Treating Drug Addiction With Addictive Drugs
Jacob Sullum at Reason is incredulous over a new Vancouver program that administers maintenance doses to stimulant addicts:
As long as legalization is out of the picture, taxpayers must choose between subsidizing the addictions of sometimes unsympathetic characters, or subsidizing by default the black market profiteers who would otherwise provide for them.
Anyone who canât come to terms with this will love Joe Biden's hilariously unworkable plan to eradicate drugs from the earth with biological weapons.
The government drives [stimulants] into the black market and then allows the select few who are sufficiently f#@ked up to get oral stimulants at taxpayers' expense. Meanwhile, doctors commonly prescribe stimulants to people who have trouble focusing and paying attention, a condition that used to be self-treated but nowadays is recognized as a disease requiring professional diagnosis. If you take these drugs without that diagnosis, you also have a diseaseâdrug dependenceâthat one day, if we're lucky, may be treated by giving you the drugs.The whole thing is mind-numbingly absurd. Try as we might to rein them in, drug policies continue to boldly defy the boundaries of logic at every turn. Still, Sullum's assessment of government sponsored maintenance programs gives me pause.
This strikes me as exactly the wrong way to achieve drug policy reform, guaranteed to alienate people who might be willing to let others use drugs but don't want to pick up the tab for it. The message should be freedom coupled with responsibility, not government-subsidized drug addiction.I'm not saying he's wrong, but I sure hope he is. Though ideal, the freedom/responsibility model isn't exactly resonating either. To whatever extent such programs are bad because they piss off taxpayers, one hopes they'll earn their keep by mitigating the destructive conditions that necessitate counterintuitive ideas like stimulant maintenance in the first place. Demonstrating that such programs actually save money while reducing harm should eventually placate reasonable skeptics.
As long as legalization is out of the picture, taxpayers must choose between subsidizing the addictions of sometimes unsympathetic characters, or subsidizing by default the black market profiteers who would otherwise provide for them.
Anyone who canât come to terms with this will love Joe Biden's hilariously unworkable plan to eradicate drugs from the earth with biological weapons.
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In a Tuesday election, voters in Flint, Michigan, approved the medical use of marijuana by a very comfortable margin.
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The "coca, si; cocaine, no" policy of Bolivian President Evo Morales has brought peace to a region long riven by conflict and repression. But while coca farmers need no longer worry about violent conflict with the state, they are still having a hard time making enough money to survive. Plans are underway to do something about that.
Free Speech: "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" Case Heading to Supreme Court Next Month, with Ken Starr Supporting One Side and SSDP Another
The court that not so long ago heard a case brought by Anna Nicole Smith will soon rule on whether students using the phrase "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" are entitled to 1st Amendment protection. The stakes are a lot more serious than the bizarre title may suggest.
Latin America: Killing of Salvadoran Politicians By Police in Guatemala Opens Window on Drug Corruption in Central America, Killing of Killers Closes It
Three Salvadoran politicians were brutally murdered by Guatemalan anti-drug police outside Guatemala City 10 days ago. Now, the police killers have themselves been killed in a brazen assassination while being held inside a nasty Guatemalan prison. Many questions are being raised, but dead men tell no tales.