Slashdot Mirror
How Chemistry Stymies Attempts To Regulate Synthetic Drugs
Hugh Pickens writes "Brandon Keim reports that the war on drugs has a new front, with chemists fabricating synthetic mimics of marijuana, dissociative drugs and stimulants. So far lawmakers appear to be a losing the war, as every time a new compound is banned, overseas chemists synthesize a new version tweaked just enough to evade the letter of the law in a giant game of chemical Whack-a-Mole. 'Manufacturers turn these things around so quickly. One week you'll have a product with compound X, the next week it's compound Y,' says forensic toxicologist Kevin Shanks. 'It's fascinating how fast it can occur, and it's fascinating to see the minute changes in chemical structure they'll come up with. It's similar, but it's different.'
During the last several years, the market for legal highs has exploded in North America and Europe. While people raised on Reefer Madness-style exaggerations may be wary of claims that 'legal high' drugs are dangerous, researchers say they're far more potent than the originals. Reports of psychotic episodes following synthetic drug use are common and have led to a variety of laws, but so far the bans aren't working, as the drugs can be subtly tweaked so as to possess a different, legal molecular form. One obvious alternative approach is to ban entire classes of similar compounds; however this is easier said than done. 'The problem with that is, what does "chemically similar" really mean? Change the structure in a small way — move a molecule here, move something to the other side of the molecule — and while I might think it's an analogue, another chemist might disagree,' says Shanks. 'That's the crux of the entire problem. The scientific community does not agree on what "analogue" essentially means.""
Doesn't every chemical have to go through thorough tests before deemed safe for human consumption?
All of it.
Some junkies will kill themselves... but that will taper off quickly. Some kill themselves. Some don't. Some never touch the stuff. If people want to destroy themselves... let them.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Blacklisting is always going to be running behind the curve. I think whitelisting allowed recreational mood/thought-altering substances (currently: ethanol, nicotine, caffeine, sugar, fat, others?) might work better. Simply make it illegal to sell or distribute new substances to the general public without permission from the FDA.
What this means is that the drugs which are legal, are potentially more dangerous than the ones which are banned. Marijuana, mushrooms, LSD have been around long enough that they've been well studied, and we know the risks are minimal. But the latest synthesised version of them has not been studied, and might be dangerous. When will we learn that the war on drugs is just making things worse?
Deconstruct the State
Make it illegal to sell drugs without declaring the exact compounds and forbid driving or operating dangerous machinery under the influence of any drug. Then you can a) see what's on the market and b) don't need a new law every time someone comes up with a modification. Anybody who's stupid enough to take this stuff doesn't have anything worth protecting in their head anyway.
Let's ban synthetic drugs while the tradicional/crime financing drugs are still around
Let's make more difficult for people to have their nicotin fix in a less harmful way by banning all 'less harmful' alternatives.
The drug traffickers and tobacco companies are grateful for your cooperation.
how long until
Why not pass a law that just bans any drug that has the potential to be used recreation-ally? Or is that too easy?
And they say there is no innovation in America...
In my state (Georgia), they just banned synthetic pot, and not by chemical name. They actually banned anything that is sold "as a replacement for pot," or something equally vague.
The law says head shops had to either stop selling immediately, or come to court within 30 days and "prove" their product is not a public danger (or something equally vague).
This law seems too broad to be enforceable, but from what I can tell, it has worked. I've heard all the head shops sold off their stock and dont carry the products anymore.
The war on drugs is just as stupid as the Prohibition. If drugs were legal, but warned against, like tobacco and alcohol, you'd get rid of a huge number of drawbacks with the present policy. The financing of criminal networks would go away. The prisons wouldn't be so full of petty criminals. There would be no development of new synthetic drugs. The users/abusers would be safer, because they would be buying quality assured substances.
Experience from countries like Portugal and the Netherlands show that harm reduction is much more effective than the war on drugs.
If the pharmaceutical industry had not moved so much of it's research off shore, the industry would be doing much better, vast hordes of US and European chemists would not be out of work and if someone made this kind of stuff, we could just arrest them. No need to involve Interpol or whoever that international police force is.
Time to harness the creative research being done by these chemists. They have so many test subjects volunteering that we're getting large scale field studies. Don't lose all that data!
When will governments just recognize that getting high is just-as-basic-a-need as sex, food, and sleep and just legalize drugs. Many people can get by with drugs, however, many can't and most don't want to.
Working in drug discovery, I'm still amazed at how often a small change of sometimes even a single atom of a molecule can take an pharmacologically active molecule and make it near-worthless - or even worse take a (relatively) safe molecule and turn it unacceptably toxic. I'd stay FAR away from any "analogue" being created with the sole purpose of rounding a ban without having any sort of safety and probably minimal efficacy testing.
I'd say this kind of story gives even stronger evidence for why illicit drugs (the less-toxic at least) should be legalized & controlled - if this article is not overly sensational and there really is an escalating war of chemistry we could get into some pretty nasty stuff being marketed to consumers who do not know any better.
I've got news for you. If the guy beat his adoptive mother and brother to within an inch of their lives on K2, then they should thank their lucky stars he was on K2, or they would be dead right now.*.
Disclaimer:I've actually tried K2 and know what I'm talking about.
Perhaps you were unaware of this, but when the government wants to make something illegal, they are often not truthful. Furthermore, correlation doesn't equal causation. If one smokes a joint and then goes and kills someone, they didn't kill someone because they smoked a joint; they killed someone because they are a murderous person.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
ill stick with the original ones!
In Canada, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act bans "Cannabis, its preparations, derivatives and similar synthetic preparations".
http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-38.8/page-24.html#h-27
'That's the crux of the entire problem. The scientific community does not agree on what "analogue" essentially means.""
The crux of the problem is our crazy war on drugs. The fact that a person cannot smoke a joint at home legally, but can drive to the bar, get hammered, get in an assaultive fight, then drive home drunk possibly killing people is simply ridiculous.
Instead of allowing a real market, with the safest possible standards, we have a black market with adulterated crap, and chemical 'analogues' with unknown long term effects.
Instead of simple stores and methods of purchase, we have gang wars, and prisons filled to bursting, many with low end crimes. As a society can we focus on the sociopaths and rapists please? And quit with this stupid shit?
Silence is a state of mime.
...religion hates spiritual experience and even simple pleasure it doesn't ration.
Note the level of Bible Thumper influence which not only drove Prohibition, but anti-"narcotics" (cannabis is not one) laws in the same era.
Taliban must control sex and control other pleasures, and to accomplish that goal must define disobedience as "sin" then punish it.
The cost of WOSD is spectacular, and it fuels the wave of immigration from the narco-states it creates (though the Christian Taliban are completely incapable of connecting the disruption of civil society with flight to the US!).
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Any prohibition creates a profitable black market, but technology has added a profitable, front-counter venue for these "illicit" products, as well. At this point the only thing that could provide a shred of control or containment is legalisation.
Of course, legalisation carries a political risk not often noted; unemployment figures would sky-rocket, should the jailed be liberated.
...religion hates spiritual experience and even simple pleasure it doesn't ration.
Thus explaining why Jews are required to drink wine every week and are required to drink four glasses (definitely enough for almost anyone to at least get a buzz) on Passover. You also forgot about the numerous religions that use psychedelic mushrooms as part of their ceremonies. Religion is not the problem here.
If you want to know why we have a war on drugs, I can think of the following more plausible explanations:
Religion is really a minor issue here. There are a few priests who will pound on their pulpits about the evils of drugs, but their power in the drug war is limited at best.
Palm trees and 8
Great Mother Government is our Purpose, oh my precious Broodmate. Have you so soon forgotten the smell of her loving pheromones?
Seastead this.
If someone discovered a new biologically harmless but mind-altering drug, it would be made illegal, too. They are banning these things not only, or even primarily, because they are dangerous, but because they get you high.
If you were to remove the ban on the safest drug ever known you would have a lot less of this shit.
It is a monster of your own making.
Applying the precedent set by software patents, I should be able to get a patent for "... any substance which causes people to enjoy themselves...".
Then Johnson and Johnson could sick some sort of RIAA inspired analogue on these "pirates".
That would avoid implementation details like chemical formulae and such.
mmmm mojo...
These synthetic drugs aren't mimicking the effects of marijuana, or of LSD. They just change your perceptions or ideas. They aren't mimicking the effects of valium, either, but nobody ays that they are. Because "mimicking valium" isn't scary scary scary. Because the corporate mass media isn't trying to scare people about valium. Because valium is actualy Valium, a brand name drug sold by giant pharmacos that advertise on TV. Marijuana and LSD are sold by independent operators who don't pay TV corps $billions a year to make them sound friendly. That's why they're illegal. Even though they're not anywhere near as scary as valium, which is actually addictive.
But that doesn't stop Slashdot from saying these drugs "mimic marijuana", or the Miami cops telling the corporate mass media that bath salts are "a new form of LSD" when some idiot turns themself into a flesh eating zombie possibly by smoking some. Because there's no corporate PR pushback to protect the brand, any kind of inane lie will fly around the media if it appeals to fear of drugs.
The fact that in 2012 the mass media is quoting cops saying bath salts are "the new form of LSD", and Slashdot is pimping the idea that some arbitrary drug "mimics marijuana" shows that the only victory in the Drug War is the first casualty of any war: the truth.
--
make install -not war
How about you just leave us alone with whatever we want to do with our protein receptors?
Criminalize actual acts that actually harm someone else, regardless of the cause. If you want to make an aggravated crime out of doing harm as a result of doing something else that's known to be risky, especially on a second or further conviction, that's got some merit.
But criminalizing people self-stimulating (or inhibiting) their own bodies is tyranny. It has failed over and again, every time, creating far more damage than the drug consumption ever has. While failing to stop the consumption. And destroying both justice itself and the people's ability to trust it, atop the rubble of everything else the prohibition touches.
--
make install -not war
while I might think it's an analogue, another chemist might disagree,' says Shanks. 'That's the crux of the entire problem.
The author seems to have missed the fact that the real crux of the problem and that is that the country has banned the relatively safe versions, causing people to seek out these dangerous copies.
Its called Salvia. Still legal in most places although nobody ever describes it as pleasant.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
In Salina, Kansas, last year, a guy who ran what was essentially a head shop got raided by local law enforcement and an FDA SWAT team (no kidding) over selling one of the "JWH"-class compounds -- I think JWH-81, while Kansas law banned JWH-18 (or maybe it was the other way around). Anyhow, he was arrested and jailed, inventory seized, etc. A few weeks later, the state pharmacy board met, and decided that what he was selling was an analogue of the banned chemical -- in other words, close enough. That kind of process ought to scare anyone; is driving 65 (or 64) in a 65-zone "close enough" to speeding? Is 0.07 "close enough" to 0.08 that you get a DUI?
because there is so much corruption out there, a trip to New York City or Washington DC will prove it to you. There is so much under the table, suitcases changing hands money out there. Politicians are corrupt from "drug money", what? Of course they are. It's so much out in the open nowadays. The real drug lords are in the US Capitol, in your local governments, telling you how to behave, because they know you won't and then they "gotcha".
1) Finances the CIA and similar organizations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US)
2) Keeps banks and probably financial companies afloat via laundering: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/02/western-banks-colombian-cocaine-trade?newsfeed=true
3) Manages to roll its way into congressional campaigns (http://tomflocco.com/fs/FBILinguist.htm)
So... don't expect rational legalization anytime soon.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
If someone is STUPID enough to: drink, snort, inject some chemical into their body, as long as they are in the confines of their own home, I could care less. It is when they interact with the public (go outside, drive a car) that I have a problem with it. In my youth, I NEVER experimented with any chemicals other than alcohol. I stopped drinking in my late 30's when it became apparent that it hurt too much the next day to get up and go to work, because I couldn't stop at just one. The problem with chemical abuse is when you have an addictive behavior pattern. OCD, ADHD or whatever you want to call it, if you have a somewhat addictive personality, and cannot stop at "just one", these new "chemicals" that are produced to get around bans on K2, bath salts, who knows what they will do to your brain cells, if you have any left. I just wish they would somehow chemically map these chemicals to render the user sterile, so eventually these dopes that snort the equivalence of drano, will take themselves out of the gene pool. As for marijuana, about the only time you hear or see someone get out of hand is when the police refuses to take the arrested individual by the taco bell before going to jail. LOL.
eh I wouldn't say these synthetics are as harmless as the real deal, back when I smoked pot I could pretty much smoke it all the time and aside from munchies and not wanting to do much, there was little side-effects.
This shit on the other hand, when I did try some out of curiosity, 1 puff too many and the muscles in my neck clinched up, I started having what felt like a massive panic attack, and according to my wife turned ghost white, and were not talking smoking a lot here. So there's some bad mojo going on in this stuff, and it may or may not effect different people in different ways, while the Reefer Madness-style exaggerations are out there, they might not be as exaggerated as it first seems.
Of course Law enforcement wouldn't have a synthetic problem if they just legalized pot in a responsible manner, much in the same manner as booze ... but no, we couldn't ever have something reasonable that people wanted could we?
It's ridiculous for lawmakers to even engage in this whack-a-mole game.
Instead of banning substances, we should be banning behaviour.
If you want to get high in the privacy of your own home and eat a half-ton of Oreo's while watching the whole of Lord of The Rings extended expanded Director's Cut, you go right ahead, sir, have a nice day.
If you choose to attempt to drive while stoned/drunk/wasted/incompetent/texting then you're guilty of a new offence called 'Driving Like A Dick' and can be prosecuted for that.
If you choose to walk through a public space shouting your arse off about aliens, then you're guilty of a new offence called 'Acting Like A Dick' and can be prosecuted for that.
Equip all police officers with video cameras. Have them show the video in the trial and the magistrate decides whether the cop was right to make the arrest.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
You can chew coca for a long lifetime to little or no ill effect; millions have, ever since the Spanish broke the nobles' monopoly on the leaf---and I guess you can use crack for a lifetime, but it doesn't sound like it would be as long or as net-pleasant as one I'd want, even were it legal. Similarly, I'd rather need my pipe of opium nightly to fall asleep and relieve the aches and stresses of the day than need to inject morphine or heroin in order to function at all.
I'm all for advancing our knowledge and abilities, but when we start using chemicals that have not stood the test of time, we're in greater danger than before. This is not limited to synthetic chemicals: some of the non-THC components of pot's seem to ameliorating effect in those individuals---and they do exist---for whom THC can be a contributing factor in the development of clinical schizophrenia...but the drugs laws have helped to shift the profile strongly toward THC. Tobacco was used by American Indians, but never constantly, and usually in combination with other plants that at least reduced the total nicotine intake (even as they might increase tars, for all I know).
Again, we should not limit ourselves to those things our ancestors developed, but we should maintain an healthy scepticism toward the untried, especially when we're hacking with our core wetware.
A significant part of the Frontal Lobes important for the ability to override your desires and overcome the dopaminergic reward pathways relies on the functionality of Glial cells, and specifically the xCT cysteine antiporter.
When the xCT system becomes compromised Frontal Lobe function collapses, frequently leading to psychosis and mental illness. The Psychiatric solution is to reduce the function of the Dopaminergic system to match, but this is like helping someone who is sleep deprived with the "Two brick method".
Virtually every psych drug is the equivalent of using a hammer to smash some system in the brain. They are either enzyme inhibitors or antimetabolites or destroyers of transporters etc.. notice the psychologically carefully naming of "anti"-depressants, which actually only redistribute serotonin and decrease total amounts in the brain ensuring depression becomes chronic and reoccurring. It turns out that most MDs and Psychs have done the equivalent of an MSCE in medicine. Ask any about the importance of the xCT, negative feedback of tyrosine-hydroxylase, mitochondrial tryptophan-hydroxylase etc.. cofactors for the cachecolamine pathway, homocysteine cycle etc.. 9 times out of 10 you'll get a parroted sales pitch because they cannot admit that it is the western diet, and toxic lifestyle that is causing so many diseases so they will just get their "First line treatment" which happens to be a patented "protected poison", instead of a real treatment like 5-HTP or spirullina and B12, folic acid, B6 etc..
The "first line" "treatments" are not treatments at all. they typically suppress the symptoms temporarily and lead to a chronic worsening outcome, and a "Prescription Cascade".
Dopamine modulates neurogenesis and dopamine antagonists are more destructive to the brain than any illegal drug. Antipsychotics cause a permanent severe reduction in neurogenesis leading to significant loss of brain volume and mass. A real treatment would be to restore the Frontal Lobe function not to impair the dopaminergic system to match.
xCT can be compromised by excess Glutamic Acid:GABA ratio, due either to deficit of GAD enzyme, excess Glutamate or deficiency in Cysteine, or the enzymes needed to synthesise and recycle Glutathione.
The non patentable solution which has been known for many decades is to provide either Cysteine, N-acetyl-cysteine or best of all Glutathione, the most powerful antioxidant in the brain/body. Glutathione is made in Glial cells when the xCT is able to uptake cysteine. Excess glutamate can also cause blockade of cysteine transport into pituitary cells leading to a chronic deficit in POMC, endorphins, and ACTH all needed to adapt to stress and regulate the endocrine system.
Cachecolamine pathway requires VitC, also SAMe, Betaine are Methylation donors and the homocysteine cycle is critical for balancing excess Norepinephrine:epinephrine ratio which leads to oversensitisation of the thalamus and subsequent over production of CRH.
Too much protein out competes the temperature sensitive shelflife senstive scarce aminoacid Tryptophan at the Large Neutral Amino Acid transporter. This amino acid is the vespene gas of the brain, without which you are stuck at the lowest "tech level".
More than about 20g of protein in a meal will markedly reduce the brain serotonin rise from tryptophan. Counter intuitively too much protein will make you deficient in Serotonin. But what protein you do eat still needs an appreciable Ratio of tryptophan otherwise you will have poor mood, learning difficulties, depression and sleep problems.
Sprouted chickpeas and pulses, non-rancid nuts, Spirulina etc. are fantastic sources of aminoacids.
Cigarette smoking significantly depletes Glutathione levels which will ensure Glial function remains compromised, markedly reducing Frontal lobe function and leading to mental illness in the susceptible.
Many smokers have the misconception that their addiction will only kill them physically and that they will retain
that "drugs" are not legal as alcohol or cigarettes are.
The world has changed in the last twenty years. Online control by voter polling of our representatives' legislative acts has become a technical possibility. We can now go beyond the village and state level. We could set up a system whereby everybody would only need access to the Internet to securely vote.
No matter how many laws or constitutional changes we manage to have enacted, none would have such political impact as simply enacting an amendment allowing voters to repeal unwanted legislation.
Once again, the idiots making the rules attack the wrong side of the problem. It is the same reason prohibition failed, the reason efforts at eliminating prostitution fail, the reason the "Drug War" fails... it's why you don't plug a leak in a pressurized system from the outside. You plug a leak in a pressurized system from the inside. You stop use of illegal substances by prosecuting the people using it, not the people making or distributing it.
Rather than trying to ban individual chemicals, which has been shown to be ineffective, why not ban getting high on ANY chemical? Of course, that also means banning alcohol...
Anyway, how do you prosecute people for taking drugs? Simple. You find someone on drugs, and you prosecute him or her. If you only slap the users on the wrist while people who make and/or sell it get slammed, you only increase the intensity of the demand. The people in charge somehow don't understand supply and demand. If you possess a gram of weed, you get a month in jail, or whatever. If you possess a ton, you get 20 years. This should be the other way around. No one using it has a fucking ton of it, and conversely it makes no sense for a supplier to manufacture only a gram at a time. If you target the users, you eliminate the demand. The supply DRIES UP AND GOES AWAY!
Allow me to provide a negative example. What is the going price on the street for mixed-feces pies? I'm talking about pastries that are filled with a variety of rotting cow, pig, horse, chicken, and human feces, served at 115 degrees Fahrenheit? You can't really get that. But why not? It would be trivial to make, (provided you don't mind imitation cow, pig, and horse feces that are really dressed up dog feces, and pigeon feces standing in for chicken feces) or at least not at all difficult to make if you had a farm, or access to one...
So why don't we see vendors selling hot shit pies on every street corner? BECAUSE THERE IS NO DEMAND for them. There are a whole range of products you have never seen, and will never see, because no one wants them. Red ant and mixed spider pudding. Elephant urine flavored lemonade. 35 grit toilet paper, and so on. (Before anyone says this would be useful, I'm talking about a roll of sandpaper, with the thickness and strength of ordinary single-ply bathroom tissue, imbedded with large pieces of crushed rocks). A double-CD release of the sounds of children banging pots and pans together while screaming incoherently for 143 minutes, with liner-notes written by a retarded monkey. The list is endless and limited only by the imagination of what would not be useful to anyone.
You will never see any of these products offered at any price because there is ZERO demand for them. Want to stop people taking drugs? Find a way to drive the demand to zero, whether by mandatory drug testing of everyone, and severe punishment for using, or by infiltrating the drug supply lines, and either adding substances that make the drugs instantly fatal, or completely useless for getting high, etc.
For example, you could mix in powdered, weaponized anthrax into cocaine, and let it go... of course, bystanders could get hurt... the alternative to taking some measure like what I'm proposing here is simply what we have now. Prisons full of people many of whom don't belong there, people walking the streets free who should be in prisons, people taking drugs that make them act like maniacs and zombies, a huge drain on the economy that sends untold zillions of dollars to other countries for things that could just as easily be made here except that our own government is full of people too stupid to understand how shit works... meanwhile funding terrorism (and I mean real terrorism, like when a couple dozen people turn up in a ditch in Mexico without their heads because of these failed policies...) and letting violent assholes get rich while entire countries around them remain impoverished...
is not to reduce the use of drugs. It's a pretext.
The power of religion in this case is one of the highest orders. Controlling and influencing what people think and believe. Declaring what is good/bad.
That's real power right there.
I think that the single most important thing for human evolution is to maximize the individual's "liberty" where "liberty is the freedom to do everything which injures no one else" (rights of man 1789).
Enacting laws that limit an individual's liberty on the grounds that "they might injure someone else" is the slippery slope to perdition. We could use that reasoning to ban cars, fast food, electricity, sex....
Just legalize the lot. And let Darwin have his way. I am happy to help my brother if he asks, but I am not his keeper.
1. Legalize marijuana and traditional hard drugs: cocaine, methamphetamine and amphetamine, heroin, morphine, ketamine, MDMA, etc. I have reservations about PCP, but heck, legalize it too--because my system will create strong but non-criminal incentives to not sell people PCP (which is one of the very few drugs that can actually cause drug psychosis--meth's propensity for this is WAY over hyped by propaganda, and more likely due to poor nutrition and impure drug anyway in the rare cases that it occurs. Now do this:
2. Do NOT regulate and tax the heck out of it. Just:
2a. Pharmacy is legally exempt from legal ramifications if buyer has an adverse reaction.
2b. Pharmacy is legally restricted to sell a modest "ration" to each buyer per week. Of course, addicts will try to get their friends to sell them their ration. This is OK. Remember--it's all legal. But...
3. Since ONLY a pharmacist is legally exempt from lawsuit for selling the regulated amount, and your friend or factory is NOT, your friend can choose to sell it to you or not. But many, such as myself, will tell you to go away because I have a life and a job, etc., and am not interested in the risk of a lawsuit because you blow your heart out snorting my weekly 0.5g of coke, for a measly $20. Some people will choose to take the risk and peddle their rations. That's Ok--but the incentive will be to not do this.
4. A free market for medical insurance to create financial incentives to not abuse drugs. The market may then evolve the following situation:
4a. Disaster insurance--covers hospital stays and serious medical bills that would financially wreck the typical person. Cheap to buy, but relatively high deductibles of several $1000. That will make most healthy young adults happy. Buy preventative care and small incidental care with cash--it will be much cheaper without the gov. mandating that doctors and ins. cos. cover everything. It cost me $7 for a doctor visit when I was a kid.
4b. More thorough insurance that covers stuff like child delivery, some prescription meds., etc. More expensive, but lower deductible, and guaranteed to cover things that are likely but not certain to happen, like child birth. Suitable for middle class folks when they get started on their careers.
4c. Steep discounts for healthy lifestyles. You take cocaine and heroin and it shows on your yearly insurance co. piss test, that's Ok. You just don't get the healthy lifestyle discount. Strong incentive for folks to not abuse drugs. Occasional users can just not use any for 2 weeks before their piss test.
4d. Charity hospitals for caring for the poor. To the extent that the charity system has the resources to treat. This was what worked, imperfectly, but better than bankrupting a whole nation which is going to happen with the present system. Then we will all get nothing. And how big a health risk is a civil war?
4e. Government clinics for preventative care, first aid, shooing away people with the common cold, vaccines, urgent care etc. I'm a libertarian, but life isn't simple. I'll make a compromise here. But no, we will NOT treat you with $500000 of care to extend your life 6 months when you are 77 and at the end of the road. We'll give you a bottle of morphine if you can't afford it and send you on your way to meet you maker. It's what we all much ultimately face. My neighbor should not be obligated to pay for my life extension with 1/2 of his lifetime earnings.
5. Pharmaceutical drugs should be similarly deregulated, so that folks with terminal diseases who are going to die anyway can take the risk of testing a new drug that has little risk data behind it, but which might just save them. And nonsense like this doesn't happen anymore... A final little anecdote:
GHB (gamma-hydroxy butyric acid) was banned because a handful of people were victimized by the "date rape" crime. One could argue that they took a large risk by hanging out with the nightclub trash where this happens anyway. Anyway, it u
Need some info here. How is marijuana defined by current drug laws? Is it a plant of a certain species? A certain drug described by chicken wire? If there are 80 varieties of pot plants, do they all have to be individually made illegal?
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
They banned the synthetic drug with the first mix of chemicals then when the second mix came along, they seized it pending the outcome of tests to make sure it didn't contain the banned chemicals (i.e. if it didn't, they would return it to the people it was seized from). Of course, by the time the test was complete, whatever new chemicals were in it were already on the banned list.
I haven't heard any media reports since then so either they gave up (realizing that anything they tried to sell would be seized and banned) or its not being reported on by the media for some reason (maybe the cops dont want it reported on)
Surely that ought to have read Whack-a-Molecule.
Decriminalized all drugs. No punishment for users; only dealers remained criminals.
Within a year or two, drug abuse rates for all previously illegal drugs fell by half.
Violent crime, in the meantime, doubled. Because the market contracted by half, and said market was populated entirely by criminal sellers.
Lessons learned:
1) Anyone who thinks drug abuse will increase due to legalization is probably wrong.
2) Anyone who thinks decriminalizing use, while keeping manufacture and sale illegal, is a good idea, is... what's a polite way of saying "mouth-breathing fucktard?". This is literally the worst "compromise" possible. You know how everything's gone full-bore apeshit in Mexico lately? They decriminalized small-scale drug possession in 2009...
Legalization is the only path to regulation. See: Alcohol.
With few exceptions, if the purpose of a chemical is to induce a pleasurable experience in the mammalian brain -- and it provides no nutritional value, and isn't tied to centuries old economic practices -- then it is considered a threat to social harmony and order.
Cannabis, and the synthetic cannabinoids created by studying its active ingredients, are the perfect example. Cannabis as a drug provides no nutritional value on its own (hemp oil is a fringe case and not particularly useful for cooking compared to other oils), there is no established, legitimate, economic sector built around its production and distribution. There was a legitimate trade in it in the West for a time but it never was bigger than tabacco which is infinitely more suited to be a money maker in that it's very difficult and time consuming to produce yourself. Consumers of tobacco are dependent on the tabacco farmers and distributors. A consumer of cannabis, if they consume it regularly, will probably be attracted to the activity of growing his own. It's very simple to grow, and provides a convenient and cheap source of the drug.
Any drug then that produces a pleasurable (or even neutral) high, has no long establishes economic activity surrounding it (opiates slip by because of this, and because the medical community has to have something to kill pain and that's the best we've found on Earth so far), and provides no significant nutritional value, will become a target for prohibition. This is exactly the pattern that has been followed in the US for the last century. LSD was discovered in the 1930s and was seriously researched for a time (and in fact showed great promise in psychiatry) but was eventually banned because it fit the description given above. Cannabis similarly was targeted once this mindset of state-sanctioned pleasure really got rolling. Hemp was collateral damage of this war on pleasure, similarly to how many useful and non-recreational chemicals could be banned if the governments really start cracking down on synthetic drugs. Casting a net wide enough to catch all of the molecules a chemist could dream up to play on the human brain will inevitably end up catching ones that have other useful applications to science and medicine.
What's important to remember is that this is above all a conservative/religious political phenomenon. Pleasure fo the sake of pleasure is sinful (both from a religious and nationalist/capitalist point of view), it distracts an individual from service to god (for the religious) and to the nation/economy (for the conservatives). Any mind altering substance is also inherently a threat to orthodoxy of all kinds. Changing the way you think, even temporarily, might cause individuals to question the socioeconomic order. Alcohol remains legal (though highly controlled in areas where the religious/nationalist sentiments are both prevalent and fighting for dominance) for two reasons: the first is that it is itself a part of the orthodox conservative world. Liquor is consumed widely among the power elite and is part of their in-group's culture. The second reason is that the effects of alcohol are not mind-elevating but are mind-depressing. It might also be considered a food source.
Public safety and health are usually smoke screens to mask the real goal of the socially conservative power-elite. Pleasure must be regulated in order to control the population and shape them to the best use of the nation and economy. Anything which threatens that must be outlawed.
... is the abject lack of morality in modern society. Relativism has sunk its teeth in deep and the world is slowly bleeding out without even realizing it.
I votge we search for digital copies of them molecules instead.
Its the UN who first said to all countries, to make pot illegal.
before that, there were no such laws, but the dick head mother fucker lawyers and pollys just listened to the UN like its god or something, and then made these laws.
To the sound of PE, FUCK THE UN.
Seriously, those bunch of crooks should be shutdown.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
They dont like something, ban it, then kill you.
Face it, life isnt easy, if a drugged up nut tries to eat your face, well, if the law allowed you to carry a gun, blow the fucker up with a round of 15.
Stop blaming K2, those canaboid type synths make you more hazy/lazy and weak.
He was probably a fucked up nutter any way.
You know bees kill more people than pot, so lets kill ban destroy ALL bees on earth.
Then you will see four years later human civilization drop from 7 billion to 1 billion.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.