Comment by talles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by talles | Hacker News Reader

> By contrast, there has been a near tripling of American deaths from heroin overdoses between 2010 and 2013, even though the law and its severe punishments remain unchanged.

But why heroin usage has raised?

I have read an (very convincing) argument that heroin usage is increasing due to the marijuana legalization. And no, it's not the typical "marijuana is a door the heavier drugs" thing, is merely supply and demand effect on the streets. Street dealers don't really sell weed as they used to now that better and legal weed exist, so they went on heroin. Heroin got a lot cheaper and widely available due to it (Unfortunately, I lost the article link).

I'm not arguing in favor or against legalization (I'm in favor all the way), my complain is how one folded the debate is. Numbers are great and they are definitely needed, but they may trick you into thinking that everything has a simple cause and effect when reality is much more complicated.

One striking example how lazy is legislation is the case of safer chemicals such as LSD or MDMA versus designer drugs such as 25i (nbomb). In some places such designer drugs are even legal (bath salts anyone?) due to how slow or careless the legislation is. As for LSD it's a long time in prison. The dealers are coerced to sell more dangerous substances.

"Street dealers don't really sell weed as they used to now that better and legal weed exist, so they went on heroin."

This is an extremely misguided statement. The demand for high quality weed has never been higher. It doesn't matter if you legalize it, because you are still taxing it 50%. The individual sellers and producers will keep doing their thing. I can tell you right now that people who sell weed don't just magically start selling heroin. The types of people who sell weed are TOTALLY different that the types of people who sell heroin.

Yes, some people exist who sell both - but those types of dealers have been selling every kind of drug they can get their hands on and will never stop.

I think you need to take another look at the supply and demand of high quality marijuana. It is hard to consistently produce high quality marijuana - and once you do cure it correctly and get it packaged, it flies off the shelf as fast as you can answer your phone, regardless of if you are in a state where it is legal or not. Furthermore, there are many people who deliver marijuana on bikes and in cars and make a very good living. These people are not going to loose business to legal dispensaries I can guarantee you. There is always demand for reliable dealers who deliver high quality to you asap. Independent producers and dealers will be able to consistently undercut dispensary prices because the government is taxing it 50%. Combined with the value of delivery and you are not going to see marijuana dealers switch to selling heroin because weed is legalized.... it doesnt work that way. Two completely different clientele/lifestyle/risk factors.

> The demand for high quality weed has never been higher.

That's my point too. And I believe that this increase in demand for high quality weed made many street dealers that sell shitty weed go for heroin. Now heroin is a cheap and common option at your local street corner.

> (...) those types of dealers have been selling every kind of drug they can get their hands on and will never stop.

Exactly. As you put it, they will never stop. It's time to realize that and include them on the equation. Why there aren't policies coercing the typical street dealer to sell safer drugs rather than weird dangerous experimental stuff (like on LSD vs Nbomb)?

I guess to clarify is that what I see (Minneapolis-based) is that weed dealers tend to deal strictly with weed, and the other type of dealer just sells anything and everything they can get their hands on.

Furthermore, the weed dealers I know who have been doing it for 10 years+ have no intentions to stop making money when it is legalized here at some point. They are not going to start selling heroin.

In Minneapolis all of our high quality weed basically gets driven here from LA/Colorado/Anywhere people have grow houses. The keyword here is "high quality". Anybody selling low quality weed is definitely selling coke/heroin as well. That's just the nature of the market here.

I guess I am kind of rambling but I find the economics of black markets fascinating. My main point is that I contend your claim that street dealers who sell shitty weed are now "switching" to heroin. This is just not true, and doesnt make sense. If you are selling heroin, you are one of those dealers who will sell ANYTHING you can get your hands on, including shitty weed/good weed/coke/whaetever. Once a dealer decides to sell things that come with heavy jail time then they dont give a fuck what they are selling. They are just in it for the $$$

> Once a dealer decides to sell things that come with heavy jail time then they dont give a fuck what they are selling. They are just in it for the $$$

They just don't care for the penalty (jail time) so they will sell anything for money, there's nothing we can do about it. This thinking is precisely what I'm criticizing, this one folded way to analyze the problem.

Let's take LSD vs Nbomb example once again. Making LSD is extremely hard specially because how hard is to find the ingredients. Nbomb is a piece of cake. Here's an example which there's nothing to do with addiction or punishment, it's just the plain practicality of dealing with the substances.

Maybe there's a way to set up an environment where the law breakers would still do it while causing less harm on society. That's the discussion I'm missing, how we coerce the bad guys to not be so bad.

> The demand for high quality weed has never been higher.

A minor point, but cannabis use has gone down.

Sources?

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

Key findings, page 1

> Around 1 in 12 (8.6%) adults aged 16 to 59 had taken an illicit drug in the last year. This equated to around 2.8 million people. This level of drug use was similar to the 2013/14 survey (8.8%), but significantly lower than a decade ago (11.2% in the 2004/05 survey).

Cannabis, page 3 (The chart on that page is pretty clear.)

> As in previous years, cannabis was the most commonly used drug in the last year, with 6.7 per cent of adults aged 16 to 59 using it in the last year, similar to the 2013/14 survey (6.6%; Figure 1.2). Over the longer-term, between the 1998 and 2003/04 surveys, the last year use of cannabis was stable, at around 10 per cent of adults, before falling to 6.5 per cent in 2009/10. The trend since the 2009/10 survey has been relatively flat, at between six and seven per cent (Table 1.02).

> Among younger adults aged 16 to 24, cannabis was also the most commonly used drug, with 16.3 per cent having used it in the last year. This was not statistically significantly different from the level in 2013/14 (15.1%), but was a significant fall compared with the 1996 survey (25.8%).

> Although the trend in the use of cannabis among 16 to 24 year olds appears to have shown a steady increase compared with the 2012/13 survey, it is too early to conclude that this is an emerging pattern at this stage. The estimates from the 2012/13 survey appear to be out of line with recent results, and a comparison of the latest estimate to previous years may indicate that the trend, which has been falling since the peak in 1998, has gradually stabilised (Table 1.06).

For the US: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/13/teen-marijuana-use-... (sorry about huffpo. CDC need to have a better website.)

> The biennial High School Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that the rate of marijuana use among U.S. high school students remained virtually unchanged from 2011 to 2013. It's also about 3 percent less than the peak of teen marijuana use in 1999, when nearly 27 percent of teens said they had recently used marijuana, according to the CDC data.

> In 2013, 23.4 percent of American high-school-aged teens used marijuana one or more times in the 30 days before the survey, the data show. That's nearly even with 23.1 percent in 2011.

The US drug stats have their own government web site:

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/nationwide-...

Making Oxycontin harder to get is why. Also people trying to get clean, then going back to doing their "old" dose.

Yes, exactly, on both points.

According to the CDC, opioid painkillers addicts are 40 times more likely to be addicted to heroin than general population. “Most heroin users have a history of nonmedical use of prescription opioid pain relievers, and an increase in the rate of heroin overdose deaths has occurred concurrently with an epidemic of prescription opioid overdoses."

I can't say opioid painkillers are the only reason, but the experts seem to agree they're, at least, a major contributing factor.

I was listening to a social worker discuss the problem recently. His experience was that most new heroin addicts started on opioid painkillers, often with legitimate prescriptions, and weren't hard drug users previously. When their doctor refused to prescribe more painkillers (or the pills they were stealing from mom ran out, etc.), they turned to the black market, where it's much easier to obtain heroin than painkillers. He estimated 90% of his cases fit this pattern of prescription drugs being the gateway to heroin.

This same guy also discussed how a lot of overdoses he saw were from recovered heroin addicts that relapsed after being prescribed an opioid painkiller for a legitimate need, e.g., after an injury. As you say, they went back to their "old dose," without realizing a) their tolerance was lower and b) black market heroin is typically much better quality and a wider range of qualities these days. In the 80's (and 90's I think) heroin was usually <10% pure (i.e., 90% filler/other), but heroin on the streets today is often around 30% but sometimes as high as 70%. I don't remember the exact numbers, something close to that. He said you could tell when a super pure batch of heroin came through town, because overdoses would spike.

Another factor I've read, can't remember where, is that the higher quality heroin has made snorting it more feasible. So, that reduces some of the stigma/ickiness associated with needles, trackmarks, etc., increasing the pool of people who'll try it. And it can be easier to overdose via snorting, because it takes several minutes to feel the full effects, unlike injecting.

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