The reason why heroin is dangerous is that it is the most addictive of all these drugs. But yes, as far as I know the medical/physiological drawbacks from use are not very severe and you don’t need to increase your dose very much over time, compared to cocaine. But the addiction is so severe that you can actually die from abstinence. If you’re on heroin, your supplier owns you.
No, your lack of willpower owns you. Stop buying off your regular dealer - there are plenty of them out there to choose from - lie to every other smackhead that you know( this comes quite easily) that you are getting it £10 cheaper elsewhere. Wait until price comes down accordingly, rinse, repeat.
What you’re saying is, YOU don’t like how they choose to spend THEIR money. What if I’d rather turn my thermostat down to 68 in the summer, and someone else thinks I should be saving that money for retirement? What if I’d like to have a fancy wedding instead of saving that money for a down payment on a house? What if I’d rather pay a little more for my groceries than spend time clipping coupons? What if I’d rather buy my groceries from Whole Foods, even though I could get cheaper groceries from Wal-Mart?
Who gets to determine if these things are a good use of my money or not? Why should someone else be able to tell me that I shouldn’t spend my money on what I like, be that drugs, a fancy car, convenience, or whatever? What if I think that any car more expensive than a Honda Civic is a frivolous thing that no one should spend their money on? Do I get to outlaw any car fancier than a Civic?
In my opinion, the War on Drugs is all about control.
It is very easy to isolate a population as ‘drug-using-scum’ and ignore the civil liberties (of everyone not just the ‘drug-using-scum’) that are abridged by this mindset.
I believe in a sane drug policy; one that respects the individual’s right to choose their own destiny. Legalizing and taxing the most commonly used drugs will not only reduce the prison population and crime in general, it will also decrease the money available to organized crime syndicates and the destabilizing effects on other nations.
There is (in my opinion) nothing more or less ethical about smoking marijuana or drinking alcohol.
I have only done ecstacy once and that was way back in the late 1980’s. I liked it.
Ecstacy dehydrates the body. I have a feeling a lot of these deaths and emergencies stem from the drug, drinking alcohol and doing vigerous dancing under hot lights and possibly crampt conditions like a club.
A lot of times to is that with a pill type drug, it takes some time for it to “kick in”, the user gets impatient and takes another dose, and then it doubles up on the person. More X, more dehydration. However, since the person is so buzzed, they are not feeling the pain and the warning of the body to slow down, take a rest, get some fresh cool air, drink something non alcoholic.
Sitting at home with the lover dropping X, smoking a joint and doing the wild thing wont hurt anything once a week. The goofball goth kids whon flame out every weekends are the idiots who go to the hospital and die.
I’m fairly sure that the waiting period between ecstasy trips should be a month if not longer.
Got told that by someone studying neuro-something.
I don’t have it in for Stoneburg, but he lists LSD among the ‘safe’ drugs. I guess I don’t believe that either. Not that it kills people, but people on LSD do seem to go basically nuts, and to not always come all the way back. Is that safe? Or am I so wrong about LSD too?
As for ecstasy, the scary story I heard was that using too much can lead to permanent depression. Kinda makes taking drugs not even worth it if that is true. Or maybe that is another urban myth…?
No, but I forgot to mention that my friend had gotten seriously messed up with drugs. She was sober, but her brain and priorties were so screwed up (from ADD and drugs) that she did not have the abilty to delay gratification.
I do think many people don’t quite understand that there are people who don’t have the abilty to make good decisions whether it be birth control, choice of life partner, drugs etc.
Actually wait…I would say that we still need to criminalize it…that is still keep it somehow in the purview of the legal system, but not the way we have been criminalizing it. But the base theory behind “criminalizing drug abuse is not effective as a deterrent” is that " oh drug addicts are just helpless victims, and they’re self medicating" rather then " oh they’re teh EVIL addicts who need to be punished to the max!
It’s not me you “have it in for”, it’s Prof David Nutt (FMedSci), Leslie A King (PhD), William Saulsbury (MA) and Prof Colin Blakemore (FRS). I’m not pulling this stuff out of my ass, I’m pulling it out of The Lancet.
My own prejudice about LSD is the same as yours, and I would have expected it to be more dangerous than cocaine but less than heroin. But I’m not listing my prejudices, I am using the research available to form opinions on facts. If you want to hold on to your prejudices because it is more comfortable, that’s up to you, I’m trying to challenge my own and learn.
I read something simmilar along the lines of how excessive use of MDMA could lead to lower production of serotonin, thus leading to depression. But not that it was ‘permanent’.
Nope. The base theory behind legalizing it is economy, not morals. Milton Friedman was the financial advisor of Reagan and Nixon, maybe he can explain it better. At least nobody will accusing him of being a liberal/socialist softie: Interview with Milton Friedman on the Drug War
Not only is criminalizing not a deterrant, due to the plasticity of the economic system, it may well be an incentive. The Law Enforcement Against Prohibition consists of cops, judges and prosecutors who are against the War on Drugs. Their first principle is:
Scientists who research drugs say the “official knowledge” of drugs is severely flawed and based on prejudices and propaganda rather than facts. Scientists and Economists say drug prohibition doesn’t work, won’t work, and is at the root of the social/economic problem. Law Enforcement people agree.
But unfortunately politicians are often more concerned with lobbyists, churches and voters prejudices. It’s easy to kill a politicians career by labeling him as “soft on crime” or “a drug liberal”. Prejudices are very powerful in the political arena.
I understand that these people exist. But how many rights do the rest of us have to give up to protect them? It doesn’t make sense that I shouldn’t be allowed to buy drugs because some other person might mess up their life if they were allowed to buy drugs.
Hey thanks, that is a good article. I only skimmed it, but there was some really great language right there in the abstract:
Cut and paste a word here and there and you could articulate most of my complaints in general.
Ah, but I have the 'dope to challenge my prejudices for me 
Again, I only skimmed the article, but the researchers you cite did not seem to account explicitly for what I would refer to as ‘mental illness’ effects. They assess ‘harm’ in the categories of ‘physical’, ‘dependence’, and ‘social’. You might try to interpret drug-induced mental illness from the physical side, but I think it is accepted that the workings of the mind are not fully understood and therefore a comprehensive physical explanation of mental illness just isn’t available.
You could describe mental illness in terms of the ‘social’ category ie it doesn’t really matter if the person can maintain their social role yada yada… but I don’t think this really accounts for the full scope of mental illness.
And this is the category I am concerned with when it comes to assessing the ‘danger’ or ‘harm’ of drugs like LSD or ecstasy. I see the methodology in the Lancet ranks them relatively low compared to other drugs. That’s interesting. I suppose I am more interested in a ‘threshold’ judgment of these drugs- they either are or are not too dangerous to, say, legalize for birthday parties and weddings and so on.
I don’t mean to reject the methodology described in The Lancet. I am simply defending my prejudice by suggesting adding a ‘mental illness’ category when assessing harm. Think about it. People who smoke cigarettes don’t seem healthy, but they don’t otherwise seem nuts either. Don’t you agree? And so cigarettes aren’t really more dangerous than LSD or ecstasy. Sure, they may kill you dead in 30 years, but the hallucinogens can cause a person to lose themselves in a short amount of time, which is kind of the same thing if you think about it.
I read it in a newspaper article years ago. I couldn’t cite it for you. And that pretty much plumbs the depths of my formal education on the subject of ecstasy. I hadn’t given it much thought either, until now… I guess these here intertubes are good for something after all!
And then there is the question: Is there any set of policies that would prevent people from messing up their lives?
You’d have to make a lot of things illegal.
Obviously, we’ll have to ban alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and guns.
People have messed up their lives with mortgage debt, so we have to make home ownership illegal.
People have gotten into financial trouble over car payments. Outlawing any car fancier than a Honda Civic ought to fix that. Or banning private car ownership might be good. That would keep people out of financial trouble, and prevent a lot of reckless and drunk driving.
We’ll need to ration clothes and other consumer goods, to keep anyone from buying too many of them.
We’ll make everybody eat at a common kitchen that would only serve healthy food in appropriate portions, and ban food sales outside of the common kitchens.
We’ll outlaw premarital sex. Just ask Bristol Palin how that can make a mess of your life. Oh, and people don’t always choose good marriage partners, so we’ll have a government matchmaking office.
People sometimes mess up their lives by joining cults. We’ll ban any religion that is not approved and watched by the government.
I suppose we could have mandatory daily exercise sessions, to keep people from messing up their lives by choosing not to exercise.
We should do something about things that encourage people to procrastinate, since procrastination can mess up your life, too. Let’s ban TV, movies, online message boards, video games, and all books other than ones that give instruction in doing things that people need to do.
We’ll have to do something about people choosing jobs that don’t pay enough to support them. Maybe we could have everyone make up a budget, and then have a government office that assigns you to a job based on your budget.
There should be a mandatory lights-out time at night, to keep people from not getting enough sleep.
We’ll ban swimming pools and bathtubs, since people can drown in them. Let 'em take showers! Or it might be a good idea to have common bathrooms with all the latest safety features, and make private bathrooms illegal.
It might prevent some brain injuries if we made everybody wear a helmet at every waking moment. We’ll make everyone sleep on the floor, too, so nobody injures their head falling out of bed.
We’ll ban dangerous hobbies like horseback riding- we wouldn’t want anyone to mess up their lives the way Christopher Reeve did.
ETA: We’ll ban pets, too. They transmit diseases, bite people, and trip people.
Anne, on the other hand, you’re just giving up ONE arbitary privilage that doesn’t even impact your day to day life that much. I do support legalization of pot for example. Pot’s nothing. But you cannot deny that harder drugs fuck up people’s lives. Even people you’d think would be able to handle drugs, often have trouble. Why would you want to feel good for a few mintues just to have some significent negative health related effects down the road? Yes, prohibitation hasn’t worked…but legalization still has significent flaws.
It’s the same argument as while there might be some young teens who are mature and sophsicated enough to engage in a sexual realtionship with someone a couple of years older then them, most young teens don’t have that sophsication.
My original point is that, yes, drugs can and do mess people up physically and or mentally, some drugs more so and some people more so.
But its too late for any formal total ban on now illegal recreational drugs, how ever harmful.
Worldwide, people have discovered that they really, really enjoy the effects of drug taking.
Now that people know that they like it we can’t hush it up.
We’ve tried stopping drugs at the point of import, the points of production, the points of sale you name it, and have failed.
We have tried to educate people about the harmful effects and the social, moral, criminal and other effects, but people have decided that the the enjoyment that they get out of it outweighs the down sides.
And we have failed globally.
As I said in the O.P. you can’t get the toothpaste back in the tube.
We have to recognise the fact that drug use is something that we have to live with like it or not, and adapt our laws and society to minimise the harm done by drugs.
As long as it is illegal we don’t have control over drug use, it is firmly in the hands of the criminals.
And they aren’t concerned over the harm it does only the money it makes for them.
But for the life of me I have no ideas on how to integrate drug use into normal society that has minimum impact on that very society.
What are the dangers of marijuana that are often ignored? Which ones are so terrifying that you “certainly wouldn’t touch marijuana with a barge pool”?
I don’t deny that some drugs can fuck up people’s lives. I disagree that keeping them illegal is the best way to deal with that. Alcohol fucks up people’s lives, but we found that prohibiting it wasn’t a good way to solve that problem.
Well, I think it is difficult to educate people about the dangers of drugs while surrounded by the economic atmosphere of our society. To consume more is, if not quite a virtue, presented as a symbol of success. So, you succeed, you should feel good (because you are good), be a good capitalist and buy something right away! Drugs are the same way- buy them, take them, feel good!
Whether it is with products or with drugs, there is a good chance the consumer is wasting their time/life. How do you educate them to avoid the one without undermining the other?
The right to tell people what they can spend their money on should not depend on what some authority has deemed illegal at some point, without explaining and justifying exactly why it was and still is deemed illegal in the first place.