The fact is that heroin is a nasty fuckin' thing all the way around. It is not the strongest drug in terms of its effects (acid would take that crown), but it is certainly one of, if not the most destructive of all drugs known to mankind. The reason for this is because of what it is. It basically is a substance that mimics the pain-killer part of the brain by being chemically similar to the natural chemicals of that type that are present in the human brain. Because of this, the body can get physically addicted to heroin very quickly and easily, for it is just a stronger version of something that is already there naturally. That's what makes it so fuckin' dangerous. It basically becomes part of the body, and when it's not there, the body goes nuts craving it because it thinks that it is needed in the amounts that it has been introduced in and the natural stuff just does not cut it anymore. The fact that the shit has this sort of effect is where the massive social problems come in to the picture. The addicted people just cannot think rationally anymore, for they have hooked their body on this shit, and all their body tells them is that they have to get more and more and more all the time. That's what leads to all the crime, the burglaries, robberies, killings, rapes, etc. Those are the problems that every society faces because of this shit. The solutions to these problems are quite different around the world however.
Many countries of the world are using what they refer to as a "harm reduction" technique to deal with all of this. This means that they are going to try and reduce the social ills involved with heroin. This involves taking the whole thing out of the strictly legal context and looking at it as a social and medical problem that faces society. Doing that means putting less emphasis on arresting everyone that's on the shit and locking them all up and all that. More emphasis is put on helping those that are addicted. One way that this is done is by using needle exchange programs. Mainliners (intravenous heroin users) go and exchange their used needles for a new, sterile one at certain places. What this does is to cut the rates needle sharing amongst users. When you smoke weed and shit, you usually pass around the same joint or pipe or whatever and everyone smokes off of it. In this context, this behavior is relatively harmless. When you do it with shooting up , a whole host of problems arise, however. Since shooting up means using a needle intravenously, this means that a certain amount of blood is involved in this process. Usually, it's some left-over blood that's still in the needle after use. The problem is that human blood is one of the major spreaders of diseases. Many illnesses use the blood to get around a person's body, so there would be some in any left over blood from an infected person using a needle. The next dude or chick takes it and shoots up with it, and gets some of that contaminated blood in their system, and here we go again. This is the way that AIDS was really spread far and wide in the populace, not by homosexual sex, as many say. So by providing clean needles to the addicts, you discourage the sharing of them and thusly reduce the spread of these diseases. Also, there is literature and people in these places where the clean needles are passed out that will tell anyone that is even remotely interested how to go about getting off of heroin and stop doing this shit altogether. This is one form of this "harm reduction" strategy that is being employed around the world.
Another is the use of "safe injection rooms". These are basically places where someone can go and shoot up in a "safer" environment. What this means is that these places are staffed by trained professionals that can keep an eye on the people that come in to use the facility. They go and shoot up, and there's a monitor there to help ensure that nothing bad happens. They can tell the signs of an overdose right away, and know what to do to keep someone alive until help arrives. These monitors also have all the necessary literature and connections and information to help any of the users kick their habit if they wish to. These facilities are placed in areas that are frequented by heroin heads in the first place. With these places, they don't have people shooting up in doorways and alleys and on the street and places like that where everyone can see them doing it and shit. You don't have addicts all nodded out ( passed out) all over the public way. They get that way in the safe rooms and they stay there until they are able to leave again. This set-up also helps those that are unfortunate enough to have to live in these type of areas, for it reduces the break-ins at their homes,. The medical ( and human) waste out on the streets, the vehicular traffic, the whole shot. These facilities were not thought up for no reason, they were an answer to a desperate problem that plagued the society.
There are also societies that have taken both of these methods and combined them with the most controversial of all proposals, the distribution of heroin by some governmental body. What has been proposed is that this would only take place if someone was a hopelessly addicted individual, and was registered with the government as just that. Then what they would do is to go to a government-registered place to get their heroin and then go to the safe room to shoot it up and all that shit. This helps by taking the shit out of the hands of the drug dealers and putting it in the government's hands. When you do this, you are taking away the profits of crime that the dealer thrives on. The government then gets the monies that the criminal would otherwise get to use as it saw fit. Many may say that there's no difference between the governments and criminals of the world as it is, but that's another topic for another day. Taking the money away from the criminal means that he cannot use his ruthless tactics to keep his ill-gotten gains, and the innocents that are almost always the victims when he does that shall be spared. It also insures quality control, for it's bad enough to be shooting up heroin, but when you add the adulterants that the criminals use to stretch their product out as much as possible into the mix, then you have real problems. Many overdoses are actually the result of the heroin interacting with some sort of adulterant present in it, and that causes the overdose. With regulated sales, at least then the consumer has an idea of what he's got. Many countries around the globe are trying out some combination of these methods to try and reduce the damage that heroin does to society.
One society is not doing that however. The United States is vehemently opposed to any and all of the answers. Let's look at why. It is said that if there are needle exchanges and safe injection rooms, that what is really being done is promotion of the usage of heroin, not harm reduction of any kind. These tactics shall just increase harm, say the Americans. As I have previously stated, there is emperical medical proof that there are many diseases that are spread throughout the populace by the sharing of needles. The only way to stop this is to use clean, sterile needles every time one injects. There are studies galore that show statistical reductions in the spread of all blood-borne diseases when these tactics are employed. As far as the safe injection rooms are concerned, just the fact that there has to be such places to go and use the shit shows you just what kind of "high" you get off of this shit. If you have to have someone sitting there watching you so that you don't fuckin' die when you do this shit, what kind of high is that? That is the lesson that those who favor this method wish to teach. It's not getting high like I get high doing some of those things that are documented in the Master's Picture section of the site when you do this heroin shit. When I get high, I don't need someone to baby-sit me so I don't fuckin' die on the spot. But shooting heroin carries that risk each and every time that you do it. The addicts don't even call doing that shit getting high, they call it shit like getting low or getting well instead. If you think that you're getting well by doing that, it only shows that your body is totally fucked on the shit and you need it to keep from being sick all day long otherwise. That's no party high, that's for sure. If you call it getting low, that only shows that it makes you stupefied and that's not any kind of party high either. This is what's preached at these safe places and needle exchange places, that and how they can help you stop doing heroin if you wish to. That's what emphasised here, not " C'mon in man, let's fuckin' party. Shoot it in your veins man" like America seems to think. Same with the controlled distribution. It would only be sold to registered addicts, not the general public. It would be very hard to get started on it this way, for the government would only sell it to you if you were a registered addict, not some guy looking to try it for the first time just for kicks. They'd flat-out tell you no way, unlike the dealer who doesn't give a fuck if it's your first time doing the shit, or your 10, 000th, so he'll sell it to anyone that has the money to get it.
America refuses to listen to any of this at all. They insist that the only way to deal with the problem is to lock everyone up that's involved with the shit, no questions asked or exceptions made. Forget the fact that enriches the criminals and spreads disease and more crime of other types and all of that. The way that America approaches the problem is that doing this shit is morally wrong, and that's it. Because it's morally wrong, the only way to deal with it is to separate the morally wrong from the righteous by using prison to segregate them. This hardcore lockstep mentality is based on moral grounds only. When you have the center of your life a moral-based dogma, of some kind, then you simply cannot see outside the parameters of that moral dogma, for it forbids you from doing that. A black and white yes and no approach to everything is what you are told to have. This type of approach simply cannot work with a problem like heroin, simply because the shit's not going to go away ever, no matter how much a morality frowns upon it simply because of what it is. You can legislate against it all you want, it's here to stay regardless. America refuses to acknowledge this in any way. Many other societies are adopting the harm reduction approaches that I listed earlier. This is in its infancy, and it will be interesting to see how it shall fare in reducing the problems that heroin causes as opposed to the American way of dealing with it. Look at the problem that heroin is in America as opposed to many of those other countries right now, and I think you'll see the way that it's going to go here. Moralistic actions shall never truly reduce harm, only common sense will, and time shall bear that out.