Actually I’d kinda disagree there, in the case of heroin, the sheer scope of negative impacts made it so that criminalizing it didn’t have the same effect that prohibition normally would.
Alcohol and Pot use may have skyrocketed, but heroin is only sustained as a black market item by the opiate and fentanyl crisis.
It’s a lot harder to say “that’s just what the man wants you to think” when you see advertisements for free kits and training to save people having an overdose that’s all but guaranteed to be lethal either from severity or from exposure to the elements if they wander out.
That being said, we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns on getting people to not start using it and as a result the criminalization has gone from getting people to take it seriously to having a hostile architecture effect on current addicts who still need help to get out before this extremely dangerous thing finally manages to kill them.
Criminalizing drugs has only ever been harmful. The people using these drugs aren’t criminals, they’re victims. They need treatment, not jail. What fucking monster thinks that someone who has fallen to an incredibly addictive substance needs incarceration, not treatment? You think someone who got caught with a needle in their arms deserves the same treatment as a murderer? People have lifetime sentences for possession of heroin and rapists get a couple years.
Criminalization hasn’t made the problem any better.
So many people don’t really get the difference between criminalization and legalization when you discuss things like this.
Actually I’d kinda disagree there, in the case of heroin, the sheer scope of negative impacts made it so that criminalizing it didn’t have the same effect that prohibition normally would.
Alcohol and Pot use may have skyrocketed, but heroin is only sustained as a black market item by the opiate and fentanyl crisis.
It’s a lot harder to say “that’s just what the man wants you to think” when you see advertisements for free kits and training to save people having an overdose that’s all but guaranteed to be lethal either from severity or from exposure to the elements if they wander out.
That being said, we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns on getting people to not start using it and as a result the criminalization has gone from getting people to take it seriously to having a hostile architecture effect on current addicts who still need help to get out before this extremely dangerous thing finally manages to kill them.
Criminalizing drugs has only ever been harmful. The people using these drugs aren’t criminals, they’re victims. They need treatment, not jail. What fucking monster thinks that someone who has fallen to an incredibly addictive substance needs incarceration, not treatment? You think someone who got caught with a needle in their arms deserves the same treatment as a murderer? People have lifetime sentences for possession of heroin and rapists get a couple years.