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Does Cracking Down on Prescription Opiates Lead to More Heroin Use?

Does Cracking Down on Prescription Opiates Lead to More Heroin Use? - The Huffington Post

Oxycontin (thankfully after my time) is such a messy situation.  There’s a lot of evidence that people around the world are undertreated for pain because governments are afraid of drug abuse (and the US and the UN).  But the solution was not a shock and awe big pharma media campaign with ridiculous lies about their new drug not having any potential to be either addictive or used off-label (not to mention the overdose risk).  There’s a lot of evidence that these drugs are overprescribed for back pain.  But, from a harm reduction perspective, a pharmaceutically pure narcotic of a known dose is way better than street heroin.  And any time you start adding anti-injection ingredients (like talc and gelling agents), you are going to do a lot of damage to the veins of people who are still trying to shoot it.  And of course, the people who give up on shooting pills are going to switch to heroin.

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"The point here is not that queer politics needs more free-market ideology, but that heteronormative forms, so central to the accumulation and reproduction of capital, also depend on heavy interventions in the regulation of capital. One of the most disturbing fantasies in the zoning scheme, for example, is the idea that an urban locale is a community of shared interest based on residence and property. The ideology of the neighborhood is politically unchallengeable in the current debate, which is dominated by a fantasy that sexual subjects only reside, that the space relevant to sexual politics is the neighborhood. But a district like Christopher Street is not just a neighborhood affair. The local character of the neighborhood depends on the daily presence of thousands of nonresidents. Those who actually live in the West Village should not forget their debt to these mostly queer pilgrims. And we should not make the mistake of confusing the class of citizens with the class of property owners. Many of those who hang out on Christopher Street—typically young, queer, and African American-couldn’t possibly afford to live there. Urban space is always a host space. The right to the city extends to those who use the city. It is not limited to property owners. It is not because of a fluke in the politics of zoning that urban space is so deeply misrecognized; normal sexuality requires such misrecognitions, including their economic and legal enforcement, in order to sustain its illusion of humanity."

—Lauren Berlant & Michael Warner, “Sex In Public”
 

There’s something similar going on with Tompkins Square Park and Haight Ashbury and the Castro — that people who own property in these iconic spots are so horrified by the homeless youth who make pilgrimages there.  I mean, surely the property owners knew about the cultural meaning of these places before they invested the big bucks.

At some point in the late 90s, there was an effort to put a shelter for queer youth in the Castro and there was a lot of neighborhood resistance.  Like, could you be sure the kids were really gay?  Maybe they were just junkies trying to get over.  Because drug use is never entangled with sexual identity and homelessness, right?  And, anyway, you wouldn’t want to create an attractive nuisance.