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The situation is darker and bleaker than that because of the third option: social contagion.
In Scotland, drug overdose deaths have soared to over a thousand a year in a country/(region of the UK) of merely five million. There is a big concentration of deaths in Dundee. The dynamics are rather like a contagious disease. How does social contagion mimic the in-person spread of an infection disease in the internet age? Junkies in Dundee are not going to Glasgow to buy their drugs; it is friend of a friend stuff with-in Dundee. The need to pass physical drugs from hand to hand creates geographically local dynamics.
But I'm old. I'm already familiar with the heroin cycle. Heroin is really cool. The fluffy cloud happiness of the high. The don't-give-a-fuck charisma of the users. The bodies piling up. And piling up. The rising part of the heroin cycle doesn't last. You don't introduce any-one younger to heroin use after your own funeral. And the occasion itself puts a damper on the whole scene. Soon heroin gains the evil reputation that recreational use deserves. "Nobody" uses any more. But every year, Mr Nobody grows a year older. Eventually the young people, who won't touch the stuff because they saw what it did to those ten years their senior, are no longer young enough to be at risk of starting. Those young enough to start, look to those a little older and see neither use nor warning signs. Some of them work out for themselves that heroin is fun. They tell their friends. The cycle closes and heroin in cool again.
I came of age during a low point of the heroin cycle, so I never tried it. But the micro-foundations of the cycle were evident in parallel matters. Things spread by word of mouth and from hand to hand. Friends warn against some things and endorse other things.
He was 35. Which brings my comment to the edge of the abyss. Back when needle sharing made Glasgow the AIDS capital of Europe, the prognosis for a heroin addicted was to become addicted around 20. Use for ten years. 50% die. 50% hit rock bottom (or just age out) and quit. 35 is old for an addict. Now that AIDS is treatable, the prognosis is probably better. Now that fentanyl is on the scene the prognosis is probably worse. I'm not keeping up with the statistics and don't know how it balances out. When some-one dies of drug addiction, we bury an "innocent victim". His "friends" in the drug scene play the role of his personal angels of death. And walking my comment over the edge of the abyss: did he take his curse to the grave with him, or did he manage to pass it on before he died?
I suspect that there is a missing demographic on the Motte: married with children. They are too busy to comment here. But I'm guessing that they want the junkies gone. They want the junkies gone before their children grow up and reach the age to be at risk. They don't want that to coincide with a high point of the heroin cycle. The stakes are much higher than a friend having plumbing gear stolen out of his truck.
Yup yup yup from one of those "married with children". I also model drug addiction as a contagion and it is clear to me that my own kids are better off if fentanyl is as prevelant as possible up until they reach the age where they might be exposed to it. And this is even moreso thanks to local decriminalization efforts - if you can't get junkies off the street with jail what's left?
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We read the QCs tho ;-)
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Reporting in, and I post less largely because now that I have more skin in the game, When I imagine these issues impacting my daughter, I quickly become incandescent with rage. The least of my problems is getting modded here for being "uncharitable" to the monsters in human skin roaming amongst us. Far more worried about ending up on a watch list given that violence in my first, second and last reaction to the question of "What will I do when this arrives at my door?"
I second the sentiment about concern for kids. When childless I could not give a shit about drug policy or gender education, because let people live how they want. Now that I have kids, I waste time on asinine committees and boards because I want to guard against liberal crazies.
Its easy to not care if the only skin in the game is your own. Its much more personal when you actually give a shit about someone else. Vague secular humanist universalism has nothing on blood and soil.
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No, there are many mottizens who are married with children. Myself included.
And yes. I hung with a drug-happy crowd in my youth, though the heroin users were only peripheral to it. Enough people I knew on some level ruined and/or killed themselves through drugs, including an actual friend (of which I never had a lot).
Would I say that the most catastrohpic of them should have simply been made "gone"? Yes, absolutely, before they drag anyone else with them. Sad as it is, those individual lives are not worth the damage they cause. There are certainly edge cases where it may be worthwhile to have a conversation, but it's also by all means possible to drug oneself far beyond salvation and any reasonable expectation of tolerance by others.
And my thought there is not even "it would suck for my friends to have been Duterte'd", but "if only their predecessors' druggie careers had been cut short and the dealers strung up from lampposts, they might not have ruined themselves". I'm certain there will always be some level of drug use regardless of what society does, but a society that tolerates heroin junkies would better be some degree of libertarian. For a nanny-state, it's an embarassment.
Part of my own reckoning with the fecklessness of youth was nursing a 'good' friend back to health repeatedly. Having a slurring dribbling mess repeatedly collapse on your couch is fine if he cleans up after himself, but I asked him if he even enjoyed getting so trashed and his quiet 'I don't know how else to live' really shook me. Great family, loving relationships, excellent prospects, and he was throwing it away for diminishing returns because of a short circuited neurological reward pathway and a social system that enabled self destructiveness.
I left the states, abandoned my old number and ultimately lost touch with him entirely. His facebook page is a yearly 'Happy birthday ___' from the same few people, and I strongly suspect no one knows if he is alive or dead. I know the another guy is alive because he purged all his social media, but these autoupdated digital profiles might as well be tombstones.
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Reporting in. And yes I just want them gone.
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