...Gotcha! Just kidding.

I want to talk about drugs!

I'm pretty sure that the people who are currently hopelessly addicted to heroin et al are, more or less, in the big picture, compared with the rest of us, perfectly OK and ready to get on with their lives, even if that means just continuing to use the drugs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They could likely take their favorite drug as desired, show up to whatever job they have, make some money, pay the rent, yadda yadda yadda.

Right? -- Wake up, put the coffee on, get out your kit, cook up a batch and consume it. "Aaaah......", they say (probably.)

Some things tend to get in the way of this potentially regular, hum-drum, day-in-the-life routine.

For example, acquiring hundreds of dollars per day when for some portion of that day you're groggy and stupid, is a challenge. You can get maybe hundreds of dollars per day, technically, if you are at the top of the picking order at the Quick Stop (i.e. There are convenience store workers that make $200 per day; some at least.)

But hundreds might mean more like 3 or 5 or 8 hundreds. I posit that if these chemicals were made in the most efficient way possible, like in the way that say Sriracha is made, it would not be quite so expensive.

Do you disagree? Of course you do, why should you make it easy for me? I respect and value you skepticism.

Part One

Let's start with opium: You grow a plant, you harvest some kind of sap, let it dry, scrape it up and smoke it. Is that not how it works? How much should opium cost? Isn't that how rubber used to be made? How much did old school rubber cost? $300 per day? Is it really that complicated?

Then there's the endless refinement and/or synthesizing techniques you can use. Heroin in particular is, if I am not mistaken, make opium (see above), add some cheap chemicals, shake it up... let it dry? Add more cheap chemicals?

I still don't think we're making anything that's more difficult to make than say aspirin...? ...ibuprofen? ...witch hazel?

Am I wrong? Consider the thought experiment "Let's make heroin as cheaply as possible!!"

If you like, you can shut down the thought experiment right now because drugs are bad. That's fine. But I'm going to proceed here, in both mind and keyboard. I'm sorry to have failed you if you think this thinking is wrong.

We have millions of very enthusiastic consumers. We only have to make tiny quantities per-person. It's easy to transport (...) We have delivery mechanism (that is, delivery into the body) that are established and work as they are meant to. We needn't worry about anything except for making, packaging, and delivering.

Again, if we don't get distracted from our thought experiment by how bad drugs are and hey we shouldn't even be thinking about this... if we don't get distracted and continue on, it's hard to find a step in the whole process that drives the price up to $300 per person.

Synthesizing chemicals is not magic nor difficult once the processes are pinned down. I believe they are well pinned down in the case of Heroin. We know exactly what to do. It's likely that this information would require some hunting around. Wikipedia, may have all the required steps, but I bet that if they do, the aren't crazy about it.

It's scary having these dangerous ideas sitting on your hard disk. I guess.

But the point remains: you and two of your cousins could figure it out if you were given the task and had sufficient incentive (...)

You might be distracted at this point by how many people are going to DIE (DIE!!) if we actually went forward with this and again feel compelled to quietly walk away from this sketchy thought experiment that I'm forcing you to participate in.

Feel free to do so. I will bravely type on. "For here I type, for I can do no other" or maybe "And yet, I type."

Part Two

People die (DIIIE!!) when taking heroin not because they sit down one night and keep consuming more and more until their heart stops.

That's not what happens.

What happens is they get batches of heroin that vary wildly (WIIILDLY!!) in potency. In recent times, they will more and more frequently come across a batch containing fentanyl. This makes the potency problem much worse. Why the fentanyl? In my ignorance, I would guess that it's because fentanyl is synthesized in large quantities and therefore cheaper.

If we lived in a world where heroin junkies just went to a store, of some kind, look at the label, go home and "get well". (Note that if you prefer, your favorite layer of government can run the stores. We often do that with ethanol for some reason.)

They consumption might go up over time, but the consumer is at lest informed and doesn't run the rusk of injecting rocket fuel when they think they're injecting kerosine.

I might be wrong. Remember: I might be wrong ...but you're not! Drugs bad.

There's plenty of evidence for this. No doubt we will give The Drug War a go for another 6th or 7th decade. We will try a mix of "put you in prison because drugs are bad" and "put you in a re-cultivation love camp because drugs are bad". In any case, don't do drugs. That's the goal: make you not do drugs!

Part Three

If people can do drugs that cost as much as Tylenol and comes with a label that tells you its strength, clearly, and not die and not engage in home invasions and prostitution, what becomes your argument for going around and slapping the drugs out of their hands?

I really think this is how it works. I believe this because I lack any good, clear data. I lack data because data collection is illegal.

For me, brave voter, there's enough evidence to just let things be, more or less, and throw the laws in the shredder. Not, adjust the laws so we can dispense some drugs in some places while maximizing tax revenue, but rather just undo all of the various laws completely. <blip!>

Part Four

I wonder if there's a nice, handy, disrupt-y way to give drug users knowledge of the potency of what they're about to consume.

Could, for example, a cheap chemical be added for this? Could a chemical be added to any kind of opiate that tells the potency when a 2nd chemical is added?

I know that there are drugs test developed at great expense to allow the police (for example) to determine the presence of drugs; nice, convenient, mass-produced test kits that are very reliable. (good for them!)

That tells you about its presence. Could a chemical be added that makes it easy for consumers to determine the strength? ("yes")

It's interesting to note: Even if such a thing existed and were provided to drug manufacturers for free, there is a strong incentive for them to not include such a thing. A mystery blob of black goo might be more potent than the one that tells you just exactly how potent it is. Why advertise just how weak your heroin is?

If we were talking about gold, everyone would walk around with a scale. More clever consumers might use archimedes' principal to determine its purity (eureka!)

Is there a cheap/simple "chemical scale" we can provide to consumers? We could sell it for the smallest amount of money possible. (Omg. Sell it! For money. We'll be in competition with those who want to wish it into existence. Should we involve the state? We should probably involve the state!)

Something to point out to anyone who is on the fence about buying a Opiate Power Scale kit... That hit that you are about to take is going to kill you. Instead, you could make three good, strong hits out of it. And that might be preferable to dying, depending on your circumstances.

[Important update: I think far few people consider that "groggy and stupid" is another side-effect of consumers having no idea how much they are consuming.]