BBC: Why is heroin killing so many people?

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HANDSOME_DAN said:
i would expect that a lot of female addicts are under the control of pimps. a legalised route would take them straight off the streets and put them in a position to make some choices as the pimp wont have a hold on them for drug money.
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Are you suggesting the price of a shag could increase if we provide a better opiate support system?
 


Lonz said:
On a human level, people are dying because of lack of purity. They're also getting addicted to things like prescription opiates and moving on to harder stuff because they're dependent and heroin is easier to come by than your typical codeine prescription.

It's also bloody expensive to combat. Why not legalise and regulate it? That way you can tax and manage the purity and take the money out of the criminal organisations' hands?


More so than they are now.
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Bang on mate
 
yorkyexile said:
Speaking as an ex smoker of around 40 - 60 a day at the worst point and a smoker for about the last 30 years, the help to quit is just "mopping up". The majority of effort really should still be to stop them putting the shite in in the first place
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I'm still convinced the best way to do this is to kill the market. And you do that by taking it's customer base away. And you can achieve that by prescribing heroin to full on junkies. And I'm even more convinced that if this was in place years ago, people like me wouldn't have got caught up in it. Thankfully, I survived it. Fair few of my old mates didn't.

To a certain degree, I'll accept the statement that we all brought it on ourselves through making bad decisions. But what about their families? Is it right for their Mam and Dad to be going through that type of trauma because their kid made a bad decision? Is it even fair to stigmatise and exclude people for their entire life who must have been in a canny low place who go to heroin in the first place? Not for me it isn't and it's horrible looking at the destruction it causes knowing there is a solution that would help to reduce this. But because the solution isn't popular to a lot of people, we'll just keep racking up the misery and the deaths instead.
 
theinediblebulk said:
I'm still convinced the best way to do this is to kill the market. And you do that by taking it's customer base away. And you can achieve that by prescribing heroin to full on junkies. And I'm even more convinced that if this was in place years ago, people like me wouldn't have got caught up in it. Thankfully, I survived it. Fair few of my old mates didn't.

To a certain degree, I'll accept the statement that we all brought it on ourselves through making bad decisions. But what about their families? Is it right for their Mam and Dad to be going through that type of trauma because their kid made a bad decision? Is it even fair to stigmatise and exclude people for their entire life who must have been in a canny low place who go to heroin in the first place? Not for me it isn't and it's horrible looking at the destruction it causes knowing there is a solution that would help to reduce this. But because the solution isn't popular to a lot of people, we'll just keep racking up the misery and the deaths instead.
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I can understand your view.

My thought are that at the end of the day nobody wakes up and thinks "You know, I'm going to become a smack head. I can lose my family, job, house and just be homeless. All I need to do is burger a house or mug someone every few days to pay for it. Sounds canny"

It seems to me that it's a slope that someone could easily fall down and not realise they are fucked until it's too late.

Horatio Pugwash said:
Do you think giving them free heroine will help?
I'm certainly no expert in that area but it seems a little counter-intuitive to me.
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At that point we're giving them free methodone already. It's a system that isn't working.

Horatio Pugwash said:
what about shoplifting?
should we have a similar approach?
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Be a lot less shoplifting if they didn't need to buy heroin.
 
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Some Random Guy said:
I can understand your view.

My thought are that at the end of the day nobody wakes up and thinks "You know, I'm going to become a smack head. I can lose my family, job, house and just be homeless. All I need to do is burger a house or mug someone every few days to pay for it. Sounds canny"

It seems to me that it's a slope that someone could easily fall down and not realise they are fucked until it's too late.
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Maybe we should be stopping the problem earlier then.
i doubt very much people live this way for years until they become full on heroine addicts. i would guess it's a slope (as you say) which would bring them to the attention of the authorities long befor ethat stage

Some Random Guy said:
I can understand your view.

My thought are that at the end of the day nobody wakes up and thinks "You know, I'm going to become a smack head. I can lose my family, job, house and just be homeless. All I need to do is burger a house or mug someone every few days to pay for it. Sounds canny"

It seems to me that it's a slope that someone could easily fall down and not realise they are fucked until it's too late.


At that point we're giving them free methodone already. It's a system that isn't working.


Be a lot less shoplifting if they didn't need to buy heroin.
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if i thought all shoplifters were heroine addicts i'd agree
 
Some Random Guy said:
I can understand your view.

My thought are that at the end of the day nobody wakes up and thinks "You know, I'm going to become a smack head. I can lose my family, job, house and just be homeless. All I need to do is burger a house or mug someone every few days to pay for it. Sounds canny"

It seems to me that it's a slope that someone could easily fall down and not realise they are fucked until it's too late.


At that point we're giving them free methodone already. It's a system that isn't working.


Be a lot less shoplifting if they didn't need to buy heroin.
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No, but they make the conscious decision to take a drug that they know is both highly chemically and mentally addictive.
 
Horatio Pugwash said:
Maybe we should be stopping the problem earlier then.
i doubt very much people live this way for years until they become full on heroine addicts. i would guess it's a slope (as you say) which would bring them to the attention of the authorities long befor ethat stage
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How can we stop the problem earlier if they aren't known until they are already on the slide?
 
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