[andrewfelix]

Had a good friend who was educated, healthy and ran his own business. He died from an heroin overdose shortly after selling off most of his business assets to pay for his addiction.

Yes, this is one anecdote. But I bet you my anecdote is a fuck load more common than that of the successful New York business man cited in the article.

[njs12345]

Would your friend have died of a heroin overdose if heroin was easily available to maintain his habit and regulated? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin_assisted_treatment

[lincolnq]

Selection and availability effects should account for this, though.

[andrewfelix]

It might, but there are thousands of people with awful stories about Heroin. Negative effects extend far beyond the individual user, entire communities can be crushed by it's use.

[ZoFreX]

Most of the effects that extend beyond the user are more a facet of prohibition than the drug use itself, no?

[andrewfelix]

That is another point in entirely. But yes you are quite right. That is true for most drugs and how they are consumed.

[vidarh]

I used to work with someone who was a responsible, successful business man who nobody suspected might use heroin until a substantial change in heroin prices left him in panic chasing money to pay for his addiction. Had the drastic price change at the time not happened, chances are nobody would have found out. In other words:

You see the ones that ends up fucking up for one reason or another. You don't see the ones that manage, so you don't know whether nobody manages to deal with it, or if lots of people do.

(the other aspect of this is that his personal ruin, while facilitated by a heroin addiction, was triggered by the legal regime surrounding heroin that made it impossible for him to get at a low, predictable price; I've gradually come to believe that outlawing most drugs is ethically indefensible)

[ZoFreX]

How would you possibly know how many of your friends use heroin responsibly and in secret with no effect on their lives (a la NY business man in the article)?

[andrewfelix]

That argument is a logical absurdity. You cannot assert a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false.

[ZoFreX]

I'm not asserting anything, other than that anecdotes are not data.