I could see this putting a dent into the organization’s that make and sell drugs illegally but the other problems are much worse in the real world.
Liberal states have already tried versions of this and the result has been bad. Just look at how things have gone in Oregon. Lot’s of unintended consequences in addition to the predictable consequences.

The opinions of most of the respondents are not in favor of the concept. What is missing are alternative concepts that could solve the illegal drug problem.

I have been in the business of analysis of drugs of abuse in patients since 1961. Although now retired from clinical laboratory work, I am, obviously, still concerned and looking for solutions.

Please, those who object to my proposal, present your own alternatives as solutions to our failed War on Drugs.

Thanks to all who have responded, both positively and negatively - you have given me food for thought!

quote:

Originally posted by tleddy:
Tatortod-

Thank you for the references.

I am not surprised at all by the increase in overdoses!

There was no change in the illegal supply line with the concomitant adulteration of drugs, primarily with fentanyl. In fact, I am surprised that it was not far worse!

Any system that does not control the quality of the product is doomed to fail.

I took the time to provide links as you requested but twice now you have neglected to answer my 2 questions.

The Oregan measure was not repealed because of ODs. It was repealed because it affected the economy and quality of life for normal people. Open drug use in downtown Portland, tent cities, increases in petty crimes likely to get drug money, business closures downtown, etc. How does your solution prevent what happened to places like Portland from happening all over the country?

Given that organized crime has increased despite dispensaries for marijuana, how does your solution address this with the hard drugs? You read the od stats from the 3 year Oregon measure and essentially replied that you have to control strength and purity by controlling the supply line. How do you do that when cartels and organized crime maintain or increase the black market on hard drugs like it did with marijuana dispensaries? Cartels and organized crime already have supply lines for the hard drugs and I'll guarantee it's lower cost supply line than anything the government can set up.

Let's loop back to controlled strength and purity. We had a DEA agent do a safety meeting at work (ie large, multinational corp). Their main focus was to get parents to talk to their kids about drugs due to so many being laced with fentanyl. One of their secondary topics ended up being most interesting takeaway for me which was when there was a deadly batch on the streets putting out warnings didn't stop ODs. The DEA agents answer for the reason shocked me because it turns out addicts are chasing that elusive first high they can seemingly never achieve again so they'll actively seek out the deadly batch in hopes of the elusive first high experience. How does that apply to your solution? Would the nationwide addicts be satisfied with the high from the consistent government purity and strength or will they seek out the organized crimes or cartels drugs in hopes of experiencing that elusive first high again? Wouldn't we just end up where we are now but with more addicts and more places like Portland?

quote:

What is missing are alternative concepts that could solve the illegal drug problem.

This may be one of those things that there is no "solution" to, because you can't change human nature. Humans have been killing each other, sometimes wholesale, even before recorded history. Anybody find a "solution" to that?

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
How is this different than what Portland has been doing which has been a disaster to their economy and their normal people?

The missing piece was providing pharmaceutical grade drugs at no cost.

How is this drug store option different than the marijuana dispensaries and there is still organized crime and cartels selling marijuana in those states? In fact, by most acccounts the legal stores have emboldened the illegal trade.

The legal dispensaries, because of the taxes, still allowed for illegal drug competition. Cannabis is the least of the problem. So called hard drugs are the main issue.

Let's loop back to controlled strength and purity. We had a DEA agent do a safety meeting at work (ie large, multinational corp). Their main focus was to get parents to talk to their kids about drugs due to so many being laced with fentanyl. One of their secondary topics ended up being most interesting takeaway for me which was when there was a deadly batch on the streets putting out warnings didn't stop ODs. The DEA agents answer for the reason shocked me because it turns out addicts are chasing that elusive first high they can seemingly never achieve again so they'll actively seek out the deadly batch in hopes of the elusive first high experience. How does that apply to your solution? Would the nationwide addicts be satisfied with the high from the consistent government purity and strength or will they seek out the organized crimes or cartels drugs in hopes of experiencing that elusive first high again? Wouldn't we just end up where we are now but with more addicts and more places like Portland?[/QUOTE]

Unfortunately, I cannot address the DEA Agents opinion regarding the initial high. If we end up with the same set of addiction but less OD’s along with bankrupting the Cartels, that would be acceptable to me.

So 35 junkies outside your house, leaving needles everywhere, shitting all over the place and mountains of garbage is acceptable?

I just got done with my shops CPR training and found out we have Narcan in the shop in a few locations.
Just in case one of the vermin keels over on the property.
They already de-landscaped the property to keep them from sleeping in the bushes, though they think that the front door stoop is the perfect place to take a shit.
I won't be rushing to give them a wake up if they OD.
It's a self correcting problem as far as I'm concerned.

quote:

Originally posted by tleddy:
Unfortunately, I cannot address the DEA Agents opinion regarding the initial high.

Like most professionals their opinion was formed from knowledge. There are dozens of pages of studies from PubMed, FBI, American Physiological Journal, American Medical Assoc, etc. on chasing first high. Now that you've had your fix for studies, why would an addict keep going to the government drug store for the consistent strength and quality drug instead of going to the cartels and organized crime for the potential for something more potent that would get them that initial high? In other words, the government spends all of this taxpayer money on your solution, but the taxpayer and law enforcement are both still stuck with all the negative baggage (e.g. murder) that accompanies organized crime and cartels for illegal drugs.

You've also dodged my question on Portland 4 times. Let me paraphrase it:
You're asking normal taxpayers to fund this solution of free pharmaceutical grade hard drugs dispensed from nationwide network of government hard drug stores. Your solution also decriminalizes drug use. When Oregon decriminalized drug use it affected the taxpayers with tent cities, druggies loitering on streets, druggies passed out on sidewalks with needles hanging out of arms, crime, and business closure. Taxpayers got sick of it and the social experiment was shutdown in 3 years. How does your solution prevent government hard drug pharmacies ending up surrounded with tent cities, druggies loitering on streets, druggies passed out on sidewalks with needles hanging out of arms, crime, and business closures?

quote:

Originally posted by tleddy:
The opinions of most of the respondents are not in favor of the concept. What is missing are alternative concepts that could solve the illegal drug problem.

I have been in the business of analysis of drugs of abuse in patients since 1961. Although now retired from clinical laboratory work, I am, obviously, still concerned and looking for solutions.

Please, those who object to my proposal, present your own alternatives as solutions to our failed War on Drugs.

Thanks to all who have responded, both positively and negatively - you have given me food for thought!

Fair enough... take a look at these two threads:

The problem is a combination of drug addiction and mental health issues.
We didn't have this problem when we had insane asylums and involuntary commission.
https://sigforum.com/eve/forum...080066464#4080066464

Most homeless people are either mentally ill or drug users, often both.

What we need (and closed down beginning in the 1960's) are insane asylums for treatment, and/or long term confinement. Other than that, pull the rug and force them to work.
https://sigforum.com/eve/forum...850090415#9850090415

How does your solution prevent government hard drug pharmacies ending up surrounded with tent cities, druggies loitering on streets, druggies passed out on sidewalks with needles hanging out of arms, crime, and business closures?

I apologize for not adequately answering your queries.

My only opinion to the above concerns crime: not having to steal to support an expensive drug habit reduces the necessity for crime.

As to the remainder, I simply cannot predict. Homelessness is not an exclusive issue to drug addicts, although a good portion of them are drug related.

I lived in California just off Venice Beach in the early 1980s - an idyllic place to live, dine and walk my dog on the beach! Recent photos show a tent city along the Beachfront Sidewalk, destroying the aesthetic beauty of the area. So, at this point in time, I would not think of living there!

Perhaps my ideas are a poor rationale, but I do not see how it could get any worse than it already is!

What would you suggest as a solution?

quote:

How does your solution prevent government hard drug pharmacies ending up surrounded with tent cities, druggies loitering on streets, druggies passed out on sidewalks with needles hanging out of arms, crime, and business closures?

First off, I don't know what government hard drug pharmacies are. If they exist, close them.
Second, we need insane asylums for treatment, and/or long term confinement. If someone is not mentally ill, offer a drug treatment program (in patient, confined) followed by either prison or work. Either way, they shouldn't be allowed to stay on the streets.

It really isn't complicated: if they are on the streets, remove them. But don't give them drugs. That doesn't solve the problem, it perpetuates it.

Mental masturbation.

Nullus ordo ab chao
No (meaningful) order from chaos.

When you normalize bad behavior, you get more bad behavior.

Another different but related version of the same experiment is liberal urban areas where they stopped enforcing most misdemeanors, and property crime isn't punished or enforced, or minimally so.
Normal people move out, businesses can't function and the rest of the downhill spiral continues.
Why would we want more of that?

Your original thought about how can we reduce various drug related issues should be open to new thinking, but this one isn't new or untested.

quote:

Originally posted by tleddy:

Please, those who object to my proposal, present your own alternatives as solutions to our failed War on Drugs.

I don't have an alternate solution. My sense of it is that the problem is social in origin. There have always been small portions of societies which are addicts, but what we are seeing over the past maybe 50 or 60 years is something different. The war on drugs will never be won because it is a demand side problem. We might reduce the supply side, but that will require an actual war on suppliers, not this half-assed policing.

Kids growing up with little responsibility to contribute. In a way, too much wealth. No, not the billionaire kind of wealth, but the kind of wealth where we don't worry about where the next meal comes from. The kind of wealth where average homes are really quite luxurious compared to generations past. Entertainment is central to modern life, rather than hard work to just survive.

And then there's pressures on kids to excel, to meet adult expectations. Kids playing in very competitive sports from a young age, knowing the parents are hoping for college scholarships or being in the Olympics.

That's the middle to upper income kids. At the other end of the economic scale there is a pervasive culture of showy wealth and what we used to call the Rock and Roll Lifestyle. Maybe there's a lack of belief in having a solid life by following more traditional routes (e.g. starting a local business or going to college for a high paying degree). Role models tend to not portray successful attributes, and do glamorize destructive behaviors.

And, in reality, for many in the poorer areas, getting involved in criminal activity and the drug trade appears to young people to be the most reliable way out.

I have no confidence that the government could administer any form of legal drug industry that would crowd out the cartels. Crime will still exist throughout the industry.

Somehow, major cultural changes are needed before young people will stop being attracted to these drugs. I don't see it mattering much whether drugs remain illegal or they are age controlled (e.g. drinking age 21) but legal. The problem isn't that criminals are forcing young people into drug addiction, the problem is kids seeking out these powerful drugs in the first place.

quote:

Originally posted by tleddy:
As to the remainder, I simply cannot predict. Homelessness is not an exclusive issue to drug addicts, although a good portion of them are drug related.

I lived in California just off Venice Beach in the early 1980s - an idyllic place to live, dine and walk my dog on the beach! Recent photos show a tent city along the Beachfront Sidewalk, destroying the aesthetic beauty of the area. So, at this point in time, I would not think of living there!

NIMBY is one of the major flaws in your solution which is why I repeatedly brought up Portland. We had a thread just last week on a homeless shelter proposed in a neighborhood and NIMBY got the voters to come together to get it killed. I imagine the NIMBY response to a government run pharmacy giving away free pharmaceutical grade hard drugs would be orders of magnitude stronger and broader coalition.

To solve NIMBY, you'd have to be remote with acres of space buffer between taxpayers and addicts (eg closed military bases). You'd have to bus them out and have space for them in barracks/tents. I disagree with your premise in general but that would solve your NIMBY flaw.

quote:

Originally posted by tleddy:
What would you suggest as a solution?

I would focus on 2 areas and business as usual on remainder:

Many drug addicts are self medicating for mental illness. My ex was a social worker for the intake of a private mental health inpatient treatment and the numbers of self medicating drug addicts was staggering. Closing inpatient mental facilities was a huge mistake foisted on society by liberals. As Chellim mentioned, reopen asylums.

This is really unpopular. Drug tests for government handouts. Shelter and food is a higher need than having fun partying. If you spend your money on a lesser human need then taxpayers quit funding your higher human need (ie shelter and food). Help them hit rock bottom and decide whether or not to get off drugs. If they choose rehab, help once or twice but don't make it a Steve Howe and MLB endless string of 2nd chances. If they make the wrong choice they're cutoff. We're broke and we can't keep funding this.

---

Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

quote:

Closing inpatient mental facilities was a huge mistake foisted on society by liberals. As Chellim mentioned, reopen asylums.

^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yes without providing treatment. The inpatient facilities,however were snake pits. One flew over the Cuckkoos next was accurate. The Oregon State hospital was where the film was made.

Never mind.

State run loony bins, nothing but the best of care.
My sister actually needs to be in one and has been in the psych ward at OHSU, but they always cut her loose.
She self medicates as most do, even though the state already pays for meds that she doesn't take.

My wife's cousin is straight up bat shit crazy, hears voices and all that fun stuff.
Barricaded himself in my front bathroom with a butcher knife.
Thought for sure he was going to get holed, the cops showed a lot more restraint than I was willing to give.
Another here's your meds, see ya, patient.
When he's on his meds it's not as bad, but he doesn't take them.

I used to think that the problem was our hypocrisy as a nation in dealing with drugs. “The dealer is a horrible person, we should just lock the dealers up forever (or put them to death), but little Johnny is the victim here, we need to care for and support him.”

My thinking was to just take a very black or white approach. Either legalize it all and get the government out of the way, or hammer the living shit out of the users until demand disappears. First approach is pretty straight forward. Second is also pretty simple: first offense, at any age, five years hard labor. Second offense, fifteen years hard labor. Third offense, life in hard labor. Demand would plummet, and the dealers would go away because there was no market anymore.

Well, like anything involving people, nothing is that simple. If folks would do whatever they were going to do in the comfort of their homes, without impacting others, that would be one thing, but that isn’t reality. We can’t even manage that with alcohol. And it isn’t even just the bad things folks do when they are under the influence, there’s also the lengths they’ll go to to get their next fix.

So, I’m resigned that the solution to “the drug problem” isn’t simple and I don’t know what it is. For me and mine, the solution is to avoid that shit, but I don’t know the answer for those who don’t make that choice.

I am confident though that the answer to “the government” providing something for free to a group that “needs it” (or wants it) is not “No.”, but “<Insert your expletive of choice> No!” The correct answer with government, at least for the next several years is to decimate it (or better yet reduce it by more than 10%) every single year. Adding more “free shit” does not in anyway advance that goal.

quote:

I am confident though that the answer to “the government” providing something for free to a group that “needs it” (or wants it) is not “No.”, but “<Insert your expletive of choice> No!” The correct answer with government, at least for the next several years is to decimate it (or better yet reduce it by more than 10%) every single year. Adding more “free shit” does not in anyway advance that goal.

Yes. Reagan's Inaugural Address 1981 comes to mind. Government is not the solution to our problem....

But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding: We are going to begin to act, beginning today.

The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we've had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?
- Ronald Reagan

https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/...augural-address-1981