Re:The war on drugs is a broken business model
by girvo on Saturday October 12, 2013 @11:13AM
(#6538986)
Methadone is horrid. Buprenorphine was better for me, personally. I'm tapering off that at the moment.
Also, Krokodil is... well, it's barely desomorphine. A RP/I reduction of codeine... that certainly doesn't produce what they want it to (except in tiny, tiny quantities perhaps, more as a side-chain reaction though).
Also, just to point out, a lot of the Krokodil images were mislabeled from another drug (that I can't remember) -- it's horridly dangerous, it will kill you, but it doesn't eat the flesh of your bones like is commonly reported, unless you're shooting acetone. And trust me, you know if what you're shooting hasn't been cleaned properly -- that shit hurts like fuck, and definitely ruins any "high" you might get. *shudder
Drug addicts take drugs. They're not deterred by the legal status of the drug. Heroin being illegal doesn't stop addicts taking heroin.
By making a drug hard to get illegally all you do is make a drug addict commit more crime to get it, or take more risks.
Heroin users inject contaminated drugs, using re-used (sometimes shared) needles, in dirty surroundings. This carries considerable risk of infection from diseases like hepatitis and HIV. It also carries significant risk of abscess or even amputation.
Heroin users need money to buy heroin. This money can come from sex working. Sex work is an unregulated semi-legal activity. There are risks of rape and assault. There are risks of sexually transmitted infections. People dislike the advertising associated with sex work. Because sex work is unregulated there are other vulnerable groups dragged into it - trafficked women, homeless people, and children.
Or the money comes from other crime - mugging, burglary, theft. And people spending all their cash on heroin will steal food.
Heroin's illegality means that its supply is controlled by criminal gangs. There is violence associated with these gangs.
Even the "nice" drugs - cannabis - have considerable problems from their illegal status. We can't do proper science because of the problems of getting and giving cannabis. Cannabis is sometimes grown by slaves trapped in grow-farms in houses. There are links between cannabis grow farms and housing benefit fraud in the UK.
Heroin being illegal makes it harder for people to look for or get help. We can't taper addicts down using heroin, so we use methadone. It's tricky to talk about how addictive a substance is, but some people feel that methadone is more addictive than heroin.
When heroin is too tightly controlled you just switch addicts to even worse drugs. See, for example, the Russian drug Krokodil. This is desomorphine, cooked from codeine-containing meds, but in dirty unclean situations. The high from desomorphine is intense but short-lived, so people cook and cook frequently. They're careless with the procedure. This means that they're using filthy needles to inject god-only knows what. An image search for "krokodil" returns many grisly horrific images. Addicts using krokodil live for about 3 years.