Is heroin so passe?

[fake]

The stuff sold on the streets is very dangerous, as, due directly to the govts 'war on drugs', it is unregulated and heavily cut with toxins by the criminals who supply it.

 

That is mainly a myth as very few people, considering the numbers of heroin users, have died from these so called toxins or substances used in cutting the raw stuff. Most street stuff is cut with glucose which is cheap and easily available from a chemist shop. Sometimes it may be cut with powdered paracetamol or aspirin, which is also safe. The idea that criminals deliberately cut it with poison is just scare stories.

 

Most addicts these days though chase the dragon, ie burn it on foil and then inhale the fumes as its easier and safer.

[fruitisbad]

That is mainly a myth as very few people, considering the numbers of heroin users, have died from these so called toxins or substances used in cutting the raw stuff. Most street stuff is cut with glucose which is cheap and easily available from a chemist shop. Sometimes it may be cut with powdered paracetamol or aspirin, which is also safe. The idea that criminals deliberately cut it with poison is just scare stories.

 

Most addicts these days though chase the dragon, ie burn it on foil and then inhale the fumes as its easier and safer.

 

 

It's not usually a problem with what it is cut with, more the percentage that is cut. If you had a habbit and you regularly used stuff that was about 70% cut then got a new supplier or whatever who cut it a lot less, then shooting that is what will cause overdoses.

 

 

a constant regulated supply avoids this.

[fruitisbad]

If you legalise more intoxicants, the usage of those intoxicants is bound to go up, why do the pro drugs brigade think that they will be any less abused in their legal form than the legal drugs we already have?

 

I think that if the drugs are prescribed in quite a formal setting, not just handed out, you are made aware of the risks, essentially a type of doctors appointment every time you go to get your drugs would make a lot of people think about what they are doing. A street dealer isn't really going to make you think about what you are doing.

 

For example at the needle exchange, they take some details enquire what you intend to do with the items and ask if you are in any treatment programs or would like to be. Just that little bit of contact might be the step that makes someone decide to turn their life around. We are better as a society to be in contact with these people rather than shunning them and hoping the problem will just go away.

[onewheeldave]

Y

 

I have already acknowledged that legalising drugs will probably make them safer if used responsibly.

 

That doesn't answer the question of how can we ensure they will be no more abused than the legal drugs we have now?

 

That can't be ensured. Just like alcohol, any legal thing can be abused- that's not just drugs and substances, but everything (e.g. cars, hammers etc).

 

But, if drugs are legal and regulated, there will be at least the possibility of responsible use- for example, responsible heroin users can avoid overdosing by simply reading the packet and seeing the content/strength of the product- this is currently impossible with the heroin being supplied by criminals.

[onewheeldave]

I do agree that most of the current problems we experience with heroin use are down to the illegality of its supply.

However, if legally and safely supplied, I am assuming it would still be addicive, as are many legal substances, including prescription medication. Is it possible to use heroin occasionally and not become addicted to it? I genuinely don't know the answer to this question - just how addictive is it? Addiction to anything is very, very difficult to 'manage' without impacting on the addict and those who are close to them. I would say that better addiction treatment ought to go hand in hand with safer supply.

 

Yes, it would be addictive even if legal.

 

Then again, addiction is another thing that has been demonised by the 'war on drugs'- addiction is not necessarily that bad.

 

For example, i've been addicted to tea (caffeine) most of my adult life, as have many others.

 

I don't consider it a problem, as caffeine is pretty harmless.

 

I was also addicted to tobacco for a decade- that was a problem as tobacco is the biggest killer, by far, of all drugs. Fortunately, i managed to quit that one long ago.

 

Legal, regulated heroin, if available, would, on the above scale, in terms of actual harm, be far closer to the tea end of the scale, than the tobacco end.

 

Addiction to the heroin supplied currently via criminals, is a terrible thing, due to the issues mentioned in this thread with toxic cutting agents and the impossibility of determining the strength/content (leading to overdoses).

 

Addiction to legal regulated heroin, would have none of those problems, and, just as they did prior to the 'war on drugs', addicted users would be able to lead happy and productive lives.

[ferno]

Start with the allegation that heroin damages the minds and bodies of those who use it, and consider the biggest study of opiate use ever conducted, on 861 patients at Philadelphia General hospital in the 20s. It concluded that they suffered no physical harm of any kind. Their weight, skin condition and dental health were all unaffected. "There is no evidence of change in the circulatory, hepatic, renal or endocrine functions. When it is considered that some of these subjects had been addicted for at least five years, some of them for as long as 20 years, these negative observations are highly significant."

 

Check with Martindale, the standard medical reference book, which records that heroin is used for the control of severe pain in children and adults, including the frail, the elderly and women in labour. It is even injected into premature babies who are recovering from operations. Martindale records no sign of these patients being damaged or morally degraded or becoming criminally deviant or simply insane. It records instead that, so far as harm is concerned, there can be problems with nausea and constipation.

 

Or go back to the history of "therapeutic addicts" who became addicted to morphine after operations and who were given a clean supply for as long as their addiction lasted. Enid Bagnold, for example, who wrote the delightful children's novel, National Velvet, was what our politicians now would call "a junkie", who was prescribed morphine after a hip operation and then spent 12 years injecting up to 350mg a day. Enid never - as far as history records - mugged a single person or lost her "herd instinct", but died quietly in bed at the age of 91. Opiate addiction was once so common among soldiers in Europe and the United States who had undergone battlefield surgery that it was known as "the soldiers' disease". They spent years on a legal supply of the drug - and it did them no damage.

 

We cannot find any medical research from any source which will support the international governmental contention that heroin harms the body or mind of its users. Nor can we find any trace of our government or the American government or any other ever presenting or referring to any credible version of any such research. On the contrary, all of the available research agrees that, so far as harm is concerned, heroin is likely to cause some nausea and possibly severe constipation and that is all. In the words of a 1965 New York study by Dr Richard Brotman:

 

 

 

"Medical knowledge has long since laid to rest the myth that opiates observably harm the body." Peanut butter, cream and sugar, for example, are all far more likely to damage the health of their users.

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/14/drugsandalcohol.socialsciences

 

Heroin users could receive a clean dose and quietly go back to work, and countries that relax drugs laws actually see a DECREASE in drug usage levels.

[janie48]

I've heard of Brompton Cocktail. Do they still use it in hospitals? For those who don't know it was a syrup of alcohol, cocaine and heroin given to the terminally ill to make their final days better.

 

No they don't use it now,they havn't done since around the late seventies early eighties.

I worked somewhere where it was prescribed for the terminally ill very often.I don't recall seeing anyone suffer.

[HeadingNorth]

No they don't use it now,they havn't done since around the late seventies early eighties.

 

Diamorphine, and cocaine hydrochloride, both remain in the Formulary and are allowed to be prescribed, but I have no knowledge of either actually having been prescribed in the last twenty years. I don't know what rules have to be met in order to prescribe them.

[janie48]

The reason I'm pulling you up on this is not to be pedantic, it's because you're basing some of your argument upon things that are just not true. You originally stated that some drugs are dangerous because they are covered by the dangerous drugs act and that they are on a dangerous drugs register.

 

You are wrong on both counts. There is no such thing as the dangerous drugs register and Opiod use hasn't been covered by the dangerous drugs act for over 40 years!

 

Opiods, some not all, are a controlled drug covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act not because they are dangerous but because of the potential for their abuse and misuse.

 

Yes i know about the Misuse of Drugs Act.Even long after the introduction of this act the controlled drugs as previously mentioned were commonly referred to in hospitals as DDAs (dangerous drug act) the same strict procedures for storage and security and thorough checking applies today with the same legal requirements, one example being the signing and completion of the drug register for such as diamorphine etc when administering that class of drug.

I wasn't suggesting such drugs were dangerous when appropriately prescribed just merely referring to the dangers of misuse in the wrong hands because of their potency after all there would hardly be a need for such legalities and tight restrictions if there was not a good reason.

[johncocker]

ps Bet you havn't heard of a brompton cocktail.

 

 

 

 

 

that set some memories off me

 

I remember sitting with my dying dad in the cancer ward at the northern general in 77/78 ,14 beds and one tv that didn't work

thats about the only thing he looked foward too ,brandy flavour was is favorite .one thing that used to confuse me was that it used to take away a lot of the pain from the stomach cancer that he had ,but not the pain of the bed sores ?

plus he'd usually start to hallucinate after he took them and see all kinds of things ,was that the norm?