Suboxone is handed out like candy in downtown Toronto and East Hastings Vancouver to any addict who wants it and is willing to show up at a pharmacy daily until they build trust with a doctor to get it on long term prescriptions.
This is part of the solution which is sorely lacking in many US states but it’s not some catch-all solution to drugs. It’s basically a better version of Methadone which has been available widely in the US since the 1980s.
I recently watched Sid and Nancy about Sid Vicious and him and his girlfriend are getting Methadone at a pharmacy in 1980s NYC before he later relapsed and offed himself.
It’s important no doubt but moving beyond the prohibition drug war approach (which is failing in places going hard as it is weak like Canada) to dealing with this requires a serious reckoning and public investment that we aren’t ready to accept yet but will be imposed on us whether we like it or not.
> It’s important no doubt but moving beyond the prohibition drug war approach (which is failing in places going hard as it is weak like Canada)to dealing with this requires a serious reckoning and public investment that we aren’t ready to accept yet but will be imposed on us whether we like it or not.
There are lots of contradictions here. Voters don't understand how they can be asked to liberalize hard drug use (and even decriminalize dealing) on the one hand, and are asked for billions of dollars for drug addiction treatment on the other. In Seattle, we have a particularly bad mess, where the biggest thing now is trying to fentanyl smoking off of public buses and light rail. They are even talking about studying the dangers of second hand fentanyl smoke to bus drivers.
Hopefully we can learn something from our neighbors up north, but frankly it doesn't seem to be that much better in Vancouver.
> Voters don't understand how they can be asked to liberalize hard drug use (and even decriminalize dealing) on the one hand, and are asked for billions of dollars for drug addiction treatment on the other.
It's easy to communicate this: We spend billions to incarcerate people for drug crimes, and then send them out with a criminal record that pushes them right back toward drug use. OR we spend fewer billions on drug addiction treatment and housing. It's not confusing or contradictory at all.
People who end up in prison don't get help, and people who get help don't end up in prison.
"Voters" wouldn't be confused if certain interests didn't keep them confused. It's profitable to keep housing scarce and prisons full. Until we start prioritizing sick people over profiteers we won't fix this problem.
No, you seem to be confused as to what voters actually want. Sure we could do drug treatment for less money and more social benefit, but how does that punish the baddies? If we give them free treatment and forgiveness, what does that say about me? I was good and they did the bad thing, and yet you want to throw a feast for your prodigal son. Taxes are high enough already, too high to give money to those fallen souls.
Or something like that. At least the first half. Most of us here are engineers, scientists, and tech leaders who can see how disruption can make a better system. But a lot of people see the opioid crisis not as health crisis but as a moral dilemma.
No, this is Seattle, we don’t want baddies to be punished. We want buses that don’t smell like burnt peanut butter. We want parks without tents, libraries without naked guys running around in crisis, and we’d like it all for some property tax rate that is less than 2%/year. It would also be nice if our grocery stores didn’t shut down due to shoplifting excesses, but that’s a stretch goal.
> Sure we could do drug treatment for less money and more social benefit, but how does that punish the baddies? If we give them free treatment and forgiveness, what does that say about me? I was good and they did the bad thing, and yet you want to throw a feast for your prodigal son. Taxes are high enough already, too high to give money to those fallen souls.
It's ironic that Christianity says they should do exactly that.
I don't think it says that. The younger son comes back and yes, a one-off feast is thrown, and the son's betrayal is completely forgiven, but the dad tells the older son that everything he has is his. He doesn't say, "Give your brother some more cash".
I don't have a strong position on drug laws, as I don't live in a city that's devastated by drug use. I just wanted to weigh in on the meaning of that parable.
I argue that in this context money spent on a one time feast can be interpreted as money spent on drug rehab. Rehab after all is meant to be a process, even if lengthy, that results in one no longer being dependent and hopefully not relapsing. Rehab is not a process of feeding the vice (unless there are various corporate interests and the process is perverted).
The point is to contrast retribution and discrimination with rehabilitation and empathy. Christianity very much endorses the latter option at least as long as the other is part of the in-group.
But maybe the in-group and out-group separation is very much the point of these laws since the war on drugs (started by Nixon) is a direct continuation of slavery after peonage was ended by FDR during WWII.
If you mean the first part then here is a quote from John Ehrlichman, the White House Counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon:
> “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Family members of Ehrlichman reject the veracity of the quote but I see no reason to since it is not about himself, it is about Nixon and his policies. There are some more voices questioning whether he was lying but even those voices admit Nixon was racist. I think it matters not whether introducing those laws had racism as a primary purpose, or whether they "coincidentally" aligned with a hidden agenda. Prohibition might not have had the purpose of creating a mafia network but failure to foresee that and failure to promptly react when the negative side effects of a law become apparent still matter. Prohibition in the US lasted 13 years, the US war on drugs is ongoing since the 70 even after other countries like Portugal demonstrated it is cheaper and more efficient to focus on rehabilitation.
If you mean the second part, see FDR's Circular 3591 from 1941-12-12. September 1942 is when the last slave in the US was freed. Nixon was elected a few decades later.
Feel free to explain which part is an utterly bizarre take.
Slavery is an extreme form of discrimination where the out-group is deemed subhuman. And discrimination is something the US has struggled with since the very beginning. It is the very notion that some people deserve to be restricted more and protected less by the law than other people. The notion that the out-group should be dehumanized and therefore it deserves whatever misery it finds itself in. This is a social illness. All that changed in the US are the names and sizes of the in-group and of the out-groups. But the illness is still there in the minds of the people.
It's a continuation in the sense that it is a manifestation of the same social illness.
> Slavery is an extreme form of discrimination where the out-group is deemed subhuman.
Ugh, no, don't argue in favor of my beliefs this badly. We know what slavery is, and creative redefinitions only make you sound dishonest. Slavery, real slavery, still exists in the US, and we don't have to make up weird definitions to say that.
Slavery still exists in the US, legally. The thirteenth amendment says:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (Emphasis mine).
This is a massive loophole, and one which has been taken full advantage of. By criminalizing things which shouldn't be criminalized, and then enforcing those laws unequally, you can effectively enslave a large portion of whatever group you want to.
In some cases such as Angola prison, the prisoners/slaves are literally forced to pick cotton for no pay. In other cases, the prisoners/slaves are paid some small amount: this is better for optics, but these same prisons easily recover the money by vending basic necessities at gouged prices: if you pay a seamstress $1/hour and then charge her $10 for a tampon at commissary, that's not pay. Prisoners can't shop elsewhere and can't work elsewhere.
And to be clear: the work isn't voluntary. Refusal to work is punished with solitary confinement and sensory deprivation--and that's if they bother to comply with the law instead of just beating prisoners who don't work or paying another prisoner to shank them. With little oversight, there's little stopping prisons from doing this.
In addition to lack of oversight allowing abuses of power, it also allows unsafe work conditions. Prisoners/slaves are unable to report unsafe conditions to anyone, and when unsafe conditions occur, there's no incentive to fix them.
Prison slavery is used by a variety of industries. JCPenney and KMart use prison slavery to manufacture clothes, IBM uses prison slavery to assemble circuitry, Wendy's and McDonald's use prison slavery to process foods.
I was not aware of all you wrote. I guess thanks for picking up the ball when I dropped it.
As an eastern European, for whom high school had almost nothing to say about American history (other than WWII) and afterwards I originally learned the usually parroted variant only to later correct the knowledge I had, I am baffled again and again every time when learning new things about the putrid fractal that is slavery in the US. I was never even that curious in the first place.
I did hear about the prison industrial complex but I had no idea about the "Angola" and how close this gets to slavery called by a different name. Reading about it now. I believed that while for profit prisons were inhuman, prisoners were not used for forced labor. I always kinda assumed that meant that prisons received so much money from the state they even made a profit.
That major western brands make use of it feels nauseating. I believed this was stuff we were criticizing China for.
Well the key word is “Baddies” we need to stop looking at drug addicts as “bad” but merely sick.
The actual “baddies” would lose their funding if you cure the junkies. The problem is the system as it is is profitable for other more socially acceptable “baddies” who stand to lose out. e.g sacklers
"we need to stop looking at drug addicts as “bad” but merely sick."
The root of the sickness often extends far beyond the individual into society. That's what many people don't want to look at or acknowledge. They insist on casting blame on the victim, and keep creating more victims.
To be honest I think you’re being to kind to the they. Yes there are some people who act out of being misinformed, or fear but there are cyclical people that pump this point of view specially for profit. Look at the sea change now in the US that pharma sent to far and people finally realised a lot of the “drugs bad” schtik was merely PR
The chapter in Erewhon from 1872 is interesting. In this strange utopia/dystopia the sick are punished like criminals and the criminals are treated with compassion as if they were sick. Particularly relevant for considering how drug addicts are treated.
He is pointing out the voters perspective which is valid and rarely reflected on social media since it is innately selfish.
At it's core this is a social issue that is swept under the rug for decades since the real solutions requires harsh reform that will likely destroy careers for pursuing it.
Drugs are a strong form of control, not just for the peddlers but to appease the masses from their painful reality, something that certain branches might like with AI and stuff reducing the usefulness of labor.
And the reason for that is the drug users as criminals narrative has been promoted by a combination of well meaning misinformed people and mere neerdowell grifters.
The solution is to promote this alternative narrative, something which is happening now thanks in part to successful activism and better education, but also an increasing wariness on the part of the public on the true motives behind public drug policy. I don’t think it’s a pure coincidence that this is all happening at the tail end of the opioid pandemic!
I hope we (as humanity) will get over punishment for the sake of punishment. It is a power tool to steer people away from harmful behavior and I don't think we can stop using it altogether anytime soon but it should be used to the extent it actually changes people's behavior - longer sentences not necessary better in this regard than shorter ones in combination with some re-integration program. And if we can prevent antisocial behavior without punishment why not at least try?
In prison or dead means they aren't on the streets and people don't have to face or interact with the problem. I would guess that many voters are much happier with "out of sight, out of mind"
Also not a risk to you. Most drug addicts are not the kind of people you want around. There are highly functioning ones, but it often exacerbates mental health issues.
Not sure prohibition is the correct approach but let's not strawman the other side of the argument.
> Most drug addicts are not the kind of people you want around.
True, but how much time does the average non-addict spend in drug rehabs? Both prisons and rehab facilities isolate addicts from the general population.
How does "we need to spend billions to get these people" translate into "people shouldn't be responsible for their choices?" Because if they aren't responsible for their choices, I am?
It isn't even less money, we passed that mark a long time ago. The average junkie in Seattle costs King County around $100k/year (w/o making any progress on their addiction), while we can put them in prison for around half that. This isn't about saving money anymore, its about throwing money into a bottomless pit and seeing nothing improving at all.
A lot of those "junkies" started off as normal people with pain, who were targeted by perdue, until they became heavily addicted to opiods and eventually turned to heroin or fentanyl.
We, as a society, as responsible for this situation, because we allowed a company to turn hundreds of thousands of people into drug addicts, and let all of the company executives walk away without any repercussions.
We have two options, both of which are bottomless pits:
1. Do nothing, and pay the costs associated with drug addicts being left untreated (shelters, prisons, run down portions of cities, lowered property values)
2. Treat people
One of those options may cost a lot, but it also improves everyone's lives. I don't understand why this choice is so hard for some folks.
Before even deciding between those choices, we should at least stop the problem continuing, by preventing so many prescriptions for opioids being given out to people in pain. The government should prosecute the likes of Purdue for their aggressive targeting of people in pain.
It won't happen though, because of regulatory capture, and general lobbying / corruption.
That problem is mostly already stopped. It is now much more difficult for doctors to prescribe opioid painkillers, to the extent that patients who legitimately have serious chronic pain are turning to buying illegal drugs because they can't get what they need through the healthcare system anymore.
Washington state successfully sued Purdue for millions of dollars over their contribution to opioid dependency. It hasn't made the tabloids because it's an example of government doing things right that doesn't sell well to people who want to complain about regulatory capture and corruption.
If we don't choose option 2, we're choosing option 1.
We need to address the source and the problem at the same time. Regulatory capture doesn't really apply here, but lobbying (which is synonymous with corruption at this point) definitely does. Fixing the citizen's united issue would be a proper start at addressing the lobbying problem.
> At the same time, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal, the Seattle metro area spends more than $1 billion fighting homelessness every year. That’s nearly $100,000 for every homeless man, woman, and child in King County, yet the crisis seems only to have deepened, with more addiction, more crime, and more tent encampments in residential neighborhoods. By any measure, the city’s efforts are not working.
I'm familiar with stats like this for other cities, but in my experience, it's common for those statistics to be misinterpreted.
Often these funds go towards housing people so they are no longer homeless, so you might have X people who are currently homeless, but Y people relying on that $1B to remain housed.
Because of that, it's inaccurate to divide $1B by X and then claim that's how much going towards individuals who are still homeless anyway, when it is more accurate to divide that figure by X+Y.
This stat isn't even being misinterpreted, it's being lied about. The $1billion is an imaginary number that includes theoretical lost tourism revenue, a pretense at annual spending of the capital costs for buildings used by welfare services, etc.
What that, obscenely slanted, first link doesn't mention, is that each year around 10k homeless people in Seattle get off the streets.
It isn't like that money is being flushed down a hole, results are being had on an individual basis, but for reasons that are nationwide in scope, the overall problem (# of homeless people on the streets of Seattle) isn't getting any better.
National problems require national solutions, but half the senate is perfectly happy to offload the cost of social ills onto coastal metros.
The chronic homeless cases (the ones that can’t recover quickly) eat up around 80% of that money, so it still isn’t that far off. The low hanging fruit cases just need housing, and aren’t going to destroy or use it to make meth, they don’t require anywhere bear $100k/year in services.
>> Seattle metro area spends more than $1 billion fighting homelessness every year.
Think about how monumentally worse the problem might be if they didn't spend that money. There are very likely tens of thousands more people who would be homeless if not for government support/programs. Just imagine how many people would be on the streets in a week if EI and disability income streams were cut.
No, only the ones that are acting nuts on the streets, the ones you are more likely notice more and the ones that aren’t helped without a lot of resources.
How inefficient is this system, actually? I doubt one homeless man in seattle can cost 2 times as much as I earn per year. What are you spending all these dollars on? A free visit to a prostitute every week? Oh, I forgot, thats illegal in the US...
They come from Christopher Rufo, a terrible person who is funded by creationist right wingers and these days is spending his time working with DeSantis to whip up fear of Critical Race Theory in schools.
The person you replied to specifically said prison is half the cost of alternative services to drug addicts. Your refutation would be worth something if you had figures, as they have subsequently posted a link to back up their position.
Except that posted link does not back up their position. The money went to housing for the homeless, not to "alternative services to drug addicts". The author's entire point or claim in that article is Seattle is wasting money on affordable housing because the driver of homelessness isn't housing costs, but rather other factors like domestic violence, drug abuse, etc.
In fact, the author encourages services to drug addicts near the end:
> With a secure emergency shelter system like that in San Diego, the county and city governments can reroute existing resources and “flood the zone” with on-site treatment options for the homeless. For addiction services, we should prioritize recovery programs and terminate policies like safe-injection sites that draw addicts from other cities.
It sounds like King County has an inefficient system. Bit of a rant here.
Tying success to "progress on their addiction" is also puritan brainworms, sorry.
A lot of US stuff seems to rely on punitive monitoring and "you relapsed, back to square one" nonsense, like a game of snakes and ladders. But with a body count.
Some people will never recover. Some will. Some will take fucking ages.
Being an addict and being a mostly functional, productive member of society are not mutually exclusive.
The actual ways to start fixing this problem are unfortunately, rather unpalatable to voters despite being cheaper in the long run.
Here's the thing. Heroin is dirt cheap to make at a controlled quality - its used in hospitals as diamorphine for end of life care, and some other uses.
State supply of heroin to heroin addicts is a policy that has been tested in the UK, Switzerland, Netherlands, and elsewhere at various points and it fucking works.
Decriminalization of possession with referral to addiction services is a policy that has worked phenomenally in Portugal.
Housing-first policies have worked out fantastically in Finland.
Putting supervised/safe injection rooms and needle exchanges in areas where addicts actually are (as opposed to where they are not) also works to reduce issues like people nodding off on the street, smoking up on buses, needles being discarded everywhere, etc.
Another point to note: the vast majority of addicts don't want to be addicts.
Those who do get off the drugs often relapse.
A vanishingly small minority don't want to get off the stuff.
Safe consumption spaces with state supply, clean needles/pipes/works, etc can effectively act as onboarding for users to engage with further services and progress along their journey to reintegration into society.
Get people into those spaces. Get them into supported housing.
Become their drug supplier, so they are no longer engaging in criminality or at risk of contaminated supply.
Don't make "being sober" a requirement for progression.
Aim to get them into "own door" independent housing with engagement with social services.
Help them find paid jobs and start supporting themselves, reintegrating into society.
Offer rehab/treatment, suboxone, etc.
Basically, TL;DR - offer them dignity and agency, and you will see far greater success.
California has been at the vanguard of reducing prison population, and decriminalizing drug use, and so far the results look disastrous. That’s not a policy that needs any confusion to be unappealing.
People are mobile. They go where they need to be to survive. Texan prisons will give you an open bus ticket on discharge, people head west for services, charity, and a better chance of not going back to prison.
Really? Singapore finds kilograms of smuggled heroin every month or so inside the country, not at border checks.
And it’s an island country with only a single airport, a couple ports and 2 bridges into the country and the death penalty for smuggling. They throw a ton of resources at trying to stop it from coming in in the first place.
If they cant stop it, i dont know how a country like the US with thousands of miles of undefended borders can.
If Singapore is only finding kilograms of smuggled heroin every month, then they are very, very successful even for a single city. Hell, thats an extraordinary achievement. Likely the best in the whole world I think by a wide margin.
The U.S. is failing to stop multiple TONNES of drugs. (actually >100 tonnes if you look at DEA extrapolated figures). Border policy is clearly non-existent.
You're missing the point. If even Singapore, where the problem of opiates being imported should be way easier to solve; if even they can't actually fix their problem and get that number to zero, what hope does the US have of fixing the problem? The US would end up spending trillions on border control and not actually fix the problem either, with less than nothing to show for it - several orders of magnitude increase in cost and wait times aren't going to be good for business or the county, and would end up costing us more money in lost business on top of the money spent on pointless expensive border upgrades, like a wall thats easily defeated.
"if even they can't actually fix their problem and get that number to zero"
This is silly nonsense. There is no crime that can be made to zero. There is definitely crime that can be severely mitigated. You are throwing the towel on border security. Please don't make up stupid figures like trillions of dollars.
Our border security budget is a fraction of the "Ukrainian War" budget. Exceed that first and you are free to complain.
You don't understand the scope of the problem and want to throw money down the drain in the name of border security. In order to meaningfully make a dent in the problem, given the size of the US-Canada and US-Mexico borders, and the East and West coastlines, and all of the international airports, and not just shift the problem around from one location to another, all of the border needs to be made more secure. I have no idea why you keep bringing up Ukraine either. You know we're shipping military hardware to them and not pallets of dollar bills right? What are we going to do instead of help Ukraine with that? Line up artillery shells on the border with Mexico and somehow that'll help the war on drugs? Talk about silly nonsense!
Understand the scope of the problem first and you'll be free to think about how to meaningfully address the border situation.
I know the amount the U.S govt is spending on border security vs the amount of money being spent on Ukrainian aid. One dwarves the other by a full order of magnitude - showing exactly where the real priorities lie - NOT for the U.S. citizen.
No need for additional drug scanners at our ports or a border wall to reduce cartel trafficking. Who cares if tens-of-thousands of bright teenagers die of drugs being sent across the southern border ? We need Ukraine to crush Russia. RAWR.
"You know we're shipping military hardware to them and not pallets of dollar bills right?"
Ah.. but you are quite mistaken there. We are not just shipping military hardware. There is $30 billion in financial aid alone - and even far more being planned this year. Wow - thats more generous than many U.S. states receive for disasters.
You clearly have no idea how much money is spent on border security, given that the DHS budget is $50 billion, the Coast Guard another $10-15 billion, etc. every year.
But I believe he claims rightly, since the statistics match for Singapore's population and drug abusers. Please note that Singapore also considers cannabis as drug abuse.
Hah, if the U.S. spent a tiny fraction of the money being spent on the Ukraine war on border security, one would get far better outcomes. No fear of inflation at all of-course - to print endless money to wage more war. But spending on the border ? Oooh - that's bad!
"The United States has appropriated approximately $115 billion in emergency funding to support Ukraine since February 24, 2022."
The Trump border wall cost is $12 billion. I think ~1/9th is a tiny fraction right ? I don't mean milli-fractions or micro-fractions, just tiny.
And btw, that $115 billion towards Ukraine is expected to grow quite a bit further in 2023/24. Who knows - it might become a milli-fraction or micro-fraction eventually.
This by itself $76.8 billion in committed aid and does not include all U.S. spending related to the war. And newer appropriations made just after Jan 2023
So ? You are looking at one sub-component of the aid in flight in 2022 encapsulated in one bill. Your link itself takes the upper value of the allocated aid: "The nation has allocated $114.9 billion in aid over the last year, contained in four separate bills".
Please do that for border security in the U.S. Like Ukraine, there is utterly NO need to transfer all the money in ONE big bang - can do the same in chunks. As long as the "border aid" is allocated in chunks - we can have better drug scanners at ports, more personnel and patrols, more funds to care for actual migrants (as opposed to drug camels), investigative teams to track down drug-routes and personnel involved, etc
Except "The United States has appropriated approximately $115 billion" is a horseshit lie. The vast majority of the money that news casters tell you we "spent" on Ukraine was spent in the previous decades, designing, testing, and building the war machines that we put into storage since then, waiting for the soviets attacked. These are machines that have already been paid off, and would otherwise take money to get rid off.
The M113s we sent to Ukraine, we have been trying to dump them on ANYONE who will take them because shipping them across the world is literally cheaper than cutting them up and making them not a weapon anymore. The stryker program is done, and the vehicles will be replaced. We don't want to keep any of these vehicles, because unlike Russia, we think using 20 year old machines to fight a modern war would be extremely embarrassing and pathetic.
We haven't spent a hundred billion dollars helping Ukraine. We spent trillions of dollars over the past many decades buying stuff to kill the soviets and blow up the desert and we have nothing better to do with them. We literally have thousands of Abrams and Bradleys sitting all over the world, being worked on every week to keep them in tip top shape, that we would rather replace before we think we have to fight China.
Russia's best is being torched by our TABLE SCRAPS.
Quit parroting the narrative of people trying to deceive you.
controlling the border is a hot button political issue in the US. It comes up constantly in election season. The right wants more the left therefore wants less.
It would be better if the state's were allowed to do more on their own borders but it's a federal thing and therefore impossible. Texas has the money and will to do a lot of border enforcement on its own but it's prohibited by law.
It's pretty deliberate failure to understand, in my opinion, driven by a core belief that bad things happen to bad people and they need to be punished out of it, not helped. The goal for many people is absolutely not reducing deaths, or even getting rid of fentanyl smoke on buses. It is expelling fentanyl users from society and expecting that will stop new users appearing. That's why they don't want to spend money on treatment or services. They think enabling the existence and recovery of existing users will encourage more.
The burnt peanut butter smell is pretty rancid. Voters, even in Seattle, only have a finite amount of empathy to spare on this problem, and it has mostly been expended.
> It is expelling fentanyl users from society and expecting that will stop new users appearing. That's why they don't want to spend money on treatment or services. They think enabling the existence and recovery of existing users will encourage more.
We (King County at least) spend around $100k/junkie per year on services. And that still isn't considered enough. So should we double our property taxes or something to spend even more money on this problem?
> They think enabling the existence and recovery of existing users will encourage more.
If Seattle is the only place these people can get help across the whole country, that would definitely occur. You can't fight a national problem with local resources and not expect distortions (people are mobile).
I'm not arguing fentanyl smoke is nice. I'm arguing that people, apparently including you, refuse to do any of the well understood and successful things that would get rid of fentanyl smoke on buses because you don't want to make help available.
> around $100k/junkie per year
Absolute nonsense. We spend nothing of the sort. We are not even pretending to approach it. Sounds like you're getting your hot takes from Christopher Rufo misinterpreting the Puget Sound Business Journal speculation a couple years ago.
The lies spread by Rufo and his ilk certainly contribute to the unwillingness to do anything, by making people confidently delusional about what currently exists.
I am constantly amazed at Americans who seem to think that XYZ is an intractable problem with no solution, without bothering to even look outside their borders and notice the fact that almost no other country seems to have the same problem, or at least the same problem at a similar scale as the US.
This is a national problem and needs to be addressed (and funded) as such.
The war on drugs has failed miserably (for it's ostensible purpose (to "protect" us from dangerous drugs).
We need to legalize and regulate them all, and make their abuse a medical issue rather than a criminal issue.
For those that have no desire or ability to quit, we can put them in camps and hand out dope to keep them sedated and "safe" from questionable supplies. If they want to get clean, they can have the support to do that but otherwise are effectively interned on work farms.
This is the cheapest, safest, and most humane way of dealing with this problem.
I have lots of fantasies but that ain't one of them. The gist of my point is that there's going to be a subset of the population that is "broken" and is unable to function as a "productive member of society".
We are going to spend money on them one way or the other; my way would be far more effective than how it happens today (both in cost and in actual remediation).
How would this destroy my (and others) humanity? It's currently challenged by watching people live in tents, shit on the sidewalk, and pass out in public on dope. How is my suggestion worse?
> "They think enabling the existence and recovery of existing users will encourage more."
It's also a timing issue. I think a lot of people that are currently in the "just get rid of them" camp would have been in the "let's help them rehabilitate" camp when the problem was in small or controlled scale.
But we are way passed that. It's a downright epidemic and needs to be dealt with in more drastic and immediate terms for some of us. I'm not going to wait 5 years while my children are innocent and in school and wandering around for the problem to get better. I want my neighborhood safe and clean and innocent for them now. This is why suburbs popped up on some level. People just want to be left alone and in relative calm and clean surroundings.
Portlander chiming in here. I think it's almost universally accepted now that decriminalization was a stupid idea - and I myself voted for it at the time. I absolutely would still vote for anything that improved the availability of treatment for addiction, regardless of cost. But I think what we've learned is that every carrot needs a stick. And where there's excess supply, demand will catch up. All of which means, go after supply and possession again until this is under control.
"Legalization" is absolutely worse. Millions of dead sooner and with more collateral damage.
You don't have to legalize the drug, simply giving it to existing junkies for free by prescription for a while would allow you to break the cartels. Also, actually do break the cartels like Ecuador is doing, with life sentences or death.
The problem with the methods we've used is that we've used them piecemeal and inconsistently.
Once the pushers are gone you force the junkies into rehab. Then when there's no epidemic you could actually legalize to prevent a black market from returning.
> "Legalization" is absolutely worse. Millions of dead sooner and with more collateral damage.
Portugal tried. In 2001, they decriminalized the possession of all drugs for personal use and started treating drug possession as a medical issue instead of a criminal issue. Ever since, Portugals rate of drug addiction and drug death is below the EU average. The policy is considered a success. It reduced harm for the addicted and at the same time, reduced the social costs of drug addiction. The rate of HIV, Hepatitis infection and other side effects of drug addiction dropped significantly.
Now, they didn’t just legalize drugs, but put the money they saved on the enforcement side into rehab, clean needle and other flanking programs, essentially “giving” it to the addicts. This may seem unpalatable to many, but the outcome is a win for everyone.
Portugal didn't decriminalize anything. They still pick you up against your will and detain you for years while not giving you drugs and forcing you to work. The only semblance of decriminalization is that if you cooperate and don't try to escape they don't give you a criminal record.
They use the criminal justice system and the underlying crime of public use and unsafe intoxication to force you into rehab, which is the very definition of criminalized.
It's decriminalized. That's literally the word. It's still illegal to possess controlled substances, but not a crime right away.
There's a published list [1] of illegal substances and what quantities constitute as "personal use" (like 25g of weed or 5g of hash - translated in "individual doses"). More than that you can be trialed for drug dealing, which is a fair trade-off.
Yes it's still illegal to possess any of these substances, but what happens is that if you're below the "criminal" threshold, you get a doctor/shrink appointment and usually pay a small fine (around 25 euros). Nothing gets written to your criminal record. Repeated offenders might have more several penalties like community service.
Recently there's been a surge in homelessness and harder drug consumption, analog to the rest of Europe, due to a huge housing crisis, very stagnant salaries and overall poor quality of life here (in Portugal).
That's not how it's used in North America and thus it's not the impression our pundits are trying to give when they use it to reference you.
Here, decriminalized is uncontrolled. You can buy your fentanyl in front of a cop and do it in public. Cops can't arrest you for it. There is a maximum amount but it's huge! Pot is still limited though, and you can be arrested for having more than an ounce but you can't be arrested for carrying enough fentanyl to kill an entire building of people.
This has been done so that there's no way to force people into rehab, so they're a continual source of income for the taxpayer funded "charities" that provide for them.
As a part-time resident of two major drug cities I've been looking for that article. I just have to read between the lines and contrast it with the results we get from the same words.
It should be obvious when reading a story about Portugal that they couldn't get the junkie to stay in rehab voluntarily, so obviously they don't mean "no potential of a criminal charge at all".
Whereas in Vancouver they specifically changed the rules so you can buy and do drugs in front of the police, pass out and almost die - get revived and smoke more drugs, and have no charges, no special detainment, nothing.
My source is my eyes. I drove through the local drug camp recently and saw a dealer dealing within a stone's throw from police in their car, and junkies passed out just steps from him. There's a ton of evidence, but you could search for it if you really wanted and you didn't.
What I haven't found is a single short and simple article that explains for ... people like you, that what Vancouver/Seattle/Portland/SF and Portugal mean by decriminalization is not the same.
What issue do you have that makes you incapable of searching for references and yet still able to whine about that incapability online? And what are you actually looking for a reference for? That there are drug encampments? That some cities have literally made it legal to buy and sell Fentanyl?
You have been told something exists, that's 95% of the way there. Now go to a search engine and type 'vancouver drug decriminalization' and 'Portugal drug treatment' and read about the issue.
You're trying so very hard to use me to justify your ignorance and to be insulting in the process.
I googled the phrase 'Portugal drug treatment' and found out what I was suspecting from the start - which is, everything I saw previously was correct and they indeed decriminalized all drugs up to certain weight and still jail dealers. This goes against the claims that you previously made that they did not have a decriminalization, and the next one about criminal record also doesn't make any sense in this context - what would the criminal record be, a gram of weed?
Okay, now that you did some work and have questions I can help.
> what would the criminal record be
Public intoxication, possession, etc.
> everything I saw previously was correct and they indeed decriminalized all drugs
They haven't decriminalized public usage. You can have your small amount of drugs if you do it in private and are discrete.
> This goes against the claims that you previously made that they did not have a decriminalization
It's a system of not giving you a criminal record by using the mere threat of the criminal justice system for force you to voluntarily enter rehab. So you have to do what they say but then they don't label you a criminal and they sort of pretend you went into treatment on your own.
In the words of the guy who invented and runs their system:
"There are a lot of myths around the Portuguese model that, for instance, we just liberalize you do whatever you want, nobody cares ... It's important to say that using drugs in Portugal is still prohibited under the law ... If somebody in Portugal starts injecting heroin in public [...] he would be arrested and conducted to the police station. The substances would be apprehended. If they have more than the amount that is calculated on the basis of personal use he undergoes criminal procedures as before. If he has less than that amount he would be intimated to present himself to the commission. It's not a court, it's not a formal institution, but he will be confronted to discuss his drug use with professionals. It's mandatory, with a little bit of muscle you have them in front of you. We can try to understand what is happening with this person. For each hundren people that is conducted through those commissions, ten of them are problematic users."
-- João Goulão - National drug coordinator for Portugal - https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/16412220666858455...
This next part is where you have to read between the lines a bit. They don't come right out and say that they can't arrest junkies for junking in public - you have to understand that they wouldn't pass a bylaw to make it happen if they didn't need to which means that in the rest of the cities they would not arrest and move them proactively.
"Police forces across British Columbia are finalizing training on new drug laws that will limit or entirely cease their interactions with people who use drugs as the province becomes the first in Canada to decriminalize simple possession."
"While many police departments have in recent years moved away from arresting and recommending charges for possession alone, officers will now also stop confiscating illegal drugs"
"at least one city is preparing to introduce a new bylaw that would re-engage police if people use in certain public spaces."
From which we learn that 1) they won't be able to arrest at all for drug possession, 2) they won't even be able to confiscate dangerous drugs, 3) they won't even arrest people for public use (unless cities pass a bylaw overriding the province.)
In Portugal they will arrest, and will confiscate, and will use legal powers (if you push them to it) to detain you. In Vancouver they can not arrest, can not confiscate, and will not engage the criminal justice system at all.
Portugal is saving lives by using the courts, Vancouver is getting worse with every loosening. Seattle and SF are roughly the same as Vancouver.
Only sometimes, like when someone ODed or tried to sell right in public. And of course that didn't do much if any good overall because Vancouver didn't do anything else that Portugal does - like limiting the almost endless supply of cheap fentanyl. Even when they seized drugs it was a mere matter of minutes and a few dollars to get more.
Vancouver/BC didn't have decent recovery programs, and not enough capacity even in the bad programs, and critically - no legal capacity to force someone into them even if they did. People can be detained for up to 72hrs and "dried out" but that merely lets some of the detox pass, it's not at all related to kicking the drug and recovering from addiction. Even when they want to be clean the city usually houses them in a drug hotel where peer pressure drags them back in.
Arrest and seizure are valid tactics, Portugal proves it, despite Vancouver failing to apply them properly as part of a holistic program.
Did they? It seems the problems started when they started cracking down and people had to resort to street heroin, and later fentanyl to get pain relief. If there were an easy, legal way to get oxycontin, I bet the majority of the problems of people dying from fake oxycontin laced with fentanyl would go away overnight.
Purdue had a financial interest in selling more Oxycontin. They knowingly pushed doctors to prescribe the medication in a manner that encouraged addiction. They knowingly misled patients and doctors as to how addictive the medication was.
Cutting the supply off without any alternatives absolutely caused harm. However, that only serves as evidence that safe and legal means of procurement are better than illegal ones.
If there had been a network of state dispensaries to provide safe regulated doses and support, over-prescription could have been stopped without leaving the victims to fend for themselves.
There's a segment of junkies who don't want drug treatment, just to get high at all costs. I spend almost daily talking to people that are professionals in this area (not a junky myself, just related to medical providers) and it's an everyday occurrence that people will come in, completely trick the medical providers for a daily or whatever short-term fix they're allowed with minimal privileges, and then use it to supplant their black market addiction. You can let them pursue their dream at black market prices while they bust into cars and inject god knows what of random purity. I'd much rather they just be able to buy it for $0.10 at walmart and beg for a dime outside the gas station, and know exactly what they're getting.
I'm not disagreeing about access to treatment, but just to be clear I don't see much intersectionality there with stopping the black market. For so many of them it becomes "sweet I can buy my black market shit, plus get whatever the addiction center place offers me on top of that."
So then they're able to stockpile and hoard it and then what? they get this stash and then are able to exist in a land of plenty when previously there was famine. it's like money. if you don't have any, things are really rough. but if you have enough that you're swimming in it? well then you're able to step aside from earthly concerns like making rent, and can choose to invest it in causes you choose. For a junkie who's drug life is feast or famine, having default access to what they need and feeling safe allows them to move on with their lives and get past their addiction and into jobs and return to regular life and be contributing members of society.
No, because the drugs are only given out in the context of dying in the street. There's absolutely no provision for people who are addicted through accident, for instance, to achieve some safe supply while tapering off to avoid the street.
And the government has decided that drug users are on palliative care, that they're never expected to improve, so they can be given drugs that are likely to end or destroy their life without any concern for recovery. That sounds 'caring' but in areas without this assumption they actually do rescue many people from this death, making the 'caring' cities into uncaring hellholes for the addicted - where they go to die on the streets of a preventable death.
There is no fear of 'famine' because the people who are being given drugs are being given drugs for the rest of their life. There's no fear of running out because even if the government stopped the supply the street drugs are only a few dollars.
What these excess drugs do is 1) increase the amount of drugs the person is taking and/or 2) get sold outside of the drug cities, both of which increase the scope of the problem.
Also, druggies don't need money because they can just take whatever they want from stores and at most will be forced to give the item back. They're given food and shelter and drugs and can steal any luxury under $1000. (Not that they'd be punished above that, but the stores aren't required to sit and accept it - they can apply reasonable force to recover their goods.)
Diverted drugs become black market drugs. I'm sure the Mexicans are getting ultra pure fentanyl or being trained to make the pure shit from precursors. Somehow most of it ends up being stomped on by the time it reaches the consumer. That is to say just because it was pure when the junky got it, doesn't mean it was accurately represented to the end user or altered along the way. Black market diversion from treatment facilities seems non-ideal.
The problem is the stomping isn't uniform. Whatever's being used as an adulterant, the end product has chunks of adulterant, and chunks of fentanyl, and this is what ends up killing people, because they end up with a life ending sliver of fentanyl from the heterogeneous mixture of drugs.
Killing a few people with your supply is an actual sales tactic called 'Hot Shotting' (a term for a lethal dose). When dealers cut and package for delivery they'll make a few extra strong and give them to well-known junkies who will then overdose and potentially die, in the process proving who's selling strong drugs. "That must be good stuff, Kevin died from it and they barely revived Sue."
Not only are street drugs inherently unsafe, the dealers view their customers as so expendable they're willing to kill them for advertising.
To fix this we've got to switch to government supply, but only when we simultaneously wipe out the illegal supply and suppliers, so that we don't simply compound the problem. Our interventions are like antibiotics. They lose their power over time when misused. They're best employed heavily in a cocktail and used fully.
There's also nothing illegal about a 7 year old jumping into a rushing river or buying unregulated "research" chemicals on the internet. Same thing, isn't it?
The way 7 year olds are kept out of rushing rivers, or consuming black market dope, is they have a parent, guardian, foster caretaker, someone looking after them. It's illegal to neglect a child. Sending a 7 year old to buy you cigarettes arguably isn't neglect, letting them smoke cigarettes or research chemicals probably is.
If someone wants to snort up a pile of rat poison, or fentanyl who am I to stop them. Let them buy Pfizer mega-OD-fentanyl-express they saw advertised on the Citybus for $0.10, and let the cartels get crushed by legal competition who have everything to lose by doing drive-bys in residential neighborhoods.
Yes. We need complete legalization and regulation. People who want opioids need to be able to get a known product, and people who don't want opioids need to know that their product doesn't contain any.
People who want opiates are people who can't wait to die.
[edit] I like your username btw... I actually said that to someone tonight... a man, a plan, a canal; Panama. The couple stared at me until I said "palindrome" and then I'm pretty sure they thought I was crazy.
Possession here without intent to sell is now decriminalized for all drugs, and larger amounts are considered misdemeanors. I do think "legalization" would be better - where the supply was safe and regulated. There's also the simple fact that being one of the few places in a country full of addicts to advance decriminalization has made us a destination for people who want to die on the street with a pipe and a needle, so we've had a massive influx from the rest of the country that we are not equipped to handle. But layered over that is the cartel system that runs the human trafficking and the mass theft that perpetuates a lot of the human misery here now.
Easier access to drugs sounds humane but it's exactly the opposite.
Then it's unfortunate to hear you regret voting for decriminalization and think it'd be better to go back to punishing people harshly for drug use and distribution. I think decriminalization is the first step, only because it's hard to push for safe supply in addition to decriminalization, but we should all be pushing for safe supply now as well, and the proceeds of that going to funding rehab programs, as well as other overall QoL improvements for people.
Legalization + safe supply might not reduce the occurrence of people using (or at least not right away), but it will provide better overall outcomes for society. If we address the systemic issues which cause so much suffering (which is why we're seeing so much addiction), and also provide treatment options, people will be more inclined to seek out those options.
My point of view is that locking people up for drug use:
* Hasn't reduced drug use
* Makes them more likely to continue their drug use
* Often leads to the use of harder drugs
* Is expensive
* Provides funding to cartels
* Causes violence
Decriminalising, or legalising drug use removes one of the main motivators of gang formation/violence while allowing the state to focus on helping addicts recover and contribute to society. The money spent on enforcement can now be spent on treatment, reducing the need for further funding rather than increasing it.
That is an option yes. It could reduce the likelihood that addicts end up in a cycle of incarceration and more extreme drug use. However, without a legal supply, I don't believe it would have any effect towards curtailing gang violence or their funding.
Personally, I believe the legal supply should be delivered by the state. With a focus on providing monitored, unadulterated doses of the safest alternative and a program aimed at weaning the user off in a sustainable manner.
> There are lots of contradictions here. Voters don't understand how they can be asked to liberalize hard drug use (and even decriminalize dealing) on the one hand, and are asked for billions of dollars for drug addiction treatment on the other.
And understandably so. It's a textbook example of privatizing the profits, and socializing the costs.
It's not enough to tax drugs. Certain products are so harmful, and their harmful use so profitable, that allowing any kind of private profit from it at all is a disaster. (Yes, the most prominent of those are tobacco, alcohol and gambling).
Worse, addiction treatment is really expensive and not very effective - even the best addiction treatment programs have high relapse rates. Even the relatively cheap programs that only seek to limit the damage addicts do to themselves and others, can only be defended on humanitarian grounds, not economic ones.
Yes, we need to help addicts. Yes, including in purely harm-reduction ways. But we're deluding ourselves if we think this is a solution at all, let alone one we can afford if we let private economic interests profit from addiction without obstacles.
> Voters don't understand how they can be asked to liberalize hard drug use (and even decriminalize dealing) on the one hand, and are asked for billions of dollars for drug addiction treatment on the other
We are increasingly spending more on drug treatment. The current approach has failed and <x> are dead. It's time to change our approach, and a radical change is needed for this massive problem.
> Voters don't understand how they can be asked to liberalize hard drug use (and even decriminalize dealing) on the one hand, and are asked for billions of dollars for drug addiction treatment on the other.
That depends on the voters.
In the 90s Switzerland experienced a significant change in its drug policy.
One of the pillars (arguably the most important) is harm reduction. At that time hardcore addicts could get heroin prescribed and paid for by health insurance. Getting into the program was not simple, but for those that were hopelessly addicted and not able to kick the habit it was fundamentally successful.
The policy is still in place and was confirmed with significant majorities by the voters in multiple referendums.
It’s not always just about what is “allowed in US states” but making it easy for addicts who need a solution to be locally accessible vs just as easily going on the corner with $10 for another high. I was purposefully being colourful saying Suboxone was handed out like candy in Canada but it probably needs to be to compete with the wide availability of Fentanyl and other drugs.
I should also note that being in favour of harm reduction doesn’t mean tolerating Portland style appeasement of crime and public
…craziness. The baby is often thrown out with the bath water with this stuff and it doesn’t have to be that way. But that overreaction goes both ways in terms of dealing with the drug problem.
Yeah this a key point. Buprenorphine availability is very inconsistent in practice throughout the US. I'm not just talking about rural Kansas here either, it can be a struggle in every state and many major metro areas. Especially if you have all the associated problems one might expect (no car, no money for a copay, other health problems, etc).
Additionally, the actual treatment provided varies considerably between doctors. Do they give the patient enough to avoid severe withdrawal? Do they allow the patient to stay on buprenorphine long term if needed? How do they handle relapses? What sort of counseling or therapy do they provide (if any)? Do they take insurance?
Seriously. The world would not end if you could buy Vyvanse and Targiniq over the counter. Just let people have the safest version of these substances and move on. Most aren’t seeking help.
Why do they need to be on every block? If there's no "it's a crime" markup,
drugs are really cheap, and illegal supply chains can't really compete with Walgreens and CVS supply chains sending out semi-trucks full of product from distribution centers.
Don't just do one thing at once. Arrest and charge everyone related to drug trafficking at the same time as forcing every public user of hard drugs to report for testing when picking up their daily dose and enforce it with ankle bracelets.
Then because you're not just putting a bandaid on it you have the funds available to actually get people off the street (and not just into shitty drug hotels) which is one of the biggest obstacles to getting sober.
The change to allow anyone to prescribe it is very recent, prior to that it was extremely limited, and most providers will still not prescribe it for a variety of reasons, ranging from not understanding it to addiction stigma to fear of the DEA.
The sad fact is that most people who would benefit from it simply do not have access to it.
I'd make suboxone available OTC, no questions asked.
Low cost, or even just free if you register as an addict.
Same for naloxone/narcan/whatever "overdose stopper" autoinjectors. Which, I'm reliably told, are the opposite of a good time.
Suboxone is not a drug you can really abuse in any fun way, and a lot of folks won't engage "formally" with addiction services due to stigma, paranoia, worries about their medical records being tainted forever, etc.
The addicts you see on the streets are just the tip of the iceberg. Much like alcoholism, the vast majority of users are "hidden".
There are multiples more users who are still functioning within society, holding down jobs, etc.
Addicts will find a way. Buprenorphine is the most abused opioid in Finland. Which by the way has the most youth drug deaths in Europe[1]. Granted it's usually Subutex (just buprenorphine) rather than Suboxone (buprenorphine + naloxone) but there's not much difference unless you're using intravenously because buprenorphine has such a high binding affinity.
I agree that there's a huge problem with opiates and am in favor of legalizing everything, but it's good to realize that buprenorphine is not a magic candy that fixes everything - you're just replacing an addiction to a deadly feel-good opiate with an addiction to a slightly less feel-good opiate with a larger therapeutic index.
Isn't the purpose of making opioids available to addicts to allow addicts to "find a way" (i.e. manage their addiction)? We have no easy/effective treatments for such addictions so harm reduction is the best we can hope for.
Yes absolutely, I'm all for giving addicts the help they need. I just don't think haphazardly making it available OTC without a prescription like the GP suggested would be the right decision in the current situation. People already abuse OTC medications with a lot less recreational potential, stuff like whippits and DPH. Adding Suboxone to the mix would, in addition to helping the addicts that want to quit, raise a new generation of buprenorphine addicts.
Despite its miraculous efficacy for addiction treatment it certainly has some recreational potential and the long lasting opioids used for maintenance are a bitch to quit. Many people stay on the stuff for life because while you can taper down it's really, really hard to drop the last bit. While milder than with the fast-acting opioids, the physical withdrawals go on for weeks. With heroin or fentanyl they're over by day 3 or 4 and it's all mental after that.
In my ideal gay luxury space communist world most drugs would be available for anyone after a doctor's consultation where you learn basic harm reduction and such. Currently people abuse OTC medications or buy fentanyl laced stuff of the street to get high even though they're absolute trash for that. Safer options exist.
I suggested making it OTC without a prescription largely due to a couple of practical reasons - many users of illicit drugs who are not "street junkies" want to keep the whole thing hidden for various reasons (social stigma, worries about health insurances, medical discrimination), etc.
Not sure about where you are, but in the countries in EU/UK I've lived, OTC can mean either "behind the counter" (where you must speak with the pharmacist), or "in front of the counter" (you just pick it up and buy it).
Depending on country, different drugs are sold differently.
In Germany and Ireland, to buy normal antihistamines or pretty much any good OTC painkiller, I have to request it and usually get asked some questions, depending on the drug, whereas in the UK I can buy the same medications in Tesco.
I'm also of the view that a lot more drugs should simply be available via the model of informed consent or just "available by asking for them".
Waiting weeks and paying 60 euros for a GP to toss a coin on if they are going to agree with you about a medicine is a nightmare.
Though that may be due to the broken health system here making me wait 4 weeks for a GP appointment so I could get a fucking salbutamol inhaler after my asthma came back, among other things.
Interesting aside, the "mental" addiction can be harder to kick than the physical. Some former opiate and gabapentin users I know have mentioned this - psychological cravings for even years after stopping. Anyone who has ever tried quit nicotine will also know this.
> Interesting aside, the "mental" addiction can be harder to kick than the physical. Some former opiate and gabapentin users I know have mentioned this - psychological cravings for even years after stopping. Anyone who has ever tried quit nicotine will also know this.
Oh yes for sure, didn't mean to make it seem like it wasn't. I was(/am) a poly drug addict from Finland. Buprenorphine and amphetamine were my jam for a couple years. One year of using intravenously daily. It's been years since my last time but I still think about shooting up every now and then. It's a deviously strong urge. But the mental battle doesn't only start after the physical stuff is over: at the beginning they both compound on each other and it's absolutely devastating when you've been awake for two weeks because of the restless legs...
I first got into opioids at age 16 or so when I found boxes and boxes of tramadol prescribed for my father who had died of cancer some years earlier. Eating them made me feel good, really good. I guess that sparked my love for drugs.
I was a recreational user and managed to keep things under control (except spending all my money) for many years. But in those circles most people are a bad influence on you. Eventually it all just spiraled out of control. It was so easy to keep slipping deeper a little at a time while taking steps in the other direction felt enormously hard.
It's been about 6 years since I last shot up. Everything's going really good now. Granted I'm not sober by AA standards; I still smoke weed, and drink a couple of beers every now and then, and do psychedelics maybe once or twice a year. Whenever I start feeling blue.
Are you referring to the scene where Sy Richardson admonishes them before giving them their methadone doses? That's a methadone clinic not not a pharmacy and he's a public health/social worker.
This is part of the solution which is sorely lacking in many US states but it’s not some catch-all solution to drugs. It’s basically a better version of Methadone which has been available widely in the US since the 1980s.
I recently watched Sid and Nancy about Sid Vicious and him and his girlfriend are getting Methadone at a pharmacy in 1980s NYC before he later relapsed and offed himself.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091954/
It’s important no doubt but moving beyond the prohibition drug war approach (which is failing in places going hard as it is weak like Canada) to dealing with this requires a serious reckoning and public investment that we aren’t ready to accept yet but will be imposed on us whether we like it or not.