You cannot avoid the nasty social effects of drug prohibition (crime, violence, contamination, etc) without making distribution legal. If you want to live in a world without homeless junkies breaking into your car, or a world without running gun battles in the street, or a world without your wayward kids accidentally ODing on their next batch, you need drugs like cocaine and heroin to be sold openly and affordably at the corner Walgreens.
"Help the addict but punish the dealer" feels good to say but the world just isn't that simple.
As someone strongly in favor of complete legalization across the board... I totally agree. And we have an example of this in (most of) the US with tobacco advertising.
That's easy enough. We do the same thing with tobacco, and look - there are no violent gangs killing people to defend their tiny slice of the black-market tobacco market.
I don't see that borne out by the opioid crisis. Many believe it was lax prescription that allowed opioids to become preferred and prevalent narcotics to abuse. If they are not available it does not matter how many cars or houses you brake into, it does no good if no one is selling.
So you say, well in that case someone will make them dirty and available for a price. Punish the illegal seller and prosecute all suppliers who knowingly sold to someone not registered. Prosecute any and all corruption related to making and distributing the product illegally.
Do people get their coke from Coca-cola imported leaves? No. They know the consequences and take appropriate precautions to ensure they are not subverted by greedy employees.
Nearly everyone dying from legal opiates is because they're mixing them with heroin, which is often cut with a depressant like fentanyl. Heroin is illegal, and fentanyl is illegal for all intents and purposes to the average person. So maybe we should fix our wide spread and nearly half a century problem with heroin by making it illegal. Then no one will ever use it and it won't be available to anyone ever again.
You just can't get around the evidence that making drugs illegal doesn't make them unavailable and doesn't reduce the number of people who use them. It just makes it more dangerous to the addicts and funds cartels and gangs.
The most recent crisis is due to overprescription, yes, but that didn't mean that e.g. heroin wasn't a problem before.
> So you say, well in that case someone will make them dirty and available for a price. Punish the illegal seller and prosecute all suppliers who knowingly sold to someone not registered. Prosecute any and all corruption related to making and distributing the product illegally.
Which is exactly what we know from experience has never worked. Why do you think you could make it work?
The outcome is to drive up prices until it becomes sufficiently profitable for sufficiently brutal syndicates to take on production and distribution.
How do you think we ended up with the amount of death and misery the drugs trade causes in the first place?
> Punish the illegal seller and prosecute all suppliers who knowingly sold to someone not registered. Prosecute any and all corruption related to making and distributing the product illegally.
So, in other words, keep failing in exactly the same way as we're failing right now?
1. Many, even the ethical, doctors prescribed opioids for pain, and misery.
2. A very small percentage of Doctors set up shop to hook their patients.
3. I just can't put all the blame on doctors.
4. People are miserable across this county. A lot of you are insulated from the misery, but it's there. The anti-drpepressant effects of opioids should not be hidden. They make you feel good.
Plus--I don't think it's a coincidence that heterocyclic/tricyclic anti-depressants have come under extreme scrutiny. Basically--do they even work. Oh yea, that double blind study, in India, proved they work 62% over a huge Placebo response? Meaning 6 patients answered three positive questing, more that the control group, on that poorly worded psychological test.
5. Now the problem is the patient starts to develop a tolerance. The foolish run to the street, and buy bags of whatever. The responsible patient stays on the same dosage.
(There are studies, done in nursing homes, that state that patients on opioids can stay on tge same dose of opioids for years, and don't feel the need go up their dose.)
6. O.K. we are blaming the doctors for the opioids crisis. They don't want to get sued, or have the FDA knocking on their door; so they cut off the patient.
7. Now, if the patient can't kick the stuff by themselves, they are labeled addicts. They go on bupenorpine, or methadone. They have to jump through hoops just to get that medication. Many, if in the right areas, just go to the street. I can see why they do. I don't understand anyone who just sticks a needle in their arm, and hopes for the best.
8. We are now stuck with a terrible system, and people in agony. Way to go America!
(Excuse my attitude. My doctor got cold feet prescribing me bupenorpine, after a decade of taking it. It's not been easy getting off of. I am not happy with the system is the slightest. I don't blame the doctors though. Many of them know their patients do just fine on a on most controlled substances. Now--the doctors who are dragging in their patients for unnecessary office visits; those bastards should be exposed, and dealt with. The ethical doctors should be left alone to treat their patients, without any oversight. Yea--try finding a ethics, doctor. I do know they exist.)
US doctors are prescribing far more opioids that doctors in any other country. The US uses 99% of the world supply of hydrocodone, for example.
The opioid crisis is far worse in the US than in any other country.
> I don't think it's a coincidence that heterocyclic/tricyclic anti-depressants have come under extreme scrutiny. Basically--do they even work. Oh yea, that double blind study, in India, proved they work 62% over a huge Placebo response? Meaning 6 patients answered three positive questing, more that the control group, on that poorly worded psychological test.
SSRIs are good at treating depression if you actually have depression. (something like 60% efficacy) If you don't have depression they don't work at all. The lack of efficacy of SSRIs is just US doctors again overdiagnosing and overtreating.
The theme is US healthcare is not very good for very many people..
> There are studies, done in nursing homes, that state that patients on opioids can stay on tge same dose of opioids for years, and don't feel the need go up their dose.)
Do you have a source? Because all the studies I've seen show that long term use of opioids causes tolerance, and doesn't work to treat pain.
Re: over prescribing antidepressants (and various other medications), I think there is a real problem in America with getting an accurate diagnosis in the first place, which contributes to the overprescription problem. Also, most people are limited to a very small slice of office time, and I imagine that makes an accurate diagnosis difficult, too. In addition, American culture reinforces individualism, and tends to be isolating relative to many other cultures, which, I'm sure, contributes to the problem.
This all just reinforces your larger point that US healthcare is not very good for very many people. It's great if you have the money (or insurance) to see whoever you need to, but not so good if you don't.
> The US uses 99% of the world supply of hydrocodone, for example.
That's a very misleading statistic. It's because most everywhere else in the world doesn't prescribe it... they typically give smaller doses of _stronger_ opioids.
I don't understand - why would cheap/free drugs prevent gun battles, car break ins or OD'ing?
As far as I'm aware, junkies still need money to eat/sleep/drink and very few have a reliable source of income. All gun battles aren't over drugs, and would still occur. And not all overdoses are caused by tainted drugs.
>> I don't understand - why would cheap/free drugs prevent gun battles
No profit to fight over
>> car break ins
No need to find hundreds of dollars a day to support the habit
>> or OD'ing?
Known quantities of known substances can help people avoid OD from either the wrong thing (fentanyl lately) or unexpected purity.
>> As far as I'm aware, junkies still need money to eat/sleep/drink and very few have a reliable source of income.
You only need a few bucks a day to eat/sleep/drink, you need potentially hundreds for your habit at present. Given an easy, cheap supply many will be able to hold down a regular job.
>> All gun battles aren't over drugs, and would still occur.
But the ones over drug money would stop, drugs are a major source of gang funding.
>> And not all overdoses are caused by tainted drugs.
That's a strange argument. Alcohol is a drug sold in the open pretty much everywhere.
You still see plenty alcoholists unable to keep a job, stealing things, fighting and even dying from their habit. It's almost as if easily accessible drugs doesn't fix the underlying problem here.
Sure: being drunk in various contexts may be, and can be a serious crime (drink driving, certain commercial operators expecially). But being in possession of alcohol, drinking it in your home, sharing it with friends (provided above legal age and not driving): not a crime.
You've got the fundamental problem of addiction, for those who are addicted (many are, many are not). But you aren't layering on the additional crime of criminalisation.
Alcohol is addictive and toxic. Yes, we do have alcoholics all over the place. Few are dead.or dying because of methanol poisoning, and few need to steal hundreds of dollars a day for a fix.
It's not really a very strange argument, particularly when it comes to opiates - it's a pretty well evidenced argument. Those with access to cheap or free maintenance doses have a better recovery rate, and a better rate of being able to re-enter prodictive society.
people gamble their money away and its plenty legal. The free market won't solve everything.
I also have a bit of a hard time imagining that someone having even easier access to, say, meth will thus be able to hold onto a job more easily. Personally I can't show up drunk to work.
Though I agree with things like gang violence, I do worry about the effects on public health. Cigarettes and alcohol mess up society a lot already
I'm not claiming it's going to be 100% solution, only that it would be much better, and cut out some of the profit motives at the gang level, and need for vast amounts of cash at the addict level.
>> I also have a bit of a hard time imagining that someone having even easier access to, say, meth will thus be able to hold onto a job more easily. Personally I can't show up drunk to work
Me neither. And I honestly don't know how this stuff might apply to a substance like meth.
I know that studies tend to show that when opiate addicts are given easy and cheap/free access to maintenance doses and counselling, they have a much easier time returning to something like a normal life, and many can hold down jobs while either continuing the maintenance indefinitely or slowly tapering. The constant search for money and the insecurity about the next dose both make the effects of the addiction on their lives much, much worse. And it's not like heroin is all that expensive to make.
This isn't, as I said above, necessarily an argument for a totally free market in heroin, but it is to show that a different approach may reduce the harm to the individual and reduce the harm done to society by both those individuals and the black market profit-making organisation above them. Not to mention the hell that gets rained on producer-countries.
>> Cigarettes and alcohol mess up society a lot already
Objectively, scientifically, these are two of the worst and most harmful drugs we know of.
That's great but the original comment implied that all of the above would stop. My comment refuted it, your comment is agreeing - in that it wouldn't stop it but may reduce it.
If you imagine a world where alcohol is illegal and replace every instance of drugs in your comment with alcohol, I think you could begin to understand how legalizing the distribution of drugs - just like alcohol - would solve a lot of problems.
How often do you hear about gun battles over alcohol?
It's overall cheaper. It's safer for him and you. Reduces crime, which saves money on police.
And if drugs are cheap to most, and free to some, there's no huge profit to be made by illegally selling them. Thus, no gun fights over distribution spots on the streets.
"Help the addict but punish the dealer" feels good to say but the world just isn't that simple.