Curious about something you mentioned in your post last week, you said that in your opinion all drugs should be legal and I’m curious about how that would be a positive at all? Like I get weed bc it’s pretty harmless but when I think of drugs I think of cocaine and heroin, which have destroyed so many lives. If it was widely available wouldn’t that end up hurting more people than helping? That’s just my opinion but I’m curious on the other side
I do think all drugs should be legal. This is said knowing that addiction runs in my family and that the only reason my older sister is my *sister* is due to drug use and addiction. Otherwise she'd be my cousin.
Making drugs illegal does not stop people from getting high. It does not stop drug related crime. And it certainly does not stop drugs from tearing families apart.
Addiction is a symptom of a larger problem. Solve the problem and the addict problem goes away. Solve the addict problem and drugs stop ruining lives and destroying families and creating massive amounts of drug related violence. Places that have roled out decriminalization strategies effectively have seen an overall reduction in crime rates across the board, a reduction in recreational drug use, and a reduction in bloodborne illness like HIV. Creating safe needle exchanges as well as safe places to get high with medical staff onhand has also created a locale where very few people die from overdose.
Most people hear "decriminalize all drugs" and think I mean a free-for-all. I don't. I think the drug market should be regulated. I don't think you should be able to get ketamine or heroin over the counter at a walmart like you can get asprin. But I think it's time to stop putting people in jail for getting high.
My aunt tore her life and her family and her health apart for years while she was addicted to heroin. My sister, her daughter, needed to be removed from her care due to the amazingly bad choices she made as a mother due to her addiction and her prioritizing drugs over the health and safety of her daughter. My aunt has had multiple heart attacks from the damage the constant drug use did to her body.
My aunt is more than a decade sober and do you know why? It's not because she got a wakeup call when her daughter was taken away, because at the time she willingly and freely signed her over to my parents because that got her "out of [her] hair". It's not because she had a heart attack, because she went right back to it the moment she was out of the hospital. It's not even because she spent time in rehab and prison, because the moment she was out she was using again.
No, my aunt got sober because her life changed. She was put on a better pain management plan. She got out of her shitty marriage to her shitty husband. She completed some education to make her more hireable so she didn't have to rely on less than safe means of paying her bills. She reconnected with my sister and reforged their relationship once she was 18. She bought her own house. She found love with someone who didn't give a shit about her past and brought out the best in her.
My aunt was a deeply unhappy person. Heroin made life more tolerable for her. Until she couldn't tolerate life without it. Until she'd do anything, anything, to get her next high.
A lot of addicts are addicts because they are self-medicating for something else and their drug of choice has chemical properties that makes their brains crave it more. If you fix the "deeply unhappy" part, you create a healthier environment for that addict to take control over their life again. Without it, they are far more likely to continue to relapse.
Knowing this, why would I then want to add the threat of prison and jailtime- life-ruining things themselves- to an addict's list of concerns?
Look up rat park sometime. In the rat paradise, drugged water was freely offered, and occasional a rat here or there would take a hit or two, but rarely enough to even get high and almost never habitually. Addiction literally didn't exist even though the rats were taking addictive substances. But the rats in cages, seperated from each other, with no enrichment, crammed into small spaces and stressed to hell? Those rats took hit after hit after hit until they overdosed and died. The addict rats were deeply unhappy. The drugs were their only escape. The paradise rats had to be lured in with sweetened drugs to even consider and even then they rejected them. The caged rats did not need sweetner, even though the drugs made the water bitter.
If we can see such a stark difference in rats having their needs met vs rats experiencing isolation and stress, what would happen if we showed human addicts the same consideration?
I think a lot better results than continuing to jail deeply unhappy and desperate people for doing the only thing they can think of to cope.
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