And it's unlikely that the way heroin is viewed will change much in our society, beyond the shift from seeing drug abusers purely as criminals, to seeing them as victims of something. A transition which is resulting in sociologically and financially healthy legislation, like the move from prisons to free mandatory rehab.
I'd imagine the view shifting, especially if a media trend pushes it similarly to the Lean craze of a few years back.
It'd just take one hype movement, one set of strong memes, to get people hooked on Smack. People are stupid, they don't typically know better when the default is closer to "I'd try anything once" within the framework of willful ignorance, and unlike most mistakes it only takes making it once to ruin everything.
We just need a popular enough rapper to promote it.
Sadly, I don't disagree with you. However by this very logic, I think what we need to beat it is not mass imprisonment, it's a more effective propaganda campaign.
In many fashions the pros outweigh the cons, but the class of a drug isn't something we should ignore.
In a general sense, yes. But in this particular case, the question is one of distribution patterns, not individual effect.
That's the thing: It wouldn't take much distribution in the first place to turn people. A small increase is a big increase, proportionally so based on how addictive it is and how strong it is.
I do see what you're saying, but do you agree that rehab at least has a better chance of helping people escape it than prison? Because that's what we're dealing with, with decriminalization. It's a method of assistance over punishment, specifically a punishment that makes it harder for them to reintegrate functionally and remain drug-free. Not to mention elevating the functionality of the entire communities at the heart of this problem. Do you think that when weighed against eachother, that wouldn't have a stronger effect overall?
Spending billions on an endless war still fails. It never ends.
It's a matter of harm reduction as opposed to something that binary. You don't win or lose versus drugs, you just reduce it's impacts sociologically.
He makes a fair point though. We've been hammering away at this pandemic for ages with brute force and wasted money. It's very simply not working.
The pandemic situation is more a matter of how it's being handled as opposed to the effort of trying to handle it at all.
That's exactly what I'm saying. And how have we been handling it? Locking people up.
As for drugs, we've otherwise managed to keep heavier substances out of a surprising number of people's hands through having other, lesser drugs be easier to access than the heavier stuff. Through having a series of fenceposts between each drug, you create a path more likely to be taken that's more likely to end somewhere safer (gateway drugs).
Through having increased risk for harder drugs, these paths form more naturally than what we'd otherwise see if all substances were treated equally.
They're not being treated equally though. While meth and heroin were decriminalized, others were outright legalized and are in the process of being opened to commercial sale. Just as we've seen patterns of improvement in weed legal states, when someone can safely and conveniently buy things like psychedelics from a regulated seller, it will decrease the need to escalate.
But it's not about the risk level of the drug, the real question is whether or not decriminalization significantly increases access.
Carrying a single dose of heroin is enough to use it as a weapon, and once their hooked they become a new source for it to spread towards others.
With other drugs, a single dose is typically just enough to have a good time, but this deserves it's own tier of treatment. It's more like a disease that piggybacks social climate than a substance that just alters your perceptions a bit.If criminalization is actually a solution, when exactly is it going to start working? : P
As a matter of harm reduction, it's working more now than it could be projected to if it's in more people's hands.
10 doses is enough to make 10 addicts, most drugs don't work that way.
But again, this argument relies on the assumption that those with access currently who aren't using, are only or mostly being held back by a fear of prison.
