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A lot of people who are against drug use want them to be illegal and dangerous to use. Someone overdosing from buying drugs illegally is a preferable outcome for them because they think it will discourage people from buying illegal drugs.
They want the drugs to be both illegal and dangerous.
In reality making them legal and regulated decreases use and is safer for those that do, which doesn't work for people who think suffering is the goal.
It also makes it easier for people to seek help, since they’re not worrying about jail time for even asking.
Remember when pot was decriminalized and everything fell into bedlam and chaos just like we were warned about for 50 years.
Yup, now everybody's a dangerous pot addict and the world's a communism.
Yeah, now we're living in Road Warrior times. Damn plant.
It's horrible circular logic.
Q: why is the drug illegal?
A: because it's dangerous.
Q: why is it dangerous?
A: because it's illegal.
Q: why is it dangerous?
A: because it’s illegal.
Plenty of street drugs are addictive and dangerous even in their pure form. See for example the opiate crisis where many people started their addiction with pharmacologically pure prescription opiates.
While true, a large majority of the overdoses in the last decade are due to street drugs not being pure. The clean drugs will kill you eventually, the street drugs will kill you today.
The clean drugs will kill you eventually, the street drugs will kill you today.
The most common way people die of heroin/opiate overdose happens when they have reduced/stopped their consumption for a while and then something happens in their lives that makes them go back to it. On the first time they use it again, they overdose because they have lost some of their tolerance.
This very common path to overdose will happen whether the drug was pure or not. The root cause is that there is fairly narrow band of dosage in which you get high but don't stop breathing altogether.
Providing pharma grade hard drugs isn't the panacea that some people believe. Nuance is necessary. I haven't even touched on the very real downsides of living next to a clinic that provides services for people addicted to drugs.
I live next to one such clinic in a huge city. It sure beats having neighbours OD in your backyard or shoot up on the sidewalk. There was a small vocal minority worried about their law and order who tried to shut down the site, and hundreds of neighbours showed up to tell them to pound sand.
Safe supply is healthcare. The people accessing safe supply and safe injection sites are much more likely to be getting help.
Hmm, a guaranteed pure version of a drug that people will take anyway, in precisely known quantities, whilst raising revenue for the government (and forcing most drug dealers to change jobs)?
What a great idea. Watch it take off almost nowhere.
Yup, that almost makes too much sense to implement.
This is known for a long time, but the mindset ofntoo many is these people do not deserve to live, if they do or are something deviating from norms. It is about rare illnesses, neurodivergence and lifestyle choices and unfortunately everywhere.
That mindset comes from somewhere. Drug addicts make for an easy, politically expedient target. It doesn't just happen, and fighting that mindset means calling out the people creating scapegoats.
Here's the Canadian solution: how about we just not enforce existing drug laws, but also not spend money on safe supply or treatment.
That way all the crime happens where poor people live, and rich people can just pay less taxes! Win-win!
No shit fucking morons. Grow up. I have to watch these traps and killers profit off fiends all while useless cops watch them while the whole thing goes down. Fuck America all the way to hell and deeper.
I'd like to see stats on how many samples tested positive for fentanyl and other deadly chemicals.
1 gallon bag of cocaine please.
That'll be £230,000 please
I'd like to see stats on how many samples tested positive for fentanyl and other deadly chemicals.
This is really hard for me to get behind. On the one hand I can get behind the compassion and safety aspect. Addicts have a sickness and shouldn’t be treated as criminals who have no value and are disposable. On the other hand, I have personal experience with just how much damage an addict does to those around them. Enabling them to do that damage and victimize the very people who love and once trusted them with everything feels wrong.
Part of the reason drug abuse is so all consuming is because 80% of an addict’s time is spent finding it while avoiding the law. I know this from experience as a recovering opiate/heroin addict. If you had let me go down to the corner store to buy clean dope legally, not only would I have about $20,000 more to my name (from scams/thieves/short bags), I legitimately believe I would have gotten clean much sooner.
If you’re just sitting in a room with your thoughts as opposed to constantly occupied with the chase, you’re more likely to have moments of lucidity to confront how stupid and useless your life has become. I never had those thoughts when I was distracted chasing it around 24/7, only once I figured out the DNM’s
I think a lot of focus goes to the addict’s experience and how that experience impacts their life. If you limit the impact scope to the user and the consequences they face, it seems reasonable to suggest that easier access to safer substances can improve their circumstances.
What I experienced was a prolonged period of time where my wife lied, cheated, stole and shirked all responsibility for herself and our live’s together. Most critically, her substance abuse led to her neglecting and putting our young children at risk.
For my part, I did everything I could to help her recover. I encouraged her to get help without judgement. I found ways to balance taking care of the kids, taking care of her and myself, maintaining our home all while struggling to meet work expectations and fulfill my sole provider role.
Ultimately meth use led to paranoid delusions, intense fear and anger outbursts, belief in fantastical persecution conspiracy and finally distrust in me and her family. Still, I was trying to balance it all and encourage her to seek help. Instead of doing so she became violent threatened to put a knife in my throat and kill me while our children played in the other room.
We can argue about the war on drugs, the systemic failures to address mental illness and the lack of easily accessible care for people suffering addiction. But a person is still accountable for their behavior and when a substance causes them to completely lose themselves to the degree my wife did, I can’t help but feel frustration of anything that enables access to it.
When pot shops opened up near me it was so much easier to go without it.
If you had let me go down to the corner store to buy clean dope legally, ... I legitimately believe I would have gotten clean much sooner.
I don't use hard drugs, but I am addicted to weed.
During the times when it is easy to access, I simply do it more.
It was the opposite for me.
I am addicted to weed.
Does it negatively impact your life? Your job? Your relationships? Or is it simply something you do frequently?
Pot addiction is a very real thing, and people downplay it a ton. Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% for the complete freedom to access and use pot for whatever reason you wish, just as I am for other drugs like heroine, alcohol, and cocaine. But there are unhealthy habits you can develop that do negatively impact your life if you use it unrelentingly.
Pot addiction isn't typically as directly harmful as other drugs. Pot itself isn't toxic, which helps, and most of its impacts on mood, for those who enjoy it, are relaxing effects, but many people develop unhealthy dependency on pot, and even can have withdrawal symptoms from going without.
I downvoted your comment simply because it feels like you're downplaying what this person feels their relationship with pot is like. I agree with the sentiment across this thread. It's fine to smoke pot, and to do so freely, but I think we also need to acknowledge that there is irresponsible, dependant, and dangerous habits we can experience with any addictive substance, be it pot, alcohol, caffeine, food.
It's not a problematic addiction. At least at the moment. But it is an addiction nonetheless.
I'm not convinced that safe and legal drug taking will enable addicts any more than they're already so.
Also there are many recreational drug takers who don't harm society.
Sure, I don’t think this will enable them more than any other source. I guess in my case with the difficulties I’ve experienced, the pain my kids and I are still experiencing, any source of the substance at the root of it is hard to accept.
It's not the substance though, it's the structures around them. I suppose when you have personal experice with the harms of drugs, as directly as you are describing, it would become difficult to care about that distinction though.
You can't remove the substance from the equation entirely like that. Yes there are a lot of other problems too, but pretending meth or fentanyl or whatever isn't harmful on its own is not helping.
Remember the drugs are usually the catalyst that get people on the street. People can hold it together right up until they become addicted, then the substance makes everything worse.
I'm not an addict yet. But I'm addicted to the street. I can't say your statement is a constant truth. My addiction to the street is based off adrenaline, not trap sold drugs. I've never done more than weed and mushrooms - a long time ago.
The streets about freedom, people aren't necessarily there for drugs. But drugs play a huge role in how people into the freedom of street life survive. If you're selling drugs you can be free. The fiends are pawns and used like cattle for cash. It's really twisted and fucked up and I often wonder why people push so hard for trendy political change but aren't willing to bring it to street thugs. Some people even make their money killing. The amount of shit I've gathered from having one foot in the street... I guarantee there is no such thing as law an order in America. Unless maybe you have money your might see some of that traditional American image.
Understandable.
I don't care what drugs you do in the privacy of your own home. That's none of my business.
But the second that starts spilling out into the street, you deserve to be locked up until you are clean.
ugh. i barely want to respond to this, but "deserve" in this context is wild. substance abuse is a medical condition, not a moral failing. its disproportionately affects people who are poor, mentally ill, or otherwise disadvantaged, and many unhoused people start doing drugs while on the street, because if fucking sucks to be living on the street.
the actual utility of "locking people up" as a response to drug abuse is not positive. prisons are miserable places, and people often aren't given the kind of care they need to get clean and stay clean, and relapse when they get out, because their circumstances haven't improved. as it turns out, locking people in a cage for years does little to address the underlying issues that cause substance abuse. nobody "deserves" prison. its ineffective generally, and particularly ineffective at actually getting people off of drugs. all it does is punish people who are suffering.
Thank you.
Who said anything about Prison?
I want them placed into a purpose built addictions facility where they can get help, while protecting public safety.
You should consider moving back to X to spew your vitriol.
And just like on X it's the Mastodon users with the hottest takes 🤣
I ain't going anywhere hun.
Making it illegal is what is causing the cycle of "spilling out into I've streets"
So you want to legalize theft and B&E's now? 😆
You are attacking a straw man. Nice.