Live data from Hacker News

Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

arstechnica.com

41–50 of 304 posts

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#41

> Cannabis has been rebranded as a wellness panacea. Mushrooms and MDMA are making headlines as therapy tools, not party fuel. Man, these guys are late to the party. Alcohol works great for treating symptoms of stress, too! Can't be stressed, anxious, or depressed if I'm blitzed out of my mind!

The doses involved in using drugs as medicine are often a lot lower than what someone would take to get "blitzed".

Do you homework.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#42
post #23

I've mentioned this elsewhere, and I say this believing that substance abuse is a public health problem and not a criminal one, but: I'm not sure it's the best idea to give a bunch of people stuck living a lonely life in the suburbs, addicted to social media, and have to pay for their own healthcare, an easier path to hard drugs like heroin. There is no doubt in my mind that decriminalization will make these types of…

Alcohol is a hard drug and trivially available. And judging by relatives and medical articles, alcoholism is worse than heroin addiction. The worst part of alcohol is that it disproportionately affects people around alcoholic through various forms of abuse. That is a direct result of destruction of brain cells responsible for empathy. The effects of heroin are much more localized to the drug user.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing to acknowledge that alcohol has an affect on stress. But that isn't what this is happening. It would be another thing entirely to REBRAND alcohol as a "therapy tool". FFS.

If alcohol was as restricted as MDMA, we just might start calling alcohol a therapy tool. But right now anyone (of legal age) who wants it can order a glass of wine or two, so the people that benefit from it have it. Nobody thinks twice. You sound incredulous that psilocybin or mdma could be therapy tools. Are you a psychologist? Do you have any firsthand experience with these chemicals? Why are you skeptical?

The real distinction here is mechanism of action. Psilocybin helps fix psychoemotional problems in an enduring sense. You take one, or three, doses and your personality and self-understanding are permanently altered.

Alcohol works acutely. So I totally agree the term therapeutic is an arbitrary label; all drugs have effects and thus can be therapeutic for condition X and deleterious for condition Y. But worth noting that psilocybin and MDMA produce enduring benefits whereas alcohol appears not to.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#44
post #29
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could already access hard drugs. The law provides a lot of additional funding to mental health and substance abuse programs, which could actually help people in those situations. Decriminalization has worked extremely well elsewhere (it dramatically reduced substance abuse problems); hopefully it will in the US as well.

Yea but you can also say criminalization has worked extremely well. Singapore for example. What I worry about here is another instance of treating symptoms instead of causes. Why do people feel like they need to use drugs like heroin? > The law provides a lot of additional funding to mental health and substance abuse programs, which could actually help people in those situations. So if I want healthcare I should get…

Can you write more about Singapore? My view is that when drug laws are very harsh, then people will less likely admit to use and dealers will use more precautions. Since drug use is mostly estimated based on surveys and police report you may see the policy effective on paper, but the reality may be far different. It is a natural instinct to use drugs akin to listening to music or having sex for pleasure. If you ban music people will still listen to it, just you wouldn't know.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#45
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exhilaration and lasting euphoria, which in no way differs from the normal euphoria of the healthy person. You perceive an increase of self-control and possess more vitality and capacity for work. In other words, you are simply normal, and it is soon hard to believe you are under the influence of any drug. Long intensive physical work is performed without any fatigue. This result is enjoyed without any of the unpleas…

I just wish currently illicit/scheduled drugs simply had the same list of disclaimers that FDA-approved drugs had. The side effects aren't different enough to be rebuttals to support their prohibition.

All drugs except schedule I are approved for some therapy, so have the same list of disclaimers and side effect notations (with a smaller sample size than normal). Amphetamine, cocaine, and ketamine are schedule II and III; Cannabis is schedule I.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#46

> Cannabis has been rebranded as a wellness panacea. Mushrooms and MDMA are making headlines as therapy tools, not party fuel. Man, these guys are late to the party. Alcohol works great for treating symptoms of stress, too! Can't be stressed, anxious, or depressed if I'm blitzed out of my mind!

Too much generalization. Alcohol makes lots of folks so frickin' depressed... (edit: sure, fine, drink enough and you don't even know the world exist...)

Alcohol is serotonergic. Yeah, it has other negative side effects, but actual FDA approved antidepressants are also convincingly shown to increase suicide ideation in some cases, and it's actively monitored by psychiatrists. The point I think is that the therapy rebranding is not a license for recreational excess, and shouldn't be invoked as a trojan horse to that end.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#47
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe now that politicians see that people are very against drug laws we'll see some of them renege on their hard anti-drug stances. The purpose of existing drug laws, especially marijuana, is to give police a reason to harass and discriminate against certain populations.

[deleted]

Just because the USA uses the war on drugs to harass people by skin color doesn't mean you need to assume that is the only reason possible. The USA tends to think of all white people at the same, but europeans don't.

In europe, remember that the "lower class" could still be visually "white", but just from a different ethnic background. (Turks, for example).

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing to acknowledge that alcohol has an affect on stress. But that isn't what this is happening. It would be another thing entirely to REBRAND alcohol as a "therapy tool". FFS.

If alcohol was as restricted as MDMA, we just might start calling alcohol a therapy tool. But right now anyone (of legal age) who wants it can order a glass of wine or two, so the people that benefit from it have it. Nobody thinks twice. You sound incredulous that psilocybin or mdma could be therapy tools. Are you a psychologist? Do you have any firsthand experience with these chemicals? Why are you skeptical?

The point being made is that alcohol is legal, and massively harmful, and the public health measures around alcohol aren't great, and so maybe we need to be cautious when decriminalising and legalising other drugs to ensure that we have some health protections in place.

At the moment we don't have those.

We have strong denial in lots of people that cannabis might cause harm in some people.

All the stuff currently being said about LSD, MDMA, ketamine, etc was also said when prozac was introduced. We need to watch out for pharma companies who'll take something that's probably effective in some people (ketamine infusion for people with severe and treatment resistant depression) and rejig it to make it patentable (eskatamine) and repackage it so it can be used much more widely (nasal spray instead of infusion) and marketed much more widely.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#49
post #42
post #23

I've mentioned this elsewhere, and I say this believing that substance abuse is a public health problem and not a criminal one, but: I'm not sure it's the best idea to give a bunch of people stuck living a lonely life in the suburbs, addicted to social media, and have to pay for their own healthcare, an easier path to hard drugs like heroin. There is no doubt in my mind that decriminalization will make these types of…

Alcohol is a hard drug and trivially available. And judging by relatives and medical articles, alcoholism is worse than heroin addiction. The worst part of alcohol is that it disproportionately affects people around alcoholic through various forms of abuse. That is a direct result of destruction of brain cells responsible for empathy. The effects of heroin are much more localized to the drug user.

Problems associated with heroin mostly come from the fact that users cannot have steady supply of medical grade heroin. They suffer from contaminants and need to scramble to pay which is not easy when you are not feeling well. Clean heroin is relatively safe, it won't damage your health like alcohol would.

Re: Voters rejecting the war on drugs is a win for public health

#50
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish currently illicit/scheduled drugs simply had the same list of disclaimers that FDA-approved drugs had. The side effects aren't different enough to be rebuttals to support their prohibition.

A lot of it is a quality control issue. The cocaine your ophthalmologist might use is just as safe as any other FDA-approved drug, because it is one. On the other hand the stuff you might get third-hand from the cartels was possibly of questionable quality to begin with and has been adulterated several times by various intermediaries.

This is why I prefer legalization instead of just decriminalization

Consumer protection and ability to address the supply chain only comes with legalization

Decriminalization is just 1800s snake oil’s salesmen at the World Fair

Post reply on HN