U.S. - Carl Hart on why it's time to legalize drugs

[S.J.B.]

Carl Hart on why it's time to legalize drugs: "What is wrong with people making that choice?"
Chauncey DeVega
Salon
September 26th, 2018

Laws are not natural. They are made by society. As such, they reward certain behavior and punish others. The law is not "neutral" or "blind." It is made by the powerful, often to the disadvantage of the less powerful. America's drug laws serve as a powerful example of how justice that is supposed to be dispensed equally becomes a form of social control.

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One of the dominant narratives surrounding Donald Trump's election is that there are all these "deaths of despair" out there in white, red-state America. In turn these deaths caused by alcohol and opioids caused desperate white people to vote for Trump. What do we actually know about this "epidemic" of opioids in white America?

There is so much conflation going on when we talk about opioids. When we think about just opioids in general, for example, very few people who are addicted to opioids were actually prescribed them. Another example: Even with heroin, less than a quarter of the people who use it are actually addicted to the drug. The vast majority of people who use these drugs are not addicted. But too many people conflate "addiction" with overdose. In fact, people who are addicted are less likely to overdose from the drug, in part because they have a higher tolerance.

I love to participate in public education. But so many reporters and others who are trying to write on these "opioid addiction" stories have not done the basic research.

Read the full story here.