Mattster wrote:@AndrewJB bit of a hole in your suggestion.
You say if you give it out for free to addicts then no one will be able to make money selling it to non-addicts but plenty of prescription drugs get sold on the street. Do you honestly think no non-addicts are going to want to try it? Especially when told "Don't worry, if you get addicted you'll get it for free". It wouldn't end the problem, though would probably improve the status quo.
Wouldn't work with cigarettes, in fact I think that would potentially make the situation worse since cigarettes are so freely and (relatively cheaply) available in neighbouring countries. It would almost incentivise getting addicted.
With tobacco there has always been a vocal and well funded lobby against restrictions - even to the point at which they used to publish their own health studies showing that smoking 'isn't so bad for you' By getting rid of the industry altogether and making it a public health issue I think we'd be sending the clear message that we aim to end smoking, but at the same time not leaving those who smoke cast adrift. Smoking is one of those things that people in the future will shake their heads over. Paying lots of money to ingest deadly chemicals, and damage our health and that of those around us. As I said, the focus has to be on harm reduction, so making tobacco something you can only get if you're a registered addict would be a vast improvement on what we have now - where anyone can just choose to start - and if we know who smokes, we can more easily offer assistance in terms of helping them reduce or stop. If we had this system there would be no outside country that could sell tobacco to us cheaper than we could produce it ourselves. We could sell prescription tobacco for next to nothing. The most probably danger would be our cheap tobacco being exported.
It might seem crazy to just give heroin addicts their fix, perhaps seen as a reward for failure. Heroin addicts should be considered in the context of their addiction. They're not desperate to get high, but take it to relieve the anxiety of not having it. It's a physical addiction, and whereas some people have weaned themselves off it, they didn't do that purely through will. They had support from people around them, and probably few concerns around things like food, shelter, and clothing. Prescribing heroin would enable addicts to start the journey toward being productive citizens, positively engaged with social care professionals who might help them eventually come off it. There is no immutable law saying addiction always leads to a person wanting more.
When you say prescription drugs get sold on the street, does that mean that people sell their own prescriptions, or that drugs normally available only on prescription get sold on the street by people who get them illegally in large quantities? I would say the second example is the greatest reason for those drugs hitting the streets, and that market is in place precisely because of our current drug laws. By putting safer recreational versions in place nobody will go around selling Ritalin nicked from the back of a lorry, because nobody will want to buy it.
If people have safe and inexpensive alternatives, then far fewer people will take things like horse tranquilizers to get high. I think in return for decriminalisation, the vast majority of recreational drug users would welcome and accept forms of regulation and control in how these drugs are handed out, and what choices they have. Right now every weekend hundreds of thousands of people buy ecstasy or marijuana despite the law, and enjoy these drugs more peaceably than those who drink alcohol. The cost of these drugs factors in the cost of production and distribution, with huge profit margins at every step of the way, which balance out the legal risks at each level. It's an insane system for a country to leave in place, and one directly resulting from the fact it's illegal. Drug dealing is a victimless crime (bear with me here) insofar as when a transaction takes place that both sides are happy with, who is going to report it to the police? It's easy money for orgainised crime. Surely a better way would be for drugs like these (which cause far fewer problems than alcohol) to be made and sold legally in a regulated way that reduces harm, cuts out criminals, and allows the state to reinvest the huge tax revenues to fund harm reduction in other areas?