Heroin didn’t start as the boogeyman of every after-school special. It started as a pharmaceutical product, marketed as safer than morphine and sold by one of the world’s most powerful drug companies. The story of heroin is not just about a drug; it’s about how governments, corporations, and moral crusaders built the modern drug war…
Heroin is the perfect case study in how drug policy gets written: not by science, not by compassion, and certainly not by respect for human autonomy, but by panic, racism, corporate protectionism, and political theater. Before it became a three-syllable scare word, heroin was a legal, branded medicine. You could buy it at the pharmacy….
Heroin didn’t just “appear” as the big bad villain of the drug war. It was engineered, marketed, prescribed, and then demonized—often by the very institutions that profited from it in the first place. The story of heroin and opioid prohibition is a case study in how moral panics, racism, and political theater beat evidence, science,…
Heroin didn’t start its life as the boogeyman of the drug war. It began as a pharmaceutical darling, marketed by one of the world’s most powerful drug companies as a safer, non-addictive alternative to morphine. Yes, really. The same substance that now justifies militarized policing and mass incarceration was once sold over the counter as…
Drug use isn’t the problem. A poisoned, unregulated supply and punishment-obsessed policies are. Harm reduction is what people build when governments would rather let you die than admit prohibition failed. This article walks through key harm reduction strategies for people who use drugs, people who love people who use drugs, and anyone who wants to…
The United States didn’t just “stumble” into the War on Drugs. It was built, step by step, on laws that turned patients into criminals, doctors into suspects, and entire communities into targets. One of the most important—and least understood—of those laws is the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act. On paper, it was a tax and…
Let’s stop pretending this is about “public health” or “protecting communities.” Modern drug policy is not a noble crusade; it’s a control system. It criminalizes ordinary people, props up bloated police and prison budgets, shields pharmaceutical and alcohol interests, and keeps politicians looking “tough” while overdose deaths keep climbing. The war on drugs has failed…
Let’s be blunt: the most dangerous thing about drugs today isn’t the molecules themselves — it’s the policies wrapped around them. Prohibition has guaranteed one thing above all else: a wildly unpredictable, contaminated, and often lethal illegal supply. In that reality, harm reduction isn’t “encouraging drug use.” It’s basic survival strategy. This article is a…
“If we legalize drugs, addiction will skyrocket, crime will explode, and society will collapse.” That’s the standard prohibitionist script. You’ve heard it on cable news panels, from tough-on-crime politicians, and in every scare campaign since the Nixon era. The story never changes: drugs are the monster, prohibition is the brave hero, and anyone who questions…
Prohibition didn’t end drug use. It just made it more dangerous, more toxic, and more profitable for cartels and corporations than for regular people. If governments were genuinely interested in “saving lives,” they’d stop playing morality cop and start funding evidence-based harm reduction. Until they catch up with reality, people are still going to use…