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Many (not all) of those things were results of the criminalization of drugs, as well as our refusal to take care of people with mental health issues. Most over

Many (not all) of those things were results of the criminalization of drugs, as well as our refusal to take care of people with mental health issues. Most overdoses could be avoided by knowing exactly what you're taking, at what dose, and maybe even under supervision (like at safe injection sites; places that have gone years without a single person dying on premises). The homeless people thing is a failure of our healthcare and housing systems. Fentanyl only exists on the black market because drugs are illegal. Fentanyl is kind of a shit high compared to other opioids, it's only a problem because dealers are cutting their illegal drugs with it.

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DrThunder 3y ago
Addiction is the root issue, not overdosing. It's not enough to just stop people from dying, you need to actually give them quality of life. "The homeless people thing is a failure of our healthcare and housing systems." This is the result of drug addiction not the cause. "Many (not all) of those things were results of the criminalization of drugs" Don't agree, alcohol is perfectly legal and one of highest percentage addictions there is. Opioids are a legal prescription and also out of control.
- randomNumber7 3y ago
  Yes, but often the root issue of addiction is mental health issues (and not only the drug itself). There are many people who occasionaly take drugs without strong addiction. It depends a bit on the drug to be fair. Like you cant "occasionaly" smoke cigarettes, either you are addicted or not. You can occasionaly drink a beer and not become an alcoholic. The people who become alcoholics almost always have some personal problems / mental health issues as a trigger. But the world wide drug policy doesnt make any sense, because even a "evil" and highly addictive drug like cocaine is actually less addicting than smoking.
  - stef25 3y ago
    > Like you cant "occasionaly" smoke cigarettes, either you are addicted or not. I was an occasional smoker for 20+ years. Could go weeks without a cigarette. Or smoke a few daily when stressed at work. Or smoke an entire pack on a night out. Recently went through some personal hell and now I'm on 10-15 cigs a day and find it hard to stop. Absolutely because of the recent stress and trauma. It is without a doubt one of the most pointless drugs in existence.
    - randomNumber7 3y ago
      > I was an occasional smoker for 20+ years. Could go weeks without a cigarette. I think you are a very rare minority then. Quit smoking is painfull (went through it multiple times). For me it feels so much better since I finally got it. And since then my behaviour regarding other drugs also got a lot better, because you dont have that "hunger" to take s.th. from smoking. > It is without a doubt one of the most pointless drugs in existence. It doesnt even make you high lol.
      - Ylpertnodi 3y ago
        "Like you cant "occasionaly" smoke cigarettes" I know several endurance sportsmen (no ladies were met, that I knew about) who will smoke an occasional cigarette. As an ex-smoker (took up endurance sports), I was astonished when I saw super-fit people casually smoking.
    - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
      > It is without a doubt one of the most pointless drugs in existence. I don't know about this one. Cigarettes specifically certainly have enough chronic downsides to outweigh their upsides for me, but nicotine in general serves as a pretty good, light dopamine hit, with relatively few acute downsides. You don't intoxicated, it doesn't take long to ingest, and it's available enough to not become life-consuming. It's not a coincidence that it's a very common habit. I say this as someone who used to use cigarettes, but took up vaping nicotine instead when I realized it didn't make my clothes reek and scratched the same itch. Everybody has habits around dopamine management. Some people snack, some people spend too much time on social media, some people gamble (in casinos or in brokerages). Personally, I'm prone to snacking, and I eventually realized I could either smoke and be attractive, or snack and get fat. It was an easy enough choice.
- di456 3y ago
  > Addiction is the root issue, not overdosing What is the root of addiction? This is the best book on it. https://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/ https://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/
  - tiffanyg 3y ago
    Ooh, unexpected and interesting reference to one of the "realms" of human experience (in the terminology / model of Buddhism, in particular, to me). "Hungry ghosts" is exactly it (as I've learned / come to view the meaning), speaking from personal experience with drives at various times morphing into the ... unhealthy. Humans have all sorts of axes - behaviorally, environmentally, genetically. It's interesting to look at these, and look at how traits complement and contrast ... how subtle tweaks and changes in parameters can be the difference between, say, a high-performing researcher with a solid career, and a ... someone who falls off the map to greater or lesser degrees [1]. One thing I am quite familiar with, these days, is: the very traits that set people up for "(very) high performance", also set people up for addictions and other issues. AA and other related groups are quite enriched in, in my experience, high performers (as well as very interesting / idiosyncratic / "exceptional" people*) of various types. The tendency to get sucked into things ... to become obsessive, to push boundaries, "openness to experience", etc. easily contribute to someone becoming a "star" and/or a "strung-out junkie". The Buddhist, AA (rooted in "Oxford Group" / "early Christian" ideas), etc. ideas about "spirit" and a sort of "middle way" and all of that, provide practical guidance (and practices) that can really help balance out the serious negatives that can come out of some traits / mixtures of traits. I'll look into this book further when I have a moment. Thanks for pointing it out! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash_Jr. - not necessarily the best example, here, but, apt enough and what comes to mind this moment ... representing, to some extent, disparate outcomes in one individual (take that, dualism!) * Note: none of this should be taken as any kind of "value judgment" - specifically, 'positive' or 'negative' ... these terms can be quite positive or negative, as reflected in almost anyone I've met, as well as myself
    - di456 3y ago
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  >"The homeless people thing is a failure of our healthcare and housing systems." >This is the result of drug addiction not the cause. Not always: lose job, lose house, get offered cheap accommodation, meet some people...seen it happen.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Or, because of how things in cities are right now: Your rent increased but your pay didn't. Now you are homeless because it's impossible to pay rent with money you aren't getting. Now you have your job and car but no home, and are homeless, and now people want to treat you as lazy even though you work 60 hours a week for jobs you've been in for a decade. Rent has gone up almost double in the city I live in (a small city you won't think of) and nobody's jobs decided to double their pay, so there's a lot of people who literally can't afford just to have a legal place to sleep.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  > This is the result of drug addiction not the cause. Where'd you get that? Studies I've seen of homeless addicts show that a simple majority were not addicted when they became homeless. Certainly it's a common cause of homelessness but still only accounts for a minority.
  - DrThunder 3y ago
    I don't agree at all. Most addicts on the streets were addicts beforehand and the reason they're homeless has a lot do with their addiction and being unable to maintain a working lifestyle. It's DEFINITELY not a minority. They don't just randomly end up on the streets from some random cause and then turn into addicts. That rarely happens, there are too many opportunities in this country to just become completely homeless from bad luck.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      It’s not a matter of opinion though look it up.
      - DrThunder 3y ago
        There's no scientific basis for what you're saying, so it is in fact an opinion you're spouting off. The only way to do a study on this would be to ask. They're not tracking people throughout their lives to see if they're suddenly becoming homeless and turning into drug addicts afterwards. Use some critical thinking please. Just because some media outlet says it's so doesn't make it true.
ak_111 3y ago
I think your argument is a bit shaky if you take into consideration alcohol in society. alcohol consumption is perfectly acceptable, very well-regulated, “safe”, and alcoholics receive plenty of support and sympathy from public health, yet that doesn’t stop alcoholism ripping through society with countless victims (and victims of victims). You can even make the argument that many alocholics wouldn’t be so if alcohol was less normalised in society
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > You can even make the argument that many alocholics wouldn’t be so if alcohol was less normalised in society Didn't American and European prohibition vehemently disprove this theory?
  - runsWphotons 3y ago
    Prohibition actually worked relatively well.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      It reduced harm until it started to increase harm. At the end of the day human vice isn't going away.
    - skulk 3y ago
      It's not useful to judge prohibition in a single dimension of "work well" to "didn't work". Sure, cirrhosis rates went down significantly but organized crime (a disease of its own) was gifted a torrent of money to fuel other activities.
  - joncrane 3y ago
    It was a "loud minority" type of thing. The average person simply stopped drinking, which was fine. In today's market, 10% of the drinkers consume 90% of the alcohol. So the efforts of the 10% and the people serving the 10%, and the efforts of law enforcement to stop them, resulted in many very high profile, violent events, which made it seem like it wasn't worth the effort. Full disclosure, I'm an alcoholic in recovery and I'd be fine with alcohol being illegal. My main beef is that the laws are not internally consistent: THC is by far a milder drug than alcohol but alcohol is legal while THC is still mostly illegal in the US (federally). Either legalize THC completely or ban alcohol if you want to be consistent. Also worth noting, THC (at less than 0.3% which is plenty for gummies) and many very very close, but naturally occurring (in infinitesimal amounts) are technically legal federally and companies like 3CHI are exploiting those loopholes. You can buy a vape containing things like HHC, THC-P, THC-O, etc which is virtually indistinguishable from Delta-9 THC, so obviously the days of THC being illegal are numbered.
jonhohle 3y ago
How are cities with a safe-injection sites doing at the moment? Over the last decade supporting drug use in transient (homeless) populations hasn’t had a positive effect on that population. Legalization (or decriminalization) is a possible pathway to supporting people, but the current method of helping people with myriad issues stay in their current state in life (or worse, encourage more to enter it) is one of the biggest public health disasters facing urban areas. Major cities are being gutted by this failed line of thinking.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  Have you looked much at the situation in Portugal? I've only heard good reports about their efforts there.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    There are many places that are doing better than the US (which is 4ᵀᴴ from the bottom). Addressing affordable housing close to places of employment seems to be pretty helpful most places it’s tried. AFAICT, NIMBYism prevents that in most large cities (though why a tent city is preferable is beyond my understanding). I agree with decriminalization, but also that individuals should be able to function within a social framework. For those that can’t (not those who won’t), services should be provided to allow that person to thrive in the capacity that they can in the most minimally invasive way possible.
    - zeekaran 3y ago
      > AFAICT, NIMBYism prevents that in most large cities (though why a tent city is preferable is beyond my understanding). It's no different than "banning abortions to reduce the amount of abortions". It doesn't work that way in reality, and rather than face reality, they dig in deeper, stick fingers in their ears and go LALALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU. Except that NiMBYism goes strongly across both major political parties. Though there's plenty to say about "affordable housing", many have argued we just need drastically more housing rather than a lot of government regulated housing prices. We're just not building enough in places people want to live, specifically because zoning (looping back to NiMBYism). [Andrew Price](https://andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20210125.php https://andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20210125.php) and Strong Towns have plenty to say about this.

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deleted 3y ago

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DrThunder 3y ago

Addiction is the root issue, not overdosing. It's not enough to just stop people from dying, you need to actually give them quality of life. "The homeless people thing is a failure of our healthcare and housing systems." This is the result of drug addiction not the cause. "Many (not all) of those things were results of the criminalization of drugs" Don't agree, alcohol is perfectly legal and one of highest percentage addictions there is. Opioids are a legal prescription and also out of control.

randomNumber7 3y ago
Yes, but often the root issue of addiction is mental health issues (and not only the drug itself). There are many people who occasionaly take drugs without strong addiction. It depends a bit on the drug to be fair. Like you cant "occasionaly" smoke cigarettes, either you are addicted or not. You can occasionaly drink a beer and not become an alcoholic. The people who become alcoholics almost always have some personal problems / mental health issues as a trigger. But the world wide drug policy doesnt make any sense, because even a "evil" and highly addictive drug like cocaine is actually less addicting than smoking.
- stef25 3y ago
  > Like you cant "occasionaly" smoke cigarettes, either you are addicted or not. I was an occasional smoker for 20+ years. Could go weeks without a cigarette. Or smoke a few daily when stressed at work. Or smoke an entire pack on a night out. Recently went through some personal hell and now I'm on 10-15 cigs a day and find it hard to stop. Absolutely because of the recent stress and trauma. It is without a doubt one of the most pointless drugs in existence.
  - randomNumber7 3y ago
    > I was an occasional smoker for 20+ years. Could go weeks without a cigarette. I think you are a very rare minority then. Quit smoking is painfull (went through it multiple times). For me it feels so much better since I finally got it. And since then my behaviour regarding other drugs also got a lot better, because you dont have that "hunger" to take s.th. from smoking. > It is without a doubt one of the most pointless drugs in existence. It doesnt even make you high lol.
    - Ylpertnodi 3y ago
      "Like you cant "occasionaly" smoke cigarettes" I know several endurance sportsmen (no ladies were met, that I knew about) who will smoke an occasional cigarette. As an ex-smoker (took up endurance sports), I was astonished when I saw super-fit people casually smoking.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    > It is without a doubt one of the most pointless drugs in existence. I don't know about this one. Cigarettes specifically certainly have enough chronic downsides to outweigh their upsides for me, but nicotine in general serves as a pretty good, light dopamine hit, with relatively few acute downsides. You don't intoxicated, it doesn't take long to ingest, and it's available enough to not become life-consuming. It's not a coincidence that it's a very common habit. I say this as someone who used to use cigarettes, but took up vaping nicotine instead when I realized it didn't make my clothes reek and scratched the same itch. Everybody has habits around dopamine management. Some people snack, some people spend too much time on social media, some people gamble (in casinos or in brokerages). Personally, I'm prone to snacking, and I eventually realized I could either smoke and be attractive, or snack and get fat. It was an easy enough choice.
di456 3y ago
> Addiction is the root issue, not overdosing What is the root of addiction? This is the best book on it. https://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/ https://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/
- tiffanyg 3y ago
  Ooh, unexpected and interesting reference to one of the "realms" of human experience (in the terminology / model of Buddhism, in particular, to me). "Hungry ghosts" is exactly it (as I've learned / come to view the meaning), speaking from personal experience with drives at various times morphing into the ... unhealthy. Humans have all sorts of axes - behaviorally, environmentally, genetically. It's interesting to look at these, and look at how traits complement and contrast ... how subtle tweaks and changes in parameters can be the difference between, say, a high-performing researcher with a solid career, and a ... someone who falls off the map to greater or lesser degrees [1]. One thing I am quite familiar with, these days, is: the very traits that set people up for "(very) high performance", also set people up for addictions and other issues. AA and other related groups are quite enriched in, in my experience, high performers (as well as very interesting / idiosyncratic / "exceptional" people*) of various types. The tendency to get sucked into things ... to become obsessive, to push boundaries, "openness to experience", etc. easily contribute to someone becoming a "star" and/or a "strung-out junkie". The Buddhist, AA (rooted in "Oxford Group" / "early Christian" ideas), etc. ideas about "spirit" and a sort of "middle way" and all of that, provide practical guidance (and practices) that can really help balance out the serious negatives that can come out of some traits / mixtures of traits. I'll look into this book further when I have a moment. Thanks for pointing it out! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash_Jr. - not necessarily the best example, here, but, apt enough and what comes to mind this moment ... representing, to some extent, disparate outcomes in one individual (take that, dualism!) * Note: none of this should be taken as any kind of "value judgment" - specifically, 'positive' or 'negative' ... these terms can be quite positive or negative, as reflected in almost anyone I've met, as well as myself
  - di456 3y ago
InCityDreams 3y ago
>"The homeless people thing is a failure of our healthcare and housing systems." >This is the result of drug addiction not the cause. Not always: lose job, lose house, get offered cheap accommodation, meet some people...seen it happen.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Or, because of how things in cities are right now: Your rent increased but your pay didn't. Now you are homeless because it's impossible to pay rent with money you aren't getting. Now you have your job and car but no home, and are homeless, and now people want to treat you as lazy even though you work 60 hours a week for jobs you've been in for a decade. Rent has gone up almost double in the city I live in (a small city you won't think of) and nobody's jobs decided to double their pay, so there's a lot of people who literally can't afford just to have a legal place to sleep.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
> This is the result of drug addiction not the cause. Where'd you get that? Studies I've seen of homeless addicts show that a simple majority were not addicted when they became homeless. Certainly it's a common cause of homelessness but still only accounts for a minority.
- DrThunder 3y ago
  I don't agree at all. Most addicts on the streets were addicts beforehand and the reason they're homeless has a lot do with their addiction and being unable to maintain a working lifestyle. It's DEFINITELY not a minority. They don't just randomly end up on the streets from some random cause and then turn into addicts. That rarely happens, there are too many opportunities in this country to just become completely homeless from bad luck.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    It’s not a matter of opinion though look it up.
    - DrThunder 3y ago
      There's no scientific basis for what you're saying, so it is in fact an opinion you're spouting off. The only way to do a study on this would be to ask. They're not tracking people throughout their lives to see if they're suddenly becoming homeless and turning into drug addicts afterwards. Use some critical thinking please. Just because some media outlet says it's so doesn't make it true.

ak_111 3y ago

I think your argument is a bit shaky if you take into consideration alcohol in society. alcohol consumption is perfectly acceptable, very well-regulated, “safe”, and alcoholics receive plenty of support and sympathy from public health, yet that doesn’t stop alcoholism ripping through society with countless victims (and victims of victims). You can even make the argument that many alocholics wouldn’t be so if alcohol was less normalised in society

smoldesu 3y ago
> You can even make the argument that many alocholics wouldn’t be so if alcohol was less normalised in society Didn't American and European prohibition vehemently disprove this theory?
- runsWphotons 3y ago
  Prohibition actually worked relatively well.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    It reduced harm until it started to increase harm. At the end of the day human vice isn't going away.
  - skulk 3y ago
    It's not useful to judge prohibition in a single dimension of "work well" to "didn't work". Sure, cirrhosis rates went down significantly but organized crime (a disease of its own) was gifted a torrent of money to fuel other activities.
- joncrane 3y ago
  It was a "loud minority" type of thing. The average person simply stopped drinking, which was fine. In today's market, 10% of the drinkers consume 90% of the alcohol. So the efforts of the 10% and the people serving the 10%, and the efforts of law enforcement to stop them, resulted in many very high profile, violent events, which made it seem like it wasn't worth the effort. Full disclosure, I'm an alcoholic in recovery and I'd be fine with alcohol being illegal. My main beef is that the laws are not internally consistent: THC is by far a milder drug than alcohol but alcohol is legal while THC is still mostly illegal in the US (federally). Either legalize THC completely or ban alcohol if you want to be consistent. Also worth noting, THC (at less than 0.3% which is plenty for gummies) and many very very close, but naturally occurring (in infinitesimal amounts) are technically legal federally and companies like 3CHI are exploiting those loopholes. You can buy a vape containing things like HHC, THC-P, THC-O, etc which is virtually indistinguishable from Delta-9 THC, so obviously the days of THC being illegal are numbered.

jonhohle 3y ago

How are cities with a safe-injection sites doing at the moment? Over the last decade supporting drug use in transient (homeless) populations hasn’t had a positive effect on that population. Legalization (or decriminalization) is a possible pathway to supporting people, but the current method of helping people with myriad issues stay in their current state in life (or worse, encourage more to enter it) is one of the biggest public health disasters facing urban areas. Major cities are being gutted by this failed line of thinking.

AlecSchueler 3y ago
Have you looked much at the situation in Portugal? I've only heard good reports about their efforts there.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  There are many places that are doing better than the US (which is 4ᵀᴴ from the bottom). Addressing affordable housing close to places of employment seems to be pretty helpful most places it’s tried. AFAICT, NIMBYism prevents that in most large cities (though why a tent city is preferable is beyond my understanding). I agree with decriminalization, but also that individuals should be able to function within a social framework. For those that can’t (not those who won’t), services should be provided to allow that person to thrive in the capacity that they can in the most minimally invasive way possible.
  - zeekaran 3y ago
    > AFAICT, NIMBYism prevents that in most large cities (though why a tent city is preferable is beyond my understanding). It's no different than "banning abortions to reduce the amount of abortions". It doesn't work that way in reality, and rather than face reality, they dig in deeper, stick fingers in their ears and go LALALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU. Except that NiMBYism goes strongly across both major political parties. Though there's plenty to say about "affordable housing", many have argued we just need drastically more housing rather than a lot of government regulated housing prices. We're just not building enough in places people want to live, specifically because zoning (looping back to NiMBYism). [Andrew Price](https://andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20210125.php https://andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20210125.php) and Strong Towns have plenty to say about this.