Unpopular opinions
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"Start with the allegation that heroin damages the minds and bodies of those who use it, and consider the biggest study of opiate use ever conducted, on 861 patients at Philadelphia General hospital in the 20s. It concluded that they suffered no physical harm of any kind. Their weight, skin condition and dental health were all unaffected. "There is no evidence of change in the circulatory, hepatic, renal or endocrine functions. When it is considered that some of these subjects had been addicted for at least five years, some of them for as long as 20 years, these negative observations are highly significant."
Check with Martindale, the standard medical reference book, which records that heroin is used for the control of severe pain in children and adults, including the frail, the elderly and women in labour. It is even injected into premature babies who are recovering from operations. Martindale records no sign of these patients being damaged or morally degraded or becoming criminally deviant or simply insane. It records instead that, so far as harm is concerned, there can be problems with nausea and constipation.
Or go back to the history of "therapeutic addicts" who became addicted to morphine after operations and who were given a clean supply for as long as their addiction lasted. Enid Bagnold, for example, who wrote the delightful children's novel, National Velvet, was what our politicians now would call "a junkie", who was prescribed morphine after a hip operation and then spent 12 years injecting up to 350mg a day. Enid never - as far as history records - mugged a single person or lost her "herd instinct", but died quietly in bed at the age of 91. Opiate addiction was once so common among soldiers in Europe and the United States who had undergone battlefield surgery that it was known as "the soldiers' disease". They spent years on a legal supply of the drug - and it did them no damage.
We cannot find any medical research from any source which will support the international governmental contention that heroin harms the body or mind of its users. Nor can we find any trace of our government or the American government or any other ever presenting or referring to any credible version of any such research. On the contrary, all of the available research agrees that, so far as harm is concerned, heroin is likely to cause some nausea and possibly severe constipation and that is all. In the words of a 1965 New York study by Dr Richard Brotman: "Medical knowledge has long since laid to rest the myth that opiates observably harm the body." Peanut butter, cream and sugar, for example, are all far more likely to damage the health of their users. "
Nick Davies, The Guardian, 2001 -
One problem here bertoni is: you are comparing medical controlled and administered doses of heroin to the uncontrolled consumption of sugar by a kid. That doesn’t go well
But then Paracelsus said: ”The dose makes the poison” which is true on both accounts I guess.
edit: Oh okay..you edited your post about your kid and sugar
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Yeah sorry BF! Realised the analogy wasn't very balanced
The article wasn't encouraging Heroin use rather attracting attention as to the dangers and pitfalls of prohibition. Look at all the blind blues artists, rendered blind by the moonshine they drank. One example of harmful prohibition. Hope you're good anyway BF -
Because toe caps are awesome, that's why.
