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What is the Problem with Heroin?
In his post “Bringing Conservatives and Libertarians Together” about marijuana legalization, Fred Cole wrote:
I think it’s the situation with marijuana that it’s already so widely accepted and widely available, that most people who want to smoke already do. Whatever society costs it imposes are already there.
So marijuana prohibition means we get all of the downsides of legalization and all of the downsides of prohibition, but none of the upsides that come with legalization. It’s the worst of both worlds.
It’s a pretty similar situation with LSD, cocaine and heroin. However in the case of those three drugs, there are also issues of supply and cost.
On the other hand, here is a caption from a recent article “Eastside Facing Heroin Epidemic” in a local newspaper:
The Eastside branch of Therapeutic Health Services opened its methadone clinic in Bellevue two years ago, serving 90 clients at that time. THS now dispenses methadone to 415 clients from its Bellevue clinic daily, and is contracted with King County for 440.
There seems to be some confusion here. Fred suggests that there may be upsides to legalization of heroin, while the other source considers increasing usage of heroin a problem. One source argues for increased access to heroin, while the other expresses concern about heroin use.
So, what is the problem with heroin? Is it a health issue (addiction)? Is it an access issue (supply and cost)? Will legalizing heroin help resolve or mitigate the problem?
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I can, and did, say that most of them also abused alcohol. I’m not sure that is a reason to make heroin legal. I have never met anyone who uses heroin the way I use whiskey.
No doubt you’ll tell me “Oh they exist, you just don’t know it.”
I’m basing my opinion solely on the people I know, so take it for what it’s worth. It’s not their wits they don’t value. It’s themselves. They think they are trash. They were born into poverty, and they live a life of poverty. Nobody every taught them anything different.
I remember a conversation with my nephew about his smoking. He had been clean about a year at this point and was beating himself up because he couldn’t give up the smokes. I said “You are clean. You love God and are seeking Him. When you die, you may die a smoker, but you are still going to heaven.” Sometimes we think that we have to fix everything in our lives before we are “good enough.”
Theodore Dalrymple, a psychiatrist who disapproves of addiction and who’s written a lot about heroin addiction, also noted in “Romancing Opiates” that there have always been people who’ve fit a heroin habit into a stable, productive life. They tend to be upper-middle-class, well-educated. Often doctors and so on who have access to stuff of predictable purity and, most importantly, a consistently high motivation to not let their habit take over their lives.
With all due respect, that is an irrelevant comparison. One can have a glass (or two) of wine with dinner every night with zero negative effects on society. The same cannot be said for a similarly consistent use of high octane drugs.
Sure it can be said. There are people who use heroin regularly and live perfectly ordinary lives. I mean, we don’t know who they are or anything, but there are articles on the web that tell you these people exist. It’s the fact that it’s illegal that causes them not to tell anyone they use the stuff, see. I mean, when arguing for the legalization of heroine, there’s a bit of fact that can neither be proven nor discredited, so therefore it’s a great tool in the belt of the pro-legalization crowd.
I would never compare the exceptions to the rule to the mainstream.
I don’t know what that means.
If you insist upon being tedious…
Exceptions = There are people who use heroin regularly and live perfectly ordinary lives.
Don’t put your nose in the air with me, buddy. I’m just a regular guy, so I don’t follow high brow stuff. Put it in plain English. Are you saying that just because there are people like that doesn’t mean we should cater to them? I would agree. I was articulating the Libertarian position just to be rude.
But the point is, we just don’t know if these people (1) exist (2) if 1 is true are the exceptions or (3) if 1 is true are the rule. (I admit I am sceptical. I see plenty of more or less functional drinkers, pot smokers and pill/speed users – heroin users not so much, though there’s a huge stigma associated with use that may keep it hidden.)
Also – I don’t know if it’s still relevant to the discussion, but the Libertarian position is not that people will never destroy their lives with heroin, it’s that banning heroin (and other drugs) is an immoral limitation on personal liberty – which limitation is itself deeply corrupting of society and individuals.
Arguing the relative merits and dangers of alcohol and heroin doesn’t address the basis of Libertarian opposition to banning either.
Indeed. Rush Limbaugh talked about being addicted to pain killers on his show. He compared it to having a flu which would go away after taking one pill.
“exception”, “that point of view with which I disagree”.
I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned WFB’s view on this. He pretty much speaks for me. Many times we’re forced into picking the “least bad choice” because there’s no “good choice” to choose from. Insisting that there’s always a “good choice” is just another form of immanentizing the eschaton!
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/383913/war-drugs-lost-nro-staff
http://www.thirteen.org/openmind/the-law/on-legalizing-drugswith-william-f-buckley/181/
Thank you for pointing out the typo. You are correct, of course, that I left out the word “not”. Sometimes my brain moves faster than my fingers on the keyboard and it’s too late to go back and edit it, so this will have to serve as my correction.
As for being a jerk, well, I’ve been called worse to my face and far worse on the internet. I do acknowledge that “anarcho-capitalist” is, in some ways, a better description than libertine, but when describing people who believe that lethal doses of heroin should be on the shelves next to aspirin (*), I don’t libertine is an unfair description. YMMV.
As for building a straw man, I don’t think I am. The explicit position of those I’ve been disagreeing with in this thread is that legalization of heroin will have no downsides (or as one person explicitly said, the downside will be so small as to not be noticeable). Their argument explicitly that legalization is universally positive, whereas my argument is that the benefits of legalization of heroin may outweigh the costs, but the costs are real and perhaps unknown.
And, yes, I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek with my “thinning the herd” comment, but I do think our current structure does lend itself to an Idiocracy phenomenon, and legalizing heroin may wind being a voluntary eugenics program in the manner that state lotteries are a tax on the mathematically illiterate.
(*) or perhaps next to the bottle of wine but since the anarcho-capitalists believe no restrictions are appropriate, it seems more likely that it would wind up next to the aspirin in their ideal state.
The other thread that spawned this one (the one referenced in the OP) started off with the NR editorial position, but I hadn’t seen the interview. Thanks for posting.
I completely agree that insisting that there is always a good choice is another form immanentizing the eschaton, which is I think the hard-core libertarians would be better off acknowledging that their policies comes with significant costs. They have steadfastly refused to do so, insisting that there preferred policy is all “good” and no “bad”.
I said as much in the 2nd comment in that thread, and have routinely excoriated by the legalization crowd for agreeing with them but not sufficiently on their terms.