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Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

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Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#221

Post by merpnderp »

coleifer wrote: post #216
otakucode wrote: post #201

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.…

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.

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.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#222

Post by chrisweekly »

otakucode wrote: post #201

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.…

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.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#223

Post by pault »

kgwgk wrote: post #155
piva00 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> people can be more curious about it and try but not necessarily stick to using them Yeah, it's not like they are addictive or anything.

Addiction isn't binary. Serious addiction takes long periods of sustained use. Source: I have done a lot of drugs.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#224

Post by m12k »

otakucode wrote: post #201

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 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."

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-r...

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#225

Post by pault »

PixelB wrote: post #217
lima wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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 real…

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.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#226

Post by shihching »

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."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/raymond-sackler-oxyconti...

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#227

Post by simonh »

gopz wrote: post #190
alexasmyths wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

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 belie…

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?

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#228

Post by graphitezepp »

kelnos wrote: post #118
jeffdavis wrote: post #28

"scientific consensus" 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 t…

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 a…

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.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#229

Post by merpnderp »

mc32 wrote: post #56
stickfigure wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 suppli…

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.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#230

Post by rasjani »

coleifer wrote: post #216
otakucode wrote: post #201

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.…

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.

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...

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