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Is your argument heroin is the lesser of two evils when compared to meth and thus should be legalized to at least get people off meth into something less evil like heroin?

Sorry for the run-on-sentence but if that's your argument it sounds absurd.

There was a documentary on Sky TV[0] of of a heroin addict who recorded his final two years of life. I urge to watch it if you haven't a clear idea of what life can be like for a drug addict. On a number of occasions one could see he sincerely hated the drug but couldn't control his addiction. He jumped out the window of his house during one attempt at going cold turkey and broke his foot since he was locked in the house and wanted to get some heroin. His veins collapsed due to all the injections of heroin over the years. He ultimately died of brain haemorrhage due to withdrawal symptoms in a detox facility.

I don't use drugs either and when I hear people's arguments about legalizing marijuana, it makes sense in the context of a society that legalized alcoholic drinks and cigarettes. But meth and heroin are in a league of their own and I don't believe your argument makes any sense whatsoever. Lowering the bar from "the worst of all drugs" to "not as bad but you'll probably get addicted to it, may lose control of your life and possibly end up with a series of medical conditions and including death" is not acceptable.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7thZbHTvZIQ

Not that I fully agree with the post you're replying to, but to be fair, I think we should note that your anecdote comes from a world where drugs are often expensive due to laws, drug users don't receive a lot of medical help in safely and non-destructively administering the drug, counseling (to solve problems without drugs) is not always easy or affordable, and drug users are shamed and criminalized.

I don't know that it would magically solve your scenario, especially as he died in a detox facility (though maybe he could have been saved if he got help earlier?) There is probably just no guaranteed safe way for some bodies/personalities to take some drugs for a prolonged period. Still, I wonder if we could uplift people on balance, if all the energy we spent on current drug policy was re-focused on helping people rather than punishing them.

I am interested in that documentary, so thanks for the pointer.

My argument is not that heroin gets people off meth, because it doesn't. My argument is that heroin junkies look for a way to get high when the cops have halted the heroin supply, so the heroin junkies take meth cause it's cheap and available and thus they become meth junkies.

In the nightclubs the partying folks want to get high but the cops have killed the ecstasy supply, so the party crowd try meth cause they want to have fun and get high, and become meth junkies.

At the universities the students want to smoke pot and listen to (what, Pink Floyd?) but having a puff is illegal, there's no pot cause it's hard to get cause it's against the law, but hey this guy has some meth, that'll get us high, and hey, meth can't really be all that bad can it?

My other argument is that drugs cost money, so how do junkies get money? They steal it, break into houses, mug people and do hold ups. Cut out the crime, just give em the drugs for free.

Drugs aren't crime, they're just sad ways for lost people to try to cope.

I'm advocating harm minimisation.

You've clarified your argument but doesn't sound like much of a difference.

"Legalize drugs to get people off meth" vs "Legalize drugs or they'll get on meth"

Kind of sounds like the same thing to me.

Meth is messed up. We seem to agree with that. My point is heroin is also very messed up. Perhaps to a lesser degree but I do know they both horrible and it makes little sense to legalize one over the other. Considering how horrific the effects of prolonged heroin use is I can't see why it should be legalized while declaring another drug off-limits.

I make no comment on marijuana since I class it differently in my head and I also make no comment on ecstasy as I virtually know nothing about its effects.

Meth is not the worst drug. In fact methamphetamine comes in legal prescription form as Desoxyn and is used daily for many with ADD and narcolepsy. I think that's a mistake to even touch that stuff but it's true. I think you could make an argument that commonly used drugs like Clonazepam (Klonopin) are far more dangerous. Unsupervised withdrawal is much more dangerous than heroin and it plays a major role in overdose deaths when mixed with opiates. The point is that all drugs to some degree are dangerous. They should all be legal and used with extreme caution if at all.

>I don't take drugs but I believe everything except meth should be free, totally legal, and freely available to registered addicts.

Registered drug addicts being supplied drugs by the government? The government would be rightly accused enslaving millions of citizens through control of the drug supply. Addicts would be at the mercy of the government, and politicians would use this dependence to force addicts to do anything they want - for which they would have the full support of the rest of society. Need to reduce the cost of road construction? Tell the "registered addicts" that if they want their next heroin dose, they better get down there and pour some concrete - and they better do it before withdrawal starts kicking in.

Decriminalization is alright with me, but what you're proposing is the reinvention of slavery. It kind of reminds me of A Scanner Darkly.

We are all dependent on the government already, but have mechanisms to prevent such abuse. Couldn't the government aready threaten to close down all hospitals? Open up all prisons? But they dont.

> The government would be rightly accused enslaving millions of citizens through control of the drug supply.

Have you accused Switzerland of enslaving its citizens lately? Because they've been doing just that for years.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-12-19/swiss-drug-addicts-giv...

All I can tell you is that in the US, such a program would be abused to the point of absurdity. We already use the "war on drugs" to create an army of millions of unpaid workers through various prison industries programs. We lock them up, then low security inmates are used for cheap manual labor outside their prisons by local businesses (yep, these programs are in place in a number of states). Higher security inmates work in metal and other shops built on prison grounds, but their work is exported to outside businesses.

Here's an example program in Colorado: https://www.coloradoci.com/

In short, our government and the corporations that control it are far more evil and greedy than anything you would find in Switzerland. A program like this on US soil would in fact be turned into modern-day slavery, and because of the stigma associated with drug addiction, these abuses would be embraced and encouraged by the US populace.

I'm okay with (soft) drugs being legal.

But free ? You'd be creating a LOT of new problems with drugs being free.