Jag hittade detta. Väldigt intressant och läsvärt. Jag tror definitivt att heroin har fått ett oförtjänt dåligt rykte. Heroin är väldigt vanebildande, det ska man inte sticka under stolen med. Mycket mer än så är det inte. Granskar man vetenskapen, och bortser från förbudspropaganda, finns det ingen anledning att ha heroin illegalt. Huruvida en drog kan skada eller inte har inget med saken att göra. Att skada sig själv är inte olagligt.
Läs och begrunda.
Heroin may be addictive for a minority of people who use it, but how society treats opiate addicts has huge ramifications for how they will process that experience. Prior to 1914 opiates were legal widely used and posed little to no threat to society. Addicts were not ostracised, marginalized or criminalized. They were allowed to continue existing as valued members of the community and because opiates were legal and cheap there was no deviant criminal subculture associated with their use. Heroin-related crime was unknown.
Heroin and pharmaceutical opiates are not going to disappear from the world. Given their efficacy in treating pain (and other things) we would not want them to. Some people will get addicted to them. If that person was you or a loved one, what time period would you want to be living in, pre- or post-1914?
A new thought came to Zeus-born Helen; into the bowl that their wine was drawn from she threw a drug that dispelled all grief and anger and banished remembrance of every trouble. Once it was mingled in the wine-bowl, any man who drank it down would never on that same day let a tear fall down his cheeks, no, not if his father and mother died, or if his brother or his own son were slain with the sword before his eyes.
Homer, Odyssey
Among the remedies which it has pleased almighty God to give man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.
Thomas Sydenham, 1680
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Legalized heroin gets us harm-reduction and reduced mortality. Legal heroin is far safer than alcohol or tobacco. So why is not heroin legal? Is it about morality, it is not right, prejudice, what is it about?
"Unlike alcohol or tobacco, heroin causes no ongoing toxicity to the tissues or organs of the body. Apart from causing some constipation, it appears to have no side effects in most who take it. When administered safely, its use may be consistent with a long and productive life. The principal harm comes from the risk of overdose, problems with injecting, drug impurities and adverse legal or financial consequences."
(Byrne, Andrew, MD, "Addict in the Family: How to Cope with the Long Haul" (Redfern, NSW, Australia: Tosca Press, 1996), pp. 33-34, available on the web)
Myth of heroin overdose. Consensus is that heroin causes deadly overdoses. Is that really true?
"People rarely die from heroin overdoses - meaning pure concentrations of the drug which simply overwhelm the body's responses."
(Peele, Stanton, MD, (1998), "The persistent, dangerous myth of heroin overdose." The Stanton Peele Addiction Website.)
Everyone knows that alcohol and tobacco causes harm and is dangerous, both for the individual and society. Even with moderate use these drugs causes harm, and can be quite lethal with long-term use. What about heroin and other opiates?
"Long-term effects of the opioids themselves are minimal; even decades of methadone use appear to be well tolerated physiologically, although some long-term opioid users experience chronic constipation, excessive sweating, peripheral edema, drowsiness, and decreased libido. However, many long-term users who inject opioids have adverse effects from contaminants (eg, talc) and adulterants (eg, nonprescription stimulant drugs); cardiac, pulmonary, and hepatic damage from infections such as HIV infection and hepatitis B or C, which are spread by needle sharing and nonsterile injection techniques."
(Opioids," The Merck Manual, Section 15: Psychiatric Disorders, Chapter 198: Drug Use and Dependence, Merck & Co. Inc. July 2008)
Most countries does not use heroin in health care. That is because heroin does not have any recognised medicinal values.
"Nevertheless, a few countries, including the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Iceland, Malta, Canada and Switzerland, continue to use heroin (diamorphine) for general medical purposes, mostly in hospital settings (usually for severe pain relief). Until recently, however, Britain was the only country that allowed doctors to prescribe heroin for the treatment of drug dependence."
(http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Heroin_Maintenance#Law)
References that collaborates that heroin could be legal, and would cause less harm and danger, than prohibition.
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cu4.html
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cu12.htm
http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/user-perceptions-occasional-and-controlled-heroin-use
http://jod.sagepub.com/content/34/1/163.full.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2219559/?report=classic
