Finally. I hope this will signal a turning point on this insane approach to national health in all countries. Drugs are a health problem, not a criminal problem.
Lone experts have been fired in western countries when they have expressed this common sense sentiments alone [0]. I hope this groups fares better.
Nixon started the war on drugs anyway as a mean to attack left and black activists [1]. Any previous legislation for control has been instigated on behalf of race and class warfare.The fact that some drugs have been the staple narcotic in some groups has been used as a control mechanism upon those groups by criminalizing the substance.
Substance distribution should be controlled by law. But that is status quo anyway - governments control the distribution of any number of dangerous substances at any point.
>Finally. I hope this will signal a turning point on this insane approach to national health in all countries. Drugs are a health problem, not a criminal problem.
Agreed.
>...Nixon started the war on drugs anyway as a mean to attack left and black activists
This point is a little controversial, in, as far as I know, we have to take Ehrlichman's word on this.
While Nixon is remembered for "war on drugs", the actual substance of his policies seems to be different than what people think it was:
>...Their consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right wing that he hadn’t gone soft. So he laid on some of the toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a White House speech declaring a “war on drugs” and calling drugs “public enemy number one”. It worked so well as cover that many people remember that “tough” press event and forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief but…a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him).
The Ehrlichman quote is controversial for more than the reason you cite. Baum claims Ehrlichman said that in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, but instead published it in 2012 and again in 2016, after Ehrlichman had died (in 1999).
I hate the drug war and I think it's stupid, but I don't think people should use that quote for evidence of anything. I think it was either made up or taken completely out of context, and obviously Ehrlichman isn't around to contest it. It encapsulates liberal conspiracy theories about the drug war far too perfectly, it's as if a Breitbart reporter claimd an Al Gore staffer who had died "admitted" liberals all knew global warming was a hoax and pushed it just to increase taxes and punish Republican leaning businesses with harsh regulations.
> it's as if a Breitbart reporter claimd an Al Gore staffer who had died "admitted" liberals all knew global warming was a hoax and pushed it just to increase taxes and punish Republican leaning businesses with harsh regulations.
It's not nearly the same thing. We know that there are plenty of self-serving scientists that would absolutely love the notoriety of debunking global warming if it was actually false. To believe that scientists made it all up is utterly insane if you actually have worked with real scientists. The number of physicists I've worked with that daydreamed out loud at lunch about having a law or parameter named after them is astounding. If they wanted money they could easily go into a quant job and make double or triple what they've been making and no longer have to drive their shitty 20 year old cars.
The issue you're proposing as a liberal conspiracy is purely an issue of he said, she said nonsense. We have the input and the output. Republicans yet again made life worse for the lower classes. Big surprise. Why doesn't matter and it's naive as an adult to even care about intent.
As a follow-up, even though Nixon expanded treatment shouldn't we still blame him for the rhetorics that aggravated the "war on drugs" for the rest of the planet?
It's after Nixon "war on drugs" stance that we begin to see harsher and harsher penalties for possession, criminalisation of usage (and this still applies here in Sweden, it's not only illegal to buy, sell or possess drugs but also to take them, if it's detected in a urine or blood test [mandatory tests if you are caught by the police] you have committed an offense) and then the Convention on Psychotropic Substances happened in 1971, very influenced by the US and UK stances on drugs.
So as much as he tried to only "look tough", Nixon has fomented one of the worst problems in modern society, I really don't think we as a society should give him any credit, that façade has fucked up a lot some parts of the world and has killed an uncountable number of people.
why does it have to about who we 'blame'? Why not go back to the CIA and how they wanted to undermine the social & political revolutions of the 60s & 70s? why not go back to 'reefer madness' and the how it was based almost solely in fear and racism, or how William Randolph Hearst's paper & publishing 'empire' was threatened by hemp? does any of that matter? Not really.
We have a problem now that we need to fix. We don't need to dwell in the past or blame people. We're more knowledgeable now - so we need to use that knowledge to fix the problems - or at least work with / around them to the betterment of people.
Blame in itself doesn't have a great deal of use, and is usually not a solvable problem. You'll always face some contributor or condition that came before which, had it been different, feels like it could have changed things. Would Hitler have gotten widely known and ended up elected if Germany had not banned the Nazi newsletter after the Beer Hall Putsch which led most Germans to seek out the newsletters? Probably not, but that can only be a guess. Blame as such is mostly just an emotional thing, something that our brains want to make situations easier to understand due to how our brains process everything as associations.
BUT, blame does have an important side as well. Recognizing the possible or likely contribution of Nixon's actions, for example, informs us of the possible dangerous consequences of authoritarian approaches to drug policy. While it can't definitely establish a causal link, it can serve at least as a basic 'this approach can lead to X' or 'this approach was tried and did not prevent X' lesson. Hopefully, it can enable us to have a better discussion and teach us about the realities of the situations involved. Often things can look great on paper, but when implemented on large numbers of varied people they fall apart. Learning what works on those large groups of varied people can really only be done phenomenologically. You have to try things and observe the result. If the result is bad, but the 'on paper' form looked (or felt) really good, it's always a fight to change things. We see this with drug policy, supply-side economics, anti-sex moralism born with the Industrial Revolution, all kinds of things. Knowing where it started, and how people were convinced of things can be useful to show how people might be convinced differently or at least what to be afraid of when you see similar tactics being used in other arenas.
I don't think that any reasonable person at any point thought that blaming is a solution.
It's just important to direct blame so we can understand history and how events unfolded from that point, there are people and policies to blame and a chain reaction of events which culminated in our current situation, not necessarily we're dwelling in the past pointing fingers and then feeling good that something was solved.
The issue with this is that ultimately no individual is ever really personally responsible for a societal level action.
To take a contemporary example, it's very possible that within the not so distant future the first amendment may be overturned. And it's equally possible that 50 years later it comes to be that deciding to allow the government to criminalize speech at their discretion somehow doesn't turn out so well. So people would go back to the past to try to figure out what happened. And perhaps they would decide to blame President McPolitic, who oversaw the overturning of the amendment, as the source of the problem. Surely they just used their powers to make a decision that turned out very bad. But of course it wouldn't be that individual - but rather society that somehow moved in a direction that in hindsight might seem otherwise inexplicable.
The nice thing is that people looking back at today will [hopefully] have access to internet archives and they can see how things evolved. The NSA's surveillance and data collection are, in this regard, doing society a great service. They are effectively creating the greatest global social archive in the history of our species --- a sort of time capsule that encompasses the entire existence of humanity in the developed world.
But we don't have that privilege when we look back at the past today. So all we can do is look at the data. Historic record, such as "the Nixon quote", cannot be taken at face value. Those casting such aspersions (or praises) have their own biases and agendas. What we do from the data is that violent crime in the 50s and 60s was very rare. But then something happened. It started skyrocketing. From the 60s to the 70s the per capita crime rate more than doubled. And drug use and abuse was also skyrocketing. Is it not reasonable to assume that people, somewhat naturally, began to link the two since they did rather often compliment one another?
Now we look at drugs much more tolerably, but that too follows an interesting trend. Violent crime started sharply declining a decline in the 90s. That's a trend that continues to this very day. And our views, as a society, are reflective of this change. Ultimately I think leaders are products of society, rather than society being a product of its leaders. And thus attributing blame (or praise) to any individual is, at best, a misrepresentation of an event.
The best way (IMO) to counteract the WoD propaganda is through facts, education, medical studies, etc... and through these issues, the people that pushed the illogical conclusions will be exposed, embarrassed and hopefully come away more enlightened.
the vast majority of the politicians responsible for the 'war of drugs' are dead. The ones that continue to perpetuate it are not being held accountable for anything, let alone the WoD. So by continuing to point fingers (at politicians), what is being accomplished?
The only movement that I have seen is at the State level, where the people are literally telling the "authorities" to GTFO and legalizing (or decriminalizing) at the state level. If anything the politicians are reaping the rewards by playing both sides of the issue. Blaming them doesn't work.
>...It's after Nixon "war on drugs" stance that we begin to see harsher and harsher penalties for possession, criminalisation of usage
I don't know about other countries but the real push for harsher penalties in the US came in the 1980s after basketball star Len Bias died of cocaine overdose:
>...It became the sole focus of legislative activity for the remainder of the session on both sides of the aisle. Literally every committee, from the Committee on Agriculture to the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries were somehow getting involved. Suddenly, the Len Bias case was the driving force behind every piece of legislation. Members of Congress were setting up hearings about the drug problem and every subcommittee chairman was looking to get a piece of the action
>...(and this still applies here in Sweden, it's not only illegal to buy, sell or possess drugs but also to take them, if it's detected in a urine or blood test [mandatory tests if you are caught by the police] you have committed an offense)
This sounds like an internal issue in Sweden - I am not really sure how much you can blame the US for this. Certainly other countries near Sweden have more reasonable drug policies and the US doesn't try and stop that or punish the countries that I know of.
>...and then the Convention on Psychotropic Substances happened in 1971, very influenced by the US and UK stances on drugs.
The 1971 wasn't the first treaty on drugs. For example, the International Opium Convention that adopted restrictions on the opium poppy's psychoactive derivatives was in 1912.
According to wikipedia:
>...The Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 is a United Nations treaty designed to control psychoactive drugs such as amphetamine-type stimulants, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and psychedelics signed in Vienna, Austria on 21 February 1971. The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 did not ban the many newly-discovered psychotropics,[1] since its scope was limited to drugs with cannabis, coca, and opium-like effects.
>...So as much as he tried to only "look tough", Nixon has fomented one of the worst problems in modern society,
I don't think that Nixon was the first politician who tried to look tough on drugs in the US (or in other countries). Anti-drug propaganda has been produced since before "Reefer Madness" and politicians have been ranting about drugs for a long time. A difference really was that Nixon was one of the first to try to greatly expand drug treatment and reform sentencing at least in a small way:
>...the mandatory minimum sentence in a federal prison for marijuana possession was 2-10 years until Nixon slashed it to 1 year with a judicial option to waive even that sentence. No federal mandatory drug sentence would be rolled back again for 40 years (in the Obama Administration).
I think we passed the turning point some years ago when the medical community decided that harm reduction is more important than patient compliance. As long as doctors insist, the rest of society will come around eventually.
Of course, it took 40+ years of people literally dying in the streets before doctors began "washing their hands" (i.e. prescribing opiates to addicts, particularily non-compliant addicts who take additional drugs).
> Finally. I hope this will signal a turning point on this insane approach to national health in all countries.
Honestly, until the people in power start saying this stuff, nothing seems likely to happen.
We've had a parade of experts, medical groups, police commissioners (in the UK), and ex-politicians all calling for change, but the people actually in power are either too set in their ways or too scared to rock the boat and lose their seats by being seen as "pro-drug".
We still have a long, long road ahead of us before much is going to change in the UK. I am heartened that baby-steps are being taken in the USA, but that's all they are, baby-steps.
It's not just the people in power, it's the people themselves. Most of the citizenry have been brainwashed that "drugs are bad, m'kay?".
A majority now think that cannabis should be legal, but harder drugs should still be illegal to "protect us". This is somewhat understandable in that there are serious problems with drug use (it killed my brother), but we need education to show that the cure is worse than the disease.
But is the cure really worse than the disease? If it can be shown that broad, across-the-board legalization of all drugs would triple heroin addiction, would you be okay with that?
>Drugs are a health problem, not a criminal problem.
I fully support legalizing drugs. That being said, if today you buy drugs that are being smuggled by the cartel, then your are contributing to the wrong they do. Buying cartel tainted drugs is a criminal matter because it finances massive violence.
I draw a comparison to other material that is illegal to posses because it supports harmful production and distribution. Today, there are laws that prevent making such material legally (for example, drawings or computer generated images). But the laws, while I think more harmful than good, does not excuse a person from acquiring material that was produced or distributed harmfully. In the same way, I think drug laws are more harmful, but their existence does not justify someone who pays money to the cartel. Now, if you are growing your own pot or buying it from someone who grew it themselves, I don't see a problem.
What if the government rationed drugs and gave them out for free? The price for black market drugs would go down, which would change the economics of smuggling drugs and selling drugs in the US. The government could track consumption of drugs and help people who are chronic addicts.
What would happen to the amount of drugs consumed in the US? If consumption would greatly increase, then this policy probably would do more harm than good. We would have many more addicts in the US. If consumption stayed the same, then
this policy might make sense. It would greatly disincentivize the distribution of drugs and could be used to move addicts into treatment programs.
This policy is probably not politically viable in the US.
I theorize that the situation is bad enough in the US that the use of drugs /would/ increase, if only as a means for the general populace to find some joy in our crappy lives.
Alcohol and tobacco consumption might go down a bit though; mostly because the drugs would be free in comparison. (/those/ lobbies would be completely against this experiment)
Focusing on the increased use segments of the population and figuring out why they're in to drugs instead of 'healthy' outlets would probably reveal deep social and societal dysfunction caused by a complex and interacting set of self-enforcing patterns.
Maybe changes in zoning, public goods funding, and worker rights would actually start to happen on a scientific basis trying to address the identified issues.
At the very least though, this would be THE MOST EFFECTIVE means of fighting criminal and terrorist organizations; by cutting off their funding at the source.
I'll agree with consumption not being punishable but a medically treatable issue.
Misditribution (illegal distribution) of controlled dugs (not over the counter) should be punishable --whether they be doctors who knowingly over prescribe or black market sellers (drug dealers).
You cannot avoid the nasty social effects of drug prohibition (crime, violence, contamination, etc) without making distribution legal. If you want to live in a world without homeless junkies breaking into your car, or a world without running gun battles in the street, or a world without your wayward kids accidentally ODing on their next batch, you need drugs like cocaine and heroin to be sold openly and affordably at the corner Walgreens.
"Help the addict but punish the dealer" feels good to say but the world just isn't that simple.
As someone strongly in favor of complete legalization across the board... I totally agree. And we have an example of this in (most of) the US with tobacco advertising.
That's easy enough. We do the same thing with tobacco, and look - there are no violent gangs killing people to defend their tiny slice of the black-market tobacco market.
I don't see that borne out by the opioid crisis. Many believe it was lax prescription that allowed opioids to become preferred and prevalent narcotics to abuse. If they are not available it does not matter how many cars or houses you brake into, it does no good if no one is selling.
So you say, well in that case someone will make them dirty and available for a price. Punish the illegal seller and prosecute all suppliers who knowingly sold to someone not registered. Prosecute any and all corruption related to making and distributing the product illegally.
Do people get their coke from Coca-cola imported leaves? No. They know the consequences and take appropriate precautions to ensure they are not subverted by greedy employees.
Nearly everyone dying from legal opiates is because they're mixing them with heroin, which is often cut with a depressant like fentanyl. Heroin is illegal, and fentanyl is illegal for all intents and purposes to the average person. So maybe we should fix our wide spread and nearly half a century problem with heroin by making it illegal. Then no one will ever use it and it won't be available to anyone ever again.
You just can't get around the evidence that making drugs illegal doesn't make them unavailable and doesn't reduce the number of people who use them. It just makes it more dangerous to the addicts and funds cartels and gangs.
The most recent crisis is due to overprescription, yes, but that didn't mean that e.g. heroin wasn't a problem before.
> So you say, well in that case someone will make them dirty and available for a price. Punish the illegal seller and prosecute all suppliers who knowingly sold to someone not registered. Prosecute any and all corruption related to making and distributing the product illegally.
Which is exactly what we know from experience has never worked. Why do you think you could make it work?
The outcome is to drive up prices until it becomes sufficiently profitable for sufficiently brutal syndicates to take on production and distribution.
How do you think we ended up with the amount of death and misery the drugs trade causes in the first place?
> Punish the illegal seller and prosecute all suppliers who knowingly sold to someone not registered. Prosecute any and all corruption related to making and distributing the product illegally.
So, in other words, keep failing in exactly the same way as we're failing right now?
1. Many, even the ethical, doctors prescribed opioids for pain, and misery.
2. A very small percentage of Doctors set up shop to hook their patients.
3. I just can't put all the blame on doctors.
4. People are miserable across this county. A lot of you are insulated from the misery, but it's there. The anti-drpepressant effects of opioids should not be hidden. They make you feel good.
Plus--I don't think it's a coincidence that heterocyclic/tricyclic anti-depressants have come under extreme scrutiny. Basically--do they even work. Oh yea, that double blind study, in India, proved they work 62% over a huge Placebo response? Meaning 6 patients answered three positive questing, more that the control group, on that poorly worded psychological test.
5. Now the problem is the patient starts to develop a tolerance. The foolish run to the street, and buy bags of whatever. The responsible patient stays on the same dosage.
(There are studies, done in nursing homes, that state that patients on opioids can stay on tge same dose of opioids for years, and don't feel the need go up their dose.)
6. O.K. we are blaming the doctors for the opioids crisis. They don't want to get sued, or have the FDA knocking on their door; so they cut off the patient.
7. Now, if the patient can't kick the stuff by themselves, they are labeled addicts. They go on bupenorpine, or methadone. They have to jump through hoops just to get that medication. Many, if in the right areas, just go to the street. I can see why they do. I don't understand anyone who just sticks a needle in their arm, and hopes for the best.
8. We are now stuck with a terrible system, and people in agony. Way to go America!
(Excuse my attitude. My doctor got cold feet prescribing me bupenorpine, after a decade of taking it. It's not been easy getting off of. I am not happy with the system is the slightest. I don't blame the doctors though. Many of them know their patients do just fine on a on most controlled substances. Now--the doctors who are dragging in their patients for unnecessary office visits; those bastards should be exposed, and dealt with. The ethical doctors should be left alone to treat their patients, without any oversight. Yea--try finding a ethics, doctor. I do know they exist.)
US doctors are prescribing far more opioids that doctors in any other country. The US uses 99% of the world supply of hydrocodone, for example.
The opioid crisis is far worse in the US than in any other country.
> I don't think it's a coincidence that heterocyclic/tricyclic anti-depressants have come under extreme scrutiny. Basically--do they even work. Oh yea, that double blind study, in India, proved they work 62% over a huge Placebo response? Meaning 6 patients answered three positive questing, more that the control group, on that poorly worded psychological test.
SSRIs are good at treating depression if you actually have depression. (something like 60% efficacy) If you don't have depression they don't work at all. The lack of efficacy of SSRIs is just US doctors again overdiagnosing and overtreating.
The theme is US healthcare is not very good for very many people..
> There are studies, done in nursing homes, that state that patients on opioids can stay on tge same dose of opioids for years, and don't feel the need go up their dose.)
Do you have a source? Because all the studies I've seen show that long term use of opioids causes tolerance, and doesn't work to treat pain.
Re: over prescribing antidepressants (and various other medications), I think there is a real problem in America with getting an accurate diagnosis in the first place, which contributes to the overprescription problem. Also, most people are limited to a very small slice of office time, and I imagine that makes an accurate diagnosis difficult, too. In addition, American culture reinforces individualism, and tends to be isolating relative to many other cultures, which, I'm sure, contributes to the problem.
This all just reinforces your larger point that US healthcare is not very good for very many people. It's great if you have the money (or insurance) to see whoever you need to, but not so good if you don't.
> The US uses 99% of the world supply of hydrocodone, for example.
That's a very misleading statistic. It's because most everywhere else in the world doesn't prescribe it... they typically give smaller doses of _stronger_ opioids.
I don't understand - why would cheap/free drugs prevent gun battles, car break ins or OD'ing?
As far as I'm aware, junkies still need money to eat/sleep/drink and very few have a reliable source of income. All gun battles aren't over drugs, and would still occur. And not all overdoses are caused by tainted drugs.
>> I don't understand - why would cheap/free drugs prevent gun battles
No profit to fight over
>> car break ins
No need to find hundreds of dollars a day to support the habit
>> or OD'ing?
Known quantities of known substances can help people avoid OD from either the wrong thing (fentanyl lately) or unexpected purity.
>> As far as I'm aware, junkies still need money to eat/sleep/drink and very few have a reliable source of income.
You only need a few bucks a day to eat/sleep/drink, you need potentially hundreds for your habit at present. Given an easy, cheap supply many will be able to hold down a regular job.
>> All gun battles aren't over drugs, and would still occur.
But the ones over drug money would stop, drugs are a major source of gang funding.
>> And not all overdoses are caused by tainted drugs.
That's a strange argument. Alcohol is a drug sold in the open pretty much everywhere.
You still see plenty alcoholists unable to keep a job, stealing things, fighting and even dying from their habit. It's almost as if easily accessible drugs doesn't fix the underlying problem here.
Sure: being drunk in various contexts may be, and can be a serious crime (drink driving, certain commercial operators expecially). But being in possession of alcohol, drinking it in your home, sharing it with friends (provided above legal age and not driving): not a crime.
You've got the fundamental problem of addiction, for those who are addicted (many are, many are not). But you aren't layering on the additional crime of criminalisation.
Alcohol is addictive and toxic. Yes, we do have alcoholics all over the place. Few are dead.or dying because of methanol poisoning, and few need to steal hundreds of dollars a day for a fix.
It's not really a very strange argument, particularly when it comes to opiates - it's a pretty well evidenced argument. Those with access to cheap or free maintenance doses have a better recovery rate, and a better rate of being able to re-enter prodictive society.
people gamble their money away and its plenty legal. The free market won't solve everything.
I also have a bit of a hard time imagining that someone having even easier access to, say, meth will thus be able to hold onto a job more easily. Personally I can't show up drunk to work.
Though I agree with things like gang violence, I do worry about the effects on public health. Cigarettes and alcohol mess up society a lot already
I'm not claiming it's going to be 100% solution, only that it would be much better, and cut out some of the profit motives at the gang level, and need for vast amounts of cash at the addict level.
>> I also have a bit of a hard time imagining that someone having even easier access to, say, meth will thus be able to hold onto a job more easily. Personally I can't show up drunk to work
Me neither. And I honestly don't know how this stuff might apply to a substance like meth.
I know that studies tend to show that when opiate addicts are given easy and cheap/free access to maintenance doses and counselling, they have a much easier time returning to something like a normal life, and many can hold down jobs while either continuing the maintenance indefinitely or slowly tapering. The constant search for money and the insecurity about the next dose both make the effects of the addiction on their lives much, much worse. And it's not like heroin is all that expensive to make.
This isn't, as I said above, necessarily an argument for a totally free market in heroin, but it is to show that a different approach may reduce the harm to the individual and reduce the harm done to society by both those individuals and the black market profit-making organisation above them. Not to mention the hell that gets rained on producer-countries.
>> Cigarettes and alcohol mess up society a lot already
Objectively, scientifically, these are two of the worst and most harmful drugs we know of.
That's great but the original comment implied that all of the above would stop. My comment refuted it, your comment is agreeing - in that it wouldn't stop it but may reduce it.
If you imagine a world where alcohol is illegal and replace every instance of drugs in your comment with alcohol, I think you could begin to understand how legalizing the distribution of drugs - just like alcohol - would solve a lot of problems.
How often do you hear about gun battles over alcohol?
It's overall cheaper. It's safer for him and you. Reduces crime, which saves money on police.
And if drugs are cheap to most, and free to some, there's no huge profit to be made by illegally selling them. Thus, no gun fights over distribution spots on the streets.
Drugs are not health problem, the life is a health problem. Drug usage not= addiction or toxicomania, as alkohol usage is not necessarily cause health problems. There is a wide range of alcohol users, from sometimes a glass of wine to hardcore alcoholism. The humans are the problems, not the drugs. Drugs could be good or bad, depend on the usage.
Your comment completely misinterprets the subject of this article and the parent comment.
The argument isn't about the differentiation between "life" and "health". It's about how to deal with addiction -- using the medical / mental heath systems or the criminal incarceration systems.
I suspect you aren't a native English speaker, but perhaps you shouldn't be so critical/pedantic of the English of other commenters.
- Reported lifetime use of "all illicit drugs" increased from 7.8% to 12%, lifetime use of cannabis increased from 7.6% to 11.7%, cocaine use more than doubled, from 0.9% to 1.9%, ecstasy nearly doubled from 0.7% to 1.3%, and heroin increased from 0.7% to 1.1%
Does "lifetime use" mean "percentage of people who ever tried it"? If so, I can totally see that. When stuff is legal, more people are going to try it.
However, using it once or a few times is nowhere near being addicted. And all the other bullet points in your source [0] look pretty great:
- Increased uptake of treatment
- Reduction in new HIV diagnoses amongst drug users
- Reduction in drug related deaths
- Drug use among adolescents (13-15 yrs) and "problematic" users declined
- Decreased street value of most illicit drugs, some significantly
Lifetime usage is a different metric than "repeated usage", people can be more curious about it and try but not necessarily stick to using them. Even more when you have policies in place for education and harm reduction.
Addiction isn't that simple either. Some people become addicted rapidly, others not so much. I've known people that quickly fell down the rabbit hole, others that just quit one day and never looked back, and others who have replaced one addiction for another, sometimes for the better, other times for the worst.
The percentage of the population using illegal drugs has stayed nearly constant since the war on drugs began. In times of lax enforcement and in times of heavy enforcement.
Not necessarily. When people really want something they will eventually find a way to get it anyway, it's not because you criminalize it that its usage drops. Just like IP infringement has not significantly dropped since they can put people in jail for it.
"Not necessarily. When people really want something they will eventually find a way to get it anyway,"
No, not true at all.
Supply and Demand.
The 'cost' of doing drugs in society right now is pretty dam high. Social stigma, the possibility of going to jail, various professional licences lost.
The 'free market price' of synthetic heroin and other drugs would be as cheap as sugar. Walk down to the local store and buy 1Kg of meth for $20. Jesus no.
People are really un-pragmatic about this issue.
I've had my exposure to it: a friend OD'd while in SF, another friend drug related suicide, and a third friend just fell in to a 'crack whole' for 20 years and now he lives full time in a clinic. Another - friend of a friend - has a 'weed' addiction (I know it's not common, but it exists) and he lives in a home as well.
These people were ruined long before they ever passed away or went into a home.
Selling crack or opioids in the corner store would instantly yield a massive public health crises.
'Legal' drugs - i.e. prescription drugs are already a major, major driver of the problem.
Here in Canada - doctors are not required to give out the 'absolute minimum' of opioids after operations etc. You don't get 'a bottle' with 'refills' - you get like 3 pills.
Why? Because there was a public healthcare crises developing even with legal substances.
That's how strict they need to be, because that's what's on the line.
If 'legal drugs' did not cause problems, then I suggest the massive amount of 'doctor shopping' and 'fake prescriptions' all over the US would not be resulting in serious problems, but they are.
It's just one of those things - some people can handle their drugs - most people can't and fall down the slippery slide.
Not saying that you are wrong, but I don't think you are right neither, it's a complicated issue.
Addicts will pay, so, the price it's not a big influence in they taking drugs. It's a big influence in what kind of life they have. There are cases of rich functional addicts.
Maybe, cheaper drugs would create more addicts, but we have the example of alcohol and weed in some places to examine. It's not so clear this is the case.
Legal drugs doesn't mean, necessarily, socially accepted drugs. I think that makes a big difference.
Legalising drugs != Making them cheap as chips on every high street. We can legalize drugs while applying significant barriers to entry such as high taxes, regulated distribution, user registration, medical oversight, etc and still suck the profits out of the illegal market. This has been done already and it works.
Criminalising everything to do with drugs has utterly failed. That's just a flat out fact, the huge damage done to your friends demonstrates this. The damage to society has been staggering, not just the effects of the drugs themselves but the criminalisation of huge swathes of the population.
"and still suck the profits out of the illegal market. "
Not really.
If you create a big series of regulations and taxes around drugs - then there will still be a huge secondary, black market.
The 'war on drugs' will therefore continue - even as you 'legalize' drugs. Double whammy.
Take cigarettes - a much milder health concern:
"the total U.S. tobacco market represented by illicit sales has grown in recent years and is now between 8.5 percent and 21 percent." [1]
So now you have to 'fight a war on drugs' - and deal with the massive health-care crisis from the considerably more people who well get hooked on opioids, barbiturates etc..
>If you create a big series of regulations and taxes around drugs - then there will still be a huge secondary, black market.
The experience in places where this has been tried is that the supply in the black market reduces and prices significantly increase. So yes, the evidence is that legalization does a better job of restricting black market access than blanket criminalization.
Note that having a legal market doesn't suddenly mean the police stop busting drugs gangs. What it means is that drugs gangs not only have to face exactly the same law enforcement crackdown they already have, but also have to compete with legal, medically regulated access to drugs. It's a double-whammy for them.
I am also wary of the mass legalization of illicit drugs, mainly because of the already huge problem my states has with opiates. I think it's a good goal, but should I really believe that the "regulated" decriminalized drug market is going to be that much better than the already heavily regulated prescription drug market? Maybe once the US can get it together with it's painkiller problem I'd be more inclined to believe in total decriminalization. I would like to see how a system like Portugal's works with opiates in US before I'd hop on board for the whole shebang. However, it seems unlikely to happen since it's already hard enough to get tax payers to sport for Narcan let alone the drugs themselves.
Neither legalisation with regulation, or the current system of blanket criminalization is going to solve the problem of dangerous narcotics. These drugs bare here to stay. The failure of the war on drugs, which was supposed to solve the drugs problem, proves that.
So given that eliminating drugs completely has utterly and comprehensively failed, at huge financial and social cost, and given that legalization and regulation has proven to be effective time and time again, the question is which approach is best at managing the damage these drugs do and protecting individuals and society?
> If you create a big series of regulations and taxes around drugs - then there will still be a huge secondary, black market.
this point is under appreciated. i see new taxes and regulations spring up on legalized cannabis in California. and, just like with the high taxes on a pack of tobacco cigarettes, some of the market goes underground. (except, with cannabis, it hasn't had time to fully emerge from the underground in the first place!)
It's true that at the margin, increasing supply and making it easier to obtain drugs will lower the price, and cause some number of users to try drugs that didn't before.
Another feasible description of the world is that this marginal effect is very small, and almost everyone who wants to do drugs does already.
We don't need to speculate on how significant these factors are; we can look at places like Portugal that fully decriminalized drugs, and extrapolate from there.
> It's just one of those things - some people can handle their drugs - most people can't and fall down the slippery slide.
I sympathize with your point about losing friends to drugs; however I'd suggest that "most" isn't the right quantifier to describe the proportion of individuals that "fall down the slippery side". Some people are susceptible to mental health issues, and drugs can trigger episodes that might not otherwise happen. But the harms those individuals would experience from a general increase in prevalence of drug use are dwarfed by the harms that are currently inflicted on the drug users who do not abuse or otherwise have problems with drugs.
(And note that if we didn't spend as much money incarcerating drug users, we'd have a lot more money available for helping individuals with mental health/addiction problems.)
While would be nice to wave a wand and do away with all of the harms discussed here, the current drug policy proves that attempting to reduce drug usage through prohibition adds more harm elsewhere in the system than the harms that it attempts to prevent.
> The 'cost' of doing drugs in society right now is pretty dam high. Social stigma, the possibility of going to jail, various professional licences lost.
Is it? I've never heard of anyone who wanted to try drugs and was unable to get them. Maybe it's different in the US, but in Europe, you can always find a supplier.
I know that I could find a supplier of marijuana if I wanted. I'd just need to walk 100m down the street and ask the school kids hanging around in the park. Easy.
But I also know that I would be risking various legal and social consequences. A conviction for possession of drugs would affect my employment options, it would affect my travel options (visa forms often ask about such convictions), it may cause issues in the future if I ever got into a custody battle for my kids.
Given all of that, I have no plans to walk down the street and buy some weed from my friends' kids.
But I do have a collection of cigars in my house which I enjoy on occasion.
If it were possible to buy marijuana in the same way I can buy cigars, with the same legality, for a comparable price, then I might do so.
Now, I don't really see why society should care if I were to substitute some of my tobacco consumption with marijuana consumption, but there's a reasonable probability that this would be one of the outcomes if marijuana were totally legalised.
Cannabis is already completely legal in a number of US States. In Portland, Oregon there is practically an embarrassment of retailers. Further, one can buy a pen-sized vaporizer which contains concentrated cannabis resins in a variety of fruity flavors, and enjoy your habit pretty much anywhere in public. So far, I don't get the impression that legalization has affected the society here much. It doesn't really rise above the background levels of weirdness here, anyhow. I believe that most other instances of cannabis legalization have been similarly non-newsworthy.
And on the subject of drug availability, I'm aware of a few remote Alaskan towns where it's difficult to obtain drugs. I'm sure that there is some more developed and less isolated region of the world where it is also difficult to get such things, but that's probably not the common case. There is a global demand for such things, and there's only so much you can do to restrict the supply. Regardless, people will still find ways to get high. In the Alaskan towns I mention, bored teens will 'huff' paint fumes instead. There's not really a winning situation there; we can only minimize harm.
Well, barriers to entry matter. If you're craving a drug and it's sold in a convenient store around the corner, you might purchase it more frequently than if you had to buy it from potentially dangerous people in a seedy part of town. That said, as with any bad habit I'm sure usage would still decrease over time for most individuals as they mature or if healthier alternatives are readily available.
When you buy it from dangerous people, you have to be in contact with dangerous people. It gives dangerous people leverage against you and people who care about you.
I've known many a dealer in my lifetime, and a distant family member who spent some time incarcerated for 'high level' activity, who gives me long tales of how the business works as well.
Dealers don't assault, endanger or attack random customers who just stop buying.
That's totally absurd, and that someone would suggest it - indicates that they are getting their information from Netflix/Hollywood films or something, not reality.
The vast majority of dealers are actually fairly normal people anyhow.
Well exuse me, I didn't know i was talking to a renneissance man. Addicts wheel and deal with each other, rack up debts to eachother, steal from one another. Some of them buy wholesale from larger distributors, usually with credit, to be repaid with interest or else. They rob, assault, rape and kill eachother over this stuff. I wish i was making this up.
Doctors in emergency rooms usually have instructions to confiscate any illegal drugs they discover on OD-patients, but are faced with the very real dilemma of leaving the patient at their creditors mercy. This can cause real harm (as in "First do no harm") to the patient and their prospects of recovery or harm reduction.
Maybe if that someone was just smoking pot and otherwise paid taxes. This particular group of drug users are not the central point of concern of the UN Special Assembly, even though its part of the wider problem. They are not dying in the streets and they are not socially marginalized. Allthough (anecdotally) i've known several fumb pot-smoking ducks who thought they could finance their proclivity through distribution and wound up several thousand dollars in debt to people who take names and chew bubble-gum.
If you tell people they can't skip in a certain lane on the sidewalk they will skip in that certain lane. There will always be people who just want to cross the line because the lines existence makes them curious or "rebellious". It's like a psychological balance for some people. Being told "no" really makes some people want something.
The counter of this is why underage drinking is higher in the US than elsewhere. Society made it a taboo and that attracts people. In countries with lower age limits there's less underage drinking. The culture itself doesn't see it as such a big deal and there's no pent up against.
Shouldn't it, though? Otherwise you still have the crime and violence associated with drug use. It's certainly better than having possession also criminalized, but is it good enough? I'm not so sure.
I would suggest that maybe it's ok to continue to criminalize the sale of the more dangerous stuff, say of Schedule I drugs, but... well, marijuana is still on the Sched I list, so it's not like that list is particular scientifically rigorous.
> If you're craving a drug and it's sold in a convenient store around the corner
But it goes with greater awareness of the risks as well, and once it's in the public, you can expect a lot more discussion about its usage rather than a too simple "it's bad" attitude.
That can be anybody. Your old grandma, to this beautifull lady, or more common that guy in the corner, but not only "dangerous people" otherwise nobody will buy it.
There are often negative consequences for society when someone becomes a drug addict. There are the costs to society at the macro level. And, of course, there's the devastation suffered by families.
Two logical fallacies; First, "use" does not equate to addiction by any means. The vast majority of people who try "addictive" drugs do not proceed to addiction or even regular use. Second, the costs to society are predominantly those imposed by society. The violence of the drug trade, the lives ruined by a drug arrest or conviction, the families broken up by incarceration of young men are all self-inflicted by society. Just having to deal with the ravages of addiction would be a welcome relief from all those things.
Citation needed. First that seems incredibly hard to measure. Second I doubt many people tried that hard to measure. And third, access to alcohol during prohibition was never reduced by much. It just created a bunch of gangsters and violence.
It is hard to measure, but yes, people did try, both at the time and in more recent eras. To some degree the end of the first World War was a confounding factor, but the bulk of the sources I've seen support the parent's claims. The real effect of Prohibition was to change the quality of the alcohol consumed, for the worse (and even more unfortunately, one of the darker episodes of Prohibition involved the US Government deliberately poisoning alcohol). So, a quick search pulled up this[0] as a reference, but I'm sure that you can follow your interests to other results as you deem meet.
> Drugs are a health problem, not a criminal problem.
Well, I would say they are both.
They are a health problem because of the addiction factors. They are a criminal problem because of what people are willing to do to get drugs when they run out of money.
So you are saying we should treat drug addicts like we treat hunger - by having "drug kitchens" where addicts can come to get a free fix and by building up huge industries to mass produce drugs so they are much more accessible and affordable to addicts? That seems insane.
Almost every post about drugs on HN has the obligatory bit about Nixon starting the war on drugs. It's like a Shibboleth or something.
Nixon probably tried to make political hay out of it sure, but the war against intoxicants has been going on probably since people started using intoxicants. No shortage of earlier historical examples. At most Nixon is a chapter in the ongoing saga. So please, for all that is holy, stop with this repetitive "Nixon started" thing. Just because people might think Nixon is a bad guy doesn't give the point about drugs any more validity.
The bit about Nixon is obligatory for a good reason. It sidesteps a lot of historical nuances but is factually correct and underpins the key issue which emerges when people discuss drugs: people imagine that drugs are criminalized for good reasons while in fact the heavy handed judicial approach hurts taxpayers and it hurts the people needing help by stigmatizing them.
The criminal process does not help public health outcomes.
There is this fallacy among even smart people that if a thing has legislation controlling it must be well thought out and they can stop analyzing it.
The Nixon bit is a strong reminder that sometimes things are like they are for some obscure political reason rather than common sense. Daylights saving time used in many countries is a similar weird political vestige.
There is a strong moral sentiment about drugs in some segments of population. There are good reasons to fear substance abuse. But, churches also have good political reasons to fear them. If people can get raptured sitting at home with a group of friends what purpose would a conregation serve then?
Therefore, from churches perspective it's politically expedient to stigmatize drug use as morally corrupt.
Confusing drugs as morally corrupt adds to the odd ball mix of criminalization.
Addiction is never good, mmkay. People need help to fight it. Social networks are among the most important bits of this help. That's why shaming and stigmatization of addicts is one of the cruelest and counter productive things a society can do.
My mother perished of alcohol abuse recently. While I don't blame anyone, the stigmatization of society did not help.
My understanding is that there's the war on drugs and then there's the War on Drugs, and the latter is what is (correctly?) attributed to Nixon, even when it is not bothered to be capitalized.
I think the point is that, while yes the naming of the 'War on Drugs' is fairly attributed to Nixon, almost none of the significantly harmful policies we've come to associate with it were actually enacted on his watch - i.e. things like three strike laws or mandatory minimum sentencing or drug raids conducted by SWAT teams. It's really Reagan who should get the "credit" for most of that. And Clinton kept things trending in the same direction, to be fair.
A huge proportion of US soldiers (20% according to some sources) also used heroin while in Vietnam, giving rise to one of the more interesting studies of addiction related to heroin [1] that also taught us a great deal about how to kick addictions and change behaviors (the short of it being that a change of environment makes breaking habits far easier)
It really shouldn't be a surprise that if someone's life is so shitty that they feel they need to do Heroin to escape it, then putting them through a grueling recovery process and then sending them back to their shitty life with no prospects is tremendously counterproductive.
Most probably yes, and also on cocaine as his fellow Goring. These things were considered not harmful and you could buy it anywhere.
Amphetamines were still used in 60s as enhancers for mountaineering for example. Most of traditional expeditions to 8000m peaks had the top party high on this, somehow balancing the rush and mental strength it presumably gave with existing in total exhaustion for days and pushing further up. One example out of many is Hermann Buhl climbing Nanga Parbat, solo, hallucinating, as a first ever ascent of the killer mountain.
People like Messner refused to use these, championing clean 'alpine' ascents, without support, just men with their skills and mental+physical strength facing mountains.
I am very troubled by this phrase -- it's almost an oxymoron. Science is not democratic, and scientists aren't anointed arbiters of facts.
Anyone can be a scientist simply by following the scientific method and collecting data in good faith; and a lone outsider with new data can challenge 100 years of "consensus". Obviously they are subject to challenges themselves, or if it's unlikely enough they might reasonably be ignored (e.g. a known charlatan saying they observed cold fusion).
Did this terminology start with the "scientific consensus" on anthropogenic climate change (which I do not dispute, by the way)? I think I understand why it was used in that debate, but I don't think it was a good precedent. Now it's being used to directly apply to policy ("growing scientific consensus on the failures of the global war on drugs").
Before long, it will be used directly in political debates to try to force some scientific organizations to choose a side. And then all credibility is lost.
Researching policies that require deep analysis of scientific (or other) data should be left to think tanks or something similar.
I'm not sure what you think a think tank is, but they're basically either (a) PR organisations, especially the ones with opaque funding or (b) some guy with a letterhead and skill at getting articles published. They certainly aren't impartial in any way.
I'd much prefer my policy research to be done by civil service bodies which might at least nominally be impartial.
I don't think it's feasible to impose a boundary between science and politics. If scientists think that something is both true and important, then why should they not speak up about it? Especially if they believe that doing so will save lives.
Because of the effect of politics on intellectual honesty.
Once a debate triggers our "political" brain, it seems to scramble the kind of intellectual honesty science requires. An even more insiduous cousin of the maxim:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
I think the use of the phrase: "scientific consensus" indicates to jeff (it does to me) that we are having that kind of a conversation, and its likely to be quickly misused to the point where it makes reaching a political/societal "consensus" even more difficult.
I don't think it's possible to seperate science and politics either, but I think "Science" needs to be wary of speaking for science, instead of speaking as well informed and interested individuals.
It's fine to speak for science on purely scientific matters. When it comes to policy, especially social policy like this, it's preferable if they don't push the boundary towards rhetorical cheating.
For the record, I agree with this article and most others on the "scientific consensus" side.
""Science" needs to be wary of speaking for science, instead of speaking as well informed and interested individuals."
Well said.
"It's fine to speak for science on purely scientific matters."
The thing about science is that one high-quality study is often all you need to have a lot of confidence. They don't need 100 experiments confirming the Higgs boson, they just needed one really good experiment.
And bad studies can be summarily ignored for the purposes of fact finding. 100 bad studies are no better than one or zero. The only thing they tell you is an area that may be interesting to conduct a good study later.
If there are a hundred high-quality studies saying one thing, and one high-quality study saying something else, then something very interesting is going on and everyone should pay close attention and get ready to learn something new. But this is very rare and is certainly not a situation where you want to inject politics.
So the only time when it makes sense for science and politics to intersect is when you have one good study concluding something relevant to the policy decision, and no high-quality studies to the contrary. And in that case you only need to cite one study and be done with it -- you don't need to "speak for science".
There is room to argue over the quality of experiments and studies, of course. And that's where the sparks should fly -- not over signatures on a report. If the results of one study are contended, it could go through some kind of extreme peer review that can re-analyze the results or question the data collection methods. The great thing about this is that laypersons will back out and wait, and the scientists and statisticians can argue in peace among their peers. When the smoke clears, then you can take those facts to the bank.
This doesn't for scientific fields where study quality is a major problem (social sciences are hard and don't usually have nearly enough funding to produce quality studies -- or have funding from overly-interested parties). But in that case, you definitely should not lend undue weight to the claims by speaking for science.
"I'd much prefer my policy research to be done by civil service bodies which might at least nominally be impartial."
Like who, specifically?
"If scientists think that something is both true and important, then why should they not speak up about it?"
Scientists agreeing about something would be a "consensus among scientists" not a "scientific consensus".
The latter implies that the consensus itself is scientific, but a consensus is never scientific. The former is still problematic, because scientists are not an anointed class, but it at least assigns some agency and allows questions like "which scientists" (to which the answer is probably "whoever we found at the major universities").
But sure, speak up about the science and what you know and what you have studied. If you want to raise an alarm, do so, but don't speak on behalf of all scientists, and don't claim that the "consensus" itself is scientific.
>Anyone can be a scientist simply by following the scientific method and collecting data in good faith;
That's like saying anyone can be a classic car collector by buying classic cars. It ignores people who are missing certain prerequisites. Many people do not have the resources (namely money) to do so. Many scientific experiments have a large cost to produce, and cannot be done by the average person. Many do not have the time to reach the level of knowledge needed to apply the statistics correctly.
And science is driven by consensus. It doesn't make it right, but it does make it science. If 85% of science think X, then that is what is presented as science. It may take a generation before the majority of scientist move on to Y and that becomes science. Thankfully the consensus changes faster than that in most cases. A lone outsider who is ignored won't change anything. The beauty is that scientists tend to look at the new data and give it fair weight, and respond accordingly. Even then most don't buy into it immediately but wait for replication.
And I've found in some fields (namely soft sciences), things are far less driven by even new data, with many scientist making the data fit the theory (seems easier to do with research on people than research on inanimate matter/energy).
> If 85% of science think X, then that is what is presented as science.
"Science" is a process [1], not consensus. It uses the scientific method, which is a "body of techniques" for investigation [2]. That is exactly what parent said - if you are "following the scientific method and collecting data in good faith" you are "doing science" - i.e, you are a scientist.
[1] a "systematic enterprise" (wikipedia.org/wiki/Science)
While science is in theory "perfect", unfortunately the people doing the science are still just flawed, imperfect humans. Even scientists who have no malicious intent can still have their work influenced by unconscious biases if they aren't careful.
Given that, I think "consensus" is a useful term. It suggests that a strong supermajority of scientists have findings that agree with something, and with that chorus of agreement, it's harder to oppose those claims by accusing all of those scientists to have flawed results.
I think you can probably find a lot of science out there that supports criminalization of drugs, and showing that there's a "growing scientific consensus" on the failures of criminalization is useful to show that previous research on the subject has either been debunked or proved false by later observations. Because that's literally what's happening.
Yeah, scientific consensus is a valuable thing. It just means "oh like a lot of probably smart people who looked at this issue rigorously mostly agree" and that is pretty much as close to truth as we have.
I don't know. I think the phrase still has a quite a bit of usefulness. The point is to communicate to the public that many people whose job it is to research such a thing agree. I also disagree that consensus has any implication with democracy. It's a word used for general agreement, and in my experience democracies are rarely in agreement.
How else would you tell people that most scientists agree on a position? Also, even if a lone outsider challenged the new data, that's not something you communicate to the public yet. Policy and publicity would need to wait until consensus actually did occur because at that point, the legitimacy of the science would have been worked out.
This terminology is ancient and has been used long before climate change debate.
Yeah, as much as I agree with the policy position, I detest the "scientific consensus" speak. It's exactly the slimy approach to engaging the public which has made something as straightforward as climate change controversial.
Same here, specially when implying that health researchers talking not about their actual results but about the _opinions_ they have of what should be the law and what shouldn't, are in some way scientific.
Research and policies are not the same things.
.
Otherwise next you'll see things like "Researchers find most animals kill each other mercilessly, so we should decriminalize murder."
> Otherwise next you'll see things like "Researchers find most animals kill each other mercilessly, so we should decriminalize murder."
Yeah, a naturalistic fallacy will take something good (e.g. a firm and objective grasp of biology) and turn it into a crime against humanity (e.g. negative/mortal eugenics campaigns).
The thing that made climate change controversial is the interests (and deep pockets) of the fossil energy lobby. Science communication can be improved, but you can't reasonably blame it for this.
I actually think they're one and the same. Al Gore is literally being paid by Al Jazeera, the state media for the world's largest oil exporter pretending to be a country.
I suspect that the biggest influence big oil has had is in making overblown, unconvincing, scaremongering communications which ultimately make people more suspicious than convinced.
Strict hard science is not applicable for vague questions s.a "should drugs usage be legal". We are not going to conduct a series of controlled experiments.
We're left with a collection of statistical observations, polluted by various uncontrolled externals ("this is Portugal", "that is Netherlands").
The only sensible way to reconcile the different outcomes in a manner the mob can understand is using the annoying term "scientific consensus"
Here in Germany politicians are still stating that Cannabis is a gateway drug, causes psychosis and makes stupid. They will even actively lie and twist statistics.
My theory for why many politicians - especially from the right-wing - are so opposed is b/c they didn't like their weed smoking and long-haired fellow students. It's a Pavlov thing.
Like many people dislike golf (justly so in my humble opinion) b/c they dislike the stereotypical golf enthusiasts.
I'm strongly in favor of legalization, but I still believe Cannabis is dangerous (just like alcohol, tobacco and countless other legal drugs are).
It's a well known fact that it can trigger psychosis in susceptible persons and I have even witnessed it happen to a close friend.
It also had hugely detrimental effects on some of my weed-smoking friends, to the point that I no longer want to spend time with them since it affected their personality. I also know people who smoke it daily without any (visible) negative effects whatsoever..
regarding psychosis - if you compare weed consumption with number of schizophrenic diagnoses then the idea that weed causes schizophrenia can be easily falsified.
but - of course - any psycho active substance can and will impair the mind of somebody consuming it irresponsibly.
a lot of people micro dose weed - less than 0.05g per consumption unit - that's not going to cause any issues.
> if you compare weed consumption with number of schizophrenic diagnoses then the idea that weed causes schizophrenia can be easily falsified
That's not how it works. There are many potential triggers for psychosis in general (and schizophrenia in particular), and there are reputable studies which show that cannabis consumption is one of them.
> but - of course - any psycho active substance can and will impair the mind of somebody consuming it irresponsibly.
I think it's safe to say that even responsible use can have negative effects for some people.
Likewise, the claim that micro dosing is not going to cause issues at all is unfounded and dangerous. We simply don't know enough about it to make such claims (enabling scientific research is a big argument for legalization!).
So what? It is perfectly legal for me to choose to sit in a cubicle and rot away the best years of my life, a fate little better than as clinical psychosis. Let people do the things they want with their own lives.
of course you are downvoted by the cubicle victims here. but bottom line you are right. even alcoholism and liver zirrosis is considered socially more acceptable than admitting you are vaping a bud once a week.
>I'm strongly in favor of legalization, but I still believe Cannabis is dangerous (just like alcohol, tobacco and countless other legal drugs are).
Oh, well if you "believe" it is dangerous. What's the LD50 on Cannabis vs alcohol, tobacco and countless other legal drugs? How many people die per year from Cannabis use vs other drugs? If you actually look at these questions with an open mind you will see which are really dangerous.
>It's a well known fact that it can trigger psychosis in susceptible persons and I have even witnessed it happen to a close friend.
It's not a "well known fact" because you saw it happen to someone once, not even mentioning their psychosis could have been triggered by a million different other things.
>It also had hugely detrimental effects on some of my weed-smoking friends, to the point that I no longer want to spend time with them since it affected their personality. I also know people who smoke it daily without any (visible) negative effects whatsoever..
All I get out of this is "some of my former friends act differently now so I don't hang out with them", which is like.. most people with or without drugs. I doubt you followed them all around 24-7 to see what their issues were, easier for you to just blame the drugs, as it were.
Marijuana is absolutely harmful for people with certain mental illnesses. Schizophrenics for example. Since it often manifests at the same age people are experimenting with drugs a person may not know they have it until they get high and have a psychotic break. GP made reasonable claims IMO. Your reaction was over the top.
That may be part of it but (at least here in the UK) the bigger factor is votes. The increasingly-shrinking (the most recent general election being an exception) voter demographic has a large overlap with the hysterical "lock 'em all up" authoritarian demographic. Legalisation of drugs is political suicide. When the UK gov's drugs advisor advised that drugs should be legal they sacked him.
I don't think it is even authoritarianism, we've become stuck in a strange cycle - people think drug use needs to be treated criminally because that is what they've been told for decades, and politicians keep repeating the falsehood because that's what people expect to hear. Neither voters nor politicians are even thinking about it, both just react as they've been conditioned to by the other. It'll take something dramatic to break out of this bizarre self-perpetuating cycle.
The drug system in the UK is quite funny - the politicians pretend drug use needs to be treated criminally, the police pretend to enforce drug laws, and the voting public are satisfied with the status quo because if they dislike drugs they can buy into the pretense, if they like drugs they can mostly use them without much bother, and if they are indifferent to drugs they have better things to worry about.
Cannibis can cause psychosis in some people, just type "cannabis psychosis" into google scholar.
The common rebuttal against this is "those people were vulnerable to psychosis from the get-go", but what does that mean when, without cannabis use, those persons might have gone their whole lives without a psychotic episode?
Edit: if you carefully read my post you might notice I'm not saying cannabis should be illegal.
So can alcohol, plus a lot more other very dangerous side-effects. Also, while not psycho-active, tobacco, coffee and even chocolate are very addictive substances and high-risk for some groups of people, too. So while technically true that cannabis is not without it's risks, it's not a valid argument against it unless they plan on banning half of the food that we eat...
So? Any action you take (including doing nothing) can have negative consequences. As long as it doesn't spontaneous cause psychosis in bystanders, let em smoke some pot.
Extensive use of cannabis has such effects from my observations. While at University I knew some people who were smoking weed everyday and they exposed psychosis, acted weird and were lazy. Maybe it's from some other substances that could be mixed with it...
You can act weird an be lazy without weed. If you act weird does is the product that make you like that or you that are simply weird? Anyway University is not the correct age/moment to consume any product like this.
I have observed that people that I knew many years ago and that use weed daily, now have psychological problems.
I know it's not a scientific study, but it have changed my mind. Years ago I though that weed was mostly inoffensive.
Interestingly, I heard an expert to comment that the weed of now it's not the weed of then, but many times more powerful because the plants have been selected for it.
> I have observed that people that I knew many years ago and that use weed daily, now have psychological problems.
That observation, by itself, does not say anything about what's cause and what's effect. It may very well be that cannabis causes all these things. It may also be that the sort of people who have psychological problems are drawn towards smoking weed either because of these psychological problems (i.e. seeing cannabis use as a relief for mental stress) or because of a common cause of both desire for cannabis and psychological problems.
I'm not saying which is true (not an expert on the subject), just that you cannot deduce it from your observation.
Something, of course, subjective, that makes me think in causality is that you can appreciate changes that are not present in other people with mental problems.
Just to be clear, I'm talking about heavy users here, not occasional users.
I don't think is a so strange prior to have. After all, heavy use of almost anything, have secondary effects.
I understand, this is an observation, not an experiment.
Anyway, as a follower of Bayes, I have updated my probabilities.
I have observed that many people who had never smoked weed (or did drugs, on that matter) have missed on many opportunities to grow up emotionally. They act "normal", but they are boring and immature in many things that are related to how they feel.
They would be a great example of a person who acts "too safe" all of his life not realising that it's his own fear that basically keeps him in his sandbox, when there's a whole world out there (BTW, I am not speaking about anything related to the New Age, as that could be interpreted - just the risks one could possibly take in general).
Two of my smartest friends are one who doped every day for a few years and the other one who practically never did drugs. Both are considered quite weird by the general population, and both know that and they know how they could manage others (but not vice-versa).
Now quite frankly I find that most of the people will never realise that drugs work well when they're done in balance with the other things in life. And the fact that occasional stressing of your body is quite beneficial in the long term, simply because it works just like training your physique.
Perverse, plentiful incentives to addict and sell -- or invest in the manufacturer who does so -- act quicker than panels of doctors, and dodge responsibility too easily.
Living long lives as a beacons of philanthropic humanism on top of your legal drug empire (or profits gained through accompanying ownership) counteracts much stigma accrued from the deaths of your customers.
> On Tuesday [July 17, 2017], OxyContin manufacturer Raymond Sackler died at the age of 97. The same day, 91 other Americans died due to lethal overdoses of the pill that made Sackler a billionaire. Sackler died in comfort, in a hospital bed, with the best possible medical care, “following a brief illness."
A bit ad hominem, right? Do we complain about Alfred Nobel having invented dynamite, which has been used to kill people?Pain medicine especially seems like a place where we can't rush to judgement. Even if he acted badly, the drug has done good for some people. Billionaires acting philanthropically is probably better than them not acting that way.
The Huffington Post article is written by an anti-corporate former heroin addict who, yes, clearly holds animus against those who profited off of opiates.
> By convincing doctors that OxyContin was “safer,” offering financial support and special perks to family physicians who were willing to push the drug, and investing millions in a marketing campaign that claimed OxyContin was not only harmless but beneficial, Purdue Pharma cornered the pain pill market. By 2003, Purdue was selling $1.6 billion of the pill annually.
The crux of his condemnation is the incentivization of doctors to prescribe -- which one could call bribery. Also, the misrepresentation of known addictive and deleterious long term health effects, which I believe could likely be demonstrated through internal company documents.
Wealth allows the purchase of goodwill at a discount price -- the ultimate destination of Mr. Sackler hinges on both the wilfulness and premeditation of his capitalist technique and the breadth and compassion of his philanthropy.
Collecting and displaying Oriental artwork appears to be at the center of his humanism -- the other side of which is biomedical research. I have not scrutinized the publications emerging from the Sackler School of Medicine in Tel Aviv, but for the sake of his soul and millions of prescription opiate addicts, I hope the papers reveal cures proportionate to his profits.
As Chomsky said, the way to deal with drug abuse is through education and treatment. That’s how we successfully reduced smoking, drinking coffee and other unhealthy habits in the USA. Not by throwing people in jail.
Drinking coffee is unhealthy? You sure about that?
> Studies have shown that coffee may have health benefits, including protecting against Parkinson's disease, type 2 diabetes and liver disease, including liver cancer. Coffee also appears to improve cognitive function and decrease the risk of depression.
The high caffeine intake is still quite bad for your heart. And it's bad for your teeth. Just googling shows that the scientific results have been quite mixed. By that I mean that scientists have found some positive correlations, and some negative ones.
From my layman's perspective, I would think a doctor would say there isn't a consensus on whether coffee is holistically healthy. In other words, it's good for some things, bad for others.
What scientific results are you googling exactly? Everything I can find shows a strong consensus that coffee has positive effects across the board. This seems like a good summary:
>There have been two meta-analyses published within the last year or so. The first reviewed 20 studies, including almost a million people, and the second included 17 studies containing more than a million people. Both found that drinking coffee was associated with a significantly reduced chance of death. I can’t think of any other product that has this much positive epidemiologic evidence going for it.
I don't understand how you can claim coffee is bad for your heart in good faith if you have read _any_ of the research... for example, this meta-analysis of 36 studies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24201300
> A nonlinear association between coffee consumption and CVD risk was observed in this meta-analysis. Moderate coffee consumption was inversely significantly associated with CVD risk, with the lowest CVD risk at 3 to 5 cups per day, and heavy coffee consumption was not associated with elevated CVD risk.
I think any doctor worth their salt would tell you that there is a strong scientific consensus that drinking coffee is not only completely safe, but it has preventative effects towards cancer, cardiovascular disease, Parkinson's, and Type-2 diabetes.
> Of the 59 unique outcomes examined in the selected 112 meta-analyses of observational studies, coffee was associated with a probable decreased risk of breast, colorectal, colon, endometrial, and prostate cancers; cardiovascular disease and mortality; Parkinson's disease; and type-2 diabetes.
Well, at least anecdotally regular caffeine (several cups per day) intake messes up your energy level, sleep patterns, etc. And if you mess with your adrenal glands, there could be subtle and long-lasting effects on your energy and mood.
> I would think a doctor would say there isn't a consensus on whether coffee is holistically healthy.
Not even one doctor I've talked to has said this to me about coffee. Several have remarked on the interesting results of recent large studies. (See moozilla's comments here, in particular one study said: "Moderate coffee consumption was inversely significantly associated with CVD [cardio-vascular disease] risk, with the lowest CVD risk at 3 to 5 cups per day.")
I'd argued that heavy regulation has been just as important. For example, how many other products besides cigarettes have to carry a warning over half of their packaging?
Also taxation. Ideally the taxes should make people understand the true cost of their purchase. (I know this is not usually how cigarette tax is actually determined)
Drugs were not made illegal because they're bad for your health and they don't remain illegal because they're bad for your health. Poisons are generally not illegal. Drugs are illegal because they make people feel good or make them happy which offends the Protestant Work Ethic. The Protestant Work Ethic says that the only legitimate route to happiness is through physically difficult labor which causes you to suffer. The greater the suffering, the greater the virtue and the greater the happiness you 'deserve' as consequence. The PWE is not openly advocated or consciously held much any longer, but it was a large part of US history and its effects stick with us.
Aside from just the people who have bought into the scaremongering about drugs, there is a significant contingent of people who see it as 'unfair' that anyone could use a drug and get even temporary happiness. Nothing offends Americans (I simply don't know how prevalent this is in other countries) more than the idea that someone else might be having an easier time than themselves. It's why many would prefer companies to go without substantive punishment for harming many people over having one person receive a large punitive judgement in court cases. The McDonald's coffee lawsuit is usually the canonical example. If McDonald's had only paid the lady actual damages, they would have simply continued their practices and harmed more people. But that is preferable to the situation where that one lady got a 'payday'. Apparently nothing is worse than the feeling that someone else has had it easier than one has had it ones self.
The Christian ethic and all that jazz that you mention dates back a long time, but the reason it's as crazy as it is in the US today is the much more recent "War on Drugs" that Nixon started:
"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
Well China does have a history with this sort of thing. The Opium wars lead to what China calls the century of humiliation which is still a defining characteristic in their global outlook.
I think the comment about China was a way to highlight that a country with no Christian back ground (and thus no history of a Protestant Work Ethic) bans drugs. It is a round about way of point out that the PWE is not the only reason drugs are illegal.
While it is a complex socio-political issue, there is a valid position that China has parallel cultural norms - political structures that maintain significant control over the private sphere, a high social premium placed on order and low individualism.
It makes sense that a society with those values, along with Confucian history, would ban drugs.
Dope costs money. When you've got a habit and no job, how are you going to pay? People steal to support their habits. Little children have their childhood stolen because their parents were addicts. People crash cars and kill people. That's why drugs are illegal.
Besides the wealth of extremely addictive substances (and activities) that are legal (some regulated), there's also at least one illegal drug that you're never going to be (chemically) addicted to: LSD.
The "we're protecting you" logic behind making arbitrary drugs illegal is nonsense. It's even more weakened by the fact that at least a few of the illegal drugs with "no medical purpose" have, in fact, some medicinal use: Marijuana for anti-nauseau, combating eating disorders, and pain relief, and MDMA for PTSD.
Alcohol is illegal here until you're 21, and then there are rules like no driving after drinking. We even tried to make it illegal but it wasn't tenable. Gambling is also illegal or very regulated in my state. And opiates are a controlled substance, you can't get them without an Rx.
I think we're talking at cross-purposes. I'm talking about the ravages of drug addiction on society. It's not about protecting you, it's about protecting society from you.
By far the most ravaging drug in the world is alcohol. So just like alcohol you put rules in place around drugs.
The reason drugs cost so much is because they are illegal, not because they cost a lot to produce or distribute. So we make the drug dealers rich, or we put them in prison, and this has a corrupting effect on police, border patrol, and who knows how many other organizations.
Plus we spend a ton of money, lives, and energy fighting something in a obviously losing fight. Isn't it better to educate, and help people with addictions? Or do you support the prison industry ;-)
|By far the most ravaging drug in the world is alcohol
Ever considered that this has something to do with it being the most accessible and normalised?
If you could pick up crack at your corner store, if it was advertised everywhere, if crack brands sponsored large sporting events and people commonly went for a puff after work, do you really think it won't be the most ravaging drug in the world, and exponentially worse than alcohol?
Video games costs money. When you've got a habit and no job, how are you going to pay? People steal to support their habits. Little children have their childhood stolen because their parents were always gaming. People crash cars and kill people because their attention is on their little screen. That's why video games should be illegal.
That's patently absurd. You're not likely to see a gamer out there ripping and robbing to support a habit. Do people get addicted to games? Food? Sex? Whatever? Yeah sure. But by far drugs lead to more crime.
Drugs do not lead to crime. Desperation and opportunity, the need to survive, with a lack of morality, all directly lead to crime. Drugs do not make people commit crimes. Emotions, those mental states, do however. What we need, as a country, society, and human race is to recognize the importance of treatment of the mind above all else. Reduce suffering. Sure, there will always be a degree of sadness in life, we should as an intelligent species, strive to end mental and physical suffering.
Totally! Lets try to remove the hopelessness from peoples lives that makes them turn to drugs. We can put the whole drug fighting budget into mental health.
Replace "video games" with "gambling" and you absolutely have people out there "ripping and robbing" to support a gambling habit.
Yet, in a large amount of places, some form of gambling is indeed legal (usually heavily regulated of course, but legal nonetheless).
In several nations (or states), there's even a form of completely legal, state sponsored gambling (with often ridiculously lower odds compared to private gambling offerings).
The issue here is that the "treatment" might be worse than the "disease". The vast majority of narcotic users (and gamblers) actually are responsible in how they use the narcotic (play the game). And illegal drug (or gambling) enterprises are also associated with an uptick in crime. Such is why the original "Prohibition" (of alcohol in the US) failed in the first place.
It doesn't help that current governments often tend to treat even simple possession of certain narcotics as a fully-fledged crime. As opposed to not caring except in the case of addiction, where it is at that point a medical problem. (Even the United States' old alcohol prohibition did not outlaw possession or consumption.)
Alcohol costs money. When you've got a habit and no job, how are you going to pay? People steal to support their habits. Little children have their childhood stolen because their parents were addicts. People crash cars and kill people. That's why drugs are illegal.
Alcohol is more addictive than many illegal drugs. Why does the above reworking of your comment feel erroneous?
It costs more money because it is illegal (demand supply curve). Just as large a percent of people use drugs as when the drug war started. So we're not saving anyone, we're just empowering gangs and cartels with higher prices. And then to feed those higher prices, driving addicts into prostitution or crime to make enough money.
If they were legal, prices would come down. Fewer crimes would need to be committed to pay for them. Enforcement dollars could be redirected to education and treatment of addiction. And maybe the drug wars ravaging nearly every country to the South of us would go away.
I don't know how much weed prices where affected in states after legalization but here where it's still illegal, one can get 10g of dope/weed for price of single night at bar and smoke every day for a month with average tolerance.
If we are talking about other drugs, can't say anything...
Which may be a good reason to not legalize drugs. My meager understanding of the issue is that happy people are less likely to grow dependent upon drugs.
(Don't take this the wrong way. I support legalizing drugs. The social costs of the war on drugs are to high to believe that there is a net benefit.)
I do not support legalizing drugs, decriminalization yes.
I am afraid that capitalism and greed, lobbying and 'free market' will be given a chance to make big profits from it. And put more people into addiction in result.
Mixed response to 2nd par, but agreed w/ 1st. Many years ago I read abt PWE in an awesome little book "The Hacker Work Ethic" (forward written by Linus Torvalds) and it resonated. Highly recommended.
The reason drugs are illegal is because they are addictive. Many of them so addictive, in fact, that they can easily suck you in and destroy your life even if you resolve to only try them "just once". Some drugs like tobacco and alcohol are less addictive than most and are therefore still legal, others like whereas others like heroin are more addictive and are therefore banned.
> Alcohol is terribly addictive and destructive. Far more so than many illegal drugs.
That's probably true. I doubt it's more addictive than heroin though, which was why I used that as my example for the other end of the spectrum. If alcohol was as addictive as heroin, I'm quite confident it would be just as illegal.
One thing to consider here, is the addictiveness of many drugs has to do with the purity. If meth is over 60% pure, then the addiction rate goes WAY up. Legalization is one way of managing the purity.
Maybe. Though if you ban meth that's >60% pure but allow meth <60% pure, really all you're doing is drawing the line on what is allowed and what isn't in a slightly different location. The linked article seems to be arguing that all drugs should be legal, regardless of how addictive they are or are not.
"Potential for abuse", not "addiction" is the legal standard the DEA uses to classify drugs. And actual harm to society is factored in. Caffeine is more addictive than steroids, yet guess which one is a DEA controlled substance.
Nobody denies that heroin is extremely addictive. Total harm and "potential for abuse" caused by alcohol and tobacco would likely land it somewhere on schedule 2 or 3 if they weren't economically useful for their profits, despite their "potential for abuse".
You claim drugs are illegal because they are addictive, then admit that alcohol and tobacco are addictive, yet not illegal.
Furthermore, marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug by the DEA, making it illegal at the federal level (no known medical uses), which based on your reasoning, would indicate it to be addictive.
Yet, prescription opiates, which people are overdosing daily, is legal.
That's a needlessly pedantic interpretation of my comment. As I clearly explained with my comparison between alcohol and heroin, the point is it's a matter of degree. Less addictive substances are less likely to be banned, whereas more addictive substances are more likely to be banned. That's why tobacco isn't banned, but heroin is. I would have thought that was obvious to everyone. Apparently not.
(And yes, obviously the laws aren't entirely consistent on this. They should be, but they aren't. That's not a valid refutation of my main point.)
Mmm, no. Marijuana is used habitually by some, but withdrawal syndromes are hardly as severe as alcohol or tobacco. Hallucinogens are not atypically used habitually either (some of the dissociatives might be habit forming but from what I understand habitual use of the serotogenics is pretty rare).
Most of these substances you are describing are older; from what I see, I'm afraid the narcotic regulation of more "traditional" narcotics largely rested on societal structure. Tobacco and alcohol are narcotics traditionally used for a long time by Europeans. Alcohol prohibition was tried, but failed in part, I feel, because many of the people in power didn't really, deep down, believe in it at all. (If I recall, at least two Prohibition-era American presidents, Warren Harding and Woodrow Wilson, had private liquor stashes available during their time in the White House.)
Marijuana, cocaine, and opium are not traditional European narcotics. As such, it was something "other people" used; the ill effects were much more easily demonized. There was some fairly racist propaganda surrounding the original Harrison Narcotics Tax Act that kind of demonstrated this point.
Obviously the ill effects of narcotics (such as addiction) are the driving force behind these prohibitions, but in my opinion a fair bit of the current "scheduled hierarchy" of narcotics is not really based on medical science.
> Obviously the ill effects of narcotics (such as addiction) are the driving force behind these prohibitions, but in my opinion a fair bit of the current "scheduled hierarchy" of narcotics is not really based on medical science.
Sounds to me like we're in agreement. I'm not sure why you started your comment with "Mmm, no." The laws aren't perfectly consistent on which side of the line they place different substances on (for a variety of historical reasons), but the underlying reason as to why drugs are illegal in the first place is (quite obviously) because of their addictive nature.
And as a result, more addictive drugs are more likely to be illegal, whereas less addictive ones are less likely to be illegal. What's not to understand?
We trust people to manage their own life, this includes medicine. Maybe insurance won't pay for it without a Dr, but if someone wants to self pay, that's their choice.
> This is pretty basic privacy and body autonomy rights.
There are more than one party involved here.
You think plain heroin is toxic, wait until you see the engineered drugs that are created by big pharma in comparison.
Do you think I should be able to purchase any drug, re-engineer it myself and consume it? I'm not selling it...
Say I'm not even a scientist, I don't know the dangers of what I'm doing, should I be allowed to have access to those chemicals just because they exist?
There is only one party involved in possession and use, by definition of those terms.
> you think I should be able to purchase any drug, re-engineer it myself and consume it? I'm not selling it...
Purchase - depends on the drug. Prohibiting trafficking in some items is outside of the scope of my comment, and I can see some cases where it might be warranted.
But if you somehow obtained some drug, and decided to tweak it and consume it? Sure, you should be able to. Most certainly, if you do it and survive, we shouldn't lock you up because you might have hurt yourself - that's evidently pointless.
I don't think that the public should be able to get a device which they can, using rudimentary skills, turn into a proverbial nuclear weapon.
I.e. buy cheap drug, make it better, die.
> There is only one party involved in possession and use, by definition of those terms.
I cannot possess something that I did not manufacture myself if I did not procure it from someone who did. They are a party. My point is that there are parties who engineer for profit without limits.
Though I agree with you on possession/use and prison sentences. It doesn't solve a problem worth solving.
> Prohibiting trafficking in some items is outside of the scope of my comment
> I cannot possess something that I did not manufacture myself if I did not procure it from someone who did.
You can, e.g. by taking possession inadvertently. But setting that aside, I suppose I could clarify it to possession/use/procurement - but excluding distribution. So, buying something like that shouldn't be illegal, but selling it might be (and the buyer could be subpoenaed to testify etc).
In any case, the distinction is clearly important from legal perspective - it's why our drug laws (and gun laws etc) all talk about possession and transfer separately.
I agree, but if someone somehow gets a hold of drugs--and puts it in their body they shouldn't go to jail for that... putting substances in one's own body doesn't necessarily hurt others--unless they become violent as a result - but until they commit some violent crime hopped up on meth -- innocent till guilty of a violent crime.
Morality and what not should not be forced on people. And most people with drug dependency issue deserve to be in hospitals NOT prisons.
Let's have some compassion as a society instead of fueling the drug -> prison -> poverty because dad-in-jail/single-mom-as-a-result cycle that's so prevalent in the lower class.
Problem is, if there's anyplace more expensive to keep a person than in prison, it's probably in a hospital. Doctors and nurses make a lot more money than guards (and a hospital treating drug addicts will need guards too).
Well I don't think that statement was meant to be taken literally - you don't just sentence someone to 4 years of hospital instead of 4 years of prison. It's more that you provide support for anyone with drug problems whether that is counselling, support for kicking the habit, replacement drugs on prescription (methadone or what have you) clean needles and needle exchanges.
We should be doing this anyway for the sake of treating people humanely instead of cruelly. The fact that it'd probably be cheaper and would result in more productive, healthy citizens is just a pleasant side-effect.
"drinking & driving doesn't necessarily hurt others--unless there is an accident as a result - but until there is an accident -- innocent till guilty of an accident while influenced."
Do you agree also with the statement above?
My view is that most of the externalities of drug uses should be managed by taxation, not forbidden. But there are some externalities that require more brutal coercion than just taxation.
> The odds of hurting someone else when youre driving after drinking are ridiculously high.
No. They are not ridiculously high. They are minuscule.
"In 2015, nearly 1.1 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. That’s one percent of the 111 million self-reported episodes of alcohol-impaired driving among U.S. adults each year"[1]
Assuming that all the drunk drivers that hurt someone else are arrested and most arrested ones haven't hurt anyone, odds of hurting someone when drinking & driving are way less than 1%.
(This is not to imply that I would like to allow drunk driving.)
You might be able to make the argument that someone who abuses antibiotics to the point of turning themselves into a walking incubator of drug-resistant bacteria does pose some risk to the general public.
There should be a good middle ground here: one where people have access to drugs, but there's some accountability (or at least a speed bump) to prevent people from causing harm to themselves or others.
I think we all agree that dishing out jail time for getting high doesn't work.
I totally get the argument that the drug war is insane---it creates a black market, fuels organized crime, puts harmless folks in jails, unfairly targets minorities, and so on. And I generally agree that people should be able to do what they want to their own selves.
And yet, drugs are clearly bad, and I fear that legalizing them is a hugely normalizing move.
I do like to drink, but it's clear that alcohol is absolutely everywhere in the US and that this causes huge collateral damage. Yes, it's absolutely possible to drink occasionally, and responsibly, and have a great time, and what's not to like? But people still very frequently kill each other by driving drunk, or they drink themselves to death and leave their families to deal with the mess, or they use alcohol as a tool for rape, or they simply drink more than they should, and more frequently, to the detriment of their health, careers, marriages, and general potential. It's generally expected and accepted that it is normal for high-school kids to be drinking, and maybe this seems OK to some folks, and maybe nothing can be done for it, but it bugs the hell out of me, because I have kids, and because, from my own personal experience, the line between recreation and dependence is very thin, indeed.
Legal or not, pot is implicitly and increasingly acceptable almost everywhere. I hear that more than half of US adults have tried it. And I have friends, with little kids, who regularly use it and keep it in their homes. They provide excuses about why they need it and explanations of what it does for them. As an outsider, it seems like total and complete bullshit, and I don't want any part of it.
Fortunately I'm old and stubborn enough to set my own, clear boundaries. But my kids are a lot younger than me, and not so inflexible. I very much don't want them to be pressured into alcohol and pot and all the rest when they are so young. I'll teach them as best I can, and they'll decide to do what they will. But as drug use becomes more normal, acceptable, and pervasive, I fear we'll inevitably see a lot more folks (especially kids) being pulled into it, and I think that will cause a lot of damage.
No, they aren't. There's a spectrum. Some are bad all the time, some are bad if they're abused. And I'd like to look at it the other way: some are great if not abused. Are we going to continue throw that away because abuse is possible?
> They provide excuses about why they need it and explanations of what it does for them. As an outsider, it seems like total and complete bullshit, and I don't want any part of it.
That is of course your choice, and I have a ton of respect for you for setting your own boundaries and sticking to them, as so many people have trouble doing that (myself included, sometimes!). But at the same time, I and others have different boundaries, and people like you need to stop trying to legislate what those "must" be.
I'm sick of people being told how to live their lives, especially in cases where doing so doesn't harm others. But guess what: sometimes people will harm others, and so you deal with that. Assault is already illegal, whether you're high or not. Maybe penalties for assault should be higher if under the influence of a drug, but that in no way means the drug itself must be made illegal.
I saw a cited stat in this thread somewhere that 1.1M people in the US were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol in a recent year. That seems like a lot until you read that 111M people admitted to driving under the influence, whether they were caught or not. I'm not sure what percentage of the 1.1M arrested hurt or killed someone, but even if it was every single one, that's still less than 1% of the total. Also not sure how many of those 111M hurt anyone, but one can expect that to be a pretty small number since alcohol-related car crashes don't often go unnoticed by the police. So it's not even true that people who drive drunk hurt people even a decent percent of the time, let alone a majority. I'm certainly not in favor of legalizing drunk driving, but it's a fine example of how hysteria and fear campaigns make problems seem much larger than they are. I think that's a fine example: alcohol itself isn't illegal, but if you do certain potentially-harmful things while under the influence of it, penalties are higher.
Assuming humanity survives another 100 years, my guess is our current attitude toward drugs will be one of those things that our future counterparts will find crazy, and shake their heads ruefully at those silly primitive past humans.
There's a whole class of drugs guaranteed to kill your child during pregnancy, and another where the interactions may seriously harm the child. Another where two relatively harmless drugs, when interacting, can produce the previous results.
It isn't acceptable to just put the risk on the average, uneducated person, who is easily swayed by the way media portrays something. We have experts for a reason, which is to guide us in what choices are safest, or "best" in the current circumstances they face.
Here's a little example, which is fairly common:
Alice has borderline personality disorder. Most people don't notice, she just seems to be rather outgoing, and prone to depression and anger. Alice isn't sure she has it.
Bill, Alice's husband, convinces her to go to therapy, where the psychologist practices Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (as CBT is the only government-approved therapy), which has no affect.
Alice's psychiatrist puts her on quetiapine.
The amount is strongly controlled, because an overdose is very likely to be lethal, and one of it's known side-effects is suicidal ideation.
She gains 10kg in a month, and her mood is barely affected, but people feel more comfortable around her. The weight gain depresses her.
The psychiatrist moves her to lithium.
Alice finds she can live a normal life, and no one notices her being outrageous anymore.
Alice and Bill decide to have a child.
Here's the hard part of "best": lithium is class D for pregnancy.
It's probably the best medication for Alice though, who has demonstrated she is fully capable of being a normal and productive member of society.
The same problems will continue if Alice chooses to breastfeed, which is best for the baby, so long as they are careful around medications.
---
Neither Alice nor Bill are remotely qualified to determine what will, or will not, harm a child.
> We trust people to manage their own life
No, we don't.
We create laws, and regulations, to guide people into making safe choices.
Seatbelts are every bit as useful as a prescription.
Drug treatment should not be used specifically for borderline personality disorder or for the individual symptoms or behaviour associated with the disorder (for example, repeated self-harm, marked emotional instability, risk-taking behaviour and transient psychotic symptoms). https://www.nice.org.uk/donotdo/drug-treatment-should-not-be...
I don't know whether you or the person you're replying to is more correct, but it doesn't change their point: That these decisions are not something the average person should be making for themselves. If anything, your disagreement kind of makes the point even clearer.
Maybe there might be an argument for people to be able to choose to obtain drugs like the ones mentioned by GP, but not without some kind of control-mechanism to at a bare minimum ensure they have been presented with the risks and have given some level of demonstration that they understand them.
E.g. I quite like the mechanism now in place for online pharmacies in the UK, where you can buy prescription drugs like Viagra, or OTC but restricted products like Daktacort (combination anti-fungal and steroids), but need to convince a doctor (for the former) or pharmacist (for the latter) in writing that you've at least bothered to read what they've written about the drugs (since nothing stops you from just faking the symptoms, but you at least need to describe relevant symptoms free-form semi-coherently, or they'll do additional checks before selling to you).
It has weaknesses, and certainly won't stop people from abusing abusable drugs, but it at least makes it possible to pick up on the most idiotic attempts at misusing drugs they don't even understand.
Alternatively, I've used PushDoctor a couple of times - a UK service that connects you with an actual GP via video chat; the last time it took me 10 minutes from I scheduled an appointment until I'd uploaded pictures of a rash, had a conversation with the GP and had the prescription passed to a local pharmacy electronically; even if one were to consider taking away their "gatekeeper" role in terms of letting them deny treatments they don't think are necessary, I don't think it'd be unreasonable to still at least require a consultation like that for the most dangerous drugs to give an opportunity to at least inform.
But these are "customer protection" laws, which are intended to make sure people are informed and to make it reasonable to shop in the street, not to protect against people who intentionally try to break them.
They are easily opted out of - they won't prevent you from e.g. buying whatever you want from China, and that's by design. There's no point in protecting a customer that doesn't want your protection.
As opposed to drug laws, which are designed to make drugs hard and dangerous to buy, even if you really want them.
> Which country are you talking about? This treatment plan for a person with borderlinePD is likely to cause harm.
I'm aware of the harm. But it is the start of therapy programs in several nations, Australia, New Zealand, France, United States of America, among others.
> Do not use brief psychological interventions of less than 3 months.
Precisely, but the therapy with the most proven effectiveness, dialectical behaviour therapy, has little support from the government programs. In fact, CBT has proven to be harmful for those suffering from BPD, but is a requirement when you first begin treating a patient in some of the above nations.
> Drug treatment should not be used specifically for borderline personality disorder
However, it is commonly used to start treatment, and supplement ongoing talk therapy, with the ultimate goal of removing it.
> What Alice probably needs is a long form talking therapy
I'd love it if I didn't have to pay a doctor to have him write the insulin prescription I need. Last time I had medical professionals manage my insulin was when I was hospitalized (they don't like allowing self administered drugs in hospitals.) They almost killed me. Twice my blood sugar dropped to 25 mg/dl. Eventually they gave up and told the nurses to administer the insulin I asked for.
It's worth noting that this article is from March 2016 (e.g. before the UN failed to course correct at UNGASS 2016), and that this and many other efforts have failed already.
Some reasons for decriminalization of use and possession, summarized:
(i.e., removing criminal penalties or making it no jail time possible, but not government supplied)
- War on drugs has failed. Criminalization has consequences on community - in many cases, most of the negative effects come from the criminalization, not the drug.
- Consensual crimes that don’t harm others shouldn’t be crimes.
- Drug prohibition doesn’t seem to decrease use — Portugal. (Also perhaps Czech, Italy, Spain?)
- Drug war enforcement costs a ton, we could save tax money.
- Prisons are crowded. Would reduce this a little.
- Easier for addicts to seek treatment.
I think the strongest reasons are that drug use should be treated as a health issue and not a criminal issue, and that consensual crimes that don't harm others shouldn't be crimes.
What is the single strongest reason for or against decriminalizing all drugs, in your opinion?
- Prisons are known to make criminals. You don't want to risk converting a non-violent addict into a violent one.
- The psychological effects on the addict's children when visiting them. A rehab home for non-violent addicts is a actually a nice place, in a way that most prisons simply can't be.
- At least in Portugal, prisons are actually not a very difficult place to get a fix. Rehab houses can be, since they're usually much smaller and isolated, not worth the dealer's time.
The main reason we won't get decriminalization is moral panic. :( But if we did...
There are still better and worse ways to make drugs available. Same as with alcohol, addicts doing high volume are where the money is -- and it's better to design regimes that prevent commercial actors from abusing vulnerable populations. Mark Kleiman has a lot of great stuff to say on the subject.
I heard Kleiman interviewed on some public radio show a decade ago. It was so refreshing to hear a rational, skeptical view in favor of measured legalization, minimizing the potential public health harms yet with a realistic assessment of the economic forces at work... it was one of those "stay in the car and finish the radio show" moments.
> and it's better to design regimes that prevent commercial actors from abusing vulnerable populations.
Unless we're looking to apply the law inconsistently based on some arbitrary prejudice of "vulnerability", this would seem to be basically what we're already doing. Any decriminalization approach which criminalizes access for addicts almost defeats the purpose according to your own rubric.
Consider that some countries have state monopoly stores for wine and stronger alcoholic drinks, and most no longer allow advertising for alcohol.
Similarly, consider the option of regulations like those in place for pharmacies in some countries, that e.g. requires the pharmacist to ensure you are aware of certain risks, but doesn't prevent you from buying.
Consider the way some countries now requires tobacco to be out of view and with health warnings all over or no branding.
In other words: There are mechanisms you can put in place that legalizes drugs fully, but still heavily restricts commercial entities ability to try to take advantage of peoples weaknesses.
Personally I believe even drugs like heroin should be legal, on the basis of harm reduction, but at the same time, I don't see a problem with e.g. restricting where it can be sold and ensuring that it's sold in plain packaging, no advertising is allowed, and to e.g. have a pharmacist inform you of the risks before selling it. I don't think that threshold will be high enough to make people go to a dealer, but it may still reduce abuse.
In the UK there are restrictions on how many pills of paracetamol (acetaminophen) and ibuprofen you can buy at a time, for example. In pharmacies you can buy up to 32 of each at a time, while elsewhere only up to 16 of each at a time. Those restrictions were put in place because of overdose deaths, and they appear to have saved hundreds of lives so far, while being lenient enough not to drive anyone to a black market.
So while I think we should be allowed to buy pretty much whatever drugs we want, we can combine that with making it sufficiently unattractive that you're not buying them on a whim.
I live in a place where the government had a monopoly on alcohol retail until recently (Ontario, Canada). I don't think it had any impact on sales. The biggest factor was price, the government fixed the prices fairly high (but those prices were the same for the retail exceptions, such as brewers' own premises).
> Personally I believe even drugs like heroin should be legal, on the basis of harm reduction, but at the same time, I don't see a problem with e.g. restricting where it can be sold
Well, if you nationalize heroin retail, then you will need to have a heroin shop in every hamlet, town, and neighbourhood. It hardly seems practical. You'll just end up with a somewhat smaller black market, instead of eliminating it.
The point of having the monopoly is be able to strictly enforce restrictions on things like marketing through an organization that is judged by compliance rather than by selling as much as possible.
> Well, if you nationalize heroin retail, then you will need to have a heroin shop in every hamlet, town, and neighbourhood. It hardly seems practical. You'll just end up with a somewhat smaller black market, instead of eliminating it.
Yet somehow places like Norway, with a population density nearly identical to Ontario manages to keep the black market for wine and spirits quite small, despite very high taxes on them compared to e.g. neighboring Denmark.
Which means there already is a suitable retail network. Or you can license pharmacies.
And the big difference is that people would be assured of getting clean, uncut, predictable doses. The cost of heroin is also so high and unstable that while there is reason to be concerned about making it too cheap, a large portion of the harm from heroin today is the high cost. The daily consumption of heroin for a typical user in clean, medical grade heroin costs less than $20 (we know, because it is produced for medical use, and prescribed e.g. in UK hospitals).
I am skeptical of your don't-bother-regulating-because-it-has-no-effect arguments. Cigarette usage in the world, for example, seems to correlate well with how unfettered commercial suppliers are.
Everything we know about retail says that convenience and marketing impact sales. Advertising works, or companies wouldn't buy ads. Premium shelf placement works or retailers wouldn't study it to death. Getting people hooked works or pushers at every level wouldn't bother.
Addiction to hard drugs (e.g. opioids) is a huge ball of misery and human suffering. It bothers me that you shrug that off so easily.
1. Cannabis prohibition is broken and can’t be fixed.
2. Cannabis is an abusable drug, and the rate of
problem use has been soaring for two decades.
3. Legalization on the alcohol model is likely to make
cannabis extremely cheap.
4. Cheap cannabis is a threat to public health.
5. The interests of the industry conflict with the
public interest.
6. There are many alternatives to current laws, and
the differences matter.
7. The market is moving forward despite the law, so
current [and likely future] laws are largely irrelevant
(save for a small and shrinking premium in price).
I don't think anyone can credibly suggest that more enforcement is a practical solution to detrimental habitual use of marijuana. As far as I can tell, it is effectively a demand-side problem.
I also think there is a greater societal cost to somebody in prison for weed because they had too much on stock, than there to somebody who is at home and stoned all the time.
Devil's advocate means you're going to argue in good faith. It's the difference between steelmanning and strawmanning
Your comment is a weak attack on a type of person that doesn't exist
cannibal card -> I'd say this is mostly about others people discomfort with it. As this seems to boil down to suicide / cult suicide + meat consumption of a uncommonly consumed animal (humans in this case). The main problem lies in the reason for suicide. (There might also be health problems with eating certain meat, I don't know.)
> Consensual crimes that don’t harm others shouldn’t be crimes
People who self-destruct rarely do so in a vacuum. The community, and specifically their families, are harmed. Just look at what addiction as a public health crisis is doing to the places ravaged by opioid abuse.
> Drug war enforcement costs a ton
A drugged out, non-productive population costs a ton.
I'm for decriminalization because we've had enough time to determine that prison and lifelong unemployability (via criminal records) cause massive damage while not actually serving as deterrents. Still in favor of using force to reduce the prevalence of life-wrecking drugs, i.e. mandatory treatment, but it has to be less life-wrecking than the drug.
I think you're missing the most important reason. As an informed adult, I should be free to grow and smoke (or vaporize) weed in the privacy of my home because I don't hurt anyone.
Freedom should be the default and interdiction should come with very good reasons (and not the other way around).
You may be interested to know that the 1975 Alaska Supreme Court ruling which legalized cannabis in that state used more or less your exact reasoning. The court found that as long as cannabis use was not a public health issue, the State had no right to infringe the privacy of one's home.
Stimulants can be pretty dangerous TBH. I don’t think class a drugs should just go on sale, but I don’t think people should be locked up for them. Baby steps.
The problem is that for a lot of these drugs the greatest harm comes from the lack quality control and regulation of sale.
Not just because it results in drugs getting cut with all kinds of shit, and people being sold the wrong thing (e.g. selling heavily cut fentanyl instead of heroin), but also because of a the race to find alternatives that slip through cracks.
A great deal of modern drugs only exists to circumvent the law, either because they're not covered for a while, or because they can more easily be produced. E.g. a number of "synthetic cannabinoids" have been manufactured, and so far indications are that at least some of them have health effects that are far worse than anything possible to tie to actual cannabis.
Without decriminalising and regulating manufacture and sale, there will still be an incentive for dealers to sell drugs like that which nobody particularly want, and that increases harm, instead of selling clean versions of the safest drugs.
E.g. for opiates, many of them are "close enough" in terms of effect that there is a lot of potential harm reduction benefit just in getting the more dangerous variants off the market by legalizing and regulating the safest ones. Unlike blanket bans that has a hope of working.
Yes but even the pure, quality drugs like adderall, which is really amphetamine can be dangerous.
For opiates, especially people injecting, it is very inportant to get clean drugs, and actually opiates are not particularly harmful to the body if used correctly. They also don’t really present a threat to society if given the drug. Holland has provided addicts with heroin with great success, as a form of treatment.
They can be, but so can a lot of drugs sold at the grocery store. E.g. paracetamol/acetaminophen is one of the largest causes of liver damage in the UK. One of the big shifts there has been to restrict size of packaging and require pharmacists to exercise care (some will explicitly verbally warn you about the risk).
Ultimately I think that we'd in many respects do a lot better if it was possible for someone who wants to use things like Adderall for recreational use to go to their doctor and ask for advice and appropriate monitoring and know they won't be refused, than having people randomly taking it without getting proper advice.
But I also think another large potential benefit would be for doctors to be able to steer those who insist on using drugs to safer analogs were possible.
To be clear, drugs aren't legalized in Portugal; they're decriminalized. That means that traffic and selling is still a crime but consumption and possession of small amounts (there's a table listing those) is not a crime.
While I support the decriminalizing of drugs, I also have to question how effective it would be if all drugs were decriminalized and became highly regulated.
Example 1: prescription drugs are highly regulated, yet their legal availability has not stopped criminal activities surrounding the illegal trade. Legalizing may solve some social issues relating to the war on drugs, but not all.
Example 2: alcohol is legal, easily available, and has a (proportionally) low amount of illegal trade. On the other hand, a lot of people do illegal stuff when impared by it. Perhaps some drugs should not be legal, particularly since there is worse stuff ou there.
On the other hand, you have example 3: tobacco. Reasonable precautions taken, its main issue is self harm due to the impact on health. While there are obvious reasons to regulate its use (e.g. people frequently smoke in environments where it can harm others), do we really want to regulate self-harm?
Perhaps we should be regulating based upon the drug, keeping some illegal, rather than pursuing blanket legalization and regulation.
Edit: an occurance of legal should have been illegal.
I don't. I think drinking age should be 18, and kids should be allowed to drink with their parents. I think marijuana should be the same way. I think assisted suicide should be allowed (euthanasia is different).
I think every drug, even prescription medicines, should be totally legal to possess, distribute, sell, and buy.
Also, you say that "I think x,y,z." But you do not say why. Do you have some expertise that informs your decision on safety or is your opinion purely philosophical (based on personal freedom or even Darwin Awards)?
Decriminalization of drugs would have to come with a massive restructuring of our social programs. You could get into a lot of trouble by financially supporting people who become addicted beyond their control.
The article is about "decriminalization of all nonviolent drug use and possession". This sounds noble, but as we found out in the Netherlands you will have to make a distinction between soft drugs and hard drugs. Hard drugs is always associated with crime and most of the time violent crime and gangs.
So I would say. Been there done that. We are cracking down on this type of policy, since 'education' does not work and it seems that prisons do not make the criminal as some other comments claim... Well they can always wish for it, but reality does not care either way.
The article is a bit more nuanced than expecting "literally everyone will be better" or "heroin users aren't going to magically become productive members of society".
'anythingnonidin has summarized a number of the points from the article here:
Maybe not, but the heroin addicts will no longer have to resort to robberies and other crime in order to fund their addictions, and it will become easier to offer them help and treatment.
> the heroin addicts will no longer have to resort to robberies and other crime in order to fund their addictions
How does decriminalization of the possession and use lead to increased money for addicts that they will no longer have to resort to illegal acts to fund addictions?
Less jail/court fees = more money in pocket to buy drugs?
Why would medical experts be considered authoritative? It's a legal and political problem. For the record, I agree with the doctors, but I think decades of research into marijuana have already demonstrated that medical facts have jack shit to do with legislative agendas.
My guess is, the only way we'll move past this ridiculous situation is if a majority of individual states decide to legalize hard drugs the same way a minority of them have already legalized weed, and eventually the federal government will cave in once they realize it's not going to cost anybody an election. That is, it will take lots of baby steps over a couple of decades. I hope I'm underestimating progress, though!
What about other drugs like steroids and growth hormones? Those are schedule 2 drugs which can be prescribed but have no addictive properties. Testosterone is something your [male] body produces but even if you have a low free T count doctors often still won't prescribe it, and since you cannot buy it legally most men live out their lives feeling the negative affects of this.
Of course the focus is always on weed, opiates, and other common hallucinogenic drugs, but what about all the other drugs that aren't.
What is the reason for those to be illegal? I legitimately don't know the reasons because even the reasons for 'harmful' drugs causes lots of debate such as the comment thread here shows.
Steroids are drugs of abuse by athletes seeking better performance in their sports. That is the reason why it's scheduled, despite low addictive potential.
Even if you had a staunchly anti-drug stance, it's also fair to say that law enforcement resources are not unlimited. Dealing with drugs like cannabis and cocaine are a waste of taxpayer dollars relative to serious issues of opioids and methamphetamine.
The drug war not working does NOT mean that all the drugs should be decriminalized.
If you fail to fight drug cartels, it's a political and organizational issue.
We should never fall into the trap of mixing everything.
They just want to make it clear to bullies and torturers that violence shall remain illegal whether or not drug use is decriminalized. Honestly, it seems like a spin word.
The way to "win" the drug war, is the way you win in capitalism. COMPETITION!!! No one would go to illegal drug gangs if they could go to 7-11(or similar).
Out of curiosity, what goods and services will people in that line of business switch to?
Will they exploit inefficiencies in other drugs markets that the state hasn't caught on to yet? And just accept the diminishing returns before switching to the next drugs?
Will they try other lines of business, like computer hacking syndicates?
Or they all magically disappear, or be cut off from appearing because there is simply no unskilled labor + high margin + low overhead business line remaining?
What happened to the gangsters of Al Capone's day, when prohibition took away their competitive edge? Did they sell "insurance"? You seem quite passive aggressive, without offering any thoughts yourself.
My guess is, most will be unemployed. They aren't criminal geniuses. They've found a cheap way to make money and get high at the same time, most of them.
Imagine a old dam. It's in poor condition, with cracks here and there, letting some water through. Its maintenance is extremely expensive and seemingly useless, since for ever crack that is fixed, a new one appears.
Now some guy shows up and says "this dam costs us too much and we are failing to fix it. Let's just blow it up!"
So the problem with blowing up the dam is that there's a large amount of water behind it that will flood out dangerously if they blow up the dam. I guess?
So what's the analogy here? You think there's a large amount of potential drug users who will suddenly start abusing as soon as drugs are legalised?
> You think there's a large amount of potential drug users who will suddenly start abusing as soon as drugs are legalised?
The opiod crisis already is quite severe. And yet most opioids are illegal. I doubt making them legal will decrease usage. Also, if they were legal, big pharma companies would see them as business opportunities. Things could get ugly fast.
I'm not following any of the logic here. Big pharma companies are already making a killing on a significant portion of the opioid addiction epidemic. They're legally (but perhaps irresponsibly) prescribed by a doctor, and either become abused by the intended patient or subsequently depart from those legal channels.
The opioid crisis isn't the only crisis. America hovers around being the 1st or 2nd worst incarceration rate in the world, and it's predominantly non-violent drug offenses. Friend of mine just lost a job offer they had provisionally because of a tiny marijuana possession charge from years ago, and that's happened to them over and over again.
If your best argument in favor of continuing to ruin people lives over something so petty is "big pharma will make money off of opioids", I call bullshit.
edit: I would also argue that in your analogy, there is almost no water built up behind that dam, and getting rid of the dam would hardly be noticeable downstream. We can't even keep drugs out of prisons very well. I live in a town that hasn't had a single case of violent crime in 13 years, and yet I know exactly where I could go and buy some heroin right this very minute if I wanted to. I know where in the Bay Area I could buy some meth if I wanted to. And these are locations that have been repeatedly raided by the cops, but the selling of drugs at those locations doesn't stop, because someone else who recently finished their sentence will just take over while the person who got busted servers theirs. I was in a concert venue last night with cops, and weed, everywhere. Freaking out about the weed, but no one caring about people having 6 or 7 beers and then getting in their cars to drive home drunk at 1am. The dam makes zero sense to me.
This was a very good interview with a neuropsychiatrist, Dr. Phyllis Bonafice, who has a different opinion, https://youtu.be/W_i2mC5fAmI. I do think focusing on treatment more than punishment may be a better idea in most cases.
a lot of drugs used to be legitimate drugs,but are now illegal to be able to sell other shitty substances which are more expensive and often less effective. example: mdma treatment for ptsd. most ptsd treatments are ill effective these days, but before wo2 mdma treatment was very effective. it's now only able to be given in certain places, usually from people who can't licence themselves properly, adding risk to this treatment where before it was solid.
http://www.mdmaptsd.org/news.html
most banned substances are just 'buisness deals' between pharma industry and government.
For the US people, this is not just due to war on drugs. war on drugs is an effect , not a cause.
Instead of drugs, I think we could ban fried chicken and watermelon exceeding a diameter of three inches. It would be more effective for the goals the government has in mind. Fried chicken is well, fried, and a large watermelon can be used to hit someone and cause head injury.
Honest question: How would decriminalization of drugs work in practice? Would it be legal to e.g. import and sell cristal meth in stores? What about cheap self-made alcohol that might contain dangerous stuff like methanol; where do you draw the line?
Decriminalization ≠ legalization; the idea here is decriminalizing usage and personal possession, which in no way entails legalizing production, cultivation or commercialization. The point is to enable addicts to seek treatment without fear of legal trouble.
I would argue, somewhat pedantically, that decriminalization = legalization. Drug use can either be legal or illegal. Drug possession can be either legal or illegal. Same for drug, manufacture, and drug distribution.
In that order: use, possession, manufacture, distribution
I think you will get a reduction in the number of people who would agree with having no restrictions. For instance, drug use is probably ok, but not while driving a vehicle, or playing a competitive sport. Drug possession is probably fine, but not more than X amount. Drug manufacture might be fine, if you are just growing/making for yourself. Drug distribution is probably not ok unless you have a license and follow state/federal guidelines.
I think where the law breaks down is under: 'possession'
If it's legal to possess say, 200 pills of oxy at any time, no Rx, no questions asked, I don't see how that isn't going to result in increased distribution.
I think the best approach is to allow each neighborhood to decide what recreational drugs, if any, can be consumed in public. And only enforce such restrictions with fines, not jail time.
Regulating at the neighborhood level makes it easier to live in or travel to the kind of neighborhood you want to be in. People that want to use drugs in public where they live can pick their neighborhood accordingly.
The more permissive neighborhoods can tax drug use to pay for any negative consequences of drug use. Maybe they need more enforcement of traffic laws, for example.
If we allow everything everywhere, eventually there will be pressure to control everything again. Better to allow people who want drug-free neighborhoods to have them, while ensuring that those who want to use drugs are still able to.
I'm thinking internally if all this buzz on drug decriminalization isn't just the visible part of darwinian process that will naturally eliminate the stupids and the mentally weak from humanity gene pool.
So 22 medical experts state the War on Drugs "directly and indirectly contribute to lethal violence, disease, discrimination, forced displacement, injustice and the undermining of people’s right to health."
In Mexico 23,000 people were killed in drug related violence in 2016. Drug overdoses in the USA jumped to 59,000 in 2016. Arrest numbers in the USA in 2015 totaled 10.8 million. Drug related: 1.49 million; (Broken down: 1.25 million for drug possession; 340,000 for sale or manufacture.) 1.09 million drunk driving; 11,092 for murder or manslaughter.
Ratios of note: 438:1 Possession:Sale or manufacture; 1.25:1.5 Drunk driving:Drug related.
Government v Science: In 2009 a British psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist was sacked from his position chief drug advisor position in government after publishing a list of most to least harmful drugs.
"Alcohol and tobacco are more harmful than many illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis..."
He also stated horse riding was safer than ecstasy with 100 riding fatalities per year(on average).
The political blowback was massive. On the floor in House of Commons MPs vehemently rebuffed the document and its author. It was a parade of "my ignorance trumps your expert scientific opinion."
The congress and courts in the USA are no better. There's no official list but there is a pattern that has no scientific basis. The crack epidemic of the late 80's saw congress pass mandatory sentencing laws for crack. Crack is the crystalized version of cocaine. It was popular in the inner city minority population. Movie stars from the 80's would have a "cocaine nail." The nail on the pinky finger (it could be any finger) would be noticeably longer. Carrie Fisher in the Empire Strikes Back has one that really stands out.
It was difficult to locate reputable sources of recent data on costs in the United States. Tobacco and alcohol combined total slightly over $600 Billion/year while illegal drugs are estimated at just under $200 billion.
So you discussed your drug habit with your physician? Physician–patient privilege isn't a sure thing anymore. The police are requesting and getting warrants to access a person's medical files. I didn't know this was happening until I started writing this post.
- Alcohol is legal yet it's the only drug where stopping cold turkey can be fatal. Most people have heard of DTs or the shakes. So drinking too much too fast and not drinking afters of hitting the bottle every day can both be fatal.
- It's impossible to overdose on cannabis. People do have bad reactions or trips and go to the hospital but it's nothing life threatening.
- For profit prisons (almost always) cannot take prisoners who've committed a violent crime. Wonder why the dealer to possession ratio was 1:438? This is probably a factor.
- We have 5% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prisoners
- Tuberculosis, HIV, Hepatitis C - The sentence wasn't for live but these transmissible diseases are.
- "If we legalize drugs think of the damage to the economy. ATF, prison guards, police, cities that are only financially solvent because of the income from the courts and prisons would face financial ruin.
- Innocent until proven guilty unless there's a empty cell? How is this not a conflict of interest for the parole board?
- So we hear nothing about how many drunks get behind the wheel of a 3000lb vehicle. Only after 3-5 DWI's will they possibly face prison time. Someone smoking weed is "a threat to national security?" They pose a threat to the safety of the community. That car swerving down the road only get a slap on the wrist.
- I don't think it should be all drugs and I don't think the article made that argument. The point was to stop treating a health condition as a crime and end what Nixon started.
I don't understand that line of argument? it's kind of like saying, lets deregulate the road / sky so we have increased choice of how and where we drive and who can fly aircraft and where...... more choice, more competition..... but clearly a bad idea because it is actually dangerous without regulation
I think we leave the Rx system as is, in that we still let pharmacists do their job and protect their mainstream normal patients and give good standard of care, but any party drugs where there is already a clandestine market become OTC. i.e. if you want some weird medicine for some weird thing that no one else wants, you'll have to go through the steps to get a Rx for it. But it won't be hard to get. Because once adderall is OTC there will be 1000's of freed up doctors who don't have to write Rx for that.
I just wish we could do away with having to get the prescription in the first place and have the pharmacist be the gatekeeper. You keep a medical history on file so they can quickly figure out if the medication you want is likely to cause complications. Then I don't have to leave work and meet with my doctor every few weeks/months to get another prescription which I then have to take to the drug store and wait to get filled.
In the UK we now have at least three alternatives (other than "grey market" import; most prescription drugs outside of narcotics can be legally imported to the UK for personal use):
For OTC drugs with restrictions, online pharmacies can sell subject to asking you sufficient questions (and potentially doing a followup call if you answers raises questions). This covers drugs like steroid creams and the like which may have risks, but are usually ok.
For prescription drugs, online pharmacies can likewise sell to you if they have you fill in a questionnaire and a qualified GP agrees to write a prescription for you. This is increasingly done for low risk but prescription only drugs like Viagra.
The mechanisms above are simple enough that even though buying from e.g. companies shipping from Indian manufacturers is trivial in the UK, I'll prefer UK online pharmacies when possible as the extra hassle is minimal and they're better regulated.
Alternatively there's a service called Push Doctor (I've got no connection to them other than being a satisfied user) that lets you have an actual conversation with a doctor over a video chat (+ text chat and ability to upload images) after which they can issue you a prescription that gets sent electronically to the nearest pharmacy. I've tried it twice - once I got seen within an hour, the other time in less than 10 minutes, and the prescriptions were ready within half an hour in both cases, so I could just wait for a text message and go pick it up when it was ready.
It's a fantastic service - the only downside is it's private only, and while the consultations aren't expensive (28 pounds or 20/month), for more expensive prescriptions it's not great as you'd be paying full price for the drugs (but you do have the option of e.g. use them for diagnosis and go see your GP to get an NHS prescription if they think you need anything expensive, so you at least avoid having to visit your GP for minor things); I'd love to see this service get a deal with the NHS...
With the above setup there's very little reason to take risks as the barriers are low enough for most people to have very little reason to circumvent them.
I do agree with you though that for most drugs delegating it to a pharmacist would probably provide a good enough barrier - at least in the UK, and I suspect most other places too, they're well educated. When it isn't we should ask why. E.g. are doctors looking for signs of any issues? If those issues are simple enough and there's low enough abuse potential, then either let pharmacists do it or standardize a questionnaire.
For the record, many Asian countries such as India and Thailand do this, and I understand that some European countries such as Spain have very liberal OTC policies.
There are a few drugs like opioids that are controlled substances, but everything else is OTC.
I suppose I should clarify that without joking so much.
Drug addiction can be very harmful but society retaliating against the victim is endlessly worse.
Its like death by a thousand cuts, everyone seems to want to take a stab at the person as if that is going to cure them but it only makes them use more. They have to hang out with criminals to buy their fix and become one themselves to finance it.
A drug addict can be successful and have a happy life but only if no one finds out. When people do it triggers a kind of social death spiral.
You get the proverbial guy drinking a liter of coffee then smoking a cigar with a glass of whiskey at 11 am ranting about drugs as if the drug user is the embodiment of evil on earth.
Lone experts have been fired in western countries when they have expressed this common sense sentiments alone [0]. I hope this groups fares better.
Nixon started the war on drugs anyway as a mean to attack left and black activists [1]. Any previous legislation for control has been instigated on behalf of race and class warfare.The fact that some drugs have been the staple narcotic in some groups has been used as a control mechanism upon those groups by criminalizing the substance.
Substance distribution should be controlled by law. But that is status quo anyway - governments control the distribution of any number of dangerous substances at any point.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/oct/30/drugs-advis...
[1] https://qz.com/645990/nixon-advisor-we-created-the-war-on-dr...