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Media Dustup Pits Bloggers and Wired Against NYTimes
destinyland writes "Wired magazine ran a table listing the scientific effects of prescription drugs (and one illegal drug) — leading to an accusation from the NYTimes that they were 'promoting' drug use. But this routine controversy led to a fierce pushback online from bloggers and from Wired's reporter, who discussed his past drug use on his own blog and called for an honest discussion of scientific evidence and straight talk about medical effects."
Who cares if they were anyway? Its their magazine, they can say what ever they want. Or has it become illegal to express your beliefs?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I usually find on slow news days the media likes to run stories that get people angry about drugs. Its one of those topics that everyone has an opinion on, enough to get some kind of emotive response and engage the readers/viewers, whether its from what Amy Winehouse put up her nose to more political issues like legality or protecting your children.
It's been a year since I deleted the New York Times from my news media diet, and I haven't looked back (pardon the mixed metaphor). I was willing to forgive them for Jayson Blair nonsense, but Judith Miller's warmongering lies masquerading as journalism seriously damaged its credibility. And with the Times' caustic, perverted coverage of the Duke Lacrosse rape trial, any last shred of integrity they had in my eyes went out the window.
The Times has discarded their long tradition of conscientious news gathering in favor of making money, and it shows. At least we know how they paid for their shiny new skyscraper.
Do the right drugs, the ones that help you fit in with corporate culture and make $$$?
Have you noticed how freaking huge Hillary's face has become recently? Symptom of anti-depressant abuse.
Caveat Utilitor
Drug use is promoted everywhere. Alcohol consumption, for example, is so ingrained in our culture that it forms an important part of some religious observances. Caffeine consumption, particularly amongst ./ readers I'll wager, is also incredibly high.
That's the thing that really shits me about the kind of story the NYT has run here. It's a story based on a knee-jerk "OH noes, wired included positive effects of an ILLEGAL drug in an article" approach rather than any semblance rational thought. I'll say it now, knowing full well there are idiots who can't get over this: the legality or otherwise of a drug has a causal relationship with how bad/dangerous it is.
Compare the effects of heavy coffee consumption with equivalent coca consumption and the actual medical side effects start to make coffee look a lot worse. Of course coca is not readily available except as a processed powder with is usually cut with other chemicals and it is associated with criminal activity, but if were not illegal would that be the case? I don't think there is any rational argument that can be made to suggest that criminalisation is not the cause of the majority of the ill effects on society of cocaine.
These articles help perpetuate the myth that all illegal drugs are bad and prescription drugs are good. This has two very detrimental effects on society. Firstly, people tend to trust the latest wonder drug that doctors hand out because it is legal. Then a few years later we find out too late just how many people taking the latest wonder drug are sleep walking off balconies or committing suicide or dying of liver failure.
The second effect is that drugs that are illegal but which can have real benefit are ignored. I don't take drugs usually, but a few years ago I broke my clavicle and a couple of ribs and bruised my spine in a bicycle accident. I could not get up or down without extreme pain and at the time I was single and had to look after myself. The prescribed pain killers where physically addictive and felt unpleasant to me as I tend not to enjoy opiates. The anti-inflammatories had evil side effects. So I ate pot. I hadn't used that since college and never really thought I would again, but as a muscle relaxant, anti-inflammatory and pain killer it was excellent, plus it made lying down and doing nothing a lot less boring. I didn't have to drive a car, there was not a lot of chance of long term mental health issues from a couple of weeks use, all in all it was perfect.
So as far as I'm concerned the whole "illegal drugs are bad because they are illegal" attitude gave me a choice of feeling like shit as a result of drugs that doctors can legally prescribe, or feeling okay physically, but committing a crime or several and taking my chances that the drug I was taking was not laced with something more dangerous. Clinically what I took was more appropriate for my situation, but knee jerk idiots who are incapable of rational debate on drugs made it more dangerous to me than it should have been.
Drugs are bad, mkay, but they are useful and given any health situation where using a particular drug may be beneficial, it should be legally available.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Hydrogen Cyanide is safe in extremely small doses too. Based on that, perhaps we should legalize it too? Of course, at least cyanide isn't phsyiologically addictive, nor are multivitamins. Guess what is?
Most of the "newsy" articles come from AP and Reuters. That's one of the reasons I love to watch Jon Stewart's show, he does these montages of the cable news morons where he shows off just how silly and repetitive they are. I just laugh, how can anyone take cable news seriously after that? They've got one up right now about Clinton's concession speech and Obama's VP choice.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
I've yet to figure how/why this angle hasn't been pursued by those who would like to see the freedom to do with their bodies as they please...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You do see big chain pharmacies such as Walmart promoting their low cost generic programs, including listing specific drugs and often the diseases they affect. It's not nearly so significant that a Drug maker heavily promotes Avandia when the customer is equally likely to hear Kroger pharmacy telling type 2 Diabetics to ask their doctor about generic Metformin, available at only 4.00$ a month.
Who is John Cabal?
Because hysteria and overblown studies aside, marijuana is essentially harmless and stupid to prohibit. Plus, for all you fiscal conservatives out there, it is extraordinarily expensive to arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate marijuana users especially given that it is such a mild drug in the first place.
The fact that even the most dire effects found in studies basically amount to "it can be addictive if used in large quantities over long periods of time", "generally mildly detrimental to health and higher nervous function" and "mildly impairs judgment and perception" is just sort of the icing on the cake. 40 years of anti-weed hysteria has yielded little more than "ha! it actually MIGHT be addictive!" and frankly that just doesn't cut it (especially as, to the very best of my knowledge, there is no law against being addicted to something, or any compelling reason to outright ban a substance based on a possibly addictive nature... alcohol and tobacco would both be considerably more illegal than weed if either were the case).
Most nations with sensible drug policies have at least decriminalized marijuana, and some have even had the good sense to go as far as legalizing and regulating it similarly to alcohol and with comparable legal requirements for both its sale and consumption. If your real problem is people driving while high, then make laws against DUI, but don't just arbitrarily ban various substances which people could use to run afoul of that law while protecting the corporate interests of those who produce others.
As for vitamins not having an abuse risk... I've known many people to substitute a large daily regimen of vitamins for balanced diets as a means of maintaining "healthy" weight. I've heard from many, many sources that I trust (including dietitians) that doing this is EXTREMELY counterproductive because, among other reasons, your body will acclimate to receiving these nutrients in that format and will therefore ramp up the ability to use them in pure form while deactivating the systems intended to extract them from actual food. Aside from weakening the digestive system overall, this actually leads to people being unable to properly obtain nutrients from food, making them dependent on supplements for proper nutrition. That sounds an awful lot like abuse leading to physiological addiction to me, even if it doesn't occur in the brain's "addiction center" (so called because many addictive substances cause stimulation there, not because it defines what is addictive, by the way).
The point is, pharmaceutical companies are praised for pushing all kinds of dangerous mind-altering substances (including, by the way, amphetamines, synthetic opiates, barbiturates and hallucinogens) with extremely dangerous side affects and addictive properties, while marijuana is obsessively attacked by various groups despite being essentially harmless by comparison. Treat your stress and anxiety by smoking pot and you run the risk of having a negative reaction and possibly going to jail; do it with Xanax and you still run the risk of a negative reaction, but you've paid a whole lot more and the negative reaction in question may include suicidal tendencies (something never credibly linked to marijuana use) or a potentially fatal drug interaction (again, something never credibly demonstrated with marijuana), but it's legal.
Sure, some of it is about "hippies" who want to smoke pot... but it's also about people who just don't buy into the "pot is evil" bullshit because it's a bunch of hypocritical fear-mongering with no basis in reality other than the business concerns of legal drug producers who prefer to compete as little as possible. I'm mostly just sick of seeing tax dollars that could be spent on useful things, like education or health care or the enforcement of laws that actually matter instead wasted on fighting a pseudo-war on drugs that can't ever be won and has no point.
Granted, I also want to put a spike in the head of every idiot asshole who balks at spending a couple of mill
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I saw that test in an article in my local news site. One thing that they don't take into account, of course, is the life-style these people live. Depression has also be shown to shrink your brain. The brain shrinkage from that scientific test could just be a consequence of the lifestyle of the test subjects. It's not too hard to believe that people who smoke 5 joints a day for 10 year might not do very much and be in a similar state to depressed people in terms of neurological activity. You could probably get the same results from people who watch TV all the time.
you moron. i'm a recovering meth addict; i also know a lot of other recovering meth addicts. i can tell you for a fact that none of us started using this drug due to reading a blog post. a weak person who is swayed to use a drug due to a blog post is the same person who would use the drug if a random person gave it to them on the street. you have no clue what you're talking about.
You're obviously delusional. I mean, where would you get that idea?
You're making me think. You won't like me when I'm thinking.
I mean seriously? Haven't they lost ALL credibility by now?
Even you ultra-libs have to laugh at that bespectacled tween in the ads who says she turns to the old grey litterbox liner to "find out what's happening on the web".
Last I checked, the leftmedia echo chamber had moved to the Huffington Post. (Who hired Hilary Rosen, she of the RIAA, so where does that leave us?)
The core market are old and dying. Even inventing the news hasn't resurrected circulation.
Asking your mom or dad makes more sense than reading about it in the New York Times which is now the 2nd most reputable paper in the city. I read left over copies of the Times on the subway every day, but it's political agenda is laughable. I read the Times when I am looking for partisanship or statistics to support my own personal liberal agenda, but I certainly don't think I'm getting a full picture when I read an article.
Being mad at the Times for inaccurate, biased or fear mongering articles is like being mad a dog when he nips you. He's a DOG! That's what he does! Being mad at the NYT is just as silly. Trust them like you would Entertainment Tonight.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
For those of you who have watched the "BBC Horizon - 2008-02-05 - Is Alcohol Worse than Ecstasy?" [available at http://www.mininova.org/tor/1173622%5D realize that alcohol and tobacco are among the worst offenders when it comes to drugs. I turn on the TV at times (very few times) and see wholesale promotion of drug use by budweiser, Miller, and a whole slew of drug-pushing beer companies. I say legalize ALL drugs and sell them including alcohol and tobacco ONLY at state drug stores and tax them all. I'm tired of all of the drug related crime here and abroad. Put all drugs on a level playing field, don't promote one dangerous one over another. Scott Emick Euclid, Ohio
I live in the UK where it _could_ be said that drug laws (particularly the classification of Cannabis) are in flux. There was an interesting program on television that asked many health and drug proffesionals to rank many common legal and illegal drugs by their harm to the body (toxcicity) and their harm to society, very intersting that one of the lowest was ecstacy (18/20) and top three (from memmory) were heroin, coccaine and alcohol with tobbaco up there as well. Tobbaco advertising has been banned almost everywhere, yet alcohol is advertised on TV. Oh the disparity. All the 'debates' or discussions about drugs are so massively one-sidded, in order to have a proper debate you have to talk about the all aspects of drug taking, including the benefits of why people would take them. Maybe then we will get some straight answers as to what we should 'do about drugs'. We need to have a real, reasoned debate about drugs and their effects on society. But you find me a politician/lawmaker who will stand up and actually talk about benefits of taking drugs.
Meanwhile, behind the innocent facade of an old hat shop......
Yes, actually, there is, though you might quibble with the method of dosing.
My father's a doctor at a state hospital, and he's had several patients that needed to be put under special watch because they eat cigarette butts and get nicotine poisoning. I believe they've actually had patients die this way. Of course, they also have patients that need to be watched around water, because they compulsively drink water, and will die of cardiac failure; they need to be monitored in the bathrooms, at meals, when it's raining, etc.
If you have not heard of it yet, the newest drug battle is an herb called salvia. It is supposed to provide a short hallucinagenic effect and is available over the counter in many places. State governments have moved to create laws to ban it locally, but the DEA has still not scheduled it. There has been no hard evidence of negative health effects. It will be interesting to see how the DEA classifies it and what the justification is. Salvia might be the rallying point for reform of drug laws, or it could just become another marijuana. Worst of all, the news media has spread FUD about kids getting HIGH using COMPLETELY LEGAL OVER THE COUNTER herbs from MEXICO.