I guess I’m not quite understanding how the FDA is supposed to regulate drugs that cannot be sold, only grown/produced in my back yard.
Is the FDA supposed to knock on my door and ask to inspect my meth cooking equipment for safety reasons? And then when they find that the whole thing could blow at any moment, they look in my drug-addled eyes and toothless grin and tell me, “We’ll see you in small claims court, buster!”
You could develop sobriety tests similar to alcohol, but measure things such as reaction times (and perhaps compare those to reaction tests you took when you originally got your license). Sure, there are lots of flaws in this but I’m not sure there’s a physical test that can test how “high” you are.
It makes an interesting point, because I’ve noticed lots of people who say they’re pretty capable of driving while under the influence of marijuana (myself included in the past) but part of that was the paranoia of getting caught makes you obey every applicable speed limit and driving law. If it were legal, I think some of the paranoia would dissipate (but not completely since you’d still be illegally driving under the influence). That said, if studies were done, I’d be willing to bet people driving under the influence of marijuana (not those super super high, just the buzzed ones) have equal or better driving skills than of the elderly drivers I encounter.
What international laws?
There have been various ones over the years but they started with the Hague Treaty of 1912 (which was interestingly incorparated into the later Treaty of Versaille).
“The contracting Powers shall use their best endeavours to control, or to cause to be controlled, all persons manufacturing, importing, selling, distributing, and exporting morphine, cocaine, and their respective salts, as well as the buildings in which these persons carry such an industry or trade.”
We could come up with a sobriety test that tests human ability to drive rather than chemical content. Give someone a little game that will measure reaction time, ability to read road signs, etc.
And, of course, they’d have to stop the ought-to-be-unconstitutional sobriety checkpoints and go back to pulling people over when they’re driving poorly. It’s actually pretty silly to test for chemicals when the purpose is to stop dangerous drivers. If you’re driving dangerously, it shouldn’t matter if you have chemicals in your bloodstream, and if you’re not, it still shouldn’t matter.
Also, it’s very likely that humans will no longer be the pilots of cars in a few decades, except for remote locations where there’s not much to hit, anyway.
The safety of a drug depends entirely on the dosage and method used to take it. It’s perfectly safe to take small doses of cocaine, amphetamines, heroin, etc., even long term. And the FDA has no problem regulating chemotherapy drugs and Botox other drugs that are extremely dangerous, do they?
That’s not necessarily true. There are huge numbers of recreational users of opiates.
They do already at least they regulate the production materials. Note the line in this homebrew advert for a brewing kit “FDA approved for food and beverage consumption”
The point being that why would anyone WANT to make meth in a bathtub when there are safe pharamutical quality drugs available. How many people die in moonshine related accidents nowadays ? How many did in the last year of prohibition ?
Covered by your waiver of liability. Medical treatment will be the responsibility of the signer. No money… pull the plug.
FML
Sign a waiver? If you smoke pot? Drive?
Do people sign waivers for driving under the influence of too much cold medicine? Too tired? Too pissed off? Using a cellphone? Listening to the radio? Being an asshole? Being an incompetent dolt?
People are expected to judge when they’re safe to drive, and as a society we are obviously pretty accepting of people’s self-judgment of their driving competence.
I don’t understand any of this “signing a waiver” stuff or get the point of partial legalization - I say legalize everything and let the individuals deal with the consequences of their use, just as we do with alcohol. Despite all the hand-wringing, I’d bet (I’ll see if I can find any cites when I get home and come off my own [prescription] drug high) there are more alcohol-related injuries/fatalities than every other illegal substance combined. Unless you’re counting victims of the drug dealers and their armies, which would effectively cease to exist with across-the-board legalization. I’m also not a pothead, FTR - shit makes me way too paranoid. But I’ve yet to see a compelling argument for why it would be worse if drugs were legal than it is now.
Don’t forget, if we had domestic cocaine farms, we could stop supporting drug lords in Colombia.
All that I can tell you is that I agree with the point alluded to by other posters that anything would be preferable to the current war on drugs.
The OP proposed a system in which hard drugs can’t be sold, only produced for personal consumption. That’s what I’m asking about.
But those drugs are administered under medical supervision. Obviously, the FDA makes decisions about whether certain drugs are safe for self-administered over-the-counter use, and which ones have to be given under close medical supervision. Surely you aren’t proposing that people who want to get high have to see a doctor for proper dosing, so comparing recreational drugs to chemotherapy really isn’t apt.
That’s not a very convincing argument why your idea is any good. Total legalization at least is a coherent proposal – I oppose it, but it is a logically sound proposal.
Why selling drugs is unacceptable if use is accepted doesn’t make much sense to me, and how the FDA is supposed to regulate the quality of cocaine grown in your back yard is beyond me. They don’t even regulate the tomatoes that my neighbor grows.
It depends on what you call “evidence”. I think most people would agree that alcohol abuse is a much bigger problem in the US than heroin abuse. That is due in large part to the fact that alcohol is legal and heroin is not, and thus alcohol is much more easily available in the US. Every city and town in America has a liquor store. The argument is that, if you could walk three blocks and pick up two rocks of crack as easily as you can a twelve-pack of beer, then use and abuse of crack will increase.
The only counter I know of to that argument is if there are a certain number of people who are going to abuse chemicals, and it doesn’t matter if the drug of abuse is alcohol or opiates or cocaine or Ecstasy. If they can’t get one, then they will drink. I don’t know if this is true or not - my tendency is to say that it is not, at least not always. It is possible, I suppose, to develop an addiction to Valium and still not be an alcoholic. I seem to remember from my training in chemical dependency counseling that people who are trying to quit alcohol sometimes increase their use of other drugs. How that plays out with use of nicotine and caffeine for recovering alcoholics I couldn’t say - I remember a phrase from AA that says “All you need for an AA meeting is two drunks and a coffee pot”. And many of the AA meetings in my area advertise themselves as smoking or non-smoking.
My take on it is that marijuana and hashish should be completely legal, and subject to the same restrictions as alcohol and tobacco. That way, if you do have an alcoholic who replaces his dependency on alcohol with a dependency on pot, this is an improvement, because the physical effects of marijuana are relatively more benign than alcohol. For those who would abuse marijuana but would not abuse alcohol, basically they are SOL - the money we save from not enforcing anti-marijuana laws (and the taxes we collect) offset this IMO.
But I would not legalize harder drugs like opiates or cocaine. Too addictive. Yes, I know alcohol (and tobacco) are addictive too, but opiates are not as deeply embedded in our culture as alcohol, and I don’t want to give them a chance.
Regards,
Shodan
Oh, and one more thing -
Congratulations!
Regards,
Shodan
…and make it part of national health insurance.
Basically, you see your doctor, and (legally) declare yourself to be an addict. Then, your doctor can legally prescribe a maintainence dose for you, you can obtain your dope from a licenced pharmacy. This does two things:
-eliminates the undergraound drug importation system
-eliminates the street crime associated with (illegal) drug distribution
Now, the criminals are cut out of the business-result?
the jails empty out
-no more money for useless agencies like the DEA
-honest Mexican and Columbian citizens do not face the threat of being killed (by drug gangs)
Plus: we can get phamaceutical giants (like MERCK) to make synthetic versions of natural drugs, and these can be provided very cheaply.
I’d say it solves a LOT of problems.
People who DON’T want this:
-DEA agents
-local police
-FBI
They don’t want to give up enormous budgets, and power over the citizenry. Plus, prisons will be empty-bad for corrections departments! 
Add Ravenman to that list. I guess I just love my enormous budget and power over citizenry.
There’s really no way to eliminate an underground market for drugs, ralph124c. As soon as prices get set, someone else is going to offer it for less money through more questionable channels, and unless drugs are made legal everywhere in the world, outlaw cartels are still going to try to get involved. How would they be blocked from the market? I can’t think of how that would happen. If the drugs are legal, there will be a more minimal interest in their products, but I can’t see how they would be boxed out entirely.
While I’m not opposed to this, it could create a broad product and price range - which is not a bad thing - but it will certainly invite some black market competition.
What you may be picturing is that the big pharma companies just synthesize a pill to deliver compounds like THC. Thing is, and I’m only trying to imagine how the FDA would deal with this, the chemical compositions of something like marijuana or psilocybin mushrooms are probably considered “obvious” and thus unpatentable. So you’d probably get a bunch of pharma companies and generic makers selling those, and a lot of competition and low prices. So far, that’s the same as what you’re probably imagining.
While there are companies specifically or mostly devoted to selling generics, but drug makers don’t want to sell drugs like that. They want to sell more expensive stuff that has a brand name and a patent. So then you get the major pharma companies developing their own synthetic versions of these drugs at varying strengths and doses and with varying qualities. There’s no way this wouldn’t happen, as far as I can see, since it’s what the market already demands - varying doses, strengths and properties - with drugs currently on the outs. And as soon as a drug company sells its stuff in the stores for a set price, individuals are going to sell it for less. I mean, kids get high on prescription drugs like Ritalin too, and drugs like heroin and cocaine - while they started life as stuff scraped off plants - were also synthesized and sold in drug stores once.
I (I don’t know about the OP) AM proposing that. Why not? I imagine a system much like methadone clinics work today: people are given their dose under a physician’s oversight and under the direct supervision of nurses and other medical professionals, and if they prove themselves trustworthy, they can get gradually increasing numbers of take-home doses, subject to occasional checks to make sure they aren’t giving it to others.