Live data from Hacker News

How to get 7th graders to smoke

experimental-history.com

161–170 of 263 posts

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#161
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cannabis is linked to a significant number of traffic fatalities. Cancer risks are also meaningful with lifetime use so it’s a mix of Alcohol risk and Tobacco risk. Safe enough to be legal, but not really safe. People have fatal overdoses on MDMA and hart attacks etc. Amphetamines use is linked with cardiovascular issues and brain damage.

So traffic deaths, heart attacks (and general cardio problems), and brain damage. Looks like a melange of cannabis, mdma and amphetamines is almost as dangerous as the standard american diet.

Ignore the rates and everything seems equally dangerous.

People OD and die from drinking water, that doesn’t make it as dangerous as heroin.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LSD is absolutely NOT the poster child for safe illegal drugs: Something like cannabis, MDMA, or amphetamines would be. I think all of those have a decent claim to being safer than or comparably safe to alcohol. Tobacco, as you say isn't particularly bad in the short term. But it is particularly addictive, so you end up with a large proportion of addicts / long term users for whom the longer term effects apply.

>Something like cannabis, MDMA, or amphetamines would be Are you really arguing that meth is a poster child for safe illegal drugs?

false equivalency

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#163
post #149
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people throw up rather than OD on Alcohol. If you take enough of a drug that it makes you throw up, you did overdose. 'Overdose' doesn't mean you died. Fatal overdoses just get talked about more than other overdoses because they're the most harmful kind of overdose.

I’m referring to throwing up preventing negative health outcomes rather than death. You can throw up from excessive smoking, but it’s not going to help for inhaled or injected drugs. OD refers to excessive consumption or negative heath outcomes, so yes and sort of. With alcohol people will sometimes throw up before all that much alcohol enters the bloodstream, throwing up may qualify on its own but may prevent things…

The first sentence is ignoring the affect alcohol has on the liver.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#164
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if I try to change your mind about how much it matters to get a new perspective and new evaluation on some things, I might murder you. A conundrum.

Magnitude matters. A full frontal lobotomy counts as personality death even if a conversation doesn’t.

Do you think LSD is comparable to a lobotomy?

And critically, lobotomy isn't a change from one set of mental states to another. That big chunk of brain doesn't grow back.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#165
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cannabis is linked to a significant number of traffic fatalities. Cancer risks are also meaningful with lifetime use so it’s a mix of Alcohol risk and Tobacco risk. Safe enough to be legal, but not really safe. People have fatal overdoses on MDMA and hart attacks etc. Amphetamines use is linked with cardiovascular issues and brain damage.

MDMA overdoses are almost certainly all cross-contamination with fentanyl.

Here’s 2 MDMA deaths that aren’t: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22640978/

From one rave “Twelve patients with 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) toxicity from a single rave event presented to multiple San Francisco Bay area hospitals with various life-threatening complications including seizures and hyperthermia. Eight required emergent endotracheal intubation and six had hypotension. Hyperkalemia, acute kidney injury, and rhabdomyolysis were present in most of the patients. In all, 2 patients died, 4 survived with permanent neurologic, musculoskeletal, and/or renal sequelae, and 6 survived without any apparent lasting deficits. Hyperthermia was present in 10 patients and was severe (40.9-43° C) in 7. Using multiple cooling methods, the average time to achieve cooling was 2.7 hours. Serum drug analysis was performed on 3 patients, demonstrating toxic MDMA concentrations without the presence of other xenobiotics. Two capsules confiscated by police at the event contained 82% and 98% MDMA, respectively, without other pharmacologically active compounds. Capsule #2 contained 270 mg MDMA, which is more than twice the amount of MDMA usually contained in 1 dose. The MDMA-induced hyperthermia significantly contributed to the morbidity and mortality in this case series. Factors contributing to the severity of the hyperthermia include ingestion of large doses of MDMA, a warm ambient environment, and physical exertion.”

To be clear drug testing would have discovered fentanyl or other common drugs in their bloodstream, so it’s not just based on the pills recovered. Granted legalization would likely result in more consistent doses which would help, but the drug itself would still be risky if people just kept consuming more.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Show them a Quentin Tarantino film? Mia's OD scene in Pulp Fiction definitely scared me away from drugs even though I wasn't supposed to be old enough to see it >_>

Same. That scene stuck with me. Makes me wonder if over-protecting children from negative feelings backfires. Pulp Fiction was a risk-free and simple way to make vivid the risks of heroin.

Trainspotting should be mandatory watching in schools.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, this is where LSD gets interesting. No, LSD won't kill your body. But what are you ? You aren't just your body, you are your mind and mental state and the consistency of that. Do enough LSD, especially consistent high doses, and the "you" you know will die and be permanently replaced by something else. I of course agree that LSD won't put you in a coffin. But there are more axes upon which a drug's danger should…

I really hate the “LSD is safe” mantra people have. I had a college roommate who did a shit ton of LSD one night and I woke up to the fire alarm having been pulled and him punching holes in the wall. The police (fire department called the police) dragged him off and the hospital had to give him a bunch of antidepressants to short circuit the LSD. He was literally not the same person ever again. That is terrifying, ev…

I don't understand how anyone who has ever taken LSD can say that it's safe. Maybe at low doses.

Once you can't seperate fantasy from reality you're just one bad trip from falling out of a window you thought was a door.

edit: The responses here just seem like denialism from people who got lucky to be honest.

You can be aware that you are tripping and still imagine that something is something else.

Roads looked like footpaths to me, windows looked like doors, knives looked like forks, and so on and so forth. I was aware that it wasn't real but couldn't be sure of the safety of existing in the world.

I basically had to sit in a corner for 10 hours, hope that the corner was actually the one I thought it was and that I wasn't going to fall down a staircase instead.

It was great fun but felt like russian roulette.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#168
Contrarian view - the programs are working. Rates of smoking among teens over the past three decades:

Ever used nicotine: 70.1% in 1991 to 17.8% in 2021; Occasional use of nicotine: 27.5% in 1991 to 3.8% in 2021; Frequent use of nicotine: 12.7% to 0.7%; Daily use of nicotine: 9.8% in 1991 to 0.6% in 2021

https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/teen-cigarette-smoking...

I suspect the same can be said for workplace sexual harassment and outlooks on diversity. I agree that the programs are dumb and the trainings are dumb, but they have an effect.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#169
post #138
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people throw up rather than OD on Alcohol. If you take enough of a drug that it makes you throw up, you did overdose. 'Overdose' doesn't mean you died. Fatal overdoses just get talked about more than other overdoses because they're the most harmful kind of overdose.

If people regularly 'overdosed' on heroin by throwing up and feeling like shit for a day, with the same kind of survival rate that drinkers 'overdose' at, opioids wouldn't be killing tens of thousands of people a year. Alcohol abuse either kills people in the long term, or combined with automobiles. Very few people have a bit too much to drink some night and actually die from it. You'll generally black out long befor…

[deleted]

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#170
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magnitude matters. A full frontal lobotomy counts as personality death even if a conversation doesn’t.

Do you think LSD is comparable to a lobotomy? And critically, lobotomy isn't a change from one set of mental states to another. That big chunk of brain doesn't grow back.

Memories once missing don’t grow back either. The most extreme cases of LSD use have impacted such basic functions as limiting people’s ability to communicate.

Post lobotomy people generally weren’t brain dead, even if diminished. So for extreme cases, yes it’s a solid comparison.

Post reply on HN