Heroin Helper Blog http://heroinhelper.com/blog/ Drugs and Politics en-us Nucleus CMS v3.64 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://heroinhelper.com/blog//nucleus/nucleus2.gif Heroin Helper Blog http://heroinhelper.com/blog/ With Friends Like David Sheff... xml-rss2.php?itemid=209 main site. Then I'll post links here. I'm also going to turn off comments here. The site is a spam magnet with 100+ spam comments for each real one.

Today, I posted the following article that I think readers here will be interested in:

With Friends Like David Sheff...


It is about Sheff's new book Clean.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=209 Tue, 2 Apr 2013 14:50:07 -0400 American Heroin xml-rss2.php?itemid=207 American Heroin - George Henry BorawskiA photography friend of mine, George Henry Borawski has an ongoing project of documenting "American Heroin." In fact, he is trying to get me to hit the road with him to do a book. That isn't a bad idea, but I have a lot of questions and concerns. My main concern is how we manage to not get arrested and murdered.

You all may have an answer to my big question: what would said book be about? The problem I see is that a simple chronicling of American heroin users would not be that interesting all on its own. What's more, I wouldn't want such a book focused on just the most intense of users. I am, as I always have been, most interested in infrequent users. Those are the people who the culture as a whole thinks not only don't exist but can't exist.

Anyway, check out George's newest batch of photos on his site. I'm sure he would be interested in any thoughts you might have.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=207 Sat, 16 Feb 2013 20:22:48 -0500 Alcohol and Drugs History Society xml-rss2.php?itemid=205 Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society. They had an article about Victorian Women on Drugs. It reminded me of much of my writing about drugs during that period (probably in Little Book of Opium). You might want to check out the site.

I wrote to my friend:

That's interesting. I've written a lot about this, of course. A common myth says that heroin was claimed to be a cure for morphine addiction. Similarly, morphine was said to be a cure for opium addiction. This isn't true of course. But opium was looked down upon as dirty—thanks in large part to its association with the Chinese, but also because it was a natural (herbal) drug. Morphine was seen as scientific and thus "western." Thus, many people in the Victorian period were glad when someone got off opium and onto morphine. What it shows above all else is that the biggest effect of these drugs is on other people in how they color their perceptions. Look at Long Day's Journey into Night. Long before I had any experience with drugs, it seemed to me that it was the rest of the family that had the real problem. So mom wanted to live life in a quasi-dream state? You would think by the reactions of the rest of the family that she was dragging them with her.

Taking matters up to today, I have heard any number of conservatives claim that maybe cannabis is a useful drug. But certainly if it were to be acceptable, doctors would put it into a pill form. You know: pill = good; smoke = bad. It would be hilarious if it weren't so evil.

If anyone has video of anyone talking about how we have to turn cannabis into a pill, please post it!
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=205 Sun, 27 Jan 2013 18:28:02 -0500 Murder in Bali xml-rss2.php?itemid=203 Bali Drugs: Lindsay Sandiford Death Sentence Criticised. I'm sure most of you have heard about it. I have not wanted to write about it because it is so vile. As the report says, "A death sentence handed down in Bali to a British grandmother found guilty of drug trafficking has been condemned by the UK government." I'm just not sure what the Bali government thinks that it is accomplishing with this.

In general, people don't traffic in 5 kg of cocaine if they have an option. It makes a lot more sense to just be an executive at HSBC, where you can work for drug dealers without the worry of even losing your job, much less going to jail or being murdered. Of course, I don't have much sympathy for the United Kingdom. Most of the drug war hysteria of the last many decades is a direct result of the actions of western powers (the US primarily). Not that I think that Indonesia isn't capable of their own homegrown oppression.

I always think that something like this travesty is a direct result of the people I see screaming on the TV that drug dealers are like serial killers. We're all culpable—every fucking one of us. But some are far more so, and I'm not thinking of anyone in Bali right now.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=203 Sun, 27 Jan 2013 18:18:20 -0500 Zero Dark Thirty Parody xml-rss2.php?itemid=201 Zero Dark Thirty. It isn't funny, it's political. And if you don't pay attention, you won't even notice. All the quotes are real:


]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=201 Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:58:06 -0500 Bread and Heroin xml-rss2.php?itemid=199
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=199 Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:17:03 -0500 The Economic Case for Decriminalizing Heroin xml-rss2.php?itemid=197 Wonk Blog reports, The Economic Case for Decriminalizing Heroin. It talks about an economic model that finds that drug use would be no higher if they were legalized but taxed up in price. This is not exactly a new idea, but I'm glad it is getting to coverage.

Just the same, I think it is largely bullshit. I accept that heroin purchasers are as rational are broccoli purchasers. But I don't accept is that either are all that rational. What's more, it is only academics and highly paid reporters who think that the only cost users face are found in the street price of the drug. The potential of three years in prison, for example, greatly adds to the price of a gram of dope.

The other side of this is that much of the benefit of allowing users to have their drugs at the fair market (cheap) price would be gone in such a situation. The point with opioids is it is the price alone that stops users from having otherwise normal lives. But really, do we as a society forbid drugs because we want to limit addiction? I don't think so. Providing government supplied drugs to be done in government supplied rooms would not increase addiction. In fact, it might reduce it. But we don't do that.

Don't take this to mean that I'm against legalization (or decriminalization as proposed in the article). But this discussion treats drug users as nothing more than a problem to be solved. I think we can go a lot further looking at the problems that drug users face. What I would like to see first is methadone maintenance on demand for anyone of any income level. Such program would cost a pittance. Even assuming a worse case scenario, it would cost no more than a hundred million dollars per year. It is a sane policy that no reasonable person would be against. Thus, I'm sure it would never win support in the United States.

Our society does not approach drugs in any kind of reasonable way. So any reasonable argument to improve the situation is useless. I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=197 Tue, 8 Jan 2013 14:56:14 -0500 Drug Felons and the Anti-Gun Lobby xml-rss2.php?itemid=195 FC. But not always.

I was just watching a discussion of new gun laws on The Ed Show, and this law enforcement officer was talking about how it was important to keep guns away from felons and the mentally unstable. I bristle at this. We have a country that has largely made it illegal to be black, brown, or poor. It isn't that I think felons really need guns. But I do hate this special carve out in our society: the unworthy. And most of these people are now and forever more defined as outsiders just because of their drug choices. This is madness.

It also bugged me that she was saying we need to keep guns out of the hands of felons because of those "20 beautiful children" who were killed. I'm all for gun laws. But in the case of Sandy Hook, none of the gun laws suggested would have done a damn thing to help. What's more, this call to make "assault rifles" illegal drives me crazy. As far as I can tell, an assault rifle is like obscenity: impossible to define but people know it when they see it.

Look: if these proposed laws make us safer, I'm fine with them. But I fear that just like after 9/11, what we will get are a bunch of laws that make us a whole lot less free but not a bit more safe.

And in the end, these people will come after the felons because they are an easy target. And that's America all over: searching under the light for the keys it dropped a block away; it may be useless, but the light is better. Although in this case: it is useless, but it makes them feel better.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=195 Mon, 7 Jan 2013 19:56:25 -0500 Oregon to Prevent Disclosure of Criminal Records... xml-rss2.php?itemid=193 The New Jim Crow, I've thought that a very important and easy thing we could do to make the war on drugs less harmful is to get rid of the line on employment applications that asks if you have ever been arrested or convicted of a crime. This is the end of almost any employment application. The question the applicant has to answer is, "Do I want to be turned down now or later?" If you lie, you will not be turned down because you are an ex-felon, of course. You will be turned down because you lied. Because that sounds a lot better than having to admit the truth that they are not willing to give you a chance. Once you've been convicted of a felony, you supposed to get by as a fry cook like in all of the movies.

So I was very excited when I started reading this tweet, "Oregon House has passed a law to prevent disclosure of criminal records of applicants..." But then I read the whole tweet:



That's right! Ex-felons don't need jobs, but they do need to carry concealed guns. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for any increase in the rights of ex-felons. But this is bullshit. Most legislators are dead set against laws that would make it easier for ex-felons to get on with their lives. But that the Oregon House can manage to pay a law making concealed carry easier is just amazing.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=193 Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:56:42 -0500 Too Big to Jail, Too Little Not to xml-rss2.php?itemid=190 The Young Turks. On the surface, it is about banking: HSBC and their laundering of terrorist and drug money. But Cenk does a good job of comparing this to a woman who got life in prison for storing cocaine for her dealing boyfriend. I don't have anything to add. This is just another example of our horrible injustice system. But it is nice to see someone as straight as Cenk talk about this stuff with such passion.


Update (14 December 2012 1:37 pm)

Matt Taibbi, Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke:

If you've ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you've ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or "drug paraphernalia" in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me.
]]> General xml-rss2.php?itemid=190 Fri, 14 Dec 2012 13:29:28 -0500