Alcohol and Drugs

[roopepa]

I don't know if this has been discussed here before. I'd like to hear what you guys think about the current opioid crisis in the US and other addiction problems our modern societies face. Millions of people literally cannot stop using alcohol or other drugs on a daily basis.

How can we prevent people from using the hard drugs? How can we help those already addicted? What changes need to be made?

Give me a shot of that good systems thinking 

[Roy]

It's completely counter-intuitive. We don't prevent anyone from doing drugs at all!

- First off if we completely legalize all drugs this naturally destigmatizes the culture around them, people will be less likely to use them because there won't be as much of a rebellious "cool" factor to them. People will still do them for other reasons, but this is significant. When people aren't legally or socially designated as criminals for using drugs their behavior is less likely to deepen in unhealthy ways or radiate out and damage society as much. The gateway phenomena will naturally fade this way.

- We invest in giving high quality education on drugs and accurate unbiased information on what they do. Which means changing the current propaganda and demonization approach that's been used for a hundred years. For hilarious examples watch anti-marijuana videos from the 1950's.

- We decriminalize possession of small/medium qualities and use. All that money used to jail people and process them through the court systems can go towards addiction counselling, health related services, safe injection sites, homeless shelters, etc.

- Let people run private enterprise that is taxed and regulated. This directly shrinks and converts black markets.

I'm not being too detailed here I'm just spit-balling common ideas. We have to understand fundamentally that anything that people enjoy whether it's drugs or sex or gambling can't be treated as taboo and demonized too harshly. People will always consume certain things and restricting them from do so is always a losing game that backfires because people always find a way to have access regardless of the collateral damage. The healthiest thing to do is educate and regulate and if done properly things will naturally stabilize and they won't really be a "problem".

Of course it's more complicated than just the things I've mentioned. The opioid crisis for example has factors that are beyond the scope of just legalization and culture. A lot of those drugs are already legal and actually coming from a corrupt and inept medical system.

 

[soos_mite_ah]

I agree with everything that @Roy is saying and in addition to that I think destigmatizing mental health issues as well as making mental health services more widely available is crucial.

To get people to stop abusing drugs, it's important to see why people start in the first place. One of the main reasons why people abuse drugs is because they don't have healthy ways of coping with trauma. It isn't uncommon in AA meetings for people to talk about how they started drinking to cope with abuse, sexual assault, stress etc.  Not only will destigmatizing mental health issues and making mental health services help addicts but it can also prevent more people from becoming addicts since a separate, healthy alternative to not only cope but to heal is available.

 It's also important to view addiction as a mental health issue rather than seeing it as proof that someone is a bad person. People tend to moralize drug use and demonize people who have issues with drugs. By viewing addiction as a mental health issue, it destigmatizes addiction which then enables people with addiction to get help without being judged and it helps their loved ones support them in that endeavor instead of enabling them further by demonizing them and isolating them. Also, making all drugs legal can enable more people to get help with addiction since there wouldn't be the threat of them getting put in jail for drug possession. Addressing addiction is important for addicts and users but it's also important for dealers as well since many dealers are also addicts so therefore both the number of addicts and dealers will decrease. 

And finally, we need to address things like income inequality and low income/poverty stricken areas. People don't just wake up one day and thing "hmm, you know what sounds like a fun idea, let's sell crack." People get into these types of things because of money issues. If impoverished areas were given more resources and we lowered the price of college, I'm sure that would have an effect on the number of people who feel compelled to be dealers.