Saudi Prince on trial for "sexual" killing of servant

[BadBeast]

From what I saw, in the Independent not long ago, there are roughly 240,000 crack and heroin users.

Today, Crack is being marketed, with Heroin by dealers who offer a £20 rock of Crack, free with every eighth of an ounce of Heroin. 

Seriously?
They must be selling that Heroin out for a huge profit to just being giving crack away... unless they're going to start charging after they've got people hooked.

You haven't heard of the "first hit's free" marketing strategy?  Of course they intend to start charging once people are hooked.

Nah, Crack is really cheap at the moment. You can get a sizeable rock for less than the price of three pints of beer. So £20 worth with every £300 of Heroin cost's them virtually nothing.  I don't like Cocaine, or Heroin, but I do know people who do.

[AFK]

Interesting fact: when heroin was decriminalized in the UK, before the 1970s, it's addicts were mostly ex-soldiers and people recovering from surgery.  There were no crimes associated with it, and doctors were licenced by the government to treat addicts with it.  Since heroin's major physiological side effect - apart from being very addictive - is constipation, people did not die from it or suffer in ill health.  There was no "heroin problem", it was not a popular drug and its usage was contained.

Then, in the 70s, the American government, as part of it's war on drugs, put pressure on UK ministers to outlaw it, which they did. Since then, the addict population has exploded from a few thousand to over 200,000 currently.  The drugs are cut with all kinds of terrible shit, meaning overdoses and complications are more common.  Because it's illegal, the price has risen, meaning addicts frequently have to commit crimes in order to afford their habit.  And government attempts at crackdowns only result in increasing the street price of heroin.

So basically, there was never a heroin problem in this country until our government created one.

I can imagine. If it's not on the black market it's not being sold by shady characters targeting the homeless and lesser-mentally-capable.

Seriously, when I see the people attending the methadon distribution point, those poor sods are so retarded, I can't imagine it's just a result of drug-abuse. (Additionally, I believe that certain mental disorders have a high co-morbidity of inclination to addiction, so that makes sense. AD(H)D is one of those disorders, btw)

It's usually a mixture of pre-existing conditions which make addiction more likely, what the drugs are cut with and socio-economic status, which feeds into pre-existing mental conditions.  I'm sure RWHN could point out more on that, I only know the basics from speaking to NHS people and a journalist who investigated the government role in the heroin boom.

I'm just seeing this now (mostly because I did a vain search of my name).  But it is true that you see a lot of co-morbidity when it comes to substance use.  There has been a significant movement here in the states to develop more treatment models that take into account mental health and substance abuse.  Because if both are present, and you only treat one of them, you're not really helping the patient all that much.  The issue, of course as it always is, is adequate funding for programs. 

[Cain]

That sounds remarkably similar to how we approached things in terrorism studies ie; if we only stop people blowing stuff up, and not the conditions which make people want to blow stuff up, we're not helping much (although there is a school of thought which posits if we can achieve perfect security, who gives a fuck why people want to blow stuff up), only there the problem is all the money is in the stopping people from blowing stuff up areas and not in the stopping people from wanting to blow stuff up areas.

And that money is a truly significant amount.  As I'm sure it is with enforcing the drug war versus treating addiction and related mental illnesses which feed into it.