To be honest, I don't know. This is an interesting problem. I do know that a lot of people get hooked on Oxycotin and then turn to heroin for a variety of reasons. Though if heroin was legal it could be manufactured in a sterile environment where you could probably get like 99% purity or something ridiculous like that. It's relatively easy to get a prescription for whatever you want. Especially in States like Florida that don't check if you're doctor shopping.
There are also legal drugs that have similar effects to things like Adderall. A lot of people don't know about them or use them because they haven't been researched as much and come in powder form.
At the very least I think that you shouldn't be put in prison for carrying pills without a prescription.
You might find this Vice article interesting. It talks about how Oxycotin is essentially legal heroin.
I say we should take it slow when it comes to legalization. Perhaps start with things that are found in nature. Marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, being legally able to harvest the opium from poppy seed plants, etc.
>Though if heroin was legal it could be manufactured in a sterile environment where you could probably get like 99% purity or something ridiculous like that.
This already happens. Diamorphine (heroin) is commonly used as a painkiller in hospitals. If you've ever been seriously injured and wound up in hospital with a tube going into your arm attached to a button which gives you a dose of painkiller, limited to something like 3 presses an hour, then you've probably taken heroin, likely in large amounts. The nurse may well have called it "morphine" to avoid scaring you.
Famously, "Heroin" was originally a trademark of the Bayer company.
EDIT: apparently this is only true in the UK. This might be why we don't have the fancy modern opiates here, oxycontin etc.
You are correct. I forgot about our friends across the pond. I believe I read heroin was supposed to be a less addictive alternative of morphine. I don't know much about opioids, I wonder what the breakdown in pricing is between commercial, hospital heroin versus something Oxycontin. I'm guessing it's probably cheaper to produce hospital heroin and drug companies can't compete with it.
Also consider that the US army burns the enormous afghan poppy harvest every summer while big pharma synthesises its opiate molecules at great expense.
There are also legal drugs that have similar effects to things like Adderall. A lot of people don't know about them or use them because they haven't been researched as much and come in powder form.
At the very least I think that you shouldn't be put in prison for carrying pills without a prescription.
You might find this Vice article interesting. It talks about how Oxycotin is essentially legal heroin.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-big-pharma-hooked-ameri...
I say we should take it slow when it comes to legalization. Perhaps start with things that are found in nature. Marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, being legally able to harvest the opium from poppy seed plants, etc.