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Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age from human hair test

nature.com

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Re: Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age from human hair test

#41

Post by PragmaticPulp »

heap_perms wrote: post #17
tastyfreeze wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the welfare state that exists, a common argument is that people that destroy their bodies or brains are a burden on "society".

I sincerely think that even if all drugs were legal, the rate of consumption wouldn't necessarily increase much. "People who take drugs "don't give a damn if they're legal, generally speaking.

I don’t know about that. For another perspective, if alcohol and nicotine became illegal then the amount of alcohol and nicotine consumed would go down. Not to zero, but it wouldn’t stay the same. We’ve already seen evidence of this during prohibition and in areas where the legal age to buy nicotine has been raised.

Prohibition has become known as a failure because there was still a vibrant underground alcohol trade, but it didn’t mean that everyone continued drinking at the same rate. It really did reduce alcohol consumption.

Re: Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age from human hair test

#42

Post by PragmaticPulp »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #22
heap_perms wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely think that even if all drugs were legal, the rate of consumption wouldn't necessarily increase much. "People who take drugs "don't give a damn if they're legal, generally speaking.

I agree. I don't think there should be a prohibition on any drugs as it is a personal choice and humans have been drug consumers for millennia. Drug use isn't something that can be legislated away.

> humans have been drug consumers for millennia

I don’t find this argument convincing at all in the modern era. Synthetic drugs and even commercialized organic drugs are significantly more potent than anything that could be found a century ago.

Synthetic cannabinoids are vastly more addictive and dangerous than cannabis ever could be, for example. Synthetic drugs like MPDV are known to produce compulsive redosing even in people who could moderate their intake of traditional drugs like cocaine.

You can’t compare what’s available now to historic drugs.

Re: Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age from human hair test

#43

Post by autoexec »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #12
tmountain wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the basis of the argument for prohibition if someone isn’t hurting others?

With the welfare state that exists, a common argument is that people that destroy their bodies or brains are a burden on "society".

With the prison state that exists, I imagine the burden on society would be much higher by locking people up and criminalizing drugs and alcohol than the costs we'd face dealing with addicts and overdoses, the numbers of which both go down following legalization

Re: Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age from human hair test

#44

Post by PragmaticPulp »

kevviiinn wrote: post #33
tastyfreeze wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the welfare state that exists, a common argument is that people that destroy their bodies or brains are a burden on "society".

People who drink too much do even more damage to their bodies and brains than any other drug so that argument is nonsense

> People who drink too much do even more damage to their bodies and brains than any other drug

It’s possible to do a lot of damage with heavy drinking, yes, but it’s not true at all to suggest alcohol is the most damaging drug. There are numerous synthetic drugs that can produce long lasting damage or even death even in experienced drug users who believe themselves to be consuming responsibly.

Re: Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age from human hair test

#45

Post by kevviiinn »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #44
kevviiinn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who drink too much do even more damage to their bodies and brains than any other drug so that argument is nonsense

> People who drink too much do even more damage to their bodies and brains than any other drug It’s possible to do a lot of damage with heavy drinking, yes, but it’s not true at all to suggest alcohol is the most damaging drug. There are numerous synthetic drugs that can produce long lasting damage or even death even in experienced drug users who believe themselves to be consuming responsibly.

Can you name which ones? Being in the field of pharmacology, this is interesting to me. I'd love to read about it I'd you have sources

Re: Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age from human hair test

#46

Post by dragonwriter »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #41
heap_perms wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely think that even if all drugs were legal, the rate of consumption wouldn't necessarily increase much. "People who take drugs "don't give a damn if they're legal, generally speaking.

I don’t know about that. For another perspective, if alcohol and nicotine became illegal then the amount of alcohol and nicotine consumed would go down. Not to zero, but it wouldn’t stay the same. We’ve already seen evidence of this during prohibition and in areas where the legal age to buy nicotine has been raised. Prohibition has become known as a failure because there was still a vibrant underground alcohol trade,…

> Prohibition has become known as a failure because there was still a vibrant underground alcohol trade, but it didn’t mean that everyone continued drinking at the same rate. It really did reduce alcohol consumption.

Mostly, after the brief sharp drop to around 30% of pre-Prohibition levels, just the much smaller (consumption at around 60-70% of pre-Prohibition levels) effects of the de facto tax collected by organized crime that prohibition imposed (“Changes in consumption were modest given the change in price. This suggests that legal deterrents had little effect on limiting consumption outside of their effect on price. Social pressure and respect for the law did not go far in reducing consumption during prohibition”.) [0]

And, both nicotine and alcohol have substantial regular taxes now, which serve the same purpose without fuelling organized crime, so prohibition would just redirect funds from the public coffers to criminal enterprise.

[0] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w3675/w3675... , p. 8

Re: Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age from human hair test

#47

Post by zepolen »

reducesuffering wrote: post #15
tmountain wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the basis of the argument for prohibition if someone isn’t hurting others?

Imagine opioid pills were OTC. For a lot of people, they will initially be instant feel-good happy pills, even though people know there will be disastrous repercussions to taking them indefinitely. How many people go through bouts of severe depression? Won't some percentage of them, in moments of weakness, decide to try the opioid pills, feel good, and get sucked in? Shouldn't we as a society, try to curb humanity's…

Banning doesn't fix that, the allure is still there.

Teaching what addiction is like is much better at curbing it.

The easiest way to do that is to have someone hold their breath as long as possible until their body is screaming for air each time, for about half an hour.

Because that is what drug addiction is like, and taking the drug is like taking that breath of air, instant relief, until you run out of air again and you're in hell waiting for the next fix. Over and over. Never ending.

I'd say films like Trainspotting did a much better job at stopping heroin than any outright ban ever did.

Re: Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age from human hair test

#48

Post by kortex »

> Thus, opium alkaloids were detected in Late Bronze Age containers

> different hallucinogenic compounds, mainly nicotine, tryptamines and tropane alkaloids have been chemically documented in Prehispanic artefacts from the Americas, and psychoactive compounds of Cannabis in archaeological wooden braziers from China.

> The alkaloids ephedrine, atropine and scopolamine were detected, and their concentrations estimated [in human hair]

> The results furnish direct evidence of the consumption of plant drugs and, more interestingly, they reveal the use of multiple psychoactive species.

Basically, we have long discovered "drug paraphernalia" and other adjacent materials, suggesting drug use (namely cannabis, tobacco, various psychoactive mushrooms, opium, various stimulants like areca and ephedra, deliriants like Datura, and of course alcohol). But we haven't known for sure that these meant the drugs were consumed recreationally/medicinally. This gives direct evidence the drugs were in fact consumed deliberately.

tl;dr - Homo sapiens got high.

Re: Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age from human hair test

#49

Post by vkou »

anigbrowl wrote: post #4

I always wonder why nobody has made an argument that drug laws are unconstitutional since the 9th amendment states clearly that rights don't need to be enumerated, and there's abundant evidence of people making their own drug decisions prior to the existence of the USA.

The 9th amendment is, unfortunately, completely useless in the current political climate, because what is an 'obvious natural right' that can be 'discovered' by the courts, is completely in the eye of the beholder. And right now, the beholder is on the payroll of evangelical reactionaries.

Re: Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age from human hair test

#50

Post by vkou »

ren_engineer wrote: post #25
eurleif wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To oversimplify, that's why prohibition 1.0 had to be done via constitutional amendment; but since then, we had the Wickard v. Filburn ruling, which made virtually everything regulatable under the Commerce Clause with its extremely broad interpretation of the phrase "interstate commerce". In Wickard v. Filburn, a farmer grew grain on his farm. He did not sell this grain, whether across state lines or otherwise; he me…

you can thank FDR for stacking the supreme court and outright threatening to increase the number of justices to intimidate other justices for that ruling. Supreme Court went with every overreach of power that FDR wanted for the federal government, including affirming the right to intern Japanese-Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bil...

If we're going to blame someone, why not blame the court for expanding its own power, back in 1803? SCOTUS' current role is defined nowhere in constitution (Which says next to nothing about the roles of courts), or by an act of legislature. It was, quite literally, magicked out of thin air by SCOTUS.
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