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Bill to Legalize Marijuana and Opium Cleared for Indian Parliament (2016)

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Re: Bill to Legalize Marijuana and Opium Cleared for Indian Parliament (2016)

#61

Post by bbatha »

meri_dian wrote: post #21
bbatha wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Chinese experience with Opium in the 1800's was terrible and very damaging to their society. To play devil's advocate, China had loads of Opium pumped in by the British to pay for their tea debts. The British countered any attempt to regulate it, so they could keep their markets open. Opium is a dangerous substance, but I'd be interested to see what a well regulated opium market looks like. Unrefined opium is i…

How does regulation decrease the addictiveness though? Every one of my friends who has become addicted to opiates got started with legal, regulated prescription drugs.

One of the main things the British did was prevent the Qing government from taxing the product. We've seen with tobacco and alcohol that sin taxes can be very effective. You can also regulate marketing, which has also been effective with alcohol and tobacco. Arguably the root of current opiod crisis was a failure to regulate marketing of opiods which caused doctors to over prescribe them.

Re: Bill to Legalize Marijuana and Opium Cleared for Indian Parliament (2016)

#62

Post by opportune »

sgrove wrote: post #57
opportune wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet those same plants contain psychoactive drugs just as those pills do. I am all for drug decriminalization/legalization but this is seriously a stupid argument. There's no logical consistency in treating a drug differently just because you can grow it.

I think the argument is more around the potency of a thing (although plant strains can become very potent as well). Just like naturally fermented berries have a different effect compared to distilled spirits.

That makes more sense, although I would wager the parent probably doesn't have anything against LSD or THC concentrate.

Re: Bill to Legalize Marijuana and Opium Cleared for Indian Parliament (2016)

#63

Post by marshall007 »

opportune wrote: post #47
libertyEQ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a serious problem when we conflate plant material with synthesized, concentrated compounds. People call their pills "medication" and the 4 plants I grow every summer in my backyard "drugs."

Yet those same plants contain psychoactive drugs just as those pills do. I am all for drug decriminalization/legalization but this is seriously a stupid argument. There's no logical consistency in treating a drug differently just because you can grow it.

I don't know if this is what libertyEQ was getting at, but generally the argument here is that it's notoriously difficult to regulate/criminalize things that literally "grow on trees". It requires hardly any infrastructure or industry to produce these substances. Thus, without some degree of legalization it's virtually impossible to prevent black markets from popping up.

Re: Bill to Legalize Marijuana and Opium Cleared for Indian Parliament (2016)

#64

Post by mikestew »

ecthiender wrote: post #52

This news is from 2016 though. So what happened? Does anybody know?

Kind of curious about that myself. All I can find is that is was cleared to go before Parliament November 2016, and there hasn't been a news story I can find since.

Re: Bill to Legalize Marijuana and Opium Cleared for Indian Parliament (2016)

#65

Post by Noos »

jrs95 wrote: post #30
meri_dian wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's make it easier for people to perpetuate their addiction? No, we should be making it much harder for them to do so.

A higher quality and more consistent product means there's a larger window of time for getting them treatment. If the quality situation ends up like it is in the U.S. now, you end up with a much more lethal product and a huge rate of overdose deaths.

this is assuming an overdose death is worse societally than having said user alive, unemployable, and addicted to opium or an opium substitute for the rest of their lives. I don't mean this morally...life is precious and should be saved. But I don't know how many societies could deal with a massive addict class that only exists to siphon benefits and energy.

Re: Bill to Legalize Marijuana and Opium Cleared for Indian Parliament (2016)

#66

Post by jrs95 »

Noos wrote: post #65
jrs95 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A higher quality and more consistent product means there's a larger window of time for getting them treatment. If the quality situation ends up like it is in the U.S. now, you end up with a much more lethal product and a huge rate of overdose deaths.

this is assuming an overdose death is worse societally than having said user alive, unemployable, and addicted to opium or an opium substitute for the rest of their lives. I don't mean this morally...life is precious and should be saved. But I don't know how many societies could deal with a massive addict class that only exists to siphon benefits and energy.

Well that's assuming that they'll just siphon benefits and energy. Most of the addicts I've known are high functioning and relatively productive -- they just spend a lot of money supporting their habit. I'd imagine this would be even easier post-legalization.

Re: Bill to Legalize Marijuana and Opium Cleared for Indian Parliament (2016)

#67

Post by libertyEQ »

opportune wrote: post #62
sgrove wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument is more around the potency of a thing (although plant strains can become very potent as well). Just like naturally fermented berries have a different effect compared to distilled spirits.

That makes more sense, although I would wager the parent probably doesn't have anything against LSD or THC concentrate.

That sounds like you are making an unfair assumption about my beliefs and my understanding is that we are supposed to be charitable in our assumptions for the benefit of discussion on HN. I made the distinction about lab synthesis (i.e. LSD) and plant material (i.e. marijuana). Now you have erected a straw man on my behalf where I can't tell the difference between purified plant material, raw plant material, and synthesized compounds. is that your intent?

Re: Bill to Legalize Marijuana and Opium Cleared for Indian Parliament (2016)

#68

Post by CynicalDio »

libertyEQ wrote: post #39
TylerE wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure opium is fairly benign, as hard drugs go. It's all the crap it gets cut with by shady dealers that kill people.

Heroine (~1%), morphine(~5-13%), and codeine(~5-13%) are the active constituents in opium, which is a plant material consisting of many other benign substances. These discussions need to include factoids like these in order to be productive.

This is incorrect. Opium does not contain any "Heroin" (Diacetylmorphine). The three major alkaloids contained I opium latex are Morphine, Codeine and Thebaine.
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