21–30 of 190 posts
I love how whenever a major world leader comes out against the war on drugs, it is always after they are out of office and generally retired from political life.
Do you risk your career and your livelihood for your innate principles often?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I care what the law has to say regarding heroin. Legalize it, regulate it just like alcohol. Being illegal didn't keep my brother from becoming addicted and dying from it. If it was legal and pure he might have had a chance. But on the other hand, nobody is trying to outlaw tobacco and alcohol, which are the biggest killers of all. Thats what did my mom in. So yes, legalize it and keep it pure. Educate people on prop…
Without judging the sentiment, "legalize it and keep it pure" does not mesh at all with tobacco and alcohol, which are legal (and 'pure,' at least in the case of alcohol), being "the biggest killers of all" as an argument for legalization. Discussion on legalization of controlled substances like heroin is fraught with bias and misinformation. It's a discussion worth having, but clouding it with contradictions makes a…
pstuart didn't say if heroin had been pure that everything would be fine, just that the user might have a chance. And you definitively have a greater chance of surviving alcohol addition if you don't die from a single bottle[2].
[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...
[2] http://www.ibtimes.com/last-call-poor-indians-continue-die-a...
I love how whenever a major world leader comes out against the war on drugs, it is always after they are out of office and generally retired from political life.
Baby steps: plenty of politicians are in favor of decriminalizing marijuana.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you risk your career and your livelihood for your innate principles often?
While I agree with this, it's exactly the reason many governments right now get almost nothing done (and what they do get done is awful): People in power who care more about their job security than their -- or anyone else's -- principles. A politician's career should be based on reconciling principle with reality. Their livelihood should be linked directly to their ability to do this successfully. That comes with a c…
Ending the drug war is important to some people, but there are tons of people who support the drug war for moral reasons, on both sides of the aisle. Meanwhile, with an aging populace people are much more concerned with Medicare, Social Security, healthcare, pensions, etc, than the justice or injustice of the drug war.
Even a politician who does care sincerely about ending the drug war wouldn't waste his political capital actually doing it, not in face of all the more important things that people want done.
IMO the battle is won in stages, and the first step in the legalization of Marijuana at the Federal level. The next step is when we recognize the victims of the War on Drugs, specifically persons who were sent to jail because of Marijuana. You expand the affected to be people who've committed all non-violent crimes, and advocate for reform from that angle. I don't care what the law really has to say regarding Heroin,…
I care what the law has to say regarding heroin. Legalize it, regulate it just like alcohol. Being illegal didn't keep my brother from becoming addicted and dying from it. If it was legal and pure he might have had a chance. But on the other hand, nobody is trying to outlaw tobacco and alcohol, which are the biggest killers of all. Thats what did my mom in. So yes, legalize it and keep it pure. Educate people on prop…
I am not so sure I would support the legalization of heroin. At times I have expressed support for the Gore Vidal approach, i.e. legalize all drugs and provide them at cost. In any case, I fully agree that drugs ought to be decriminalized and treated as a public health, not a criminal, issue.
I just think it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that all drugs are the same. Consider, for example, the ratio of the therapeutic dose (or, I guess, recreational dose) to the lethal dose. A very small amount of marijuana or LSD causes the intended effect, yet it's virtually impossible to die from overdosing on these substances. Clearly this is not the case with alcohol, cocaine, heroin, etc.
I'm not trying to argue strongly for tiered classification of drugs, but I am saying that it's not obvious to me that we should just treat them all the same. There are more-or-less objective measures that we can use to establish their risk to the individual and society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you risk your career and your livelihood for your innate principles often?
Is comming out against the "war on drugs" really a career killer, still? I think some real leadership from public officials would quickly reverse the remnant of public support that exists for this so-called war.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I care what the law has to say regarding heroin. Legalize it, regulate it just like alcohol. Being illegal didn't keep my brother from becoming addicted and dying from it. If it was legal and pure he might have had a chance. But on the other hand, nobody is trying to outlaw tobacco and alcohol, which are the biggest killers of all. Thats what did my mom in. So yes, legalize it and keep it pure. Educate people on prop…
Without judging the sentiment, "legalize it and keep it pure" does not mesh at all with tobacco and alcohol, which are legal (and 'pure,' at least in the case of alcohol), being "the biggest killers of all" as an argument for legalization. Discussion on legalization of controlled substances like heroin is fraught with bias and misinformation. It's a discussion worth having, but clouding it with contradictions makes a…
While alcohol and tobacco might have a larger "therapeutic index" then heroin, regular use can and does damage many peoples' bodies. Regular use of opiates causes constipation and a few other minor side effects. They aren't really comparable.
The main reason for overdoses on opiates is related to mixing with other drugs (alcohol and benzos). After that is the dosage amount. If patients always knew exactly how much they were using, like they would less likely accidentally use too much.
Another cause for overdoses is when a patient discontinues the medication, then resumes usage assuming their previous tolerance levels. If these medicines were legal, far fewer people would need to stop using in the first place, further reducing accidents.
The other health issues with opiates are a result of unhygienic IV use. If needles were readily available, and medicines pure, there would be less health issues arising. Instead, people reuse their needles many, many times, and users may often end up injecting all sorts of materials into their blood.
I love how whenever a major world leader comes out against the war on drugs, it is always after they are out of office and generally retired from political life.
Do you risk your career and your livelihood for your innate principles often?
Kofi Annan does not have any prerogative to tell me or others what to do with their own bodies. Fuck the UN and Kofi Annan.