Heroin Parenting

[The Brain]

Why do you want to reopen Birkenau for poors?

[Berkut]

Yeah I used to see things like this. Drugs do some fucked up shit to families.

I think there is something happening in the US that is not in line with the typical drug problems we have seen over the last few decades.

Heroin use has become a huge, huge issue. I have a friend whose son is an addict, just fucking out of nowhere. He was a top scholar in high school, got a full ride to an excellent school. He is a freshman, this year.

He went off, his dad said his demeanor changed, stopped going to class, all that in hindsight obvious shit. Then it all became clear when his roomate ODed and died, and he told his dad he had tried Oxy and then heroin, and was an addict.

This is fucking crazy. Heroin? HEROIN? That was a drug that fucked up poor people and hard core addicts had problems with - not middle class kids fucking around in college with pot and booze.

[Berkut]

You really are distorting this argument.

Nobody is calling for apalling "disappearance through abstinence". And nobody is also saying that people who are less well off than the average not to have children - often people who are poor can be some of the best and responsible parents.

Rather, the crux of the argument is simple - people should not have children (or more children) if they lack sufficient mental, financial and moral capacity to take care of them. Hopefully for most people such situation of deprivation is transitory. There are those, however, for whom it is permanent or semi permanent - such people should not be encouraged to have children.

Again, I will repeat - I am not calling for any legal or medical means of preventing this, but rather through encouraging responsible parenting. Isn't this what planned parenthood is all about?

I think the shift we need is more that humans should not be fertile except by conscious choice, rather than the opposite.

[Valmy]

Yeah I don't get it. Why would you use something that is 100% guaranteed to fuck up everything? But then people continue to take up smoking despite most of society going through hell to try to stop smoking. So who knows?

[Monoriu]

Humanity needs more babies.  A rapidly shrinking population won't do the economy any good. 

[Berkut]

I think Marty is NOT saying "Poors should not be allowed to procreate!"

He is saying "Parents unprepared to raise children are a leading cause of those children growing up in poverty, and then having children of their own in poverty".

Trying to break that cycle by making it less likely for unprepared parents to have children they cannot care for is a goal we should work towards, within the bounds of our liberal ethics.

[garbon]

I think Marty is NOT saying "Poors should not be allowed to procreate!"

He is saying "Parents unprepared to raise children are a leading cause of those children growing up in poverty, and then having children of their own in poverty".

Trying to break that cycle by making it less likely for unprepared parents to have children they cannot care for is a goal we should work towards, within the bounds of our liberal ethics.

The difficulty is that it is a razor thing edge to then stepping outside of our ethics when linking to poverty.

Obviously, I think at least theoretically, we can agree that only fit parents who are happy to have children, who are willing and able to support them. What exactly are the details that make up those items though...that's the landmine.

[viper37]

This is fucking crazy. Heroin? HEROIN? That was a drug that fucked up poor people and hard core addicts had problems with - not middle class kids fucking around in college with pot and booze.

how do you think these people became poor?
Heroin addicts have always been from all classes.  More often than you think among college kids.

[viper37]

Yeah I don't get it. Why would you use something that is 100% guaranteed to fuck up everything?

Yeah, why do people keep doing dangerous things purely for seeking pleasure?

[LaCroix]

some of the crazier parenting techniques I've read are spanking babies / suppressing babies' instinct to explore by placing them on a blanket and swatting them if they crawl off it until they learn to stop exploring

[Valmy]

Yeah I don't get it. Why would you use something that is 100% guaranteed to fuck up everything?

Yeah, why do people keep doing dangerous things purely for seeking pleasure?

Well there is a difference between doing something dangerous and something nearly absolutely bad.

[Valmy]

Isn't this what planned parenthood is all about?

Yes. Boy has it made them a popular and loved institution.

[Berkut]

This is fucking crazy. Heroin? HEROIN? That was a drug that fucked up poor people and hard core addicts had problems with - not middle class kids fucking around in college with pot and booze.

how do you think these people became poor?
Heroin addicts have always been from all classes.  More often than you think among college kids.

I think it is radically worse in the last decade in the US.

[Malthus]

This is fucking crazy. Heroin? HEROIN? That was a drug that fucked up poor people and hard core addicts had problems with - not middle class kids fucking around in college with pot and booze.

how do you think these people became poor?
Heroin addicts have always been from all classes.  More often than you think among college kids.

I think it is radically worse in the last decade in the US.

Opiate addiction is on the rise everywhere in North America.

The reason isn't too hard to find: physicians have become far more willing to prescribe opiate-based painkillers, as a result of philosophical changes in modes of treatment (briefly: medical practice is far more concerned than it was to prevent patients from experiencing pain; opiate-based painkillers work; patients have grown to expect pain-freedom, and will shop around until they get it).

The unfortunate result: an increase in addiction, for a bunch of reasons (some get addicted after a legitimate prescription of painkillers; more opiates around to be "diverted" into non-medical use).

People rarely if ever start out injecting themselves with heroin or other street drugs. More usually, they get addicted to properly prescribed painkillers (either prescribed to themselves or 'diverted'). Then, when they can't get that, or the pharmaceuticals no longer deliver a high because of developing tolerance, they turn to street drugs.   

[The Larch]

This is fucking crazy. Heroin? HEROIN? That was a drug that fucked up poor people and hard core addicts had problems with - not middle class kids fucking around in college with pot and booze.

I read somewhere that heroin is making a big comeback in the west amongst young people because the current younger generations have not seen the wreckage it created amongst the older junkies. Over here heroin was almost epidemic in the 80s, but most of those junkies have already died out a good while ago, so young people nowadays have not seen first hand the human zombies it created.