You can die from alcohol withdrawal, much more likely to die from alcohol withdrawal than heroin. It's really understated how addictive alcohol can be.
Perhaps one of use can post statistics showing how many deaths occurred due to alcohol withdrawal and how many of them occurred due to heroin overdose? Pointing out that a person CAN die from alcohol withdrawal doesn't mean much when people are not dying of alcohol withdrawal as much as people dying from heroin overdose.
Capture rate (percentage of users who reported that they had become dependent to their respective drug at some point) for tobacco is larger than heroin.
Not to mention you're just listing the worst out of hundreds if not thousands of different options in the illegal drug market.
Well, I'm not talking about tobacco which I've never heard anyone dying over except for certain cancers linked to cigarette smoking. But I've yet to hear of a
cigarette overdose or someone pulling a home invasion to come up with the money to get a pack of smokes.
And I listed tangibles as opposed to
what ifs or
possibles. We'll get better traction that way imo.
There are hundreds of illegal drugs safer than alcohol or tobacco.
I beg to differ. You are looking at it from a
"self bodily harm" pov. I was looking at it from a
"the harm addicts do to others to get what they want" pov since the beginning of this conversation. Even mad man Duterte never cited the self harm argument. His thing seems to be the harm that drug addiction does to people other than addicts and society as a whole. At least that's what he claims publicly.
It's probably worse.
DUI deaths are around 10,000. I doubt junkies looking for a fix account for 10,000 murders. Sure there's a difference in intent but that's outweighed by the real total consequence to society.
I'm inclined to agree with you but I would not be surprised if I were to look into it and find out that junkies looking for a fix also accounted for those numbers. That number maybe too big for one city or even one state, but for the entire U.S. it's totally possible. And let's not forget that illegal substances are also included in those numbers so we don't know how many of those 10,000 or so DUI deaths were cases where the guilty parties were under the influence of something other than alcohol. But it's like you said, the INTENT is what separates the two. A DUI death is considered manslaughter while a death during a robbery or home invasion goes to as murder. But if it were up to me people who drive while under the influence would receive the severest possible punishment. I think those people are inconsiderate scum.
Hopefully this becomes a moot point in the next few decades with driverless car technology.
American police seizures shit all over the 4th amendment so badly that asset forfeiture from police was larger that that of the total physical theft for the entire country.
You have a crime wave occurring by your own police where seizures can be implemented without conviction coupled with an appeal process where the person has to prove their innocent often to a fucking prosecutor.
We're talking about killing people without due process in Duterte but you already have a lite version of this with civil asset forfeiture. Not only are you giving up your right to decide what risks you take with your body you're also allowing your property to be taken away often without due process.
Well for the record I VEHEMENTLY disagree with Duterte's program with the lack of due process especially since some people are supposedly dealt with based on suspicion alone which is really fucked up. But I'll say again that no one on earth (including Portugal which I'll get to below) has come up with a viable and "serious crack down" solution to drug addiction and the problems that drug addiction imposes on a given society. It's a shame that some people become so desperate that a solution such as Duterte's sounds almost practical.
Also while not quoted I also noticed you seem to infer that Portugal, a european country with a pretty high HDI has statistics that don't seem as believable as the lowly developed, poor south east asian often fraught with corruption Indonesia where the president has started killing people without trial.
This is not a logical position in the slightest.
I'll put it to you in a way that you should understand. Let's say my professional mma record is 20-0 with only 4 KOs. That's a boring ass resume, no? Now let's say that instead of only 4 KOs the rules were changed to where if I knock a fighter down more than once over the course of a fight then that is recorded as a knockout! And I managed to knock at least 17 out of 20 opponents down two or more times during the fights so now my resume looks lovely; 20-0 17 wins by KO. See the what I did there?
What I am saying is that Portugal has decriminalized recreational drug use and reduced certain drug possession crimes to
"minor offenses". OF COURSE this will make the numbers look differently than what they did before Portugal started this thing of theirs. But my MAIN POINT is that Portugal is essentially doing something which I believe Duterte refuses to do which is essentially
placating drug addicts instead of trying to clean up their country and completely rid themselves of illegal drug use. Big difference between the two approaches so really shouldn't eve be compared if you ask me. That too helps change their statistics. It's better than nothing sure but as long as you still have broke and jobless drug addicts needing money to pay for drugs, certain amounts of drug possession as still being criminal offenses and people competing for drug business, you will still have
ALL of the problems that come with these no matter what
"official numbers" say. The Government of the United States has
"official numbers" concerning the sexual assault rate in this country. Do you think even for a second that those numbers REALLY reflect the total number of sexual assaults that take place here? Every country
fudges their numbers to look better to the rest of the world.