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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

Would you support methadone being freely available over the counter? After all, it is a valuable tool in helping get people off more dangerous opioids.

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Would you support methadone being banned while heroin is available over the counter? Because that's the proper equivalent comparison to the e-cig policy.

It doesn't have to be an either/or situation. I would be perfectly fine if cities also wanted to make it harder to buy heroin/traditional cigarettes.

I support and advocate for 100% across the board drug decriminalization, so prob not the best one to ask.

Why not? Heroin is essentially decriminalized in SF. I work in Civic Center and watch cops casually walk and drive past people actively shooting up every single day.

Decriminalization is different than legalization. This ordinance does not criminalize e-cigs.

I think criminalizing drugs leads to a lot of societal problems. I don't think legalizing all drugs is the answer to those problems.

As per the NPR program I heard last night, this is already the case in SF.

Info for those interested here: https://harmreduction.org/issues/overdose-prevention/dope-sf...

They are providing a drug to treat overdoses which is an entirely different thing than a drug that is used to ease someone out of a chemical addiction. There are different priorities when someone is minutes from dying rather being addicted to a deadly substance that might take years to kill them.

Thank you for the correction, I hadn't realized that there were different drugs for different cases.

Yes, absolutely. Along with anything else anyone wants to buy.

methadone and vaping, while both used for cessation, are not comparable

It was an analogy and you are leaving half of the analogy out of consideration.

The analogy was not a comparison of methadone and vaping.

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