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a lovely poster posted:Except that guns and cars really aren't the same sort of product whereas alcohol and marijuana are both mind altering substances. I'm not saying calling alcohol drinkers out as wife beaters is a good idea (it isn't) but it's not that bad of a comparison if you stick to the statistics, which bear out that alcohol is much more dangerous than marijuana, not to mention 90% of the schedule 1 drug list. Alcohol is more or less the only drug that causes health damage at normal consumption levels. Heroin, crack and meth don't come close the the body load alcohol has - most of the physical damage we associate with these substances comes from chaotic abuse patterns and homelessness. Alcohol damages your liver over time even at non-abuse levels.
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Oct 12, 2012 18:27
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Interestingly, there's an argument to be made that the DEA is overstepping their authority in the first place by keeping a substance on Schedule I when states have found that there is a medical usage: http://newamsterdampsychedeliclaw.blogspot.com/2012/10/madmen-rule-you.html
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Dec 10, 2012 17:44
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Opiate withdrawal is often fatal - take away someone's scrip and they're often forced to turn to heroin just to stay well.
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Dec 15, 2012 07:05
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Broken Machine posted:You would have to be in a chronically ill state where anything would kill you. Like a stage IV cancer patient. For all practical intents, no one dies from opiate withdrawal. Overdose, yes, but not withdrawal. You could think of it like having the flu - you feel awful for a few days, and in a week you're back to normal.
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Dec 15, 2012 17:57
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Install Gentoo posted:I think that it should be illegal, for example, to sell drugs that were being cut with something else. And that that should a criminal offense whereas selling clean stuff would not necessarily be. Good lord you're pedantic. OK, let's sum it up: drugs are, at base, morally neutral. Selling them is currently illegal, but shouldn't be. Child porn, nuclear weapons, and assassinations are, at base, horrifying things that kill and maim people. Selling them should not be legal, but the buying and selling isn't really the crux of it; the issue is that, by joining the transaction, you are becoming a party to those things; the transaction does not stand alone as its own moral unit. The argument you seem to be trying to make is that fraud is morally wrong, selling drugs that are the product of fraud is just the same as buying or selling other things that are morally wrong. However, you're willfully ignoring the actual argument, which is that the very fact that selling the drug is illegal is the greater moral wrong than committing fraud to obtain the drug to be sold.
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Dec 16, 2012 02:37
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Install Gentoo posted:You are the one who hasn't been paying attention to the argument here. You just went and made up your own thing and projected it on other people having a discussion. Refrain from doing that in the future. I know, I was articulating two entirely separate thoughts: one, that you are a pedant, and two, what I just said above.
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Dec 16, 2012 03:15
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Babylon the Bright posted:Except two wrongs don't make a right. If I engage in fraud for the purposes of getting around an unjust law, the fact that my fraud is less bad than the existence of the law is irrelevant, as long as the violation of the law is morally neutral at best (as is the case when selling drugs). Of course it may be that committing fraud may be part of a virtuous act, for example, creating a fake id for a Jew so they can leave Nazi Germany, but that is not the case that we're talking about here. Unless you want to argue that selling drugs to enrich yourself is a moral imperative or a virtuous act in and of itself.
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Dec 16, 2012 09:43
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redshirt posted:Yeah, I see your point. If it truly becomes commercial, we're talking tens of thousands of acres of marijuana fields across the country. Not an easy opportunity to claim for the small business person.
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Dec 17, 2012 00:58
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spengler posted:I for one would stop well short of calling for outright legalization of most opioids, but two counterpoints: Decriminalization is a no-brainer, but the importance of full drug legalization really can't be overstated; most of the arguments for marijuana legalization can be applied to the drug war as a whole, with the added bonus that the current drug culture is dangerous to addicts in many ways that it simply is not to marijuana users. Overdoses happen because people don't know the potency of their product, and things like vein calcification happen because injection drugs get cut with horribly dangerous things. Nobody is prevented or dissuaded from using meth or heroin because they're illegal, but they'll certainly die because they are, and as a society we suffer the consequences associated with the illegal drug trade.
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Jan 22, 2013 20:27
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Space Gopher posted:This is DARE logic - all drugs are equally bad, mmkay? The cop in the fifth grade classroom starts with "scary needle drugs will destroy your life," and argues that weed is obviously just as awful. You're flipping it around, starting with, "weed is basically harmless," and following the same chain of logic. It doesn't work in either case. Heroin and cigarettes are roughly equivalent in terms of risk of physical dependency (I believe cigarettes are actually slightly worse). Somehow, you don't hear about a lot of people committing crimes to get their next cigarette fix, even though the price per unit is fairly similar. Just like cigarettes, people start for a variety of reasons, some a lot more innocuous than you might think - plenty of people started on pain pills after a minor surgery, couldn't stop, and found that heroin was about 1/10th the price of an Oxy. There isn't any reason to treat these people like criminals - they may not have made the best choices, but they aren't ultimately harming anyone but themselves. Furthermore, the long-term harm of cigarettes are much, much worse; without harmful cutting agents, a person can use heroin their whole lives without suffering anything physically other than mild bone density loss. All of this is to say that the primary harms from drug use come from the illegality of the market, not the substance itself. Can heroin ruin your life? Absolutely. Could it ruin your life even in a legal, well-regulated market? Hell yes. In such a market, are people nearly as likely to overdose, suffer serious health consequences, or find themselves a member of the criminal class? No. And we have no reason to believe that prohibition cuts down on use - access is probably a great deal easier in an unregulated market, especially in neighborhoods where these sorts of drugs are likely to be an issue. If you want to spend money combating drugs, you spend it on making treatment available to everyone that wants it, and making sure those that aren't yet ready are safe - as the saying goes, "you can't get clean if you're dead." Spending it on prohibition drives markets underground, destroys lives, makes treatment more difficult, makes criminals out of ordinary people, destabilizes entire communities needlessly, and turns the police force against the people. And those are just the domestic effects - it gets worse when you start looking at the effects of the drug war on poor communities in developing nations. The argument against prohibition isn't "drugs are harmless," although that certainly helps with the weed debate, the argument is "prohibition is harmful."
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Jan 23, 2013 17:34
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And now they're illegal and easy to get and it's a goddamn mess. I'm well aware of the history of opiates - substance abuse overall was a much bigger part of the culture at the time. I think the danger of opium dens reopening all over Chinatown and morphine parties seeing a resurgence on the Upper East Side is a bit overstated, and if it did happen it would still be better than people shooting on the street.
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Jan 23, 2013 17:44
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Right - we're talking about a period of time when, towards the beginning of the era, it was believed that you could only get addicted to opium if you ate it (because addiction is an appetite), and towards the end heroin was introduced as a non-addictive way to get people off of morphine. It was not exactly a great time for addiction treatment. Edit: it's worth noting that, in the modern era, anywhere where efforts have moved from an enforcement strategy to a treatment strategy have been wildly successful. Portugal is a good example. Chitin fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jan 23, 2013 |
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Jan 23, 2013 17:55
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Azram Legion posted:Same goes for Danish trials of state-run heroin dispensaries http://sciencenordic.com/heroin-clinics-improve-addicts-lives . The shift from enforcement over legalization to treatment isn't just a moral issue, it is very much a practical issue. I'm hoping Denmark goes further in this direction, but unfortunately many of our politicians seem to have forgotten that gang-related violence somehow mysteriously spiked, when the police were ordered to strike down on the illegal-but-largely-ignored sale of weed. My understanding is yes, they still broke a law. I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of sentences shortened and probation granted, though, what with the overcrowding.
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Jan 23, 2013 18:28
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That DICK! posted:Well, not that I disagree with you, but there was an Opium War. There still is! 
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Jan 23, 2013 18:34
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breaklaw posted:See, this is where I become a hypocrite because gently caress. Heroin. No matter what anyone ever says about drug legalization that I agree with, I've seen people (ok only 2 people) I know totally ruin their lives with this poo poo, and I somehow don't believe all the benefits would outweigh the fact that we would probably have more people turning themselves into drug zombies for life if it was legal. We have very compelling modern and historical evidence that this is not true. There is a good chance that under a legal framework where drugs were safe and available without committing a crime and there was easy access to good treatment, your friends' lives would not be ruined. For some further perspective, alcohol is habit forming and a great deal more dangerous than heroin both to the user and to the people around them (some people do get violent on heroin, but nothing as compared to alcohol). Many people do ruin their lives with alcohol, but while doing so they won't be killed with adulterated product, overdose because they drank a can of Everclear when they thought they were drinking a can of Coors Light, or become felons due to their possession of a substance on which they are physically dependent. Thus they are likely to live long enough to seek treatment, are likely to retain their employment, and are likely to be able to find work in the future due to not carrying a felony record.
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Jan 23, 2013 20:57
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breaklaw posted:My friends lives are hosed because they used heroin and got addicted. quote:The legality of the drug has nothing to do with its effects on the body. quote:That chemical drastically changes a person in many ways. quote:I'm saying that I'm afraid that if it were legal more people would try it and become addicted, quote:and the part of your quote I bolded I simply don't believe. quote:You must have never been around for the before and after of heroin usage to say something like that. quote:I'm sure there are functioning heroin addicts out there, but the substance is simply too dangerous to be made legal and freely available. This is the part where I'm a hypocrite because with weed I will say "people will do it anyway, legal or not" but with Heroin I hope very much that the onerous process of scoring smack and the legal risks involved keeps some people from ever trying it. quote:As far as treatment, I'm all for that, but the real treatment program is don't ever loving use heroin ever. Treatment is for trying to save people that have already fallen overboard from drowning. I'm saying I don't want the gaurd rail taken down and have that many more people falling overboard. Look, I realize this is a personal subject for you, but you're falling into the emotional trap of saying "this is bad, and therefore should be banned" when the fact of the matter is that banning isn't helpful and is actively harmful for a huge variety of reasons. The drug war - as a whole, not just on marijuana - is perhaps the worst civil rights abuse of the modern era, and I'm willing to stand by that statement.
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Jan 23, 2013 23:31
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Splurgerwitzl posted:I've been exposed to opiate addiction since I was a little boy and some of the information here is bullshit. Regulation would cause problems, the stuff is insidious and has lots of long-term health effects that build up over time. Brain damage, chronic gut peristalsis, permanent changes to neurotransmitters and sex hormones are not negligible effects. It's also bullshit to pretend that it only happens to people with poor self-control, I've never been physically addicted but I promise that it could have happened to you so easily if you were born into the right life. All of the issues you just cited have to do with impurities in the supply or lasting effects of overdose, not opiates themselves. In general overdose occurs because users aren't certain of the strength of what they're getting. Legalization and regulation is not the same as "sold at Wal-Mart." There are many forms legalization could take but I don't think you'll find many people saying that heroin should be sold the same way alcohol is.
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Jan 24, 2013 03:16
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Splurgerwitzl posted:http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=103089 You're right, I'm wrong - there are other side effects to long-term opiate use. I'm not an expert (though I am married to one). Regardless, none of these are as bad as the problems demonstrably caused by prohibition to either the user or society, nor are they worse than problems associated with long term alcohol or tobacco use. None of this is to say that heroin is a good thing to do. I'm not recommending it. But there is no indication that prohibition prevents people from using (as KingEup helpfully linked above, use in the 1800s began to decline around 20 years before prohibition) and it demonstrably kills them before they can stop. I understand that people ruin their lives due to heroin, but the only way they have a chance to recover is if they stay alive, and prohibition is primarily what kills heroin users. Heroin is a particularly egregious example, but the same applies to every other major illegal drug. There are the obvious ones like MDMA, LSD, and shrooms, where there are no (or very limited) physical dangers aside from impurities; there are cocaine and crack cocaine, which are addictive in the same way gambling is addictive (they are not physically dependence forming, which is not to say they can't ruin your life) and which are currently being cut with cow dewormer; there's methamphetamine, which is apparently the most dangerous drug ever despite being available by prescription for ADHD and is also not dependence forming; the list goes on. Prohibition has also created a market for lovely synthetics that come out faster than they can be made illegal - so there are already drugs that you can purchase at any given head shop, except that we don't know anything about dosage, long term effects, addiction potential, or anything else. Maybe they're safer, maybe they're not. Heroin, cocaine, meth - these are bad things for the most part. But the way to prevent people from using - and the way to help current users - isn't prohibition. Deregulation solves the criminalization issue but not most of the other harms associated with use or the drug market at large. Legalization and regulation with an eye towards education, prevention and treatment are the much more effective solution.
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Jan 24, 2013 05:46
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Delta-Wye posted:I'm afraid that proper studies, as we understand them today, weren't exactly done in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, it's not like abuse and addiction didn't occur: You're creating a strawman argument. Nobody is saying heroin is totally something you should go do and it's a great idea. I am saying that the dangers of heroin use are overstated - you don't get hooked on your first go, it's not a death sentence, you can still be a functional member of society. What I've been saying is not that heroin is without significant harm to the user, but that the primary and most significant harms to heroin users come from prohibition. Furthermore, the only person handwaving in this thread is you - we've provided studies and examples that show that usage wouldn't increase, and even a scholarly work that shows your own historical beliefs about opiate prevalence are incorrect.
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Jan 24, 2013 06:09
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To be clear, you are unlikely to die from heroin withdrawal. You can die from withdrawal from alcohol or benzodiazepines.
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Jan 24, 2013 06:20
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Red_Mage posted:What about PCP? Methamphetamine? Substituted cathinone? The argument still holds; these drugs are very bad for you. You shouldn't do them! Nobody should! However, they exist, and people use them in huge quantities. Well, they use meth in huge quantities, PCP less so these days. Cathinones are generally a component of dirty ecstasy pills, which is actually a pro-legalization and regulation argument; they would likely largely disappear from a world in which verifiable, clean MDMA exists. As for methamphetamine and PCP, the argument is the same as heroin; they are very bad drugs, but prohibition does nothing but make things worse for the user and society. All of the evidence we have is that use of these drugs does not go up under legalization; that people are more likely to find treatment; and that the issues that come with an underground drug market (crime rings, dirty drugs, exploding trailer parks) are eliminated. The "bigger badder drugs" part of it holds no water.
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Jan 24, 2013 17:00
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somnolence posted:I think this applies to recreational abuse of any substance. You can't really downplay meth's demonization by society, though. It's one of the most addictive substances out there and really fucks up people's lives. It's important to note that methamphetamine is not dependence-forming; it's addictive like gambling, not addictive like cigarettes, alcohol or heroin. This isn't to downplay the horrible consequences of meth addiction, but saying it's "one of the most addictive substances out there" is overplaying it quite a bit. As noted above, a huge proportion of meth use is for performance enhancing purposes, and meth generally becomes the stimulant of choice in places where cocaine is less available. The "Faces of Meth" campaign is hardly a good resource on what average methamphetamine use entails.
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Jan 24, 2013 17:42
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Install Gentoo posted:Eh no dude, I've been on C-II meds for the past 15 years. And ADHD meds aren't nearly as stigmatized as oxy yet they're both equally legal - thus proving my point that mere legality isn't enough. I think you have a skewed idea of demographics - being on opiate pain maintenance is pretty common in communities where there's a lot of manual labor. Anyway, the primary reason opiates are hard to get at ERs is drug-seeking behavior - opiate addicts looking for a fix. If they can get their fix elsewhere, legally, there is no reason for them to be in the ER in the first place, so there's no suspicion involved.
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Jan 24, 2013 18:52
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somnolence posted:Maybe I have a biased view on the subject because the city I grew up in and the surrounding areas were infested with meth heads and much of the crime in my city was related to both that drug and the epidemic of people smoking oxycontin. Can you cite a source that says that methamphetamine does not form physical dependence as opiates and alcohol do? Also, I'd love to see a citation for your claim that a "huge proportion" of meth is used for performance enhancement. First of all let's define the difference between dependence and addiction. The terms are very muddy in the discourse and are often used interchangeably, but there are medical meanings to be found. Dependence as a medical term means that, absent the substance, your body will suffer acute physical withdrawal symptoms. For example, the experience of withdrawing from alcohol (Delirium Tremens or "the DTs") can be fatal. You can be dependent on your heart medication, caffeine, certain antidepressants, heroin, benzodiazepines, and probably a few other things I'm probably forgetting. Addiction is a very ill-defined term with no medical meaning. You can be addicted to gambling, shopping, marijuana, the internet (coming soon the the DSM V! Maybe!), hallucinogens, food, the stimulant drugs, you name it. Generally speaking, addiction absent dependence describes compulsive behavior and cycles that can be difficult or impossible to break. To say that methamphetamine is addictive but not dependence forming is in no way a slight to those suffering from methamphetamine addiction. Withdrawal symptoms from an addiction are psychological and psychosematic; speaking personally, when I don't get my amphetamines in the form of Adderall, I feel lackadaisical, withdrawn, distracted in tired, but I'm not writhing in bed in agony. Wikipedia on Methamphetamine withdrawal posted:Withdrawal symptoms of methamphetamine primarily consist of fatigue, depression, and increased appetite. Symptoms may last for days with occasional use and weeks or months with chronic use, with severity dependent on the length of time and the amount of methamphetamine used. Withdrawal symptoms may also include anxiety, irritability, headaches, agitation, restlessness, excessive sleeping, vivid or lucid dreams, deep REM sleep, and suicidal ideation. Wikipedia on Marijuana withdrawal posted:Common symptoms of cannabis withdrawal include low mood, irritability, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, and muscle pain.[2] Symptoms typically begin within a day after stopping cannabis intake, and last up to two weeks. Another way of making the distinction is to use the terms "psychical" and "physiological" addiction, as is done in the Wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence As for my claim that a lot of methamphetamine use is performance-enhancing: British Columbia Ministry of Health Services posted:A diverse population uses methamphetamine and for various reasons. Methamphetamine use can result in increased energy, performance enhancement, loss of appetite, weight loss and heightened sexual drive. Methamphetamine use seems prevalent among street youth, youth involved in the rave dance scene, and gay men. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...9,d.dmQ&cad=rja This seems obvious on its face. Methamphetamine is a powerful, long-lasting stimulant, which is useful for anyone who needs to be awake or forgo sleep for long periods of time. Truck drivers are a good example. There's also a long history of methamphetamine use in sports. Anecdotally, methamphetamine is popular with grad students and doctors. Chitin fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jan 25, 2013 |
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Jan 25, 2013 17:26
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Install Gentoo posted:And making it "more legal" won't make that stigmatization go away. They're going to continue treating people taking it poorly for quite a long time afterwards. They are putting things in the way because they believe that a lot of people only want it to get high (which most likely isn't true) and having it more legal isn't going to make that go away. Again, this is because doctors and pharmacists have been found liable in the past when people have abused the drugs they prescribe. Doctors have gone to jail for prescribing too many pain meds, even when their primary business is opiate pain management. It's not just a stigma thing, it's that they fear if they give out opiate pain medication too freely they could lose their license. In a world where doctors could legally prescribe opiates for addiction maintenance, or in a world where you wouldn't have to go to your doctor to get opiates, this wouldn't be an issue. Would there be doctors not comfortable with prescribing and pharmacists not willing to fill? Sure, that's true with Plan B as well. Would the problem be nearly so widespread? Clearly not.
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Jan 25, 2013 19:00
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But now we're in the realm of discussing perfectly legal, commonly prescribed amphetamines, not just methamphetamine - and we're talking about studies that, as pointed out above, are important but for the most part tenuously connected to actual human experience. And none of this disproves my central point that psychical and physiological withdrawal is fundamentally different, which isn't really up for debate - saying that psychical and physiological withdrawal are the same thing because they both involve changes in the brain is ridiculous. Everything you've ever experienced causes changes in your brain, using that as the criteria for what constitutes anything physiological would make it a very broad category indeed. But again, all of this is very much beside the point. Again, you'll not find me saying anywhere that these drugs aren't bad for their users - my point this whole time has been that prohibition prevents no harms to drug users or society, and adds very significant harms to both. This is true whether we're discussing marijuana or krokodil.
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Jan 28, 2013 17:22
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:It certainly would make it a very broad category, but why would it be an inaccurate characterization? Isn't this false distinction why psychological issues aren't regarded as "real" by far too many people? Psychical addiction is absolutely real, and nobody is saying that it isn't. However, the distinction between what you can go off of without experiencing ill (physical) health effects and what can cause acute physical symptoms is important, especially when it comes to treatment. If going off your drug makes you sick, there's an extra step in the process where it's nearly impossible (and in some cases fatal) to simply quit cold turkey - there needs to be a tapering or detox process, ideally professionally guided. This is why I used the gambling comparison (though as others pointed out there are certain ways amphetamine class drugs can damage your brain that make the comparison not as apt as I wish it were) - gambling is an addiction that many people consider to be very real, difficult to break, people suffer relapses, people get professional help, you can ruin your life etc etc but you don't end up vomiting for a week, screaming from pain if you stop doing it.
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Jan 28, 2013 19:17
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Install Gentoo posted:Perhaps if amphetamines had been invented and part of world culture back thousands of years ago they would get the special place alcohol holds. You're not giving a very good justification for why we should add another dangerous drug to the place alcohol holds though. Methamphetamine nor heroin nor anything else will ever reach the place marijuana holds, let alone alcohol, so it's silly discussion to have. The discussion that we should be having is "does prohibition do more harm than good," and the answer is "yes, on a massive and horrifying scale." I haven't even touched on how, despite the fact that whites and blacks use drugs at around the same rate, enforcement falls much more heavily on the black community creating what is effectively a new slave class of black felons and destroying the family structure of whole neighborhoods. Or how the drug war causes massive conflict and death abroad. Or how it destroys the livelihoods of farmers in the third world. Or how allowing the drug trade to go underground has placed it in the hands of some of the most violent criminals the world has ever known.
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Jan 29, 2013 19:58
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Ah, yes, date rape drugs. Surely we should also rid the world of date rape knives and guns? Kidnapping rope? Bank robbery ski masks? GHB is a substance that has personal recreational use as well as having properties that make it beloved of body builders. We don't make things illegal based on their worst possible use or the fact that they might conceivably be used in a crime sometimes.
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Mar 18, 2013 06:23
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You're right. That was dumb. I am tired. We shouldn't, though, for all of the reasons outlined like five pages ago.
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Mar 18, 2013 06:37
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computer parts posted:GHB is not the only date rape drug. There is a much more popular one which isn't approved for medical use in the US. And even the source you just linked mentions that flunitrazepam has legitimate medical uses and is INCREDIBLY rare as a date rape drug.
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Mar 18, 2013 14:49
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computer parts posted:Yes, and the argument is whether or not schedule IV drugs (and all scheduled drugs) should be freely available to everyone. I'm saying no. That's not the argument we're having, actually - though it's understandable that some people would think that's the argument we're having. Legalization is not the same as decrim, and it doesn't necessarily follow that legalizing something means it's available at all times anywhere to anyone. There are plenty of alternative regulatory schemes that wouldn't put users in the position they're currently in. That said, I find it difficult to believe that people who want to put a substance in someone's drink don't have access to one - and the easiest, most common way of "spiking" a drink is to make it more alcoholic than expected, regardless of the legality of anything else.
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Mar 18, 2013 15:23
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There are plenty of drugs that are available only with a prescription that aren't scheduled. You're confusing the CSA with the prescription system. The CSA DOES say, however, that I need to pay a dude monthly and leave work for an hour so he can be like "how's that Adderall prescription" and I can be like "'s cool, write me the same thing for another month" and then try to keep track of a paper prescription. Oh, and if I don't fill it immediately because I skipped a couple of pills that month on vacation or whatever, I can't fill my next one on time. None of this is egregious, but it is asinine, and a barrier to someone less well-off than myself (say, someone in an hourly job where you can't gently caress off to the psychiatrist for an hour in the middle of the morning) seeking mental health services.
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Mar 18, 2013 16:07
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Mrit posted:Why is this even being discussed? Marijuana legalization has only recently become popular enough to pass in two states(and as a resident of one of those states, there is a bit of backlash on TV/radio from those against it), and the percentage of people who want to deschedule all drugs is likely lower than the percent that wants us to become a monarchy. This was true of marijuana within living memory, and legalization has become a reality in Portugal. The unthinkable can become thinkable very quickly, and vice versa; my father lived in the segregated South, for example. The harm reduction movement is very new, but needle exchanges went from sheer madness as a concept to a fairly uncontroversial drug policy over the course of a decade or so. All of these things start with a small group of radicals with an impossible idea convincing others that their facts are good, their studies check out, and their cause is worth fighting for. I don't think it will happen soon, but it's definitely worth discussing.
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Mar 18, 2013 18:03
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Red_Mage posted:Its being discussed because a lot of people in this thread are like some sort of bizarro world DARE. "First they legalize marijuana, and that's the gateway to repealing the entire CSA. I'll be doing PCP down in front of the police station in no time, after all recreational drugs only affect me, the government has no right to tell me what I can and cannot put in my body." Right so this is a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the anti-prohibitionist stance, which is unfortunate, though I can understand how you might have gotten this impression. The anti-prohibitionist stance is that prohibition causes many more problems than it solves. Nobody is saying you should be able to smoke PCP in the middle of the street (you also can't chug a beer in front of the police station), or that drugs are harmless, or that you should be able to buy whatever you want from the corner store. Under the current regime, access to psychoactive substances has not been meaningfully limited - indeed, there is an argument to be made that for minors, access is significantly expanded. Instead, what has been created is an unregulated black market moving impure product of unknown strength; a ballooning prison population of largely nonviolent offenders; the destruction of black communities; the creation of a paramilitary police force; and the creation of criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens, causing a massive rift between the police and the people they serve. All of this at a cost of billions of dollars. While it feels correct, emotionally, to ban substances that we know to be harmful to society and their users outright, we would do better to regulate and tax psychoactive substances and provide access points to treatment for users.
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Mar 18, 2013 18:45
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Red_Mage posted:I am aware of the anti-prohibition stance, and for many substances I support it. Your list of downsides to prohibition is, while a touch hyperbolic (and tautological with the criminals out of citizens comment) , accurate and horrifying. The reason I summed up the calls to repeal the CSA as I did is threefold. 1. For example...? 2. I have specifically avoided making these arguments, because while a convenient shorthand for people new to the idea they are beside the point. However, we don't have to go as far back as the Opium Wars to find out how addiction is affected when prohibition ends; we did it with alcohol in this country within the last century. The answer is "not very much at all." And "people being hurt" is a fairly vague statement to make when the primary harm of many drugs is their illegality in and of itself. 3. Not all of the countries participating in the war on drugs have all of the listed problems, but they all have most of them. And I hate to break this to you, but the war on drugs is a major factor in many of our issues with healthcare, class inequality, and socioeconomic mobility. Portugal is a modern first world nation that has legalized drugs. The result has been fantastic on more or less every front. Edit to add: Incidentally, a heroin habit isn't the worst thing in the world when one has easy access to clean heroin (Google "Heroin assisted treatment," for example). I try not to base my arguments ENTIRELY on heroin, but heroin is a particularly egregious example of how the drug war causes way more harm than it helps. Chitin fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 19:52
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Delta-Wye posted:Prozac is much better option for the poor to have a safe regulated substance to ease the pain of having a poo poo life. The ability of the poor to utilize mental health services notwithstanding, and the lack of statistical evidence on the efficacy of SSRIs notwithstanding, and the flippant tone you're taking notwithstanding, why on earth are you making a comparison between a prescription antidepressant and a recreational substance? Many people do use heroin to self-medicate (making the voices stop is a pretty common reason to start shooting; so is losing your health insurance and being unable to afford your pain medication), but in this case the comparison you're making doesn't even make sense. Clinical depression is a mental health issue, regardless of one's actual circumstances.
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Mar 18, 2013 20:05
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Rigged Death Trap posted:I'd like to refute this. And under a regulatory scheme, all of this information could be printed RIGHT ON THE PACKAGE!
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Mar 18, 2013 20:06
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Red_Mage posted:1. I'd have a hard time saying someone abusing Ambien, for example, is in completely in control of their actions. Same for my friend who decided to slice his hand open and spray a crowd with blood while robotripping and on acid (I have no loving idea why he did this). There are obviously different degrees and different people react in different ways, but its willfully ignorant to say that drugs people do only affect themselves. 1. Ambien is a lovely, lovely over prescribed drug. I have a hard time believing anyone would ever touch Ambien again if it weren't widely prescribed as a (horribly ineffective) sleep medication (that just makes you forget how much you didn't sleep) and had access to things that are... actually fun. Robitussin is completely legal, and LSD is one of the most benign substances known to man. Your friend makes terrible decisions, but I'd still support this combination over one of the mystery drugs that keeps getting pushed to market to skirt drug laws. Nobody has made the argument that drug use only affects the drug user but you; we live in an interconnected world after all. People freaking out on drugs to the point that it harms others in the immediate vicinity is a pretty fringe event, though. 2. One of the primary harms of drugs is economic in nature - for example, being convicted of a felony makes you more or less unemployable. Cigarettes are roughly as addictive and expensive as heroin, but people don't bankrupt themselves buying them because cigarettes are legal and readily available - they don't have a chaotic use pattern, and they don't bar one from employment. 3. It certainly can be; try seeking medication for your pain condition as a poor black man sometime.
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Mar 18, 2013 20:37
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Install Gentoo posted:If you're focusing on treatment and rehab, you're saying that certain drugs are actually bad for some or all people and we can't just let people have as much of them as they want. Especially the decriminalization programs where "caught with drug, go to jail" gets replaced with "caught with drug, mandatory rehab and detox". Mandatory rehab is a really dumb idea, incidentally - people get off drugs when the circumstances that cause them to use cease, not because they went to a program. If someone doesn't want to stop using, or isn't ready to stop using, then going to rehab is going to be a pointless, expensive, and damaging exercise. Users forced into rehab who aren't working the program bring down users who are doing their best to stop using. That's why I emphasized "points of access" - rehab should be encouraged, easy to get into, and readily available, but not mandatory under any circumstance. Red_Mage posted:When someone leads with "all drugs should be legal," they've made their point. If the point is something like "we need to look at and revamp the way we punish people who abuse substances, to focus on treatment" or "the criminalization of drugs in this country is problematic," than lead with that. Leading with "all drugs should be legal" is a great reason to ignore things said past that, because its a dangerous and simplistic position to take. "All drugs should be illegal" is just as simplistic and dangerous, because of the simple fact that all drugs are not the same. Drugs covers an exceptionally broad spectrum of things. But I don't think drug use should be "punished" at all. I don't think using most drugs is a good idea, but just because something is a bad idea doesn't make it worth criminalizing. People ruin their lives in a huge variety of creative, legal ways all the time. Chitin fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 20:44
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