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."

Comments

when haven't we promoted drugs?

[saiha]

I flip on the TV and I see people promoting drug use all the time /shrug. And some of the side affects of those make me sick just to hear it.

Re:when haven't we promoted drugs?

[Xyrus]

Reminds of the "story" not too long ago that screamed "SMOKING POT SHRINKS YOUR BRAINS!!! OH N0ESSS!!11!"

Of course, if you had actually dug into the details you would have found out that it was a small study that really wasn't best run, and that these people had smoked a minimum of 5 joints a day for 10 years.

I could probably run a similar study on people who took 5 multivitamins a day over 10 years and showed that all of them either died or ended up with some pretty bad complications. Then I could write a story that says "MULTIVITAMINS WILL KILL YOU!!!!".

What is it about drugs that set people on edge? Parents absolutely lose it if they find they're kind smoking a joint, but they don't think twice about jacking their kids up on ritalin and anti-depressants.

Exactly what message is that sending them?

At least get hemp legalized. Aside from the recreational use, it has so many other uses that keeping it illegal is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

~X~

Re:when haven't we promoted drugs?

[clang_jangle]

Exactly what message is that sending them?

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.

Re:when haven't we promoted drugs?

[Max Littlemore]

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.

Re:when haven't we promoted drugs?

[ColdWetDog]

Have you noticed how freaking huge Hillary's face has become recently? Symptom of anti-depressant abuse.

Well maybe you ought to cut down on the Prozac then. Of course, consult your doctor.

Either that or move away from the screen.

Re:when haven't we promoted drugs?

[Max Littlemore]

I wouldn't exactly consider the overly rampant but legal use of opium in China in the late 1800s a positive development.

I didn't say that drugs are good, nor did I suggest anywhere that rampant abuse of drugs is ever positive. This is exactly the kind of brainless knee-jerk non argument I did refer to. You have a position which you seek to support by taking one case that on the surface appears contradict my argument, while in truth it doesn't. Idiots with preconceived notions who half read my post and read your response will have their preconceived idiot notions reinforced. This does nothing to further rational debate.

Re:when haven't we promoted drugs?

[inKubus]

weed isnt physiologically addictive either until you get to about a few pounds of it a day. If you are doing that much weed addiction is the least of your problems. Good luck finding a study that says any different.

unfortunately weed prevents capitalizing the first word in your sentence and if I may be quite frank here the proper use of the comma.

Re:when haven't we promoted drugs?

[Miseph]

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

Re:when haven't we promoted drugs?

[TapeCutter]

"In drug studies, they need to get the animals to self administer."

So what is difficult about having two piles of cookies, one with dope and one without?

I realise you have some objection to dope for some reason or other but please don't pretend science is on your side with the addiction thing or that the current laws against dope have anything to do with medical issues. The dope plant is in fact one of the most studied plants on the planet and as such we now know a great deal more about it than we did when Anslinger went on his self-serving crusade.

The main problems with using dope are scizophernia[sic] for those who are already genetically predisposed and lung/throat disease for those who smoke rather than ingest it. As for addiction, opiates, tobacco and alcohol are physically addictive in that you will suffer physical symptoms during withdrawal. Dope, chocolate, and video games are mearly habit forming.

Now even if smoking a joint was as foolish as playing russian roulette, under what moral/ethical imperitive do you have the right to stop me putting chocolate or battery acid into MY veins should choose to do so?

Prohibition did not work for booze and it is not working for other drugs. Someone once said that "If we eliminate all recreational drugs people will simply spin in circles on their front lawn until they can no longer stand up, because that is what we as humans like to do".

Methamphetamine is NOT illegal!

[Ellis D. Tripp]

It is listed in DEA schedule II. Truly illegal drugs (like heroin and pot)are Schedule I.

Methamphetamine is available on prescription under the brand name Desoxyn:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desoxyn

Re:Methamphetamine is NOT illegal!

[tshetter]

All DEA Scheduled drugs are legal given proper permits.

Schedule 2-5 usually only require a prescription from a doctor with proper DEA licensing.

Schedule 1+ can also be had, but with more restrictive DEA licensing.


Alexander Shulgin may be the best known for his DEA Schedule 1 license and his ensuing discovery of numerous psychoactive substances.

Who really cares what the NYT has to say?

[lawn.ninja]

I know I certainly don't. On that note I'm tired of all the main stream media in the US. It's all lies and talking points. Watch the news some night and flip back and forth between the channels, or better yet catch a few with the DVR at 7 and 11. Get different samples from the two time slots and tell me what's different. Nothing, other than the filler material. They even use the same verbage most of the time. So I figure this is all coming from a very small group of sources (probably AP wire considering how lazy the media is). Which means that you can't really trust it. Hell I don't know how many times recently we've seen articles about the media being duped by someone or something. So that means to me that they don't vet their stories or sources properly anymore. Fuck it, at least the ratings and the revenues are up, god forbid the profit margin shrinks.

Considering......

[Anachragnome]

.......That William Randolph Hearst and his Yellow-journalism fueled the war on drugs in the first place, the Media are the LAST people I trust to provide me with reliable information in regards to drugs.

As a matter of fact, I don't trust anyone to provide me with information regarding drugs anymore. Guv'ment included. The DEA website is so full of blatant propaganda, I find it hard to believe anyone can take it seriously

And besides, I seriously doubt anyone has my best interests in mind more then myself.

How the NY Times has fallen.

[cunina]

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.

"like heroin and pot"

[Reality Master 201]

Truly illegal drugs (like heroin and pot)are Schedule I.

It's a sad commentary on the stupidity of our drug laws that heroin and marijuana get lumped into the same category.

My lawyer said....

[Balthisar]

I'm suing Wired. Even though my lawyer said not to mention anything outside the courtroom, the Wired article enticed me to try ALL of those drugs in order to rescue my failing career.

Under the Aderall, everyone that passed my cube though I was calling them names. That resulted in an unpleasant meeting where I swore at my boss.

With the Aniracetam, I had the unpleasant assignment of examining the weld quality on some Ambassor Bridge repairs. Thank goodness for fall harnesses!

I don't even want to recall the embarrassment at work when taking the Aricept. It was like first grade all over again.

Methamphetamine was probably my best try. I had to stop taking it when I was sent home for "the nerves."

The Modafinil made everyone think I actually *did* something with the stripper in the back room at the club, and worse, that it was contagious.

The Nicotine just got met cited by the county for violating workplace rules. It actually worked out quite well, but the $250 smoking fines really add up, ya know?

The Rolipram was a little better than the Aricept. You get much more sympathy when everything comes out from above rather than from below.

I'm currently taking Vasopressin. For some reason, people keep telling me to chew my food before I swallow it.

Maybe I shouldn't have taken them in the prescribed order? In any case, don't tell my attorney. Something about "spoiling my case."

Re:LOLOUTRAGE!!1!11!

[Bullet-Dodger]

Wired is wrong to promote drug use, especially stuff like meth. I work with recovering addicts and believe me, some gullible young kids ARE swayed by this sort of stupid publicity by those self-appointed arbiters of coolness. Yes, wired promoted using meth by saying it causes "Parkinson's-like symptoms, addiction, stroke, psychosis, prison, death" and "Prolonged use can also make you stupid and crazy.".

How dare they make it look so cool and sexy!