Should heroin be legalized, your country

[dillydude]

Hey all , I've been watching a documentary on television about smack in this country (Canada).


There was a mayor in a city (Van.) that was advocating legal heroin for that province, they now have it after legal shooting sites as well.


They basically have done this the same way that they did in Germany I think. I myself would have to be on the pro side of this decision, although I was very heavy into the I.v. method myself, for awhile . I have just recently stopped about 2 months ago with a couple of relapses,(story some other time)but know trying to keep it at quitting.


Anyway I firmly believe that legal heroin is great, cuts down on crime, overdoses, and ultimately as a result from both aspects death too.


What are your opinions about legal smack?


What is good for one province, is good for a country.

[These Forensics]

Im pretty sure that canada and other countries aren't legalizing heroin
completely, they're just providing addicts a safe place to shoot up and
clean product

[dillydude]

I said it was legal in a prov. not in the country read carefully.It would be nice to have it in the whole country

[bogumil]

Would be great if it wascompletely legalJust kidding. I mean I would love it to be legalized but it has its use that it isnt I think. Heavy users should be allowed to buy heroin though. Would minimize dangers from cut stuff and the whole thing would be controlled better. In Germany it can be prescribed to heavy addicts if methadone doesnt work. They managed to finally open "fixer stuben" which are rooms in which people can shoot under hygienic circumstances. They get fresh neadles there and stuff ...Edited by: bogumil

[Alfa]

It should be regulated, not legalised. So people can get it easely prescribed from the doctor. It would solve a lot of peoples life situations & crime. IMO it is a flaw of reasoning to think that this is closer to legalisation than we are now. It creates government control on the distribution of herion and excludes criminality from it. Society gets good citizens back for the many heroin addicts. Sounds like a good deal to me, but I do not believe politicians have balls enough to go against the prejudices of the masses. The same reason why politics don't work IMHO.

[mariecurie]

I think that heroin should be legalized, but it isn't going to be IMHO.
I think that a healthy compromise would be to sell purified heroin in
injection ready bottles like they sell ketamine. This would enable
users to obtain clean product if they were willing to find it. Soon the
people with clean shit would put the people with filthy heroin out of
business.

[Alfa]

DMSO would give a much cleaner way of using heroin. It will give you dragon breath, but won't screw up your body like injection needles do.

[jimdandy]

What is DMSO?


I'm for legalising all drugs, even though I'm not for using all drugs.


I've been addicted to heroin and it sucked, I've been on the methadone program and it sucked. I've been clean and am currently so, and it beats the hell out of a habit or the program. Sometimes though I ask myself whether I ever would have stopped using if it would have been free and easy to continue. I stopped methadone because it was such a pain in the ass back then, very stringent controls and peeing in a bottle in front of a nurse every day was too humiliating (and Inever did manage to leave a clean sample). Plus never being able to take a good dump...one of the best things about being clean is taking good dumps! That and the ability to laugh for real, at life and at myself....

[sands of time]

This may sound extreme, but I believe everything should be legalized. I know it sounds insane to many, but let me explain. There are, obviously, things in nature to control the population of every species. (Un)fortunatly, many of these population controlling occurances are not effecting humans. The average life span of a human has gone from 20-40 years to somewhere in the 75+ year range, and this trend will probably grow even further. The problem is, at some point, we will use up all our resources. Think about it, our world will be completely used up, and the life cycle will have to start over agian.

Now to the point... Social Darwinism should be allowed to regulate the population. If people die from drug overdoses, its sad. Death is a natural thing, however, and its how the planet it allowed to survive. Drug overdoses will probably acount for very little in the long run, but its the principal. The law should not try to get in the way of Social Darwinism. I also feel suicide should be legal for the same reason. I know my views may seem strange and twisted to some, but if things don't change, we will destroy this planet. Humans are animals with the same mentality, they just care about themselves. If we truely are an advanced species, we will need to adopt some new ways of living.

[bogumil]

I respect your point ov view and I dont think youre a bad guy cause of that, but let me add my few bucks to that.


It is true that most of the natural selection has been switched off by modern medicine and better hygienic circumstances et al. But you must see two things: An adiction character is not a physical selective it is mental. So it will not make mankind a "stronger" race in the physical sense. What it does is social selection (to filter out people who can take higher amounts of any drug would be the only positive effect of this selection and I cant see what it would be good for). What this kind of selection will do is pick out dcertain characters. Addiction goes along with social problems usually. This kind of charakter is often (definately not always) going along with a more social charakter (i know that sounds strange, but I think you know what I mean). Many studies have shown that people who are intelligent have problems like mental diseases (that is a small amount of people using drugs, but the amount of people with problems is higher in the group of people who are intelligent). Think about Hemmingway, Kafka, The math-nobelprice winner who was schizophren. All this people added important pieces to our culture. One wouldnt really want to loose those people. What our societies would select is a charakter that should be well known to us: coruptive,more or less perfectliers, scrupeless with the ability to use their ellbows. Just watch Tv. Starlets without individual cernel, wrong emotions, corruptive politicians. and so on. This would be the character that would be selected. Of course, not only this but one cant be very difficile with social darwinism on that subject.So alltogether this kind of social darwinism would create a "race" that we allprobably agree about - is not a good choice. This is only the strict social darwinistic argumentation. If you think about ethics, there are many more arguments: Ifyou would have a disease, wouldnt you expect hospitals to help you? Or if you have problems, dont you want people to help you? If you have anOD, wouldnt you want to be saved? What I want tosay is thatit is always easy to call for selection when oneself isnt affected ... Thats just my opinion though ...


And the new way of living you meant, we definately need this. But do you think the ellbowcharacter I talked about would be able to leadus to that?After all this characters were it, who brought us where we are now ... and I think we are in the worst situation the planet ever had ... and human society is not far away from the middle ages ...Edited by: bogumil

[sands of time]

I understand what you are saying. What the law is doing, however, is locking these addicts up. Many of these are productive people, and some are very smart people. You could have a mathmatical genious locked up in some maximum security prison cause hes hooked to the needle, and no one would ever know it.

When you say I'm calling for selection, how am I not effected? We would all be presented with the option of doing the drug, but many would choose not to take the risk. It's just like cigarettes. You have the option to smoke, but you are also presented with the reasons not to. I think thats how it should be with all drugs. The government tells us we shouldn't do drugs, but at the same time, hypothetically, we have no option.

[bogumil]

I dont know if I got you right. You meant that you will also be effected, when you call for selection, right? Yes, I just think that one might call for something, but when one really is in that situation one might regret that. Or better: One wouldnt call for it when one is in that situation. (I do this alot, saying things like: When you dont have money, you must live on cheap food but when Im out of money I still buy what tastes good ...)


And with the genius thing, that sounds a bit strange the way I said it. I just used that to illustrate what I meant ...

[sands of time]

I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you are saying.

[bogumil]

Lol. My english ... Yoiu said: "When you say I'm calling for selection, how am I not effected?" What I meant was, that of course you are included into that but you are not in the situation at the moment you say that. When youre haveing an od or some bad stuff and you know that youre going to die, you probably would want to be saved. I hope i expressed it correct this time ... lol

[sands of time]

O well of course. But at the same time, when your being eaten by a lion, you probably would want to be saved as well. Selection is not pretty, but it is effective, and necessary.

[sunyata]

I totally agree with you sands, overpopulation is a serious problem. The only problem, as I see it, is that if the government starts thinking in those directions things could get really uncomfortable for a lot of people. But, then again, it will be uncomfortable for all of us(including animals and plants) if we don't get this overpopulation thing under control. And if we don't do it ourselves, some other part of nature will do it for us.

[Alfa]

Yeah, they should better hurry up with that moon station project. lol.

[bogumil]

Guys, please ... lol. You can do something against ovrpopulation without erasing people by selection. We had that here in Germany 65 years ago. And we all know whatit lead to.


If we would use common sense, we can do both - save our planet and we dont need to let people die. Mankind will survive some "genetically weak persons" (do you realize, what kind of vocabulary this subject brings up?). Medicine will be able to compensate it -if our statesmen would manage to put more money intoscience, research(and a working health system!) andnot into useless stuff. Exactly this people for some part, that we consider worth to be selected - the strong, tuff businessmen and lobbyists - do a very big part to make the world like it is today. Some examples out of hundrets of things that could be done: Not giving penecilin for simple coughs, using our resources intelligently, doing some foreign and economy politics that is not giving wealth to our western world by making the third world pay for it ... Why dont we just take care for that honest and intelligent politicians do the politics. Its absurd to consider letting people die when we have the possibility to change somethingso "easily" ( you know what I mean).


It is strange thatwe think about that our government should think into that selection-direction insteadof considering that they should do their job right. Edited by: bogumil

[dillydude]

Well said, Bogumil

[sunyata]

Bogumil: I agree, it might get real nasty if government starts thinking in those directions, but the problem of overpopulation won't go away by sticking our heads in the sand. I don't really see how not giving penicilin for simple coughs would reduse the population, please elaborate a little further. You say "we have the possibility to change somethingso "easily" ( you know what I mean)", no I don't, I don't see any easy or comfortable solution to the problem of overpopulation, if you do then please explain it to me. I am well aware thatI seem to bemoving into nazi-territorry when I say that we need to reduce the population(and obviously I would kick and scream as much as anyone else if I was selected for termination), but there must be a more humane solution to it. One strategy I can think of is telling the Pope to shut the hell up about the sin of practising safe sex, although this wouldn't solve the whole problem.


To be clear about it: No I don't think we shouldstart executing people on a mass scale,but we still have to face theproblem. I admit that I don't exactly know how we could do this, but I think it's worth discussing.

[sands of time]

Nazism and social Darwinism couldn't be farther apart. Nazism was about eliminating groups of people who other humans thought were inferior. Social Darwinism is nature making the choices for us. I don't think heroin would play a big role in balancing the population, but I don't think the government needs to concern itself with being the savoir.

[bogumil]

"...but the problem of overpopulation won't go away by sticking our heads in the sand."


Thats what I mean. We stick our heads in the sand while there are so obvious problemsin front of us. I mean our own coutries politics.


"...I don't really see how not giving penicilin for simple coughs would reduse the population, please elaborate a little further."


Social darwinism argues with the deacrease of human genom qualities because of the missing natural selection by diseases. At the same time we speed that up by taking one of the some weapons against bacterial infections for illnesses we would easily go through. We just want to have the feeling the doctor helped us, so he describes us something (also because he dont want to use paying customers and because of pharam companies promotion). Also wedont want to go through the fever andpain stuff - so we take penicicllin. The effect is that lots of bacteria have becomeresistant against penicillin and in fact at this point a natural selection does happen, because medics cant help anymore. The same for penicillin given to animals to make them grow faster and get chunky: Theylead to resistant bacteriy, too.And that only because the producers want to raise profit. But its only one thing. I didnt mean not giving penicillin would reduce population.The problem withoverpopulationwe have only in the third world.We instead have a problem with declining population. An alerting problem by the way. But governments dont spend money on programs for the education in the thris world. Schools, simple programs and so on would help. But not within 1 year but in 5 to ten years. Thats too expensive for us. We prefer using the money for other things. Not we, the people who have it.


"...You say "we have the possibility to change somethingso "easily" ( you know what I mean)", no I don't, I don't see any easy or comfortable solution to the problem of overpopulation, if you do then please explain it to me. ..."


Politics. We can parttake in political groups, we could work for greenpeace, donate or work for organizations that try to do something against the overpopulation in africa for example. We can "choose" our politicians. What do we have the democracies for that were so proud of? By the way: You sure know the old thing: We have foodenoughfor 3rd worldX2. Wedont even need it, we throw it away because it is cheaper than sending it there.


"...I am well aware thatI seem to bemoving into nazi-territorry when I say that we need to reduce the population(and obviously I would kick and scream as much as anyone else if I was selected for termination), but there must be a more humane solution to it. One strategy I can think of is telling the Pope to shut the hell up about the sin of practising safe sex, although this wouldn't solve the whole problem. ..."


Yes this is one thing the pope. But the church from what I know is really cooking internally because of this problem and they will change that within a not too long time. There seem to be many people even in the high positions that are not happy with that. And again: We have to reduce population in the third world -better: THEY must reduce their population. (How can we say other human what they HAVE to do? They are not an abstract pile of living material like the cows in our stables.) but there are other ways than natural selection. We practice natural selection since almost 150 years in africa by not helping them. With education it would easily be done.


"...To be clear about it: No I don't think we shouldstart executing people on a mass scale,but we still have to face theproblem. I admit that I don't exactly know how we could do this, but I think it's worth discussing. ..."


I totally agree with you. And Im thinking its a quite interesting discussion here.


"...Nazism and social Darwinism couldn't be farther apart. ...".


Actually they are very close. The thought of a superior race lead to thoughts about selection very fast and social Darwinism was a big deal for them. Lots of theoretical process at that time. But what I was talking about was not the Schoah but the euthansia programs that were raised to eleminate people that were not worth living due to genetical defects, like disabled people.The concept could be easily adepted and they searched for this kind of reasons too, to eliminate the jews. Although the superior andminor race thought was the main argument, they used social darwinistic ones too.


"...Social Darwinism is nature making the choices for us...."


We probably have a definition problem here: Social Darwinism is 'defined' as an adeption ofthe biological selection principals on social, scientific and political phenomenons. In the US the theorie was and still is used to tell us that unboardered kapitalism is right.So the concept is one that was pushed by people trying to justify their practises.In Germany and other European contries they used it for the things I talked about before.


Edited by: bogumil

[joetaco]

I don't buy social darwinism as a reason for legalizing heroin. Drugs should be legal for the same reason suicide is legal; you're only hurting yourself. Not just to weed out "inferior" people. Bogumil hit the nail on the head. Social Darwinism is simply a naturalistic justification of social inequality.