Needles at Werd Insel Zurich

Needle syringe found yesterday. And that along with the sex perverts. When are the police going to get off their lazy arses and send a patrol through there every day.

It would not be too bad if they were to take their shit with them and by the way; what happened to the safe rooms where these creaturs can shoot up to their hearts content?
Realy .mixed feelings on this topic, one one hand, its their life’s choises, so why should you and me have to put up with it? Also it seems that despite all the programs and assistance and offers of help there seem to be more and more of them every year.
Not much sympathy here as im Munich and other towns and cities I go to I am seeing the beginning of the fentanyl epidemic here in Germany.

and there’s one more horrible than fentanyl…nitazines.

Frankly there is only one way to stop drug pushers and addicts from polluting our streets. Legalise it and give it away in medically monitored conditions.

If you kill the profit motive you kill the problem.

This is an Einstein thing. We keep doing the same things over and over again and then are surprised that nothing changes.

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It depends.

They tried that in Portland, Oregon and it was a complete failure although it was more of a success in Portugal.

You do realise that if they legalise certain drugs, the cartels will just create something else, more lethal, and more addictive to sell.

Do you think they are just going to give up and get 9-5 jobs?

And if it’s just polluting the streets that you are worried about (which is what you wrote) - cigarette smoking is legal but there are dog ends and empty packets everywhere.

You are overlooking my main thought. Give the drugs away free. They did not do this in Portland or Portugal. There demand and supply did not change.

So. based on your premise, giving cigarettes away for free would get rid of cigarette dog-ends?

The biggest problem with giving narcotics away for free is that there are going to be a hell of a lot of new users, especially younger ones.

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Your comparison doesn’t work. In programmes where substances are provided by the authorities, they are under strict monitoring with medical staff, rooms and sharps boxes. They don’t just give out drugs and send people on their way, as you are inferring they would with “cigarettes”.

You think? That’s actually how it works today. Pushers give their drugs away to newbies, then once they are hooked they have customers for life.

So the state gives their drugs away to newbies, although I don’t see long queues at medically controlled centers, and …? Worst case they have created a new addict who will return. But the profit motive for pushers is gone.

Also, many low level pushers today are not in the business today to make buckets and buckets of money, they are there because it supports their own addictions.

As you say the big guys will just find another activity to make their money. OK we can’t cure them. But we will have disrupted the cycle and there will be many fewer victims, some of which will be able to live near normal (all be it managed) lives.

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Heroin? So old school. City managers talk about a crack epidemic.

Also, Werdinsel is far away from the “safe zones” for addicts near city center. This is new.

Nothing seems to work. America’s “war on drugs” failed miserably, European leniency and trying to sweet talk druggies failed miserably, even Duarte’s line 'em up and shoot 'em tactics failed, again, miserably.
Anybody remember William Shatner in “Tek-wars” Where chemical drugs were replaced by direct dial-a-yield brain simulation?
With all the money being poured into fighting drugs I am sure it could be possible to develop an implant and a phone app and take away the base for chemicals.

Ahhh, too serious…no one joking about the nudist area in Werdinsel yet?

Whereas I am very liberal on assuring people the right to decide about “what do they want to die of”, I believe that providing “free” (Quality controlled ) drugs might not be the right answer –

Please allow me to elaborate - up to 20% of us (us = everybody) have epi- / genetic predisposition to get ‘hooked’ to a / any / some types of drugs. Maybe not to all drugs. Maybe yes. You don’t know…until you try. And then, when you try, some of the metabolic pathways on your brain change. For ever. Allow me to repeat it, Forever. And then, unwantedly, you become addicted. For life. Nothing you can do - even if you want!. Guess what; it does no happen only with drugs, it happens also with (legal) drugs - like tobacco and alcohol, as well as with food (sugars mainly), and even exercise or sex.

20% of us – or 20% of you? I don’t know. You don’t know. Nobody knows…until it happens. And you might get addicted to something, but not to something else (although there are a couple of genes that actually make you susceptible to become addicted to a lot of things).

That’s why you see people who seem to be able to give up on smoking or drinking easily, and people who, even after years of quitting, they keep on feeling the urge. This is not about ‘free will’, your genes have decided it for you. The ’ I can stop whenever I want’ is a figure of speech.

So, should we be exposed early and easily to all of these potential addictive substances…particularly those ones which do NOT exist freely in nature?

Here are a couple of review articles that are pretty interesting.
[Understanding the genetics and neurobiological pathways behind addiction

  1. on overall genetics of addiction and a beautiful and simple explanation of the specific Mechanism of Action (MoA) of the addiction, involving some everyday chemicals that you hear on everyday life…and that live on your brain ( serotonine! (as in 'i feel aggression in the forum :smiley: ‘), dopamine! (as in ‘sexual gratification’), endorphines! (as in ‘how i feel happily idle after going to the gym’), GABAs! (as in ’ I cannot sleep!’) , acetilcoline! (as in ‘i am drunk’) and so many more that any drug disrupts. Ah, there is also an explanation of what happens when you take the different type of drugs. (Review) - PMC](Understanding the genetics and neurobiological pathways behind addiction (Review) - PMC)

and, for those who didn’t have enough… some figures The Molecular Basis of Drug Addiction: Linking Epigenetic to Synaptic and Circuit Mechanisms - PMC

i know, i know…so boring! i have worked on a product (delisted in Switzerland, but still used in the rest of Europe), that works on alcoholic addiction. And once you understand that, in a % of cases, it is beyond the will of the person, to be able to quit, you make yourself a lot of questions on how this could have been avoided…

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OK, and thank you very much for that.

I was not offering ideas of how drug addiction could be treated or solved. I was suggesting how drug trafficking could be ended and how addicts could be helped.

I’m somewhat sympathetic to your idea. I think I would support it given a high enough age limit and it is given only to existing addicts (no idea how to check) rather than creating new addicts.

As Izzy_the_busy_bee mentioned, addiction is a lottery, more consumers = more winning lottery tickets.

The fraction of troublesome addicts is very small when compared to casual and moderate consumers. Anyway, if the consumer population increases, the absolute number of stumbling addicts on the streets will go up.

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yes, and I also agree with you that forbidding things is the best way to make them more appealing. Yet, difficult to legislate boundaries, and, for any limit that you establish, the ‘free’ market will be there to cover the ‘apparent’ need…

I don’t agree with that. Do you have any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise which suggests that?

The idea probably came from little children who, when told they were not going to get an ice cream, immediately had a temper tantrum.

The thing is, this wouldn’t have happened if they had no idea what an ice cream was in the first place.

With countries that have introduced harsh smoking bans, no advertising of tobacco and so on, smoking rates have gone down and the uptake of smoking by younger people has gone down - this goes completely against what you have said.

Research into, and the roll out of drugs which completely remove the desire, or ability to want to take certain narcotics (rather like Ozempic does for over-eating) would, in my opinion, be a better route to go down rather than giving out free drug to users.

In this weather?? Anyone skipping around in the buff deserves a round of applause.

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Tobacco was widely consumed. Removing tobacco from TV and sport sponsoring made a great job by contributing to the reduction from ~50% to 10-15% of people in many places around the world.

The other drugs are different, prevalence is much much lower. Going from 5-15% (cocaine & marijuana) to zero is much harder than going from 50% to 20%. Heroin and crack consumption prevalence are even lower, so they’re completely different animals. There’s no point in banning crack sellers sponsoring a football team because it’s not happening in first place