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A comment on Ross Ulbricht was just granted a full pardon. Parent comment

Re:Ross Ulbricht was just granted a full pardon by adriand on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @09:16PM (#42788069)
> addicts would have access to regulated, pharmaceutical grade heroin

We tried that, it was called the opioid epidemic and Purdue was the pharmacist. We had readily available, doctor-prescribed, high quality narcotics available to anyone who wanted them and the result was an epic disaster that cost thousands of lives.

> weapons weren't permitted on the platform

My mistake.

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Re:Ross Ulbricht was just granted a full pardon by l0ng1nu5 on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @10:02PM (#42788449)
>We tried that, it was called the opioid epidemic and Purdue was the pharmacist.

Not really, this was a case of a private company deliberately pushing narcotics for profit without oversight or any associated increase in access to treatment options.

Now the "opioid epidemic" has been replaced with a "fentanyl epidemic" which is objectively a much more dangerous drug with absolutely no regulation and murderous cartels instead of doctors - and we're still throwing people in prison for the crime of being addicts rather than treating it as a medical issue.

I don't know the stats (or if it's even possible to accurately collect statistics due to prohibition) but I'm fairly certain this costs more lives than the short lived opioid epidemic.

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