Well, if you've "recently run into the idea of giving free heroin to drug addicts", it sounds like you might be thinking of Portugal, which recently, and quietly, separated itself from the current global consensus-of-attitude powers-that-be, and started offering free heroin to card-carrying addicts under controlled circumstances as a social cost-saving measure.

Portugal is the poorest of the European Union nations, which means they needed to find ways to reduce government expenditures, and the simple facts are:

1) The social costs of trying to handle heroin addiction with suppressive measures are way, way more expensive than just buying the stuff from poor Afghanistan poppy farmers.

These social costs include things like theft and robbery, policing, and imprisonment, and none of those are cheep to deal with. Think about the cost of just a common home robbery, what with replacing locks and broken doors/windows, the time it takes for the cops to assess the site and write reports when they could be chasing murderers, the cost to home insurance, the emotional cost of loss of family mementos, yadda yadda.

It is *not* a case of the government becoming a drug-pusher. You can't walk in off the street and ask to have a fix unless you've already been certified as a real addict, so there's no "drug pushing" happening.

2) Ironically, and perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, heroin addiction is one of the cheapest and least harmful of any of the controlled substances, if managed. It's vastly less destructive than chronic alcoholism, and it's way, way less self-destructive than speed.

In fact, the only physical effect of heroin addiction tends to be chronic constipation.

Otherwise, once a person's physiology has adapted, it's about as biochemically transparent as any substance can get.

The health-service of Portugal is *not* giving away alcohol nor speed... just heroin. They're not handing it out to anyone who asks, so they're not being a pusher, and you have to prove you're a real addict.

So what's a real addict? Well, the best research on that came from Vietnam vets.

Like most wars with no clear objective nor method to victory, it created a lot of discombobulation among troops, and so the troops would do what troops do when stuck in a BS situation, which is seek some psychological time-out, and there was plenty of heroin in Vietnam. Heroin use in Vietnam was way more rampant than was being acknowledged.

What was interesting was that as soon as they got home, 90% of those who used heroin in Vietnam spontaneously and voluntarily kicked the habit, with little or no prodding from authorities, family or friends.

It turns out that in fact, for 90% of the population, heroin is a physical and emotional pain killer that gets too boring when they've got other things to do.

But for 10%, there's something about the receptors in their brain where heroin fits it like a perfect key-in-lock, such that once they start using it, they really cannot unlock the grip... not the way other people can.

It's not a deficiency. In fact, there's indications that at some time in our evolutionary history, it was a defense against some types of vegetation-constituents that enabled omnivorous consumers to withstand effects that could be toxic to ordinary consumers, sort of like how sickle-cell anemia can be a bad thing in today's world, but how if you lived in a part of the world swarming with malaria, it provides some defense.

For those 10% who's brain will lock onto heroin once they try it, it's frankly kind'a pointless trying to beat it out of them.

Yeah maybe they shouldn't have started. Yeah maybe there should be a DNA test to tell people before they try heroin whether or not they're going to be one of those who's brain will lock on it, such that they'll never be able to kick it once they start (although, on the other hand, maybe it's a good thing such a test does not exist, else dealers might use it to target who will become their most guaranteed regular clients once those clients start), but once that special one-out-of-ten start, you might as well give it up and just make sure they can get a regular dose.

Go ahead and lecture them and wag your finger, as if they're not going to have lectured themselves enough already, but really, it's simply cheaper on a social level to make sure there's a regular supply than to try to get them to stop when the way they are subjectively experiencing the addiction is *not* the same as it is for the 90% majority.

And by the way, it's not just heroin which can lock into special receptors for some people.

For example, there's nicotine (seven times harder to kick than heroin when comparing a typical nicotine addict to a typical heroin addict), but there are some people... again, about one out of ten... who have nicotine receptors in their brain that are a bit different from that of the majority.

Like those with that special heroin receptor, people with a special nicotine receptor seems to have inherited it as part of what had been, at one time, an evolutionary adaptation that enabled them to survive poisonings by some plants, and like that 10% with the special heroin receptor, those with the special nicotine receptor can *not* mentally function without it once they start.

It literally affects their base cognitive functions on a level that the typical nicotine addict cannot understand, and like that 10% of the special heroin addicts, they are exactly the people who never should have started. One famous example is Golda Mier, former Prime Minister of Israel. She was smart, she was capable, she got things done, and she was an absolute chain-smoker who went wiggy without it.

We also see this same phenomena among alcoholics. Anyone can become an alcoholic once they get in the groove, but there's a minority percentage whom it affects different.

Like heroin and nicotine, the presence of special receptors looks to be an artifact of evolution, from some time lost in prehistory when an ancestor's ability to process alcohol in a different way had an advantage under those circumstances, but which is a danger in a society flush with plenty of booze, and like heroin and nicotine, if you're one of those with a special receptor, you're exactly the type who never should have started, but once you do start, you've got an issue that an ordinary alcoholic is not going to understand.

Now, here's what kind'a curious about those folk with special receptors for heroin or nicotine or booze... and it's that - yeah, they are exactly the people who should never have started - *but*, once they do, ironically, if the supply can be stabilized, they handle it better than the majority.

In the case of heroin, if a person does not have that special receptor for heroin addiction, each thwack of heroin makes them kind'a dopey, whereas for those with the special receptor for addiction, it levels them out. One of the more famous examples of that was actor Bela Legusi. He did his best parts after shooting up.

This is true even for alcoholics, which is - bar none - the hardest drug to self-regulate, yet there are, and have been, plenty of people with that special receptor for alcohol addiction who have navigated themselves through long lives by dosing themselves on very steady levels - usually in two-ounce shots, spread out to be equivalent to about a fifth per day - and the most critical thing for them to watch out for is that they eat a healthy diet, because the side-effect of ethanol metabolism is serious tissue self-digestion if the consumer doesn't make sure there's always plenty of nutrients in his tummy for catalysts to work on.

We bewail the social costs of alcohol, yet it's *nothing* compared to the cost of prohibition.

Likewise, the social costs of heroin prohibition are astronomical compared to the cost of simply allowing for regular and controlled dosing to those of the special addiction.

I will confess, sometimes I find it a tad annoying trying to explain this concept to those of a Republican nature, so let me put it into terms they might understand better:

Taxes. The taxes are lower when you control supply, and allow for maintenance dosing of those with the special receptors, and if you're going to get off on calling the government a pusher for allowing such things, start first with government control of alcohol first, because alcohol is a hundred times more destructive.

And if you want to get off on talking about how people should never start using the stuff - especially if they're those with the special receptor - then take a look at why they start in the first place, and work on that.

From Vietnam war vets we learned that people don't pick up emotional-and-physical pain killers unless there's some pain to kill...

Have you seen the state of Russia's economy since it was "set free"? It now has a few billionaires who like it better, and a few hundred million others who are miserable and think It's a mess compared to how things were for them under the Soviets...

Did you know that 90% of all that heroin being produced by Afghan poppy farmers is ending up in Russia?

The solution is not to hammer on people for having tried it and got addicted, and then hammer more on the genetically-natural addicts who shouldn't have tried it in the first place, because once started they are *not* going to stop (in which case, the cheapest thing to do is simply facilitate regular dosage so they're not driven to crime).

Rather... if you really want a long-term solution, take a look at what compels *anyone* to pick it up in the first place.

Wow. As you know from working in a drug rehab center there is not a single solution for addiction that will work for everyone. What works for one addict will be the death of another addict. I do not know which government you are talking about and why specifically they feel importing and distributing heroin to addicts will be helpful to the specific area of concern or the specific addicts or addict of concern but it sounds to me like they have exhausted most all other options.

The shift in world view and opinion of the addict is changing and not all countries view the addicts as criminals just for being addicts. The actions one takes in the procurement of the drugs to feed ones addiction are criminal but having the addiction itself is not a crime. I think this government you are speaking about has considered that by removing the criminal act of the procurement of heroin and the otherwise criminal people one must encounter and deal with when procuring heroin that they are getting more to the base of addiction and can treat the disease and not the symptoms.

The symptoms of the disease of heroin addiction would be the unreasonable, dangerous, criminal, and entirely unsafe/insane actions a heroin addict will do to get their fix and when these actions are what is treated in the addict the addict will merely end up in jail or prison where they will stop using heroin but not ever really have their disease treated and studied. There is no rehabilitation in jail or prison.

I think the government you are asking about is progressively venturing into treating the disease of addiction at its base instead of the more mainstream ways of treating addiction by allowing lives to be destroyed by crime and and an unhealthy criminal lifestyle and then through the justice system get addicts "off the street" and therefore not using heroin. This effectively stops the addict form using and stops their criminal behavior as a result of their addiction but it does not treat the addiction.

I cannot say this is the right thing to do but I do say that the way the disease of addiction is viewed by the law and the people needs to change before any leaps and bounds progress will be made in the real deal treatment of addiction and all of an addictions manifestations including heroin addiction