How Prohibition Makes Drugs More Dangerous -- And Even More Deadly
It's the hysteria, not the facts, and the prohibition, not the drugs, that makes some so deadly to some people.
Jacob Sullum writes at reason that drugs laced with substances -- like fentanyl -- that can be dangerous or deadly wouldn't be a problem if drugs were legal:
Prohibition magnifies drug hazards by creating a black market where quality and purity are unpredictable:According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, fentanyl is "roughly 50-80 times more potent than morphine," so it's the sort of ingredient you'd want to know about before snorting or injecting that white powder you just bought. This kind of thing--passing one drug off as another, delivering something much more (or less) potent than the customer expects--almost never happens in a legal market. When was the last time you bought a bottle of 80-proof whiskey that turned out to be 160 proof? The main reason liquor buyers do not have to worry about such a switcheroo is not that distillers are regulated, or even that their customers, unlike consumers in a black market, have legal recourse in case of fraud. The main reason is that legitimate businesses need to worry about their reputations if they want to keep customers coming back. It is hard to build and maintain a reputation in a black market, where brands do not mean much.
And no, addiction isn't a "disease." I wrote about it here in relation to porn:
Sure, porn can pose problems in a marriage or relationship -- when used to excess. The same goes for golf clubs, credit cards, and Hostess Ding Dongs. Of course, when there are problems, people love to blame the thing being used instead of the person doing the using. This thinking is fed by the damaging contention that addiction is "a disease." Multiple sclerosis is a disease. You can't decide to not have multiple sclerosis. You can decide to stop engaging in some behavior. You might not want to stop, it might be terribly hard to stop, but if the stakes are high enough, you will. Just ask some guy who tells you he can't stop looking at porn. Sorry, but if his house catches fire, he's not going to sit there at the computer simultaneously getting off and getting crispy.
More here:
An addiction treatment specialist I respect, Dr. Stanton Peele, in "7 Tools to Beat Addiction," writes, "When people turn to an experience, any experience, for solace to the exclusion of meaningful involvements in the rest of their lives, they are engaged in an addiction." Another addiction therapist I respect, Dr. Frederick Woolverton, in "Unhooked," explains that what all addictions have in common is a longing to avoid "legitimate suffering" -- difficult emotions that are a normal part of being alive.
Stanton Peele writes at reason that it's the "addiction as disease" treatment industry that taught Philip Seymour Hoffman that he was helpless before drugs:
Hoffman is not a good symbol for the efficacy of American treatment. He was famously abstinent after having entered rehab at 22. Then, supposedly abstinent for 23 years, he took some pain medications and went completely haywire, progressing to rampant heroin use. According to this model, a person who is addicted to heroin who simply samples a painkiller is doomed to all-out relapse by this "cunning, baffling and powerful disease."But what are we to make of the stunning, continuing findings over the decades that most people recover from heroin and other drug addictions? Even a well-known figure associated with AA (but one who displays intellectual integrity) like William White can declare: after analyzing 415 scientific reports of recovery, from the mid-19th century to the present, that "Recovery is not an aberration achieved by a small and morally enlightened minority of addicted people. If there is a natural developmental momentum within the course of these problems, it is toward remission and recovery."
So Hoffman is an exception, one who tells us an important story. Let's turn to Charles Winick's 1962 classic, "Maturing Out of Narcotic Addiction," in which he found that two-thirds to three-quarters of known heroin addicts graduated off the Federal Bureau of Narcotics' rolls by their mid-thirties. Indeed, Winick surmises, we need a theory to account for the minority who fail to recover: "The difference between those who mature out of addiction and those who do not may also mirror the difference between addicts who struggle to abandon addiction and may develop some insight, and those who decide that they are 'hooked,' make no effort to abandon addiction, and give in to what they regard as inevitable."
Corralled by the disease theory in rehab in his early 20s, Philip Seymour Hoffman failed to allow himself to mature out, to develop a realistic assessment of his own strength relative to pharmaceuticals and other drugs. As a result he was left vulnerable, not to a cunning, baffling and powerful substance, or disease, but to an emptiness and learned powerlessness, or helplessness, in this area of his life, which so contrasted with his forcefulness and mastery in his acting career.
More from Peele here -- on how government says you can't overcome addiction...contrary to what government research shows.
Okay, let's example the basic premise:
Are you telling us that more people died from alcohol per year during Prohibition than they do now?
Yes, use %.
If you can show that, you've made the first actual case for drug legalization.
Radwaste at February 4, 2014 10:50 PM
Something I noticed that totally changed my mind on addiction.
Amerindians have been using drugs for like their entire existence and it's alcohol and paint fumes that fuck them the fuck up.
Ppen at February 4, 2014 10:55 PM
There are two types of addicts, people who are PHYSICALLY addicted, and those looking to bury their emotional pain.
It could be argued that physical addiction is somewhat like a disease, and in those case treatment is remarkable simmilar to food allegies - DONT INGEST. But most ODs are people trying to avoid their emotions.
I come from a long line of addicts, never understood the appeal. Until I had to have major surgery and they put me on morphine.
I dont think well adjusted people or people resilient enough to cope can ever truly understand why addicts chase that high. Not to say that is an excuse for them to chase that high.
But you have no IDEA how pleasant?/peaceful, I cant realy find the word to describe it. But how much of a RELIEF it was to not be able to think, to not be able to FEEL. Even with as little as it did to numb the physical pain it worked wonders disconnecting my from reality.
Until that moment I never understood, and in that moment I understood it all too clearly. I could see why people would throw away their lives and friends and family to crawl into some small corner in the back of your mind where nothing can reach you thru that warm, and all too brief haze.
Only reason I'm not dead is the compulsive need I have to be in charge of myself outweighs my want to escape. That being said I'm still tempted from time to time, but I know it wouldnt last and that cold knowledge always trumps my emotional weakness.
But, Im still tempted
lujlp at February 5, 2014 12:14 AM
Lujlp I know that feeling too. I think when you have mania (in bipolar) it's similar to doing coke and getting that high..
Once when I had mania I told my therapist "it's like speaking to the gods".
Best feeling in the world.
Ppen at February 5, 2014 12:36 AM
Lujlp sums it up well, and I also think it's useful to differentiate between physical dependence and "addiction" in the psychological sense.
As a recovering drunk, I see a lot of sense in what Stanton Peele says; but I also know that if I treat alcoholism as a disease, I'm not as likely to ruin my life with it. Being, in some sense, "wrong" about how I look at it is OK with me if it keeps me sober. I do know, and I think that 12-step programs teach this pretty clearly if worked correctly, that my life eventually becomes manageable again if I do what I need to do to make it so, and I don't surrender.
Grey Ghost at February 5, 2014 6:47 AM
>>Are you telling us that more people died from alcohol per year during Prohibition than they do now?
On the many failures of prohibition, including increased crime, lack of quality control and failure to lower alcohol related deaths.
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa157.pdf
Assholio at February 5, 2014 7:14 AM
I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that the late Mr. Hoffman hadn't been as clean as he said he was--that's the simplest answer. I'll bet he's been chipping on and off for the last 22 years. And the additives to street drugs give the drug another kick--if drugs were legal, these compounds would still exist. He didn't die because he got some bad batch---he died because he gave himself too much.
KateC at February 5, 2014 7:42 AM
While I'm not advocating legalizing heroin, and some other drugs, but it could have been an effect of the using drugs that aren't regulated.
If you get a prescription for 20MG Vicodin pills and get them from a pharmacy you know that you have 20MG. You go down on the corner you have to depend on the dealer and producer to have made the heroin at a 20MG and didn't use ricin to cut it.
Jim P. at February 5, 2014 8:10 AM
I've read that the reason he passed away is because when you start using again after so many years your body is back to it's pre-use state BUT your mind wants/ is focused on using the quantity of the last time you used that made you stop.
Ppen at February 5, 2014 2:44 PM
I am a big believer in free will. Maybe if he had access to oxy, he would not have tuned to heroin.
However, we don't know that for sure. Someone wealthy can easily get access to either, although heroin might be cheaper.
They can also check themselves into rehab if they get scared enough.
This man had a lot of demons chasing him. You cant become an addict unless you stick that first needle in your arm, and the article indicates that he had been on a bender for a few months at least.
His family probably realized correctly, that you cant save someone from themselves.
I have had some relatives and friends who valued their life enough to quit cold turkey when something was becoming a problem. My husband watched what booze did to his parents, and never even tasted liquor after the age of 14. I wish my daughter was smart enough to do the same,
If you are drunk or high, your judgment is pretty much the first thing that goes. I hear Heroin makes you feel invincible.
Well, he wasn't.
Isab at February 5, 2014 7:24 PM
Naw, PCP makes you fell invincible. Opium derivatives make it so you DONT feel.
Its cruel to say, but he got exactly what he wanted, out.
lujlp at February 5, 2014 9:07 PM
I think drug addiction (including alcohol), and all of its sequelae, is no more or less a disease than emphysema, obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, or any other condition caused by something people chose to do.
People have differences in genetics, physiology, metabolism, exposure... resulting in widely varying degrees of susceptibility. One person can eat a jar of peanut butter and get gas. Another can get just a whiff of peanuts in the air and go into anaphylactic shock. One person can eat 2,000 calories of carbohydrates every day of his adult life, and stay slim and fit and live to be 95. Another may eat only 800 calories of carbs a day and develop obesity, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes in his 40's, and die of heart disease in his 50's. Some people can drink enormous amounts of alcohol over long periods of time and then quit for a while, and feel only nostalgia. Some can drink one or two shots and become violently ill every time. Others drink regularly "in moderation", and don't realize they're addicted until they try to go without for a day or two.
An example: A 62 year old, successful small businessman who had one drink every day at lunchtime, one drink when he got home from work, and one drink after dinner - habitually, for years. He occasionally got mildly drunk at a party or major sports event. He and his wife went out of town for two days to attend his daughter's wedding, during which he didn't drink. On the second day he was shaking, sweating, and had a headache and nausea. A few hours after they got back home he had a seizure and a serious heart arrhythmia. At the ER they gave him a shot of gin, references to a couple of treatment programs, and strong encouragement to follow up. A few days later he was admitted to the medical detox unit where I worked. He and his wife didn't know he was addicted to alcohol until he went to the ER.
Ken R at February 6, 2014 4:56 AM
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