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Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

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Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#321

Post by jeffdavis »

pjc50 wrote: post #160
jeffdavis wrote: post #28

"scientific consensus" I am very troubled by this phrase -- it's almost an oxymoron. Science is not democratic, and scientists aren't anointed arbiters of facts. Anyone can be a scientist simply by following the scientific method and collecting data in good faith; and a lone outsider with new data can challenge 100 years of "consensus". Obviously they are subject to challenges themselves, or if it's unlikely enough t…

> think tanks I'm not sure what you think a think tank is, but they're basically either (a) PR organisations, especially the ones with opaque funding or (b) some guy with a letterhead and skill at getting articles published. They certainly aren't impartial in any way. I'd much prefer my policy research to be done by civil service bodies which might at least nominally be impartial. I don't think it's feasible to impos…

"I'd much prefer my policy research to be done by civil service bodies which might at least nominally be impartial."

Like who, specifically?

"If scientists think that something is both true and important, then why should they not speak up about it?"

Scientists agreeing about something would be a "consensus among scientists" not a "scientific consensus".

The latter implies that the consensus itself is scientific, but a consensus is never scientific. The former is still problematic, because scientists are not an anointed class, but it at least assigns some agency and allows questions like "which scientists" (to which the answer is probably "whoever we found at the major universities").

But sure, speak up about the science and what you know and what you have studied. If you want to raise an alarm, do so, but don't speak on behalf of all scientists, and don't claim that the "consensus" itself is scientific.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#322

Post by lightbyte »

ytNumbers wrote: post #313
lightbyte wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter if usage is increased?

There are often negative consequences for society when someone becomes a drug addict. There are the costs to society at the macro level. And, of course, there's the devastation suffered by families. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intervention_(TV_series)

Most negative consequences are caused by society and how the drug addict is treated, not by the drugs themselves.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#323

Post by wavefunction »

abtinf wrote: post #311
jeffdavis wrote: post #28

"scientific consensus" I am very troubled by this phrase -- it's almost an oxymoron. Science is not democratic, and scientists aren't anointed arbiters of facts. Anyone can be a scientist simply by following the scientific method and collecting data in good faith; and a lone outsider with new data can challenge 100 years of "consensus". Obviously they are subject to challenges themselves, or if it's unlikely enough t…

Anytime "scientific consensus" comes up, I think of the "Aliens Cause Global Warming" essay by Michael Crichton: http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers...

Unfortunately Michael Crichton is an unreliable figure when it comes to science, especially climate change.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#324

Post by soundwave106 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #305
amigoingtodie wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You claim drugs are illegal because they are addictive, then admit that alcohol and tobacco are addictive, yet not illegal. Furthermore, marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug by the DEA, making it illegal at the federal level (no known medical uses), which based on your reasoning, would indicate it to be addictive. Yet, prescription opiates, which people are overdosing daily, is legal. And, you spelled 'wrong'…

That's a needlessly pedantic interpretation of my comment. As I clearly explained with my comparison between alcohol and heroin, the point is it's a matter of degree. Less addictive substances are less likely to be banned, whereas more addictive substances are more likely to be banned. That's why tobacco isn't banned, but heroin is. I would have thought that was obvious to everyone. Apparently not. (And yes, obviousl…

Mmm, no. Marijuana is used habitually by some, but withdrawal syndromes are hardly as severe as alcohol or tobacco. Hallucinogens are not atypically used habitually either (some of the dissociatives might be habit forming but from what I understand habitual use of the serotogenics is pretty rare).

Most of these substances you are describing are older; from what I see, I'm afraid the narcotic regulation of more "traditional" narcotics largely rested on societal structure. Tobacco and alcohol are narcotics traditionally used for a long time by Europeans. Alcohol prohibition was tried, but failed in part, I feel, because many of the people in power didn't really, deep down, believe in it at all. (If I recall, at least two Prohibition-era American presidents, Warren Harding and Woodrow Wilson, had private liquor stashes available during their time in the White House.)

Marijuana, cocaine, and opium are not traditional European narcotics. As such, it was something "other people" used; the ill effects were much more easily demonized. There was some fairly racist propaganda surrounding the original Harrison Narcotics Tax Act that kind of demonstrated this point.

Obviously the ill effects of narcotics (such as addiction) are the driving force behind these prohibitions, but in my opinion a fair bit of the current "scheduled hierarchy" of narcotics is not really based on medical science.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#325

Post by HillaryBriss »

alexasmyths wrote: post #173
simonh wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legalising drugs != Making them cheap as chips on every high street. We can legalize drugs while applying significant barriers to entry such as high taxes, regulated distribution, user registration, medical oversight, etc and still suck the profits out of the illegal market. This has been done already and it works. Criminalising everything to do with drugs has utterly failed. That's just a flat out fact, the huge dam…

"and still suck the profits out of the illegal market. " Not really. If you create a big series of regulations and taxes around drugs - then there will still be a huge secondary, black market. The 'war on drugs' will therefore continue - even as you 'legalize' drugs. Double whammy. Take cigarettes - a much milder health concern: "the total U.S. tobacco market represented by illicit sales has grown in recent years and…

> If you create a big series of regulations and taxes around drugs - then there will still be a huge secondary, black market.

this point is under appreciated. i see new taxes and regulations spring up on legalized cannabis in California. and, just like with the high taxes on a pack of tobacco cigarettes, some of the market goes underground. (except, with cannabis, it hasn't had time to fully emerge from the underground in the first place!)

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#326

Post by stickfigure »

pharrington wrote: post #312
stickfigure wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot avoid the nasty social effects of drug prohibition (crime, violence, contamination, etc) without making distribution legal. If you want to live in a world without homeless junkies breaking into your car, or a world without running gun battles in the street, or a world without your wayward kids accidentally ODing on their next batch, you need drugs like cocaine and heroin to be sold openly and affordably at…

You'd also need to ban drug advertisements.

As someone strongly in favor of complete legalization across the board... I totally agree. And we have an example of this in (most of) the US with tobacco advertising.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#327

Post by sethrin »

timv wrote: post #212
tomp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 'cost' of doing drugs in society right now is pretty dam high. Social stigma, the possibility of going to jail, various professional licences lost. Is it? I've never heard of anyone who wanted to try drugs and was unable to get them. Maybe it's different in the US, but in Europe, you can always find a supplier.

I know that I could find a supplier of marijuana if I wanted. I'd just need to walk 100m down the street and ask the school kids hanging around in the park. Easy . But I also know that I would be risking various legal and social consequences. A conviction for possession of drugs would affect my employment options, it would affect my travel options (visa forms often ask about such convictions), it may cause issues in…

Cannabis is already completely legal in a number of US States. In Portland, Oregon there is practically an embarrassment of retailers. Further, one can buy a pen-sized vaporizer which contains concentrated cannabis resins in a variety of fruity flavors, and enjoy your habit pretty much anywhere in public. So far, I don't get the impression that legalization has affected the society here much. It doesn't really rise above the background levels of weirdness here, anyhow. I believe that most other instances of cannabis legalization have been similarly non-newsworthy.

And on the subject of drug availability, I'm aware of a few remote Alaskan towns where it's difficult to obtain drugs. I'm sure that there is some more developed and less isolated region of the world where it is also difficult to get such things, but that's probably not the common case. There is a global demand for such things, and there's only so much you can do to restrict the supply. Regardless, people will still find ways to get high. In the Alaskan towns I mention, bored teens will 'huff' paint fumes instead. There's not really a winning situation there; we can only minimize harm.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#328

Post by jeffdavis »

dalbasal wrote: post #204
pjc50 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> think tanks I'm not sure what you think a think tank is, but they're basically either (a) PR organisations, especially the ones with opaque funding or (b) some guy with a letterhead and skill at getting articles published. They certainly aren't impartial in any way. I'd much prefer my policy research to be done by civil service bodies which might at least nominally be impartial. I don't think it's feasible to impos…

Because of the effect of politics on intellectual honesty. Once a debate triggers our "political" brain, it seems to scramble the kind of intellectual honesty science requires. An even more insiduous cousin of the maxim: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I think the use of the phrase: "scientific consensus" indicates to jeff (it does to me)…

""Science" needs to be wary of speaking for science, instead of speaking as well informed and interested individuals."

Well said.

"It's fine to speak for science on purely scientific matters."

The thing about science is that one high-quality study is often all you need to have a lot of confidence. They don't need 100 experiments confirming the Higgs boson, they just needed one really good experiment.

And bad studies can be summarily ignored for the purposes of fact finding. 100 bad studies are no better than one or zero. The only thing they tell you is an area that may be interesting to conduct a good study later.

If there are a hundred high-quality studies saying one thing, and one high-quality study saying something else, then something very interesting is going on and everyone should pay close attention and get ready to learn something new. But this is very rare and is certainly not a situation where you want to inject politics.

So the only time when it makes sense for science and politics to intersect is when you have one good study concluding something relevant to the policy decision, and no high-quality studies to the contrary. And in that case you only need to cite one study and be done with it -- you don't need to "speak for science".

There is room to argue over the quality of experiments and studies, of course. And that's where the sparks should fly -- not over signatures on a report. If the results of one study are contended, it could go through some kind of extreme peer review that can re-analyze the results or question the data collection methods. The great thing about this is that laypersons will back out and wait, and the scientists and statisticians can argue in peace among their peers. When the smoke clears, then you can take those facts to the bank.

This doesn't for scientific fields where study quality is a major problem (social sciences are hard and don't usually have nearly enough funding to produce quality studies -- or have funding from overly-interested parties). But in that case, you definitely should not lend undue weight to the claims by speaking for science.

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#329

Post by knodi123 »

Why would medical experts be considered authoritative? It's a legal and political problem. For the record, I agree with the doctors, but I think decades of research into marijuana have already demonstrated that medical facts have jack shit to do with legislative agendas.

My guess is, the only way we'll move past this ridiculous situation is if a majority of individual states decide to legalize hard drugs the same way a minority of them have already legalized weed, and eventually the federal government will cave in once they realize it's not going to cost anybody an election. That is, it will take lots of baby steps over a couple of decades. I hope I'm underestimating progress, though!

Re: Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

#330

Post by knodi123 »

DanBC wrote: post #123
stickfigure wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot avoid the nasty social effects of drug prohibition (crime, violence, contamination, etc) without making distribution legal. If you want to live in a world without homeless junkies breaking into your car, or a world without running gun battles in the street, or a world without your wayward kids accidentally ODing on their next batch, you need drugs like cocaine and heroin to be sold openly and affordably at…

But even with legal distribution you're going to want to have limits - no selling to children, for example.

That's easy enough. We do the same thing with tobacco, and look - there are no violent gangs killing people to defend their tiny slice of the black-market tobacco market.
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