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Originally Posted by Sarah_Jayne
In the case of heroin, there are entire towns in the UK that were pretty much ruined by it. The last time I was in Nottingham, parts of the town looked like a scene from the Walking Dead. Meth was starting to take its place when I left.
I don't spend enough time in small town America to know if that is echoed here and cities like LA have enough different corrosive factors that drugs just blend in with the others.
Of course there are functioning drug users. I think most of us agree that alcohol has been a bigger problem over time and appreciate the double standard that exists. That doesn't mean that other problems don't exist and that they shouldn't be handled.
I've come to think that the reason that weed gets labeled as a gateway drug isn't because it creates an addiction that is then transferred to other drugs. It is because once somebody does it and finds out that they have pretty much been lied to they then wonder what else has been a lie and try other things. Perhaps if we were more honest then the warnings of the truly dangerous would be more clear rather than muddled into a simple 'drugs are bad mmmkay' wag of the finger.
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With a lot of the hard drugs, what makes them so dangerous are the contaminants that the drugs are mixed with to create bigger quantities. There was a documentary on channel 4 about Heroin many years ago and the scientist was explaining how if all drugs where legalised then addicts could get pure quantities in smaller forms but most importantly because of this it would be of little harm to their health and they'd be able to maintain a normal lifestyle, and be slowly weened off the drugs over an extended period of time while still being a decent functioning member of society.
That's the real problem about prohibition, in the UK the most widely used drug is cannabis and it is truly terrifying the stuff that dealers put in it to make it weigh more. Brick powder, Fiberglass, when that shit gets into someones lungs it has the potential to burn holes in the lung tissue. There are cases now of heavy cannabis users in their early 20s who have lungs worse than people who have smoked heavily for 30+ years
But that's prohibition for you
