That said, there are drugs which fuck your life up even in the very short term, and dealing them absolutely be criminalized. Using them should be a medical problem, but dealing? Straight to jail.
Heroin withdrawal is shit, but compared to alcohol or benzos it’s at least not deadly. Also opiates are not hard on the body.
The problem with opiates is mostly getting clean ones - and the money for it.
In Switzerland they have a program, where they hand clean heroin to addicts and with a safe clean supply they can work, get a grip on their life again, and they start to reduce the dosage themselves after some time.
The social stigma and the idea to punish someone out of addiction is obviously bullshit.
People usually self medicate because of problems. So solving those problems is the right approach and not just taking away the crutch.
Also the state is losing quite some money with the prohibition - on multiple fronts
Heroin also isn’t the same as the media likes to portray it. You don’t magically turn into a crazed addict who’d sell their own grandmother for a hit as soon as you look at some. That’s the same crap that used to be said about weed. Plenty of people live totally productive lives and use heroin regularly.
Alcohol and pot used to be illegal (pot is getting decriminalized more and more).
Prohibition doesn’t work.
That said, there are drugs which fuck your life up even in the very short term, and dealing them absolutely be criminalized. Using them should be a medical problem, but dealing? Straight to jail.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about pot here.
If prisons would work, the US would be drug-free by now.
Yeah but heroin isn’t weed
Heroin withdrawal is shit, but compared to alcohol or benzos it’s at least not deadly. Also opiates are not hard on the body.
The problem with opiates is mostly getting clean ones - and the money for it.
In Switzerland they have a program, where they hand clean heroin to addicts and with a safe clean supply they can work, get a grip on their life again, and they start to reduce the dosage themselves after some time.
The social stigma and the idea to punish someone out of addiction is obviously bullshit.
People usually self medicate because of problems. So solving those problems is the right approach and not just taking away the crutch.
Also the state is losing quite some money with the prohibition - on multiple fronts
Heroin also isn’t the same as the media likes to portray it. You don’t magically turn into a crazed addict who’d sell their own grandmother for a hit as soon as you look at some. That’s the same crap that used to be said about weed. Plenty of people live totally productive lives and use heroin regularly.
What’s your standard for “productive”
What’s yours?
But we also don’t know what was sold, so we may guess from the statistics of trafficking that it was stimulators or weed:
Prohibition still doesn’t work.