My apologies. I thought you were responding to my last post. What I meant in the sentence you quoted is that it’s often the people equating the two who are playing politics. It was not my position that politics should determine which type of drug is worse, which is what you said.
See? This is what I’m talking about. I didn’t say it was “okay”. I attempted to explain why some people can be addicted to pain-killers yet remain scornful and punitive toward street-drug users. I was trying to illustrate their thinking, not mine. I have indeed tended not to equate pain-killer addiction with street-drug addiction, but I don’t feel punitive toward street-drug users simply because they’re addicts. This is an important distinction and one that quite a few of the posters around here seem unable to make.
Rush apparently looks at the issue in the way I described.
I dunno. You seemed to zero in on it in your post and you seemed to feel that it was little worse than pain-killers in terms of causing dangerous behavior. I read it as though you omitted meth and heroin because it would be more difficult to argue them as being relatively benign. But I could be wrong. No big deal either way.
Now, having said that, I’ve got a couple more busy days coming up, and I’ve made the points I wanted to make, so I’m going to bow out now.
Heroin is a pain killer, SA. Just like oxycontin. They are both opiates. There’s barely a dime’s worth of difference between them.
As a whole, opiate addicts are about as non-violent a class of criminals you’ll find. They may steal & lie and cheat to support their addiction, but they’ll gladly forego food, drink, shelter, and even human companionship to sit quietly in a corner somewhere with their next fix. When deprived of that, they may try to steal something they can sell, or scam someone (like Rush and other doctor shoppers do) but violence, or even threat of violence, even during withdrawal, is uncommon.
Stimulant addicts can be a bit different, granted. But even the worst meth-heads tend to inflict the violence on themselves during their acute intoxication, far more often than on others.
No, the vast majority of violence of the drug culture comes from the drug dealers, not the addicts. That’s why it is foolhardy to target the addict for punishment, or divide the addicts into different classes (respectible vs. not).
Worse yet is setting up arbitrary rules to pronounce the addicts to be dealers, when they’re clearly not. In many jurisdictions, if a person has over 30 pills of a narcotic that is not prescribed for him, he is defined by law as being a dealer. And most addicts will consume that amount themselves in mere days if not hours. And if they’re caught with 35 pills within 100 yards of a church or school, then their crime is considered even worse, dealing drugs to children and the Godly!!
That’s a piss-poor method to target the dealers, by redefining what a drug dealer is.
additionally, I don’t know of many drug users who don’t (from time to time) sell some small quantity. (usually at a slightly inflated price so they can then get more). when dealing w/ some one who’s crime was ‘poss w/int to distribute less than 50 grams’ , I always ask 'how much money was involved. ’ usually it’s a small amount. also, inmy jurisdiction, you can get a delivery charge by telling some one where they can get drugs (ie, identifying the dealer). and often the narcotics squad does deals w/one person to turn on/in several others. One guy I know, every single deal he did was w/a cop. (I know this info from the cop side). How do you suppose that happens other than a complete and utter set up?
Thanks, Qadgop. As is likely apparent, I wasn’t aware of this. I’ve had occasion from time to time to use Hydrocodone and Oxycontin and I never got anything at all out of them other than the reduction or elimination of the pain I was having at that time. I’ve mentioned to people from time to time that I don’t understand what it is that people who get hooked on these drugs experience. I was also under the impression that one had to take quite a few doses before becoming hooked on them. My impression of heroin, on the other hand, has been that it’s a very strong drug that tends to get people hooked almost immediately, and that the reaction it produces is strong and immediate.
As a result of your posts, as well as those of DoctorJ and a couple of other posters to this thread, my view in regard to this subject has changed. But of course I’m only one in a country of millions who hold pretty much the same view as the one I had, and Limbaugh, I’m sure, is one of them. And unlike the case with Limbaugh, most of us don’t hold this opinion out of political rancor but out of the view that street-drug users ruin their own lives and those of their family and loved ones, and that they frequently engage in behavior that poses a threat to others - whether that threat is being mugged or burgled or having a nearby house blow up from cooking meth. People also don’t like the fact that their own children are exposed to it and that they be being tempted by people who are already using.
I guess my point in closing is that people can hold very negative views of the drug culture and drug users for reasons other than political affiliation, and for reasons that are not necessarily mean-spirited…and that to people who aren’t privvy to discussions of this nature, it’s easy to view street-drug addiction as a much different animal than pain-killer addiction.
Posts like yours, lacking rancor, are much more effective in ignorance-fighting than posts that just appear to say SA=Republican=jerk. Thanks again for taking the time to post.
if your concern is ‘the children’. you should be even more concerned w/the rise in prescription drug use/abuse among kids. they raid their parents pill closets.
It’s also worth noting that in some countries heroin is a legal painkiller for those who are tolerant to lesser opiates - in much the same way that extremely powerful opiates like Fentanyl, a drug that’s far stronger by weight than heroin, is a legal prescription drug here in the U.S.
It’s crazy how much effect the word “heroin” has on people.
You said there is a distinction between some drugs (like oxycontin) and other drugs (like heroin) because people commit crimes to obtain the latter. So these drugs should be illegal because they encourage these crimes.
I responded that there’s no inherent difference between these two types of drugs. People commit crimes to get heroin because heroin is illegal not because of some inherent quality in heroin. People commit less crimes to get quasi-legal drugs like oxycontin because they don’t need to commit these crimes not because oxycontin is more moral. The illegality of the drug, not the drug itself, is what causes most of the associated crimes.
I can’t make it any simpler. I’m sorry if you couldn’t follow this, but if so I guess you’re going to have to accept it’s one of those things you don’t understand.
There’s a pretty well-understood relationship between the price of drugs (which is directly related to their legal status, since illegal drugs are vastly more expensive since their sale has to support an immense black market) and what sort of things people addicted to those drugs end up doing.
People who can afford methadone treatment, or people who can afford prescription opiates, or rich people who can afford any kind of drugs, tend to be a lot more law-abiding than people who have to steal and rob to get the money they need for drugs … until their ability to easily procure their drug of choice disappears. Then they’ll often do whatever is necessary to get their next fix. The actual difference between street drugs and prescription drugs is that they’re pretty much identical except you have to pay (and risk) a lot more to obtain a product of much lower purity.
In addition to what everybody has said about painkiller addicts committing crimes to satisfy their addiction, people have been known to do anything for almost every other addictive drug when it becomes hard to get. The Consumer’s Union report Licit and Illicit Drugs talks about women prostituting themselves and people trading all their food for cigarettes during WWII, when cigarettes were very scarce.
Actually, you stupid bitch, it’s because you’ll forgive anything if a Republican does it. Nothing more to it, so try not to present yourself as something deeper than that.
Of course in your admiration for Q the M, you gloss over how rancorous your own postings in this thread could and would be seen by those who are or know/love addicts who became addicted in ‘the bad way’.
Please see that your position of ‘good addict/bad addict’ was quite offensive to many. You may not have intended it that way, but it was. So, perhaps, the next time folks bristle in their response to you, you could reflect on your own posting first to see if you were unintentionally offensive before you get riled at the response.
I agree -the folks I work w/ are called by their last name, but must “ma’am/sir” the officers. I always tell 'em I’m not old enough to be a ma’am.
(what does “QFT” mean?)
You are quite right. My comments were in regard to people I see on t.v. or hear on the radio or read about here and there who are Limbaugh-enemies first and foremost and use his pain-killer problem as a weapon to further what was their own agenda to begin with. I had no one here in mind at all…and especially not anyone whose own life has been made difficult by addiction. In fact, prior to this thread I would never have guessed it was much of a problem for anyone here at all. (On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog…or a drug addict, either. ) That is why I posted the rather lengthy explanation of my former and current point of view and why I went into my past experiences with certain drug addicts I have known. Had I not felt I’d misstepped I likely wouldn’t have posted that information.
Further, as has been shown as the thread progressed, I was at the time of a very commonly shared opinion that pain-killers were rather minor compared to street-drugs. I’ve been advised differently by some people whose opinions I respect. My initial post also reflected that inaccurate belief.
I made the decision some time back that my posts had become too reactionary and hostile and I determined to try to dial it back somewhat, and in the main I feel I’ve done a fairly good job. This was a momentary slip-up and I offer my apologies to those I offended, even Merijeek.
And on preview, wring, it means “Quoted For Truth”. I believe he was pointing out the truth in what you said.
) That is why I posted the rather lengthy explanation of my former and current point of view and why I went into my past experiences with certain drug addicts I have known. Had I not felt I’d misstepped I likely wouldn’t have posted that information.