And a lot of the ones that hurt lots of people now, predominantly harm people due to effects of the criminalisation. Even heroin is a quite safe drug (comparable to other opioids, which does not in any way make it harmless, but also not nearly as nasty as it's often portrayed) - to the extent that it's prescribed for post-op pain in .e.g the UK (under the name diamorphine).
It becomes the horrible nasty mess that people overdose on when you incentivise criminals to cut it with anything from other drugs to brick dust and sell it at all kinds of unpredictable doses because their customers have no recourse.
Give people predictable doses of clean heroin, and it's not much different than having people stay on prescription drugs like Vicodin. In fact, one of the most common gateways to heroin abuse is a dependency on prescription drugs like Vicodin - once the prescriptions are terminated people often turns to the black market due to dependencies, and gradually get nudged over to heroin because it is far cheaper.
I'm not saying we should have ads for heroin or let grocery stores sell it, but the criminalisation even of these drugs do massive amount of harm and we owe it to the people harmed to actually seriously consider whether the criminalisation is even moral.
Your concern of advertising budgets is easily prevented by outlawing advertising. Whenever I visit the US, I'm shocked at the amount of drug advertising on TV for example, as in Europe both drugs (prescription or otherwise) and alcohol advertising is strictly regulated or outright banned in a range of countries.
Likewise many European countries regulate sale of e.g. liquor heavily, including with government sales monopolies with stricter sales policies in a few countries.
Interestingly, opiate replacement therapy where heroin is the drug they choose to get you off heroin has a higher success rate than any other choice. I was lucky, Suboxone worked wonders for me, despite 6 years of addiction. I'm now fully recovered (and no long-lasting effects, such a curious side considering how horrendously addictive it was for myself; most other drugs that are as addictive cause pretty bad physical side effects from use alone) three years later and have been a productive member of society for those three years. All thanks to the government treating heroin addicts pretty well, as long as it's not the police whom are the first to find out about your problem anyway.
And a lot of the ones that hurt lots of people now, predominantly harm people due to effects of the criminalisation. Even heroin is a quite safe drug (comparable to other opioids, which does not in any way make it harmless, but also not nearly as nasty as it's often portrayed) - to the extent that it's prescribed for post-op pain in .e.g the UK (under the name diamorphine).
It becomes the horrible nasty mess that people overdose on when you incentivise criminals to cut it with anything from other drugs to brick dust and sell it at all kinds of unpredictable doses because their customers have no recourse.
Give people predictable doses of clean heroin, and it's not much different than having people stay on prescription drugs like Vicodin. In fact, one of the most common gateways to heroin abuse is a dependency on prescription drugs like Vicodin - once the prescriptions are terminated people often turns to the black market due to dependencies, and gradually get nudged over to heroin because it is far cheaper.
I'm not saying we should have ads for heroin or let grocery stores sell it, but the criminalisation even of these drugs do massive amount of harm and we owe it to the people harmed to actually seriously consider whether the criminalisation is even moral.
Your concern of advertising budgets is easily prevented by outlawing advertising. Whenever I visit the US, I'm shocked at the amount of drug advertising on TV for example, as in Europe both drugs (prescription or otherwise) and alcohol advertising is strictly regulated or outright banned in a range of countries.
Likewise many European countries regulate sale of e.g. liquor heavily, including with government sales monopolies with stricter sales policies in a few countries.