So the predicate "wasn't allowed" is even more accurate. She was prohibited, legally, to get properly labelled medication.
Again, would you have the same attitude if her options for depression were "steal SSRIs from a pharma company" or "buy from someone that gets unlabeled, unmonitored shit from China, resold by whoever?"
Forgive me if this is wrong, but are you really arguing for the over-the-counter sale of chemically addicting drugs, premised on the actions of junkies? Won't that just create more junkies?
Alcohol is chemically addictive, sold over the counter, and is currently the fourth leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.
> Alcohol is chemically addictive, sold over the counter, and is currently the fourth leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.
The point isn't that legalizing a drug makes it completely harmless to everyone in society, it's that legalizing may mitigate _some_ harms that are caused by the specific circumstance of being illegal. The obvious example is something like marijuana, where we had to manufacture scary bullshit to get people to go along with its illegal status (and all the harm illegalizing it caused). But even your example here works against your argument: as dangerous as alcohol is, we tried making it illegal (Prohibition) and then went back because it simply did not work.
Opiates are not anywhere nearly as harmful as alcohol. Apart from overdosing, there's very little side effect, generally. (Some people don't tolerate them well.) The health issues that junkies have is usually due to poor hygiene - many places don't even let them buy needles!
The legal aspects cause all of this. They raise prices, make supply hard, encourage fraud, discourage help, increase the terrible social stigma.
There are millions of legal users that are doing fine - hundreds of millions of prescriptions!
On top of this, it's an affront to the concept of individual freedom to deny medicine to patients just because you don't like them or have labelled them an addict. The current system encourages for-profit gatekeepers.
This is probably the biggest lie that I ever heard in my life.
Go on and take your opiates if makes you happy, but don't try to deny reality.
Alcohol is assumed every day by billions people in the world and it has absolutely no harmful effects if taken moderately. Actually there are several studies about the healthy effect of one glass of wine a day.
A junkie instead cannot take his sh.t with moderation and will suffer plenty of ill effects.
You're completely off base here. Many times more people die of alcohol than heroin and prescription analogs put together. Also, there are tons of people who use opiates responsibly and in moderation--I'm one of them. Finally, lose the anger, it's a symptom of alcoholism ;)
No one ever died for drinking a glass of wine a day. Heroin users can't use it moderately by definition. Enjoy your addiction, but don't try to lie to the world saying that opiates are innocuous just to feel better with your conscience. ;)
>Heroin users can't use it moderately by definition.
I don't see why you think that taking one hit of heroin each day would be any harder than drinking a glass of wine a day. Perhaps the heroin is more enjoyable, but given such small consumption it won't inherently be any more addicting than alcohol.
Opiates are consumed every day by tens of millions of people in the world and they have absolutely no harmful effects if taken according to prescription.
That opiates when used in proper doses are extremely safe from a physical point of view is an indisputable fact.
There's basically no difference. Chronic pain users will end up on ever higher doses and get rx's with amounts that'll make junkies jealous. Severe pain might make them even more tolerant to the drug.
Even then: I've had IV morphine at the hospital after getting my knee run through. I was high as hell. I've had hydrocodone given to me after hurting my back. Totally high, blissed out. Seems to be the common complaint: "I got pain pills, but they made me loopy!"
It's like when people say meth (or Adderall or Ritalin) works differently on people with ADHD. No it doesn't, they're just coming from a different baseline. It'll help anyone think better.
There might be some long-term problems with opiate use. Like reduced testosterone. Maybe reduced immunity (hard to tell, since so many chronic pain patients have severe illness). Prolonged constipation can certainly cause issues, too.
The benefits of alcohol drinking are very hard to separate from other factors that also differ between drinkers and non drinkers. There may be benefits but the data is hardly conclusive.
I know a fair amount of people that have used, some that died. I've been robbed by a relative so he could sell my shit to buy drugs. Yet I strongly believe that people should be able to make their own decisions, that personal freedoms are worth the price of people deciding to use whatever medicine they want.
In this thread there's a lot of blaming of a chemical. There's a lot of blaming people getting caught by laws. Jaywalking is more dangerous to third parties than these drugs, yet we would not accept this kind of attitude toward jaywalkers.
People conflate the situation of drug use with the actual effects of substance. Even in this thread there's people bemoaning that junkies will do anything. While failing to acknowledge it's purely an artificial constraint that creates this situation in the first place.
Antibiotics are far more dangerous. It provides a serious threat to everyone, even those that don't engage. Where are the task forces raiding and jailing people for that? I can personally go purchase a 4th line antibiotic in about 20 minutes, but I can't get strong pain relievers?
The war on drugs, including (perhaps most importantly) the social attitudes, keeps countries in poverty and disarray. Look at Latin America, and how much money and blood, crime and fear is caused by this idiocy. Yet much of the population still views "dealers" and "drug traffickers" as inherently vile. In some countries, they have basically no drug user issues, yet they pay this ridiculous price.
I find it abhorrent to have for-profit gatekeepers deciding what people cannot do with their own bodies (or possessions for that matter). It's far worse than say, DRM or Apple-style device lockdown.
Edit: Perhaps I'm also excitable. I'd probably get annoyed if commenters kept repeating that "function" was a fine length for the lambda keyword/syntax, while simultaneously saying lambdas are too verbose.
Legalization would avoid the shitty stuff part of junkies, for the most part. Or at least mitigate it to a huge extent, since costs would go down. Oxycodone, for instance, goes for about 30-100x on the street than at a grocery store.
If gas was 50x more expensive, we'd probably see some desperate behaviour for a while.
You know a few functional alcoholics right now, and you likely don't even know it.
You also almost certainly know someone addicted to opiates and have no idea.
There's only a small percentage of drug users who lack the ability to regulate enough to prevent a complete destruction of their lives, but those people will generally destroy their lives with anything, be it opiates or beanie baby mania. The rest of humanity can mostly hold their shit together, and you'll have no idea.
Again, would you have the same attitude if her options for depression were "steal SSRIs from a pharma company" or "buy from someone that gets unlabeled, unmonitored shit from China, resold by whoever?"