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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (651539)	4/15/2012 7:17:06 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580675

I'm the person who has posted what Portugal's drug policy is ... and it's not outright legalization as is being called for. The legal system is still involved and drugs remain illegal. Trafficking in drugs is still illegal Not just trafficking, use is illegal. Growing your own is illegal. Decriminalization doesn't mean legalization. In Portugal, simple possession is illegal in the same sense that exceeding the speed limit is. Yes, speeding is illegal, but people don't serve time for it and people don't lose their jobs over it. They pay a fine. There are people who would let crack be sold in convenience stores. I think Milton Friedman would have. Lots of libertarians would consider that a matter of personal liberty. If one takes a purely libertarian point of view I can understand it. It isn't my view at this time. Milton Friedman would not support it, IMO, on purely libertarian grounds. His comments on legalization AFAIK pertained to marijuana which is where the greatest injustice is -- as he says, it is a "moral" issue. I would never, ever support locking up a crack user unless other crimes were involved. The dividing line for me is when drug users become violent or start committing property crimes. Until such time as that happens, there should be no jail time, no felony, no permanent destruction of that person's life with a felony conviction. So why make that argument and then propose stricter controls on painkiller prescriptions? Because you can. Because Rx drugs are manufactured by legitimate businesses and dispensed by licensed pharmacists and prescribed by physicians, they can be controlled. Or we could at least try. If may be that after a few years of serious effort we find out that like other drugs, you can't kill the supply side. It could even cause a destructive move back toward street drugs. But if you don't try it you don't find out. I don't understand the subject, but yes, I was right in saying they are simply replacement drugs that are themselves addictive. Coffee is addictive, but surely you would favor addiction to coffee over addiction to heroin. The point is that substitution drugs, when used appropriately, can make previously dysfunctional addicts functional again. Paying for suboxone is far less expensive than paying for years of imprisonment or the property crimes that often lead up to imprisonment. If you could transition every heroin or Oxycontin addict to suboxone it would be a great improvement. Yet, there is no impetus or funding to do that because we're too busy locking these people up for stealing or possession. It is a pretty effective medication that absolutely ends craving for other opiates without many of the negative side effects. If a company could make a nonabusable painkiller, I'm sure the market would be immense. So there's obviously a motive for companies to develop such drugs if they can. The fact that mfrs of present painkillers would be hurt doesn't matter, they can't force other companies to keep good stuff off the market. I think eventually we'll see it. I just don't see the point in waiting on the problem to get worse. Well, since you've told me that painkiller addicts (like Limbaugh did) can function in society okay, if we've been able to shift some folks from heroin, cocaine and meth to something they can use and function in society ... wouldn't that be progress? I think everyone agrees that drug addiction, regardless of the drug, is not a good thing. If you're going to move addicts from one drug to another, I suspect suboxone is the best choice even though it is highly addictive, as people on suboxone don't have to have increasing quantities to keep cravings in check. I've not tried to make the case that Limbaugh's addiction was a good thing; only that it is possible for a person to be severely addicted to painkillers and for the people around him not to know it. In his case he obviously didn't have to steal to get the drug. Had he not had money, he would have stolen to get the drug. People on suboxone don't have to steal because cravings are reduced to a tolerable level. It really isn't like you took a "set" of people and moved them from one drug to another. But people who are going to use drugs will use whichever drugs are available. Right now, Rx painkillers & benzos are extremely available, starting in middle school on up. Painkillers are very expensive, but we still have a tremendous problem with the addiction to them, which clearly shows that merely driving the price up (the war on drugs basic philosophy) cannot control the problem.