[josefresco]

Running a a drug friendly "festival" and a state (as in the United States) are two completely different realities. I'm welcome your anecdotal evidence but don't find it at all relevant to the topic of how a state should handle the legal and health consequences of heroin abuse. A bunch of party-goers doing recreational drugs couldn't be farther from the realities of heroin addiction in a rural population.

[david_b]

Your comment is slightly off-the-mark as his comment wasn't merely about a festival, but also about his opinion on Portugals drug policy. As your comment implies that you aren't familiar with said policy, you may wish to recap Portugals efforts in drug decriminalization:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-d...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

While it is apparently hard to say how effective these efforts were, it is quite easy to see that the neo-prohibitionists worst nightsmares have yet to happene in Portugal.

[DanHulton]

You do realize that a great deal of the problems associated with heroin addiction come from the very fact that it is illegal? The crime, the marginalization from society, the lack of access to health care or rehabilitation clinics, these things all make the addiction far, far worse than if we treated this whole thing a little saner and more compassionately.

[at-fates-hands]

>>> The crime, the marginalization from society, the lack of access to health care or rehabilitation clinics

Where do you live?

There's a myriad of state and federally funded programs here in the US that help people get treatment for a nominal fee or in many cases for free. Not sure how much more compassionate you can be when you're giving people a free alternative to get clean.

Also, if you've never had an addict for a friend or a relative, then you'll never know it doesn't matter how compassionate you are to them, if they want to use and continue to throw their life away - they will. They have to be willing to help themselves first. No amount of free clinics, health care or compassion will combat that.

[jpgvm]

> if they want to use and continue to throw their life away

This is exactly the marginalization he was talking about. Some of the smartest people I know love hard drugs and are very successful, are they throwing their life away because they use on a regular basis?

Maybe you are only talking about the outright stoners that just get high every day, but are they really any different to the other lazy people that don't work? Not doing anything ever is generally what I would consider to be throwing your life away.

I don't think drug use has much to do with throwing your life away, apart from the depression that comes from being marginalized. People that wish to throw their life away will do so with or without drugs.

[bryondowd]

The marginalization comes from the fact that you can't participate in society if you are a drug user/abuser. Even if you are healthy enough to be a productive, upstanding member in every other way, the system is designed to tear you down at any moment, based on nothing but the fact that you use an illegal substance. Some people use regularly, but can still maintain and even excel in a job, and keep a healthy social life without anyone even being aware of the drug use or addiction. But they have to live with the knowledge that they are one drug screening away from being out of a job, regardless of performance, and that they can always be arrested the next time they have to purchase their vice, which would likely also lead to loss of a job and social ramifications.

If we treated addicts the same way we treated someone with any other mental or physical ailment, it would make it so much easier for them to actually function in society without "getting clean". Which might actually help a few of the ones who want to get clean, because from what I understand, it is much easier to kick a habit when you have more going for you, like a career and social life.

Just my two cents, from anecdotal evidence knowing drug users in a few different circumstances. Never been a user myself.

[spacemanmatt]

I might not like it, but I don't consider it my place to judge how others deal (or fail to deal) with their problems, how they lead their lives. What's entirely unfair, and not helping anyone, is criminalization of drugs.

[smcl]

Remember that this is not particular to that festival in Portugal, but to the entirety of Portugal

[drzaiusapelord]

>Running a a drug friendly "festival" and a state (as in the United States) are two completely different realities

Right. I mean, a hippy-esque musical festival is going to draw in all sorts of non-violent potheads. How about the south side of Chicago? Do you think Kosmic Care is going to handle gangbangers on meth?

Heck, here in Chicago during Lollapalooza, a man bit two people and injured them. It is reported that he was on drugs:

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/08/05/attacker-bites-man-on...

“In describing it to the police later, they said ‘We never see cases like that where the attacker isn’t on PCP, or bath salts, or something like that,” Lenet said. “There’s no way a normal person could have sustained that much punishment, and just walked away.”

The problem with the pro-legalization crowd is that we don't have any consistency. Some of us just want pot legalized but most of the movement seems to have this pie-in-the-sky view of legalizing just about everything. I'm afraid that we have two extremists groups: "no drugs" vs "all drugs" and per usual sane moderate voices are drowned out.

I just don't believe a "one size fits all" mentality will work here. I just don't think we should legalize drugs that are physically addictive like heroin, PCP, meth, etc.

[mikeash]

How does making the stuff illegal handle gangbangers on meth, exactly?

The anti-legalization crowd seems to hold it as an article of faith that criminalizing drug use results in less drug use. The arguments always come down to some variation on, "Freedom is good, but drugs are bad, so sometimes it's worth making them illegal."

I think you need to show that criminalizing physically addictive drugs like heroin, PCP, meth, etc. actually reduces their use. The evidence available so far from places like Portugal seems to indicate the opposite, although the data is far from clear.

I mean, your PCP example is from a place where all of this stuff is already highly illegal. How is that not an argument against criminalization?

[mpthrapp]

C'mon, don't know you know that making something illegal automatically makes everyone in the world stop doing it? /s

No, but seriously - and I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir - we desperately need reforms in both the Mental Health and Drug sectors in the US. Vermont's initiative seems to be a step in the right direction. It reminds me a bit of the Canadian Insite[1], which is a place where addicts can go to be in a sterile environment and be under medical supervision while they use.

[1]http://supervisedinjection.vch.ca/

[kaitai]

Decriminalization would have a disproportionately good impact on the south side of Chicago. Remember, black kids are less likely to use drugs than white kids, but then have roughly equal arrest rates (not per drug use, per person) and then ridiculously disproportionate incarceration rates.

Some interesting books on the topic include "High Price" by neuroscientist Carl Hart, which I enjoyed because it touched personally on the gangbanging aspect, and "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander, which instead takes a structural/legal point of view. "High Price" also discusses our psychological reactions to drugs like nicotine, marijuana, and LSD -- the author talks about interactions between environment, personal psychology, and chemical and how different behaviors can result.

You can explore drug use rates at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/quicktables/quickconfig.do?34481-... and notice that for a few drugs use is similar across black/white racial lines (crack, heroin) and for most other drugs skews very white. Look at cocaine, for instance.

[true_religion]

> Heck, here in Chicago during Lollapalooza, a man bit two people and injured them. It is reported that he was on drugs:

If you attack people, it doesn't matter how drug friendly your country is... you'll still be arrested just the same as if you attacked someone while sober.

[mpthrapp]

Yup. Just because a substance is legal, doesn't mean using it absolves you of responsibility for your actions while using it. Look at alcohol.

[Noted]

I think the point was the few lines after that about the punishment the attacker withstood, presumably due to the drugs. Subduing someone on PCP can be much more difficult than someone who is drunk or high from other substances

[mpthrapp]

Yeah, why would we ever legalize physically addictive drugs like cigarettes or alcohol? Oh wait.

I'm not saying anything about the legalization of Heroin, just that the potential for physical addiction maybe isn't the best marker for legalization.

[drzaiusapelord]

I'm all for making nicotine illegal. Alcohol isn't physically addictive like heroin.

>just that the potential for physical addiction maybe isn't the best marker for legalization.

Probably better than the current standards. I'd love to live somewhere where cigarettes were illegal and pot wasn't.

[mpthrapp]

> Alcohol isn't physically addictive like heroin.

Yes it is. It's a GABA antagonist.[1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_dependence#Drugs_that...

[vidarh]

As others have pointed out, alcohol very much is physically addictive.

As for heroin, the rates of addiction to heroin amongst heroin users is similar to that of alcohol - most heroin users are casual users, just like most users of alcohol. You just don't see the casual heroin users as easily, because they don't exactly advertise what they do. Nor do you see the large proportion of heroin addicts that manage to lead relatively normal lives.

It's not like heroin is a good thing, and that heroin addiction is something we should brush under the carpet, but for existing heroin addicts, lack of safe access to consistent doses is a far greater hazard than heroin itself.

Meanwhile nicotine on its own is not particularly addictive, nor particularly harmful - it needs to be mixed with other substances to become much of a problem.

[JoeAltmaier]

Ok naieve non-user here, no idea what heroin use is like except what I see in the media.

But it takes some kind of nerves to inject a drug, unlike say drinking from a glass or lighting up. I have to believe heroin is the resort of fairly desperate people. Some emotional or physical compulsion must exist to overcome the natural inclination to not jab yourself with a needle. So I have to believe the risk of heroin use escalating is accelerated by that compulsion.

I'd love to see your statistics on the demographics of 'casual heroin users'. And how long they remain that way without some crisis.

[vidarh]

I've never used anything stronger than caffeine and alcohol myself, so this is all from reading and some limited experiences with people who have used drugs.

For starters, injection is not the only way to take heroin. It's also smoked, snorted and sniffed. But you are right - heroin is rarely the first drug of choice for anyone. It's not glamorous, and it has a "bad image". Thankfully that reduces recruitment. However once people have tried it, the "natural inclination to not jab yourself with a needle" is quickly overcome with habituation.

A substantial gateway to heroin usage is abuse of other opoids such as prescription painkillers. Ironically many of the people who make the switch does so because they find heroin is cheaper and more easily accessible than commonly prescribed opoids that are often safer (not least because they're of predictable strength), available in pill form etc.

I haven't looked up any significant studies at source, but here's an article from the National Institute on Drug Abuse that claims that 23% of heroin users become dependent [1], and an article [2] that covers some work on the subject of heroin addiction and casual use, though, that includes the following quote:

"In the early 1970s, researcher Lee N. Robins led a study commissioned by the Department of Defense that followed tens of thousands of Vietnam War veterans as they returned to the U.S. Use of narcotics and heroin was rampant among soldiers stationed in Southeast Asia, with as many 20% showing signs of addiction. Yet during the first year back, “only 5% of those who had been addicted in Vietnam were addicted in the U.S.” and “at three years, only 12% of those addicted in Vietnam had been addicted at any time in the three years since return, and for those readdicted, the addiction had usually been very brief.” It wasn’t for lack of access to junk, either: half of the returning addicts said they’d tried heroin at least once since arriving back home.

As my Reason colleague Jacob Sullum has documented, such take-it-or-leave-it findings are common in drug research. In his 2004 book Saying Yes and other places, he’s detailed work in which researchers find a surprising range among heroin users, including a study that concluded, “It seems possible for young people from a number of different backgrounds, family patterns and educational abilities to use heroin occasionally without becoming addicted.”

The 23% number above is the highest estimate of percentage of addicts amongst heroin users I've ever seen, and as far as I understand it reflects the lifetime risk of becoming addicted at some time. As noted in the quote from the Time article, many addicts go on to stay free of abuse for years at a time subsequent to becoming addicted.

But to be clear, whether at 23% or 10% or 2%, heroin addiction is not something to take lightly. It's a nasty drug. However, it's not nearly as nasty as it is generally portrayed, and many of the biggest problems for heroin users, and addicts, are a result of it's status as an illegal drug rather than due to the drug itself. Secondly, as noted above, many of them come to heroin due to lack of access to other, safer, drugs - a typical cascading problems with drug abuse.

My "closest encounter" with heroin for my own part was working with an addict - a well functioning one for most of the time I knew him. As for many heroin addicts, he first ran into problems when prices spiked overnight due to supply problems: Suddenly it was hard for him to feed his habit from his normal income, and he started spending a disproportionate amount of time on the phone, seemed jittery and nervous, and eventually a couple of k disappeared from the till at the store he co-owned, and he disappeared for a couple of days before checking himself into rehab.

That's the first we knew of his addiction.

As long as he had a steady supply, he was a nice, hard-working family man with a loving wife and son that knew little to nothing about his addiction. That's not to say that the heroin was not a problem for him - he was certainly an addict, and it certainly would affect his health over time. But he was far from the typical image of heroin addicts you get from anti-drug propaganda. He opened my eyes to considering that the addicts you see sleeping rough etc. are not the full set of heroin addicts, or even most.

As with alcohol use, heroin addicts also manage to function in many or most cases, and as with alcohol use, most users are not addicts - not even according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse with their 23% number. The biggest challenge to keeping things together for the guy in question was finding a safe and stable supply for whenever he felt unable to stay clean. The biggest threat for him, then, was government drug enforcement supposedly there to keep us safe from drugs, that prevented him from getting a guaranteed clean supply at a cost that could let him focus on fixing his life and keeping his job and family, and that would have substantially reduced his health risks.

I used to be against all legalisation, but I've come to see almost all anti-drug legislation as downright immoral. Even when it comes to heroin. It doesn't mean I think it ought to be available at the grocery store next to the milk, but I do think trying to prevent access has a vastly higher human cost than allowing carefully regulated sale would.

[1] http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/heroin

[2] http://ideas.time.com/2013/11/21/trey-radel-scandal-whats-so...

[waterfowl]

Because IV is the only way to do heroin. Lots of "casual drug users" are into pills/narcotics, which end up being too expensive, so they get into heroin and wreck themselves.

To be fair I only know a couple people who say they "occasionally do heroin" and I'm not sure if I believe them, but I would say a huge proportion of heroin users do not initially IV(you can smoke or snort, same with crystal, people tend to progress to IV when they feel they are no longer getting "high enough").

[innguest]

> alcohol very much is physically addictive

> nicotine on its own is not particularly addictive

No drug is addictive. This word "addictive" is a rhetorical strategy to shift the blame from people's genetic and psychological predispositions onto a substance that by itself is harmless.

I drink alcohol about once every two months. I'm not addicted to it. Therefore, alcohol is not "addictive". It only takes one counter-example to disprove that assertion.

I've also tried cigarettes in the past. Never got addicted. So it can't be that nicotine is "addictive".

Nothing is "addictive". People are either more prone to forming habits around certain substances and behaviors, or they aren't.

This is important because thinking that substances are to blame is what got them banned in the first place, and that is the wrong approach to the problem of treating people with strong habits around unhealthy substances. This point of view only harms those that need the most help. They cannot help that they have certain genes or that their brains are wired in a certain way.

[astrodust]

You can die from an alcohol dependency if you're not treated properly when going sober. For about 10% of the population that is pre-disposed to alcoholism it is extremely addictive.

[girvo]

Yes it is, very much so. The withdrawals are one of the few that can straight up kill you.

[api]

I fail to see how ruining peoples' lives with criminal convictions, records, and incarceration helps anyone in any case. Addiction is a psychological and medical problem.

The real insult is that alcohol is legal. Heavy alcohol use results in severe addiction and physical harm comparable to chronic heroin and amphetamine abuse. Yet we treat alcoholism as a psychological and a medical problem (which it is), and do not further ruin the addict's life and worsen their problems with incarceration and persecution.