Opiate addiction is a massive problem, but prohibition is not helping. People have no way of knowing how strong the heroin they buy is, and they OD. Illegal drugs of any kind lead to gangs and shootings. Keeping things illegal means that they are very expensive on the black market. This leads addicts to steal and rob to feed their addiction. Pharmacy robberies are a huge problem, and are always for oxycontin. I think people should just be able to buy this stuff off the shelf, instead of having to show up at CVS with a pipe bomb to get it.
Legal opiates would massively cut down on violence, and would make it much easier for addicts to get help if they want it. We tried prohibition for alcohol, and it failed miserably. I think prohibition for heroin/oxycontin is also a disaster.
Prohibition for all ‘recreational’ drugs is a disaster that fuels crime and the prison industry.
Are you willing to accept an increase in the sheer number of addicts, and an increase in the number of them that die every year? Because that’s a likely outcome.
When Prohibition was repealed both drinking and alcoholism went up, even as certain types of crime went down.
I am. I should be able to ingest whatever I want, as an adult.
I tend to agree that the prohibition of recreational drugs, and now painkillers, has not worked. Looking at just the painkillers (opiates), you now have people buying their meds illegally or replacing them with heroin, instead of working with their doctor, where they can be monitored. As a consequence, you see increased heroin use and overdoses. How is this an improvement?
Interesting. I really don’t know where you stand on the whole gun control/gun banning issue, but according to Obama in this CNN article more Americans die each year already (i.e. without legalization) from opiates than do in car crashes…which means that more Americans die from them than die from guns. And unlike guns, the opiate figures are increasing, not going down or even leveling off.
Now, I’m good with that. Like you say, people should be free to do what they like as long as they don’t break our laws for DUI/DWI…i.e. as long as they don’t harm or infringe on the rights of others, they should be free to kill themselves through the ingestion of whatever floats their boat, IMHO anyway.
“Opiate” means drugs derived from the opium poppy.
“Opioid” means any drug which acts as do opiates
Reference: Heroin was heralded as a “Salvation for Opium Addicts”. Now methadone is heralded as a salvation for heroin addicts.
Meanwhile, I am in pain because of DEA/FDA and everybody else is panicking over “Opioid Addiction!”.
Yes, there will be more addicts and more deaths.
I am old enough and cynical enough to point out that is is a Hell of a lot cheaper to bury a dead junkie than to try to clean up his messes - crime and extreme medical expenses.
And I don’t like pain.
Let’s try it and see.
The great Collapse of Western Civilization widely predicted following legalization of weed has yet to happen.
The vast majority of problems that comes with opiate addicts is not the opiates - it’s the lack of them that causes the to commit crime.
While some nod out and stuff like that - you see people everyday that are addicts and function just fine - they get their supplies from doctors.
It’s cases where opiates are combined with muscle relaxers, alcohol, and benzos; inability to tell the purity of street heroin; and addicts that come off for a bit and go back to their old level - which is now leathal that causes a lot of the overdose deaths.
Much of the multi drug use is due to economic reasons - there are plenty of addicts that would be fine with just opiates, but it is a cheaper high to combine them.
That isn’t to say that long term opiate use doesn’t have its problems:it’s associated with hearing loss, opiate induced algesia, more likely to be unemployed, etc…
And the idea that there would be more addicts is the result is kinda ignoring the underlying issues. Many opiate users do this to self medicate real underlying issues. Same with nicotine and other substances.
There are ways for many to relatively easily get off opiates (or at least substitute for something less “dangerous”). But we have this ridiculous policy that in order to get it - you have to test positive for opiates.
So you have thousands of people every day trying to stay clean - that walk into a clinic or doctors office (has to special ones) - and feel like they are going to give into their addiction. And they are told “sorry, you tested clean”. And at least one doctor I know tells them “go get heroin and come back after you’ve used”.
That’s the type of ridiculous drug policies we have in this country.
It does appear we are finally turning a corner as both sides of the aisle now admit that the 100x disparity for crack cocaine was a mistake, we are allowing people to get naloxone, and hopefully more needle exchanges.
Interesting argument, albeit comically mooted by the continued legality of tobacco.
I think we should be able to ingest any guns that we want.
Yep.
I don’t think it’s moot at all. It’s really the same thing, in my mind. As a society we collectively decide what risks we will take and what things we will allow our adult citizens to possess or use. We allow alcohol and thus accept that a large non-zero number of our citizens will die because of this decision. Same goes for tobacco, or marijuana, or perhaps opiates or whatever. To me, as long as someone isn’t breaking the law or endangering others with their use (instead of mis-use) of something, I’m good with it being legal for them to do so. And when they DO break the law through misuse I’m good with throwing the fucking book at them and bringing down the wrath of the gods on their miserable heads. 
I rather grossly misinterpreted, thought you were suggesting something about guns and/or … well… something else I’m sure I misunderstood. I can no longer remember what my intended point was, beyond how tobacco use kills more people than opiates and guns combined.
It does. No, my point wasn’t really about guns, per se, but about risk and societies tolerance for that risk. You are right…tobacco use kills a lot more people (probably an order of magnitude more, at least) annually in the US than either guns, booze, cars or even fast food.
You have a moral and legal obligation to be a “reasonable person” who can be trusted to act with a certain degree of care for everyone around you. Knowingly sabotaging your ability to act as a “reasonable person” by turning yourself into a heroin addict is a violation of that obligation.
Because then we wouldn’t be good little cogs in the machine of the state? Seriously, why can’t adults decide for themselves what it is to ‘act as a “reasonable person”’, or that the definition of ‘reasonable person’ can vary from person to person?
Because when people are negligent, innocent people die. A heroin addict is a primed grenade - if something gets between them and their next fix, all bets are off.
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Legal opiates would massively cut down on violence, and would make it much easier for addicts to get help if they want it.
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I agree with you but I must ask; are you limiting this to the opiate/oid type drugs? If so I’d think it a good start but that much, much more could be done to stop drug related crime and the social disturbances it creates.
For that reason I am in cautious favour of legalizing everything for consenting adults. It is time to crush the crime syndicates and start taxing the privilege to exist in a society that can guarantee drug producers be professional and held to a strict accord. It is time to usher in an age of personal responsibility in which the behavior of addicts is judged against that same privilege. People behaving badly should be known as doing just that and the legal response to them should not be diluted by other concerns like it is now.
I am more inclined to think that in an environment where drinking itself is illegal, that self reporting of an illegal activity would be lower than when it is not a crime. That is a guess, though, and not a cite I admit.
Naturally you apply the same reasoning to alcohol.
I’m all for the legalization of marijuana but opiates are an entirely different beast. A good few reasons for keeping them controlled: 1) It’s really easy to die from ingesting opiates (and my pet I-can’t-prove-it-but-I-know-it’s-true theory is that these sudden deaths don’t necessarily come from ODing or mixing them with other drugs, but can also happen randomly from normal doses). 2) It is an easy addiction to acquire and very hard to quit. and 3) Restricting the supply actually does keep people from becoming addicts.
I wonder what the retail price of heroin would be like if it were suddenly legalized? Low enough to put the opium cartels out of business? Or would they thrive just fine, side by side with Big Pharma, with lower profit margins compensated for by increased sales volume?