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You bring up good points. Is this debate also about letting everyone get whatever drugs they want without prescriptions? If I decide I want to try some statins, do I have to still go to the doctor or can I just go get them? Antiobiotics anyone? Ritalin for all?
Would opening this up lower everyone's healthcare costs? See the commercial, go try it.
Whether one would steal for drug money would depend on addictiveness of drug, cost of drug, users financial situation, etc. A panel of drug experts said cannabis is 1/3 as addicting as caffeine. So, do users of coffee or soda pop steal to get caffeine? If no, cannabis "addiction" likely doesn't cause a significant increase in stealing. If legalization decreased prices, it would be even more improbable cannabis users would steal. Cannabis elevates the mood, making it less likely a person will want other drugs.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the coffeehouses in the Netherlands are only for cannabis, which has a 0% chance of fatal OD.
For hard drugs, monitoring by a medical person who can supply the antidote for OD would make sense. So there should probably be safe injection sites, which could also supply clean needles. These sites could be in downtown areas if nobody was willing to have them in residential areas. Could they even be in rural areas?
Drugs are not escapable if they are in our air, soil, food, and water. Something like 85,000 toxins have been approved, mostly in the last 50 years.
I feel rehab should be for those who want it except I think people on potentially fatal drugs, should first try cannabis to see if that can stop use of the more harmful drug(s).
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Originally Posted by hellob
Unless the current user is a functioning one (weekend warriors), they are eventually going to steal from family and friends, then it trickles down to the general population.
Safe zones would be like the coffeehouses in the Netherlands. A place where you can use and be monitored. If you're not doing the drugs with some monitoring, how do you keep someone from giving their legal allotment to someone else who then ods?
I'm just thinking out loud but I don't think that the neighborhood or even the co occupants of your home really want drug. I'm all for not ruining a life with criminal charges but I just don't know how you can really make across the board legalization and distribution happen and tie it to increasing rehab.
Look at the hatred people have towards obese people and the burden they put on the health care system. The difference is that food is inescapable but drugs aren't. If people are so unsympathetic to those who make bad choices with food, how do you think that paying more for something that one has to seek out in order to get a problem?
Nobody should want statins. They're toxic and don't provide any good feeling and almost certainly are not needed. Policosanol is a "dietary supplement" that can lower cholesterol, but should we want to lower it? A doctor in Sweden has spent half his life specializing in studying fat and cholesterol, resulting in his new book "Fat and Cholesterol Are Good For You". He says he can't find a relationship between high cholesterol and heart attacks. Another elderly doctor online says don't worry if your cholesterol is under 300. Also, I've seen it sais cholesterol under 200 is associated with an increase in strokes.
Some people with cholesterol over 500 are still alive. How is this possible if doctors know all & don't lie?
Antibiotics weaken the immune system, which generally isn't good. I've never heard of a doctor saying people should take a probiotic to protect an antibiotic user from harm. Probiotics are called a "dietary supplement" and what they are is healthy fit bacteria.
Read the side effects of Ritalin at drugs.com if you want to know why we should avoid it.
Prior to the Harrison Act of 1914, people could choose their own drugs at the pharmacy, like cannabis oil.
After the Harrison Act, doctors decided which drug(s) patients should have, as in whichever made the pill companies the most profit. Before the Harrison Act, patients would know what they needed, or could consult with the pharmacists who are required to know about both natural and synthetic medicines.
Prescription pills kill about a quarter of a million Americans a year, more than all illegal drugs combined, according to U.S. gov't. All dietary supplements combined kill an average of 23 Americans a year, according to Consumer Reports.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KaraG
You bring up good points. Is this debate also about letting everyone get whatever drugs they want without prescriptions? If I decide I want to try some statins, do I have to still go to the doctor or can I just go get them? Antiobiotics anyone? Ritalin for all?
Would opening this up lower everyone's healthcare costs? See the commercial, go try it.
Last edited by GWTJ; 07-27-2017 at 08:42 PM..
Reason: punctuation error
I'd be all in favor of one or two states being allowed to completely legalize access to all drugs. They should also legalize prostitution, so women have a way to make money to pay for those drugs. The male druggies can steal and kidnap to get their money. Then the rest of us can stand back while those states star to look more and more like Haiti. But most honest people don't want that, so thats why theres a war on drugs.
Women can only pay for drugs if they do sex work? Not sure where _you_ live but the rest of us live in a world where women have a variety careers and can pay for their recreational choices in the same way as everyone else.
Loving the propaganda move at the end of your post too where you paint the people who agree with you as "honest". The implication for the opposite there is clear. There is nothing dishonest _at all_ about thinking that the proper way to deal with recreational drugs at a social level is a legal and regulated industry product rather than an underground unregulated product sold by criminal gangs.
I am sure - lacking any anti-drug arguments as you appear to - would love to paint all drug users as criminals who can only feed their habit through crime and sex work - but the reality is that the majority of users of recreational drugs (including alcohol) do so moderately and sensibly and without any negative impact on society or law.
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Originally Posted by augiedogie
I should have added, that along with ending the war on drugs, it should include ending all drug treatment programs,which have a high failure rate, and emergency services for overdoses. If people want to pursue their vices, fine, but I dont see why the public should be forced to save them.
I note that you throw out a "should" above without validating the "should" in any way. Why "should" we do any such thing? We do not do it with any other form of recreation. We have never withdrawn emergency services for people who have alcohol related medical issues or injury. People get sport injuries through their recreation of choice all the time - we do not turn our back on them declaring "You brought it on yourself".
It is _you_ who wants to single one recreational choice out for special (mis)treatment so it is _you_ who needs to justify that narrative.
Also I note you do not cite any statistics on the alleged "high failure rate" of drugs programs. But that fail aside one of the _many_ reasons for failure rates is that the criminal elements who sell these products know who their consumers are. And they will know who is trying to get off the drugs. And they will know to go around to them and tempt them and cajole them into buying more.
One aspect of a legal and regulated product is that it gives us the tools to compete and undermine the criminal gangs selling drugs. And when they are put out of business - we do not have them following punters home trying to get them to stay addicted.
Further the addiction of some drugs is exacerbated by criminal elements cutting other materials into their product that elevate the addictive nature of the drug. That is something you also would not have with a legal and regulated industry product.
And you speak of the "public" having to "save" them? Well a legal regulated product would be taxed. Therefore you would have a new revenue stream to finance the services that are already there and already being used to help and save people with addiction and overdose issues. And that is _before_ you factor in the money saved by having police process pointless crimes - or having our prison services incarcerate perpetrators of victimless crimes.
So in other words, having it illegal did squat to keep them from getting drugs....I would think you of all people would be a proponent of treatment rather than jail for drug users. Is the current system of having drugs be the domain of the criminal justice system helping the people you worked with?
I am strongly in favor of treatment, but recognize that treating full-blown addictions, much like jail, is an after-the-fact response. The lives, careers and families that are destroyed in getting to that stage are the real cost. In many cases, jail is the best thing that can happen to an out-of-control addict because it forces them to get cleaned-up and off drugs. Unfortunately, the recidivism rates of drug users are high, because 'force' is the only control to which they respond.
Not sure what you mean by, 'drugs are the domain of the criminal justice system' (?) -- With respect to drugs, the role of the criminal justice system is not so much to 'cure the addicts' -- as it is to protect society from their criminal and life-threatening behaviors (towards others). If they were otherwise willing to be 'cured' or overcome their own addictions, the criminal justice system would not be necessary. Further, I would suggest that a lot more hard-core addicts get their habit under control in jail, than in the many treatment programs that most attend prior to then.
Would opening this up lower everyone's healthcare costs? See the commercial, go try it.
Most civilized countries do not allow direct to consumer advertising of drugs. This is quite unique in the USA and part of the reason for all our problems and high medical costs.
But - there are many similar examples to what you are talking about.
Many of the athlete's foot and jock itch type cremes were "illegal" without a prescription. Now they are not - think of the amount of money and hassle saved.
So any and all similar things should be legal OR at least available after a very short consult with the Pharmacy.
As far as harder drugs - decriminalizing and legalizing are two different things. I wouldn't want to see methedrine easily available to the general population - or fentanyl. At the same time I 100% think I could handle a bit of opium which used to be full legal and in many preparations.
More mind bending drugs might be available only with supervision of licensed (not doctors, but trained) overseers...at least for the first trips (mushrooms, etc.).
Pot, of course, would be pretty much fully legal although edibles do need to be strictly regulated since you can easily eat too much.
Dosage is really the important point here. Coca tea is the national drink of Peru...it makes you feel about like a cup of coffee. Take the same Coca leave and process it into crack and it's a different thing.
Put a couple drops of Laudanum in your coffee and your back probably won't hurt. But turn it into concentrated heroin and inject it and you will be in trouble.
Free market... No we don't actually have a free market, but, IF we did, drug sales would be right up there with milk and gasoline sales. People get hung up on the most trivial aspects of any government actions, ie, thinking that the "cost" of illegal drug usage is a burden on society, that thinking doesn't take into consideration all of the resulting jobs and revenue derived from said drug sales. If we take a long look at the economics of illegal drug usage, we can see it as just another potential legal commodity and, then treat the negative aspects of drug abuse as an inconvenient fact of commodification.
In that inclusion into the open markets, all drugs would simply meld into a class of substances which we use/or abuse..it's the abuse of substances that drives the negative cost factor, borne by tax dollars and a reluctant public. As a side note: it seems a bit ironic that the most adamant supporters of the war on drugs were also those who said we shouldn't tolerate any undue government meddling in our private lives. Alcohol, Cigarettes, and yes, even corn syrup is bad for humans, the destruction of the human body when partaking of these substances is an incredibly widespread health and safety concern for us all, but---they are all legal and controlled substances.
I'm certain that the architects of this war on drugs were well meaning in the beginning, but it's evolution has proven it to be a failure. When we criminalize anything, we are in essence creating a huge underground/illegal economic opportunity, bring it up to the light of day tax it, and include it in those other bad things humans have demonstrated a taste for. We desperately need to address the negative side of drug use/abuse, and give up chasing the negative aspects of our own creation, namely, the war on drugs...
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.
"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
It's actually the opposite. Liberals have been fighting the War on Drugs for years, because minority groups by far bear the brunt of this "war". It is conservatives who won't give an inch. It is Republican governors against marijuana legalization even in states where people voted for it (Mass for example). This administration has already stated in many ways they want to ramp UP the war on drugs, not the opposite. Do not forget how much the private prison industry and their investors (which can also be judges) makes on this "war".
Oh please, nobody goes to prison for possessing a "personal use" amount of marijuana. In my home state, you can have up to 4ozs and it's a misdemeanor, which means a citation or maybe jail time - but not prison.
Oh please, nobody goes to prison for possessing a "personal use" amount of marijuana. In my home state, you can have up to 4ozs and it's a misdemeanor, which means a citation or maybe jail time - but not prison.
Go to Camden, or poor parts of Detroit or L.A. and tell me that applies across the board regardless of race, creed or neighborhood.
Oh please, nobody goes to prison for possessing a "personal use" amount of marijuana. In my home state, you can have up to 4ozs and it's a misdemeanor, which means a citation or maybe jail time - but not prison.
So is jail a place where there are not hard criminals and the possibility of violence against you? Is it a place where you lose your freedom?
And you are saying "just jail" as if it's OK because someone was smoking a weed? Amazing.
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) makes on this "war".
