Or if not entirely legalised, than at least prescribed to all addicts.
My understanding of the situation in the UK is that over half of all theft is committed by junkies (I don’t have a cite, it may well be a myth I’ve heard so often that I now believe it). Now, I’m sure a lot of junkies were criminals already. However, heroin addiction is a disease that all but compels any idiot who has got addicted to it to get the money to fund it, any way they can. If we just gave it to them, surely they’d be less likely to steal things, and the cost of manufacturing a whole load of heroin is, I suspect, much cheaper than the expense incurred through police, hospital, welfare bills etc.
Great. Now who pays for the cost of manufacturing/processing the Heroin? Obviously not the addicts; otherwise they wouldn’t be robbing/stealing in the first place.
I sincerely hope you are not thinkng about/advocating a government financed/administered program paid for out of tax dollars?
A lot of people makie a comparison to the days of Prohibition, where the illegality of buying and selling alcohol led to the rise of gansters and gang violence. What these people don’t seem to want to acknowledge, however, is that while repealing Prohibition may have decreased gang violence to a degree (or not – I suspect many of the gangs just went into other forms of illegal activity), the number of alcohol related problems since then have skyrocketed, whether we’re talking about hepatitis, drunk driving, spousal abuse, or what have you.
My suspicion is that, while legalizing heroing might decrease crimes committed by those who commit crimes to feed their habit, making heroin completely legal would lead to a whole host of other, perhaps worse, crimes and problems.
I thought it was obvious that that was exactly what I was suggesting.
It sounds uncomfortable, but my question was in itself largely based on economics, ie. our taxes are already going to waste dealing with junkies as it is, and this might be cheaper.
godzillatemple - yes, that is exactly my worry as well. However, I’m told that as long as an addict is kept fed their supply, then they can function perfectly well in society; hold down jobs, what have you. There were thousands of WWII wounded veterans that were prescribed some kind of opiate for decades after the war - these men were, to all intents and purposes, junkies, they just had a rather more noble reason for being so.
Do you distinguish between the bad things like someone of their own free will ODing on a drug and a junkie mugging people for his artificially expensive fix? IMHO, the government has far less business attempting to stop bad thing 1 than bad thing 2.
I reckon that herioin should be perscribed as you suggest DrNick. Once you have all the heroin addicts on a database and their addiction is being managed, you can start to get them off it.
And im sure that it would be far cheaper to manufacture clean,quality herion than to carry on fighting a battle which cant be won.
Am i right in thinking that pure herion is called morphine and is actually not addictive?
Society has an interest in whether or not people OD on drugs, because they impose a cost upon society. Put at its crudest level, if someone “of their own free will” ODs on heroin, somebody else has to clear away the body afterwards.
Put on a slightly higher level; the government (as the expression of the will of society) has a duty to promote behaviour which is in the interests of both society as a whole, and the individuals who comprise it. Therefore, the government has a duty to try to get people to be happy, productive citizens, and not drug addicts. Dead junkies are a liability on anybody’s balance sheet.
Now, whether or not current government policies are effective in doing that, that’s a whole other question …
I heard on the Irish media (a while back, no cite) that the police estimated 80% of burglaries were heroin-related. Also that trial programs in Frankfurt (?) and Liverpool, where heroin was prescribed by a doctor and dosage was monitored with the intent of reducing it; the crime rates dropped by 80%. This, however is from my memory so may be inaccurate.
BTW, heroin is already legal in the medical profession as diamorphine, IIRC.
sinical brit, I just love your scheme. Where do I sign up for it?
I mean, here I am, working away at an underpaid, demanding job, coming home to an empty flat every night, generally fairly miserable most of the time … under your plan, I could pack all that in! Just get myself addicted to heroin, give up the job (give up pretty much everything, but once you’re on junk you don’t care about anything else anyway), and shoot myself full of state-sponsored smack all day. I’d be happy! I wouldn’t have to work! Of course, there’d be doctors trying to get me off it, but why would I want to stop?
(If you can’t see a down side to this idea, you’re not looking hard enough.)
Question: I recognize that heroin is a bad thing, and that we, as individuals, should dissuade people from doing it. Does the government have the same responsibility?
I expect the government I vote for to protect me from crime. The choice as I see it is to live in Fort Knox and the government put a cop on every corner, or they do something to alleviate the heroin crime all around.
BTW, sinicalbrit, heroin is an opiate, as is morphine, derived from opium and they’re both addictive.
ExTank, do you have realize how cheap drugs actually are? If drugs weren’t illegal, it is estimated that their cost would be 1/20th of their current levels. Marijuana would be as cheap as tea. (Information from a USC economics study - I’ve cited the research in earlier drugs threads. If you want me to, I’ll track it down.) The current high cost of drugs is directly due to the risk premium criminalization imposes.
So, in most instances, the addict would indeed be able to pay for it. A junkie may have to steal to support a $100/day dope habit, but it considerably less likely that they would have to steal to support a $5/day dope habit (or if they still had to, they’d be stealing a lot less, which is a benefit in itself).
Add to that the fact that British and Swiss prescription programs also include job skills support, and the increased likelihood that the addict will be able to get and keep a job, thus earning money to pay for the (much cheaper) heroin.
Steve Wright - what then, is stopping you doing that now? You sign up on any street corner !!
Just because something ceases to be illegal ( although highly regulated ) doesnt mean that everyone is going to start doing it.
Heroin use leads to a crappy way of life whether perscribed or obtained on the street. You can get addicted to perscription tranquilsers and go on the sick if you want. Whats that? No, you rather be sane in your “underpaid, demanding job, coming home to an empty flat every night…”
Thought so. Thats why were not all doing it. Give society some credit.
The Swiss and German governments have had great success in reducing drug dependence and overdosing by prescribing heroin and/or supplying safe injection sites. There is a real benefit to taking a harm reduction approach to the drug battle rather than a punitive one. That being said, legalisation would solve no problems, and would in fact be counterproductive.
In those countries where it is prescribed, an addict must be registered, and generally has tried other means to get clean and failed. These are usually the last-chance addicts, with nothing to lose but their lives. It’s not something any idiot can do just by deciding to get hooked.
Heroin is also extremely addictive, more so than most other drugs (except crack and possibly nicotine). Once a person shoots (or snorts or smokes), they’re usually useless for several hours, because the euphoria it causes is a complete activity inhibitor (why do anything when lying there staring at the ceiling feels so good?). This is why it is generally difficult for addicts to lead normal lives, on top of the illegal nature of their habit. So legalizing it would not help make people more productive.
Also, in studies in western countries, heroin use is generally only prevalent in about 0.3% of the population, and most of those people aren’t hard-core users. The amount of money spent on law enforcement and incarceration far exceeds the costs of treating it like an addiction and supplying and monitoring the addicts. It is also a better method for preventing the spread of diseases, such as Hepatitis A, B, and C, and HIV, which are rampant among heroin and cocaine injectors. There exists TONS of research on the subject, so I won’t post any cites here, because a quick search on PubMed will keep anyone interested busy for days with reading material.
Out-right legalization won’t help, but recognizing heroin (and cocaine and other drug) addiction as an illness and not a crime will make a big difference, both in the health of the individual addicts and society.
Intelligent argument, I don’t think. It’s exactly the same as the one put about unemployed single mothers (have a baby, live off the state benefits!) . You can question the person’s judgement in getting into the situation, but the idea that they did it deliberately to sponge off the tax-payer is unlikely
Heroin addiction may not kill you straight off, but it certainly isn’t a healthy lifestyle. And for those who do prefer life that way, as you suggest, well, they’re life’s losers already and I’d far rather they slipped away into oblivion on free heroin rather than robbing my house to pay for it. Heroin that’s legal would be dirt cheap.
If society is prepared to pay for the fall out from alcohol and tobacco, I see no reason why heroin should be any different. We have to face up to it; addiction is part of the human condition, an ugly part maybe, but a part we have to learn to live with. Making it illegal will never make it go away and experience shows us it has never, ever worked.
In the same vain, you could also ask why doesn’t everybody just go out and commit crime so they can go to prison? Why work when you can get free state sponsored room and board?
