Free heroin quickly puts 7 users in hospital

[ovidsen]

Good to see that progress is being made in "the war on drugs"

Not.

Free heroin quickly puts 7 users in hospital

West Side junkies lined up single file Friday morning in an alley near Cermak and Keeler for a "pass out" -- a free taste of the latest batch of heroin to hit the street.

"They do it all the time. Dealers give it away. It's like when Wal-Mart is having a sale," a neighbor said. "It brings in customers."

By lunchtime, dopers were passed out in public all over the place.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-heroin15.html

[SoftUnderbelly]

1. surprised

quite surprised that in this media report, they actually mention that a drug addict can also hold down a job. dont often see that in the news!

of course the correct response will be legalisation with regulation, cant quite see it happening though...

interesting that 50 years ago, when heroin was criminalised in britain, how few addicts there were:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4647018.stm

[ovidsen]

2. When heroin is outlawd, only outlaws will use heroin

By no means am I advocating drug use or cheering drug addiction. No matter what the substance... heroin, oxycontin, crank, nicotine... dependency is bad, okay?

But I found this thought from the BBC article you linked to quite interesting:

"In the context of all that has happened since, from heroin's link with violent crime to the transfer of HIV among users who share needles, as well as countless other social ills, such an article today would seem unthinkable in all but the most libertarian of newspapers.

The heroin related problems they list (violence and HIV through shared needles), as well as most of the ones they don't, wouldn't be problems if heroin were legal and regulated.

[SoftUnderbelly]

3. well

i probably wouldn't use smack even if it was legal, but i would like it to be my choice and i would also like to know what is in what im taking.

how much money does the US spend on its war on drugs? i imagine its quite a large figure that could be better spent actually helping people? guess the right wing wouldn't like that, they do tend to get all flustered over the drugs issue. less government is good government, unless someone is doing something i dont like...

[madrchsod]

4. interesting

i wonder what was the composition of the junk..either cut with shit or really pure.junk is wonderful stuff isn`t it!