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This Bold Plan to Fight Opioid Overdoses Could Save Lives--But Some Conservatives Think It's "Immoral"
With Ohio beset by a massive public health around opioid use and overdoses--more than 4,000 Ohioans died of opioid overdoses in 2016--the Cleveland Plain Dealer sent travel editor Susan Glaser to Amsterdam in search of innovative approaches to the problem. While there, she rediscovered Holland's long-standing, radical, and highly effective response to heroin addiction and properly asked whether it might be applied to good effect here.
The difference in drug-related death rates between the two countries is staggering. In the U.S., the drug overdose death rate is 245 per million, nearly twice the rate of its nearest competitor, Sweden, which came in second with 124 per million. But in Holland, the number is a vanishingly small 11 per million. In other words, Americans are more than 20 times more likely to die of drug overdoses than the Dutch.
For Plain Dealer readers, the figures that really hit home are the number of state overdose deaths compared to Holland. Ohio, with just under 12 million people, saw 4,050 drug overdose deaths in 2016; the Netherlands, with 17 million people, saw only 235.
What's the difference? The Dutch government provides free heroin to several score [where a score=20] hardcore heroin addicts and has been doing so for the past 20 years. Public health experts there say that in addition to lowering crime rates and improving the quality of life for users, the program is one reason overdose death rates there are so low. And the model could be applied here, said Amsterdam heroin clinic operator Ellen van den Hoogen.
[...]"It's not a program that is meant to help you stop," acknowledged van den Hoogen. "It keeps you addicted."
That's not a sentiment sits well with American moralizers, such as George W. Bush's drug czar, John Walters, whom Glaser consulted for the story. He suggested that providing addicts with drugs was immoral and not "real treatment," but he also resorted to lies about what the Dutch are doing.
He claimed the Dutch are "keeping people addicted for the purpose of controlling them" and that the Dutch have created "a colony of state-supported, locked-up addicts."
Your humble Ed (who rechopped the quoting, so head off to the full article(s) to see the full story) adds: of course, this is quite a contentious issue, digging deep into moralistic debate, and where clearly there's little agreed-upon objective truth and plenty of opinions. However, we are a community dotted widely round the globe, and so I'm sure there are plenty of stories of what has or has not worked in different locales.
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Portugal Cut Drug Addiction Rates in Half by Rejecting Criminalization
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:54PM (4 children)
So we have to add something like a police force to your list of required government service and agencies. Declaring someone an outlaw is meaningless to someone who already flouts a court order, unless you have some method of enforcement: a police force.
Try reading more carefully. That wasn't my point. My point was that you may be impacted by your neighbour's failure to buy fire service protection. C0lo has shown clearly why private fire protection is a bad idea.
1. Many private schools provide a worse education than public schools provide. Many public schools suffer from two things: a: lack of funding and b: lack of parental support (often because the parents are working multiple jobs and don't have time). Private schools don't have these issues.
2. You didn't answer the question of how poor people are going to pay for this private education. Your argument amounts to the idea that private schools are too cheap because of "competition" from free public schools, which implies that the result of your changes would be to increase the cost of education, making it unaffordable for even more parents.
All you are doing is redoubling on your naivete.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday July 26 2018, @09:26PM (3 children)
We're not adding anything, that's a fundamental, necessary elemeent of any state. When you get rid of that you cross the line from minarchy to anarchy.
The only question is just how small that force can be, and still perform the necessary function.
"Declaring someone an outlaw is meaningless to someone who already flouts a court order, unless you have some method of enforcement: a police force."
That's NOT necessarily true. Again, your ignorance of history is showing. This was an effective punishment for centuries if not millennia!
Once you're declared an outlaw, anyone - whether your old enemy or your best friend or second-in-command; that thinks they can take you is free to try - with no legal consequences if they succeed. This can be very effective in the right setting, and it has the advantage of being an imminently approprate 'punishment' - if you do not consent to the jurisdiction of the court, the court will not take action against you. It will simply withdraw its protection. A good reminder of *why* you should obey it voluntarily, in the first place.
"Try reading more carefully. That wasn't my point. My point was that you may be impacted by your neighbour's failure to buy fire service protection."
Well then you were making a shitty, redundant point. Of course it may be. Doh!
So what? You think there are no potential problems with state-provided fire service?
"1. Many private schools provide a worse education than public schools provide. Many public schools suffer from two things: a: lack of funding and b: lack of parental support (often because the parents are working multiple jobs and don't have time). Private schools don't have these issues."
Again, so what? Private schools suffer from a race to the bottom caused by the existence of public schools, as well as by regulations placed on them requiring them to emulate the prussian model just like the public schools do. You're quibbling over a few crumbs sitting on top of a giant trash-heap.
The prussian model of schooling was never designed for a liberal democracy. It was designed for prussian autocracy. It can't be just a coincidence that we've been hurtling head-first towards that end ever since we adopted it.
"2. You didn't answer the question of how poor people are going to pay for this private education. "
Work.
Look, you want to give the poor things you think they need, and cannot afford. A noble sentiment. But not the most practical, nor is that setting your sights so high.
Instead, find out why they're poor. Find out why they can't afford what they need. Set your sights on fixing *that*, not procuring handouts that at best tend to be dehumanizing and risk creating dependency.
"Your argument amounts to the idea that private schools are too cheap because of "competition" from free public schools, which implies that the result of your changes would be to increase the cost of education, making it unaffordable for even more parents."
Not at all.
Look, I'll spell it out for you. Everyone pays for the public schools, whether you use them or not, making them 'free' in the bad sense of the word. They're not truly gratis - clearly they have a cost, and we pay for them - nor are they in any way a matter of liberty, quite the contrary, both payment and attendance are compulsory. The only sense in which they are 'free' is that payment and attendance are de-linked, so when you are in a position to attend, you've already paid, and you cannot get a refund, so it's 'free' only in that sense.
So when you look at a private school as an alternative, you're not comparing the cost of the public school and the cost of the private school. You're oomparing something near the actual cost of the private school with an effective cost of 0 for the public school. This gives the public school a HUGE, and undeserved, advantage. By itself it's very close to a monopoly grant, and when you calculate in all the other advantages given to this system by law, it's virtually impossible for anyone to effectively compete with it. The fact that private schools still exist speaks to just how awful the public schools are, objectively.
So, no, my system would not necessarily increase the cost of education. It would allow the cost (and other aspects) of education to respond dynamically to the needs of the students, and result in greater value for the dollar. The actual amount spent on education would similarly become a matter for the market to decide, in response to supply and demand. The likely effect would be spending slightly down and results significantly up.
You're fixated on the fact that the system does not *guarantee* that each and every person gets some shitty minimum level. You're right, it does not. That doesn't mean that anyone would be unable to access education, it means that that's not a function of the high level design, it's an implementation detail. Exactly as it should be. The overall design should maximize opportunity, rather than minimize it.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Thursday July 26 2018, @10:13PM (2 children)
You did not list a police force as necessary in your hypothetical state. Now you say it's necessary. What else is also necessary? Your argument style is intellectually bankrupt.
Of course having a police force then changes other things about your argument, such as the concept of outlaws. If you have a police force, you don't need to have outlaws.
If you have outlaws, you are going to spend far more on defending yourself from outlaws than a functioning society would spend on keeping an orderly society.
You still have not provided any way for the poor to be able to afford to educate their kids. You keep trying to dance around the issue, but it still remains. Your society will have a huge underclass of uneducated people that will ultimately provide a drag on society.
What the children of poor families *need* is education. You seem determined not to provide it, despite acknowledging its value to society as a whole.
I am not going to challenge your economic arguments because they are simply too stupid and you have chosen to ignore my points on private vs. public schools.
You are merely deflecting with my point about fire service. I'll take it that you concede my point.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday July 26 2018, @11:06PM (1 child)
Here, read up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night-watchman_state
"Of course having a police force then changes other things about your argument, such as the concept of outlaws. If you have a police force, you don't need to have outlaws."
Nonsense. There are any number of possible scenarios where you do have some sort of police force, even several of them, yet it's still preferable to simply declare a person outlaw rather than order them to kidnap him. The poverty of your imagination boggles the mind.
"If you have outlaws, you are going to spend far more on defending yourself from outlaws than a functioning society would spend on keeping an orderly society."
In the historical examples I referenced, and of which you are clearly completely ignorant, this was an unusual event, most often an exceptional one, and a person declared outlaw almost always left the jurisdiction for the period of the outlawry rather than face a situation where anyone could do anything they wanted to him without legal repercussion.
"You still have not provided any way for the poor to be able to afford to educate their kids."
It's not my job to provide your kids with an education! Why do you have so much trouble understanding that?
"Your society will have a huge underclass of uneducated people that will ultimately provide a drag on society."
No, no it would not, because what creates that underclass are the same policies I would end. The same policies you persistently advocate, as if it's completely inconceivable to you that anything else were possible! I would let the poor escape from poverty, while you would keep them there so you can feel good about yourself, giving the handouts to those poor desperate folks, aren't you a good boy!
Your self-righteous posture is as comical as it is misplaced.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday July 27 2018, @12:45AM
Whatever, buddy. Let me suggest you move to Somalia and see how you find life with minimal government.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory