re: Let's Discuss Heroin

Alcohol is legal, and anyone who wants to drink themselves to death will do so.

Heroin is a much more potent, life-threatening, and addictive drug, but who is to say that we shouldn't have freedom to choose what we put in our bodies?

The problem is that we've already established a culture where this drug is labeled taboo, therefore making anyone who uses the drug necessarily a criminal on the edge of society, as well as anyone they associate with.

I could imagine a world in which drugs were never prohibited. Sure, there would be plenty of people who overdose and die, but that already happens by plenty of legal means (like obesity). Having access to purer drugs, as well as harm reduction through public education and a different social attitude towards their use, heroin would not be as heavily tied to things like theft, disease, overdose, and general shame and rejection from society.

It's an interesting hypothetical as to whether things would get better or not if heroin was legalized and far too complicated for me to speculate definitely. The number of users would definitely go up, but the safety associated with its use would also. Perhaps the hardest aspect would be getting rid of its social stigma that has been propagated for years and years.

I do know that mankind will always use and abuse things that make them feel good: drugs, sex, food, or anything else for that matter, whether they are legal or not. Who has ever consciously decided to become addicted to something?

The question fall back to what should people have the freedom to do, even if it may harm them. I say it would be better to legalize it, but this would require us completely reshaping our society in a number of ways unlikely to ever happen.

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I don't agree with this argument because I speak somewhat for myself and then probably for a lot more people who have stayed away from highly addictive drugs because they are illegal.

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The only reason you don't slam meth or heroin is because it's illegal?

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Do you believe that the % of heroin users whose lives are seriously negatively affected by their use of heroin is similar to the % of alcohol users whose lives are seriously negatively affected by their use of alcohol?

Do you believe that we would collectively notice a difference in the general quality of life if you replaced every instance of someone becoming drunk in America with an instance of someone becoming high on heroin?

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I believe it's impossible to separate the negative effects of heroin use caused by pharmacology from those caused by illegality and sociology at present. It's also silly to speak of hypos where "every instance" is replaced with another when one drug is far more popular and there is no evidence that the two are substitutes in any significant sense.

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Do you think a preteen breaking into a liquor cabinet and getting drunk is comparable to a preteen breaking into a cabinet filled with heroin and getting high?

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Both are less dangerous than a gun cabinet. We don't make things illegal based on "what if a kid finds it." (You know a lot of preteens that can work an injection kit and strap up to find a vein? The likely consequence would be a nasty abscess.)

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Nearly everyone gets drunk at some point in their lives. That's why we have so many deaths from alcohol. If practically everyone shot up heroin at some point in their lives, I'm thinking things would be worse than they have been, oh, for I don't know, ALL OF CIVILIZED HISTORY, when nearly everyone drank alcohol.

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When opium and alcohol were both legal, which one was the greater public health menace? Hint: It's the one mentioned in the Constitution. Twice.

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This idea that "people should be able to do whatever they want to themselves" sounds great, and when I was a childless twenty-something, I bought into it too.

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This idea that "people should be able to defend their opinions with logic" sounds great, and when I was [demographic signifiers] I bought into it too. Then I realized it was much easier to just append my posts with a little bit of anonymous, unverifiable condescension.

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100 years ago small groups of people weren't able to make millions of developing minds think certain drug habits were cool and OK to do

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Google "Opium Wars" please.

My only point was that it's not meaningful to compare heroin to alcohol in the way you did.

I'm not even saying it should be illegal. Just don't try to convince me by saying this:

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Even if there were a net increase in deaths, it would have to be a 20x increase to compare with the numbers currently tolerated in our society for excessive alcohol use

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It's not meaningful.

And please elaborate on this:

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I believe it's impossible to separate the negative effects of heroin use caused by pharmacology from those caused by illegality and sociology at present.

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Is it not clear that the primary negative is the pharmacology? Furthermore, what is the primary negative? I thought it was mainly that it was so highly addictive.

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