We have built a society where the best options for these people are to do what they are doing. Nobody starts using because they have a great life but they’re just curious what a bit of meth feels like and then accidentally get hooked. They do it because there’s no better life path open to them. It’s really a form of suicide. Criminalizing will make the suicide process faster and less visible to you. It won’t stop anyone from using but it will make using more dangerous. There is no easy solution. We need societal change. Making it illegal would be like criminalizing sugar because of the obesity epidemic.
>Nobody starts using because they have a great life but they’re just curious what a bit of meth feels like and then accidentally get hooked. They do it because there’s no better life path open to them.
that's pretty obviously wrong. Look at the demographic sample of meth users; it's not just down-and-out on-the-street folks.[0]
it's not some "i'm going to try heroin on my deathbed" drug; affluent people try/use it routinely and it's fairly common in vacation destinations/sex-clubs/bars/'adult-venues' across the U.S.
Some 100k+ salary earner who frequents sex clubs every weekend while on meth isn't doing it because 'there's no better life path open to them'; they're doing it because they're bored and it is entertaining, which is essentially the raison d'etre of all recreational drugs.
One could also note that the existence of such casual users belittles the idea that it forms such addictive bonds as to guarantee a ruined life.. but personally I think that's a person-to-person thing; some people don't get addicted to things like others.
Young bored person tries some meth at a party because they're bored, young and invincible. They like it and do it again, a few times, and now they're hooked. They want more all the time. Due to constantly being high or looking to get high, they fail at work or flunk out of school. What happens next?
If that person is from a wealthy family, maybe their family pays to put them into rehab, or brings them back to live at home, or pays their rent. The wealthy family has the resources to support the addict in some way and usually manages to keep them off the street.
If that person is from a more common sort of working class family? They have less money available to them, so they'll start to steal. They'll steal from their family, who don't have much in the first place. They'll get in fights about it and alienate themselves from their family. The house is small so everybody in it has to live close to everybody else, the situation becomes intolerable and eventually the addict is kicked out and cut loose. The family can't afford to do otherwise. They tell the addict to get clean and wish them luck. He's now homeless and will probably be dead in a few years.
Most street users aren't using because they're on the street. They're on the street because they're using.
You nailed it. The amount of tech directors or VPs actively tweaking on coke or meth while interviewing me has been eye-opening. I remember one had an inch-long coke nail. Hah!
I had a friend who had tried several substances and thought they were above addiction... until they were eventually hooked on heroin. It's anecdotal, but having watched people (more than him) get addicted, I don't have much doubt that even people with a good life get hooked on bad drugs.
Hopefully, as society becomes more honest about drugs and stops scheduling every drug as equally dangerous or criminal, friends like that will be able to better trust that dangerous drugs do exist and know which ones to avoid.
You'll never find disagreement on the need for societal change. My impression is that the U.S. doesn't really have tools in place to help people caught in the grip addiction back from the brink. Best case, it seems like something that that is being dealt with city by city without a national framework. Therefore, addicts largely end up on the street, hurting others, and/or in a prison system that's not designed to help them.
This was me too. I had used many substances (cannabis, ketamine, benzos, cocaine + every other stimulant under the sun) and was able to keep them in my possession and only use them at most once every 4-6 weeks, and only ever in the company of others. This lasted for many years. I was arrogant and thought I was above addiction. I tried heroin and was addicted before I finished my 1g bag.
I think your point about "stop[] scheduling every drug as equally dangerous" is very salient. I really don't want to shift blame anywhere but myself, but if society had been honest about treating heroin as much more problematic than (for example) cocaine or amphetamine, maybe I would have listened. But when they were all considered equally bad and the others didn't form a grip on me... you can see how I ended up where I did.
Thankfully, I had every advantage one could need: a loving spouse, a lot of savings and a medical system that treated it as a health problem, not a criminal one. I told my doctor about my addiction and he prescribed diazepam for the withdrawal. He wrote a referral to admit me to a psychiatric hospital. I was able to take a month off work (and keep my job) while under the care of professionals. Without all of those, I'd probably end up dead in a few years.
You're absolutely right. I was wrong to oversimplify and claim that this is everyone's experience. I do think that it is the experience of many people who don't have families or support structures or any economic prospects. I completely agree that better education about the different levels of harm of different substances is incredibly important and lacking. I will say that while I don't know the stats on this, in the communities I am in meth has been at least as destructive for people as heroin.
And did you notice it abstractly, similar to "I've been using food delivery too much recently", or did it have a physical or mental toll before you noticed?
That's an interesting take but I think it's mostly reasoned from flawed first principles, as if everyone is a rational actor. For starters, some people do meth just because their friends are doing it. Some people aren't able to see the consequences clearly.
And even if you assume it's only people having a bad go at life, every life includes bad parts, despair, etc. We're all vulnerable to irrational acts in those times.
Legalizing drugs just makes access a little bit easier during those times. Once they're addicted, though, no rational amount of jail time will dissuade anybody.
Yes, once they're addicted no amount of prohibition will dissuade them. And we already have lots of addicts so the prevention ship has sailed. It's time to address the negative effects of black markets and drug impurity. During alcohol prohibition people used to die from the adjuncts or improper distillation. Now you can still become an alcoholic but at least can rely on the quality. And no gangsters make a living from rum running.
All I know is that if I were born into their circumstances I would probably do the same thing. Some lives are way worse than others due purely to accident of birth and the really uncomfortable truth is that we have built a society where some lives are not even worth living. We need to face up to that, not pretend like everyone suffers to anything like the same degree. Life in the USA is very unequal. I’ve suffered terrible events in my life but I also have hope that my future will be worth living. If I didn’t have that hope, I’d be doing exactly what these folks are.
I think you're oversimplifying things a little bit. Some people will try e.g. heroin and get hooked due to curiosity. Some people do derail otherwise promising lives with drug and alcohol use.
Heroin is one of the few drugs where "once is enough". Many people go through phases experimenting with drugs in specific party contexts (e.g. raves) but that doesn't carry over to daily life. The people who carry it over are the ones looking for an escape as parent describes.
Edit: And of course it doesn't require that they have obviously impoverished hopeless lives. Part of the illness of our society is the huge numbers of depressed/lonely/etc middle class people who otherwise seem to have a life "on track"
How many people do you know who work in harm reduction? How many of your friends are regular drug users? I’m speaking from direct experience are you? or are you just making assumptions that make you feel more comfortable?
You could just admit that you are oversimplifying things without trying to dismiss my credentials. I have experience. I haven't posted anything unreasonable in this thread.
I understand. But what is the solution? Just wait for them to all die? Here in San fransciso we have 3 overdose death per day. That is 40% spike from last years. In 2017 we had 222 overdose death for entire year and we reached that number by march 15h this year.
The solution that seems most likely to work IMO seems to be a European-style welfare state. All drugs have long been decriminalized in Portugal and you don’t see that kind of thing on the streets of Lisbon. But I don’t see that happening any time soon in the USA.
> All drugs have long been decriminalized in Portugal
Portugal did not decriminalize use of drugs! Public use of drugs, and being uncontrollably high in public, is criminal and they use the court system to force people into voluntary rehab (the other choice is prison) where they use an evidence-based drug treatment system and up to a few years of job skills and counseling before releasing the person. Decisions are made by a panel of doctors and ex street-junkies who know the truth of the situation and what the addicted will say and do.
Portland Oregon on the other decriminalized the drugs - as in you can buy and inject anything in front of a cop and pass out in your own vomit in the middle of the sidewalk and the police can't even move you.
Regrettably they knowingly chose to reference Portugal as if they were following its advice while using the terminology to describe a completely different system.
> Actually one thing I would be curious to try is to substitute ketamine for opiates. It might work out that some people prefer it and it’s far less harmful on the body.
That feels like the joke about Freud trying to cure Cocaine addiction with Heroin and merely inventing the speedball.
What do you think of Suboxone? It blocks withdrawal symptoms and the further effect of opioids, making users not suffer or want more drugs during the process. At the end, the user is not dependent or addicted, and is ready for actual rehabilitation.
You're probably right about the Portugal example, I don't know enough about it to know if it is the solution for sure. I was just grasping for what I could only think of as the best possible solution. Perhaps there truly is no solution.
But criminalization certainly isn't the solution. Hiding the problem in order to allow the rest of society to ignore it more easily is obviously (to me at least) less desirable than having it in the open where we are all forced to share at least some small part of the burden, the hope being that this will push us to find real solutions.
Re: ketamine - the point is that many these folks are seeking an escape from an unbearable life. In that position, there is really no desire to neuter the drug. I'm pretty sure Suboxone availability is not the issue. Ketamine on the other hand might provide a similar escape without most of the harmful side effects. It's pretty obvious that ketamine is much less harmful in every way than heroin.
> But criminalization certainly isn't the solution.
There are many ways to see criminal law - as a punishment, or as a tool.
Portugal uses it as a tool. They know, because many of the founders are ex junkies, that junkies can't say no to another dose. They have to remove the dangerous option and that's handled by taking you off the street, for which they use the crimes as an excuse to remove your autonomy temporarily. Critically, they don't stick you with a criminal record for anything self-harming - when you get clean your record is also clean.
As a parent I believe in talking to kids, explaining, making them allies. But if they misbehave dangerously you simply pick them up and carry them away. You don't pretend that a 3yo, or even an 8yo, can understand everything well enough to just the dangers in a situation so sometimes you just take control.
Given that junkies have less reasoning capability and willpower than a 3yo, I think that trying to reason with them "Oh come on, don't you want to put down the drugs and not feel awesome? Don't you want to sign up for a 'meaningful' life with a 9-5 job?" is going to work because drugs are engineered to take that ability away.
IMHO the correct response, for where we've let ourselves get on the West coast, is to take everyone who ODs and throw them in an ambulance when narcan-ing them rather than leaving them on the street. To give them suboxone when we get them to a holding facility. After a day or two of good food and TV and smokes, etc, etc, but no more hard drugs - but also no more desire for them or detox pain from not having them - you ask if they want to continue the program. The trick is that both paths lead to the program - one directly and one via a bit of a cooldown in a more traditional jail (though still super low-security) until they come to the conclusion on their own. This is where you use the criminal charges, from whatever they did to obtain those drugs, to justify the captivity.
There's a good documentary (Vancouver is Dying, I think) where one of the government guys helping people, pushing for new laws, had spent five years on the street himself as a casual habit took him to rock bottom from a high-status life, so he knows all sides of the issue, and he thanks the people and the systems that gave him the opportunity to live again. There are many such stories, but his - juxtaposed with the misery people are currently in - was heartwarming and breaking.
Actually one thing I would be curious to try is to substitute ketamine for opiates. It might work out that some people prefer it and it’s far less harmful on the body. Problem is it’s super expensive compared to opiates.
I was wrong to say that “nobody starts using because they have a great life and they’re just curious what a bit of meth feels like”.
The point I was trying to make was that many people do know exactly what they’re getting into and do it anyway because they also know they have nothing better to look forward to in life and this is really a form of suicide. I was wrong to suggest that this pattern fits everyone, it is indeed an oversimplification and I apologize for minimizing different experiences.
> Nobody starts using because they have a great life but they’re just curious what a bit of meth feels like and then accidentally get hooked.
No, I know people who've been hooked meth and heroin (all different people) who not only tried them for the high, but used them "safely" for years before they lost control.
This single anecdote disproves your "nobody starts" claim.
> They do it because there’s no better life path open to them. It’s really a form of suicide.
No, less than one in twenty at most wants to die or has circumstances that would make the average person want to be dead if they had the addiction treated. (Which with modern drug-based methods is actually pretty easy.)
> Criminalizing will make the suicide process faster and less visible to you.
It's not suicide though, that's just want you're saying. It's your opinion. Given that most people recognize this isn't suicide, and most users did not and do not want to die, it should not be treated flippantly and the responses shouldn't be denigrated.
Banning hard drugs is like banning unsafe food or medical products - it's what we expect our government to do.
> Making it illegal would be like criminalizing sugar because of the obesity epidemic.
That would work and would save a lot of lives. And fwiw, the argument isn't if we should criminalize sugar which we already do in many goods and forms, it's about at what point the FDA should set the allowed value.
