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What Would it Be Like if Heroin Were Legal?

Jabberwocky

Jabberwocky

Frumious Bandersnatch
Joined
Nov 3, 1999
Messages
84,998
Bill Fried said:
March 11, 2013 |

The most frightening image conjured up by the term “drug legalization” is that of a chaotic free-for-all, where heroin is as unrestricted as chewing gum.

Not so fast. If you plan to go into the chewing gum business, you’ll soon learn that the state will not let you:

· sell fruit juice or beer and call it chewing gum,
· put floor shavings or dangerous chemicals in your chewing gum,
· claim your chewing gum cures cancer,
· hire people to sell your chewing gum on the street without a license.

In short, what must be in, what must not be in, what you can say about, and who can sell chewing gum, are all regulated. There’s no age restriction on purchase, any more than there is on the purchase of aspirin. But make no mistake, this benign substance is heavily and appropriately regulated.

And if it weren’t?

How would you feel about a child being offered a pack of gum—attractively packaged and half price— containing one part per 1,000 of energy boosting strychnine and no government body charged with preventing this?

Regulations are the checks and balances that keep some of us honest and the rest of us safe. We modify regulations in accordance with evolving science, state law, and political pressure. Regulations are openly discussed, periodically adjusted and always enforced with police power. In addition to product purity, regulations often involve age limits and restrictions on promotional freedom, typically around schools.

So much for alcohol, sex, voting, driving, and chewing gum. What about heroin? Who regulates heroin? Who sets its potency, price and age limits, who profits from it, sets its tax rate, and decides whether it is marketed to our children?

Street thugs and international cartels. Feeling safer?

Prohibition creates the incentive-laden, free-for-all street anarchy that snares our children as sellers and users. Legalization, paradoxically, means regulation. Meaningful regulation.

It is safe to say that in a country which regulates chewing gum and licenses hair dressers, legal heroin will be tightly regulated, and correctly so. It will be seen as a dangerous, adult-only drug that some can handle without incident, but others cannot. Just like alcohol, only stronger.

But unlike alcohol, which was a preexisting, legal enterprise before its prohibition, don’t expect full page ads promoting heroin on the day of its legalization. The faucets of promotion can be effectively sealed from day one. And, of course, it will never be sold without strictly enforced age restrictions, under any conditions.

It will be something that adults can get, as is currently the case. But stripped of its outlaw allure and extreme, prohibition-created profitability, its purchase and sale will not cause blood to flow in our streets or our jails to fill. It will continue to be used as an emotional crutch by those who spend their lives in the thrall of addiction, regardless of the legal status of their drug of “choice.” But treatment will be easier to come by as addicts no longer fear state reprisal from a futile, moralistic crusade. And as the state no longer threatens them, they will no longer threaten us.

The addicted will be seen as more needy than exotic. The Swiss, now followed by half a dozen European nations, have been doing just this for over a decade—dispensing heroin to heroin addicts on a non-profit, medical basis—and have enjoyed significantly lowered rates of addiction, crime, disease and death. The addicts are safer. The streets are safer. Life goes on.

Legalization works. It strips the glamour from drug use. And cuts street dealers off at the knees.

Legalized regulation of all drugs will yield a quieter, safer world, as we say goodbye to community-destroying street violence, family-destroying arrests, folk-hero drug dealers, dirty needle deaths, deaths from contaminated drugs, widespread corruption and SWAT team smack downs.

Send your daughter out to the store for chewing gum and a six pack. She’s come back with the gum. They won’t risk their license to sell her beer.

Street thugs pushing heroin don’t have that constraint—the constraint of legalization.



See more stories tagged with:
Chewing gum [3],
Contact Details [4],
Director of Programs [5],
Drug control law [6],
Drug liberalization [7],
heroin [8],
law enforcement [9],
law [10],
Person Career [11],
pharmacology [12],
Product Issues [13],
Prohibition of drugs [14],
public policy [15],
swat [16],
[email protected] [17],
dangerous chemicals [18],
drugs [19],
energy boosting strychnine [20],
state law [21],
widespread corruption [22]
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/drugs/what-would-it-be-if-heroin-were-legal

Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/bill-fried
[3] http://www.alternet.org/tags/chewing-gum
[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/contact-details
[5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/director-programs
[6] http://www.alternet.org/tags/drug-control-law
[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/drug-liberalization
[8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/heroin
[9] http://www.alternet.org/tags/law-enforcement
[10] http://www.alternet.org/tags/law-0
[11] http://www.alternet.org/tags/person-career
[12] http://www.alternet.org/tags/pharmacology-0
[13] http://www.alternet.org/tags/product-issues
[14] http://www.alternet.org/tags/prohibition-drugs
[15] http://www.alternet.org/tags/public-policy
[16] http://www.alternet.org/tags/swat-0
[17] http://www.alternet.org/tags/billfriedleapcc
[18] http://www.alternet.org/tags/dangerous-chemicals
[19] http://www.alternet.org/tags/drugs-0
[20] http://www.alternet.org/tags/energy-boosting-strychnine
[21] http://www.alternet.org/tags/state-law
[22] http://www.alternet.org/tags/widespread-corruption
[23] http://www.alternet.org/+new_src+
Click to expand...
http://www.alternet.org/print/drugs/what-would-it-be-if-heroin-were-legal
 
See more stories tagged with:
Chewing gum [3],
[...]
energy boosting strychnine [20],
[...]
widespread corruption [22]
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I lold.
 
Great article.
We need more like this, to get the point out to the masses that drug legalization would benefit society in many, many ways.

"What would it be like if Heroin were legal?"
It would mean many less people ODing.
Less spaces in prisons taken up by victimless criminals.
And we would have the freedom to alter our consciousness in this way - a freedom that is as essential to this being human as freedom of speech.
 
less strain on health and justice systems
addicts more likely to be productive members of society
massive loss in income for all those involved in the illegal drug trade
 
Oh course, the idea of the article is, as presented, doomed to failure/disfigurement as reform (might that be in the regulations themselves, kind of like how big tobacco and pharma are legal entities but fucked up in themselves; so legalization as "reform" isn't really a meaningful solution in any normative sense?). Like how reforming drug laws or sentencing guidelines, while not such a bad thing in and of themselves, don't solve the problem of mass incarceration. At least from my quasi-anarchist sensibilities (I think this was the article I'm looking for... not about to dig through it to find the concise example of that they use, but you get the idea).
 
Can the same be said for meth? What do you guys think about the selling and taxing of meth? If you replaced all the heroin in this article with meth is it still the same article and a good idea?
 
poledriver said:
Can the same be said for meth? What do you guys think about the selling and taxing of meth? If you replaced all the heroin in this article with meth is it still the same article and a good idea?
Click to expand...

i think all drugs should be legal. taxing them heavily as well if they have a negative effect on society.

weed = minimal tax
crack = heavy tax
 
yeah I kind of agree with all drugs should be legal, but sometimes i am divided because of how detrimental some drugs can be to people and the community, but I guess alot of the crime comes from the drugs being illegal in the first place.

If crack and meth were very heavily taxed this may cause a problem of people who don't have much money and wont more of them to rob and steal to get the money to buy the drugs. I dont know what the answer is, either way people are going to take them and get addicted to them hey. May as well get some tax going back into the country and councils and communities etc for funding of other projects like roads and schools and hospitals and addiction treatment facilities.
 
Crack and meth are much more deletrious on the body physically speaking than heroin or (almost) any opioid is.

That doesn't mean they couldn't/shouldn't be legalize/decriminalized. Certainly both (well, ime/imo meth much more so than crack or blow given duration of effects) have their legit uses. Crack, with it's short, intense high, doesn't lend itself all that much to the more practical of purposes, but again that doesn't mean people should be locked up for using it.

But should people be able to buy crack (straight up) down at the liquer store? Iono, I'm not so excited about that. But I think they should be able to get coke there is they can get caffeine, alcohol, proplyhex, etc. And in that sense it wouldn't even matter cause crack heads would just have to cook their own crack/base.

For the record, though, this - being able to walk down to the liqueur store and buy a drug like heroin or crack - is NOT what the article is advocating at all (it's advocating more of the ORT style clinic settings and decrim). So really this question is null, cause who really wants to see such powerful chemicals being distributed willy nilly, without regard and indiscriminate of the user? This isn't the public safety approach we're so used to, let alone the public health approach we'd be so much better off with. It's just fucking bizarre, like the way these drugs were regulated - or de jure lack there of - when they first became popular (I'm thinking coke and heroin here).

Cause being able to go out and buy heroin or cocaine at the local corner store, or through the mass consumer, mail-order catalogs, that IS just like how it used to be with patent medicines, even if we didn't always know. That is what I mean by bizarre.

Although in other ways it was a much safer system than we have today, at least for those of us using the drugs (not in terms of quality of the drug at hand - patent medicines were notorious for being contaminated with deadly shit as well as stuff like heroin - but the way drug users hadn't been so thoroughly socially and institutionally/systematically demonized). But that's likely got more to do with just pre-prohibition/war on drugs times than anything else...

I'm more interested in the "pre-conditions" end up being (e.g. actual historical precedents) if we ever get our act together. What leading up to the decriminalization of "hard drugs" would imo be just as important as the actual decrminalization itself. Especially concerning that would largely color the situation we would them find ourselves in, once, if we ever get there I mean...

I'm certainly not one of them, but I don't see anything wrong with crack style clinic/maint programs. Crack-Replacement-Therapy. Freebase Cocaine Replacement Therapy.

And for those in the gay community (and else people) who just can't seem to get enough of slamming tina, clean IV methamphetamine replacement therapy too (with lots of free condoms and lube)...

Some people just need it (granted this population is a tiny minority relatively speaking). I hear, like heroin, crack works as a wonderful antidepressant (although this wasn't my experience - my single crack experience, the exception to the rule of crack, was horrible, thank god; I suffered enough at the hands of cocaine hcl and then heroin thank you mother)...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
But should people be able to buy crack (straight up) down at the liquer store? Iono, I'm not so excited about that. But I think they should be able to get coke there is they can get caffeine, alcohol, proplyhex, etc. And in that sense it wouldn't even matter cause crack heads would just have to cook their own crack/base.
Click to expand...

Maybe they should be sold via prescription, things like coke and meth, and made via pharmaceutical companies. And not on show at shops. Imagine how many workers might have a bit here and there? Bit too tempting for some I'd imagine. Drug stores have been dealing with the problem of addicts with pain pills and such for a while now, some implementing some pretty strict measures to control stock and make sure it goes to the right people etc.
 
I think the jury is out on whether it would be beneficial to legalize meth or cocaine. My gut feeling is that to do so wouldn't cause any significant positive change, and possibly even make the issue worse, as, unlike heroin, the majority of the dangerous side effects are inherent to the drug, and not a side effect of prohibition. That said, I'd still like to see research and experimentation into finding a better balance between prohibition and all out legalization for these drugs, one which would cause the least harm to both the individual and society at large.

A good start would be to try and synthesize a replacement for these drugs that provides the euphoric stimulant effect but without the massive cardiotoxicity of cocaine or the neurotoxicity and excessive half life of meth. Addiction, sleep deprivation etc. would still be an issue, and it wouldn't be healthy, but at least you wouldn't have crackheads dropping left and right from heart attacks and strokes, or meth heads frying their brain and impeding their eventual recovery.
 
I keep on laughing whenever I read this (particularly the bolded out portions):

"From 1898 through to 1910, diacetylmorphine was marketed under the trademark name Heroin as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough suppressant. Bayer marketed the drug as a cure for morphine addiction before it was discovered that it rapidly metabolizes into morphine. As such, diacetylmorphine is in essence a quicker-acting form of morphine. The company was embarrassed by the new finding, which became a historic blunder for Bayer." [http://opioids.com/heroin/heroinhistory.html]

---------

Anyways, my reason for quoting that paragraph is because so few people actually know that heroin was once a trademark, and that for over a decade it was legally sold over-the-counter in pharmacies, alongside Aspirin.

It really is astonishing how powerful of a brainwashing tool propaganda can be, and how blatantly ignorant and narrow-minded it can turn most of a nation into, in as little as half a century. All most people nowadays do seem to know is that heroin is a scourge, and that anyone associated with it's use or sale are scumbags who deserve everything bad that befalls them, regardless of why any of them have become associated with it. At least that's the type of attitude I've witnessed over the past couple of decades from the vast majority of "law abiding" citizens. And judging by some of the comments I've read on various news sites regarding - for example - a celebrity ODing after slamming a speedball, I could swear some of them act like they're controlled by some pro-drug war human overlord. Some rather disgusting thoughts out there for sure.

Thankfully, there are a few bright thinkers out there in the riot crowd of "just say no" indoctrinated folk who have come to realize that people tend to do things for a reason, rather than spontaneously wake up one morning and chant, "Oh joy, oh joy, a smack-filled life for me!" And it seems that more and more previously mind-controlled bodies are beginning to see things in a similar fashion. I can only hope this continues.

At the same time however, I know there's always someone out there who's screaming bloody murder every time yet another famous individual is quoted in a newspaper as speaking out against the war on drugs. Someone who needs their head examined now more than ever.
 
slimvictor said:
Great article.
We need more like this, to get the point out to the masses that drug legalization would benefit society in many, many ways.

"What would it be like if Heroin were legal?"
It would mean many less people ODing.
Less spaces in prisons taken up by victimless criminals.
And we would have the freedom to alter our consciousness in this way - a freedom that is as essential to this being human as freedom of speech.
Click to expand...

Money will go to the government rather than criminal gangs.
More money, less stigma, surrounding medical care for addicts.
More people will be clued up on the facts. (How to use safely, etc)
More people will know what to do in the event of an overdose / adverse reaction.
More people will be equipped to deal with an overdose / adverse reaction.

I believe all drugs should be legal and regulated. People should be taught about harm minimization / drug safety throughout school. Then once old enough go on an educational course covering each drug, it's dangers, ways to use safely, what to do in the event of an overdose, etc etc. Upon completing said course you should get a license (like a drivers license) which will allow you to buy certain amount of drugs from shops.
 
Yup, next to Asprin, hasn't Heroin been their most lucrative product?

rickolasnice said:
Upon completing said course you should get a license (like a drivers license) which will allow you to buy certain amount of drugs from shops.
Click to expand...

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but that is actually kind of how the system works at present. If you have the right stamp/tax whatever, licensed by the gov't, you can manufacturer/distribute/sell/etc whatever drug/item is associated with it. Except, of course, all those drugs are illegal and the so-called-war "rages" on. Point being, regulation is tricky, although I agree, as it will relate to a distribution, necessary to some degree (where it wouldn't be paternalistic and coercive).
 
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