# Do abortion rights imply "heroin rights"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 23, 2013, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038 "2013-10-23T16:46:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2013, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038/61 "2013-10-24T18:27:55Z")
> [@Iggy](#): > > So the logical conclusion is that if a woman can perform her own abortion then it should be allowed? > > Abortions do not take place in isolation from the greater marketplace. Doctors use medical supplies and drugs, pay rent on offices, buy exam tables and other office furnishings, and so on. Not exactly “should be allowed”, but “can’t be stopped.” Plenty of women used to self-abort or go to someone in the neighborhood. One of the reasons abortions was legalized was a realization that if it can’t be stopped, that legalizing abortions under some conditions and haveing them done in a medical environment made it MUCH safer for the woman. ---
**Author:** ![Farin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e79b87/32.png) [@Farin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farin)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2013, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038/62 "2013-10-24T19:19:31Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > I am absolutely not an expert, but this is not my understanding of heroin addiction. My understanding, which again may be simply a mis-understanding based on foolishness, is that it’s perfectly possible to be a functioning heroin addict. It is possible to be a functional _anything_ addict. However, the functional heroin addict is very, very small portion of heroin users. And a lot of the functional users (up until a year or two ago when they made it harder to illegally get the medicinal forms of heroin) used pills for the medical forms of the drug, not street heroin. A good portion of being “Functional” is also knowing that what you get every time is the same stuff in the same amount, especially with something like heroin where you can go off the deep end fairly quickly. You see a similar pattern with functional meth users. Most functional meth users will be on things like adderall. The street meth is too varied to reliably control your intake. To illustrate: Try to be a (Actual, not in the “quotation” sense) social drinker. How many beers is your limit? 2, get a buzz and you’re good to go? What if one of those beers is 90% alcohol and the other beer is 3.2% alcohol? Still two? Maybe one and a half? What if you have no idea which is what percentage? Once you leave the realm of pills/standardized amounts, it becomes harder to control yourself because you’ll randomly get a higher-concentrated or complementary drug in a dose and your need level will elevate. The more addictive the substance, the quicker this can happen. My expertise is non-professional. I did a lot of research to help a friend out of a situation about ten years ago. I’ve kept up on the subject, but am by no means perfect in my knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2013, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038/63 "2013-10-25T13:20:35Z")
> [@Farin](#): > > The gang and drug lord violence would probably drop, but the crime of the users would stay. > > If the hard drugs are available from the supermarket, people would rob from the supermarket to get their fix. Or they would rob from the grannies to get money to pay the supermarket for their fix. The next high is largely what drives people addicted to stuff like that. Except that as I noted such drugs are extremely cheap to produce. If they were sold like any other product, you wouldn’t need to rob anyone to get them because they would cost next to nothing. ---
**Author:** ![Farin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e79b87/32.png) [@Farin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farin)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2013, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038/64 "2013-10-25T15:06:43Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Except that as I noted such drugs are extremely cheap to produce. If they were sold like any other product, you wouldn’t need to rob anyone to get them because they would cost next to nothing. So, being cheap would mean that people wouldn’t get addicted to heroin? People wouldn’t lose their jobs from their addiction? They wouldn’t steal to feed their addiction after they run out of money? Think of legal heroin like Alcohol. All the time people lose their jobs because they showed up drunk. They sleep on other people’s couches and exist only to serve the bottle. I’m not saying there is a pandemic of drunken losers, but you could probably gut-check a subset of alcoholics doing this. A similar percentage of heroin users would be in this same state with heroin. They don’t care about work, or anything except their next fix. This won’t go away with legalizing heroin or making it cheaper. Meth would pose the same problems. I assume you are a proponent of legalizing all drugs. While I have my own reservations about this, you should be realistic about what will happen after they are legalized. You won’t get rid of the criminal element. You might change it (probably not the way it’s expected to change), but it won’t disappear. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038/65 "2013-10-26T07:31:24Z")
Heroin addiction is a disease and should be treated as such. Not as a crime. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038/66 "2013-10-26T08:30:56Z")
> [@Farin](#): > > I assume you are a proponent of legalizing all drugs. While I have my own reservations about this, you should be realistic about what will happen after they are legalized. You won’t get rid of the criminal element. You might change it (probably not the way it’s expected to change), but it won’t disappear. Heck, after Prohibition ended there was a rise in kidnappings, extortion and bank robbery. Crooks don’t stop being crooks, they just find other crookery to do. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038/67 "2013-10-26T09:54:35Z")
> [@Farin](#): > > So, being cheap would mean that people wouldn’t get addicted to heroin? People wouldn’t lose their jobs from their addiction? They wouldn’t steal to feed their addiction after they run out of money? > > Think of legal heroin like Alcohol. All the time people lose their jobs because they showed up drunk. They sleep on other people’s couches and exist only to serve the bottle. I’m not saying there is a pandemic of drunken losers, but you could probably gut-check a subset of alcoholics doing this. > > A similar percentage of heroin users would be in this same state with heroin. They don’t care about work, or anything except their next fix. This won’t go away with legalizing heroin or making it cheaper. Meth would pose the same problems. > > I assume you are a proponent of legalizing all drugs. While I have my own reservations about this, you should be realistic about what will happen after they are legalized. You won’t get rid of the criminal element. You might change it (probably not the way it’s expected to change), but it won’t disappear. People don’t rob convenience stores and gas stations and liquor stores to get cash to buy alcohol.\* Why should one assume they would do so to get a box of Heroin-Os (a part of this complete breakfast) at the local Whole Foods market? \*not on the kind of scale that present-day junkies are perceived to do, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038/68 "2013-10-26T18:56:26Z")
> [@Farin](#): > > Once you leave the realm of pills/standardized amounts, it becomes harder to control yourself because you’ll randomly get a higher-concentrated or complementary drug in a dose and your need level will elevate. The more addictive the substance, the quicker this can happen. Well, sure, but I would assume regulation would go hand-in-hand with legalization. You don’t get 180 proof beers (I’m not even sure it’s possible to have “beer” that has that much alcohol. I’m very ignorant about alcohol) without knowing it. I would think you wouldn’t get the 180 proof equivalent of heroin without knowing it if it were regulated. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038/69 "2013-10-26T19:17:48Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > Well, sure, but I would assume regulation would go hand-in-hand with legalization. You don’t get 180 proof beers (I’m not even sure it’s possible to have “beer” that has that much alcohol. I’m very ignorant about alcohol) without knowing it. I would think you wouldn’t get the 180 proof equivalent of heroin without knowing it if it were regulated. Exactly. The qualities that make it difficult to be a high-functioning heroin user exist largely _because_ prohibition makes quality control problematic. If there was regulation rather than prohibition, standardization of purity and dosage would make being a high-functioning junkie more realistic. I confess to ignorance as to whether a user’s tolerance levels would gradually increase to where a lethal dose would eventually be the minimum that could produce the desired effect (I know _about_ that phenomenon only in the context of prohibition). But I do know that you can’t really get beer to go higher than about 30 proof. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038/70 "2013-10-26T20:53:11Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > I confess to ignorance as to whether a user’s tolerance levels would gradually increase to where a lethal dose would eventually be the minimum that could produce the desired effect I am not a clinical pharmacologist, but feel confident in stating that by and large the lethal dose and “desired effect” dose rise in parallel. And, they decrease in parallel, too - that’s why it’s a relatively common scenario for someone who’s been off heroin for a while to OD on their very first dose after relapsing (i.e. if they take their immediate pre-quitting dose (or even a good portion of it)). ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038/71 "2013-10-26T21:04:49Z")
> [@Farin](#): > > So, being cheap would mean that people wouldn’t get addicted to heroin? No. Drugs are currently very costly. That’s why there’s so much crime associated with drug use. If your addiction cost you $ 10/day, you’re unlikely to resort to crime to fund it. You mentioned alcohol in your post. Despite the large number of alcoholics, mugging old ladies to feed one’s alcohol addiction isn’t particularly common. In fact, most alcoholics do hold a job. I expect it would be mostly the same with other addictions if drugs were equally available and affordable. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-abortion-rights-imply-heroin-rights/672038.md?page=3)