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What is a "victimless crime"?

phattonez said:
Take a trip with me to San Francisco. It will completely change your views about the supposed benefits of drug legalization. I had bought it for many years too, but going there after drug legalization I can't defend it any longer. The whole city (no exaggeration) smells of it. There are homeless everywhere, and they've now developed a syringe problem, where people will, after shooting up heroin, leave their syringes on the streets. There are just too many negative societal effects, and it simply does not work. Unlike with alcohol, there is no such thing as responsible marijuana use.
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Well, I go back and forth sometimes. I was a footsoldier in the War on Drugs, and I know we lost a long time ago and that enforcement isn't the answer.

OTOH I see the damage it does first hand, and it breaks my heart.

Syringes and MJ are not the same thing though. I'd agree there's no such thing as responsible heroin use.

I knew a guy who smoked a joint about every night. He stayed full time employed and took care of his family reasonably well. This went on for decades. THEN he switched to opioids, supposedly to avoid getting caught in drug testing at a new job (opioids typically don't show up on standard tests).

Pretty soon he went downhill like a bobsled. He HAD been a doting grandfather; now the grandchildren rarely get his attention; his wife is neglected; his bills unpaid.... nothing matters to him but more pills. He isn't the same man I knew back-when.
 
Goshin said:
Mm. Easy to say in the abstract. When we're talking real people...

I knew a guy who married a paramedic. She was a great person, really.... so much so, I was envious that my buddy "caught her first". THEN... she was injured and got hooked on the opioids, and in the course of a year she changed so much, it was hard to believe. She went from angel-of-mercy to daughter-of-satan; nothing mattered but more opioids.

There was no foreseeing that; there was no poor judgement on his part. As he said, "that isn't the same woman I married."

My buddy tried to help her, get her help, but she was too far gone and he had to bail. She almost killed him. Divorce. There were children involved, and that makes it ten worlds of difference than if it was just two adults.

All people I cared about... painful to watch it happen, painful to be helpless to do anything.
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I hear ya' man, addiction can bring out the worst in people.

My father had issues with painkillers and anti-depressants, and it was hard to watch. He's the most amazing person I know, but when he was abusing drugs, he could be a lot to handle. At the end of the day though, he realized he had to take responsibility for his problems, and get himself the help he desperately needed.

It took awhile for him to come to terms with the fact that he had a weakness, but he eventually stopped blaming the doctors, stopped looking for excuses, and got clean.

Good luck to your friends.
 
phattonez said:
Take a trip with me to San Francisco. It will completely change your views about the supposed benefits of drug legalization. I had bought it for many years too, but going there after drug legalization I can't defend it any longer. The whole city (no exaggeration) smells of it. There are homeless everywhere, and they've now developed a syringe problem, where people will, after shooting up heroin, leave their syringes on the streets. There are just too many negative societal effects, and it simply does not work. Unlike with alcohol, there is no such thing as responsible marijuana use.
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The Swiss and the Dutch have made the syringe problem go away by having licensed injection sites with I think free needles. It is the functional equivalent of injecting in the doctor's office and the needles are disposed of properly. Likely no place in the US, including SFO, practice that method.
 
Goshin said:
Well, I go back and forth sometimes. I was a footsoldier in the War on Drugs, and I know we lost a long time ago and that enforcement isn't the answer.
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I'm interested in your experiences. Did we really "lose" the war, or did we just give up? And how much of that was due to neglect of the border?

OTOH I see the damage it does first hand, and it breaks my heart.

Syringes and MJ are not the same thing though. I'd agree there's no such thing as responsible heroin use.

I knew a guy who smoked a joint about every night. He stayed full time employed and took care of his family reasonably well. This went on for decades. THEN he switched to opioids, supposedly to avoid getting caught in drug testing at a new job (opioids typically don't show up on standard tests).

Pretty soon he went downhill like a bobsled. He HAD been a doting grandfather; now the grandchildren rarely get his attention; his wife is neglected; his bills unpaid.... nothing matters to him but more pills. He isn't the same man I knew back-when.
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I totally agree that opioids are far worse than marijuana, and I'm often saddened at the thought that people are addicted to them because they trusted their doctors to give them pain medication. However, I note that you used the phrase "reasonably well". I suspect that there were issues, nothing like what he's experienced with opioids, but issues nonetheless. I've seen the issues firsthand as well, and for that reason I just want it gone. I give myself the following thought-experiment. If I were starting a community, would I allow marijuana use in it? I never can find a reason to allow it.
 
Thoreau72 said:
The Swiss and the Dutch have made the syringe problem go away by having licensed injection sites with I think free needles. It is the functional equivalent of injecting in the doctor's office and the needles are disposed of properly. Likely no place in the US, including SFO, practice that method.
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I wouldn't say that makes the problem go away. You now have a society littered with people high on opioids that you have to deal with.
 
phattonez said:
I'm interested in your experiences. Did we really "lose" the war, or did we just give up? And how much of that was due to neglect of the border?



I totally agree that opioids are far worse than marijuana, and I'm often saddened at the thought that people are addicted to them because they trusted their doctors to give them pain medication. However, I note that you used the phrase "reasonably well". I suspect that there were issues, nothing like what he's experienced with opioids, but issues nonetheless. I've seen the issues firsthand as well, and for that reason I just want it gone. I give myself the following thought-experiment. If I were starting a community, would I allow marijuana use in it? I never can find a reason to allow it.
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He was kind of a dumb ass from the day I met him. Really bad at managing money. Not sure how much of that was from long-term MJ and how much was just that he was kinda stupid. But he did take care of his family tolerably well and through thick and thin, until he got on the opioids.

MJ has some legit medical uses, hard to deny... but I've rarely met a long-term heavy user that was worth much. Mostly, quirky folks with some very odd notions, and often chronic underachievers... though there are exceptions.

Personally I'd rather folks either stayed away from the stuff or exercised moderation, but our ability to enforce it out of existence is simply a failed policy. Nearly four decades of the "drug war" and if anything it is WORSE than ever before.

Most people are hooked on meth these days, and it is made right there in your neighborhood.

We made cocaine hard to get and they invented crack...we made the ingredients for crack hard to get and they invented meth... each one worse than the last.

Weed smokers are rarely any great trouble... they sit on the couch eating Doritos and watching TV mostly. Meth-heads, oh my gosh they are trouble.
 
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Goshin said:
Personally I'd rather folks either stayed away from the stuff or exercised moderation, but our ability to enforce it out of existence is simply a failed policy. Nearly four decades of the "drug war" and if anything it is WORSE than ever before.

Most people are hooked on meth these days, and it is made right there in your neighborhood.

We made cocaine hard to get and they invented crack...we made the ingredients for crack hard to get and they invented meth... each one worse than the last.

Weed smokers are rarely any great trouble... they sit on the couch eating Doritos and watching TV mostly. Meth-heads, oh my gosh they are trouble.
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The ultimate cure is going to be more of a societal one. I made a thread a while back about how our society is manufacturing depression, and I think that this is one of the "treatments" for that. It seems like it's getting worse today because society is getting worse and because for a while now we have essentially given up on enforcement, especially for marijuana. I wonder how things would look if we did go back to strict enforcement and got serious about preventing drugs from crossing the border.

But at the same time, I wonder how things would look if we would ever stop celebrating single motherhood and finally started to fix our family instability problems.
 
phattonez said:
The ultimate cure is going to be more of a societal one. I made a thread a while back about how our society is manufacturing depression, and I think that this is one of the "treatments" for that. It seems like it's getting worse today because society is getting worse and because for a while now we have essentially given up on enforcement, especially for marijuana. I wonder how things would look if we did go back to strict enforcement and got serious about preventing drugs from crossing the border.

But at the same time, I wonder how things would look if we would ever stop celebrating single motherhood and finally started to fix our family instability problems.
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These things tend to go in cycles. Going back to the founding of the nation, we've gone through periods of decadence followed by periods of religious revival and social conservatism.

In the 20th century, the 1920s were a time of incredible decadence, followed by far more societal conservatism in the 30s-50s. The 60s were a time of change and upheaval followed by the decadent hangover of the 70s. Then came the 80s, which had its problems but was more businesslike than the 60s-70s. Wild speculation and sudden wealth of the 90s came to a crash in the first decade of 2000, and patriotism was "in" again in the wake of 9/11/01... at least for a while.

The 20-teens have been pretty darn crazy... I'm wondering if we're due for the pendulum to swing back in the next decade as people get fed up with all the problems created by an anything-goes society. We'll see I suppose.
 
phattonez said:
I wouldn't say that makes the problem go away. You now have a society littered with people high on opioids that you have to deal with.
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Opiates, not opioids.

Investigate the story of William Halstead MD, formerly of Johns Hopkins Medical School. He carried on a perfectly normal life while injecting himself with morphine (maybe heroin) in the last century.

It has been demonstrated first by Halstead, and with many others since--opiate addicts when properly maintained lead perfectly normal and productive lives. This will not be discussed on our fear-mongering mainstream media, but it is a well known fact.
 
Thoreau72 said:
Opiates, not opioids.

Investigate the story of William Halstead MD, formerly of Johns Hopkins Medical School. He carried on a perfectly normal life while injecting himself with morphine (maybe heroin) in the last century.

It has been demonstrated first by Halstead, and with many others since--opiate addicts when properly maintained lead perfectly normal and productive lives. This will not be discussed on our fear-mongering mainstream media, but it is a well known fact.
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Why don't we instead look up how the Sackler family has grown immensely wealthy by addicting an entire nation to OxyContin, and how that family has been able to keep about 99% of the wealth generated from a drug that never should have been cleared in the first place.
 
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