Heroin shortage in UK is "putting lives at risk" laments that trashy newspaper known as The Guardian, noting that the Afghan poppy harvest has been blighted by fungus and that dealers are adulterating supply to maintain profits. The supply shortage was always going to cause problems in the UK, although one wonders what happened to the surplus stash the Taliban is supposed to have been salting away for a rainy day.

View full article here

I am confused by this post. Heroin is bad for people. Is it not good that less should be available? What am I missing here?

OK The problem with the "legalise it and organised crime will go away" argument is that heroin is much more a serious drug than alcohol or opium. I knew, in my youth, heroin adicts who stated that the problem was quality of heroin; that a "heroine addict" could live healthily and well if their daily heroin was clean and pure. Yes, I am sure if such idyllic conditions could be achieved, he would be correct. Enter reality....

Whose reality?

Do you not think that reality is something of a personal constuct? Some might argue, plausibly, that the reality is that the war on drugs, like the war in Afghanistan, can never be won and therefore we should stop fighting it.

The stupid argument continues ad nauseam.
All drugs should have been legalised years ago &, like alcohol, sold freely on the market under minimal gumment supervision (& a tax rake off for garanteeing purity)
The reasons & logic have been expressed many times here on this blog.

Like RoO, I'm confused. But then, I'm not aware of knowing any addicts or dealers. To such a one it seems that if "dealers are adulterating supply to maintain profits" they would shoot selves in feet - because they're killing off their own market ... which they're presumably killing off anyway.... no, I can't get it [though it seems to work like modern economics].

All I know is that when I presented a prescription for "heavy duty" post-op pain medicine, the chemist treated me as if I were an addict. I had to prove three times over that the doctor had prescribed the stuff after spinal fusion.

Twenty years before, I'd had to give it to my mother in her last days of terminal cancer, and the hospice nurse behaved a) as if the patient should have been happy with Tylenol, and b) as if I was sneaking off with the stuff for myself - even though she stopped screaming. Well I wasn't, and I have no idea why anyone would want it, other than for intractable pain.

But I do know that chemists and nurses can get above themselves over legitimate use, and that the fight adds undue distress to already distressing situations. So why anyone would want to be either an addict or illegitimate is beyond me. Oh - and how do they get to be addicts in the first place? How many are there? And why does the grauniad expect its readers to know these things? I guess I'll just steer clearer of it and its readers...

A Guardian article I agree with.

A wrong clock, and all that.

I am a special constable, hence my username. Last week I was in the cells for a reason I dont need to go into. I heard over the police radio of a well known thief who had frightened a young shop assistant by robbing the shop she worked in of the till. He was eventually caught about 1 hour later and brought to cells; it turns out he was wanted for a spate of these till robberies over the past week. Whilst in the holding area of cells he confirmed to the officers that arrested him that he wanted to be caught by police and go to prison. The reason is that he was so sick of being on heroin that he thought the only chance he had of getting off it was to go to prison and get treatment. He was 19 yrs old and had been on it for a number of years. I have also my nicked a 14 yr old for dealing heroin and he was an addict himself. Nobody is going to persuade me that the legalisation of drugs is a good thing. Drugs are extremely addictive. One of the purposes of governments is to protect their citizens. How is legalising an addictive substance protecting people? Does anybody think that if cigarettes were a recent discovery (say the last 50 years) that they would be legal, considering the onslaught against smoking right now?

Many people have stated before that alcohol is addictive. Yes it is. But how many people who drink go on to become alcoholics? I would suggest that the % is quite low. How many people who take heroin as a 'recreational' thing and then go on to be addicts. I would suggest it is a higher figure than those who drink alcohol.

The trouble with public health issues is that you cannot draw inferences from individual cases - this is a question of the "greater good". The issue which must be addressed is whether the greater harm is caused by legalisation, or by prohibition. On balance, it is more likely that prohibition causes the greater harm. But nothing of that gainsays the argument that drugs cause harm ... they do. It is a question of how best to reduce that harm. Taking the profit out of illegal sales seems to me to be an admirable way of doing that.

Another question often avoided is what will all the dealers do to get quick money if it is legalised? I cannot imagine a dealer (at whatever level in the chain) suddenly wanting to get a 'normal' job and renouncing criminality.

Nicotine is more addictive than heroin. At least that's what a friend of mine says, and I'm inclined to believe him. There's a fair chance he knows about these things. Then again he's an awkward argumentative fcuker and was a big big-noise GP until a couple of years ago. Even so, he's Yorkshire so he's probably sound.

I say legalise the shit, get our own farmers on the case, provide a decent product, tax the users—as we do smokers, for everything they've got ...

Snipped ... and you know why, so don't bitch at me. Mod.

That's only an argument that the current status quo produces a lot of criminals. In truth of course the police, the jail builders, the justice system all have a vested interest in maintaining this as well as the criminals. They all benefit. I can't see this changing any time soon. Not in the present climate where tobacco and alcohol look soon to be joining the prohibited list.

The addict who wanted to go to prison was after the regular supply of heroin he could get there.
The question about legalization of drugs depends on whether one regards addiction as a medical problem or a criminal one. Our current approach pretty well enforces criminality.
Maybe medically supervised distribution to addicts would begin to undercut the illegal market?

They use methadone ... so using pure heroin might be an option. But the broader point is that, if heroin is on sale to all comers, from licensed establishments such as pharmacies, then it so undercuts the market that it destroys the illicit network. The effect of making it legally available, therefore, should mean that the drug actually becomes less available. If it is cheaper from licit sources, there is less pressure on addicts to steal to get their fix and, if the drug is pure, there is less need for medical intervention to deal with the effects of adulteration. What is there not to like?

Would you insist on medical registration of addicts with regular check-ups?