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Comment by its-obvious | Hacker News Reader

Legalize opium and the number of overdoses would plummet, as well as blood-transmissible diseases like these.

It's at the point that if you're not aware of and advocating for obvious solutions like this, the blood is on your hands.

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This is a lie that is continuously propagated. Portugal has not seen a reeducation in overdoses: quite the opposite

https://www.statista.com/statistics/911927/drug-overdose-dea...

I assumed that Zurich’s failed experiment decades ago would have ended the possibility of further debate.

Portugal decriminalized possession, but production and sale remains illegal. Without legalized production and sale users are still using drugs with poor dose consistency, which is what kills people.

Would opium deaths be then on your hands?

Why downvote this? It's plainly true. Most drug-related deaths are from disease, contamination (fentanyl), improper dosing and black market violence. Those issues all virtually vanish with legal access to drugs. So we can choose to a) change our obviously failed policies and start saving lives or b) keep doing what we're doing and keep paying the cost in taxes, personal liberty and lost human lives.

If you need data, look at Portugal.

1. Because it isn’t plainly true. The number of drug overdoses has risen in Portugal over the last decade https://www.statista.com/statistics/911927/drug-overdose-dea...

2. Even if it were true, nations get to dictate their policies and it is perfectly understandable for them to not want to subsidize drug abuse.

Portugal has had massive success across the board with decriminalization, but they have not gone far enough to prevent overdose deaths because they still ban manufacturing and distribution. As long as a government protects a black market, there will be preventable deaths.

Legalizing has resulted in more ODs so you want to.. legalize more?

How does legalizing manufacturing of a killer substance stop ODs?

> How does legalizing manufacturing of a killer substance stop ODs?

It’s not legalizing it that could potentially help with ODs but regulating it. It’s the difference between injecting a random-assumed-to-be-heroin substance dissolved in tap water on a heated spoon and injecting a known 10mg/mL vial of heroin.

And that 10mg/ml of heroin can and will kill heroin users. Fentanyl has made the situation worse but heroin users do in fact kill themselves frequently by ODing.

I don’t disagree, but legalization without quality control is almost certainly worse than legalization with QC.

Legal weed in Canada has THC % numbers on it and it makes dosing so much simpler. While the impact of too much THC is nowhere near as bad as opiates, it’s quite nice being able to look at a bag and pretty accurately predict how much to have to get a desired effect.

Edit: same with alcohol. It’s really nice to be able to look at a 355mL can of beer and know that drinking it isn’t going to have the same effect as a 355mL bottle of vodka.

And peoole kill themselves - frequently - with alcohol.

So are you suggesting that problem would be better or worse without quality control and labelling?

Part of the problem, ironically is the war on opioids. I’ve read many accounts of people with legit chronic pain being cut off by the doctor… which simply results in them getting relief wherever they can find it.

Many dudes I knew in prison on drug charges were ex-military recent vets who picked up a pill habit from their service related injuries/chronic pain. That pill habit needed to be fed and pills got harder to find leading to dealing/importing fentanyl analogs from China.

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