Use alcohol? That's a drug. Drink coffee or tea? Caffeine's a drug. Smoke or vape? Drugs. Pot's a drug ofc. Ever needed painkillers? Drugs. Ever had stitches? That topical is a drug.

People use drugs all the time. The arbitrary nature of determining who can use what is purely anti-liberty, and is the root cause of a majority of the issues.

The guy who throws out his back stocking shelves at Walmart and is now in pain for the rest of his life doesn't want to become a heroine junkie, he just wants the pain to stop so he can be productive. But oh no, the painkiller prescriptions stopped. Holy shit, gotta get those painkillers somehow. He knows! He can go buy some off the street. Looks perfect, guy he buys it from SAYS it's prescription. Nope! Counterfit, full of fentanyl, now he's dead. Oops.

You likely know more people who regularly use drugs than don't. Ibuprofin to combat inflammation? Drug. Antihistamines for allergies? Drug. The base idea that, "Well THOSE drugs are DIFFERENT" is stupid. ADHD treatments are just amphetamines being mass delivered to children. But that's "okay because they need it!" Really?

Feel free to attack me personally over my stance that you won't stop people from doing drugs short of executing them (like Singapore), and if you value liberty in any way, shape, or form, then other people's drug use is none of your business whatsoever. That's fine. I'm not seeking to use illegal drugs. I just don't think drugs should be illegal at all, nor do I think any drug should require a doctor for "permission" to use. If somebody becomes an addict and destroys their own life, that's their problem. All drug wars accomplish is to remove the abililty to obtain safe, cheap, and effective drugs legally, while creating a class of criminals who've committed no harm to others.

Dead people don't get sober. The safe injection sites are more than just to prevent rates of lethal overdose, but to also reduce the incidence rates of transmissible infections (Hep C in particular) and abscesses/necrosis.

And given that major drug trades are the result of it being illegally brought in by other countries (Cartels of the South, China, etc), why would you abandon your fellow citizens who are victims of geopolitical efforts to destabilize your country?

A simple question for you: What site is safer to use your drug of choice than your own home?

What I see with "safe injection sites" is an influx of homeless addicts. This is a major problem. These people have no stake and fear no consequences. Their life, at this point, revolves around their next fix. So when you make a "safe injection site" you're going to attract a high concentration of these homeless addicts. The absolutely natural outcome is that all businesses and residences near those sites see a surge in crime, all the way from petty theft to rape and murder.

Your point regarding the majority of drugs coming from other nations who might be adversarial to us is perfectly valid. And I ask the question again: If a person could simply wander down to their local drug store, prove they're over 18/21, and buy their next fix and be GUARANTEED it is exactly what it's supposed to be, then go home, have their fix, where's the harm? If they do overdose and die? Their problem. On the flipside, something like 88% of all overdose deaths are a result of "synthetic opioids" aka Fentanyl. By preventing the legal manufacture and sale of "safe" drugs, we're pushing the very people we claim to want to help directly into the fenty path.

Addicts WILL obtain what they want, no matter what. Would you prefer they die because it's poisoned, or that they get their high, or whatever, and live another day?

I share your sentiment that people should be free to do with their body what they want, including getting high. I'd rather people be high than dead.

As for safety, the safe injection sites are safer than at-home use, particularly because they decrease the rates of shared needles and because you have staff/volunteers who are readily available to administer things like Narcan or to call emergency medical services in the event of an overdose. Additionally many of these sites will test people's drugs for them in the absence of legal access, and most people don't have chemical assay or spectrometers readily available for their own testing.

This post was edited by Handcuffs on Feb 15 2024 12:08am

If drugs were legal and regulated, testing wouldn't be required. I do agree that as things stand now, the ability to go somewhere and have their drugs tested without having them seized or landing in prison is useful.

As to needles being shared, if you're doing your own drugs in your own home, who are you sharing needles with and why would you even CONSIDER sharing needles? Anyone can go down to walmart or kroger or safeway or their local drug store at any time and buy a 20 pack of clean needles for $10. Or hell, even have Amazon deliver them directly to their door. $10 for 20 needles is cheaper than a single dose of whatever drug they're shooting into themselves. This idea that people are massively sharing needles and would be doing so in the privacy of their own home is just not a real thing. Are there some addicts who share needles? Sure. They're not the norm. Some guy goes and spends $100 on some meth he's going to shoot into his arm, you think $0.50 for a clean needle so he doesn't get AIDS is going to make him flinch? Be honest.

As to the treatment if overdose, are we now sponsoring that people get fucked up in public so that when they overdo it, we can be there to help? If so, I'd kindly suggest that if bars and pubs are any indicator, normalizing people getting fucked up in public leads to MORE people overindulging, rather than limiting them.

As someone who has worked extensively in substance use treatment, including in harm reduction settings, I assure you that sharing needles is very common. You'll find rates of endorsed needle sharing being anywhere from 20% - 50% of IDU depending on the study/survey.

This post was edited by Handcuffs on Feb 15 2024 12:38am

Interesting. Do they provide reasoning behind why they would share needles? It can't be lack of education. Elementary schools were already teaching never to share needles back in the 70's. They tried to keep the discussion centered around Diabetics, rather than Druggies, but all the warnings of lethal disease transmission has been part of the most basic education ever.

Not doubting your word, it's your field. More just curious if reasoning was provided. Like, sharing doses or something?

My experience is that it is a combination of lack of education and because when people are deep in injection drug use, you'll not want to spend money on needles when you can just reuse/share them and instead spend what you do have on more drugs--and this is more common in low-income or homeless communities, where a majority of the use is happening, and those packs of fresh needles start to add up. The education piece is not so much that they don't understand that there is risk in needle sharing, but due to misinformation such as thinking that drawing bleach through a syringe will sanitize it, that Hep C isn't a "serious" infection (because technically the body can clear Hep C on its own, but that is usually among healthy people with a single-exposure. I would do Hep C testing for folks who injected, and 90%+ tested positive) or that "only gay people get HIV", and there's a lot of hedging bets in sharing needles where people will use together in a small group and people try to be the first or second injection to reduce their risk, but the risk is very real even if you're second.

I'd say lastly that when people are deep in injection drug use, their health stops being a main priority in general, but especially so for these infections that you aren't going to immediately see/take time to build up in the body. When I did this work in New Mexico, we'd routinely see people whose veins are shot, they'd be covered in abscesses, and many of them had necrotizing fasciitis and would still be using because that's how deep in the weeds they were. When you've already got all that happening, the idea of risking another infection stops mattering very much.

This post was edited by Handcuffs on Feb 15 2024 01:13am

Mostly, those who inject themselves are far gone enough that it's rare to see them come back. At least, that's been my observation. Lot of people I've known over the years in Oregon fell to the meth craze. Those who smoked or snorted it were recoverable. Those who slammed it are all dead. Asking those who slammed it why, they provided answers like "longer, better high" and "too difficult to get to waste even the tiniest bit".

That said, do you think that these addicts, especially heroin/meth, would get to the point where they are injecting at all if they could get cheap guaranteed safe meth/heroin in smokable/snortable/pill form without risk or judgement?

Edit: Note when I say "guaranteed safe" I'm talking about pure, uncut, not spiked, from a drugstore. I'm in no way indicating that meth or heroin is ever "safe". I'm not pro drugs. I'm just anti drug war.

This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Feb 15 2024 01:21am

Yeah, it's rough, rates of substance use treatment success are pretty universally grim but I remain optimistic that we'll continue to get better at it, and every life saved and family system changed is worth it. Heart goes out to you and the people you've lost.

I would hear similar answers as to why people injected, particularly that it gives a longer, stronger, and more stable high like you said. I think some people would still slam it, but much, much less than people do now. We'd also need to change various laws between what we have now and the kind of legal access that you and I believe in. We're in the minority, so our vision is unlikely to happen, but right now there are some whacky unintended consequences from these kinds of harm reduction practices and the laws we have. For instance, when I was in New Mexico, you couldn't get in legal trouble if you were found with needles (so long as there wasn't substance inside of them) but the condition was that you had to either be on your way to or from a harm reduction/needle exchange site (We'd typically encourage people to just say that they were if they ever got stopped); however, since pipes are federally recognized as drug paraphernalia and aren't typically part of these programs, people could get in trouble with the law if they had a pipe on them. So, in a way, people were incentivized to use via needles rather than by pipe as an unintended consequence.

This post was edited by Handcuffs on Feb 15 2024 01:31am