If you feel so strongly about it, then you should get out of your ivory tower and do something about it.
Informing people that there is a problem, and countering misinformation, IS doing something about it.
Heroin is illegal, and its euphoric effects, everything else being equal between it and methadone, are what will keep it illegal.
Now we get to the heart of the matter. You actually agree with me, that the euphoric effect is the reason that it is illegal, not because it is in any way more harmful than methadone.
You're still misinterpreting my comments though. As I said before, my purpose in this discussion isn't to convince anyone to legalize heroin. Rather, I'm trying to convince people that switching heroin addicts to methadone is NOT a solution, despite the fact that it is the government-sanctioned treatment.
You keep trying to sidestep my point. I'm not trying to get heroin legallized. I'm pointing out that methadone is no better than heroin, and that there is no obvious rational basis for one being legal and the other not.
Perhaps you should learn to think for yourself rather than having blind faith that the government is looking out for your best interests and that whatever the government tells you must be true.
Just the fact that the government has banned something is not sufficient evidence to conclude that the banned item is inherently worse than a similar non-banned item. Furthermore, the consequences that arise solely because the item is banned, and would not occur if it was not banned, are also not evidence that the banned item is inherently bad.
Methadone exists in intravenous form as well, though under a different name.
But suppose that both methadone and heroin had the same legal status (i.e., both legal and non-rx, or both legal and rx, or both illegal). Then your objections would apply equally to both.
Thus you still have not given any logical reason why use of methadone by addicts would be better than use of heroin, aside from the legal issue.
No, I just don't buy into an argument that something is bad only because it's against the law. It should be against the law because it's bad.
Or are you trying to use "against the law" as an appeal to authority, i.e., suggesting that since it's illegal there must have been a darn good reason for it to be outlawed, even though you can't actually identify one?
There are heroin addicts that hold jobs and lead lives as normal as those of methadone addicts, and nearly as normal as non-users. Both heroin and methadone have maintenance dosages, unlike cocaine, so either one allows the addict to function reasonably normally, and doesn't require ever-increasing cash outlay, which is what leads to violent criminal activity.
I suspect that if there were a drug that had all the negative effects of cocaine (or more), and would satisfy the physical addition of a cocaine addict, but didn't get the user high, the government would be pushing that too. The real agenda isn't about getting these people off drugs, it's about making sure they don't enjoy them.
If it was legal for the clinic to administer heroin, it would be a habit which could be supported without committing crimes. So again I ask, how is methadone better?
I was in the doctor's office recently, and while I was waiting in the examining room I got bored. There were no good magazines, so I started reading drug brochures. The one for Propecia (for male pattern baldness) said that 86 percent of test subjects maintained hair or experienced new growth, vs. 42 percent of subjects given a placebo. Seems to me that 42% is not bad odds for something with almost no side effects, so I showed it to my doctor and asked him if he'd write me a prescription for placebos.
The only study I've ever heard of on that subject had the opposite conclusion. It was found that people high on marijuana were more careful drivers, presumably because they were afraid of being caught.
I'm not trying to condone driving while stoned, I'm just pointing out that we shouldn't assume a priori that being high on a particular substance necessarily causes people to exhibit antisocial behavior. We should study it.
Of course, our wonderful set of elected representatives has banned spending any federal money on studying the possibility that marijuana may have beneficial effects. "We don't know, and we don't want to know."
I think an effective use of a placebo is when addicts of some types of drugs continue going to methadone clinics, even after the physical addiction is gone...
That would be a great example, except that methadone is addictive. The reason it is given to heroin addicts is that it doesn't get them high. It's unclear to me exactly why that is considered an improvement.
There was a study not that long ago that concluded that the placebo effect doesn't really exist. How did they test that? Did they give some patients a placebo, and others (the control group) a fake placebo?
Universal Constructors introduce new problems, and it's best to be prepared for them. For instance, if you construct a machine that can construct anything that begins with the letter "N", be very careful what you ask that machine to construct. (Trurl and Klapaucius are characters in "The Cyberiad" by Stanislaw Lem).
In all seriousness, though, this project is awesome, and I really hope it works out. This could potentially result in as big a change as the industrial revolution.
Usually (but not always) I *do* want to load or save from somewhere in my home directory. The key point being *somewhere*. My home directory contains a hierarchy of thousands of subdirectories. Having to click an extra button to get a reasonable hierarchy browser really sucks, especially since the old dialog did it by default.
I don't have a problem with encouraging naive users to put things in their home directory; that is a good thing. But catering to naive users shouldn't be done to the point of making things much harder for more sophisticated users.
One extra click might not seem like much, but when you have to do it over and over and over...
One day, when I came home from work, I accidentally put my car key in the door of my apartment building... I turned it... and the whole building started up.... So I drove it around.... A policeman stopped me for going too fast... He said, 'Where do you live?'... I said, 'Right here.'
Gotta agree, the file dialogs in 2.8 are absolutely awful. I haven't seen 2.10 yet.
If it at least remembered the state of "browse for other folders", so I didn't have to click that nearly every time I use a file dialog, I would be much happier.
Paul Allen wrote most of the MSFT Basic code, not Bill.
Wrong.
Paul Allen wrote the non-execution routines (entering program lines and such). Bill Gates wrote the code that actually executes the statements. And Monte Davidoff wrote the math routines. All three wrote significant portions of the code.
Slashdot Mirror
You're still misinterpreting my comments though. As I said before, my purpose in this discussion isn't to convince anyone to legalize heroin. Rather, I'm trying to convince people that switching heroin addicts to methadone is NOT a solution, despite the fact that it is the government-sanctioned treatment.
Perhaps you should learn to think for yourself rather than having blind faith that the government is looking out for your best interests and that whatever the government tells you must be true.
Just the fact that the government has banned something is not sufficient evidence to conclude that the banned item is inherently worse than a similar non-banned item. Furthermore, the consequences that arise solely because the item is banned, and would not occur if it was not banned, are also not evidence that the banned item is inherently bad.
But suppose that both methadone and heroin had the same legal status (i.e., both legal and non-rx, or both legal and rx, or both illegal). Then your objections would apply equally to both.
Thus you still have not given any logical reason why use of methadone by addicts would be better than use of heroin, aside from the legal issue.
Care to try again?
Or are you trying to use "against the law" as an appeal to authority, i.e., suggesting that since it's illegal there must have been a darn good reason for it to be outlawed, even though you can't actually identify one?
I suspect that if there were a drug that had all the negative effects of cocaine (or more), and would satisfy the physical addition of a cocaine addict, but didn't get the user high, the government would be pushing that too. The real agenda isn't about getting these people off drugs, it's about making sure they don't enjoy them.
Oh. In other words, there isn't any real reason. It's just that methadone is politically correct and heroin is not. That's basically what I expected.
Apparently longer ago than I thought, in 2001. Perhaps the scarcity of comments might have resulted if they didn't put it on the front page?
If it was legal for the clinic to administer heroin, it would be a habit which could be supported without committing crimes. So again I ask, how is methadone better?
I was in the doctor's office recently, and while I was waiting in the examining room I got bored. There were no good magazines, so I started reading drug brochures. The one for Propecia (for male pattern baldness) said that 86 percent of test subjects maintained hair or experienced new growth, vs. 42 percent of subjects given a placebo. Seems to me that 42% is not bad odds for something with almost no side effects, so I showed it to my doctor and asked him if he'd write me a prescription for placebos.
Bingo, got it in one.
I'm not trying to condone driving while stoned, I'm just pointing out that we shouldn't assume a priori that being high on a particular substance necessarily causes people to exhibit antisocial behavior. We should study it.
Of course, our wonderful set of elected representatives has banned spending any federal money on studying the possibility that marijuana may have beneficial effects. "We don't know, and we don't want to know."
The same could be said of heroin, though. So why is methadone better?
Here's the Slashdot story on the study that seemed to discredit the placebo effect.
There was a study not that long ago that concluded that the placebo effect doesn't really exist. How did they test that? Did they give some patients a placebo, and others (the control group) a fake placebo?
In all seriousness, though, this project is awesome, and I really hope it works out. This could potentially result in as big a change as the industrial revolution.
True, but that wasn't the "Urysses" to whom I was referring.
I don't have a problem with encouraging naive users to put things in their home directory; that is a good thing. But catering to naive users shouldn't be done to the point of making things much harder for more sophisticated users.
One extra click might not seem like much, but when you have to do it over and over and over...
If it at least remembered the state of "browse for other folders", so I didn't have to click that nearly every time I use a file dialog, I would be much happier.
Sigh.
Paul Allen wrote the non-execution routines (entering program lines and such). Bill Gates wrote the code that actually executes the statements. And Monte Davidoff wrote the math routines. All three wrote significant portions of the code.