Heroin overdose cure: It exists, but how do you get it?

[Aractus]

Do you think people that drive cars in the US don't actually believe that 40,000 people die in car wrecks every year in the US?

Everybody plays the odds. That's just life.

Um, no that's not the way life works. Taking risks is one thing, doing things that you know have no long term positive benefits and only negative long term effects is another. I was actually going to use driving earlier as an example as to why I'm against safe-injecting rooms, but I think I summed it up even better in my previous entry where I explained that in-home targeted assistance (which does extend to support groups) is far more beneficial than any external assistance and that's where the support should be targeted.

But let's look at the example I would have given. If we spend an unlimited amount of money and bankrupt society we could potentially make roads 100% accident proof, and with less resources we could make improvements that save lives. Yet we have to weigh up the financial cost of doing so, even though human life is priceless and sacred; thus while we could spend $50,000,000 and save dozens of lives, we could instead invest that money in hospitals or schools, and well you get the picture.

Seeing as Australia is the largest producer of opium alkaloids than anywhere else in the civilized world (not counting Afghanistan since all their poppies end up as heroin and not medicine, and not counting India since they export raw opium), you have the exact same argument there. Of course it means that criminals will illegally hand-harvest the crops and produce heroin, but seeing as opium alkaloid is absolutely essential to modern medicine it's an unfortunate side-effect that has to be accepted and dealt with as part of the package. The good news is that non-imported Australian heroin thus doesn't fund the Taliban but the bad news is that it instead funds organized crime in Australia.

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As I understand it, research indicates that we are wired to believe that these things do happen, but that they will not happen to us.

Yes and that's either the definition of stupidity or insanity, take your pick.

Supposedly Einstein* wrote that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

*Attributed to him in 1925, which is quite early.