New idea for hard drug policy. Is this the greatest solution ever?

[martins name]

Okey, I just had a crazy new idea for how to handle hard drug policy that would increase user safety, kill the illegal market and reduce consumption.
This is primarily about opiates but meth and cocaine could also work. I'm not talking about weed or psychedelics.

This is the policy:

• You can buy hard drugs at a safe injection facility.
• You have to do the drugs at the facility, you can't bring them with you.  
• To be eligible to buy you have to have a certificate that you obtain by handing in a small amount of the specific drug that you want to buy. The certificate lasts for a medium length of time, say 5 months.
• Towards the end of the certificate time, there is a period where the amount of drugs you are eligible to use a day decreases until it reaches 0, to wean users of the drugs in a safe manner.

The result of this is that every time a dealer gets a new client, the client takes the drugs to the facility and obtains a certificate. He then no longer needs the dealer, so the dealer loses the client. Like this, dealers lose all their clients. With no dealers, users can't get certificates to get more drugs. 

This is a win from every angle. 

You can then wage total war on the drug market that is left without getting users in the crossfire.

Can you think of any unintended consequences? Let's discuss!

Edited February 10, 2023 by martins name

[Zedman]

To make ideas into reality you need power. Financial power, political power, power of persuasion, power of love.

I think it will require a lot of power to achieve this. A metric ton of power to convince conservatives for example.

Sorry drug problem but we need that power elsewhere.

[Sucuk Ekmek]

8 hours ago, martins name said:

You can then wage total war on the drug market that is left without getting users in the crossfire.

 

I think you are from USA. 

Here is some treat for you all.

05:53 is my fav part.

 

 

[martins name]

@Sucuk Ekmek I'm Swedish. Maybe war isn't a good word choice. Tho it's good rhetoric for getting conservatives on board. The problem with the war on drugs is that it's really a war on drug users. If you get the users out of the picture and effectively only target the marketers of heroin I don't see the problem.

 

Edited February 11, 2023 by martins name

[martins name]

@Zedman There are countries where drug reform is being considered. Having smart policy ideas out there for those countries is a good thing. I'm guessing you are American since you only seem to consider your own country or part of the world.

[Sucuk Ekmek]

50 minutes ago, martins name said:

@Sucuk Ekmek I'm Swedish. Maybe war isn't a good word choice. Tho it's good rhetoric for getting conservatives on board. The problem with the war on drugs is that it's really a war on drug users. If you get the users out of the picture and effectively only target the marketers of heroin I don't see the problem.

 

Here is how I view this: I don't think conservatives are the real problem. It's more like various interests in the government are profiting from this market. So you gonna fight agaist your own government and narrative. I don't see it as a win from every angle. 

[martins name]

14 minutes ago, Sucuk Ekmek said:

It's more like various interests in the government are profiting from this market.

The Swedish government isn't run over with bribes and special interests like the US. Most countries aren't. The US might be a special case here.

[Sucuk Ekmek]

1 hour ago, martins name said:

The Swedish government isn't run over with bribes and special interests like the US. Most countries aren't. The US might be a special case here.

Sweden demands cheap labor... US is not a special case...

 

[martins name]

@Sucuk Ekmek What do immigration and nationalism have to do with special interests' grip on government? 

[integral]

On 2/10/2023 at 5:27 AM, martins name said:

• You have to do the drugs at the facility, you can't bring them with you.  

How will they get home? 

[Sucuk Ekmek]

 

16 minutes ago, martins name said:

@Sucuk Ekmek What do immigration and nationalism have to do with special interests' grip on government? 

Immigration is only one thing. It's not like government accepting these people for their own good. Government does this because it benefits swedens  top %1 elite. I don't think ordinary swedish citizens are benefiting from immigrants. If this is not corruption, I don't know what corruption is.

[Thought Art]

Simply make them all legal to possess in certain quantities but illegal to sell. Then, focus on the mental health and trauma aspect. Make the policies around drugs oriented towards healing, health, wellness and curing of trauma. Stop punishing drug addicts with jail time and criminal records. 
 

Safe use sites are good idea too. But, people should be able to use in their own homes as well. 
 

Increase education around safe drug use. The government should create a pure and healthy supply of the street drug to ensure people don’t overdose and then support them with whatever therapy is needed. Make them easy to access with little to no questions asked and make them affordable. Try to use systems thinking to run the street dealers out of business somehow. 
 

Make mental health services widely available and affordable. Invest billions in training speakers, therapists, etc in helping heal these communities. 
 

Creating stronger regulations around doctors over prescribing and better rules around what pain killers can and can’t be used. 
 

Addiction as it is costs billions of dollars a year. It’s a problem worth fixing. Demonizing a drug using addict is nonesense and hypocritical. 
 

If someone has a hard drug problem they are likely simply trying to cope with and cover their pain. Covering pain should not be illegal. This is idiocy. 
 

It’s arbitrary that some of these drugs are illegal while smoking Tabacco, alcohol are legal. 
 

Focus on the whole system of the social matrix at once. Why are people so hurt, traumatized and full of pain that they need to cover the pain? 
 

The pain and trauma is the real problem with our society. The drug use is a last resort solution for people to cover their pain. They know no other way. The addiction is a tactic of sorts to not feel the pain, shame, guilt, trauma, etc if their abuse and neglect of various sorts. 

Edited February 11, 2023 by Thought Art

[martins name]

@Sucuk Ekmek As I understand it the biggest motivator for immigration policy is the declining birth rate. The economy will collapse if it's not fixed. stage green Social democrats that voted for this policy thought immigration would help economically out of sheer stupidity. The reality is that they are an economic burden and the resources would have helped 10x more in refugee camps. From the liberal side of the political system then yes banks and property owners are making a killing. Most of the liberal polititions that voted for mass immigration owns property and made a killing of it. Also, Fredrik Reinfeldt used immigration to destroy the welfare state, which played a big part in the policy. There are some corruptive influences on the Swedish government, but it's not so much from corporations. More so, the self-interests of the political and cultural elite in Stockholm. I don't see how this influences drug policy tho.

[martins name]

50 minutes ago, integral said:

How will they get home? 

This is actually a great point lol. By train or bus I guess. This would only work in an urban environment. I'm such a city slicker I didn't even think of this.

@Thought Art 

Part of the idea behind my proposal is that it would work in smaller countries. Superpowers like America, China, Russia and Japan can run their drug policies how they want. But for smaller countries like Sweden where I'm from if top-shelf heroin would flow from here to neighboring countries, there would be international repercussions. No head of state would agree to get that headache.

The other problem with just making it legal is that it would actually attract more users. I really don't know if it's worth it but I'm open to the idea. But at the very least I agree that it should be decriminalized.

 

[Thought Art]

9 minutes ago, martins name said:

This is actually a great point lol. By train or bus I guess. This would only work in an urban environment. I'm such a city slicker I didn't even think of this.

@Thought Art 

Part of the idea behind my proposal is that it would work in smaller countries. Superpowers like America, China, Russia and Japan can run their drug policies how they want. But for smaller countries like Sweden where I'm from if top-shelf heroin would flow from here to neighboring countries, there would be international repercussions. No head of state would agree to get that headache.

The other problem with just making it legal is that it would actually attract more users. I really don't know if it's worth it but I'm open to the idea. But at the very least I agree that it should be decriminalized.

 

I don’t know about the first part. 
 

But, I doubt it would attract more users. You aren’t marketing it. You are just making it safe to use. Have you read a case study of people making illegal drugs legal increased its use? Made it more addictive? Sounds like an assumption. 
 

The real problem is the addiction. 

[martins name]

@Thought Art It is an assumption but it's only logical as more people get access to it more people do it. I don't know if such a study exists. I don't think this kind of legalization has been tried. I've known people who would try it. Some of the same people have tried tobacco and got hooked. You are not just making it safe to use. You are also making it accessible, which I believe will lead to more addiction.

[Thought Art]

@martins name The drugs aren’t the problem but the symptom is what I wanna point to. 

[Zedman]

@martins name

While trying to assume my origins you completely missed the point. What I said applies universally to any country and any policy.

Your proposition is good but hard and expensive to implement. Investment vs reward ratio is simply not worth it unless drug problem is really really bad like it was in Portugal 2001. And even then they went for cheapest most easily implementable option. I mean no offense or disrespect but your proposition requires facilities, safety audits, certification offices, additional police forces to crack down on illegal use and it just might not work anyway because people want to use drugs and go party and break roadsigns not sit in a white padded room

[martins name]

@Thought Art Ye I know and I agree. Doesn't change that access increases use tho. We should get at the problem from all angles.

@Zedman Maybe the revenue from the clinic can fund itself. People who do opiates don't want to party from my knowledge. That's why I wrote the policy is primarily for opiates. Tho yea I can see how this would never work with coke.  
Is your point that the left should focus on more important policies? Because liberals could push this policy too.