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> Btw, ever wonder how much fentanyl it takes to kill you vs the amount of heroin? https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/29/fentanyl-heroin-photo-fa.... That's what's driving the huge number of deaths from "heroin".

Fentanyl is definitely a problem, but you can't point just to potency and say "this is why". Fentanyl is much more potent than most other painkillers, but it's also more expensive.

5 patches of 12 hour release 25mcg/hr fentanyl will cost $145 on prescription, before any street markup. That's about half what you see in that vial there (assuming your recovery method is 100% effective, no-one cuts it, etc, etc).

Mmmm, I'm not following your point.

I'm saying "If you cut a big bag of heroin with an amount of fentanyl in the correct ratio to not kill you, and shake it all up, you can't be very certain that the correct ratios are being evenly distributed. Therefore, when you split it all up into much smaller quantities, the ratio of fentanyl to heroin will vary." That's creating a situation where you really don't know what you're getting. I'm pointing to that as "this is what's driving heroin deaths".

Very true, the bonding and distribution can cause big problems.

What I'm saying is analogous to this:

Drug A requires 1kg to be lethal, and costs $100/kg. Drug B requires 100g to be lethal, but costs $5,000/kg.

It doesn't _automatically_ follow that you can say that Drug B is more likely to be a problem on the street, because mass/volume is not the _only_ factor in safety.

But, it certainly is one, yes.

Legalization benefits addicts in other ways - like safer environments for consumption[0].

Addicts that are presently shooting up in basements and bathroom stalls and under bridges can go to a place where they can receive an injection of a known dosage under supervision of medical professionals.

I'm all for fighting addiction, but that's a complicated and expensive fight. Fighting the crime and fighting overdoses, equally destructive problems to addiction, are much simpler fixes: legalize it.

[0]http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/safe-injecti...

While I [would like to] agree that people have the right to put whatever they want into their own bodies, we cannot deny that there are negative societal externalities caused by individual addictions. Everything ranging from something as abstract as an increase in national healthcare spending to something as palpable as coming home to find that your house has been burglarized by addicts.

I think all of the issues that cause drug addicts to be expensive or harmful to society are externalities of the war on drugs. For your two examples:

Increased healthcare spend: But why don't we draw a line for alcohol and tobacco? Or people eating too much? All of these are legally sanctioned choices people make. It gets into slippery territory when you start telling people what they can or can't do because of the burden they'll place on the healthcare system. Slippery territory that leads to the situation we currently have.

People stealing your tv: Spend less money on chasing and locking up drug users and more money on chasing and locking up burglars. Also, if we're just talking about simple economics here, the cost of supplying the entire world with high quality, low price drugs would not be terribly high. It's like, "How many homeless alcoholics are robbing homes because they can't find a drink?" That could be paired with a general public education campaign about the realities of drugs (I mean, Trainspotting and Leaving Las Vegas are kind of about the same thing right?)

So I deny that there are negative societal externalities. I'll make an exception for the fact that families pretty much literally lose loved ones to addiction, and that's a pretty big one, but I think it gets into the kind of territory of "do you owe your family anything?" I would say no, if you want to throw away your life to drugs, that's not the state's business.

And again, I'm really not advocating anyone start doing any of these things, I'm advocating that the state stop locking people up for doing them. In order for that to happen, it requires a certain amount of acceptance.

I think you've made some excellent points, but you can't simultaneously deny the existence of negative societal externalities caused by individual drug use while acknowledging that the usage of drugs (including alcohol, tobacco, and excessive eating) imposes a cost onto society in the form of [just one example] increased healthcare spending.

I think my particular stance is that the war on drugs is a massive failure that props up prices, lowers quality, and destroys the lives of many young non-violent "offenders." This is probably quite similar to your position, but I think the primary difference is that I would not advocate lifting the prohibition against drugs like heroin, which can supposedly turn a person into an addict within a few sessions.

I think my position is ultimately something like this:

Should the state lock someone up for using heroin? No, it's their money and their body.

Should the state lock someone up for using heroin and then committing a crime? Yes, because of the crime.

Would the legalization of heroin cause an increase in number of people committing crimes? Yes, because of its addictive potential and the extremely difficult/potentially fatal withdrawals.

Whether or not that would actually be the case, I can't say.