Usually, when people discuss heroin abuse, their solutions revolve around reducing freedom and ramping up hysterical rhetoric. The solutions offered here will pursue the same goals but by increasing freedom and honesty.
One trust-destroying feature of modern life for kids is “zero tolerance” policies in schools which expels students for bringing Asprin or Midol to school. This demonstrates to kids at a young age that their elders have hysterical, irrational reactions to all “drugs,” and that their words and actions are to be ridiculed, not respected. True messages about the dangers of certain drugs, like heroin, get lost in the nonsense, knee-jerk reactions.
Another example of this problem is treating marijuana like it is a dangerous drug similar to alcohol and heroin. When kids try weed and realize that hysterical foolish adults have been hyping it’s dangers, they naturally wonder what else they have been lied to about. They may try the truly dangerous drugs thinking that they, too, have been over-hyped.
Eliminating these policies, and not “crying wolf” will do much to preserve adults credibility for really important messages. It will not, however, eliminate the heroin problem. Utopia is not an option. Thus, other steps which will reduce morbidity and mortality heroin use, are in order.
First, all regulations on the sale of sterile hypodermic needles should be repealed. Needles should be freely and easily accessible to drug users, in order to reduce the spread off deadly diseases like Hepatitis-C and AIDS, clean needles are as important as condoms, and for the same reasons reasons.
Secondly, the laws forbidding the sale of heroin to addicts should be repealed, so that when addict buy their drug, they at least know that what is in the package is what they expected. Many addicts die because the content and purity of their drugs are not what they expected either they buy something stronger than they expected and overdose or they buy heroin that is cut with the things like Fethynol either way, the results can be deadly. Open sales of drugs by reputable businesses can eliminate death due to misrepresentation of content and allow use of the system to keep the market honest.
Thirdly, government should stop sending people to prison for victimless crimes many opiate users started their habit in prison, whilewhile there for things like selling weed. Such people should never have been sent to prison, and their blood is at least partially on the hands of the state.
Fourthly, stop treating addiction as a criminal justice problem. Addiction, like alcoholism, is a MEDICAL problem. Neither jail nor prison has been found to be a “safe and effective” care for addiction or alcoholism.
Lastly, stop forcing people into treatment programs before they are ready: if you force people into treatment for smoking weed, or before they are willing to give up hard drugs like alcohol and heroin, you have the others attending these programs voluntarily, and you make it harder for the person forced in prematurely to accept treatment if and when he becomes ready. Treatment is not for those that need it, it’s for those who want it.
Will these measures eliminate opiate addiction? Absolutely not. Nothing can do that– neither full legalization, nor a full blown police state like the one that failed to eliminate the drug problem in the old Soviet Union. But these policies will reduce the incidence of, and the harm done by opiate addiction. And that is more than the drug warriors have accomplished.
