Re:Magic mushrooms are changing the lives of terminal cancer...
by vidarh on Friday November 27, 2020 @06:13PM
(#25233415)
The problem with this thinking is that these drugs are not medically gated today.
In fact, the "gating" of heroin through law enforcement is so poor that the difficulty and cost in scoring oxy once people face medical gating due to drug seeking behaviour is now one of the larger recruiting avenues to heroin use.
It's easier and cheaper for people to get heroin as a substitute than it is to continue to use a safer, cleaner supply of oxy.
If you want to medically gate these in a manner that does not increase harm it needs to be at the kind of level that e.g. paracetamol/acetaminophen is restricted in places like the UK (limits on quantity in a single purchase, but nothing that stops you popping to the next pharmacy over and buying more, or coming back the following day) or that e.g. some non-prescription drugs are sold (under the counter, pre-requisite information given out by a pharmacist and possibly some basic questions).
You can maybe push it to a non-aggressive push towards treatment, but if you start denying access you're right back to creating a black market you'll have no control over.
The exact threshold probably needs to differ per drug, but it the level of gating we're currently at even for legal prescription drugs like oxy is actively harmful.
In fact, the "gating" of heroin through law enforcement is so poor that the difficulty and cost in scoring oxy once people face medical gating due to drug seeking behaviour is now one of the larger recruiting avenues to heroin use.
It's easier and cheaper for people to get heroin as a substitute than it is to continue to use a safer, cleaner supply of oxy.
If you want to medically gate these in a manner that does not increase harm it needs to be at the kind of level that e.g. paracetamol/acetaminophen is restricted in places like the UK (limits on quantity in a single purchase, but nothing that stops you popping to the next pharmacy over and buying more, or coming back the following day) or that e.g. some non-prescription drugs are sold (under the counter, pre-requisite information given out by a pharmacist and possibly some basic questions).
You can maybe push it to a non-aggressive push towards treatment, but if you start denying access you're right back to creating a black market you'll have no control over.
The exact threshold probably needs to differ per drug, but it the level of gating we're currently at even for legal prescription drugs like oxy is actively harmful.