UK - Why Legalisation of Drugs Won't Work

[Crankinit]

Both drugs are highly addictive and a large portion of the damage is due to poor dosing, purity and route of administration.

That might be true in the current situation, but only as a side effect of prohibition. No matter how pure or clean you make your meth, no matter how you administer it, it will still cause neurological damage, sleep disturbance and psychosis with regular use. There's no way to be a functional meth addict for long, eventually it just wears you down and catches you one way or another, the strain on the body and the mind is too much.

Whereas heroin doesn't cause any major harm outside of overdose (uncomfortable side effects, sure, but nothing debilitating), which is easily avoidable with on-site administration by a nurse with naloxone on hand. You shouldn't even need that if you have pure diamorphine, but people are idiots.

What I think would be reasonable to try, would be to keep methamphetamine illegal, but to offer another, safer stimulant that can only be taken orally. Even then I'm dubious, but it would be worth the attempt. Perhaps regular d-amphetamine? Certainly not cocaine, in fact finding a safer, less cardiotoxic replacement for cocaine should be one of the highest priorities on drug reform. Remember how the cocaine death rate dropped when mephedrone was big in the UK? Surely they can synthesize a short acting, high oral BA, euphoric stimulant without the cardiotoxicity of cocaine or the neurotoxicity of meth? The biggest question then is how to handle it's place in society. You want it to replace meth and coke, but you don't want everyone and their dog deciding to use it. Very tricky.

 

[rickolasnice]

People take desoxyn daily

 

[rickolasnice]

You really can't rationalize a mature reason for using heroin outside of pain management.

Recreation?

I really don't understand this post? Can you maturely rationalize any kind of drug use? Why not heroin?

Pure diamorphine does very little to no damage to your brain or body.

 

[Crankinit]

People take desoxyn daily

It's very rare, and even then the doses are extremely low, tightly regulated, oral only and usually for short periods of time, it's not really comparable.

You really can't rationalize a mature reason for using heroin outside of pain management.

It feels mind-blowingly awesome? It kills anxiety and depression better than any SSRI could ever hope to do? Or the fact that you're already addicted and can't function without it? Or all of the above? What about pain patients who are also addicts?

You could say the same thing about every drug, technically the safest choice is to take nothing but prescribed meds and to be wary even then, but if we did that we wouldn't be here on BL :D

 

[rickolasnice]

If legalisation were to occur there could also be means of restricting the amount you can buy..

Meth is illegal yet thousands of people take it anyway. If people want to take it, they will, regardless of legality.

 

[Crankinit]

If legalisation were to occur there could also be means of restricting the amount you can buy..

Meth is illegal yet thousands of people take it anyway. If people want to take it, they will, regardless of legality.

Sure, but that isn't to say that ending prohibition and adopting new policies towards it won't affect levels of use. You'll probably never get rid of it, but you can try and find the optimum policy setup which results in the least harm caused to society and the individual by the drug.

For meth, I'd say decriminalize personal possession with diversion to treatment for problem users, combined with a heavy education campaign and potentially providing safer alternatives.