"If you've got to cut the vein and find some way to pour it in there, you're going to get it in there," Tony said.
Jack was lucky. He kicked the habit two years ago and didn't turn up HIV positive. But Tony suffers from full-blown AIDS, which he caught from an infected needle.
Anyone who thinks heroin junkies behave rationally doesn't know any heroin junkies. When they need a fix, they might not wait to stand in line at the local Safeway buying 2 for 1 syringes with their Club Cards.
But, sure, by all means, let's buy syringes over the counter. The junkies won't be the ones buying them, but the enterprising heroin dealer just found another, legal, profit center! As a matter of fact, he/she might just get into the lucrative business of medical sales and give up heroin dealing altogether.
As for the rest of us, you never know when a syringe will come in handy. I mean, I just might want to inject blue dye into the yolk of an egg without cracking the shell. Makes a great conversation starter at breakfast....
LOL!
The libertarian conceit assumes everyone will behave rationally in the absence of external controls and laws. That includes junkies. There are no addictions is a libertarian free state--just responsible casual indulgences. It is the law--not the substance consumed--that destroy bodies and souls.
But you are right. A junkie will scrounge a used syringe and needle from a dumpster or gutter and use them before he will walk into a shop fifty feet away where syringes are sold without a prescription and pay fifty cents for them unused. Having used them, he will drop them in the dirt and the next junkie will spy them and use them. And so on, and so on.
Some will and some won't. And where's the downside---who is deterred from heroin use only by the unavailability of clean needles?