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This is where the libertarian mindset comes off as infantile and silly.
No sensible person thinks heroin should be decriminalized. The idea is absurd.
Do we put people in prison for the "crime" of alcoholism? No doubt you would call that idea "absurd." Yet that's what we do with people addicted to heroin or other substances.
Prohibition doesn't work. If you doubt that, go read about the 18th amendment and see how well that worked out. About as well as the prohibition of all other substances is working out now. Of course, if you own a for-profit prison, it has been working out very well for you. Yet despite the obscene number of people serving prison terms for drugs, the "solution" has done absolutely nothing to address the problem.
People with substance abuse problems need medical treatment, not prison sentences. And I'm not a libertarian.
Do we put people in prison for the "crime" of alcoholism? No doubt you would call that idea "absurd." Yet that's what we do with people addicted to heroin or other substances.
Prohibition doesn't work. If you doubt that, go read about the 18th amendment and see how well that worked out. About as well as the prohibition of all other substances is working out now. Of course, if you own a for-profit prison, it has been working out very well for you. Yet despite the obscene number of people serving prison terms for drugs, the "solution" has done absolutely nothing to address the problem.
People with substance abuse problems need medical treatment, not prison sentences. And I'm not a libertarian.
I'm talking about dealers and cutting off the supply. Heroin should not be legal to possess, period. If that means confiscated and destroyed in small amounts, fine. I have no problem with that. That will do nothing to stop people from getting addicted.
Why bother with having the State kill people when the Heroin will do it by itself?
It makes more sense to me to provide help for the addicts that will accept it as well as doing the research needed to know why the stuff is so addicting. Removing the criminality for the addicts and their suppliers is necessary to start really understanding the problem.
I decriminalization causes the private sector prison industry and the criminal cartels to bankrupt that is a small price to pay for figuring out the problem and using that knowledge to help existing addicts and reduce the future numbers.
We need to stop punishing people for a medical problem. Would we stop treating syphilis because it is a sex transmitted disease and sex is evil? I suppose the same people that would use the death penalty to kill addicts would. I hope they are listened to and their ideas ignored.
Decriminalize all drugs and divert the obscene amounts of money we are spending on law enforcement and incarceration into drug treatment centers and education instead. It would not only be money better spent, but it would prevent millions of people from ending up in prison for substance abuse or drug addiction, which is a medical condition, not a criminal one.
But this will not happen until the for-profit prison system is dismantled, and there's way too much money involved for that to happen in our current political atmosphere.
Detox, rehab and treatment do not cure addiction. Heck, years of incarceration does not cure addiction.
What's the problem? Legal, moral or health?
What's the goal?
Harm Reduction- health and wellbeing of addicts?
Reduction of costs for jails, trials, prison and healthcare?
There's no shortage of alternative models in Europe, Canada and Australia.
Some glorify the way Portugal has addressed addiction. The country changed the way it perceived and reacted to addiction, from legal to healthcare. Portugal instituted a Guaranteed Minimum Income. Vans are disbursed throughout the country to disburse chemical alternatives to opiates/ opioids which can be abused or traded. In some areas, the state offers home delivery. Given the challenges of resettling refugees in the wealthier countries in Europe, how long will they be willing to prop up Portugal?
Heroin - assisted treatment has been available in the UK for nearly 100 years.
There are dozens of supervised injection sites throughout Germany, The Netherands, Switzerland with the goal of harm reduction, the health and wellbeing of addicts.
And despite all the well intended approaches, addiction continues expand within these populations.
Why bother with having the State kill people when the Heroin will do it by itself?
It makes more sense to me to provide help for the addicts that will accept it as well as doing the research needed to know why the stuff is so addicting. Removing the criminality for the addicts and their suppliers is necessary to start really understanding the problem.
I decriminalization causes the private sector prison industry and the criminal cartels to bankrupt that is a small price to pay for figuring out the problem and using that knowledge to help existing addicts and reduce the future numbers.
We need to stop punishing people for a medical problem. Would we stop treating syphilis because it is a sex transmitted disease and sex is evil? I suppose the same people that would use the death penalty to kill addicts would. I hope they are listened to and their ideas ignored.
Alcohol has been around since forever. No one knows why one guy can drink in moderation and another guy cannot stop. Twin studies suggest a genetic predisposition. Theories abound about how centuries of drinking or lack thereof may make certain ethnic groups more or less prone to alcoholism.
Unlike alcohol, all who use Heroin will become addicted. Most who will admit to being addicted ( denial is common) say they knew they were addicted after 1-2 doses. Others already had a pill habit on their backs and sought a better bang for the $.
Why bother with having the State kill people when the Heroin will do it by itself?
It makes more sense to me to provide help for the addicts that will accept it as well as doing the research needed to know why the stuff is so addicting. Removing the criminality for the addicts and their suppliers is necessary to start really understanding the problem.
I decriminalization causes the private sector prison industry and the criminal cartels to bankrupt that is a small price to pay for figuring out the problem and using that knowledge to help existing addicts and reduce the future numbers.
We need to stop punishing people for a medical problem. Would we stop treating syphilis because it is a sex transmitted disease and sex is evil? I suppose the same people that would use the death penalty to kill addicts would. I hope they are listened to and their ideas ignored.
Research on opiates is a waste of money. There's no mystery. They make you feel great. They take away pain, and from what I've heard heroin makes you feel like you've "crawled back inside the womb".
I had a shot of morphine once for an acute pain due to injury..and I know what they mean by that description. An initial wave of nauseau, and then all pain and all worries melt away.
And that's morphine, not heroin. So there it is, it's no mystery. There's no code to crack. Opium has been around and abused for thousands of years, it's not new.
The problem is that these drugs that make you feel this way are highly addictive, build tolerance quickly, and can kill you if you take the wrong dosage and it doesn't take a lot. They are dangerous. They are too dangerous for most people to mess around with even once. Yes, for your own good "libertarians", you shouldn't have access to them. The nanny state is right on this one.
You make them available to young kids who tend to feel sorry for themselves or isolated and depressed anyway, just as the normal phase of being a teenager..forget it, you have addicts very easily. That's why we are where we are in this country. Opiate Pain pills+bored teenage kids=18-21 year olds dead from heroin overdoses. There's your research.
Research on opiates is a waste of money. There's no mystery. They make you feel great. They take away pain, and from what I've heard heroin makes you feel like you've "crawled back inside the womb".
I had a shot of morphine once for an acute pain due to injury..and I know what they mean by that description. An initial wave of nauseau, and then all pain and all worries melt away.
And that's morphine, not heroin. So there it is, it's no mystery. There's no code to crack. Opium has been around and abused for thousands of years, it's not new.
The problem is that these drugs that make you feel this way are highly addictive, build tolerance quickly, and can kill you if you take the wrong dosage and it doesn't take a lot. They are dangerous. They are too dangerous for most people to mess around with even once. Yes, for your own good "libertarians", you shouldn't have access to them. The nanny state is right on this one.
You make them available to young kids who tend to feel sorry for themselves or isolated and depressed anyway, just as the normal phase of being a teenager..forget it, you have addicts very easily. That's why we are where we are in this country. Opiate Pain pills+bored teenage kids=18-21 year olds dead from heroin overdoses. There's your research.
Who ever said anything about "making drugs available to young kids" except for you? I said decriminalize drugs, as in, don't send people to jail for using. Provide help instead--rehab, counseling, support. What good does it do for those who are depressed and/or in pain and attempt to self-medicate to spend years in jail because they were seeking some kind of relief? All that does is line the pockets of the for-profit prisons and the politicians they bribe, but for society as a whole it does nothing to either deter use or help the user.
Lots of people want to outlaw everything they think is bad. But often, that produces the opposite of their intended results. Here is a clear article on one way to fight the proliferation of heroin.
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A heroin epidemic has been spreading across the United States, expanding enormously for the last several years. With it, the number of people dying has also increased dramatically. While politicians offer failed solutions like “securing the borders,” the real solution is to legalize drugs.
The number of drug overdoses in the US is approaching 50,000 per year. Of that number nearly 20,000 are attributed to legal pain killers, such as Oxycontin. More than 10,000 die of heroin overdoses. I believe these figures vastly underestimate the number of deaths that are related to prescription drug use.
The “face” of the heroin epidemic has changed since the 1960s when it was largely contained to urban “junkies” and Vietnam veterans. In recent years the epidemic spread to suburbia as heroin became a low-cost substitute for other drugs. In more recent times, the epidemic has spread to rural areas such as fishing villages in Maine and coal mining towns in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
The problem of the epidemic rests with two causes. The first is the War on Drugs which creates profit incentives in the black market for the distribution of the most dangerous drugs. The second is the pharmaceutical-medical-FDA complex, or Big Pharma, which profits from treating pain with dangerous pharmaceutical drugs.
Who ever said anything about "making drugs available to young kids" except for you? I said decriminalize drugs, as in, don't send people to jail for using. Provide help instead--rehab, counseling, support. What good does it do for those who are depressed and/or in pain and attempt to self-medicate to spend years in jail because they were seeking some kind of relief? All that does is line the pockets of the for-profit prisons and the politicians they bribe, but for society as a whole it does nothing to either deter use or help the user.
You need to take off you myopic one track mind-o-vision goggles.
I don't think addicts should be jailed. I'm fine with just confiscating and destroying their drugs under a certain amount. We heard you the first dozen times about the prisons. Start another thread about them already.
If you make opiates more easily available, they end up in the hands of curious teenagers. That's exactly what HAS happened with legal opiate pain killers in the last 15 years. The number of prescriptions went up exponentially, the amount of pills available was in the millions, kids got their hands on them an got hooked. Heroin came next. Here we are.
The drug attic stealing to support an illegal drug habit will still have to steal to support his legal and heavily taxed drug habit.
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