The government must never, in good conscience, open up the use of extremely physically addictive substances. Decriminalisation for users, I can support, but legalising and selling is a terrible idea. Alcohol, tobacco and marijuana are not in the same league as heroin and other opiates. It’s extremely dangerous to equate all drugs in this debate.
Alcohol is physically addictive - ever heard of DTs? Decriminalization enables the black market. Legalization would lower prices, too. The black market should be enemy number one.
Thats dependency, not addictivenes. Alcohol is among the most dependent substances, but its not nearly as addictive as hard drugs or nicotine for that matter. Some people will find themselves strongly addicted to alcohol, but most wont. Heroine by comparison will result in nearly everyone becoming strongly addicted. Its not nearly the same. It has no place in society.
I don't understand your line between dependency and addictivenes. How are those different/how do we rank differences in terms of dependency and addictivenes? The genie is out of the bottle with Heroin and you can't put it back so what do we do? If addiction is such a problem, shouldn't we make it as cheap and as safe as possible? The only way to do that is legalization. Saying it has no place in society doesn't make any more sense than saying cancer doesn't have a place in society - we have to confront realities.
> how do we rank differences in terms of dependency and addictiveness
They are somewhat confusing terms, but important to understand if you want to have a critical conversation about the subject.
Dependency relates to the physical symptoms of withdrawal; i.e. whether it is safe to stop and how to manage it. Many medications need to be tapered down before stopped to not harm someone, despite the person not being addicted to them, i.e. not craving more when they stop. If drugs merely caused dependency and not addictiveness, detox might be required but people would be able to stop anytime they wanted. Addiction is more how hard it is to stop, once you want to. Some people become addicted to alcohol, but most don't. Comparatively, few if any people can avoid addiction to heroine once begun.
> If addiction is such a problem, shouldn't we make it as cheap and as safe as possible?
Cheaper, more available highly addictive drugs is the source of the current crisis. I am pro legalization given the right framework of supportive services around it, but it has to be realistic (especially cost wise). Oregon's current plan is very far from realistic; its creating a destination for the countries addicts, without enough services to support their current ones. They are going to exhaust people's goodwill and likely backpedal having caused more harm than benefit.
