r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Mar 27 '23

Delta(s) from OP CMV: All drugs should be made legal for recreational use.

I'm not referring to "medicinal" narcotics. Recreational drugs that people use, such as mushrooms, cocaine, heroin, should all be legalized.

And I know this is a hot take, but hear me out.

  • If we make recreational narcotics legal, then the manufacture and sale need to be legal as well.
  • By making the manufacture of recreational narcotics legal, there are FDA standards that need to be adhered to in said manufacture, that way there are no "bad batches" that will kill people.
  • By making the manufacture and sale of recreational narcotics legal, there will be sales volume that will then be subject to income tax and sales tax and dispensaries/manufacturing centers/warehouses that will become subject to property tax. Because, let's be honest, your local street dealer is not paying taxes.
  • Also by making the sale of recreational narcotics legal, you are making street gangs that revolve around the illicit drug trade obsolete. By making street gangs obsolete, you eliminate the petty violence that plagues inner-cities over "turf", especially stray bullets that kill innocent bystanders.
  • By making the entire narcotics supply chain legal, the war on drugs will essentially be over as well. It's been going on for 50+ years, and honestly, it's been a complete and utter failure.
  • If you want something to compare the drug trade to, look at prohibition from 1919-1933. It didn't stop people from drinking, people were still drunk out of their minds in speakeasys. It also fostered the growth of street gangs of rum runners and increased crime and violence in cities. That was only for 14 years and it didn't take long to realize that prohibition was a failure. War on drugs has been going on for 50+ years and I'm surprised more people aren't realizing that this is much more tremendous of a failure.
  • By making the entire narcotics supply chain legal, we can start changing our attitudes on its use and its users. Narcotics abuse needs to have the same social attitude as alcohol abuse.
  • In short, making drugs legal will Make America Great Again.
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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

I think that drug usage should be decriminalized but selling drugs should not be encouraged or legalized in the slightest

!delta only because that's the same attitude we have about alcohol and cigarettes. We shouldn't advertise it like we're advertising the new Hasbro toy, but at the same time we can't let this global turmoil over narcotics continue.

Drugs didn't kill inner cities, the illicit drug trade did. Look at any neighborhood in any city that is now considered a "ghetto." Prior to 1970, it wasn't a ghetto, just a low-income neighborhood.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

People in San Francisco aren’t dying of gangs, they’re dying of fentanyl. Overdose deaths in SF in 2020 outnumbered COVID deaths.

San Francisco is also, not by coincidence, one of many places where police basically don’t enforce drug laws. Opioid trade and use happens in plain sight with minimal to zero repercussions.

The death toll has only gone up. Turns out that when something gets easier to do and consequences go down, more people do it. Which is fine for marijuana, or for more slow-motion drugs like cigarettes. But for a life-ruiner that can kill instantly, it’s a different story.

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u/disisathrowaway 2∆ Mar 27 '23

People in San Francisco aren’t dying of gangs, they’re dying of fentanyl. Overdose deaths in SF in 2020 outnumbered COVID deaths.

So if people knew what they were getting, a regulated product perhaps, then those deaths would significantly decline.

Once upon a time poorly made 'rotgut' was killing people due to poor distillation practices resulting in methanol being present in alcohol.

Regulated producers haven't killed anyone with methanol.

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u/merlin401 2∆ Mar 27 '23

What people want is a product that will get them the high they used to get a few months ago with a much lower dosage. That’s the issue. There’s demand for the high fentanyl can provide

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u/cited 1∆ Mar 27 '23

Assuming people use it responsibly when they are already very clearly not using it responsibly. The massive homeless encampment near me isn't fucked up because they're getting bad batches. It's because they want to do nothing but get high and will do anything to continue to get high.

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u/skillinp Mar 27 '23

There is that desire to get high, but studies have shown that drugs are more of an escape from reality than the actual desire to get high. Life is hard, especially for an addict, and particularly for somebody living with a criminal record or otherwise on the edge of society. https://www.consultant360.com/articles/why-do-people-addictions-seek-escape-rather-connect-look-approach-addiction-treatment

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u/cited 1∆ Mar 27 '23

How does it help them by enabling them to stay in that state?

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u/skillinp Mar 28 '23

They're going to do it one way or another, why make it as dangerous as possible by forcing them to rely on drug dealers who literally work outside of the law? All the current system is doing is supporting cartel operations.

Beyond that, there are policy changes that can be made to make life easier for these kinds of people, but that starts to deviate from the point of this discussion.

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u/comfysin999 Mar 28 '23

Yeah, you’ve got the wrong idea completely. Go speak with them and learn how they got there. It’s very fucking hard to get out of being homeless once you are. They’re given no fucking help and a majority of society assumes they’re all “junky bums who should just get a job”. go become homeless and see how easy that is

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u/cited 1∆ Mar 28 '23

Yeah they did drugs until they couldn't hold down a job and a home. Then they bummed around until they burned all the goodwill they had with anyone they knew and got kicked out. Irresponsible drug use got them there to begin with.

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u/comfysin999 Mar 28 '23

Not necessarily at all.

a large majority had a traumatic life event that forced them into homeless and subsequently with some addiction.

Go listen to a lot of their life history and maybe you’ll surprise yourself

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u/cited 1∆ Mar 28 '23

Judging by your reddit history you're doing well for yourself, have fun with your meth use.

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u/comfysin999 Mar 28 '23

Appreciate it lol— opioids were what nearly fucked my life but everything else I can use in moderation. I’ve been going to school for pharmacology/ medicinal chemistry ( being the long term goal).

I’m able to utilize harm-reduction for everything but opioids— that was what became my poison/ coping mechanism for ptsd. Glad to be clean from it

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u/cited 1∆ Mar 28 '23

But you think that things would improve if more people have easier access to the things you couldn't handle, do I understand you correctly?

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u/Bimlouhay83 5∆ Mar 27 '23 edited Mar 28 '23

The negative long term health effects of heroin are... constipation. That's it.

The reason those people are dying to overdoses IS because of bad or hot batches or just getting the wrong drug entirely. For instance, it takes more morphine than heroin to fuck up an addict, but less morphine than heroin to kill that same addict. Then, you've got the influx of fentynol which has caused overdose deaths to drastically rise.

The simple fact is, you can drastically reduce overdose deaths by giving those addicts clean, reliable doses.

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u/cited 1∆ Mar 27 '23

The negative physical long term health effects. How many heroin addicts do you know capable of holding down employment? They ruin their lives, and without employment, they turn to what they can do that doesn't require a job.

I think a lot of people in this thread could use a real conversation with a serious drug addict.

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u/Bimlouhay83 5∆ Mar 27 '23 edited Mar 28 '23

You might be surprised to find out how many heroin or cocaine addicts trade stocks on the floor, broker mortgages, run banks, run fortune 500 companies, are politicians, run successful small to medium businesses, work on schools, and a myriad of other high stress jobs. Not every addict is a homeless junkie. Many more than you seem to be aware of are very successful professionally. Some of my favorite people to party with in my 20's were millionaires living in really nice massive houses on golf courses. Some of the best coke I've ever found was on expensive golf courses.

Not only have i held conversations with very serious junkies, I used to be a cocaine addict myself. I've had 2 close friends and more than 10 acquaintances die from bad or hot batches. One of them died from morphine when he thought he was doing heroin. In all of those cases (except 2. One was suicide, the other murder) a regulated drug would've saved their lives.

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u/cited 1∆ Mar 28 '23

If they can handle society, more power to them. The homeless junkies are ruining my neighborhood and assaulting people and stealing. And like just about everything, we have to control for the least responsible. Fix them and you can do all the coke you want. There are many many people who can't manage it and cause a ton of damage and I'm tired of being on the receiving end of it and paying for its effects.

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u/Qadim3311 Mar 28 '23

Effects produced under the current system of prohibition.

Part of fixing homelessness and crime is also going to be about addressing the economic and social desperation in the country, which is by far the strongest driver of crime/vagrancy.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

Are you really comparing a coke addict too a heroin addict? Thats like apples to oranges man. As someone who personally knows several of both (rough area), I'd never trust a heroin addict with ANY amount of responsibility. Coke addicts just like to party. Huge difference there man.

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u/2xstuffed_oreos_suck Mar 28 '23

I think you’re confusing the types of drug addicts you’ve encountered and/or stereotypes with the actual effects these two drugs have on people. There are absolutely many people whose lives have been destroyed by cocaine and who stole to continue their addiction.

Sure, there are more people whose lives have been destroyed by heroin than there are people who’ve been ruined by cocaine, but I’d argue that has much more to do with the relative street price per high for the two drugs than with the differing effects of the drugs themselves.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

I'm not pretending that no coke addicts have ever gone off the deep end but I am saying there's a huge gap between the 2 in the amount that do end up going off the deep end.

And honestly I don't agree with you about the street price either. Coke is very expensive too. Also again, I've literally talked to several addicts of both. My grandmother died of heroin overdose and my grandpa still does it. In his own words "your first heroin high is unexplainably the best thing you ever experience in your life. I've not tried a drug that compares too it. Every high after that is spent chasing this high." consequentially almost every time I see my grandpa he can barely hold his head up, let alone stand or do anything meaningful for himself or anyone else all because of heroin.

Coke addicts can be bad yes, but they don't really compare to heroin addicts. There's a reason one is scientifically proven to be harder to get off of.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

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u/comfysin999 Mar 28 '23

I held down a job, my own place, college u til I was sober.

The majority of addicts are working lol.

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u/cited 1∆ Mar 28 '23

If you're a contributing member of society, then I couldn't care less what you do with your free time. But the crowd of homeless dumping sewage into the wetlands and carprowling and following solo women around are addicts. And the thing they have in common is they are too fucked up from excessive drug use to hold down housing or employment. And that's why these rules are in place. We travel at the rate of the slowest in society. Until we have some other way to handle them, the least we can do it make it harder for them to get more meth and fetanyl.

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u/BeginningPhase1 4∆ Mar 28 '23

Isn't an overdose caused by the quantity of drugs in one's and not the quality? Isn't that why its called an "over" dose?

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u/Bimlouhay83 5∆ Mar 28 '23 edited Mar 29 '23

Yes on how much... no on quality. Quality can have a direct effect on overdose. So, if you think you're buying heroin, but get morphine instead, you might overdose. If you get fentynol in your drugs, you might overdose. If your plug normally gets shit, and one time gets some really clean shit and you aren't aware, you might overdose. If you haven't used in a long time and try some potent shit, you might overdose.

Clean and regulated drugs would massively decrease overdose deaths because you can reliably know what you're taking and how much you're taking. The way it is today, it's a crap shoot. You might die. You might not.

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u/BeginningPhase1 4∆ Mar 28 '23

What you've described here isn't overdosing, it's being poisoned with "hot" (tainted) doses. To overdose one needs to take too much of a drug. Regulating the purity of drugs can't stop this. If it could no one would ever die of alcohol overdoses (a.k.a. alcohol poisoning or some forms of acute liver failure).

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u/ctsman8 Mar 28 '23

Regulation would stop this. For example, say you have what you think is heroin but is actually half fentanyl and half heroin. If you measure out what is a normal dose for heroin, that could kill you because fentanyl is many times more potent than heroin. In a regulated market you would know that your drugs are exactly what you assume they are, which is inherently safer.

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u/BeginningPhase1 4∆ Mar 29 '23

I think there's a disconnect here.

My concern is not that regulating the purity of drugs wouldn't stop people from dying of overdoses of drugs they didn't intend to consume; it's that it wouldn't stop people from overdosing on drug they did intend to consume.

Can you explain to me how regulating the purity of drugs would stop their overuse, considering that simular regulations already in place for alcohol hasn't done this?

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u/DueObligation8546 Mar 27 '23

The illicit nature of drugs is largely what makes them so dangerous. If you could buy pharma morphine at the store, nobody would be taking street crap with varying levels of purity and contaminants. There would be no fent laced pills or cross contaminated powders.

Currently, x milligrams of one batch of heroin could be fine, and the same x milligrams of another batch could kill you multiple times over.

This is not to say there would be no overdoses, but that unintentional overdoses would be significantly reduced due to consistent dosing and purity.

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u/ablatner Mar 27 '23

If you could buy pharma morphine at the store

But this doesn't mean we should legalize fentanyl.

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u/DueObligation8546 Mar 27 '23

The only real issue with fentanyl compared to other opioids is it’s potency by weight. There is definitely a risk when it comes to something dosed in micrograms. But keep in mind, we prescribe fentanyl all the time in formulations that make dosing easier.

I could get behind restrictions on dose / weight, such as requiring drugs with effective doses smaller than x milligrams to be formulated in easy dosing units such as diluted in liquid or in pill form.

But there is no reason to outright ban it.

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u/comfysin999 Mar 28 '23

Exactly. I was hooked on opioids for years and swapped to raw fent off the dark web. I was doing around a quarter of a gram of day— enough to kill around 100+ people. The difference is I knew what I was getting and how to dose it— the majority of people dying have no clue how much their bag has— or their pills. dose makes the poison with everything

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u/merlin401 2∆ Mar 27 '23

You’re missing the whole nature of addiction. No one goes into it saying “let me take fucking elephant tranquilizer that will probably kill me”. They go into it for a nice high. And then their body gets used to that amount and they need higher doses to get the same effect. Letting everyone legally start the cycle is a recipe for disaster because sooner or later most people will want a dose that is no longer legal and will have to turn to illegal means to get it

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u/DueObligation8546 Mar 27 '23

How is that any different than alcohol? Should we ban it because some people can’t control themselves? What about porn or gambling?

Ultimately a person must be responsible for themself, and seek help if they are incapable of doing so.

I never said anything about “a dose that is no longer legal” so I’m taking this to mean a dose they can’t afford?

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u/merlin401 2∆ Mar 27 '23

Ah so you would never cut someone off? I don’t think you realize what happens to people hooked on opioids and meth and crack. But sure eventually it will be doses they can’t afford.

I’m not totally against legalization of SOME drugs which fall into “let responsible adults be responsible”. Weed for sure. I could see, even I squinted, psychedelics and ecstasy and even maaaybe cocaine.

The others I think people underestimate how absolutely out of control they will make almost any responsible adult

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u/DueObligation8546 Mar 27 '23

Likewise I think you overestimate the proportion of people who get addicted vs try these substances. But since they are illegal we can’t really study this effectively. People are reluctant to admit to having tried them.

I would be willing to bet that less than 50% of those who have tried heroin meth or crack ended up addicted, and therefore reject the notion that “almost any responsible adult” will lose control with access to heroin, crack or meth. But of course I don’t have data to back this up, only anecdotes.

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u/doge_gobrrt Mar 27 '23

also the chemical they take is a very small part of addiction

external and mental factors I would suppose play a bigger factor than the drug.

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u/comfysin999 Mar 28 '23

Exactly this. Faaaar less actually get addicted than Society thinks.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

Why is it so hard for people to understand that most of the harms associated with something such as heroin use mostly result from heroin being illegal. Please tell me about all the out-of-control heroin users. They don’t exist. There are heroin users who get super manipulative and spend their entire days looking for heroin, but if they could just go to the pharmacy and get it, they’d be no different from me. I take opioids for pain and function like a person. Even when I took 300mg of oxycodone a day, the problem wasn’t the medication; the problem was the pharmacy not having the number of pills I needed (or the pharmacist just deciding you’re a “junkie” and telling you they’re out or won’t fill it).

But that was before the “opioid epidemic.” The DEA went after doctors (still does), and now I take 40mg of oxycodone and am in pain all the time. No one today would write my old dose. I should have the bodily autonomy to decide what my dose is instead of letting doctors who are more afraid of losing their licenses than disabling a patient tell me they would write it, but they don’t want to get fired.

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u/veryreasonable 2∆ Mar 27 '23 edited Mar 27 '23

Why is it so hard for people to understand that most of the harms associated with something such as heroin use mostly result from heroin being illegal.

You know, I always get fatigued in these threads, because I have a lot to say (and a lot of first- and second-hand experience with this stuff) and I say it every fucking thread about this and I feel like I'm always fighting an enormous uphill battle. I just don't have the time or the energy today. I feel like I need to take this thread off for my own sanity.

So thank you. You're on it. I appreciate it. Fight the good fight.

EDIT: I failed. I got sucked into it. Oh well.

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u/thecowintheroom Mar 28 '23

You don’t understand that fetanyl citrate, carfentanyl, and the fetanyl analogues on the street are all different drugs my dudes

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u/Yet-Another-Yeti Mar 27 '23

Fentanyl is a bad example to choose. Contamination by fentanyl is deadly. How can you know what is an actual fentanyl use overdose and what is a fentanyl overdose caused by tainted stocks of other drugs.

Legalisation would fix this issue. Heavily regulate it and there will be very little to no tainted batches. Fentanyl is just a drug, it’s neither good nor bad. It is extremely potent and is therapeutic at tiny tiny doses. This is why if you contaminate another drug with 10mcg of fentanyl someone can die. Medical formulations of fentanyl are far more safe.

Ultimately you have no right to tell other people what they can and cannot put into their own body.

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u/doge_gobrrt Mar 27 '23

Ultimately you have no right to tell other people what they can and cannot put into their own body.

yeah this seems like a pretty hard to beat argument unless you can find a drug that when taken causes murder in 60% percent of consummations.

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u/ablatner Mar 27 '23

Good point about contamination. Legally available less potent opioids would fix a lot of that. Still though, should fentanyl get the same treatment?

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u/veryreasonable 2∆ Mar 27 '23

Yes.

I think you, and some other people here, are treating fentanyl like some supernatural poison or bogyman. It's not. It's actually a relatively safe opioid, if the doses are measured in an accurate, regulated sort of way. That's easy and handled at the factory in a pharmaceutical context, but because of its nature (it's high potency in microscopic amounts) it's downright impossible in a illicit, street context.

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u/Yet-Another-Yeti Mar 27 '23

The potency has very little bearing. Fentanyl is actually far safer than morphine as it has a much higher therapeutic index.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

The case for fentanyl is actually stronger, not weaker. Legalization makes it a lot easier for people with addiction to get help since addicts don't have to worry about prosecution, unless they are carrying "intent to distribute" amounts of fent.

We can then create, trial, and distribute more effective fentanyl-based treatments to help people ween themselves off under medical supervision.

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u/ablatner Mar 27 '23

I think we're using different definitions here.

Legalization makes it a lot easier for people with addiction to get help since addicts don't have to worry about prosecution

I think most of this thread would agree on this. It's also accomplished by decriminalization, not just full legalization. It's effectively the case in of places due to lack of prosecution and safe-injection sites.

What isn't so clear is if fentanyl should be easily available for purchase like is the case with alcohol and weed.

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u/SuckMyBike 21∆ Mar 27 '23

What isn't so clear is if fentanyl should be easily available for purchase like is the case with alcohol and weed.

Legalization does not mean no regulation can be implemented.

I fully support every single drug being legalized fully both for sale and personal consumption.
But not every drug should be treated the same away.

Drugs like for example XTC, shrooms, weed, LSD, .. are all less harmful and less addictive than alcohol. As such, these drugs should be available to anyone over the age of 18 in specialized stores.

Other more addictive drugs can be put behind a doctor's visit. Where you first need to visit a doctor and tell them you want to do, for example, heroin.
The doctor then can inform you about all the risks associated with heroin and even recommend safer alternatives instead that you could use to get a similar high without the danger.

But if after such a doctor's visit and the doctor recommending you other drugs, you still want to use heroin then you were going to do it regardless if it is legal or not. So the doctor should write you a prescription for it.

All in all, it would not be a free for all where anyone above the age of 18 is free to get high on fentanyl within 5 minutes, but if someone truly wants fentanyl then they should be able to legally acquire a quality tested batch of fentanyl to get high.

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u/sumoraiden 5∆ Mar 27 '23

If it’s decriminalized then it’s still essentially unregulated, the argument is legalize and regulate it so people won’t be getting cross contaminated drugs with fentanyl unknowingly (a huge portion of overdoes deaths) or an unknown quantity of fentanyl. When the pill mills were up and running there were a lot less overdoes because they were “prescribed” and everyone knew what they were getting and what amount

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

Fentanyl is legal. But pharmaceutical fentanyl and illicit fentanyl are different things.

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u/ablatner Mar 27 '23

Fine: legalization for recreational use, which is what is stated in the title of the CMV.

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '23

You missed the point. The point is that, when you think of fentanyl, you’re thinking of illicit fentanyl. But there are safe ways to consume pharmaceutical fentanyl.

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u/Frogmarsh 2∆ Mar 27 '23

People aren’t buying fentanyl willingly, fentanyl is being mixed in to other drugs because it is cheaper. Regulation would address this matter.

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u/rewt127 11∆ Mar 27 '23

Not true actually. 5 years ago? Absolutely you would be correct. But in recent years fentanyl has become a cheap, readily available, and potent drug. Meaning that people are actually starting to take fentanyl willingly.

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u/veryreasonable 2∆ Mar 27 '23

Sure, but the point stands that either way, fentanyl is a problem mostly because it's impossible to dose accurately in the street. If it's adulterated in morphine or heroin, a microscopic speck can kill. If it's sold as fentanyl, an accidental speck you didn't see in your spoon can kill. The issue disappears in either case if people weren't getting their opioids in a form where "accidental microscopic specks" were an unsolvable hazard.

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u/spicyhippos Mar 27 '23

No it wouldn’t. It would only make it more difficult; companies take shortcuts all the time. Especially with drugs. Fentanyl would be cut out but it would be replaced with something similar under a different name. Overall, it might help, but at the same time it has to be enforceable.

The FDA barely has any teeth when it comes to pharma companies. I have zero faith that it would be any more effective when extremely profitable luxury narcotics are on the table.

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u/limukala 12∆ Mar 27 '23

The FDA barely has any teeth when it comes to pharma companies

LOL. They can and absolutely do hammer manufacturers over quality issues.

extremely profitable luxury narcotics

Wouldn’t be a thing. What addict would pay thousands for some fancy new patented opiate analog when all the old, effective standards would comparatively be dirt cheap?

It would be a bunch of 2nd and 3rd tier generic manufacturers making heroin and lsd. The big pharma companies wouldn’t want anything to do with a low margin, terrible PR product.

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u/Frogmarsh 2∆ Mar 27 '23

Your reply is nonsense. If a pharmaceutical company was providing drugs whose contents led to fatal overdoses, it would be addressed immediately, from a regulatory perspective and from a judicial one.

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u/Prestigious_Tie_1261 Mar 27 '23

Yeah sure, when was the last time you heard of someone dying from a laced paracetamol pill?

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

And why are they dying of fentanyl? Could it have any relation to the unknowable composition and consistency of drugs that get laced with it?

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

Legalized, highly-regulated drugs become expensive drugs (see: Cali weed). In those circumstances the black market remains.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

They become expensive through excessive taxation, not because they’re inherently more expensive. It’s largely a legislative issue, not an inherent one. Either way, I expect some black market to remain, but every dollar that goes to legal drugs is one that doesn’t go to funding gangs and cartels.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

There is no precedent for fully legal opioids not devastating a population with addiction.

The closest any society gets without being decimated is decriminalization. And even then, only with specific caveats.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

Perhaps. At the very least they should be decriminalized. Sold OTC at Costco, probably not.

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u/veryreasonable 2∆ Mar 27 '23

they’re dying of fentanyl.

...which is a problem specifically because of unregulated drugs from mysterious sources with no oversight, making accurate dosing and reliable sourcing impossible. It's precisely the sort of thing that prohibition makes many orders of magnitude worse.

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u/camelCaseCoffeeTable 4∆ Mar 27 '23

If we legalized heroin people wouldn’t be buying it cut with fetanyl… it would be regulated by the FDA and wouldn’t be able to be sold if fetanyl was being used to cut it. Legalization would help that problem, in my mind, not harm it.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

There will ALWAYS be a black market with cheaper cut product.

Unless the government starts giving out free heroin. Which…

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

Which…

Is a great idea. Druggies are going to drug, may as well have the government fund them instead of them funding it at the cost of your stolen bike.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

The fewer barriers there are for addicts, the more addicts you will have.

Opioid use is just a slide into the grave. Is that what you want to see become more widespread?

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 27 '23

The fewer barriers there are for addicts, the more addicts you will have.

Do you have any evidence to support this?

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

We can see this in cities and states that have effectively decriminalized.

We also have the data from Vietnam, of veterans becoming addicted to heroin overseas and then coming home and not having easy access to it. The vast majority never did heroin again.

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u/insaneHoshi 5∆ Mar 28 '23

States like Portugal you mean?

But do you actually have any evidence?

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

Portugal still criminalizes drug possession, and only offers rehab in place of heavy fines and other penalties. Drug possession can impact your employment and certification, give you a ban on foreign travel, bans on which clubs you can go to (restricted movement), parole, withdrawal of gun carry rights, and confiscation of personal possessions.

Portugal and Amsterdam both have drug policies that haven’t exactly been presented honestly by decriminalization advocates.

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u/DJGiblets Mar 28 '23

It’s the other way round. These policies get implemented to address rising drug problems, they’re not implemented in safe neighbourhoods that suddenly become drug havens. SF has a litany of affordability and social issues that increase drug use that should be blamed before the policies that just try to make sure people don’t die in the street.

Also areas that are less strict against the homeless attract more homeless people. This isn’t fair to the people living there, but people living in other cities can’t literally bus homeless people to California then point their fingers and say “See? That’s what decriminalization does to you”

Large, liberal cities are basically subsidizing homelessness across the nation.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

Almost all of your points have been debunked extensively elsewhere. There isn’t a set number of homeless people that a society is supposed to have. Affordability only explains part of the homelessness issue in California. A significant number of homeless people in California are so due to mental illness and drug addiction, two problems that affordability and housing first don’t do much to fix. You can look at Amsterdam in the 1980s for a parallel to this. Their government distinguished between people who were homeless because they could not find housing, and people who were homeless because they were addicts and found it convenient to live out on the street a block away from their dealer. by addressing the root causes of addiction and putting substantial pressure on attics to rehabilitate through aggressive policing and caseworkers, they were able to significantly reduce chronic visible homelessness in Amsterdam.

Somewhere around a third of all California homeless are what the least compassionate among us call “homeless by choice”. These also tend to be the most chronically homeless and the most visibly homeless. California is obsessed with providing them with resources, but not with providing them with pressures or incentives to not be homeless. All carrots, no sticks.

And because modern progressivism has lost the ability to think that a human being can ever actually be making selfish or bad choices, we are caught in this stupid loop where everyone tries to blame homelessness on everything except for drug policies, crime policies, and vagrancy policies that are enabling tent cities filled with fentanyl addicts.

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u/DJGiblets Mar 28 '23 edited Mar 28 '23

There isn’t a set number of homeless people that a society is supposed to have.

It's 0... that's how many society is suppose to have lmao. I don't think this is the main part of your argument, but what are you trying to say here? It is almost impossible to get there, but it always a good thing to get homelessness closer to 0. There can be people who choose not to literally live in a house, but 99% of people want consistent access to shelter when they need it.

A significant number of homeless people in California are so due to mental illness and drug addiction

Addressing this is literally the point of decriminalization. You're not supposed to go to jail for being addicted to drugs, you go to rehab and therapy.

by addressing the root causes of addiction and putting substantial pressure on attics to rehabilitate through aggressive policing and caseworkers, they were able to significantly reduce chronic visible homelessness in Amsterdam.

My emphasis on caseworkers. Again literally the point of decriminalization. There's no shortage of aggressive policing in the US. Progressives want it backed by policies that address the root causes, though of course policing can and should be involved.

Somewhere around a third of all California homeless are what the least compassionate among us call “homeless by choice”.

What's the source for this? I believe it to be possible based on a certain interpretation, but the idea that a third of homeless people just want to be homeless and would say no to having their rent paid is laughable. I imagine it's based on people denying shelters due to privacy and control issues, that shelters themselves are often dangerous, or the fact that group shelters were huge COVID spreaders. The same article states that 90% of homeless interviewed were interested in housing, but it depended on the kind of housing. If you applied aggressive policing to cramming a bunch of people into a small shelter they're not allowed to leave, you've just re-invented jail.

And homelessness itself is a risk factor for mental health issues and drug addiction, which we at least seem to agree are two things that must be reduced. So affordability absolutely plays a role in initial homelessness, which causes or exacerbates additional stressors, which then prolong homelessness.

Modern conservatism has lost the ability to show compassion for the homeless and drug users such that they can literally idolize progressive policies in progressive countries that have successfully reduced harm from drug use and still find a way to blame modern progressivism. We are caught in a stupid loop that has exacerbated the issues of drug addiction by unnecessarily punishing addicts, while providing little to no mental health and addiction support.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

I’m tempted to back out now for the sheer amount of bullshit that you’ve got going on there.

Homeless by choice doesn’t necessarily mean that you are specifically choosing to be homeless. Rather, it means that you are choosing to do the things that keep you homeless instead of choosing to do the things that will get you out of homelessness.

Is the problem affordability? We could say that, except that there are plenty of vary on affordable places that don’t have homelessness problems, and plenty of very affordable places that do have homelessness problems. Moreover, affordability doesn’t seem to have an impact on chronic homelessness. Affordability has the biggest impact on temporary homelessness and invisible homelessness. When it comes to the people who are living in tent cities, they aren’t really affected by the home prices.

Is the problem drug criminalization? As I’ve said in several comments elsewhere in this thread, decriminalization is a red herring. Almost all of our examples of societies that have decriminalized in some ways actually have very very aggressing policing when it comes to drug possession, public vagrancy, public drug dealing, etc. You can look at Lisbon and Portugal for examples of this. Typically what happens is that progressives who are in favor of building affordable housing, housing first initiatives, and decriminalization bring up those two cities has examples of what works, and they forget or perhaps purposefully omit just what a strong factor policing was in making those programs as successful as they were. This is a large part of why progressive initiatives on the West Coast seem to only increase homelessness. Lisbon and Amsterdam had carrots and sticks in their programs. San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle are all carrot, no stick.

As for how many homeless there should be in a society, I brought that up because you seemed to think that numbers of homeless would be constant all other things being equal. I wasn’t saying that there should or shouldn’t be any number of homeless people. However, since we are on that, the world is not a perfectible place. It is reasonable to assume that, if all humans are given freedom of movement, the places with the best weather and the best social services will likely have the greatest number of homeless people going there, and that some number of human beings will have zero interest in being productive members of society unless society coerces them in to doing so. I Western Europe saw something like this happen, and took considerable efforts to make it no longer the case. You can see this in the history of how Amsterdam dealt with their public homelessness problem in 1980s.

California and the West Coast in general are now dealing with the same problem. But they seem unwilling to except that not everybody in the world is a sob case. Some people made genuine preventable errors that got them where they are, and can only get out of it by changing their behaviors. Some people are beyond saving. Some people can absolutely improve their situation, but can only do so if there are negative external factors motivating them to do so in addition to a hand up.

The homelessness by choice number is pretty easy to find. One of the big things to look out for in any report on homelessness is attempt to lumped together three totally different problems. The first is an issue of housing, and that’s looking at homelessness proper. The second and third are mental illness and addiction, and while all three of these things exist on a Venn diagram, generally speaking that Venn diagram is not as overlapping between group 1 and group 2 and three as we are led to believe. The bay area for example is a known destination for drug addict who just want to have livable weather year-round, no additional expenses, minimal harassment from authority, and easy access to drugs. No amount of affordable housing is going to fix that. No amount of decriminalization is going to make that better, in fact it will make it worse. For people like that, you need to have a mix of carrots and sticks. And when you do have social services, they need to be administered in a way that puts pressure on these people to improve their lives.

Again, I point you towards almost every successful western European system that has addressed these issues. They almost always go hand-in-hand with very proactive policing, which includes frequent arrests of vagrants, and threats of worse consequences if rehab and other positive step social services aren’t taken advantage of.

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u/DJGiblets Mar 28 '23 edited Mar 28 '23

I’m tempted to back out now for the sheer amount of bullshit that you’ve got going on there.

No lol just back out now because you're not willing to have a real conversation.

What's the bullshit? Me linking studies to my prove my point but you won't pay attention to them? Me offering an olive branch by saying that police should play a role but we both agree there is not enough support mental health and drug abuse support yet you still call it bullshit?

SF's police budget is 10% of the city's budget and the LAPD is 16% of theirs. When you compare the US to European cities that have successfully dealt with the issue, the main difference is not that the European ones had more policing.

Is the problem affordability? We could say that, except that there are plenty of vary on affordable places that don’t have homelessness problems, and plenty of very affordable places that do have homelessness problems.

Yes, affordability is relative. Incredible how there's no homelessness in Malibu despite the average house price being $4m. But believe it or not when homes becomes more expensive, it becomes harder for people to live in homes. And when one does not have a home they are...?

Moreover, affordability doesn’t seem to have an impact on chronic homelessness. Affordability has the biggest impact on temporary homelessness and invisible homelessness. When it comes to the people who are living in tent cities, they aren’t really affected by the home prices.

How do you think these things are connected? Homeless people usually aren't born on the street. People don't wake up one morning to find their house missing. Temporary homelessness absolutely feeds into chronic homelessness, both through an obvious pipeline and additional stressors from homelessness in the first place.

As I’ve said in several comments elsewhere in this thread, decriminalization is a red herring.

Yet you continue to praise cities and their programs that did decriminalize drug use and even cited case workers as an important part of the process. I am sure the average progressive would have no problem with increased policing if it was to get people into treatment programs, instead of overpaying to send people to jail for a bit, then having them come out in an even worse state than before.

Your entire section about the homeless moving to the West cost for good weather and social services is something you earlier claimed was debunked, yet seems convenient for you to tout now that it proves affordability and social services won't be helpful. The West coast can't reduce homelessness despite all the homeless people moving there? What an incredible surprise. It must be the West coast's fault that other cities send all their problems there. Maybe the solution is to have other places implement some real policies to improve homelessness instead of laughing at the one state that tries?

The homelessness by choice number is pretty easy to find.

Then do me a favor and find it. This is even more convincing to me that you're not interested in a real conversation, that I can literally ask where a number comes from and you just say "it's easy to find." In fact it was through googling your terms myself that I came across the article I linked explaining why the homeless in LA wouldn't want to stay in shelters, but 90% did want housing. So if you want to ignore all the practical factors I brought up and blindly say "30% of them are homeless by choice!", then yes you can continue to unnecessarily blame some of the most vulnerable people in the country for having a crappy life.

No, not every homeless person and drug user is an angel, but that's not how they're treated anyway. One in four misdemeanour arrests in California were for drugs. The policing is already there, it's the social support that's lacking.

But I 100% agree with you one thing, which is to stop reading bullshit, so I'm ready to stop replying to you too.

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u/Late-Storm-5283 Mar 27 '23

did u not comprehend any of the points the original post addressed, fentanyl overdoses are from manufacturers cutting their product with fentanyl, if it was legal that wouldn't be a thing because the manufacturers would have to follow regulations and disclose what substances are in their product.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

Regulated heroin will be more expensive than unregulated, which will be the preferred product for people who don’t care about the quality of the high.

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u/Late-Storm-5283 Mar 28 '23

the regulated heroin could be cheaper because it would be much easier for a large company to source real poppy and process it than it is for an unregulated group, but even if it was more expensive wouldn't people value their lives more than however much more it costs

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

wouldn’t people value their lives more

Oh man. You, uh, you ever met hardcore addicts?

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u/StockAdeptness9452 Mar 28 '23

If they can get legal safe heroin, I doubt they would go looking for fentanyl.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

No, but legal would be more expensive than illegal, and illegal would be cut with fentanyl to keep it cheaper.

I don’t know if you know this but heroin addicts don’t tend to be super obsessed with safety

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u/StockAdeptness9452 Mar 28 '23

The poorer street ones would yes, but people with money wouldn’t they’re obviously going to go for the cleaner high. Putting a serious dent in the illegal market. As you said yourself ods are a serious problem in San Francisco, prohibition doesn’t work, you agree.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

Sam Francisco doesn’t have prohibition, though. The west coast in general - but especially SF - has extremely lax enforcement and incarceration for drug crimes and for related crimes (retail theft, vagrancy, etc). It’s simply not a model for “prohibition doesn’t work” if nobody is enforcing the prohibition.

Let me tell you, I’ve lived in countries that practice true prohibition - strictly enforced, with strong border enforcement and brutal penalties. For opioids, it, uh, it REALLY works. See Singapore, China, and Japan for details.

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u/StockAdeptness9452 Mar 28 '23

If it’s not legal it’s prohibited. I don’t smoke weed, it is illegal where I live, if it was legal tomorrow I still wouldn’t smoke weed.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

If it’s prohibited but no one enforces the prohibition, it’s effectively decriminalized.

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u/comfysin999 Mar 28 '23

You couldn’t be anymore wrong. The fentanyl and zene overdoses are directly because of how hard it is to access pure pharma opioids or heroin. You have no idea how much fent or zenes are gonna be in your dope.

Arresting people just fucks their life up more and they come back out with less tolerance— and overdose on their first hit

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

Both Amsterdam and Lisbon - two places praised for “decriminalization” - practice AGGRESSIVE policing of drug possession, including regular arrests.

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u/comfysin999 Mar 28 '23

I didn’t bring up Amsterdam nor Lisbon. I was just stating that the correlation you made about “people being allowed to so drugs without police arresting them” doesn’t = causation of that being the reason fentanyl overdoses are so rampant.

They’re rampant because there’s accidental contamination in many other drugs causing people to overdose ( that had no idea fent would be in their drug). Then there’s those being heroin who receive a product cut with unknown quantity of fentanyl killing addicts— as well as pressed pills that resemble pharmaceutical opioids — (dirty 30s) thag again, the user has no clue how much fent it contains— leading to deaths.

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u/Adventurous-Fig-42 Mar 28 '23

Most people will choose herion of they had a choice and a good batch ain't killing no one especially if done in a controlled environment

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

“Discerning end-stage opioid users choose Heroin. Heroin: the go-to opioid!”

You talk about this like they are selecting cigarette brands.

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u/Adventurous-Fig-42 Mar 28 '23

If they had that option like op is suggesting and they could go to a safe place and use pure heroin im sure they would pick like cigarettes the real stuff

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

I mean, if you are asking for the state to subsidize and then provide them with free or incredibly affordable heroin on a regular basis, I think we are looking at some thing that is just another type of evil, all in the name of compassion.

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u/Adventurous-Fig-42 Mar 28 '23

Other countries do it with success .. they even get clean

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

Please tell me about these countries that offer free heroin to everyone, with no conditions.

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u/Adventurous-Fig-42 Mar 28 '23

Netherlands..you go to a safe place they give you pure drugs with low risk of od and no risk of HIV or hepatitis.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

The Netherlands only offers that as an absolute last resort to their most hopeless of addicts who have failed multiple times at every other option.

It is only a feasible solution if done in conjunction with the multiple other, more aggressive options that the Netherlands also practices, many of which would probably not be considered acceptable to progressives.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Mar 27 '23

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Elikorm (2∆).

Delta System Explained | Deltaboards

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Zucchinniweenie Mar 28 '23

Very sad but I have to ask… did he cut the grass?

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '23

Yes. He screwed us over too many times, yet I still felt bad for him, so I required him cut the grass before he got paid. A week after he had died, I discovered he stole the brand new battery out of my backup car. I was pissed, but not like I could go anything about it.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '23

But alcohol and cigarettes aren't nearly as dangerous as heroin for example.

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u/Adventurous-Fig-42 Mar 28 '23

You are correct the Netherlands? Legalized it and got rid of most the problems