Agreed. Criminalizing drug abuse only led to compound the problem, and is only a net positive for criminal networks.
LSD has been found to be physiologically harmless: Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris from the Centre For Neuropsychopharmacology at London’s Imperial College has reached the conclusion that it has “a very favourable physiological safety profile” - i.e., that it is “non-toxic.”
What’s more, it may even have some therapeutic potential. Earlier this year, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease “published results from the first study of LSD’s therapeutic potential in humans to appear in more than four decades.” (Full thing here - warning: PDF.) It sounds quite promising:
And LSD may also help against cluster headaches, so that’s nice - not to mention make people enjoy themselves without hurting themselves or others, which is nice, too.
The research is ongoing, so perhaps it’s too early to tell either way. But two or five or ten years from now, I think a very good case could be made for LSD at least losing its classification as a “Schedule I” drug - or perhaps being legalised outright.
Alcohol is an acquired taste. Nobody would enjoy drinking it if we hadn’t accustomed ourselves to its repulsive taste because we were seeking intoxication. The sole use of alcohol is intoxication.
Anything at all to back up all that assertion?
I mean millions drink alcohol responsibly every day, and claim to enjoy the taste of specific beverages. Are they all zombies or sheeple?
[EUROSNOB] Tsk, tsk - only an American would partake of l’alcool solely to achieve intoxication. [/EUROSNOB]
dismissive gesture / swirls cognac
Cannabis seems largely agreed, and LSD was mentioned - that’s another I don’t think needs to be criminalized. MDMA hasn’t been mentioned, but that’s also not particularly dangerous and shouldn’t illegal.
You have a French poster just two above you who said something almost entirely opposite to that.
'Twas a joke.
@pkbites But the baseline is people drinking to get a beer buzz in society - not so much established but tolerated by default. You go to a wedding and one of your friends gets loaded at the free mini bar, your reaction? My guess is between not much at all and being hammered yourself.
I might say the same thing about religion. Americans appear to be dreadful at this “moderation” thing. But yes, I think we could probably handle OTC codeine without the sky falling.
Oh, absolutely. But it exists, now, and the OP’s question was whether there was a legitimate “scale” of badness of illegal drugs. I used to think no, not really. Or I’d lump psychedelics into one group and narcotics into another, based on the difference of psychological addiction potential vs. physical dependence. But mostly I felt that people are silly monkeys who need to categorize things, and that the “badness” caused by “hard” drugs was almost entirely a manufactured one; the crime and theft and stealing and even infections from reusing needles caused by the illegality of them, not the drug itself.
Then krokodil happened. And this one has some crazy issues with the drug itself. And yes, those are also due to the unsafe manufacturing process created by the Drug War, but it is what it is. Krokodil isn’t any ol’ desomorphine. It’s specifically desomorphine cooked in such a way that it’s likely to cause necrosis.
So, yes, I now do believe that at least one drug is “worse” than the others and deserves to be treated differently. There’s absolutely no way krokodil (not desomorphine, krokodil) should be legalized.
And this:
…only swap in “krokodil” for “crystal meth” and “desomorphine” for “amphetamines”.
Yep.
But just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s cheap. We still might have a black market for cheaper substances - heck we have a black market for cigarettes right now.
Speak for yourself.
I liked the taste of alcoholic beverages the first time I tried one. Nothing “acquired” about it.
But I disagree that it’s sole use is intoxication in the sense of getting actually drunk. Some of us like the relaxation brought on by a single drink with dinner.
There are a bunch of substances that it seems possible for most people to use in moderation - such as caffeine and alcohol. I would add marijuana to that list. One thing they all seem to have in common is that they are not highly concentrated. Practically no one mainlines pure caffeine, for example, it’s normally consumed in small amounts in beverages. Likewise, most people who drink are mostly drinking beer and wine, or mixed drinks, rather than chugging down 100% ethanol. I know people who smoke pot, which is pretty herbal in nature, but have never known anyone using pure THC.
Things like meth and opium and cocaine are highly refined and have a huge impact - unlike something like ephedra tea (which contains a precursor to meth) or coca leaf tea as as is consumed in Peru.
I could go along with legalizing things on the “not too refined” level because it seems that’s where the recreational use can occur, but not the highly refined substances like opiates or cocaine which very few seem able to use without severe consequences.
And, of course, absolutely no driving under the influence of anything that will impair judgement or reflexes. If you want to use, fine, but not in any manner that puts others at risk.
The “acquired taste” bit is key to this idea. Alcohol is a product of rot*, and while I don’t know of any studies that ask subjects unaware of the effects of alcohol to choose between fresh and fermented fruit juice, or fresh and fermented grain mash, I remember as a child thinking that alcohol had a nasty flavor, tasted variously like rot or like gasoline, depending on its concentration.
Now, I love me some alcoholic drinks. But it was definitely an acquired taste.
- Certainly other things like cheese and soy sauce are also the products of rot, and that might contradict what I said. I dunno. I just know that as a kid I thought alcohol had a nasty taste.
Tsk tsk … are you sure you’re really in France? What would all the vintners at the great chateaux throughout your magnificent wine-making country think of a comment like “repulsive taste” and “sole use … is intoxication” being applied to the wonderful products that in many cases they’ve devoted lifetimes and generations to developing to world-class perfection? 
One big obstacle with “legalizing everything” is that it would presumably mean doing away with the prescription system altogether and making everything OTC. If heroin is OTC, then there’s little rationale for making one have to go through one’s doctor to get Percocet or fentanyl; the same as to amphetamines vs. Ritalin and Adderall. We’re creating a very different world where antidepressants, beta blockers, or thyroid meds are freely available to anyone.
I think the point of alcohol is to get inebriated to some degree. This can be illustrated easily with the fact that alcohol versions of all consumables outweigh the sales of non-alcoholic versions. The sales for alcoholic wine and beer far surpass non-alcoholic.
To say that alcohol is mainly bought for taste is just silly. Surely taste is a factor but the main factor is the inebriating properties.
As for the war on drugs - I think a drug should be increasingly regulated based on the potential to harm other human beings on the substance. Under that thinking alcohol would be far more regulated than marijuana and far more regulated than it is right now. I don’t think we should be criminalizing them, but making them harder to access and limiting the circumstances in which consumption is acceptable.
For example I think it should be legal to be stoned at home or in public, but not on the job or operating a vehicle.
I think it should be legal to be drunk at home, but alcohol in public should be limited. People are notably more aggressive when drunk in general.
A lot of drug related violence stems from acquiring an illegal substance and not the effects of the drug itself. I think if we made drugs more available there would be less harm overall to society.
That Marijuana remains illegal is utterly laughable when you consider the harm it does, it’s impact on society and especially when you compare those costs to Alcohol and Tobacco, which remain legal.
I visited Denver back at the end of June. I think they did an awesome job on legalization and things appeared to be working very well so far. I visited a couple of dispensaries, some (such as Euflora) just to see and say I’d been there. At this point I would have to say that the Colorado Model is far more organized and successful than the Washington State Model and should be studied by other states looking to legalize marijuana.
This isn’t the case: different substances are regulated differently, depending on their advertised use. Alcohol is a “drug” where it is sold for its sterilizing properties (as a “disinfectant drug” in Canada), and a "drink"where it is sold as wine. What makes a drug a “drug” for regulatory purposes is that it have a claimed medical indication (aside from certain substances currently regulated in Canada as ‘natural health products’ which require a lower level of scrutiny).
Similarly, just because a product is not classified as a “drug” doesn’t mean it can’t be regulated - look at alcohol and tobacco; neither are sold in pharmacies as “drugs”, but are nevertheless subject to much regulation.
The idea of “legalizing” isn’t to engage in an anything goes free-for-all, with a shady dealer on every courner. It would be to create a system of regulation for so-called “drugs” (that is, substances sold because of their psychoactive properties but which lack any medical indication). Such products may be subject to reasonable limits, growing more stringent or more lax depending on the substance, subject to purity controls, subject to taxation, etc. For example, I could foresee that (non-medical) heroin use would be very strictly regulated - requiring some sort of official ‘addict designation’, only used in a controlled setting, etc. In contrast, pot would be sold with a level of control more like that of cigarettes.
The major differences would be that users would no longer be branded as ‘criminals’, that organized crime would be undercut substantially (have to live off the margin between the taxed and untaxed economies - like with bootleg booze - rather than having a total monopoly), and that users would be at less risk, assuming they stick to the regulated product, of harm from impurities and the like.
This is what makes sense. I wouldn’t make all drugs all legal all the time, but any enforcement of illegal drugs should be directed at manufacturers and distributors and not the users. And if the users have preferable drugs available and legal they won’t be injecting stuff that rots their flesh or makes them act like a flesh eating zombie. Sure, some crazy person will ingest something and harm himself or others, but our current prohibition has done nothing to stop that. We can eliminate the self sustaining crime induced from our current drugs laws by making drugs reasonably legal for those who are going to use them anyway. If we had done this a long time ago we wouldn’t have the mess we have now.
How is O’Douls selling these days? C’mon, I don’t think reasonable person thinks that if we went back to prohibition of alcohol but provided really tasty non-alcoholic analogs, we’d seem them embraced with enthusiasm. We didn’t come up with hard cider, hard lemonade and wine coolers because the make fruit juice taste better, and coffee liqueur isn’t around for it’s coffee flavor. People drink alcoholic beverages for the alcohol and the companies are aggressively chasing people that don’t like the traditional tastes.
To me, the real worry about legalized drugs is the companies that would then sell them. People up in arms about Joe Camel won’t want to see the marketing scramble to get early brand loyalty for addictive products.
Taste some pure alcohol. Tell me how good it is. The fact that we have devoted thousands of year to make the stuff palatable by mixing it or flavouring it with all sort of stuff, and that people finally come to appreciate a whiskey instead of immediately thinking “that’s disgusting” and “it burns” doesn’t change a thing.
Alcohol is vile in taste and burns the mouth and the oesophagus. You have to have the taste disguised and to make some degree of effort to come to finally enjoy it.
Do the same with marijuana, mix it with pleasantly scented and tasting stuff, have people devoting their life for several generations to make it more agreeable, make sure to smoke it for several years and to learn to appreciate the various type and flavours, and I’m sure you’ll be equally able to say you’re enjoying the taste of a joint responsably.
All come from the fact alcohol is socially accepted. Otherwise, the only thing people would find to drink would be bathtub-produced vodka, and would only drink it for the buzz.
And of course, the reason why we devoted so much time and energy to make alcohol drinkable is because it’s intoxicating. I’m certain we could produce equally palatable drinks with some other vile chemicals. We never did because the intoxication was the point, not trying to make something normally undrinkable drinkable for the sake of it.
We did for a very long time and the sky indeed didn’t fall.