We've seen what happens when opiates are unregulated. I do think we need to legalize more drugs and generally liberalize drug laws, but selling oxycodone in stores for recreational use would end in disaster, just like selling heroin in stores did in the early 1900s.
> just like selling heroin in stores did in the early 1900s
Does anyone have a good resource for reading about what actually happened when they sold heroin in stores? Statistics about addiction, anecdotal reports, etc.
> Just as a large majority of drinkers did not become alcoholics, a large majority of users of these products did not become drug addicts. They used opiates as "props for the unstable nervous system," like a person who drinks wine at the end of a stressful day at work.
That's from Chasing the Scream, with the quoted portion coming from a prominent doctor named Henry Smith Williams in the early 1930s. Here are two more direct quotes from him:
"No one thought of the use of these medicines as having any moral significance."
Many women who used opiates daily are the same ones who "would have gone on their hands and knees to pray for a lost soul had they seen cigarette stains on the fingers of a daughter."
The book reports that 3/4 of self-described addicts (that is, the subset of users who are addicted, as opposed to a generic term for "user") had a stable and reputable job, over 1/5 were wealthy and under 1/12 were poor.
Yes, but then not selling it in stores for recreational use ends in heroin being substituted with fentanyl (and other, even more effective synthetic opiates) in the dark market, because fentanyl is cheap to make and transport (way bigger potency for the same weight) and then killing many people who otherwise would not be dead.
The case for regulated legalisation is harder to make for opiates than for many other drugs, but still there.
