Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Bottom line is you cut down demand, less will come.
Demand is being driven in large part by pill addicts.
It's not rocket science. Heroin has made a big comeback because of pills.
Demand has been met by Mexican drug cartels.
Stop it from all sides and angles. First you start with the legal stuff where upwards of 80% of the addicts start off. There's too much supply. This is the pharma industry and their paid off government.
It will always be around, but there's no reason it can't be scaled back to where it was decades ago.
The lowest heroin use in the last 45 years was in the mid 1970s, after Nixon expanded methadone programs at the end of his administration, and the end of the Vietnam War meant less of a need to fund covert ops in Southeast Asia.
So this suggests if you want to lower heroin use now, you'll need to expand methadone programs to what they were back in the '70s, or even more so, and you'll need to end some of the funny business that the US pulls off in Afghanistan and Latin America.
You have to try to kill yourself with alcohol. A kid usually only drinks enough to kill themselves under tremendous peer pressure.
And yet 88,000 people are killed by alcohol every year. How does that work exactly?
Quote:
Far from the case with heroin. Experienced users die all the time. You'd end more lives making heroin legal than you'd save. First time users OD all the time also. 88K die from alcohol and it's legal and how much is consumed per capita?...1/4 of that many die from heroin OD's and it's illegal. It's much more dangerous.
I'm aware and I did address this in my previous post. With proper regulation and monitoring of users, I think you can drastically reduce the number of heroin deaths after legalizing it. Like I said, if you know where people are shooting up heroin, it's a lot easier to save them from an overdose. Pretty hard to help the guy lying unconscious on their own bathroom floor. When addicts have to hide in order to imbibe, they're going to die, hidden where they imbibe. Spend all that WOD money on treatment and awareness. Everyone in my generation knew that heroin was scary stuff. I guess we were smarter than the current crop of kids out there. Heroin use dropped and stayed way way down during my teenage years. Perhaps the new generation needs better education on how dangerous heroin and other hardcore drugs really are? Education likely fell off because heroin use was down for such a long time.
The lowest heroin use in the last 45 years was in the mid 1970s, after Nixon expanded methadone programs at the end of his administration, and the end of the Vietnam War meant less of a need to fund covert ops in Southeast Asia.
So this suggests if you want to lower heroin use now, you'll need to expand methadone programs to what they were back in the '70s, or even more so, and you'll need to end some of the funny business that the US pulls off in Afghanistan and Latin America.
Ultimately, though, legalization is the solution.
There was a spike in addiction from returning soldiers. They either died or got clean. Enforcement didn't change.
-Very tight restrictions on prescriptions..they still aren't that strict despite all the press because pharma companies have strong lobbies and still make a lot of money selling Oxy and hydro. Trust me..I know. They are not restricting prescriptions nearly enough. Let's try going back to pre 2000 levels at least, maybe, before opening up heroin stores?
- Treatment for current addicts
-sealing the border where most of the heroin comes from.
Go back 25 years before the pain pill epidemic..look at the number of OD's, and look at them now. When there was less access to opiates, you had fewer addicts and fewer deaths. That's where the "what we are currently doing isn't working.." is nonsense. What we are currently doing is barely different than what we did 10 years ago when this thing was blowing up.
The one size fits all approach you take with pot and alcohol and applying it to opiates is naĂ¯ve and dangerous. The situation with what Perdue Pharma did with Oxy and where we are now is all the evidence you need for what would happen with complete legalization..you'd have a ton more addicts.... but again..for some reason that's too hard for people to handle when they want their weed I guess.
I'm sorry, but do you know what decriminalization is? Legalization and decriminalization are not the same thing. No one wants heroin being sold in a head shop as a commodity.
I have no problem with tighter regulations on prescriptions, I personally hate pills. This is not the war on drugs though, this has nothing to do with decriminalization or even legalization - prescriptions are completely legal, it doesn't matter if your ailment is real or not. We are discussing whether or not it should be a crime to simply posses illegal drugs without an intent to redistribute.
Sealing the borders will not stop it coming in. We have ports. It will drive up the market value and criminal activity.
I don't understand the train of thought that if what we are doing now is what we were doing when the problem first started, why you think it will work now? How can we properly treat addicts when they are cycled through a system over and over again for petty possession charges?
And for the last time, heroin does not suddenly become more enticing because it's decriminalized. Nothing is stopping anyone from getting their hands on it today, the teenagers abusing their parent's prescriptions today are the same teenagers who would seek it out elsewhere - they would seek it out no matter what. I used tobacco as a perfect example as nicotine is highly addictive. No one thinks tobacco is harmless anymore, not even the teenagers who pick up the habit, the only person comparing it to weed or alcohol is you.
I'm sorry, but do you know what decriminalization is? Legalization and decriminalization are not the same thing. No one wants heroin being sold in a head shop as a commodity.
I have no problem with tighter regulations on prescriptions, I personally hate pills. This is not the war on drugs though, this has nothing to do with decriminalization or even legalization - prescriptions are completely legal, it doesn't matter if your ailment is real or not. We are discussing whether or not it should be a crime to simply posses illegal drugs without an intent to redistribute.
Sealing the borders will not stop it coming in. We have ports. It will drive up the market value and criminal activity.
I don't understand the train of thought that if what we are doing now is what we were doing when the problem first started, why you think it will work now? How can we properly treat addicts when they are cycled through a system over and over again for petty possession charges?
And for the last time, heroin does not suddenly become more enticing because it's decriminalized. Nothing is stopping anyone from getting their hands on it today, the teenagers abusing their parent's prescriptions today are the same teenagers who would seek it out elsewhere - they would seek it out no matter what. I used tobacco as a perfect example as nicotine is highly addictive. No one thinks tobacco is harmless anymore, not even the teenagers who pick up the habit, the only person comparing it to weed or alcohol is you.
So explain the number of suburban heroin addicts who started with pills..probably prescribed legally that they had access to from family and friends medicine cabinets.
Heroin is an alternative to opiate pills. Without "legal" pills, you wouldn't have so many addicts. So, for all intents and purposes, "legal" heroin (oxycontin and its derivatives) created large numbers of heroin addicts that wouldn't have been interested or had access to it.
So if your argument is..the issue was legalized heroin in pill form.....making it easier for people to take...that's a fair argument. But again...Oxycontin is still perfectly legal for anyone to possess if they have a prescription. That's why it's in peoples medicine cabinets. That's why kids got access to it.
Now make possession of small amounts of heroin legal.....you don't think access is easier for kids?
Anyway, there are plenty of people on this thread who've said legalize everything no matter what, so I didn't pull the comparison out of thin air.
So explain the number of suburban heroin addicts who started with pills..probably prescribed legally that they had access to from family and friends medicine cabinets.
Heroin is an alternative to opiate pills. Without "legal" pills, you wouldn't have so many addicts. So, for all intents and purposes, "legal" heroin (oxycontin and its derivatives) created large numbers of heroin addicts that wouldn't have been interested or had access to it.
So if your argument is..the issue was legalized heroin in pill form.....making it easier for people to take...that's a fair argument. But again...Oxycontin is still perfectly legal for anyone to possess if they have a prescription. That's why it's in peoples medicine cabinets. That's why kids got access to it.
Now make possession of small amounts of heroin legal.....you don't think access is easier for kids?
Anyway, there are plenty of people on this thread who've said legalize everything no matter what, so I didn't pull the comparison out of thin air.
Doctors get money from pharmaceutical companies for prescribing their pills to clients. They have pushed pills of all kinds hard over the past decade or so. Look at Utah and how many anti-depressants are abused in that state. All pills of all kind are being "popped" too often in the US, pain killers by far the most and opiates just happen to have a street alternative.
The war on drugs does not go after big pharma, it's a completely separate issue. You said so yourself, the number of heroin OD's has only gone up after the heavy push of prescription pain killers, so clearly the availability of heroin was not enticing enough on it's own to convert non-addicts over the the ranks of criminal addicts.
Most people on here have been confusing legalization with decriminalization, I even quoted someone earlier and responded to their remark on making heroin legal, but mostly I was referring to the absurdity of basically making a addiction a crime.
As to whether or not decriminalizing (not legalizing) heroin would make access for kids easier? I'm not positive, most of the studies I've seen were done with pot and showed that decriminalization and legalization reduced underage use.
A group of 22 medical experts convened by Johns Hopkins University and The Lancet have called today for the decriminalization of all nonviolent drug use and possession. Citing a growing scientific consensus on the failures of the global war on drugs, the experts further encourage countries and U.S. states to "move gradually toward regulated drug markets and apply the scientific method to their assessment."
Street heroin in the 70's typically tested 5% pure.
Over time, the purity level has increased to greater than 90% pure.
Higher the purity the greater the liklihood of instant dependence and potential for overdose.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
