This is not how a free society operates. I choose what I put into my body and not you or anyone else. If doing so causes me to commit a crime, then punish that crime, but banning drugs because "most people" don't like them is not freedom. If you don't like them, then don't do them.
>Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user?
A free person should be given the opportunity to demonstrate their responsibility instead of it being assumed such responsibility is not possible simply because a majority of the populace finds a substance distasteful.
Unfortunately, the US public and the US government never accepted this principle. Practically everything you put in your body - at least in the US - has to be approved by the government. Sometimes by several branches of it. Food, drink, medicine, whether you swallow it, inject it, smoke it or rub it in - the government has its say in it. In 20 states you can't even legally drink raw milk, and in those that allow it in principle, require you to jump through a lot of hoops to achieve it. Such is the reality of the nanny state, and unfortunately the US public - the Land of the Free - is largely completely OK with it and would never vote to remove it.
I think a much better argument is to point at countries that decriminalized drugs and didn't see an increase in crime. If legalizing marijuana resulted in a 10x rise in crime I'd 100% for keeping it illegal
(This is all from someone who is very much AGAINST the war on drugs)
> I think a much better argument is to point at countries that decriminalized drugs and didn't see an increase in crime.
I agree.
> we've already concluded that it's okay to prioritize safety over freedom
Who is "we"? A majority telling a minority "we" know what's best for you at the expense of your freedom is very dangerous rhetoric.
> we have seatbelt laws
In this analogy, I would argue drugs = cars and seatbelts would be some safety measure on where drugs could be used (like no heroin injecting within 100 ft of a school, etc...) which seems like a reasonable restriction. But banning cars because a majority of the population thinks they are dangerous and people cannot drive them responsibly would be absurd.
Under the process of law making, a lot of things has been made illegal because it adds a risk to society. From a simplistic perspective it is just risk management, with risk on one side and the cost of the mitigation on the other side. It is not necessary any ideology behind it, and thus the removal of one costly mitigation strategy can have little impact on other strategies that are less costly.
We can have a free society where people are free to put whatever they want in their bodies, and to suffer the health outcomes and poverty and combination of those things freely as well, if they make bad decisions.
What we can't afford as a society is to give free health care and UBI to people who choose to destroy their bodies, at the expense of everyone who chooses against their own interests to be productive members of society, assuming there are enough people who wouldn't choose to live on the dole and do drugs if they were legal.
What about people who got that way before they turned 18 because their parents fed them junk every day, and the window of puberty had closed?
What about alcoholics who are compulsively drinking their calories?
I know there are a lot of people who are just lazy and stupid, but good luck proving that to legal satisfaction.
Yes! And this is what is so fascinating is how well the "drug war" has helped shape societal opinion to think it's not possible to be a functional user. Yet, you may be surprised to learn we have millions of people prescribed Adderall, an amphetamine mixture that is functionally equivalent to methamphetamine. They go about their daily lives on this drug.
Likewise, we have beyond millions of people on oxycotin and other functionally equivalent drugs to Heroin going about their daily lives as well.
Does this mean they live great lives? Not necessarily, but just as we have millions of functional alcoholics we also have many functional drug users in our country.
"The average crystal meth addict uses about 500 mg a day. And they snort it, which probably produces about double the peak plasma level as taking it orally. So they're getting the equivalent of 1000 mg oral amphetamine daily. The average Adderall patient takes 20 mg."
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/drug-users-use-a-lot-o...
The fact that it's safe to have licensed people prescribe a tightly-controlled substance at 2% of recreational doses is... not at all a good argument for fully unrestricted 100% recreational doses.
(I'm still against the war on drugs, for what it's worth)
Of course it is. The issues that you equate with the image of meth and heroin users are not as a result of the drugs; they’re nearly always a symptom of the problem, often mental health related.
Addiction is always a public health issue, no matter what form, whether it’s gambling, food, alcohol, drugs, …
Many years ago I read of a long-term study which followed heroin addicted doctors for 20 years, in a society which guaranteed them a supply of clean heroin, and found that as long as their supply was clean and uninterrupted these heroin addicted doctors actually performed slightly better than their non-addicted colleagues, and there were minimal if any negative health consequences.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the study since[1], so take that with a grain of salt.. and heroin is not really my subject of interest so take the following with another grain of salt, but my impression has been that pure heroin is actually not that harmful, especially compared to something like alcohol or cigarettes.
The main problem is the potential for unintentional overdose, which really shouldn't be much of a problem with pure heroin (or not much more than many other prescription drugs, whose use doesn't have any negative moral stigma attached to them). If people know the purity and dosage of the drug they're taking they tend not to take so much that it would kill them... not accidentally anyway. It happens, but it also happens plenty of other prescription drugs.
There's also addiction, but if you can get a pure, cheap supply (which should be the case where heroin is legal) and it doesn't cause any serious health consequences, then what's the problem?
[1] - If anyone else can find this study, I'd be eternally grateful.
I used to be a heroin addict, price and availability were the two main obstacles to functioning normally. I’m glad I don’t do heroin any longer (suboxone was a huge help, also stopped that), but if the conditions in the first paragraph were true, it would easily be possible.
See Switzerland for example: https://transformdrugs.org/blog/heroin-assisted-treatment-in...
Whether you like it or not the substances are available to everyone either way, as the better part of a century of the war on drugs has taught us.
Pharmacologically, Adderall is extremely similar to methamphetamine. So, it sure seems like it.
Well it does sound like you're equating the War on Drugs to the War on Marijuana.
There are other substances that most people really don't think should be accessible to everyone. Is it even possible to be a responsible Heroin user? Or even Meth?