How To End The Heroin Epidemic

[WillowTree]

Relatively minor cost my ass. If it's minor then ewe pay it.

If you would take the time to research the overall cost of the street crime attributed to drug addicts, including the cost of preventive measures (alarm systems, etc.) arrests, prosecution, imprisonment, parole, probation, etc., and compare it with the cost of maintaining addicts in rehab you will be surprised at the difference. The cost of rehab is less than ten percent of the final cost of the crimes addicts commit to satisfy their cravings.

Right now, as you are reading this, dozens of Americans' homes are being burglarized by junkies who wouldn't be doing that if there was a program available to aid their gradual withdrawal.

Do yourself a favor and research the progress being made in Switzerland and The Netherlands in the way of addict rehab. In both examples there have been dramatic reductions in crime.

Heroin Maintenance and More: Switzerland's Great Drug Policy Experiment - Substance.com

Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com

At the bottom line, if your home is burglarized by some junkie, would that affect your thinking about rehab programs?

No, I live in a stand your ground state!

 

[WillowTree]

I am supposed to pay a drug addict not to burgle my home? Libtards are nuts!

 

[Skull Pilot]

You cannot stop drug addicts. These people's fate is the predictable outcome!

People don't know they're drug addicts until they use. Relaxing laws and decriminalization drugs only encourages use.

You are not an addict util you use enough to get addicted. Behavior recedes addiction

Which, often times for addicts, is only once.

Sorry no one is addicted after one use of anything

 

[RoshawnMarkwees]

You cannot stop drug addicts. These people's fate is the predictable outcome!

People don't know they're drug addicts until they use. Relaxing laws and decriminalization drugs only encourages use.

You are not an addict util you use enough to get addicted. Behavior recedes addiction

Which, often times for addicts, is only once.

Sorry no one is addicted after one use of anything

Tell that to a crack head

 

[MikeK]

Tell that to a crack head

There is a difference between liking something enough to desire the experience again and again, as occurs in the examples of sexual intercourse, music or marijuana and acquiring a compulsive biological dependency, an effect which requires some degree of repetition to develop -- as in the example of opiates and some other recreational drugs.

One experience can leave one psychologically wanting to have it again. But it takes more than one experience with an addictive drug to develop the biological need to continuously repeat it.

 

[Silhouette]

Mike, this is about the Mexican economy, not who gets addicted to pot or heroin. It goes to follow that someone with an addictive personality will do what everyone else is doing...which is what the Mexicans are leaning on now that pot flooded American markets. When it's no longer edgy (or lucrative) to do pot, the little rebels will turn to the forbidden heroin.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

The one thing about crime, you can't stop it. You can stomp on it to keep it tamped down but you can't stop it. Crime is like water, it always finds an outlet.

That's why those who imagine that they will "Put the cartels out of existence" by legalizing marijuana, heroin, meth, qat or any other drug. Legalize marijuana and you get cheaper and more dangerous spice. Legalize meth and you get much cheaper and more dangerous bath salts. Legalize heroin and you get the strand of heroin that just kills.

Legalize all drugs, and there is kidnapping for ransom, international slavery, and organ trafficking. The only way to end the cartels is the way the British ended the Thugees in India. Eradication. They aren't tried, or arrested, they are eradicated. It worked then, it will work the same way now.

 

[MikeK]

I am supposed to pay a drug addict not to burgle my home? Libtards are nuts!

The cost of supporting an effective drug maintenance/rehab program would be substantially less than the collective cost of burglaries attributed to desperate drug (typically heroin) addicts -- experiences for which the best insurance available never fully compensates. So your offhand comment makes it obvious you've never experienced the trauma, the financial loss and the lingering personal misery that comes from having your privacy violated and your most precious possessions ransacked or stolen.

You presently are paying quite a bit in taxes to fund the so-called War on Drugs, a counterproductive exercise in futility which has done absolutely nothing to reduce the use or availability of illegal drugs. If a registered participant in a federally administered addict maintenance program could visit a supervised center and receive a regulated dose, the actual cost of which is about ten cents, it would eliminate that addict's need to break into your home, ransack it and steal your computer and tv set, etc.

Considering that the cost of such a program would be less than one percent of what you presently are paying to fund the utterly useless and counterproductive drug war, why would you not be willing to promote it?

 

[MikeK]

The one thing about crime, you can't stop it. You can stomp on it to keep it tamped down but you can't stop it. Crime is like water, it always finds an outlet.

That's why those who imagine that they will "Put the cartels out of existence" by legalizing marijuana, heroin, meth, qat or any other drug. Legalize marijuana and you get cheaper and more dangerous spice. Legalize meth and you get much cheaper and more dangerous bath salts. Legalize heroin and you get the strand of heroin that just kills.

Legalize all drugs, and there is kidnapping for ransom, international slavery, and organ trafficking. The only way to end the cartels is the way the British ended the Thugees in India. Eradication. They aren't tried, or arrested, they are eradicated. It worked then, it will work the same way now.

That doesn't seem to be the case in Portugal. In fact the decriminalization experiment in Portugal has been impressively successful. And there is no reason to believe that full legalization would be any less successful, if not moreso.

Why hardly anyone dies from a drug overdose in Portugal

Why shouldn't it be?

 

[EvilCat Breath]

The one thing about crime, you can't stop it. You can stomp on it to keep it tamped down but you can't stop it. Crime is like water, it always finds an outlet.

That's why those who imagine that they will "Put the cartels out of existence" by legalizing marijuana, heroin, meth, qat or any other drug. Legalize marijuana and you get cheaper and more dangerous spice. Legalize meth and you get much cheaper and more dangerous bath salts. Legalize heroin and you get the strand of heroin that just kills.

Legalize all drugs, and there is kidnapping for ransom, international slavery, and organ trafficking. The only way to end the cartels is the way the British ended the Thugees in India. Eradication. They aren't tried, or arrested, they are eradicated. It worked then, it will work the same way now.

That doesn't seem to be the case in Portugal. In fact the decriminalization experiment in Portugal has been impressively successful. And there is no reason to believe that full legalization would be any less successful, if not moreso.

Why hardly anyone dies from a drug overdose in Portugal

Why shouldn't it be?

Go to Portugal. See how happy you would be there.

Portugal is a failed state. It has no industry, most people are illiterate. They can't work they can't think. Drug use has robbed them of all humanity. The EU keeps Portugal limping along.

The only country now fighting a real war on drugs is the Philippines.

You cannot limit burglaries and robberies by drug addicts by giving them drugs. They still cannot function. They still want things that their drug addiction won't let them get.

You can stop many burglaries by making everyone equally as poor which is Portugal.

 

[MikeK]

Mike, this is about the Mexican economy, not who gets addicted to pot or heroin. It goes to follow that someone with an addictive personality will do what everyone else is doing...which is what the Mexicans are leaning on now that pot flooded American markets. When it's no longer edgy (or lucrative) to do pot, the little rebels will turn to the forbidden heroin.

First, you are assuming the same number of people who presently use marijuana would use heroin, which is a false assumption.

It has taken a long time to expose the lies associated with marijuana use and to shake off the Reefer Madness brainwash, but the public has finally seen the light and is ready to accept marijuana for what it is -- which is a relatively benign recreational substance without the addictive potential of even light beer. But the same cannot be said for heroin, nor is anyone attempting to say that. The vast majority of Americans are quite well aware that heroin is dangerously addictive and should be avoided.

In the way of affirmation of that, let me ask what your disposition is where marijuana and heroin are concerned. I'll tell you mine, which is I would not under any circumstances consider using heroin, nor would my late wife, nor would any of our friends, most of whom routinely enjoyed the safe and euphoric tranquilizing effects of marijuana.

 

[MikeK]

Go to Portugal. See how happy you would be there.

I have no reason to go to Portugal. I'm too old to be starting over and I'm relatively content right where I am, which is close to my kids and grandkids.

Portugal is a failed state. It has no industry, most people are illiterate. They can't work they can't think. Drug use has robbed them of all humanity. The EU keeps Portugal limping along.

As usual, you don't know what you're talking about. Read this:
Living in Portugal

The only country now fighting a real war on drugs is the Philippines.

If you knew anything about the Philippines you would be too embarrassed to make such a silly observation. Philippine society is a kind of semi-civilized pandemonium in which the shooting never stops. One is either very wealthy or dirt poor and the general misery affecting the lower class is the reason for the widespread use of heroin -- or any other substance which can relieve the general misery for a few hours.

You cannot limit burglaries and robberies by drug addicts by giving them drugs. They still cannot function. They still want things that their drug addiction won't let them get.

Switzerland and The Netherlands has been quite successful with their heroin maintenance effort. Drug-related crime in both countries has been substantially reduced.

You can stop many burglaries by making everyone equally as poor which is Portugal.

Another moronic observation. Keep going. As I've said earlier, you are a good drum to pound on.

PS: One way to estimate the quality of life in a given nation is to count the number of refugees you come across here in the U.S. So how many Portugese have you met lately?

 

[Skull Pilot]

You cannot stop drug addicts. These people's fate is the predictable outcome!

People don't know they're drug addicts until they use. Relaxing laws and decriminalization drugs only encourages use.

You are not an addict util you use enough to get addicted. Behavior recedes addiction

Which, often times for addicts, is only once.

Sorry no one is addicted after one use of anything

Tell that to a crack head

yeah that's scientific proof for your statement

 

[waltky]

Treatment, Not Prison, Way to Deal With Global Drug Epidemic...

UN: Treatment, Not Prison, Way to Deal With Global Drug Epidemic
June 22, 2017 — The United Nations reports about 250 million people, or 5 percent of the global adult population, used drugs in 2015, and of those, about 29.5 million suffered from drug-use disorders, including addiction.

The World Drug Report 2017 launched Thursday by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that opioids were the most harmful drug type, accounting for 70 percent of drug-linked health problems worldwide. It said opioids, including heroin, legal painkillers, such as morphine, and synthetic drugs like fentanyl were responsible for many premature drug deaths. “In many parts of the world, we observe an increasingly complex relationship between the use of heroin and synthetic opioids,” Aldo Lale-Demoz, deputy executive director of UNODC, said. Lale-Demoz said that poly drug use — the use of two or more psychoactive drugs — a common feature of both recreational and regular drug users, “as well as the cross-over between synthetic and traditional drugs pose increasing public health challenges and produce highly negative health and social consequences.”

Injecting drugs

Of the 12 million people who inject drugs worldwide, the report found that 1-in-8, or 1.6 million people, is living with HIV and more than half or just over 6 million are living with hepatitis C, while around 1.3 million are suffering from both diseases. Despite the many health problems afflicting drug users, the report noted that only 1-in-6 people seeking help have access to drug treatment programs. Lale-Demoz observed that many countries preferred to deal with drug problems by throwing users in prison, which he said exposed them to many infectious diseases. “The standard of care, which is provided to those who are incarcerated should be equivalent to the care received by those outside the prison system, with appropriate continuity of care between prison and the wider community,” he said. “Most importantly, we know that alternatives to incarceration for drug offenses of a minor nature actually help reduce the spread and burden of infectious diseases in prison and ultimately within the wider community,” Lale-Demoz added.

A used needle sits on the ground in a park in Lawrence, Massachusetts, May 30, 2017, where individuals were arrested earlier in the day during raids to break up heroin and fentanyl drug rings in the region, according to law enforcement officials.​

Luiz Loures, deputy executive director of UNAIDS, agreed with this assessment noting that “criminalization and health do not go together.” Loures warned that an injecting drug user who is on the police radar would be reluctant to seek treatment for HIV or another illness for fear of being caught. He said this drives the disease underground, which is dangerous. “It does not help for the person and it does not help for society. There is plenty of evidence that when you criminalize, the impact on health is negative,” he said. “In my view, one of the major problems today is exactly this confusion between criminalization and access to health. I think that is really not helping, in fact that is fueling the drug use epidemic globally.” Among its other key findings, the report notes amphetamine use accounts for a large share of the disease burden globally. It said the cocaine market has expanded with the largest number of consumers found in North America and Europe. The report said global opium production had increased by one-third in 2016 mainly due to higher opium poppy yields in Afghanistan.

Thriving business

Chloe Carpentier, chief of the Drug Research Section at UNODC, told VOA that the Taliban was behind this thriving business. “We estimate that about $150 million were made by them only in terms of taxing the drug business in 2016, and their revenue would be between $150 and $200 million per year and the drug business would account for about half of what they make per year,” Carpentier said. Authors of the report concluded that “without the proceeds of drug production and trafficking ... the reach and impact of the Taliban would probably not be what it is today.” The report noted that organized crime groups were reaping huge profits from the multi-billion-dollar drug trade, generating between one-fifth and one-third of their revenues from these illicit sales.

Farmers harvest raw opium at a poppy field in the Zhari district of Kandahar province, Afghanistan.​

One of the aims of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals is to significantly reduce such illicit financial flows. “Drug profits is what drives traffickers and, therefore, identifying the flows related to these profits and the channels where they are invested and laundered can effectively counteract them,” the UNODC's Lale-Demoz said. Ultimately, however, he said drug control was less a law and order issue, and more a matter of personal and public health. “Sending people to jail, punishing people for minor drug offenses has not worked,” he said. “In fact, it is highly detrimental. It only increases the possibility of all sorts of social dislocations — violence, crimes, stigma and also the spread of diseases.”

UN: Treatment, Not Prison, Way to Deal With Global Drug Epidemic

See also:

Study: Few Opioid-addicted Youth Get Standard Treatment Medication
June 19, 2017 — Only 1 in 4 teens and young adults with opioid addiction receive recommended treatment medication despite having good health insurance, according to a study that suggests doctors are not keeping up with the needs of youth caught up in the worst addiction crisis in U.S. history.

"Young people may be dying because they are not getting the treatment they need,'' said Brendan Saloner, an addiction researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who wrote an editorial published with the study Monday in JAMA Pediatrics. Researchers looked at records for nearly 21,000 patients ages 13 to 25 from one large insurance carrier, UnitedHealthcare. All were diagnosed with opioid addiction, but only 27 percent were given buprenorphine or naltrexone during 2001-2014, years when addiction was soaring. "The take-home message for parents is: If you have a child struggling with opioid addiction, understand that there are medications that support and sustain recovery,'' said study author Dr. Scott Hadland of Boston Medical Center.

Hadland was following a hunch when he began the study last year. In his practice, he was seeing more young people addicted to opioids. Many already had been through multiple treatment programs and they told him they'd never before been offered treatment medication. Doctors must become more comfortable treating addiction with medications, Hadland said, noting that buprenorphine and naltrexone are recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Buprenorphine is given daily as a pill or film that dissolves under the tongue. It costs about $100 a month. Doctors need special training and a government waiver to prescribe it. A common version of buprenorphine is Suboxone. Vivitrol is a brand-name version of naltrexone. It's a shot given once a month and can be used only with patients who have completely detoxed from opioids. It costs about $1,000 per month. The drugs work slightly differently, but both can ease cravings while patients work on addiction issues in counseling.

In the study, females, blacks and Hispanics were even less likely to receive the medications than males and whites. It's unclear why, but unequal access to care or doctor bias could be to blame. "The treatment gap is bad for everybody and even worse for certain subgroups,'' Hadland said. "Even though all the youth in our sample had access to high-quality health insurance, they may not have had equal access to high-quality addiction care.'' Hadland and his colleagues plan to study access to treatment medications for youth from low-income families covered by government health insurance programs such as Medicaid.

Study: Few Opioid-addicted Youth Get Standard Treatment Medication

 

[Divine Wind]

Treatment, Not Prison, Way to Deal With Global Drug Epidemic...

UN: Treatment, Not Prison, Way to Deal With Global Drug Epidemic
June 22, 2017 — The United Nations reports about 250 million people, or 5 percent of the global adult population, used drugs in 2015, and of those, about 29.5 million suffered from drug-use disorders, including addiction.

The World Drug Report 2017 launched Thursday by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that opioids were the most harmful drug type, accounting for 70 percent of drug-linked health problems worldwide. It said opioids, including heroin, legal painkillers, such as morphine, and synthetic drugs like fentanyl were responsible for many premature drug deaths. “In many parts of the world, we observe an increasingly complex relationship between the use of heroin and synthetic opioids,” Aldo Lale-Demoz, deputy executive director of UNODC, said. Lale-Demoz said that poly drug use — the use of two or more psychoactive drugs — a common feature of both recreational and regular drug users, “as well as the cross-over between synthetic and traditional drugs pose increasing public health challenges and produce highly negative health and social consequences.”

Injecting drugs

Of the 12 million people who inject drugs worldwide, the report found that 1-in-8, or 1.6 million people, is living with HIV and more than half or just over 6 million are living with hepatitis C, while around 1.3 million are suffering from both diseases. Despite the many health problems afflicting drug users, the report noted that only 1-in-6 people seeking help have access to drug treatment programs. Lale-Demoz observed that many countries preferred to deal with drug problems by throwing users in prison, which he said exposed them to many infectious diseases. “The standard of care, which is provided to those who are incarcerated should be equivalent to the care received by those outside the prison system, with appropriate continuity of care between prison and the wider community,” he said. “Most importantly, we know that alternatives to incarceration for drug offenses of a minor nature actually help reduce the spread and burden of infectious diseases in prison and ultimately within the wider community,” Lale-Demoz added.

A used needle sits on the ground in a park in Lawrence, Massachusetts, May 30, 2017, where individuals were arrested earlier in the day during raids to break up heroin and fentanyl drug rings in the region, according to law enforcement officials.​

Luiz Loures, deputy executive director of UNAIDS, agreed with this assessment noting that “criminalization and health do not go together.” Loures warned that an injecting drug user who is on the police radar would be reluctant to seek treatment for HIV or another illness for fear of being caught. He said this drives the disease underground, which is dangerous. “It does not help for the person and it does not help for society. There is plenty of evidence that when you criminalize, the impact on health is negative,” he said. “In my view, one of the major problems today is exactly this confusion between criminalization and access to health. I think that is really not helping, in fact that is fueling the drug use epidemic globally.” Among its other key findings, the report notes amphetamine use accounts for a large share of the disease burden globally. It said the cocaine market has expanded with the largest number of consumers found in North America and Europe. The report said global opium production had increased by one-third in 2016 mainly due to higher opium poppy yields in Afghanistan.

Thriving business

Chloe Carpentier, chief of the Drug Research Section at UNODC, told VOA that the Taliban was behind this thriving business. “We estimate that about $150 million were made by them only in terms of taxing the drug business in 2016, and their revenue would be between $150 and $200 million per year and the drug business would account for about half of what they make per year,” Carpentier said. Authors of the report concluded that “without the proceeds of drug production and trafficking ... the reach and impact of the Taliban would probably not be what it is today.” The report noted that organized crime groups were reaping huge profits from the multi-billion-dollar drug trade, generating between one-fifth and one-third of their revenues from these illicit sales.

Farmers harvest raw opium at a poppy field in the Zhari district of Kandahar province, Afghanistan.​

One of the aims of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals is to significantly reduce such illicit financial flows. “Drug profits is what drives traffickers and, therefore, identifying the flows related to these profits and the channels where they are invested and laundered can effectively counteract them,” the UNODC's Lale-Demoz said. Ultimately, however, he said drug control was less a law and order issue, and more a matter of personal and public health. “Sending people to jail, punishing people for minor drug offenses has not worked,” he said. “In fact, it is highly detrimental. It only increases the possibility of all sorts of social dislocations — violence, crimes, stigma and also the spread of diseases.”

UN: Treatment, Not Prison, Way to Deal With Global Drug Epidemic

See also:

Study: Few Opioid-addicted Youth Get Standard Treatment Medication
June 19, 2017 — Only 1 in 4 teens and young adults with opioid addiction receive recommended treatment medication despite having good health insurance, according to a study that suggests doctors are not keeping up with the needs of youth caught up in the worst addiction crisis in U.S. history.

"Young people may be dying because they are not getting the treatment they need,'' said Brendan Saloner, an addiction researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who wrote an editorial published with the study Monday in JAMA Pediatrics. Researchers looked at records for nearly 21,000 patients ages 13 to 25 from one large insurance carrier, UnitedHealthcare. All were diagnosed with opioid addiction, but only 27 percent were given buprenorphine or naltrexone during 2001-2014, years when addiction was soaring. "The take-home message for parents is: If you have a child struggling with opioid addiction, understand that there are medications that support and sustain recovery,'' said study author Dr. Scott Hadland of Boston Medical Center.

Hadland was following a hunch when he began the study last year. In his practice, he was seeing more young people addicted to opioids. Many already had been through multiple treatment programs and they told him they'd never before been offered treatment medication. Doctors must become more comfortable treating addiction with medications, Hadland said, noting that buprenorphine and naltrexone are recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Buprenorphine is given daily as a pill or film that dissolves under the tongue. It costs about $100 a month. Doctors need special training and a government waiver to prescribe it. A common version of buprenorphine is Suboxone. Vivitrol is a brand-name version of naltrexone. It's a shot given once a month and can be used only with patients who have completely detoxed from opioids. It costs about $1,000 per month. The drugs work slightly differently, but both can ease cravings while patients work on addiction issues in counseling.

In the study, females, blacks and Hispanics were even less likely to receive the medications than males and whites. It's unclear why, but unequal access to care or doctor bias could be to blame. "The treatment gap is bad for everybody and even worse for certain subgroups,'' Hadland said. "Even though all the youth in our sample had access to high-quality health insurance, they may not have had equal access to high-quality addiction care.'' Hadland and his colleagues plan to study access to treatment medications for youth from low-income families covered by government health insurance programs such as Medicaid.

Study: Few Opioid-addicted Youth Get Standard Treatment Medication

Alternatively, low-cost heroin which must be used in designated areas; preferably next to a morgue or large crematorium.

20,000 years ago nature cleaned the human gene pool by removing those who were unfit through attrition by natural forces. Now modern society saves people from themselves be it seatbelts or resuscitation from drug overdoses. We need to let nature take its course.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

Go to Portugal. See how happy you would be there.

I have no reason to go to Portugal. I'm too old to be starting over and I'm relatively content right where I am, which is close to my kids and grandkids.

Portugal is a failed state. It has no industry, most people are illiterate. They can't work they can't think. Drug use has robbed them of all humanity. The EU keeps Portugal limping along.

As usual, you don't know what you're talking about. Read this:
Living in Portugal

The only country now fighting a real war on drugs is the Philippines.

If you knew anything about the Philippines you would be too embarrassed to make such a silly observation. Philippine society is a kind of semi-civilized pandemonium in which the shooting never stops. One is either very wealthy or dirt poor and the general misery affecting the lower class is the reason for the widespread use of heroin -- or any other substance which can relieve the general misery for a few hours.

You cannot limit burglaries and robberies by drug addicts by giving them drugs. They still cannot function. They still want things that their drug addiction won't let them get.

Switzerland and The Netherlands has been quite successful with their heroin maintenance effort. Drug-related crime in both countries has been substantially reduced.

You can stop many burglaries by making everyone equally as poor which is Portugal.

Another moronic observation. Keep going. As I've said earlier, you are a good drum to pound on.

PS: One way to estimate the quality of life in a given nation is to count the number of refugees you come across here in the U.S. So how many Portugese have you met lately?

Why would a drug addict leave the very place that panders to his addiction?

 

[QuickHitCurepon]

I had someone at the Houston police station shoot me with heroin so I could do a story about it. The experience was a special kind of hell. I came out understanding full well how one could be addicted to 'smack,' and quickly. -Dan Rather

 

[MikeK]

Why would a drug addict leave the very place that panders to his addiction?

This comment presumes that everyone in Portugal is a drug addict, which is very far from the truth.

 

[xyz]

To end the heroin epidemic we first have to understand the politics behind it. Before states began legalizing marijuana, Mexico and other Central American countries made a BUNDLE off of it. I've heard estimates that it was around 1/4 of Mexico's economy, running pot to the US across the border. Then when states started making it legal, quasi-legal, what have you, the market dropped out for poor Mexico. So, adept and agile as Mexicans are, their "government" (read: white-collar cartel) simply shifted to a more addictive drug, still black market, they could also grow easily: opium poppies. All through Central America I'd imagine. But Mexico supervises the border and nothing gets through unless the cartel...er.. I mean the Mexican government says so.

I'd bet you anything that if our boys behind the scenes cut a deal with the Mexicans, agreeing to return pot back to the controlled substance list nationwide, if the Mexicans agreed to clamp down on heroin "or else pot will be legal again in the US", the heroin would STOP crossing the border in a nanosecond.

Of course, now that the genie is out of the bottle and tons of Americans are hooked on heroin, their cartels may be comfortable with the new arrangement. Unless the US could figure out a way to cripple their poppy crops?

Dunno. It's bad though. Was inspired by this horrible story: 7 year old told her bus driver she can't wake her parents up

Discuss.

They are 2 unrelated things, besides the cartels which may deal in both.

People who are not hooked on horse are not going to buy it if there is no pot, in particular as it is probably harder to get and I don't see any similarity (unless you're talking about opium, which is also smoked).

People who are heroin addicts may smoke pot, but they would much rather deal with a pot shortage, since they are really hooked on heroin.

If you legalize pot, you're not going to get less heroin addicts. Maybe it can be used for treatment, although I have not heard of that.