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The drug revolution that no one can stop

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Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#101

Post by MarkPNeyer »

frogpelt wrote: post #73
jpatokal wrote: post #29

And these shenanigans, too, would be entirely unnecessary if known drugs were legal and regulated, and people could take controlled risks instead of playing Russian roulette with newly synthesized drugs.

Its hard for me to wrap my mind around this. Are you a person is willing to risk losing their intellect, health, usefulness to society and even their life but is afraid of the legal repercussions of that decision? That doesn't make sense to me.

You've never been extremely depressed, I take it? Most people pursuing altered stars of consciousness are deeply unhappy and don't feel like they are risking anything.

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#102

Post by Nursie »

rdxm wrote: post #97

Seems to me ingesting any chemical compound cooked up in an unknown/uncontrolled environment, whether that enviro is the design or manufacturing side of things makes you an active seeker of the Darwin Award. What's irritating is the expense of public resources bailing people out of the pursuit of the Darwin Award. Of course the same could be said for smoking, consumption driven obesity, excessive alcohol intake, etc.…

Here's the thing - 'designer drugs' or 'research chemicals' or whatever you want to call them, they all come out of well equipped labs in China. It's not like Cletus is cooking them up in his kitchen with that low-grade crystal meth.

They do have unknown harm profiles, for the most part, and they may well have been designed by someone who just liked to draw in an organic molecule drawing package, but the production conditions are likely to be pretty modern.

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#103

Post by r721 »

robert_tweed wrote: post #41
frozenport wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can sympathize with OP, sometime we just want the info without pictures of the Beatles.

Seriously, I'm considering writing an HN filtering proxy that ignores these kinds of magazine pieces. I just don't have time to read them properly, even if they are interesting enough that I inevitably get drawn into some of them. That's just another factor in HN becoming a time-sink instead of a productive source of useful news. I suspect if we had the ability to downvote submissions as well as upvote, less of them…

Sorry for wasting your time, I purposedly submitted this on Sunday, a slow news day.

I can agree though that sometimes it's hard to estimate time which you would spend on a story. I use a word-counting service (textalyser) for that, and this particular story is quite long even by longform standards: 7,800 words / 47,000 characters (with spaces).

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#104

Post by saiya-jin »

austerity wrote: post #85
bigiain wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the unspoken "X has risks, and I don't want to do X, therefore X should be illegal". I ride motorcycles. I have friends and family involved in scuba diving, paragliding, football, rock climbing, hell - even horse riding. _All_ of those activities have "well known risks of serious injury or death" associated with them, and each of them I've heard recent stories of death in the extended circles of my famil…

I wish so much to hear at least a semi-coherent response to this from the pro-prohibition crowd.

The most of pro-prohibition crowds are either not-so-bright people who grab all their wisdom from TV without any proper experience whatsoever beyond alcohol & cigarettes, or law-enforcement-related people. As in many other cases, I believe following money explains it nicely. Ignoring the former redneck case, the rest has actually good bussiness case for latter. Ie legalize weed US nationwide, and many prisons (let's not forget many are private owned by investors, who want only one thign - maximize their profits by having as many inmates as possible), DEA loses maybe 90% of the success claims they have, and maybe local police can have more time dealing with serious issues. For conservative politicians, its political ammo par exellence, since if they will go hardline on drugs, there are very few risks to their career, and they can always claim all the usual stuff (drugs are destroying families and young people, we care about them etc... ever heard that?). Ask yourself - what can a politician gain vs lose bybeing pro-weed in US?

Too lazy to look it up, but if I remember correctly that one of DEA chiefs was also head of some UN panel on drugs, which then enforce rules for all UN member states (read whole world maybe except North Korea). From first glance, it might make sense. But show me one career-oriented competitive guy (and being head of such an agency, you have to be at least that, and have a lot of political games skills), who would undermine his own little kingdom, and make his own subordinates lose job by declaring that some of most popular drugs shouldn't be banned. One real example - weed & hashish have thousand years of history in hindu culture (look up shiva day when almost all india is high), yet they had to ban it after they joined UN.

So, we can thank those guys for making policies that worldwide raise crime, help supporting organized crime on massive scale (brutal mexical cartels are a fine example, out of many, ie afghanistan)

It's like thinking, that in banking/trading/brokering, it's always the client's best interest that's primary drive. Well yes of course, unless the bussiness is funded mainly by operational fees. WHat do those brokers do? Make you do as many operations as possible, of course, without being too obvious :)

(*no references here :))

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#105

Post by theorique »

hristov wrote: post #80
jpatokal wrote: post #29

And these shenanigans, too, would be entirely unnecessary if known drugs were legal and regulated, and people could take controlled risks instead of playing Russian roulette with newly synthesized drugs.

Or maybe people just shouldn't take drugs.

Good idea. No more antibiotics, ibuprofen, chemotherapy for cancer, anesthetics for surgery ... shall I go on?

Oh, you meant only the "bad" drugs, not the "good" drugs. Never mind.

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#106

Post by cmdkeen »

frogpelt wrote: post #73
jpatokal wrote: post #29

And these shenanigans, too, would be entirely unnecessary if known drugs were legal and regulated, and people could take controlled risks instead of playing Russian roulette with newly synthesized drugs.

Its hard for me to wrap my mind around this. Are you a person is willing to risk losing their intellect, health, usefulness to society and even their life but is afraid of the legal repercussions of that decision? That doesn't make sense to me.

Drink driving laws? Plenty of people seem very happy to take the risk that they are still a "good driver" after a few drinks, but many are deterred by the legal consequences.

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#108

Post by dagw »

jamesdelaneyie wrote: post #107
xbmcuser wrote: post #42

Actually it can be stopped very easily legalizing drug use. The major reason we have for designer drugs is market demand.

I don't think so. It's like saying we have Heineken, so why would anyone want a craft beer?

People drink craft beer because they taste better, not because it gets them drunk better. In fact I'd wager that people whom drink beer because of its alcohol probably prefer Heineken, since it gives the same end state at half the price.

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#109

Post by mr_sturd »

Seems to me like an excerpt from Powers' book on the subject, Drugs 2.0.

It's a great read. Starting out describing the evolution of drug use, and the relatively recent implementation of laws to control the substances. Progressing on to the present day, describing the point we're at now - use of TOR and dark net markets to acquire these compounds, pseudonymously, over the internet.

Re: The drug revolution that no one can stop

#110

Post by jamesdelaneyie »

dagw wrote: post #108
jamesdelaneyie wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. It's like saying we have Heineken, so why would anyone want a craft beer?

People drink craft beer because they taste better, not because it gets them drunk better. In fact I'd wager that people whom drink beer because of its alcohol probably prefer Heineken, since it gives the same end state at half the price.

More than fair point. Craft beers usually do have a higher alcohol percentage though, so they would actually get you drunk 'better'. Taste would be subjective however. Personally I'd be 50/50 on getting drunk, having a nice drink, no reason you can't have both :)

The point being, if all substances were legalised, I think we all could easily see there being a wide range of branded drugs that might offer the same base experience with different subtleties to it. Longer and harder or short and sweet etc. You don't think so?

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