America’s syringe exchanges kill drug users

Re:America’s syringe exchanges kill drug users by standardUser on Saturday December 03, 2022 @01:09PM (#33845723)

Why downvote this? It's plainly true. Most drug-related deaths are from disease, contamination (fentanyl), improper dosing and black market violence. Those issues all virtually vanish with legal access to drugs. So we can choose to a) change our obviously failed policies and start saving lives or b) keep doing what we're doing and keep paying the cost in taxes, personal liberty and lost human lives.

If you need data, look at Portugal.

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Re:America’s syringe exchanges kill drug users by edgyquant on Saturday December 03, 2022 @01:38PM (#33846021)

1. Because it isn’t plainly true. The number of drug overdoses has risen in Portugal over the last decade https://www.statista.com/statistics/911927/drug-overdose-dea...

2. Even if it were true, nations get to dictate their policies and it is perfectly understandable for them to not want to subsidize drug abuse.

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Re:America’s syringe exchanges kill drug users by standardUser on Saturday December 03, 2022 @01:54PM (#33846181)

Portugal has had massive success across the board with decriminalization, but they have not gone far enough to prevent overdose deaths because they still ban manufacturing and distribution. As long as a government protects a black market, there will be preventable deaths.

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Re:America’s syringe exchanges kill drug users by vorpalhex on Saturday December 03, 2022 @02:45PM (#33846598)

Legalizing has resulted in more ODs so you want to.. legalize more?

How does legalizing manufacturing of a killer substance stop ODs?

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Re:America’s syringe exchanges kill drug users by tonyarkles on Saturday December 03, 2022 @05:41PM (#33848225)

> How does legalizing manufacturing of a killer substance stop ODs?

It’s not legalizing it that could potentially help with ODs but regulating it. It’s the difference between injecting a random-assumed-to-be-heroin substance dissolved in tap water on a heated spoon and injecting a known 10mg/mL vial of heroin.

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Re:America’s syringe exchanges kill drug users by vorpalhex on Saturday December 03, 2022 @06:15PM (#33848503)

And that 10mg/ml of heroin can and will kill heroin users. Fentanyl has made the situation worse but heroin users do in fact kill themselves frequently by ODing.

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Re:America’s syringe exchanges kill drug users by tonyarkles on Sunday December 04, 2022 @09:56AM (#33854205)

I don’t disagree, but legalization without quality control is almost certainly worse than legalization with QC.

Legal weed in Canada has THC % numbers on it and it makes dosing so much simpler. While the impact of too much THC is nowhere near as bad as opiates, it’s quite nice being able to look at a bag and pretty accurately predict how much to have to get a desired effect.

Edit: same with alcohol. It’s really nice to be able to look at a 355mL can of beer and know that drinking it isn’t going to have the same effect as a 355mL bottle of vodka.

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Re:America’s syringe exchanges kill drug users by vorpalhex on Sunday December 04, 2022 @01:38PM (#33856317)

And peoole kill themselves - frequently - with alcohol.

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Re:America’s syringe exchanges kill drug users by tonyarkles on Monday December 05, 2022 @08:05AM (#33865069)

So are you suggesting that problem would be better or worse without quality control and labelling?

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