Osler's Razor

I think opiates should be legalized. After all Big Pharma is raking in tons of money legally, irrespective of the high addiction rates and subsequent devastation their legally synthesized opiates wreak. Also better targeting and "something else" whatever that is. Funny I was just thinking along the “something else” lines the other day when walking in Midtown Manhattan past a string of flashy shops. They never go out of business despite the fact they’re full of super hideous stuff that nobody seems to buy, ever. In fact some of the ghastly objects have been in those windows for at least a decade. I specify Midtown Manhattan because rents there are exorbitant so these shops, like many more businesses in NYC are obviously fronts for laundering money. But then if better targeting means going for the top hitters that implies a huge number of empty money laundering shop-fronts, right? A potential wasteland feel that would negatively impact the legitimate neighboring small businesses wouldn’t you say? A solution to that would have to be well thought out.
 

Big Pharma makes palliatives for sale to folks whose Docs prescribe them. Are you suggesting that Big Pharma have access to the medical records of everyone for whom a drug is prescribed so that it might or must, if the law comes to thatoverride the judgment or lack of it of Docs? I doubt it.

The street drug problem and the problem of abuse of prescription drugs are not equivalents. If street drugs are legalized, then why should medical drugs be regulated? And, if everyone has equal access to all opiates without sanction, will the problem of the abuse of drugs, those presently legal as well as those presently illegal, be solved? I don't see how.

If one can stomach "extreme" libertarian views, and open the door to indiscriminate access and use of addictive palliatives, then shouldn't it make sense to let the addicted find their own way out of their own personally created "hell?" Isn't that the libertarian way?

I think we shall never find a way to keep some people from self-destructive (as we see it) behavior. Certainly the meagre results of drug treatment programs and the amount of recidivism do not encourage me to believe much good will come of decriminalizing the drug trade, just as little good has come from incarceration.

I agree with this thought, however: A solution to would have to be well thought out.But then, some very bright minds have been thinking and thinking for a very long time about such problems: crime, drug addiction, and related subjects. Yet, like the poor, they are always with us. Sure, we can try legalization of street drugs. but to what end?

Damned if I know.