Do you believe Cannabis should be legal both for religious and non-religious standpoint?

Why all this fuss about young people in Thailand?

Two words.

Soylent Green.

 

You may laugh, but I actually thought that when I was in Junior High School and answered that way on a test.

 

One big question is exactly why drugs continue to be unlawful and who gets to be the final arbiter of what is "harmful". All sorts of things are harmful when they go past a certain point, but the problem with making them illegal is all the additional criminal activity they start to generate as people who might be regarded as victims end up being regarded as criminals.

If you're got a teenager who wants to look tough in front of your friends smoking doesn't really cut it so to go the extra step you find yourself some drugs. Bingo, you're a tough guy, in contact with the criminal underworld. You're somebody now. Think how much less cool it would be if you were standing in line at the local CVS behind your friend's granny and her packet of incontinence pads.

Now look at the way drug pushers have an incentive to target children. If you offer the kids a wrap of heroin for $1 you'll most likely be making a loss in the early days but once they are hooked the price goes up because you know they'll do what it takes to get the money to fund their next high. And so you get kids involved in anything from stealing, street robbery, prostitution, whatever it takes to raise the money for their fix. If you can buy it over the counter at CVS there's a cap on the price - the street pushers can't charge $100 for a fix because you can buy it anywhere for $20. You may still get the crime to fund it but you'll have a lot less of it.

You can also regulate the purity. While it's illegal pushers have an incentive to cut their wares with, well, anything on hand. What are the buyers going to do, complain to the better business bureau? So you've got some poor schmuck who thought he was buying cocaine only to find (after he snorted it) that it was cut with battery acid and now he needs a new nose. Too bad. You wouldn't get that sort of thing if it were controlled for purity and sold over the counter. Of course you could still choose to buy it from a street dealer if you really wanted to, but it becomes harder to think of reasons why you would.

Legal drugs are bought and sold all the time with no pressure. If you go into a store that sells beers, wines and spirits and try to buy a six-pack of beer nobody is whispering in your ear, suggesting that maybe you'd like to try something a bit stronger. Nobody offers you a special to try the whisky instead of the beer. They just sell you what you want. When drugs are illegal the street dealers have a clear incentive to get you hooked so it makes sense for them to be constantly encouraging you to try something a bit stronger.

There's also the human cost. When drugs are illegal and represent a source of huge profits there's a clear benefit to controlling the most lucrative territories. Cue violence, gang warfare etc as people try and maintain control. Too bad if you're caught in the middle when two rival gangs clash. The more money on the table, the more they'll do to protect it. If you can buy drugs over the counter at Walgreens where's the lucrative territory now?

A big difference between drugs and prostitution, and abortion and euthanasia, is the issue of consent.

If I choose to ingest something that others consider harmful or toxic, who gets the final decision? If not me, why not me? It's my body and ultimately my decision.
If two people choose to have sex, why is it anyone else's business? If I take a young lady home with me, what difference does it make whether she was attracted to my sparkling wit or the $50 in my wallet? (My wife might have something to say about it, but there's no reason why the government needs to be involved at all).
Abortion involves ending the life of another human being without their consent, so is a totally different situation.
Euthanasia is arguably more complex and if anything is closer to the issue of consensual sex. If someone is pressured into saying they want to be euthanized (perhaps by a family with an eye on an inheritance rapidly being soaked up by medical bills) there's the clear potential for abuse. Arguably this would be akin to pressuring someone to have sex, perhaps picking on someone in financial difficulty and taking advantage of their vulnerability. A key difference here is that abusing provision for euthanasia would typically be expected to result in a financial gain for the abuser, while abusing freedom to have "consensual" sex (with consensual in quotes to indicate consent given under some kind of duress) would typically be expected to result in at least some benefit for the abused. That may not be much consolation for someone who may live with the regret of just who they spent a night with to avoid getting their electricity cut off but at least they don't end up being buried.

 

Let's start at the beginning: name some drugs that are medical grade heroin? Similar drugs are OxyContin and Vicodin, so let's keep those in mind when legality is mentioned, as if being legal makes a drug any less dangerous.

 

Killing a human in self-defense is legal.

Killing a human with premeditation is illegal.

Why is killing a human legal and illegal at the same time??? That doesn't even make any sense.

Really?

 

If euthanasia is a whitewashing of suicide, then what role does legalized heroin have in that whitewashing? Does it not hide the reality of pain, agony, and suffering that suicide, aka. euthanasia, would otherwise bring, and as a result, remove the stigma of euthanasia as far as it being presented as the 'humane' option, re: the ending of pain, agony, suffering, and so forth? On that connection, how would we know if diamorphine were distributed to a patient who 'requested' euthanasia, and is unable to object while in a catatonic state? Here, too, we have the 'bringing in' of a doctor to legitimize the kind of scenario we have in mind, but while you're all for the legalization or decriminalization of drugs, you're against the legalization or decriminalization of euthanasia, but I'm not seeing a good reason why you shouldn't be 'for' both?

 

Can't we all just get along.

 

I guess I've lost my comic relief skills.
I was only kidding around.

 

Newb ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I had a client that owned a "pain management clinic." He did it correctly, having a full time physician that saw EVERYONE before any treatment or prescriptions were written. Required previous medical records, MRI, XRay, etc. He paid the doctor $10,000 a week. We had regular discussions with state investigators, DEA, etc., to show them how he did it to comply with the law and how others were rigging the system. He regularly had entire van loads of people show up from neighboring states trying to get opiods, mostly oxy.

He finally got tired of it and closed it down.

Our state has fairly stringent requirements, and he added other safeguards, but the money in the sale of prescription opiods is so ridiculous that it just screams for corruption.

Most states are far more lax. I had a discussion with one DEA agent that was looking at one particular pharmacy located about 3 blocks from my client's clinic, and they filled more than 400 scripts a week for oxycontin... it made up 97% of their total revenue.

 

I'm not sure of the current opiod issues north of the border (I'm sure there are problems). They did make changes to only allow oxy pills in a slow release form (as I recall). In Vancouver, morons have been mixing Fentanol (sp?) into the heroin on the street and killing a whole lot of users.

 

Same here with the Fentanol and heroin.

Slow release oxy becomes fast release if you chew it or crush it and inject/liquify/snort it.

 

So that's why so many heroin users have been dying in large numbers.

 

Yep. Using the same dose it is an overdose every time.