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ymeskhout  7mo ago (text post)   2430 thread views

The Bailey Podcast E034: An Unhinged Conversation on Policing

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In this episode, an authoritarian and some anarchist(s) have an unhinged conversation about policing.

Participants: Yassine, Kulak, & Hoffmeister25 [Note: the latter's voice has been modified to protect him from the progressive nanny state's enforcement agents.]

Links:

About the Daniel Penny Situation (Hoffmeister25)

Posse comitatus (Wikipedia)

Lifetime Likelihood of Going to State or Federal Prison (BJS 1997)

The Iron Rule (Anarchonomicon)

Eleven Magic Words (Yassine Meskhout)

Blackstone's ratio (Wikipedia)

Halfway To Prison Abolition (Yassine Meskhout)

Defunding My Mistake (Yassine Meskhout)

Recorded 2023-09-16 | Uploaded 2023-09-25

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I understand how distasteful a "free heroin" arrangement would be, from the standpoint that you describe. Ultimately it boils down to a variant of "do you want to be right? or do you want to win?". I don't like property crime. The cost of shoplifting gets shifted onto me the customer. Stores also respond by putting items behind locks, or just shift their inventory to less valuable things. I would like there to be less shoplifting but I don't see a feasible or practical way to get to that point given the continuing prevalence of addicting drugs. Yeah it would suck to see someone contribute nothing to society and just wait around for their regular heroin drop, but that's preferable to me if it means a significant reduction in property crime. We're already spending money on police, prosecutions, higher prices, etc. it's just a matter of how to spend it efficiently.

Exactly now the Danes come take our stocks and treasure by force while doing considerable damage. If we paid them the damage could be avoided.

Generally speaking, it tends to be more persuasive if you speak with clarity. If you have an analogy, it also helps to explicitly tie it to the argument at hand. So if I was rewriting this I would probably say something like:

Just as paying tribute might embolden the Danes to continue their raids, providing free heroin would encourage the very behavior we're trying to mitigate. For example, XYZ

...or something to that effect, feel free to make modifications!

Thank you. That's charitable.

I was hoping slightly that someone would respond with Kipling's Dane-geld.

Is free heroin for onsite consumption substantially different from methadone for onsite consumption? Is this a particularly methadone resistant cohort?

Based on the research and anecdotes from my clients, methadone is a poor substitute for the opioids it's meant to replace. It's apparently not very good at completely suppressing the cravings, and also causes constipation and sweating. Suboxone tends to get better reviews; side effects are less common and less severe (mostly headache & nausea), longer lasting (up to 72 hours instead of 36), and apparently slightly better at suppressing the cravings.

[There's also a difference in how the two are administered where methadone requires a very strict regimen of daily in-person visits to a clinic and you can get kicked out if you miss a dose, while suboxone can be given as a prescription for home use. Though this is a legal requirement and not inherent with the medications themselves.]

I've seen people successfully cut their habit with either medications, but also have seen way more relapses (though keep in mind that there is heavy sample bias with my work where I generally only see the fuckups). Despite the shortcomings, if someone is trying to quit either medication is way better than nothing. But if someone is still chasing the high, both are disappointments.

Would you anticipate the Free Heroin Clinc accepting clients who are not in treatment or only accepting clients for whom other treatments had failed? Is there a path to being opioid free in these treatment plans?

The Free Heroin Clinics that currently exist in Switzerland are only open to clients as a last resort if other treatment plans have failed. I couldn't find much data on cessation, but also the primary goal of heroin-assisted treatment is the dreaded "harm reduction" buzzword which includes reducing overdoses, reducing crime, and freeing up addict's time to maybe become a normal part of society. Maybe that helps some people quit, but it's perfectly possible for some clients to have no interest in being opioid-free and just remain in the program indefinitely.

The yearly cost FYI for HAT is around $13k/year, or about 3x what methadone programs cost, namely due to the higher staffing required.

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