[zd123]

Heres the peer reviewed article upon which the article is based.

https://www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/News%20stories/dnutt-lanc...

I would encourage you to read it before marking it as a “narrow view”. It is literally taking a broad view factoring in societal impacts. It is written by highly respected experts.

Alcohol absolutely has severe societal impacts: violence rates are positively correlated to rate of alcohol consumption; clogging up hospitals with self inflicted injuries, driving under the influence, health issues (liver damage), clogging up emergency departments on the weekend etc.

I mean I could literally go on. Of all the drugs alcohol really shouldn’t be as easily available as it is.

Personally I find the argument that it does “good” pretty wishy washy and more driven by societal bias toward it as an accepted medium for socialistion. Alternatives do exist.

[pstuart]

Most of the harm from heroin stems from it being illegal and unregulated. It obviously would be abused if legal and readily available but even that would be better addressed by spending money on health/prevention vs. police/courts/jails.

My brother died of a heroin overdose many years ago. If it had been legal, pure, and known quality that likely wouldn't have happened (he could still have been affected by addiction like our mother with alcohol, but he wouldn't be dead).

[rectang]

I wish that things could have been different for your brother, your mother, and you and all those affected.

[pstuart]

Thank you so much. I do too, as well as for all the others who suffer because of these misguided policies.

It so easily could be changed, but we are collectively trapped by the delusion that the only route to safety is to make drugs illegal. You'll see it here on HN, in this thread, about how the "dangerous" drugs should not be readily available because people will get hurt if society lets them have legal access.

It's such an easily solvable problem and we collectively support the worst possible way to deal with it -- it's crazy making.

[Ginden]

> If it had been legal, pure, and known quality that likely wouldn't have happened (he could still have been affected by addiction like our mother with alcohol, but he wouldn't be dead).

Overdoses on opiates happen even with legal opiates [1] and it's related to tolerance mechanisms. You become tolerant to euphoric effects much faster than you become tolerant to respiratory depression and nausea.

This basically makes opiates much more dangerous than any other drug class.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/featured-topics/overdose-de... - prescription opioids alone contribute to 9.2% of overdose deaths excluding alcohol.

[allturtles]

The study is based on a group of drug experts going in a room and assigning point values to harm of different drugs. It's not really a 'study' at all in the empirical sense, it's just a social group expressing its pre-existing biases.