Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Aldeer General Forum Yes, let's legalize all drug use.

Wow...some of y'all are scary individuals.

PCP, the illegal use of legal pain killers is what is fueling the heroin outbreak today. My daughter started on illegally obtained prescription drugs and graduated to heroin. They are getting those prescription drugs from somewhere. Whoever is supplying those pain killers is KILLING people and need to be charged as such.

Absolutely all the way back to the drug dealing Dr that only cares about making a $1 and nothing else.

The fundamental problem here is people are killing themselves (no one else is killing them). There is no stopping an addict - they will be addicted to paint thinner if nothing else is available.

Alabama has recently instituted new regulations where a doctor has to check a data base to see if a person has been prescribed narcotics recently and the dose amounts given in an attempt to stop people from going from doctor to doctor. Also there is a similar data base pharmacies are suppose to use now.

I don't know if these things will help. But, the state and the Feds are tracking what doctors prescribe now.

Interesting article that I came across.
http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/opioid-abuse-plummeting-states-legal-marijuana/

Troy, I agree with everything you said, and I'm so sorry to hear about your daughter's problem. Prayers sent for her.

I just wanted to point out that this new law is gonna do nothing to address the actual problem, and will just make life harder on people that are truly hurting.

And I also wanted to say that I think the ideas a lot of folks have about the easy availability of pain meds are outdated. I talked to a well known orthopedic surgeon a few months back. This is a guy that cuts into people every day, and he told me that he didn't write scripts for pain meds at all now. And he wasn't happy about that because he realizes most of his patients need them for at least a few days. He said he was not gonna risk having his picture in the newspaper.

Will holding doctors to this level of accountability solve the problem? Maybe it will help. I had a church member who worked at a drug store about 10 years ago who would buy the prescriptions of elderly people who wanted food more than their pain meds, and I don't think this happens as much now. I've read that the difficulty of getting prescription meds now has sent some to heroin; seems to be plenty of it.

I don't think this is a problem the govt can solve.

i think they should definitely do something. What they're doing now ain't working. Alot of y'all have been listening to these politicians so long you're unable to form you're on opinion. These attitudes are the same as the tetolers during the Volstead act. For instance, blaming Drs for Verizon addicts. Most everyone here has taking pain med. How many decided to shoot heroin. There's 2 things that cause people to shoot dope.#1 people wanna shoot heroin and #2 a supply of heroin. Heroin is basically legal now anyways due to methadone clinics.

I have 8 extruded discs in my spine. I have been on and off pain management since I was 31 (almost two decades). I've never used heroin. I have a small stash of lortab 10's that I guard with my life because when I need them - I REALLY NEED THEM and they are now impossible to get.

I grew up in places where everything was not legal but no one enforced any drug laws. I've done every drug but heroin and mushrooms. I'm clean now simply because I live in a place where it's REALLY not cool.

I would do a couple of lines of coke a quarter if it was legal or ignored. I don't miss any of it, I don't crave any of it.

Addiction rests with the individual, not the supply of the drug.

help me understand this, you are using Portugal as an example for us to follow and validate it by proclaiming that the crime rate in the US is almost twice what portugals is, another way to put it is that portugals crime rate is a little over half of what the US'S is, you do realize that portugals population is a little over 10 million folks and the US is a little over 300 million? Our crime rate is less than twice what portugals is and our population is 30 times that of Portugal, seems like to me we don't need to be following their lead.

I agree addiction does rest with the individual. But one cannot ignore how the supply or availability of the drug isn't a major factor in both drug use and the potential for addiction afterwards.

In my past I have lots of life experiences with drugs, sadly. I've been there and know the damage it causes. I escaped without an addiction problem or screwing my life up, but to this day some close friends who were right there with me are still dealing with consequences of their choices.

This cannot be ignored: Among many common threads in drug use and addiction is....the access to the drug itself. Yes, the individual choice to partake, to seek out and to desire the "high" or "party" is definitely a driving force too. But normally people act like people---if any "thing" is readily available it is more popular and more used. The harder to find, the less people are looking for it.

Pot is everywhere and easily accessed by most any one of any age with very minimal effort. For harder drugs, the person has to go find it and when they do....well.....

I don't think you understand statistics.

Let me try to explain.

Normalization is a thing that people who do research perform so that all of the statistics we present are comparable. The rate is a ratio of the population - not a set number that needs to be scaled up or down - that number is already scaled so all you have to do is compare the rate. The occurrence is a raw (not normalized) number that would need to be normalized (or scaled up/down).

When someone says "statistically speaking" that is what they mean. If our education system was where it needs to be - everyone would not only already know that - they would also be equipped with the knowledge needed to check the math and make sure that the study was not intentionally skewed. The math is explained in the "methodology" portion of the research so those who have a decent education can take a look and see whether it's a good study or just some bulldoodoo someone came up with to back up their opinion.

We have unlimited access to alcohol. Is it better or worse than drugs?

My answer is - it depends. Some drugs are obviously worse. Cocaine is a hell of a lot of fun but you can kill yourself in five minutes if your a dummy. Pot - can't kill yourself even if you try. Only three side effects - sleepy, hungry and happy. He may look like he's dead but he's going to wake up in two hours and eat you out of house and home.

I pass winos on the street every day. It's the individual, man. If they didn't have wine, they would be (and are) stealing spray paint and huffing it.

and where do you put heroin???

I'm scared to death of it. I wouldn't use it with you threatening to shoot me and I truly believe you would if you thought it was a good idea.

edit: I have several close friends who have killed themselves with it. I wouldn't let them know where I lived when they got bad because I didn't want that crap around and I didn't want them walking off with my stuff.

I heard a very interesting talk radio show on medical reform. I need to look it up and see if it can be heard online. It was on Insight radio on XM 121.

They discussed many facets of medical reform but the one I found most interesting was the lack of patient outcome assessment. Basically, doctors are rated by "patient satisfaction surveys". No one is actually rating doctors based on their successful treatments, only on whether or not they are keeping their patients happy. This is a major contributor to doctors writing prescriptions they may not otherwise write. It has nothing to do with laziness as someone put it. It's about keeping your patient satisfaction rating up so insurance companies will continue to do business with you. It's definitely a broken system that needs to be addressed but I could easily see it leading to more bureaucracy.

That kind of make my point for me.

Alcohol can be tasty with a meal, fun at the lake, or deadly when a driver kills someone when they were impaired. The parents who have lost a child to drunk driving accidents may argue too many beers are just as bad as heroine.

Easy Access to alcohol 100% increases the risk to become addicted to it. The wino in the street....how did they get there? That's the underlying question.

Is alcohol their way of self-medicating for some tragedy or pain?
Is alcohol a way to self-manage some mental issue?
Did they become alcoholics, never succeeded in treatment (if they got any), lost everything and are now in the gutter?
If they had $100, would they buy alcohol or a harder drug?

Same with drugs too.

People decide to partake, 100% agree.
But the drug and the chemical impact on the person is what addicts.
Some people can push pass that and end addiction by themselves while others needs various levels of help.

One thing we can all agree on though I suspect: There are dangerous things out there that can hurt you, kill you and mess you up. Be careful.