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You can't put pot in the same league as heroin. If you think pot is going to be the biggest problem, you'd have to say the same for our "legal" drug of choice, alcohol.

I haven't read the Calafano book. Does he count the pills sold illegally as "illegal drug" use, too? 

Heck, in the USA we're proud of our pill industry being the best, right? Feeling a little down, feeling anxious, we have a pill to fix you up, just ask your doctor if it's right for you. I find this shocking.

If you feel as you do about pot, you'd better outlaw alcohol too, it's a scourge. Oh wait, they tried that, amendment, prohibition. How'd that work out? Rise in crime and crime bosses, and almost no change in consumption. We'd have to find a source of state revenue to replace alcohol taxes. And gambling, I hear that's addictive...

posted 3 years, 2 months ago
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I don't have direct (usage) experience, but I have heard a few addict's stories...

Heroin is a sledgehammer of a drug; people who use it are self-medicating so they can knock their brain out for a few hours. Whatever they are experiencing, it's not just enhanced perception or feeling good: they are knocked out.  People in abusive situations, people with mental illness and demons they can't cope with, are drawn to use this drug after alcohol or lesser drugs fail to give them relief from living in the real world.  It is tragic.

It would be interesting to hear from the VA about their efforts to treat drug adiction in the VA system.

Methodone: a friend was a drug conselor in the 1980's or earlier in a methodone clinic in CA. Her take on it was it was an ineffective, cruel program, that client recividism rates were very large (like 80%), that it was simply substiuting a state-sponsored addictive drug for a black-market one; that withdrawl from methodone was as bad or worse as withdrawl from heroin; that "clients" at clinics all game the system, fake their UAs, and that there is a street / black-market in methodone as well so dosing is really not in control of the clinic.

Also, these clinics are far and few between; treatment is rarely available in rural areas, there are states that have no clinics or only clinics in one major population center. What do these clinics cost? Are they run not-for-profit? How do poor and desparate addicts afford to pay for clinic, counselling?

Is drug use the symptom of other problems at large that could be addressed before the addict turns to heroin? Law enforcement has a difficult task; really they see the tail end of the problem: the officer is here cleaning up a mess that was long in the making. Would society paying for mental health treatment and crisis intervention be better off, and reduce the stream of people who feel they have to medicate with the sledgehammer to cope with life? 

posted 3 years, 2 months ago
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