For the most part, yes. Lots of the harm comes from the fact they're not legal and cheaply available. For example, heroin, I would say nearly all the harm comes from the fact it's not legal. Overdoses are prevented because they can happen in safe places where people will notice. I've even been told of a story where people thought someone was having an overdose and they were told to go home because they couldn't risk calling an ambulance, I was told this story by one of the people telling the person to go home, so I believe it. The crime that comes from heroin comes from people trying to make money to buy heroin. Considering tobacco is more addictive, and we have way less crime to buy tobacco, it seems logical to assume crime would drop if drug addicts didn't have to spend 20-30 a day on drugs. Then you have the violence and anti-social behaviour which for most drugs is non-existent.
" I would say nearly all the harm comes from the fact it's not legal"
Wow, you're not using your imagination well enough to recognize how ubiquitously widespread opioid addiction would be were it integrated into our coffee, soft-drinks, an aperatif with dinner etc.. It would be a massive, ongoing public health crisis.
Combined with the fact that the effect quickly erodes, that users want ever more aggressive substitutes like Fentanyl, it almost guarantees the inevitable OD.
Blaming the 'harm' on systems literally trying to stop the promulgation of what arguably is actually poison ... is a leap in logic.
Tobacco is similarly additive, but it obviously has a completely different set of health effects.
Finally - if Tobacco is really in the same category of addictivity, then ironically, you've made an argument that we really should shut down the opioid industry hard, because while quitting smoking is difficult, it's not existentially hard and the resulting withdrawal does not require medical attention or anything on the scale of 'Trainspotting withdrawal'.
An acquaintance in Prison indicated they call the heroin addicts zombies, because they bang on the doors and yell 3 times a day as they receive their poison, which is slowly killing them. I'd argue that incarcerating people and slowly killing them is a strange punishment for those wanting to 'reduce harm' whereupon the logical thing for their health would be to make sure they had absolutely no access and an opportunity to dry out. I hope that in 50 year we look back on 'free heroin' like lobotomies or shock therapy.
Humans have some control of our faculties and must overcome impulses of all kind - facilitating the total degradation of that control system by administering poison is definitely a form of torture. I'd rather be waterboarded.
> Wow, you're not using your imagination well enough to recognize how ubiquitously widespread opioid addiction would be were it integrated into our coffee, soft-drinks, an aperatif with dinner etc.. It would be a massive, ongoing public health crisis.
That would never happen. People literally wouldn't buy the products enmass because they don't want to sit around drooping all day.
> Finally - if Tobacco is really in the same category of addictivity, then ironically, you've made an argument that we really should shut down the opioid industry hard, because while quitting smoking is difficult, it's not existentially hard and the resulting withdrawal does not require medical attention or anything on the scale of 'Trainspotting withdrawal'.
Everyone seems to be thinking about how bad the withdrawal is and not how long the addiction lasts. The addiction to heroin and many other substances is over in days and weeks. Tobacco as any former smoker who has successful quit will tell you, you have cravings for months, not constant but enough that it's a thing for quite a while.
> An acquaintance in Prison indicated they call the heroin addicts zombies, because they bang on the doors and yell 3 times a day as they receive their poison, which is slowly killing them. I'd argue that incarcerating people and slowly killing them is a strange punishment for those wanting to 'reduce harm' whereupon the logical thing for their health would be to make sure they had absolutely no access and an opportunity to dry out. I hope that in 50 year we look back on 'free heroin' like lobotomies or shock therapy.
You should look into how Portugal has dealt with the drug problem. The free heroin isn't the issue, it's the lack of other support systems to get them off the heroin. Prison is not a place for support.
"wouldn't buy the products the products enmass because they don't want to sit around drooping all day."
Yes they would (!) and we already know why: it's extremely addictive.
We have ample evidence from the ongoing Opioid Crisis that people who get 'too many pills' from an operation can and do become very addicted and 'do it all day'.
Have a look here [1] from the Economist.
What does that look like? It looks like 'COVID explosion' doesn't it?
And consider that we already have restrictions in place for Heroin, what would that 'R0/R1' (aka transmissible social disease) look like without restrictions? It would look like COVID 'without social distancing' aka disaster.
This is happening to Soccer Moms and Patent Lawyers.
And you must be aware that this isn't about 'being high' it's 'addiction servicing' whereby they need the fix to maintain a degree of normalcy.
'Opioids at the Gas Station Checkout' would devolve any society into 'World War Z' within a few months. Only a small fraction of the population affected would overwhelm the medical system.
> We have ample evidence from the ongoing Opioid Crisis that people who get 'too many pills' from an operation can and do become very addicted and 'do it all day'.
That's kind of different. So that's people who start taking them for medical reasons and become addicted during the course of taking them for medical reasons. This wasn't they decided to start taking them for fun. This also seems to be mainly an issue in the US as other countries doctors don't hand out these pills that often due to nature of them.
To understand what heroin usage is like you can watch a few seconds of this video that I have at the correct time https://youtu.be/17TbF6n4jI0?t=459. While it's Valium and not heroin trust me that is how heroin addicts act while on heoroin too.
Heroin has been legal repeatedly throughout time. It never brought the world down before.
The thing that caused the opioid crisis was doctors and Purdue pharma. Some folks are bad at handling addictive substances, and they were prescribed these things.
> Lots of the harm comes from the fact they're not legal and cheaply available.
I fully agree with this.
> For example, heroin, I would say nearly all the harm comes from the fact it's not legal. Overdoses are prevented because they can happen in safe places where people will notice.
Even if that is true, the harm that does not come from the fact that it's illegal would be magnified a hundredfold if it became as widespread as alcohol (which is, please keep that in mind, the scenario I was talking about). That's not hyperbole: Accodding to the European Drug Report 2018 (https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/8585/...), the prevalence of injecting drugs (chiefly heroin) is between 0 and 0.9%, which consumption of alcohol is pretty damn near 100%.
> Considering tobacco is more addictive, and we have way less crime to buy tobacco, it seems logical to assume crime would drop if drug addicts didn't have to spend 20-30 a day on drugs. Then you have the violence and anti-social behaviour which for most drugs is non-existent.
> Even if that is true, the harm that does not come from the fact that it's illegal would be magnified a hundredfold if it became as widespread as alcohol (which is, please keep that in mind, the scenario I was talking about). That's not hyperbole: Accodding to the European Drug Report 2018 (https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/8585/...), the prevalence of injecting drugs (chiefly heroin) is between 0 and 0.9%, which consumption of alcohol is pretty damn near 100%.
With heroin specifically the increase would be nowhere near what alcohol is. Heroin is not a party drug while alcohol is. Cocaine, Meth, and MDMA I would expect to see increase in usage for the party scene but heroin specifically wouldn't see that increase, it would a small increase at first but overall that would go down. Portugal has shown that if you legalise the drug and make it a health issue you then get access to the addicts and you can help them. This means while more people will take it, the number of concurrent users will be lower because the number of people coming off it will be higher.
> Even if that is not exaggerated (which I strongly supect it is)
I'm pretty sure there was a study somewhere but I am lazy. But 1 thing I can tell you, every heroin addict I've met and talked with about the addiction of different things, I've met lots, has said they found tobacco harder to give up than heroin. Heroin it seems has a shorter withdrawal period than tobacco, so once you're over the hump you're for the most part fine. With tobacco from experience, it took weeks to stop taking nicotine gum and months for the cravings to go away.
Those are envoirmental harm. I've heard heroin is healthier than alcohol but that's just some random heroin addicts so I take that with a grain of salt.
> Heroin is not a party drug while alcohol is. Cocaine, Meth, and MDMA I would expect to see increase in usage for the party scene but heroin specifically wouldn't see that increase, it would a small increase at first but overall that would go down.
Given how strong the heroin high is and how quickly and strongly physical addiction is, I would not be so sure about that.
> Portugal has shown that if you legalise the drug and make it a health issue
Portugal has not, in fact, legalised any previously illegal drug, or even fully decriminalized it. Not even cannabis.
> Given how strong the heroin high is and how quickly and strongly physical addiction is, I would not be so sure about that.
Have taken the drug and seen countless addicts, I can be sure on that.
> Portugal has not, in fact, legalised any previously illegal drug, or even fully decriminalized it. Not even cannabis.
OK, but they did make it a health matter instead of criminal matter. The fact the power is no longer in the criminal justice system means it's decriminalised.
err. have you heard about the opioid crisis? that stuff is to heroin like beer is to vodka. it's the same shit. waaaaaaay more people take opioids than just the heroin users, but there's all part of the same thing. it's the same molecule
But the harm is categorical. Cheap heroin might reduce the impact of crime/family issues, but what about the health of individuals? We'd be back to people wasting away in crack dens.
> Overdoses are prevented because they can happen in safe places where people will notice
what kind of places? If you become so addicted that overdose is likely, where would you be welcome?
Making something illegal doesn't mean it automatically becomes socially acceptable; piss-stained street drunks don't attract lots of caretakers.
It feels like your assuming that people will be able to manage their addictions, and remain functional - I'm not sure this is realistic. Even mildly addictive substances can really wreck peoples ability to function.
Can you provide a source that suggests: "tobacco is more addictive [than heroin]"?
Because we have data to back this up.
Countries like the Netherlands or Portugal have was fewer OD deaths than countries where a hard drugs use is more punished.
It's not so much it stops them but saving their life if they have one. If you see someone overdosing from heroin and intervene the person can live. Whereas, if they're sat alone in some house they'll die. Saferooms are about watching them and making sure they get medical treatment if needed. But then there is also the purity issue someone else mentioned.
Known purity, quality control, known quantity. If you actually know how much it’ll take you to get high you’re not going to overdose because you coverage got a stronger than average batch. You certainly aren’t going to get fentanyl sold as heroin.
Can't reply directly to SirSourdough because of thread limits.
>I don't think this really address the point though. Alcohol is sold with known purity, quality, and quantity. You aren't going to overdose due to an impurity.
Their argument was never that it would stop everything, only that it would help (and I agree).
How many people have you met that have gone blind from drinking "bad" alcohol? During the prohibition era, this was an actual issue people faced.
>A major decline in the risk per use massively outweighed by a huge increase in use over time due to legalization.
There is evidence that decriminalization when paired with other policies can potentially cause decreases in usage as well as a decrease in negative outcomes such as HIV transmission rates and drug deaths.
I don't think this really addresses the point though. Alcohol is sold with known purity, quality, and quantity. You aren't going to overdose due to an impurity.
Yet dangerous drinking is still very common, and alcohol causes significant strains on our society, perhaps more than any other drug. Why do we think that the situation would be different with legalizing other drugs? A major decline in the risk per use massively outweighed by a huge increase in use over time due to legalization.
