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“$15,000 in 3 Months Is Change”
The title of this essay is a quote from a heroin addict on what he spent on heroin. As a former police officer, it should come as no surprise that I do not support legalizing drugs like heroin and meth. I understand that for some it is an academic exercise, but I had to clean up the mess when people became addicted to drugs.
One afternoon when working a festival four of us were approached by an individual who said there was an awful smell coming from a porta-potty. We didn’t have any trouble finding it, and we knew right away what that odor was.
My warbag contained extra copies of blank report forms, a copy of the revised statutes, and enough ammunition to take over a small Latin American country was locked up in the trunk of my police car. More importantly, my jar of Vicks was in that bag. We used Vicks for welfare checks that might include someone who had passed away a week earlier in their apartment or home. A Vicks smear underneath your nose made it a little easier to process the scene.
We pried open the door, and there was an individual sitting on the toilet seat, a syringe in his arm; an arm that was tied off to try and find a vein, which he found. He had probably died a day or two earlier. Two 90 degree days, well let’s just say it wasn’t a pleasant experience.
If you believe that the state should sanction heroin use, then you should understand that someone you love might be approached to use heroin. You should also understand that a police chaplain might meet you at the morgue to offer what comfort they can.
I’ll leave you with some more quotes from the link I provided at the beginning of the article.
Heroin costs everything. As in all your money, all your earthly possessions, everything of value that you own. She will take it all. Then she will take your family, friends, and everyone you care about. And she will leave you penniless, alone, sick, cold, and desperate.
When you have an addiction to heroin, you become a slave. She says give me $15,000, you might think, “I don’t have it.” But you’ll get it. It might mean stealing, tricking, conning, and so on. But you’ll damn well not say no to her. Because she knows all your weak spots. She knows what hurts you. And she will hurt you. Oh boy, will she hurt you. First, it’s physical pain. She will torture you physically. The longer you refuse, the worse it will get. And then, if that doesn’t work, she will torture your mind.
So, you will get the money and do it quick. And don’t even try to fight her. It’s a fight we cannot win. Trust me. I’ve been fighting her for 14 years. Recently I decided to stop fighting. I’m too tired to fight.
I’ve seen far more than the one incident I described when it comes to heroin or meth use, but they are not very pleasant stories, so one will be enough.
Published in General
You will sell your soul a piece at a time. You will hate yourself for doing so. You will persist.
Doug, what is your opinion of what would happen if legalization of these drugs made them cheap enough that druggies wouldn’t have to commit crimes to support their habit?
…given that
Doug, I don’t choose irony to express my response to your theory because I wish to mock it. In fact, I am sympathetic to your idea, and also to you personally as one who’s seen closeup the effects of our new social experiment in phasing out traditional American values: love of God, implying the need for personal responsibility, implying the need for the family.
I choose this means of expressing myself because it puts what I see as your incorrect implicit assumptions in stark terms.
You have inadvertently presented those of us who think that the experiment is not working as those who are indifferent to its results. It is because we are not indifferent to human life that we believe the experiment must end, the search for an Age of Aquarius of amoral pleasure-seeking animals herded into safe, healthy pens by the state, and we must return to our sacred values.
State prohibition of immoral behaviour is a poor substitute for, and an invisible poison to, individual responsibility and freedom.
We need a simultaneous spiritual revival AND revival of political responsibility freedom.
Yes, you are right, some will die. But already far more are dying than did in a more morally upright and free America.
This is going to happen regardless. It’s what democracies do.
The legalization of recreational drug use will not reduce the monetary costs to society of drug addiction. The user is not exercising personal freedom, the user is exercising license. They will not bear the burden of caring for themselves. Those who work for a living will still pay the cost of feeding them and clothing them. That $15,000 in three months that was obtained by stealing will be paid by you in taxes to purchase their drugs, to provide their housing, and if they have children, to care for them as well.
This doesn’t count the production and importation of the drugs they use, unless we decide that we should subsidize farmers to grow, and harvest opium poppies to try and stop the importation of heroin into the United States.
Laws are not written to prevent illegal behavior, they are written to define a specific crime, and to deal with individuals in a consistent manner that choose not to obey a specific law. If we believe that laws are written to prevent bank robberies, or any other crime against property, or persons then laws have been a failure. At that point we can eliminate crime by not enforcing laws, that will not eliminate the act itself, but we can say that the crime of bank robbery has been eliminated in the United States.
Seattle has people who are pushing (no pun intended), not only for “safe” injection sites (as if shooting up could ever be “safe”), but also for the government to supply the smack.
Now, there’s some downright insanity masquerading as “public health” and “compassion” for ya.
There is a lot of rhetoric that is not based on the history of drug use. The Harrison Narcotic Act made narcotics illegal but what had gone on before ? In the last 19th century, a lot of doctors were experimenting with cocaine as a local anesthetic. One was Sigmund Freud who used it in ophthalmology, before he got interested in psychiatry. William Halsted was one who became addicted and had a very hard time getting off it. He and William Osler took a long sea voyage where it was supposed that he was able to get off narcotics and he had a very successful career as one of Americas greatest surgeons and teachers. When Osler died, his papers were sealed for many years. Eventually, they became available to historians and it was revealed that Halsted remained addicted to morphine until his death. There are some interesting speculations about its affect on him as a surgeon. I discuss this in my medical history book.
Most of the pathology we see with addiction to heroin is a result of the illegality. Some of that is the attraction of the illegal. Certainly people will ruin their lives with heroin. How many would do so anyway ?
Very good point!
I’m thinking of having this printed on business cards. Then, whenever I hear some idiot say, “Making it illegal won’t stop it”, I can just hand them the card rather than arguing.
@Mark Camp, I agree with you to the extent that the solution to the drug problem is a “return” to a moral society, but legalizing illicit drugs will certainly not move us in that direction; for the reasons that Doug Watt outlined in his OP and Comment, among others.
I “Liked” the comments of both @markcamp and @dougwatt above even though they contradict each other. These two well written comments demonstrate the entire reason this is a controversial issue – because both sides have valid points that make it difficult to decide which side you support.
On one hand, I think that in the abstract, adults should be able to legally buy cocaine if they want to. But the reality is that we aren’t all responsible, and that if people like pilots or bus drivers are high, they can cause terrible death and destruction. Even bankers or others who must make important decisions can wreak havoc on the rest of us if they’re impaired.
But aside from that, societal taboos and social stigmas perform important functions. A society where nothing is shocking anymore or where there are no taboos is not a strong society. I’ve watched as the liberals removed the stigma from having babies out of wedlock and of addiction by passing out needles to junkies out of their misplaced notion of compassion, and I think we can all agree that it hasn’t made the world a better place.
Our laws express our standards by saying what we find to be not permissible. Laws send a message to our kids. I can tell you that raising a high school child just after Colorado legalized pot was no picnic. Talk about mixed messages.
Doug,
Great post!
I cannot understand why so many people don’t see that the government, which is designed to protect its people, should never ever be complicit in enslaving them and then warehousing them.
It is easy to say that people should be free to ruin their lives with drugs if that is how they choose to live, but the truth is that you do not live in some sort of libertarian bubble. Other people pay the price for your actions.
The current situation isn’t very good, but outright legalization would definitely be worse
When we speak of illegal narcotics we tell these horrible true stories and a fictional story about how awful it would be if we treated the stuff like chewing gum, available everywhere, advertised, promoted, celebrated. These conflicting visions, the true one a the stupid one keep the drug war going, the drugs pouring in, the crime running rampant, producing countries rotting, narco states of cuba and Venezuela with a little help from Hamas thriving, not to mention the Chinese and Russian gangs. Those aren’t the alternatives, but we don’t seem to be able to approach the topic seriously. Sort of like progressives talking about poverty.
I was never that impressed by cocaine.
There are not enough “likes” on the face of the earth to give to this portion of your comment.
I speak as one who has a close family member (mentally ill) with drug and alcohol addiction. Over the course of seven years, he went through almost half-a-million dollars in inheritance money. For three of those years, he was living with us, and had virtually no out-of-pocket expenses.
In late 2013, he left our home for the last time to follow his lunatical dreams, still with about $300K in the bank, with the words “porn wins.” (He also had a nasty porn addiction which I won’t go into here, but it was the catalyst for his hasty exit.)
On December 8, 2017, after a few years of behavior and circumstances more bizarre than I hope most of you can ever imagine, many of them resulting from the search for, and use of, various illicit substances, and after he became penniless and dependent on the kindness of strangers for support, he was assaulted by two individuals at the flophouse where he was living, was left with severe brain injuries and has been in a coma ever since. We’re at the point in his care and condition where we will need to make some hard choices very, very soon.
Thank God, due to his indigence (he who, a few years ago, had half-a-million dollars in the bank), we were able to get him onto Medicaid, and that his care is being paid for by the State. Thank you, taxpayers of Pennsylvania for your assistance in this matter.
I can think of no circumstances where the legalization of recreational drugs would have helped my family member do better in his life, nor any way in which it would have reduced the cost of his care and support over the last three decades (which must have run into the millions of dollars by now) to the taxpayers of the state I live in.
And, good luck having a productive conversation with anyone about what to do regarding care for the seriously and chronically mentally ill.
But that’s another subject.
Seattle/King County have already approved “safe injection sites”; they are just debating where to put them. Once they actually have a site open, the lawsuits get filed. Injectable drugs are illegal everywhere, and the Feds might object to a governmental unit promoting the use, on public property, of illegal drugs.
Just one more in the litany of “Reasons to stay the heck out of Seattle’.
I am so sorry, @She, no words, prayers.
This. I am ideologically sympathetic to drug legalization for all of the libertarian reasons, but I am adamantly opposed to it so long as a single dollar of government money is devoted to health care, or a single line of regulation impacts health care.
When the burden of addiction is 100.000000000% private, I would abolish the FDA and everything related except the FTC’s authority to punish false advertising.
That’s the same reason I’ve heard for libertarian support of seat-belt laws, which are a gateway drug for government regulators.
My position exactly. And I don’t believe addiction is a disease. That’s something you’re born with. – like cystic fibrosis – or can catch – like malaria. It not something you can avoid by your own behaviour. Legalize anything but do not spend a single cent of anyone else’s money to obtain the product or comfort you when the product does harm. Tired of this.
Yup, I support those, too. For the same reason. I don’t support motorcycle helmet laws, though, because without them, the cost of treatment born by the public goes down (the rider is likely dead).
Unfortunately, the claim that criminalization hasn’t reduced use is non-falsifiable. It’s impossible to calculate what usage would have been without criminalization. Would it have been higher? Would it have been lower? Without a crystal ball, it’s impossible to say.
We can look at the trendlines of other countries that have decriminalized, but that only provides a very rough idea of how decriminalization might work out in North America, due to differences in circumstances, culture, demographics, etc.
It’s a conundrum. There’s no way to know if decriminalization would be a disaster without trying it.
If pressed, I’d probably say that my ideal position is “leave it to the states to decide”. Constitutionally, the federal government shouldn’t be allowed to dictate to the states what products they allow for sale solely within their own borders.
Like the way this thread ties dysfunction and libertarian together.
In Eugene, where I now live, we have a charity service called Cahoots that operated a van cruising the streets picking up derelict druggies and carrying them off to shelters (with the druggy’s agreement) where they can get some care and food. Eugene has practically no drug enforcement, so it is common to see multiple groups of users hanging out downtown zonked out of their minds.
When I hear people advocating legalizing narcotics and other “recreational” drugs, I picture traffic cops with drug labs in their patrol cars as they administer field tests for heroin, cocaine, pcp, meth, etc., etc., at traffic stops. Or, as Doug Watt asked, should we also remove traffic laws from the books?
Is it, though? According to the Declaration, our government is designed to protect our inalienable rights. A government designed to protect people (rather than liberty) will sooner or later devolve into a nanny state.
Nothing lasts forever, but that doesn’t excuse us from doing our part to keep our republic alive and healthy as long as we can. Just because I know I will inevitably die one day, that’s not a good excuse to skip the gym and eat the whole carton of ice cream.
I want to thank everyone for the comments, regardless of which side of the issue you may believe. I received a personal message from one of our members that asked me to say some prayers for a sibling that is using, and I will. For those of you that believe, you could do the same. The name is not important, the thought, and prayers are.
I’m going to address some comments tomorrow because I have a house guest who will leave tomorrow, and all of you had some great comments.
Everyone should understand that my view is shaped by my experiences on the street with drug addicted individuals. I not only respect the differing views you have, I also have some empathy for the user’s plight. That might seem odd coming from someone who found himself fighting with people at times, and who thought he might have to pull the trigger at times, not too many times thank God. If you say my view might be rather narrow I would agree with you.
Defining moments in police work do not always consist of heroic actions, many of them involve actions that will never be known. I would never call myself a hero, and would not expect anyone else to call me that. Simple respect for any beat cop that is a good, and competent cop is all that is necessary, and there are a lot of good, and competent cops out there.
How about regulations banning plastic straws?
And by the way, I would like to see your data on the public cost of helmet laws (or lack of them). ‘Cuz I question whether there is anything at all that isn’t justifiably regulated on the grounds of cost to the public. Bad choices of sexual partners is an example I frequently use. Why shouldn’t the government regulate those on the grounds of saving government money?
Well we would.