that drugs ought to be decriminalized and treated as a public health, not a criminal, issue. I just think it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that all drugs are the same. Consider, for example, the ratio of the therapeutic dose (or, I guess, recreational dose) to the lethal dose. A very small amount of marijuana or LSD causes the intended effect, yet it's virtually impossible to die from overdosing on these substances. Clearly this is not the case with alcohol, cocaine, heroin, etc. I'm not trying to argue strongly for tiered classification of drugs, but I am saying that it's not obvious to me that we should just treat them all the same. There are more-or-less objective measures that we can use to establish their risk to the individual and society.
  - girvo 13y ago
    I'm an ex heroin addict. Have been on Suboxone for a year and a half (nearly off it, only two months to go yay!) after being addicted from 16-22 years old. Would I still be where I am if heroin was legal and I was on that for ORT instead of Suboxone? I think I would -- as it stands, I'm still on an extremely strong opiate daily, but it is pure and legal, so a lot of the issues fall away from it. The problem is: that's just me! Your brother might be completely different, and that sucks :( An argument can be made, however, that because one person might not benefit (I'd argue that it won't make his situation worse: he's already an addict, like I was, if it's now clean and doesn't require breaking the law to get..) does that mean that those who can should miss out? It's a complex issue, and you raised some great points about how people conflate "drugs" as if they were all the same. I'm still not sure where the answer lies, but I'm pretty certain what we have now isn't working.
    - ambler0 13y ago
      Totally agree that the current approach is not working, and that's why I say that, regardless of which drugs we choose to fully legalize, all of them should be decriminalized. Most people who become addicts are already traumatized in some way and throwing them into the machinery of the criminal justice system only compounds the problem. The healthcare situation also makes it worse. My brother had considerable difficulty obtaining Suboxone, and even after establishing a relationship with the only doctor in our area who prescribes it, was not able to afford the enormous expense. It's just pathetic that he had a much easier time acquiring this legal drug illegally from fellow addicts. I wish you the very best with your recovery.
- 7952 13y ago
  A concern is that the practicalities of such a legalization would just make things worse. It could make it much easier for children to get hold of. You would also need to define what is "pure" and police that for an endless list of possible products. It is difficult enough to keep salmonella out of food, effective regulation of cannabis sounds impossible. Any regulation would need to be sufficiently loose that you do not need a black market. I would argue that the most important impact of drug use is to people who are not drug users. Any legislation should put the interests of those people first.
  - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
    We already have two very good examples of regulating a legal drug with little or no black market: Tobacco & Alcohol I think many of the things we've learned with regulating those drugs could be applied to a lot of other drugs.
    - 7952 13y ago
      Both tobacco and alcohol have sizable black markets, mostly as a way to avoid tax.
  - Bsharp 13y ago
    > It could make it much easier for children to get hold of. There are currently no age restrictions on heroin. All a child needs is a morally-bankrupt drug dealer, which imo is easier than finding a morally-bankrupt store clerk if it were legal. > You would also need to define what is "pure" and police that for an endless list of possible products. 'Pure' can be easily defined, and it doesn't have to be 'pure' anyway, just not increasingly harmful - beer isn't pure alcohol, McDonald's burgers aren't pure beef, etc. > It is difficult enough to keep salmonella out of food, effective regulation of cannabis sounds impossible. Any regulation would need to be sufficiently loose that you do not need a black market. Comparing keeping salmonella out of food to keeping drugs clean is apples and oranges - they're entirely different problems. Also, given the insane markup drugs are subject to today, primarily due to the risk of distribution, prices would fall with regulation, and imo enough to undercut any current black market. Also, the quality could be better or worse, but you know it would be safe.
- lukifer 13y ago
  We have an existing infrastructure to handle dangerous drugs: prescriptions. While I believe that making choices about one's own biology and consciousness is a fundamental right, there are realities of addiction and drug-seeking behavior that can't be ignored. Ensuring that a medical professional is in the loop regarding a user's drug choices (in my perfect world, even for alcohol and cigarettes) could lead to real harm reduction while respecting personal freedom.
at-fates-hands 13y ago
>> and the first step in the legalization of Marijuana at the Federal level. You don't want that. Trust me, you don't that. All you need to do is look at how heavily regulated tobacco is. Right now, the way to get people to stop smoking is to simply make it unaffordable. It just keeps getting taxed more and more and the price keeps going up and up. Thinking the Feds will do a better job than the states is a joke. Look at how well the states have handled their own Obamacare exchanges and then how the Federal Obamacare website is a joke. If anything, this should be left at a state level. Let them regulate, tax and decide whether the people in that state want to allow it.
- a_c_s 13y ago
  Right now it is illegal at the Federal level. To really allow states to have a choice (instead of the current the-feds-might-look-the-other-way-if-they-feel-like-it arrangement) is for it to not be illegal at the Federal level.
  - tokenizer 13y ago
    Exactly. Theoretical potentialities regarding the subversion of the using population thereafter by the government is too speculative and too far ahead to worry about. I agree that the government usually messes things up, but in this case, we need to think of the people suffering the most; the people serving prison time for this drug. Once we can get them freed, and have the using population treated as law abiding citizens, we'll see how it goes IMO.

pstuart 13y ago

I care what the law has to say regarding heroin. Legalize it, regulate it just like alcohol. Being illegal didn't keep my brother from becoming addicted and dying from it. If it was legal and pure he might have had a chance. But on the other hand, nobody is trying to outlaw tobacco and alcohol, which are the biggest killers of all. Thats what did my mom in. So yes, legalize it and keep it pure. Educate people on proper drug use and spend money on health resources for those who need it rather than jail.

mildtrepidation 13y ago
Without judging the sentiment, "legalize it and keep it pure" does not mesh at all with tobacco and alcohol, which are legal (and 'pure,' at least in the case of alcohol), being "the biggest killers of all" as an argument for legalization. Discussion on legalization of controlled substances like heroin is fraught with bias and misinformation. It's a discussion worth having, but clouding it with contradictions makes an already difficult topic that much harder to address.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Uh, pure alcohol does kill, but poisoned alcohol is worse and much more effective (as the US government knew[1]). There's nothing contradictory about it. pstuart didn't say if heroin had been pure that everything would be fine, just that the user might have a chance. And you definitively have a greater chance of surviving alcohol addition if you don't die from a single bottle[2]. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... [2] http://www.ibtimes.com/last-call-poor-indians-continue-die-alcohol-poisoning-liquor-laced-industrial-chemicals-1434038 http://www.ibtimes.com/last-call-poor-indians-continue-die-a...
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Alcohol and tobacco are bigger killers than heroin because A: They're obviously much more widely used and B: heroin has very little health side effects. While alcohol and tobacco might have a larger "therapeutic index" then heroin, regular use can and does damage many peoples' bodies. Regular use of opiates causes constipation and a few other minor side effects. They aren't really comparable. The main reason for overdoses on opiates is related to mixing with other drugs (alcohol and benzos). After that is the dosage amount. If patients always knew exactly how much they were using, like they would less likely accidentally use too much. Another cause for overdoses is when a patient discontinues the medication, then resumes usage assuming their previous tolerance levels. If these medicines were legal, far fewer people would need to stop using in the first place, further reducing accidents. The other health issues with opiates are a result of unhygienic IV use. If needles were readily available, and medicines pure, there would be less health issues arising. Instead, people reuse their needles many, many times, and users may often end up injecting all sorts of materials into their blood.
  - lewaldman 13y ago
    The best and maybe the only approach for drugs like Heroin or Crack is (IMHO) the Swiss one: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-12-19/swiss-drug-addicts-given-free-heroin/1184806 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-12-19/swiss-drug-addicts-giv...
k-mcgrady 13y ago
>> "nobody is trying to outlaw tobacco" They aren't trying to outlaw tobacco but they are trying to stop it's use in a different way. Banning smoking in public places (which I agree with), health warnings on packaging, and the latest thing they are trying to do is ban branding on packaging (i.e. cigarettes can only be sold in plain white boxes). In many places they also can't be on display (displays are covered) and the age at which it's legal to buy cigarettes has risen in many places over the last 5 years or so. I agree with your main point. Recently where I'm from there were news reports about several deaths from a 'bad' batch of ecstasy. Police informed people what to look out for on the news (what the bad pills looked like) but the main message was drugs kill, don't use them. The problem wasn't the drugs it was a poison being cut with them. If they were legal and regulated we wouldn't have this problem.
- declan 13y ago
  "They aren't trying to outlaw tobacco but they are trying to stop it's use in a different way" Yep. Also through taxes. In the U.S., taxes on a single pack of cigarettes can be as high as $5.36, depending on where you live.
  - hfsktr 13y ago
    I might be completely off here but it almost seems like they don't actually want people to quit. They just want the tax money. I know when I smoked I could get a 2 week supply of patches OR gum (at the time) but that just wasn't enough to actually get to the point I needed. Maybe for some people it works but the success rates aren't that great, if I recall. EDIT: I just wanted to mention that, I feel this, is completely the wrong use for taxes. They should be for raising revenue not for changing behavior. I don't have a great solution so I won't even attempt to go there.
    - k-mcgrady 13y ago
      Raising the price through taxes is likely to put off new young smokers who will find it incredibly difficult to afford. It probably won't deter as many adults who can afford the price increase even if it does piss them off. I've also known some people who have switched to cheaper, lower quality cigarettes because of the price increases rather than quitting. In other words raising the prices has caused them to seek a worse alternative for their health.
ambler0 13y ago
I'm sorry to hear about your brother. My younger brother is also a heroin addict. I watched him change from one of the sweetest people I knew and the best man at my wedding into an awful excuse for a human being. I am not so sure I would support the legalization of heroin. At times I have expressed support for the Gore Vidal approach, i.e. legalize all drugs and provide them at cost. In any case, I fully agree that drugs ought to be decriminalized and treated as a public health, not a criminal, issue. I just think it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that all drugs are the same. Consider, for example, the ratio of the therapeutic dose (or, I guess, recreational dose) to the lethal dose. A very small amount of marijuana or LSD causes the intended effect, yet it's virtually impossible to die from overdosing on these substances. Clearly this is not the case with alcohol, cocaine, heroin, etc. I'm not trying to argue strongly for tiered classification of drugs, but I am saying that it's not obvious to me that we should just treat them all the same. There are more-or-less objective measures that we can use to establish their risk to the individual and society.
- girvo 13y ago
  I'm an ex heroin addict. Have been on Suboxone for a year and a half (nearly off it, only two months to go yay!) after being addicted from 16-22 years old. Would I still be where I am if heroin was legal and I was on that for ORT instead of Suboxone? I think I would -- as it stands, I'm still on an extremely strong opiate daily, but it is pure and legal, so a lot of the issues fall away from it. The problem is: that's just me! Your brother might be completely different, and that sucks :( An argument can be made, however, that because one person might not benefit (I'd argue that it won't make his situation worse: he's already an addict, like I was, if it's now clean and doesn't require breaking the law to get..) does that mean that those who can should miss out? It's a complex issue, and you raised some great points about how people conflate "drugs" as if they were all the same. I'm still not sure where the answer lies, but I'm pretty certain what we have now isn't working.
  - ambler0 13y ago
    Totally agree that the current approach is not working, and that's why I say that, regardless of which drugs we choose to fully legalize, all of them should be decriminalized. Most people who become addicts are already traumatized in some way and throwing them into the machinery of the criminal justice system only compounds the problem. The healthcare situation also makes it worse. My brother had considerable difficulty obtaining Suboxone, and even after establishing a relationship with the only doctor in our area who prescribes it, was not able to afford the enormous expense. It's just pathetic that he had a much easier time acquiring this legal drug illegally from fellow addicts. I wish you the very best with your recovery.
7952 13y ago
A concern is that the practicalities of such a legalization would just make things worse. It could make it much easier for children to get hold of. You would also need to define what is "pure" and police that for an endless list of possible products. It is difficult enough to keep salmonella out of food, effective regulation of cannabis sounds impossible. Any regulation would need to be sufficiently loose that you do not need a black market. I would argue that the most important impact of drug use is to people who are not drug users. Any legislation should put the interests of those people first.
- jack-r-abbit 13y ago
  We already have two very good examples of regulating a legal drug with little or no black market: Tobacco & Alcohol I think many of the things we've learned with regulating those drugs could be applied to a lot of other drugs.
  - 7952 13y ago
    Both tobacco and alcohol have sizable black markets, mostly as a way to avoid tax.
- Bsharp 13y ago
  > It could make it much easier for children to get hold of. There are currently no age restrictions on heroin. All a child needs is a morally-bankrupt drug dealer, which imo is easier than finding a morally-bankrupt store clerk if it were legal. > You would also need to define what is "pure" and police that for an endless list of possible products. 'Pure' can be easily defined, and it doesn't have to be 'pure' anyway, just not increasingly harmful - beer isn't pure alcohol, McDonald's burgers aren't pure beef, etc. > It is difficult enough to keep salmonella out of food, effective regulation of cannabis sounds impossible. Any regulation would need to be sufficiently loose that you do not need a black market. Comparing keeping salmonella out of food to keeping drugs clean is apples and oranges - they're entirely different problems. Also, given the insane markup drugs are subject to today, primarily due to the risk of distribution, prices would fall with regulation, and imo enough to undercut any current black market. Also, the quality could be better or worse, but you know it would be safe.
lukifer 13y ago
We have an existing infrastructure to handle dangerous drugs: prescriptions. While I believe that making choices about one's own biology and consciousness is a fundamental right, there are realities of addiction and drug-seeking behavior that can't be ignored. Ensuring that a medical professional is in the loop regarding a user's drug choices (in my perfect world, even for alcohol and cigarettes) could lead to real harm reduction while respecting personal freedom.

at-fates-hands 13y ago

>> and the first step in the legalization of Marijuana at the Federal level. You don't want that. Trust me, you don't that. All you need to do is look at how heavily regulated tobacco is. Right now, the way to get people to stop smoking is to simply make it unaffordable. It just keeps getting taxed more and more and the price keeps going up and up. Thinking the Feds will do a better job than the states is a joke. Look at how well the states have handled their own Obamacare exchanges and then how the Federal Obamacare website is a joke. If anything, this should be left at a state level. Let them regulate, tax and decide whether the people in that state want to allow it.

a_c_s 13y ago
Right now it is illegal at the Federal level. To really allow states to have a choice (instead of the current the-feds-might-look-the-other-way-if-they-feel-like-it arrangement) is for it to not be illegal at the Federal level.
- tokenizer 13y ago
  Exactly. Theoretical potentialities regarding the subversion of the using population thereafter by the government is too speculative and too far ahead to worry about. I agree that the government usually messes things up, but in this case, we need to think of the people suffering the most; the people serving prison time for this drug. Once we can get them freed, and have the using population treated as law abiding citizens, we'll see how it goes IMO.