Memories of the 28th Century

I probably should stop reading newspapers. Yesterday I saw an opinion piece about siting an addiction treatment facility. Apparently there are people who are opposed to such things. The writer of the piece didn’t even touch the real problem: certain drugs are illegal, so the use of them can become a problem. Most of the problems involving drugs are from their illegality rather than the drug itself or reactions to the drug; although there sometimes are overdoses. If the drugs were legal and the chemical or drug industry distributed them in a reasonable fashion and government didn’t impose excessive taxes, then there would be very little trouble from drugs, and the associated crimes would almost disappear.

The cost of production, transportation, and distribution of a dose of a recreational drug is a small part of cost the retail price after the risk premium is removed. The difficulty of covering the expense of being a drug addict results in some users turning to crime for funds. The other source of trouble from the drug business is the matter of competition among criminal gangs. The gang wars over drugs have mostly ended here in the U.S.A., but it is a major problem in Mexico. Simply making drugs legal would quickly end those drugs wars, especially if major corporations got involved in the business. Violence is bad for business, and it can eat into profits.

There are many people who have trouble backing the idea of legalizing drugs. That trouble is usually caused by ignorance. The medical and scientific industries have usually condemned drug use, because they make money from treating addiction, but drug addictions are ordinary reactions to chemicals that are similar to neurotransmitters, so similar that they can occupy the receptors for the neurotransmitters, except THC, which has its own receptors in the human brain, because it is produced in the brain. Heroin uses receptors for endorphin; nicotine uses receptors for acetylcholine; cocaine is a reuptake inhibitor for dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephine. And amphetamines are reuptake inhibitor for dopamine, and they have related effects.

I mention the brain chemistry of some drugs, because it appears that the drugs are effective, because the users have abnormal brain chemistry to start with. For example, only about half of the population can become addicted to nicotine; those who do not become addicted appear to have more acetylcholine receptors, so it makes no difference whether some are occupied by nicotine instead of acetylcholine. But in people with fewer receptors there is a demand for more receptors, so there will be enough for the acetylcholine and for nicotine. The increase in receptors brings on a need to fill them, but there isn't any more acetylcholine being produced, so nicotine is desired. This increase in receptors and desire to fill the receptors creates a spiral of addiction that continues until the need for something to fill the receptors is filled. If there were a way to adjust the number of receptors that addicts had, then addiction might be cured, but if the drugs that adjusted the filling of the receptors were readily available and inexpensive, then the same net result would be attained.

That is to say that complete legalization of drugs would lead to the elimination of the social problems that are caused by drug addiction, including excessive taxation necessary to pay for extra police and for prisons that are necessitated by drug laws. And the chemical imbalances in the brains of drug users could more readily be corrected.

The only ones who would lose from the complete legalization of drugs would be the people in the legal system who are involved in drug prosecutions and some prison guards. There might be a few people involved in production and distribution who wouldn't be able to adjust to doing those things legally, but most of them would find places in the new drug stores.

Rather than being concerned with siting addiction treatment centers, the drug stores could simply move into spaces in strip malls and such.




http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_...r_cocaine.html
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_...phetamine.html