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It would probably save more lives to just legalize all drugs. Until drugs are legalized and quality controlled there will be no way for consumers to even know w

It would probably save more lives to just legalize all drugs. Until drugs are legalized and quality controlled there will be no way for consumers to even know what they're getting.

threeseed 12y ago
One of the issues with legalising a drug at this point in time is that it sends a signal that it is safe. This is fine for drugs like Cannabis or even LSD/Ecstacy which are relatively benign and non-addictive. But drugs like Ice, Meth or Heroin are incredibly dangerous, toxic and addictive regardless of how well they are made. Making them readily accessible to existing addicts makes sense. But to first-time users ? No way.
- eru 12y ago
  Even making heroin available to addicts doesn't make sense, when you can feed them subutex as a ready alternative. Anyway, you can legalize all these drugs, but make the harder ones prescription only and highly taxed.
  - aorloff 12y ago
    Its not just taxation that needs to occur with legalization of harder drugs. Its a comprehensive reaction from the social safety net - no more unemployment, no welfare, and CPS comes to check on your kids if you have them.
    - eru 12y ago
      Why? Just treat those drugs like we treat alcohol today. (Or find a better solution, and apply it to alcohol, too.)
- TylerE 12y ago
  Heroin isn't especially dangerous from a medical standpoint. Heroin cut with god knows what injected with a reused needle is incredibly dangerous. Most heroin ODs are actually the reverse problem....a frequent user gets something that for once ISN'T cut, takes their normal dose and instantly ODs. Even that is easily handled if Narcan is available. I'm not saying anyone should use heroin, but from a purely pharmaceutical standpoint it isn't an especially dangerous drug, and in many places (but not the US) is used for the treatment of severe pain. Something like Oxycontin is harder on the body due to the acetaminophen.
curun1r 12y ago
If you're willing to expand the definition of "saving lives" to include people who would otherwise be thrown into prison and enter into the cycle of violence, recidivism and minimal job prospects, then your plan would literally save millions of lives. And when you consider that drugs are used to finance some seriously bad shit around the world, the number of "lives saved" grows even further. According to Wikipedia, it's 120,000 alone in Mexico's recent drug war. Colombia has been one of the most violent places on earth for decades now. And it's not a coincidence that we're dealing with terrorism threats from the country that produces 70% of the world's opium. The number of people who've had their lives ruined by illegal drugs goes way beyond those that consume those drugs.
- aorloff 12y ago
  Columbia is far safer now than several decades ago. It is in fact a great example of a Latin American country that has really turned its economy around.
  - curun1r 12y ago
    They still have, according to Wikipedia, the 12th highest homicide rate in the world. They've got nearly the same number as the US, a country with 6 times the population. It's much safer than it used to be, but it's still not that safe.
bigbugbag 12y ago
Or is it ? There was an interesting program on the BBC a few years back dealing with this question titled "If… drugs were legal". In this program they explored something not so obvious about legalizing drugs, namely that the pharmaceutical industrial complex would fill the market with many new drugs, think the current issues with legal highs but industrial scale. Another point is drug interactions are very unpredictable and very difficult to test. This show is probably available on the web somewhere, here's the bbc page about it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/if/4075235.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/if/4075235.stm
- Nursie 12y ago
  Awesome. Let them. We absolutely should have the industry doing research into drugs that are safer and less addictive but still fun. Imagine if we unleashed the full power of science and capitalism at the problem! Of course we would need to find a regulatory framework that allowed us to optimise for that outcome rather than for addiction...
Derpdiherp 12y ago
You must take the harm that these drugs can cause into consideration when you say that you want to legalize them all - it is unfortunately not that black and white. Heroine is a prime example. Whilst the argument could be given for "Educated use" you must take into account that the greater population at large will not educate themselves, and will come to harm - mainly through addiction. Cigarettes are a nice example. We spend vast quantities of money on health care for people who smoke - the information is there, everybody knows that it causes cancer, yet huge amounts of people do it. We would be better off as a planet if everyone just stopped. Whilst incarceration clearly is not the correct response to addicts, some form of regulation is needed to protect idiots from themselves.
- DanBC 12y ago
  I tend to agree with you, but looking at heroin I see most of the harm comes from it being illegal. The supply chain funds warlords and criminal gangs. Impurities in the heroin cause abcesses and the need for amputation for injecting users. Restrictions on needles cause spread of blood-borne disease - and this also affect low wage workers who have handle sharps in public bathrooms and so on. People need money to feed their addiction and so they turn to prostitution[1] or acquisitive crime. Treating heroin as a criminal problem has failed to protect people from themselves, but it also fails to protect wider society. I do agree that we need to be cautious though. Look at the mess caused by alcohol. (That may be more true in the UK than the US.)
  - Derpdiherp 12y ago
    Of course - the war on drugs itself is a failure and the morals and reasoning behind it is suspect at best, if not downright wrong. And you only have to look at Russia to see what happens when supply completely dwindles to addicts of hard drugs, the krokodil epidemic is truly horrifying. My point is just that a free for all on all drugs no matter what harm they cause could be disastrous for society as a whole, as you mention there are plenty of people that currently use alcohol to escape their problems that are in difficult places, especially in poorer demographics. Imagine if they could get hold of heroine or methamphetamines on a whim. It's a fine balance and I personally cannot see a good way to strike one that will keep everybody safe and happy. There are plenty of drugs which if used responsibly I could see being legal though, marijuana, ecstasy and some hallucinogens to name a few. If taxed the government could stand to make a lot of money from them as well.

It would probably save more lives to just legalize all drugs. Until drugs are legalized and quality controlled there will be no way for consumers to even know what they're getting.

threeseed 12y ago

One of the issues with legalising a drug at this point in time is that it sends a signal that it is safe. This is fine for drugs like Cannabis or even LSD/Ecstacy which are relatively benign and non-addictive. But drugs like Ice, Meth or Heroin are incredibly dangerous, toxic and addictive regardless of how well they are made. Making them readily accessible to existing addicts makes sense. But to first-time users ? No way.

eru 12y ago
Even making heroin available to addicts doesn't make sense, when you can feed them subutex as a ready alternative. Anyway, you can legalize all these drugs, but make the harder ones prescription only and highly taxed.
- aorloff 12y ago
  Its not just taxation that needs to occur with legalization of harder drugs. Its a comprehensive reaction from the social safety net - no more unemployment, no welfare, and CPS comes to check on your kids if you have them.
  - eru 12y ago
    Why? Just treat those drugs like we treat alcohol today. (Or find a better solution, and apply it to alcohol, too.)
TylerE 12y ago
Heroin isn't especially dangerous from a medical standpoint. Heroin cut with god knows what injected with a reused needle is incredibly dangerous. Most heroin ODs are actually the reverse problem....a frequent user gets something that for once ISN'T cut, takes their normal dose and instantly ODs. Even that is easily handled if Narcan is available. I'm not saying anyone should use heroin, but from a purely pharmaceutical standpoint it isn't an especially dangerous drug, and in many places (but not the US) is used for the treatment of severe pain. Something like Oxycontin is harder on the body due to the acetaminophen.

curun1r 12y ago

If you're willing to expand the definition of "saving lives" to include people who would otherwise be thrown into prison and enter into the cycle of violence, recidivism and minimal job prospects, then your plan would literally save millions of lives. And when you consider that drugs are used to finance some seriously bad shit around the world, the number of "lives saved" grows even further. According to Wikipedia, it's 120,000 alone in Mexico's recent drug war. Colombia has been one of the most violent places on earth for decades now. And it's not a coincidence that we're dealing with terrorism threats from the country that produces 70% of the world's opium. The number of people who've had their lives ruined by illegal drugs goes way beyond those that consume those drugs.

aorloff 12y ago
Columbia is far safer now than several decades ago. It is in fact a great example of a Latin American country that has really turned its economy around.
- curun1r 12y ago
  They still have, according to Wikipedia, the 12th highest homicide rate in the world. They've got nearly the same number as the US, a country with 6 times the population. It's much safer than it used to be, but it's still not that safe.

bigbugbag 12y ago

Or is it ? There was an interesting program on the BBC a few years back dealing with this question titled "If… drugs were legal". In this program they explored something not so obvious about legalizing drugs, namely that the pharmaceutical industrial complex would fill the market with many new drugs, think the current issues with legal highs but industrial scale. Another point is drug interactions are very unpredictable and very difficult to test. This show is probably available on the web somewhere, here's the bbc page about it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/if/4075235.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/if/4075235.stm

Nursie 12y ago
Awesome. Let them. We absolutely should have the industry doing research into drugs that are safer and less addictive but still fun. Imagine if we unleashed the full power of science and capitalism at the problem! Of course we would need to find a regulatory framework that allowed us to optimise for that outcome rather than for addiction...

Derpdiherp 12y ago

You must take the harm that these drugs can cause into consideration when you say that you want to legalize them all - it is unfortunately not that black and white. Heroine is a prime example. Whilst the argument could be given for "Educated use" you must take into account that the greater population at large will not educate themselves, and will come to harm - mainly through addiction. Cigarettes are a nice example. We spend vast quantities of money on health care for people who smoke - the information is there, everybody knows that it causes cancer, yet huge amounts of people do it. We would be better off as a planet if everyone just stopped. Whilst incarceration clearly is not the correct response to addicts, some form of regulation is needed to protect idiots from themselves.

DanBC 12y ago
I tend to agree with you, but looking at heroin I see most of the harm comes from it being illegal. The supply chain funds warlords and criminal gangs. Impurities in the heroin cause abcesses and the need for amputation for injecting users. Restrictions on needles cause spread of blood-borne disease - and this also affect low wage workers who have handle sharps in public bathrooms and so on. People need money to feed their addiction and so they turn to prostitution[1] or acquisitive crime. Treating heroin as a criminal problem has failed to protect people from themselves, but it also fails to protect wider society. I do agree that we need to be cautious though. Look at the mess caused by alcohol. (That may be more true in the UK than the US.)
- Derpdiherp 12y ago
  Of course - the war on drugs itself is a failure and the morals and reasoning behind it is suspect at best, if not downright wrong. And you only have to look at Russia to see what happens when supply completely dwindles to addicts of hard drugs, the krokodil epidemic is truly horrifying. My point is just that a free for all on all drugs no matter what harm they cause could be disastrous for society as a whole, as you mention there are plenty of people that currently use alcohol to escape their problems that are in difficult places, especially in poorer demographics. Imagine if they could get hold of heroine or methamphetamines on a whim. It's a fine balance and I personally cannot see a good way to strike one that will keep everybody safe and happy. There are plenty of drugs which if used responsibly I could see being legal though, marijuana, ecstasy and some hallucinogens to name a few. If taxed the government could stand to make a lot of money from them as well.