Would Drug Legalization Reduce Or Increase Addiction?

What a great debate: would drug legalization reduce or increase addiction?

If you really like heroin, but you have to find someone who sells it and put yourself into dangerous situations at time to get it, is that standing in your way of getting high? Wouldn’t it make your life so much easier if you could get your prescription for heroin filled at your local pharmacy?

Well, that is essentially what is happening with prescription drugs.

I can tell my doctor that the pain from that car accident is still lingering, and I just can’t go about my everyday life with the Vicodin pills he’s been giving me. If I get the prescription renewed, I walk myself down to the pharmacy, or even call in the Rx and then pick it up through the drive-thru. Either way, my drug of choice is in my hot little hands.

Vicodin, OxyContin, and heroin are all in the same drug class: opiates or opioids. Abusing painkillers is no different than shooting up, other than the legal versus illegal component.

Opiates

If I am hooked on an opiate, I am going to find a way to get high through legal or illegal measures, so would the added convenience of legality change my behavior? Would heroin being dispensed like prescription pills reduce my ability to get it because I would have to show medical need to a physician?

Maybe drug legalization would actually reduce addiction because the availability on the street would (in theory) become obsolete. Or, maybe the stuff I can then get on the street is much stronger, in an effort to allure customers to stay the illegal route for a better product at a lower cost than you’d get it for at the pharmacy.

Overall, would that reduce or increase addiction?

If cocaine was available for purchase like cigarettes at any convenience store, would more people casually use it, or would the main buyers still be those who would buy cocaine whether it’s legal or not?

What about young people who want to experiment? Buying a pack of smokes, a dose of cocaine, and a soda could be just that easy, or again, would a prescription be needed and all drugs would go through the medical system like what’s happening with marijuana?

Many Variables

There are so many variables and different sets of possibilities to answer the question.

What if we look at alcohol. It is legal to drink in the United States once you are 21 years old. Are there more alcoholics because the substance is legal? There are countless heroin addicts, and that substance is illegal. Do addicts really even care about the legal system when they’ve reached full-blown addiction?

Can the legal system dissuade people from progressing to the point of addiction, though? If all drugs become government-regulated, and you can essentially only get substances through the medical system, would people spend their time doing other things? Maybe a whole subset of the addiction culture would not have so easily kept abusing certain drugs.

What do you think?

Have you been addicted to an illegal substance and would have had a different take on it had that drug been legal?

If heroin and cocaine were treated the same way as medical marijuana, or course there is still plenty of illegal weed available all over our neighborhoods. With more dangerous drugs that can be made stronger, does legalization drive financially limited addicts to greater chances of overdose and death? Would legalization reduce the desire to use because it’s no longer breaking the law?

Addicts

Addicts know addicts, and the mind of addiction is a dark place. Whether drugs are legal or illegal seems inconsequential when abuse has progressed to addiction.

Maybe the focus should be on prevention and treatment instead of on legal or illegal.

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