Dear lord it's hard to research a topic so spammed by political hacks and organizations trying to sell stuff.
I saw a doctor on the tele talking about how 1% of heroin users die from overdose annually, and that most heroin addicts stop by their '40s (largely because it's economically unfeasible to keep it up). I've found a few repeats of this 1% annual claim online but can't find an original source for it--nor can I find any claims conflicting it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2039886/ roughly correlates this, finding that "[o]n average, addicts in this cohort [heroin users] lost 18.3 years" (years of potential life lost).
The fact that none of the plethora of anti-drug websites cite an annual mortality rate strongly suggests it's certainly not "[o]dds are that they will die" from anything relating to heroin.
My search for a source for this statistic also taught me that heroin overdose is almost always from impure heroin (a result of the "drug war"), diseases contracted from needles (also a result of the "drug war"--needles are cheap) and mixing heroin with other drugs--not a result of heroin dosage by itself. (http://tinyurl.com/mzubphh / http://tinyurl.com/kakj4w3) I'm shocked to be learning that heroin itself is not as potentially fatal as I thought when I started reading today.
First time users are dying because of the "drug war" and the impure heroin they're buying from an unregulated black market, not pure heroin. The deaths you fear are another example for my argument that the "drug war" is more harmful than drugs, not an example of heroin being dangerous in its pure form (which it would be in, were it regulated like OTC meds).
In any event, that people who use drugs are "asking for it" is not a response to my post. If someone died because a bottle of bourbon was poisoned, that'd be a poisoning fatality, not death by alcoholism.
Now you've made a guess that maybe the "drug war" is keeping drugs out of the hands of the children. Well, for the children, of course I can turn off my brain and give in to emotion. But, can we find any evidence that this is actually true? Does drug criminalization (which certainly kills people) prevent children from abusing drugs?
"Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/20 … -portugal/
Lucky me. NORML did some research for me (and included citation):
"Marijuana Decriminalization & Its Impact on Use" (This one's just about cannabis, but if we're going to generalize let's generalize)
http://norml.org/aboutmarijuana/item/ma … t-on-use-2
"Global report: Decriminalization does not increase rates of drug use"
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/07/g … -drug-use/
An interesting read:
"Supply-Side Drug Policy: Will It Ever Work?" (includes citation)
http://faculty.winthrop.edu/stonebraker … edrugs.htm
I'm not finding evidence that the "drug war" is saving the children. Most people don't do drugs because most people don't want to. Tons of drugs still cascade over the US border, but most people still aren't using.
As for those who use (more proof that the "drug war" is a complete failure), prohibition didn't stop alcohol consumption, and the "war on drugs" isn't stopping millions of Americans from using drugs. You're dismissing people we know the "drug war" is hurting and killing by comparing them to people you imagine it saves. You're not remotely equipped to make the calculation that the "drug war" is harming less people than it's supposedly saving from themselves. You don't have evidence; you have faith.
[I wish I could obey forum rules]
