A new study shows that overdoses in the Pacific Northwest have increased despite decriminalization laws, not because of them.

“There’s always the hope that states function as laboratories of democracy, and when one state does something that makes sense and seems to work, that other states will adopt it,” says Davis. “Arrests went way down, overdoses didn’t change: To me, that’s an improvement over the previously existing system.”

      • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
        6·
        1 year ago

        Benzos and booze by themselves are both just straight up deadly. No combination needed.

        People need to start giving alcohol the respect it deserves… but it’s so damn cheap and easy to make lol.

        In a UK study of more than 1000 women who claimed drug‐assisted sexual assault, only 2% were identified as deliberate spiking cases with sedative drugs.2 The most common drug detected was alcohol in 46% of samples, with illicit drugs detected in 34%.

        46.3 million people aged 12 or older (or 16.5 percent of the population) met the applicable DSM-5 criteria for having a substance use disorder in the past year, including 29.5 million people who were classified as having an alcohol use disorder and 24 million people who were classified as having a drug use disorder.

        The percentage of people who were classified as having a past year substance use disorder, including alcohol use and/or drug use disorder, was highest among young adults aged 18 to 25 compared to youth and adults 26 and older.

        https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/01/04/samhsa-announces-national-survey-drug-use-health-results-detailing-mental-illness-substance-use-levels-2021.html

        https://www.livescience.com/54896-drink-spiking-college-students.html

        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2658214/

        • remotelove@lemmy.ca
          5·
          1 year ago

          I can add to the statistics with a short personal experience.

          Alcohol is a hell of a drug and it took years off my life. It’s been over a year since I stopped drinking over a 12 pack an evening (or much more) and I haven’t looked back. The thought of drinking even disgusts me now.

          While I may have done plenty of stupid shit in the last year, I haven’t done anything stupid that I truly regret.

          Alcohol is a hell of a lot more dangerous than we give it credit for and it was close to destroying my life. It kills slow and with as much pain as possible. Honestly, I don’t know how the hell I was able to stay out of jail all this time, TBH.

          If you are a person that wants to stop, please do. While I am no fan of AA or rehab personally, there is something that one of my old AA sponsors told me years ago that finally clicked: If I didn’t want to get drunk, I shouldn’t drink.

          Am I hard-core anti-alchohol now? Hell no! If you can handle it responsibility, you do you, friend. Carry on and be happy with being responsible. I’ll even buy you a drink sometime if we ever meet.

        • Zink@programming.dev
          2·
          1 year ago

          Damn right people need to see alcohol for what it is. I’m not anti-alcohol but I’m also not a regular drinker.

          I live in a state where you can get cannabis with a medical card. I would never dare bring it to work, on a plane, and I try to avoid crossing state lines with it.

          But with alcohol, while its probably not cool to drink at my desk, if I am at a business dinner I often order a drink just to not be the oddball of the group, and I get to hear my boss discuss his preferred drinks.

          And yet alcohol kills people every day, and I even have an uncle who died from what it did to his body. He was the youngest and in extremely good shape.

          But then the weed that we must speak about in hushed tones causes… checks notes… happiness and comfort at the cost of, uh, making you lazy?