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

To: i-node who wrote (651542)	4/15/2012 7:58:37 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1580685

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. I know. And there are places in the US where it's treated the same way. 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. We do try. People get in trouble for it all the time. Just not as hard as you want us too. I'm still unclear why you think we should try harder. Most medical marijuana prescriptions are bogus in fact, though legal in the particular state .... do you think we should crack down on the doctors prescribing mj for insomnia etc? Coffee is addictive, but surely you would favor addiction to coffee over addiction to heroin. Sure, that would be a great idea. Switch them to coffee. 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. OK, I'm not opposed to substitution drugs. But since you've said painkiller addicts (like oxycontin) function in society okay all ready, why are you saying we should transition them to something else? 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. We're not waiting on the problem to get worse. We're waiting on some drug company to do what you say they can do. It's not like legislators could wave a wand and make such drugs appear. We have to wait on the market response ... assuming its technologically acheivable. I'm an agnostic on this. 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. OK. I get it, you think suboxone is the best replacement drug and you want the govt to make as many people as possible to switch to it, though without locking up any users. Kind of sounds like a drug war solution to me. Not that I'm necessarily opposed to that .... I'm trying to pull out what you're for. That's been my goal here. Trying to identify what one advocate of change is for.