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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: skinowski who wrote (282568)	12/1/2008 1:55:46 PM
From: alanrs	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793927

Nothing changes, all the competing forces that create the situation maintain it. It's a great place to get hooked up with fellow addicts if one is new in town. Plus methadone is a particularly nasty drug to withdraw from, along with other problematic drugs that are prescribed, eventually. Much harder than heroin. It used to be that 100mg methadone was a barrier that was hard to pass, but anymore I'm lead to believe it is quite common to be well into the 300-500mg range. In terms of long term customers, when one is taking 400mg of methadone to stay well, the price of detox is at least a year of withdrawal process, and it is not recommended. Few would attempt such a thing. Very much the every problem is a nail syndrome, plus a comfortable income to the establishment. It has it's place I suppose. Most people don't recover and that has to color ones attitude, being exposed day after day a constant flow of human failures, and a certain amount of cynicism is understandable. ARS

To: skinowski who wrote (282568)	12/1/2008 11:19:45 PM
From: Maurice Winn	5 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793927

Similarly, do you think those government departments managing welfare want fewer "clients"? <By establishing methadone clinics the government created an entire class of people who's livelihood depended on having a sufficient number of "customers" addicted to methadone. I want to point out again that these are observations from a long time ago, but... I suspect that the law of unintended consequences is still there > When OPM is involved, there is strong incentive to keep the whole boondoggle going. There are swarms of people making a LOT of money from the War on Drugs. The last thing they want is to leave plant poison consumption up to the people who want to ingest the stuff, for whatever reason. There is serious money to be made. And if it's legal to ingest plant poisons, the price will plunge to similar prices as growing tomatoes, corn, beans and other crops. So the suppliers quite like their products to be illegal as it keeps prices high, competitors out, and maintains the "cool factor" in consumption. Instead of just being a drug addled loser, one is suddenly cool by defying the government edicts and laws. Make it all legal so anyone can poison their brain and the number of people choosing to do so will reduce. Or, even if it increases, that's their problem, not mine. Paying money to harass and even kill [by police fire and other violent aspects of illegal drug selling] is daft. We have heard of "to save the village we had to kill them all". There is a similar logic in the War on Drugs. Mqurice